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The Zoq2
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Posted: 28th Jul 2012 17:03 Edited at: 28th Jul 2012 17:05
Hello everyone, I figgured it's time to show off the project im currently working on.

The game is called Stranded. You play as a character that has been stranded on an island. The goal of the game is to survive and (maybe) get of the island to return to family and friends .

I have a world generator working, and you are able to controll your character. Im currently working on interraction with the world (chopping trees, gather suplies, staying healthy). Right now though, the game play is extremley boring, you can walk around, but nothing else The reason im making a WIP thread now is to get feedback on how the game runs and the size of the GUI. So far it's only 2 buttons.

Anyway, enough of the talking . Here are a few screenshots.

This is a randomly generated island, this is how big the gameworld will be. I want the player to feel stuck on the island, but still have some exploration to do.



This one shows how it will look when you spawn, you will always spawn on the shore (Mostly). Also, ignore the Logs and the rock at the bottom, they serve no purpose.



This shows the only gameplay feature I have added yet, 2 buttons. One for Cutting down a tree ect., the other one for harvesting resourses without destroying whatever you harvest from.



I will also include a .apk file, which you can try the game out your self, there is not much to see yet but feedback on the performance would be incredibly helpfull, also, if you try it, do the buttons feel big enough on smaller screens than my 5" one.

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Rich Dersheimer
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Posted: 28th Jul 2012 18:28 Edited at: 28th Jul 2012 18:39
I would love to play a game like this!

Some notes, just my opinion...

The second button looks like a duck , is it supposed to be a rock?

I would suggest NO buttons for doing things. Just tapping on a thing uses it.

If it's a thing that can be gathered, then the resource is gathered.

If it needs a tool, then the resource is collected if you have the tool.

If it can do more than one thing, then a list of choices could open up for what you want to do. Like a tree could be chopped if you have an axe, or fruit could be gathered, or the tree could be set on fire if you have fire, etc.

And lots of different recipes for making things, that would be SO cool!

EDIT: Err, looking at your third pic, and after trying the apk, it seems like my suggestions are redundant. So the stuff at the bottom is what you currently HAVE, not buttons, right? Silly me. The "action" menu buttons do seem a bit small, even on my Kindle Fire.

The pathfinding is excellent, the screen scrolls smoothly.

I would suggest shadows for all the trees, bushes, rocks, etc.

And maybe some non-square looking interface tiles between grass and sand, water and sand, etc.

FakeBlood
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Posted: 28th Jul 2012 18:38
Looks like a great start! Keep us posted..unfortunately I can't try the APK as I don't have an Android device just yet.

The random island looks really good..the key will be coming up with ways to make it fun for the player.
The Zoq2
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Posted: 28th Jul 2012 18:57
Thanks for the feedback. The wood and rock (duck) have no reason to be there in this version... Scaling things are a bit hard for me since all I have to test with is a 5"galaxy note and my brothers S3. Also, what FPS did you get on your kindle fire?
Rich Dersheimer
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Posted: 28th Jul 2012 19:29
On my HTC Incredible Droid phone, it stayed about 13 fps, and the scrolling was just a little bit jerky.

On the Kindle Fire, it stayed at 60 fps while stationary, and between 50 and 60 fps while moving.

Did I tell you how excited I am to play this? HURRY!!!

The Zoq2
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Posted: 28th Jul 2012 20:07
Quote: "Did I tell you how excited I am to play this? HURRY!!! "


Hehe, thanks for the support, i'll try to get a playable version out soon.
FakeBlood
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Posted: 28th Jul 2012 20:42
13fps...wow thats bad ..and with very little logic going on..Hopefully thats the htc and not agk being slow!
The Zoq2
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Posted: 28th Jul 2012 22:12
Actually, there is a fair bit of logic going on, since the map is 100x100 "tiles" big so there are a lot of "foor loops" in there. I don't remember if I have any that are actually 100*100, but there may be. I hope it's the Phone to though because I hate optimising.

Also, did you happen to notice any slowdowns when you told it to go somewhere. im still not sure how fast my pathfinding is.
Digital Awakening
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Posted: 28th Jul 2012 22:42 Edited at: 28th Jul 2012 22:43
Will try when I get home to my wifi connection.

From the screens it doesn't look like you need a lot of code to loop through.

And the concept sounds interesting.

MarcoBruti
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Posted: 28th Jul 2012 22:56
Hi Zoq2,
I hope that you do not draw 10K sprites at each sync cycle.
I think that the best approach to tilemap based game, is to keep the map in memory and draw only the visible tiles plus the sections of tiles at the border. I think that your approach is that, or not?
If not, I am not surprised if performances are so low.
The Zoq2
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Posted: 28th Jul 2012 23:16
No, I dont draw 10k sprites. I dont realy think that I have any 100x100 loops left. I heard that the draw sprite command is slow, so I will probably change to having each tile as one sprite in the future
Digital Awakening
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Posted: 28th Jul 2012 23:37
Yeah, drawing sprites are slow. That command wasn't even in AppGameKit at first because it's so slow. It is my understanding that AppGameKit handles sprites extremely well by not drawing any outside the screen. I should whip up a test for this some day.

The Zoq2
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Posted: 29th Jul 2012 00:27
Well, I changed the sprite system but since I didnt have any issues before, I dont know if there is an improvement in speed. Ill upload a new version tomorrow to see if it helped with the FPS
The Zoq2
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Posted: 29th Jul 2012 13:11
Yeay, dubblepost.

Well, I did some more inprovments, and recompiled the .apk. The problem is that I get worse framerates on my android than I did before. It may be because I have 100k sprites loaded at the same time now . What do you think is faster, keep all sprites loaded at the same time, and hiding those that are out of sight, or loading them as they show up/deleting the ones that arn't vissible.

Anyway, I uploaded the new version of the APK here, would be awesome if you could test it and see if you get better or worse performance

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Digital Awakening
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Posted: 29th Jul 2012 13:19
All sprites should share the same image, make them animated and then set them to the correct frame. I would suggest that you use enough sprites to cover the screen and then move them around and change their frames. I think that is faster than creating and deleting sprites.

DennisW
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Posted: 29th Jul 2012 16:42
Hi I installed it on my Acer 500 and looking good the FPS is about 31 to 34. Good path finding. Needs a little info displayed for player. A GOOD thumbs up

Dennis

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The Zoq2
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Posted: 29th Jul 2012 17:45
Quote: "All sprites should share the same image, make them animated and then set them to the correct frame. I would suggest that you use enough sprites to cover the screen and then move them around and change their frames. I think that is faster than creating and deleting sprites."


Hmm, that's a pretty good idea.. I'll see what I can do, but for now I want to finish some gameplay.

Quote: "Needs a little info displayed for player"

I will add that once it's more of a game than it is now

Thanks for the feedback.


Here is an update of the progress, I have started working on a inventory, and it's going good so far. Right now, you can show/hide the inventory, and I can display what's stored in it. Now I will have to start working on Using and gathering items to store in it Should be fun.

This is what the inventory looks like so far.


And the inventory when hidden
Digital Awakening
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Posted: 29th Jul 2012 19:20
The inventory icons are nice

I think you need to do something to make the level objects stand out more from the grass background though. Adding shadows is one solution. You might consider trying toning down the grass texture a little, it is quite busy. Also making the grass brighter and adding a little yellow might make it different from the objects as well.

The Zoq2
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Posted: 29th Jul 2012 19:54
Good point, I was thinking about doing that bu forgot about it...
Digital Awakening
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Posted: 29th Jul 2012 20:04 Edited at: 29th Jul 2012 20:04
You could make a 3D effect on the trees by scaling and rotating the trunk and then position the leaves accordingly. That is, you will see more of the trunk the further away the tree is from the center. And a leaf shaped shadow on the ground that doesn't move would go well with that.

The Zoq2
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Posted: 29th Jul 2012 23:47
Well, I updated the image for the palm trees, this time around, I made a 3d object and then made sprites from that (same as I have done with the items). This is what the forest looks like now.

It looks a lot better IMO, I will probably do something similar for the other sprites to.

Digital Awakening
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Posted: 30th Jul 2012 00:00
Those trees are so much better. They pop out from the background and also looks better Suddenly the grass doesn't look so bad.

The Zoq2
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Posted: 30th Jul 2012 00:32
Those where my thoughts to, tomorrow I will try to update the rest of the items. There is one thing I need some suggestions about how to do though. Between the difirent tiles, sand, grass water ect. There is a pretty ugly border as it is now. I have had a few ideas on how to fix it but none of them have been good enough for me to implement. So do any of you have any ideas on how to blend the tiles together. Or do you think I should keep it the way it is now?
Digital Awakening
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Posted: 30th Jul 2012 00:38
Easiest way to do it is to create a simple fade from one to the other. Corners are a little tricky and if you mix 3 textures it can get complicated. If you for example use Photoshop you can create a back and white mask. Then put one texture with the mask on top of the other.

The Zoq2
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Posted: 30th Jul 2012 10:41
Thats one way I considerd, but like you said, the corners are tricky, aswell as whwere 3 tiles meet
Digital Awakening
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Posted: 30th Jul 2012 11:20
I have done it with 2 textures. While corners are a little tricky it's not hard. 3 textures shouldn't be very hard to do if you spend some time on it. Texture fades are far easier to do than anything else. I can get away with blocky maps in RTA due to the art style. But this game have a more realistic look so you have to do something about it sooner or later.

leo877
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Posted: 31st Jul 2012 10:48
@ the zorq2


i ran strand(A) and strand001(B), i got the 60 fps and the load up quick on strand, the arrow move fast (A) but on strand001(B) the loading was slow when you get to the tree, i would get fps 30 and the arrow move slow.


The Zoq2
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Posted: 31st Jul 2012 11:42
Thank you for the feedback, the loading times are pretty explanatory, it has to create 15k sprites instead of 10 (10k ground, 5k items). Ill have to do some optimisation.

On another note I have been working on the gathering system. I can now have 1 frame when something has something to gather and one when not. The character also walks close to the "target" when the loot button is pressed...
Digital Awakening
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Posted: 8th Aug 2012 11:15 Edited at: 8th Aug 2012 11:16
Sorry that I haven't replied to you sooner.

The first version ran at 60 fps (AGK default max) on my Galaxy S2. Only dipping a few fps when it was calculating the path finding. The 2nd version ran at 50 fps. I did prefer the larger loot art. It did take for ever to start though.

The Zoq2
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Posted: 8th Aug 2012 14:48
Quote: "Sorry that I haven't replied to you sooner. "

Well, I havn't realy done anything on this project for a few weeks either. DayZ is to fun

About the slowdown, I will have to figure something out. Perhaps I can load a few of the sprites at a time. Because cloning 15k sprites is slow
Digital Awakening
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Posted: 8th Aug 2012 17:45
Yeah, the amount of sprite is a problem. The best solution would be to use a small amount of sprites and then move them around, changing their frame (using an animated sprite instead of multiple images, or an atlas image). That way you do not need to create any new sprites while the game runs.

The Zoq2
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Posted: 9th Aug 2012 15:25
Yea, I have to do something like that...
The Zoq2
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Posted: 7th Sep 2012 15:22
I have finaly gone back to working on this project, the performance issues are still there, but I don't know how important fixing it is. On all the devices I have tested, it runs at 30 fps on my tablet and 50 on my phone, which IMO is enough.

Anyway, I have now got "looting" working. You can harvest materials from plants, and they regrow in time. Hopefully I will get a health system working and then the game will actually be a playable game...
The Zoq2
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Posted: 23rd Oct 2012 17:44 Edited at: 23rd Oct 2012 17:49
Aww, I have to tripplepost again

Anyway, I submitted stranded to the "app inovation contest" and I got thru the first round, so that means i'll be getting an ultrabook sometime soon This also means that I will need to finish this game within the comming month.

I just finished the saving and loading and a working menu. I think i'll start working on making a crafting system soon. I added harvesting and added a delay when looting things to.

Here are some screenshots of the menu.






Oh, and I replaced the red arrow with something that actually looks like a player. But it's not animated yet :/
baxslash
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Posted: 24th Oct 2012 11:34
The Zoq2, if you need a way of creating your characters for the game I could get you the latest copy of my "Character Workshop" which has sprite export / animated character export. If you need it that is


this.mess = abs(sin(times#))
The Zoq2
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Posted: 24th Oct 2012 11:44
I have been thinking about using your tool, it looks awesome. But the problem is that my game it has a top down perspective, which based on what I have seen isn't ideal for character workshop. Instead of rotating the legs, I would need to scale them. Besides I already have a 3d character with an animation, I just have to find some time to convert it to a 2d animation. Thanks for the offer though

In other news, I got a call today, saying I will get my ultrabook today so that should be fun to test. I have also started working on the crafting system, but it's not working just yet.
baxslash
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Posted: 24th Oct 2012 11:49
You will be able to scale and can already move limbs and they don't need to have a rotation / parent / child hierarchy, that's just one way of animating in CW.

Sounds like you already have something sorted out though. I would suggest one of these tools for easy sprite creation:
Sprite Me
Model-2-Sprite


this.mess = abs(sin(times#))
The Zoq2
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Posted: 25th Oct 2012 22:35
I have looked into both those, but I think I may do it manualy, or just make my own program that does that.

Anyway, here is an update. The main change is that I redid the sprite system, now instead of having 15k sprites, it's down to about 300. The weird thing is that it made the game "laggy" on my ultrabook, increased the framerate on my tablet, but didn't change anything on my phone. I uploaded an APK file and it would help a lot if you could test this version, and an older one and see what change you get in framerate. Other than that, I have started working on a crafting system, but I have alot of problems with it. Sprites disapear if you go to it to often, it creates random sprites, it dosn't get any values out of variables. Other than that, its going tood

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The Zoq2
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Posted: 7th Nov 2012 23:53
And another update, as well as another double post

I have been doing a lot of work on the game, but im still waiting for AppGameKit to get touch working on ultrabooks before I can release it.

In the meantime, I have set up a system for using items, and a working crafting menu. The player will now also find random items on the ground, rocks, roots, sticks ect. Also, I have finaly added a walk animation to the player, and started working on animals. However, the latest AppGameKit patch broke a lot of my code with some UDT array problems.

I will probably make a youtube video pretty soon with some gameplay. But for now, here is a screenshot of the crafting menu.

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