The Epilogue Blog

1/9/18 What could have been, could it still be?

Observant readers -or- those who can read English, may notice a fairly decent gap in the posting date of this update vs the last one in which I was faced with oh such a dilemma on what to start designing next. Well, the truth is I managed to burn myself out of production for a while. Health, relationship, and financial concerns left me too drained at the end of the day to continue production. I fell out of my groove for too long and when attempting to get back into my productive side later on, I found that I no longer had the same eyes, creativity or heart as the 'me' that wrote all of the updates seen below. I lost contact with a lot of friends who helped to inspire me and keep me moving forward and without them, not only did I lose my drive, I lost my team. Currently I have no plans to continue development on The Epilogue, only hopes. I still make notes about what could be, I keep an eye on pop culture and gaming trends and tailor a few ideas around my findings, but as far as butt-at-desk, brain-making-things development goes, I don't have it in me to return just yet.

3/19/16 Update:

Not much of an update, but I have now reached a fork in the road. I have the option of working on desert, forest or snow and I'm not sure where to begin...

My Heart, She Hurts:

Apparently none of the updates that I have been making to the blog have actually been getting saved over the last few months. That's my fault I should have made sure that they were being saved. That said, boooooooooo!

Short update for months of work?

Fine.

Hmm...

Wow, I changed a lot,

I fixed the player attack animation as well as the hit boxes. But I'd have to say my most impressive changes are the additions of the new areas!:

A few rooms in Town:

~~~

'Final' Update (Half time):

There's not too much change since the most recent entry. I finished with the demo in a decent state where there are few fatal errors. I plan on continuing development after the end of the semester when things calm down.

12/4 Update:

Over the length of the break and the week of return, I made some pretty substantial improvements. I final finished the sprites for the attack animations and tuned them to face the right perspectives. So I finally made the combat a bit more smooth since now I basically doubled the length of the attack area. I also finished the death screen- FINALLY! Now, when a player dies the game sends them to a room that has a sprite of them that explodes into bones and presents the Game Over menu. That took me a few days to finally solve since every time the character used to die, there was a second long pause before the room would change and the menu would just pop up without the death animation. But it's finally taken care of and it works great! I added an 'end to the demo as a bit of a prank. When the player leaves the court house the game 'blue screens', crashes and sends the player to the response sheet (which I will post here). I spent a long time last night prepping a solid demo for the class today. Most likely it will end up being the final version for this semester as a benchmark since there are no fatal crashes that have been found yet. Over the winter break, I am expecting to start working with some sprite artists to start making some new assets.

Survey results

11/19 Update:

Current status update (keeping in mind I have still been in a recovery for the last week) I have finished building the court room and have populated it with a few NPCs. I also began the process of scripting their dialogue. You can see the placement of the NPCs in the finished image of the court house. Notice that 2 are in jail cells and one is behind the counter in addition to the audience attending the court case. Each NPC will have unique dialogue pertaining to the quests that they will offer the hero to drop their law suits. The plan is for the hero to go to the judge's room and naturally loot the chest which will result in the judge catching the hero and comment on the fact that they are foolish and just can't stop breaking the law.

Additionally I have added more detail to the sprites that deal with the character attacks. I didn't like the originals and I felt as though they were not large enough. Again, I apologize for the lack of detailed blog entries recently, I am hoping to get a large amount of work done during Thanksgiving break when I have a chance to rest.

11/15 Update:

I'm finally starting to recover from the cold that I had last week, however it would seem that the negative affect that it had on my productivity may be a larger issue than I had anticipated. After being too sick to do anything for a week, jumping back into the same workflow is proving to be very difficult. Today I resumed construction of the court room I imagine that will take me a few more hours to complete.

11/13 Update:

A quick last minute update before the cut off time; I was unable to make it to class today due to catching the cold that has been around the lab the last week or so. Despite my best efforts, I was unable to update too many features on the actual code of the game. That being said, I can say that I was able to begin creating 2 additional levels/rooms. I began on the court room that sees the player begin the process of losing their abilities. Mist likely I am going to have to create a stand alone object to appear when the court case ends, due to the fact that i don't' know how to have a sprite tile appear without it being an object. The other room that I began working on is a room that would house the cutscenes that would take place without the player control. The trick to this room is having objects that re perfectly timed to replicate the needed sprites and their desired locations. To this extent, I am aware that I am going to need to create an entire object list of different events that certain objects will have to perform. That is unless I can find a more simplified structure for the cutscenes. It was a shame that I had to miss class today because I have been drafting a Google survey page that I had planned on the class filling out. This would help my testing get more feedback and people would have the anonymity to make comments about the game that they may not make to my face out of respect or potential social perception

I have not taken this week lying down production wise. Despite not being able to implement too many changes to the actual game files, I have been drafting up some details that I think are going to go over very well in the long run of the game. Most of these details include the weapon systems that I had mentioned in an earlier post. one idea that I came up with was returning a magical book that you gave to a beginning magician. He claims that he doesn't like the book and that it freaks him out. The book is described as having a face and upon returning the book to its original alter, the player will discover a 'metal arm clutching some kind of 'Thus Pipe'' an homage to the cult classic "Evil Dead: The Army of Darkness". That'a all that I have the energy to go into for now

11/12 Update:

No update this week. Been bedridden and out sick for the week. Supposed to present tomorrow, but I don't have anything new to show.

11/4 Update:

I'm writing an update despite not making much progress over the past few days mostly to make a point that I am not blowing off the responsibility of the assignment or the mandatory blog updates. I have been having some personal issues that I've been dealing with over the past few days, so there is a good chance that it may take me some time to recover before I am able to back to work.

11/3 Update:

Website editor has been acting strange lately, so updates are a little tough at the moment. So far, the current item I am working on is the attacking sprite for the sword. I am editing the new one to not be gold, but to instead be a regular color. Additionally, I am trying to set it so that once I get the multiple weapons system up, there will be different sprites for elemental weapons. In order for that to happen, I need to lay the foundation now to make sure that it does not become an issue later. Once I have that taken care of, I will map the collision mask of the sword. From there I will work on the combat settings as the main complaint for combat is that getting hit can freeze players, thus making them take continuous damage. I'm not sure what I'm going to need to change or even look for in the code, but I need to find a way to add some I-frames in.

Also, it would appear that for the Portfolio assignment, I need to find a public forum to post the game in for critiques. While this may work for other people's assignments, I feel as though giving people a 30 second demo with almost no original content is going to get me feedback on par with that you could find in the comment section of a PewDiePie Youtube video. What do you want me to do here, Frank??

10/28 Update:

Just a quick update for the day unless I have time in a little while to update some more. Decided to take a break from the weapons and start making some more levels. Never been a fan of building from scratch...

10/26 Update:

After dealing with so many code changes over the last week, I decided I wanted to mess with some of the aesthetics...I should not have messed with the aesthetics...

One of the issues that I noticed from playtesting is that the hit detection is AWFUL for the player attack. It's basically this giant square that just hurts everything around it. That means that if an enemy is behind you, you can hit 'em. So I have started to work on better hit detection masks for the sprites. But before I did that I needed to make the changes to the sword sprite so that the mask would stay consistent. For now I just stretched the original Metal Sword sprite and added some detail lines to reduce the pixelation from the scale up. The main issue that I face now is that the origin points of the sprites were changed as well. This makes it so that the sword appears about half an inch away from the player sprite when you attack. I have been messing around with a solution, but the entire process is just trial and error.

10/23 Update:

Oh, what a productive week. I honestly should have kept track of what changes were made, but I honestly didn't expect enough to change that I couldn't remember it all. So, basically I worked hard on the dialogue system. The original set up used a small text box with a small and basic font. I realized that the text box was far too small for people to be able to read with ease, so I wanted to expand it. A running theme with this project is "You would think it would be simple, but...", with that being said; You would think it would be simple, but the code that was used referenced a lot of scripts that I still haven't even reviewed. With hours upon hours of work I was able to change the size of the box, but the text remained too small:

So, after a few more hours I was finally able to figure out that the

drawing text script referenced a separate script that defined font.

So I found that script and began to mess with different options for font and size.

Then came the issue that pushed me almost to the point of insanity. I tried for several hours over the course of 2 days trying to figure out why the text was not centered in the box. I scan every script that even used the term "Draw" and messed with each individual one trying to find the location that actual drew the text in the center. On the morning of day 3, I FINALLY figured out that the reference for that script used different terms from the other text drawing. So at long last, the text is aligned and I am able to have a more extensive amount of text that can fit in the dialogue box.

The source of my slow decent into madness...

10/20 Update:

Well, it would seem that my updates are not being posted as methodically as requested, so I will do my best to improve their frequency. Since yesterday, I started messing around with adding an extra treasure chest. A larger more fancy one in reference to the boss chests in retro Zelda that usually housed a new item or the key to the boss room. Now, you would assume that this would be easy. It is not. It seemed as if the most simple way to make the chest was to copy/paste the original chest code, but for some reason that doesn't work, the player can't open the chest and the collision detection is all off. I tried messing with the sprite mask, but that was not the cause of the issue. I may just find a way to tweak the code that draws the sprite of the original chest so that I can tell it if it is a regular or special chest and can change the sprite accordingly. I also messed around with the player's ability to equip new weapons. The pre-made system is super nice, but I am going to have to crack it open and mess with it to add new weapons. I just hope that I don't mess something up as bad as when I tried to change the movement control buttons. Now only could the player not move, but none of the controls responded and I had to force close the file. Which is unnerving because I will need to get back in there and mess with everything so that the controls are a bit more 'nice'.

10/18 Update:

So! Weekly update...I presented my current build to the class on Friday. Created an executable for them to play with. However, I didn't realize until after I sat down that the version that I gave them had DEV shortcuts in it that took me all the way to the end room. Oops. So basically everyone who played the sample thinks that the only thing that I added was a broken room with some scorpions. I suppose it's not the worst thing for them to assume that. Next time I go to report, when I give them the fixed version that includes everything that I'm working on now, it will look like I did a massive update. Unless they read my blog...but I don't think they read my blog. Anyways, status report: The current build is looking pretty awesome. I am becoming more and more familiar with the array system that the original devs used to make the sample, so adding new items shouldn't be that far into the future! I worked more on the opening of the game. I added a little ghosty-guy that shows up when you start the game. He's supposed to be the final boss dying after the fatal blow that the hero gives him when you press New Game. He slides backwards for a bit and then explodes into bouncing bone bits. I was surprised at how hard this was to set up.

For 3 hours I dealt with an issue in the step event for the ghost boss that kept causing a crash. There was a variable that it claimed I did not define in the create event. Only I did, and it drove me mad that I could not figure out why it was not working. Finally I found out why (I think). It turns out that in order for the current object to turn into the bones AND bounce around requires the actual object to change. So what was likely happening was the object changed into a different object, which did not have the variables defined, thus the crash. In addition to the ghostly animation, I added a few treasure chests to the room to symbolize the end of the game reward. Inside of the chests are over 1,000,000 coins, and the 'ultimate weapon'. Players are trapped in the room until they open all chests and have all coins in their possession.

I may need to edit the asset sword that you are given so that it has different stats to reflect the fact that it is the final weapon. Additionally, I need to start looking in to making the special swords. I think for the ultimate sword, I may have it be some form of nuke, every time you attack. Like maybe 'The sword so sharp, it can split the very atoms of foes.' That would be a fun concept to play around with. Like, every time you hit an enemy with it, maybe they turned into a mini nuclear blast. The only thing I would need to look into is how to 'tell' the game that the ultimate sword is equipped. I spent a lot of time combing through every thing but I don't know what script they included to check for that. I imagine that it's going to be under the same script as the one that actually equips the sword.

I have also been putting a lot of thought into the lawsuit mechanic of the game. I know that the scope of what I want to do might be an issue in terms of having a finished product by the end of the semester, but I really feel that if I can pull it off and walk away with something unique, it will be a justifiable reason to not finish the game. I am thinking of the long term after all. The issue that remains though, is that I don't know how I want to handle the lawsuit mechanic. I have the original concept, but then I'm worried about breaking some design rules. If I give the player the ultimate weapon and all of the other weapons, only to take them away, it might be a bit of an annoyance to the players. Also, how am I going to handle the community service missions? I had thought about just making it so that the player had to go back and return the items they took from the dungeons, but what should they return? My first thought would be the weapons that they originally got from the dungeons, but that would mean that the players would be LOSING abilities as they progressed...

I suppose I could have the ability weapons that you start with be fairly tame in terms of powers and then when you return them, you could be rewarded with something that is actually much cooler. Liiiiiiike...what if...you had a sword that shot a small bolt of lightning, but when you return it, you...

...

...

Oh!

What if there was a new ability that was defensive. For example, the constant use and subsequent loss of the sword made it so that you had a permanent static charge, so what if any puzzle that required electricity would be solved just from you touching it? OR maybe in addition to that, when you collide with enemies, what if there is a shield that zaps them, and depletes, and then gets recharged the more you walk around? Okay, while none of that may fit correctly into my scope, it is important for me to know that there is a way to make things work out without the sacrifice of fun abilities. So here's hoping that my next update is full of awesome reports.

10/11 Update:

It's been a while since my last update, but I have been pretty sick lately. There's a bug going around and whudya know...I caught it. So since I'm still not totally at 100%, this update is probably going to have to be a bulk one that encompass' all of the updates that I should have been making. I suppose some of the largest changes that have happened would be some fixes that I made to issues that I mentioned in my last update. I was able to fix the character select screen so that it was no long all off center. The strange thing is, I don't know why it was broken. I looked over the code for why the other menus worked correctly, and then tried to copy that code over to the character select screen, but it was still an issue. In the end I had to just have the origin placed at half of the screen width/height instead of half of the GUI display. I also encountered a similar issue on the options menu, but this was an easy work around as I just have the back of the screen go black instead of showing an image. It seems to work just fine.

A few notes regarding when I presented to the class last, the lab computer with the projectors does not have a pro license for Gamemaker, so I can't just open my file on the computer to show off. The only work around that I was able to find was to use a program called Team View to stream my laptop screen on to the lab desktop. However, this was a bad idea as the moment I started moving the frame rate dropped and it made the game look absolutely horrible. Also, this may sound...I don't know...arrogant, I suppose, but when I show off my work, I feel like the class doesn't really notice the changes I make. Where as artists can show how much more pretty their work is getting, all of the hard work that I do is hidden behind the game's look. People see a small room and don't seem to think it's anything impressive, when in fact just tiling out the room takes hours and the code that you need to make everything takes just as long despite there already being some base code to work from. I don't know. I probably sound silly complaining about people not getting it...Anyways, people do want a playtestable version of the game and I understand that it would be the best was y for them to experience it, but I am so far out from anything that is playable or interesting and it makes me wonder if I should just rush something out for them to mess with. It's a strange compromise(?) it reminds me of when other devs produce garbage and when people complain the devs say "Well we wanted to put something out there that people could mess with." Oh, also regarding the save file joke; not single chuckle from anyone one the older brother angle. I don't know if the joke just doesn't work or if I goofed on the delivery, but it was definitely a 'cougher'.

So, in addition to the menu fix, I had to fix another issue that came up when connecting the first room to the second room. When you went to the long hallway, the room view was crushed down to where it tried to make the whole room fit on the screen. I had to tweak the settings in room view, but I could have sworn that I used the same room template as last time, so I have no idea what went wrong there. The important thing is that it's fixed now. Once I get the room details worked out, I am going to work on the next part where the hero exits the hallway and enters the secretary office. I forgot to take a picture, but I have a bunch of designs on my white board for the progression planning. It's a decent way to keep things organized, yet still easily editable. Another additional change that I tried to make to the game script (with disastrous results) was to change the control keys. I figured it would be an easy fix, but as soon as I tried to change them, the game stopped receiving any kind of input, so that's going to have to be an issue I come back to later on. I also need to see what script is used to name the save room. For right now I need to plan out what I need done for the presentation on Friday:

-Add a few rooms for the character to walk through.

-Add some NPCs and customize their dialogue.

-Fix any fatal errors that might cause the game to crash.

-Hats.

-Potentially include some test enemies to show combat and death.

-Executable?

10/1 Update:

I changed the menu last night so that the background is now 'unique' the image is a temp one since it is one from Shining Force, but it perfectly captures what I want my actual background to show once I get that far. I have also started construction on the first real room of the game. So far I have had some pretty good ideas for some starting 'yuks' that I can make. For one, there is a 3 file save system built into the engine, but I want to make it so that you can only play on the first one and the other two will say "Older Brother's save file (Don't delete or I'll punch you!)" & "Mom's save file (Don't delete or I'll have your brother punch you!)". Additionally, the mom's profile will only have like 3 hearts and like 5 jewels. The only challenge I face with this one is that I have been dissecting the pre-made scripts for a few days now and I have yet to find where the save files are stored. I will need to limit the number of saves that you can have from 3 to just one. The other idea I had is starting the player in the boss room after beating the boss, having them open a chest that will give them all the jewels (fire will be blocking the exit until they open the chest. Maybe I can have a fire extinguisher in chest?) Once they leave the room, there is a long vertical hall that they will walk down. It's designed to be pretty long so that on the sides of the screen there will be text that gives this kind of "It's finally over" message. Once the player passes the hall they will be in a receptionist's office where they will walk past a desk with an NPC monster that will say "Oh! That was fast, did your meeting with Mr. Wosucheval go okay?" From there, the player will leave the cave and be at the top of a mountain where again they will descend with messages about how happy the towns people will be with you and your hard work. Once at the bottom of the mountain there will be a crowd of NPCs. -Cutscene- They carry you to the court house.

One of the issues I need to fix is the character select screen not lining up.

All of the other title screens work fine, but not this one.

Here are some additional issues I need to correct on the first stage.

9/28 Update:

Ever since I got the RPG pack, a vast majority of my time has been studying the setup for how it uses arrays. Arrays have never been my specialty so progress has been a little slow. However, I was able to start dissecting the process for adding in instances of NPCs. NPCs require separate creation codes to make them unique this is set in the room that their instance exists in. You use the preset arrays to determine the sprite of the NPC, their name, and their train of dialogue. This also includes multi conversational paths that can be explored based on how the player interacts with them. I was able to create 1 NPC and the player can talk to them, but their dialogue seems to go in the wrong order. This is something I'll look in to tonight. In the meantime, I was FINALLY able to get the room transfer to work. Before, there was this weird glitch with the screen that would make everything start to blur out from the old room, but then stop and obstruct the view of the new room. I was finally able to determine that the size of the door sprite I used was not set to the correct dimensions. I have made the adjustments and everything works fine. The only thing that I noticed is that there is no room transfer for going East or West. I may have to create my own using the base code, however I am hesitant to do this because it would add additional time to the research side of the project and take away time from the actual production and at this point I NEEEEED to have something to actually show off this Friday when I give my status report. The only thing that I am hesitant on is showing of the pre-existing assets.

Additional note:

I plan on uploading some screen shots when I get home later tonight.

9/27 Update:

Not much to report this Sunday night. I have been pretty pre-occupied with studying for an upcoming test so my hours have been a bit stretched, I'll check back in tomorrow.

9/24 Update:

Well, it would seem that I have reached a fork in the road with the inclusion of the assets. Where I once thought I could merely integrate what I wanted from the assets, it would appear that it's going to be an all or nothing scenario. The code for certain objects that I wanted to use are inter mingled with other objects from the original files. This basically means that I can't just use one or 2 objects from the assets I have to integrate MY stuff into the asset pack file. Additionally, The 'asset pack' isn't even an asset pack. The paperwork seems to refer to it as an "RPG engine". Which would mean that it's an 'engine' inside of another 'engine'.

So it appeared like I was going to have to import my assets and just code them in, right? Nope. Nothing I have is worth saving when compared to the efficiency of the new pack. I've been looking over their scripts and the entire thing is mind blowing. Lines of code that I didn't even know were possible in Gamemaker. So I am left with a difficult choice, but one that I must make for the sake of coming out with a decent project: I have to abandon all of the work that I put into my original project files. It is a bittersweet feeling, as I no longer feel the sense of pride I once felt when I launch the game to test features, when I looked at everything and knew that it was all from my own hard work. But on the flip side, I now have a much more professional looking set up that has more features than I had even planned to put into my game. And it's not as though this swap is going to make my life easy. The way everything is coded, I need to dive in and learn/analyze everything that exists before I can start making my own items. Which is goo industry practice as it will allow me training in jumping into a project that has already been underway. I need to be able to look at existing code and understand it in a timely manner if I want to do my job. I suppose I need to work a lot harder on this ability as well, a conversation with Jeff has gotten me a bit more concerned for my future in the industry. Game designers need to be a jack of all trades, they must understand the in's-and-out's of any department that is employed to work on a game (modeling, animation, texturing/lighting, sound/audio, programming, etc., etc.) and they must be able to communicate their ideas effectively if not just demonstrate what they mean by showing the other person with a hands on approach. I suppose that concern is in the future, but that doesn't put me at ease.

9/22 Update:

Well, the last week or so has been interesting...Yoyo Games, the company that makes the 'engine' in which I am working with for this project, put out a deal on Humble Bundle. The cool news is, I got an extra license for their Professional Studio, the Android publishing extension and some amazing assets that I will be using. The frustrating news is that when they started the sale, Yoyo's servers immediately hit the floor and crashed. Normally this wouldn't be an issue, except they have a ridiculous license verification system that could no longer verify my original license. Thus, I have been locked out of any and all work for the last week or so. Cheers!

When it comes to using pre-made assets, I have a few reservations. My main one is that any time there is someone who notices a pre-made asset, I worry that they my discount other elements of the game. It's an unfounded concern I am aware, that however, does not mean that I can just pretend like it's not something I am worried about. The other issue I have with it is that there is a current epidemic of 'developers' just flipping asset packs and trying to scam people out of their money. It puts everyone on the indie scene who is aware of the issue on high alert and looking for per-made assets.

9/14 Update:

This update comes a little later than my usual ones, things have been a bit manic in development lately and if it comes to spending my time writing updates, vs actually working on the game, then I am obviously going to choose to work on the game. But, the progress that I have made has been notable. For most of the development I have been aware that I was going to need to play around with screen resolutions in the game settings.

I spent a very large amount of time on trying to create the HUD system so that it would adjust to the resolution of the player's monitor and would use math to find their resolution and adjust its self to that size in order to remove the look of the black bars on the sides. However, after many many hours of jumping between my laptop and desktop, I was unable to find the perfect formula for getting the correct measurements even though my formula was perfectly fine.

In the end I decided that the best course of action would be a redesign of the HUD and special selection process would go. I did research into, and then implemented a pause menu. It is from the pause menu that the player may select their special. I have even drafted a pretty cool menu layout for how this can be implemented, but it involves some animation, so unfortunately, I won't be able to have it usable for a while. I find that this redesign is going to prove to simplify my development though as it won't require needing to gather information regarding the player's display.

The other changes that were made were room scaling. One complaint that I have heard regarding this form of RPG (at least the indie versions) is that when a player walks into a house, the room containing the house is too big, so I have scaled the houses down.

I also laid down some tiles for design testing and it reminded me that I have yet to find an artist. I was put in touch with a friend who seems interested in working with sprites, so there may be a ray of hope when it comes to making the game look a bit more stylish.

Future Goals:

-By Friday, I want to have enemy parents that are region locked. I want them to activate only when the player is in their area and deactivate when they leave. Additionally, I want to create a switch system that I can organize in a way that won't become complicated when I have many versions of the switches later on in development. Having to learn AI is right around the corner and I am NOT looking forward to that one...

9/2 Update:

As soon as I posted the update for yesterday, I took a look into the tile system. I was surprised to learn how easy it is in Gamemaker. Using the sprites that I found from the Kenny website, I have begun to lay the tile. And let me just say, laying tile is about as fun as...laying actual tile...It is sooooo bland. Results are slow so I'm not focusing on laying all the tile right now I am just putting enough in each room to make the rooms stand out. I also increased the speed of the avatar's movement due to the change in room size from when I first started the project. On the movement note:

One thing I still seem to have an issue with is the direction the avatar's sprites are facing. They work fine when moving on the X,Y axis, but whenever you move at an angle, the sprite doesn't necessarily change to the correct sprite. This is also an issue that I'm facing when the avatar collides with a wall. Some directions will make the avatar slide along the walls, but there are a few others that he will stay motionless when colliding with. I have gone over the code, but I can't see where the issue may lie.

So, I need to set my first hard deadline: By the end of class this Friday, I want to have all of the tile layed for the first level of the test dungeon. A stretch goal would be to create the objects that will keep track of quest progress.

9/1 Update:

Okay it was a long a tedious process, but I added the walls to the rooms to give them barriers. Things are starting to look very Zeld-er...Classic adventure game that's not based on anything...Fixed all of the view snap objects, so that is a huge advantage because in the future when I make a room those will be pre-made for me. the only annoyance would be having to add them manually, I could chart all of the co-ordinates, but I think I may do some research into room creation codes. Seems as though they may come in handy. The other thing that I tried is using Tile Sets. I had never used tiles before, and now I hate myself for not trying before hand, they are awesome and they make designing the level so much more streamlined. I managed to grab some VERY basic sprites from http://kenney.nl/assets. They will help in blocking out levels. My next thing that I'm going to have to look into is designing enemies and how room spawning should work. For the time being, the only thing I can think of to enable rooms is to create 9 different copies of the same enemy and keep them organized in their own folders. The only problem is that this seems like it may be an issue later on when there are a ton of enemies and items.

-Ugh-

It's time like this when I start slipping into old habits of wanting to work on cosmetics. But the WHOLE point of me working on this project is that I get the fundamentals down. I need to prove to myself that I can keep focused on what is important and not worry about the superficial, least I fall into Jim Sterling's level of hell in the future...

God I miss having a team...

...

P.S. I need to remember to start adding screenshots as I go. It will make 'the journey' better at the end...

8/31 Update:

Progress is being made on development. Although, it is more slow going than I would like it to be. Recently I was faced with an issues of view changes not lining up, the cause seems to have been an error in math that I used to tell me where the View Change Objects were supposed to be located. I had incorrectly added the X,Y co-ordinates so that when the avatar crashed into them, they would jump to a location that again hit the avatar, this would cause them to bounce around on a loop which made the game crash. I should have corrected the movetolocation problems, but now I am cleaning up an issue with the X/Yview port locations, it would appear that certain collisions with the wrong objects makes the view jump to the wrong room.

Moving Forwards:

My hope is that in a day or so I should have the view port issue cleared up and I can begin structuring the walls to the individual rooms. That should only take me an hour. And with that done I can make steps towards writing a code that will check to see if the avatar is in a room or not and then follow event steps once he enters/leaves a room. That is most likely going to be a very time consuming venture.