SFML community forums
General => SFML projects => Topic started by: myroidtc on June 23, 2014, 04:47:52 am
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Zeran's Folly is a story-based action-adventure platformer with fluid combat and a weird sense of humor.
The game is being built in C++ and uses a custom engine. Except for networking, I use all of the SFML modules: graphics, window, system, and audio. I enjoy SFML because, well, it's simple and fast but also includes a bunch of useful little features.
I came to SFML from Flash back in 2013. At first I missed some of the basic engine stuff from Flash like rendering and asset management but I've grown to love the power and flexibility that SFML offers. One of my favorite parts is shaders--you can get some awesome effects out of them if you get creative. For example, I use shaders for the wavy water effects, some bloom here and there, and as a method to tint the level art in some sections of the game, mostly in the Manastery area. You can check out the effect in the "Miracle Juno Boss Fight" video below.
Zeran's Folly is out! Check it: http://store.steampowered.com/app/665030/Zerans_Folly/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Af1wwCLzcLc
Some pretty pictures:
(http://media.indiedb.com/cache/images/games/1/31/30405/thumb_620x2000/Zerans_Folly_2017-08-06_22-00-55-47.png)
(http://media.indiedb.com/cache/images/games/1/31/30405/thumb_620x2000/Zerans_Folly_2017-08-05_14-04-07-20.png)
(http://media.indiedb.com/cache/images/games/1/31/30405/thumb_620x2000/allchars.2.png)
Here's a bunch of videos:
The first few minutes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpdMlh5QIZE
Lone Clone boss fight:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91jrjgKLSO4
Final dungeon gameplay:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0mVBkF6GqY
Miracle Juno boss fight:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lrg4i2xZSbk
Let me know what you think!
IndieDB: Zeran's Folly (http://www.indiedb.com/games/zerans-folly)
Twitter: @myroidtc (https://twitter.com/myroidtc)
Subreddit: /r/ZeransFolly (http://reddit.com/r/ZeransFolly)
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Wow. Although this is not really my kind of game, it looks really well done and the video is amazing.
Love the graphics.
Great work.
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This is sweet, it reminds me of Sonic The hedgehog in a way.
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This is by far the most complete project I've seen so far and it looks awesome!
Seems like a lot of fun to play and I definitely would love to play this!
You and your team did a very great job on this one and the graphics really look great.
The only annoying thing is the sound of the coins :D
Keep us updated on this masterpiece! ;)
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Wow. Although this is not really my kind of game, it looks really well done and the video is amazing.
Thanks!
For those of you who are on the fence, the gameplay shown in the video is from a sidequest that is more of the traditional "collect coins and beat the stage" deal. The main game is more Zelda-y in that you go to a place, beat a dungeon, maybe get a new power, go to the next place, and so on. Millie Megavolte 6 (http://www.milliemegavolte.com/fallenhero/index.htm), another game I made, was like this.
This is sweet, it reminds me of Sonic The hedgehog in a way.
Yeah, Sonic is one of my biggest influences. In fact, the physics engine is an implementation of the Sonic engine from the Genesis games. Check out Sonic Retro (http://info.sonicretro.org/Sonic_Physics_Guide), they did a really good job explaining the Sonic physics engine.
Originally I just wanted a way for characters to go up slopes at the correct speed but I guess I went a little nuts with it, heh.
You and your team did a very great job on this one and the graphics really look great.
The only annoying thing is the sound of the coins :D
Keep us updated on this masterpiece! ;)
Thank you! Tori Kamal and Izzy Dulay did a great job with the voices. Everything else on screen (except a good chunk of the sound effects) is my handiwork, from the art to the programming to the music. I guess I can't brag about the coin pickup sound being any good though, heh.
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Wow! That looks like it could be a great app (I would absolutely download it if it was).
Oh, and if you don't mind me asking, what did you use to make the maps? Was it TiledMapEditor or your own level editor?
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Oh, and if you don't mind me asking, what did you use to make the maps? Was it TiledMapEditor or your own level editor?
The foreground is split into three layers: midground (behind the character), foreground, and collision mask. All three are big ol' textures, which is why the levels are broken up into sections rather than continuous. While incredibly easy to work with (just draw some stuff in an image editor and boom, level), it's incredibly taxing on memory and load times. If I keep going with this method I'll have to rework it in some ways because I've noticed lower-end machines have problems with missing textures.
I do most of my "level editing" with Flash. I use it to make the collision masks and I made a script to output object positioning code that I can insert directly into the C++ source.
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That looks awesome. I definitely got a Sonic vibe from it too. It should be on Steam!
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I think i would enjoy thins quite. Nice smooth game play!
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I like it so far, but I've got two things that I'm not that happy with:
- Plenty of health: Maybe I'm a bit too old-school for this, but the amount of health appears to be a bit extreme.
- Lack of contrast: Looking at the levels shown, it's either all green, all blue, or all brown. Especially at high speeds it appears to become a blurry mess. I think the game has been heavily influenced by the classic Sonic games (especially those loopings), so I'd say look back at the Sonic games: There's always quite some high contrast, e.g. blue sky, brown background, and green platforms (and a blue character).
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Plenty of health: Maybe I'm a bit too old-school for this, but the amount of health appears to be a bit extreme.
Like, as in appearance-wise, or difficulty-wise? According to the feedback, there was a wide spectrum of perceived difficulty but it tended to skew towards fairly difficult. Plus, keep in mind that I know the game inside and out (obviously) so I didn't need that much health in the video.
But, rest assured it won't seem like much on the higher difficulties. (Mostly more damage taken, most enemies and bosses have extra/harsher abilities, etc)
Lack of contrast: Looking at the levels shown, it's either all green, all blue, or all brown. Especially at high speeds it appears to become a blurry mess. I think the game has been heavily influenced by the classic Sonic games (especially those loopings), so I'd say look back at the Sonic games: There's always quite some high contrast, e.g. blue sky, brown background, and green platforms (and a blue character).
That's a good tip! I'll keep it in mind.
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Very cool. You did an excellent job. I really enjoy the familiar feel to Sonic the Hedgehog. One question I have regarding the engine: do you have any tips or tutorials on actually making the game side scrolling? Meaning, how do you stream the map from left to right? Obviously this is a fundamental question of side scrolling games and I don't expect a thorough explanation, but I really would like more information on how this is done.
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how do you stream the map from left to right?
Think of it as having two representations of your game world: logical, and on-screen. A character may have an X position of 1500 but it may have an on-screen position of 300 depending on where the camera is.
object.onScreenPosition = object.absolutePosition + camera.offset;
So, in your draw function, you position the sprites on-screen depending on their distance from the camera rather than on their absolute position. By moving the camera or having it "track" an object, you can move the object around and the world will appear to follow them, scrolling the map.
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Ah that makes perfect sense. Thank you so much.
So one last question that goes along with that, I think:
If the world in which you're scrolling through with relative positioning of objects, do you load the resources of the objects when they are, say, 1000 > x > -1000 AND 1000 > y > -1000 position units away from the main character (the center of the screen), and anything outside of those bounds unload it?
Also, do you have the absolute positions of every object stored inside some sort of database so that you know which objects to load the resources of and display as you get close to that object?
Thanks so much again,
cm3rt
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Also, do you have the absolute positions of every object stored inside some sort of database so that you know which objects to load the resources of and display as you get close to that object?
Movable objects in the game (like coins, the characters, particles, etc.) derive from a Mobile class. Mobiles have an sf::Sprite member that gets drawn when draw() is called on the Mobile. Mobiles also contain other data like its absolute position, animation data, velocity data, and so on. If the Mobile is going to be used that level, such as the bee enemies in the grasslands level, its textures will be loaded or pointed to.
That will help explain the next part:
If the world in which you're scrolling through with relative positioning of objects, do you load the resources of the objects when they are, say, 1000 > x > -1000 AND 1000 > y > -1000 position units away from the main character (the center of the screen), and anything outside of those bounds unload it?
The issue here is not loading/unloading resources, which is a different beast altogether. Instead, it's about calling draw() on an object or not (i.e. culling). The way it works in Zeran's Folly is fairly simple:
-Set the sf::Sprite's position to the Mobile's absolute position modified by the camera offset. This will be its "screen" position.
-Is the sf::Sprite's getGlobalBounds() inside the screen, therefore (probably) visible? If so, call draw() on it. If not, don't.
TL;DR: Don't mess with loading/unloading textures, just don't call draw() on stuff that won't be seen. sf::Sprites are contained in another class that has absolute position data--no database is used.
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Oh wow, I had no idea I posted this over a year ago. Time flies.
Zeran's Folly is still in development. Here are some updates from last time:
In game, you can switch between the four different characters at save points or by using a special item. You can see it here as sort of a proof of concept:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUVAJ7KJ5kg
To switch the textures, I mark the player object as invisible, replace all the textures in a separate thread, then make the object visible again. It's not the most efficient if you want to swap characters a lot but it works. It'd be better to use a pointer and keep the textures around instead of reloading them all the time whenever you switch characters.
However, I'll have to update this approach as I've been using Spine (http://esotericsoftware.com) to replace my sprite sheet characters with dynamic models. Here's a demonstration between the two types (the smoother one is the Spine model):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jpD5adRzNk
Code-wise, Spine is kind of a pain in the ass to use with SFML because Spine's API uses C structuring instead of C++ so there are no classes. Instead, it's a bunch of spClass_Function(args) calls which all return pointers. But, once I got it figured out, it worked well. Visual Studio's Intellisense/autocomplete is a godsend for APIs.
One reason I switched to Spine from sprite sheets was the ability to have custom skins without having to generate an entire new set of sheets. It's not a big thing but I love having alternate outfits for my characters! Here are some examples:
Lone:
(http://i.imgur.com/U1MfGw1.png)
Lydia:
(http://i.imgur.com/NKFWPwa.png)
Abby's new model with an alternate outfit:
(http://i.imgur.com/0IFwwFR.png)
The different skins all use the same underlying structure so there's no need to make new animations or anything. Pretty sweet!
Finally, here's a concept for the Tomb of Kings, a new area in the works:
(http://i.imgur.com/FPSY71f.png)
I've been putting together a Level Art Generator that uses sfVertex shapes and custom shaders to draw the background art. This particular scheme isn't done yet--the concept serves as the guide to what steps will be needed to make it happen. For example, these would be the steps for this scene:
- Draw the stepping stones for the walkable path
- Draw the base rock texture on a different renderTexture
- Outline the rock texture using a shader that draws and antialiases a black outline
- Draw the reddish-orange highlight around the rock edges using a shader to find the edges
- "Light" the rock texture using a shader that determines the pixel's distance from a zero-alpha pixel. The further away, the darker it is.
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I love your artwork. Catchy music. Still no download available?
That looks awesome. I definitely got a Sonic vibe from it too. It should be on Steam!
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Still no download available?
Here's a recent-ish build: Download (http://www.indiedb.com/games/zerans-folly/downloads) (103 MB)
Make sure to read the README, there's no in-game documentation of controls or anything yet.
TL;DR:
- Move: WASD, J+Space.
- Holding up or down changes your attack.
- Hold the attack button to charge your attack.
- Open the debug menu with K (or Y on the XBO controller) to open the Debug Menu to switch characters and levels.
- 3 stages, 4 characters
Also, here's a video of some guy playing it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wBkoSiZ9Gc
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Wow, Very Well done project! Hope I could finish mine too
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New Build: Download the Tomb of Kings Build (http://www.milliemegavolte.com/media/ZeransFolly.zip) (Windows only, ~39 MB)
(http://i.imgur.com/8vDIMhg.png)
I recently finished a Level Art Generator and made a new level editor in Flash. Now that I've got those two things in the can, making new levels is a lot faster and easier.
In the new build linked above, there's a preview for the Tomb of Kings East, the first half of the first dungeon of the game. To play it, select "Dungeon Run" on the main menu. Give it a whirl and let me know what you think.
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Update, March 29 2016: New Build! Download the Tomb of Kings COMPLETE Build (http://www.milliemegavolte.com/media/ZeransFolly.zip) (Windows only, ~39 MB)
Here's a gameplay video of the dungeon's boss:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sp50sG743DM
Give it a gander and let me know what you think! The Tomb of Kings is the first dungeon in the game so I'm trying to gauge its difficulty.
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Hi myroidtc,
Your game vids look bloody amazing! i can't wait to try it out and provide my feedback :-D. Hopefully i'll be able to check out some actual gameplay stuff in a couple of hours
LOVE the animations, fluent movement and the art though. Well done!
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I just grabbed the latest build and it's really great! Spine animations can add so much to a game. :)
Did you switch to SDL?
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Did you switch to SDL?
Just for the controller rumble. Everything else is still and will be SFML!
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Ah okay. Just saw the SDL DLL and was wondering. :)
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Update, May 31 2016: New Build! Download the Manastery Build (http://www.milliemegavolte.com/media/ZeransFolly.zip) (Windows only, ~46 MB)
There's a huge new dungeon available! The Manastery is the second dungeon of the game--a mysterious structure teeming with magic and crawling with baddies.
Here's a gameplay video of the fight with Miracle Juno, the dungeon's boss:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4QznpC1MQ8
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Very nice work. Looks awesome.
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Update, July 31 2016: New Build! Download the Pukamake Grotto Build (http://www.milliemegavolte.com/media/ZeransFolly.zip) (Windows only, ~50 MB)
There's a whole new dungeon available! Pukamake Grotto is the third dungeon of the game. Lisa faces her right of passage to become a Sea Dragon knight while Lone and Lydia look for the Seer's Staff supposedly buried within.
Here's a video of Da Kula Hula, a new minigame:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2K6Q1j4Veg
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Brilliant work. I loved it! It reminds me Toad Strikes Back game (it is also platformer with different bosses).
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I found one problem:
I minimized the game and then switched to it using Alt-Tab (Windows) and it became "not responsing". I forced it to quit. Also, why it eats so much memory (in my case - 500 MB)?
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I found one problem:
I minimized the game and then switched to it using Alt-Tab (Windows) and it became "not responsing". I forced it to quit. Also, why it eats so much memory (in my case - 500 MB)?
Thanks for playing! Yeah, I noticed it has problems with losing focus--I'm not totally sure what's causing it. Maybe something with threads? During loading screens it does a lot of stuff with RenderTextures in another thread to draw the levels.
Once the game is more or less done, I'm going to go back in and revise and how the levels are loaded and kept in memory. Right now, it draws textures for three layers (collision mask, midground, foreground) for each room in the zone. That way, room transitions are instant since the level art is already drawn and ready to go. The downside is it takes a lot of memory (like you said) and the load times can be a little egregious (sometimes as much as 40 seconds for a big area like the Manastery).
I'm going to look into seeing if drawing rooms on demand can be fast enough to feasible--that would cut loading times and memory usage dramatically. It all depends on if I can do it or not. A lot of time is spent create()ing the renderTextures for each room to make them the exact size of it, and create() tends to be expensive. So, I'm thinking of making them a static, large size and just re-using them over and over by clearing them instead of creating them.
But, that's for later. I want to have a game to optimize first.
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Such a great game!
Amazing moving and physics. :o
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Wow...this game is so awesome... you have done a REALLY good job bro... stay awesome!
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Update, December 30 2016: New Build! Download the Vinegarden Build (http://www.myroidtypecomics.com/media/ZeransFolly.zip) (Windows only, ~82 MB)
5 of the 6 main story dungeons are available. The two new dungeons, Dorfhole and Vinegarden, are unfinished in places but mostly playable. Load times have been improved a bit, too.
(http://www.myroidtypecomics.com/media/vinegarden_dl_halfsize.png)
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Zeran's Folly is now on Steam Greenlight (http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=844264612) if you're into that sort of thing.
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Up voted. :)
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Voted ;D. Good luck with the greenlight campaign, love your game.
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Upvoted. Good stuff.
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It's been a couple months since the last update. Zeran's Folly was indeed Greenlit--a huge thank-you to everyone who voted or checked it out.
At this point, the engine and features are all mostly in-place--it's that boring part of development where it's like, "alright, now make all the assets". A few boss battles still need some tweaking but aside from that, all that's really left is a bunch of overworld areas. Basically, that means a ton of art assets for backgrounds, NPCs, etc.
I don't have a definite release date but I'd love to release sometime this year. It's still at least a few months out. Once the game's out on Steam I might come back and throw around a few keys or something if there's interest.
Anyhoo, here are a bunch of videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0C3frDUraNs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91jrjgKLSO4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4aFqH2Cmek
I don't know if I ever posted this here but here's a silly little animation from Feb 2014. Can't believe it's been three years already. I made it to flesh out the characters a little more in my mind and get a better idea of who they are. They've changed a lot since then but it was still a helpful exercise... even if it is a little cringe-y in retrospect, ha.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtfJeuvhSWY
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Horror story time!
Out of curiosity, I wanted to see how much video card memory the game was using. So, I found a GPU profiler, ran the game, and found out it was using a shocking 3464 MB.
Was that a lot? I checked out some other games. Overwatch and Guild Wars 2 each used around 800 Mb. It turns out 3 gigs is pretty terrible.
The problem is that I was using a lot of big, redundant RenderTextures for the level art generator. 4096x4096 textures * 6 per room * 2 depths * 4 layers. It's obvious now in hindsight but I had no idea it was using that much memory.
So, I did what I could and eliminated some redundant RenderTextures. Now my system uses about 1505 Mb when running the game. Still pretty bad for a 2D game, but way better than what it was before.
Moral of the story: Be careful of what you're allocating.
Anyhoo, now that that's fixed, I put out a new build that hopefully shouldn't immediately crash for everyone. Windows only, and you'll need a video card with at least 2 GB of memory. I've seen them online for as cheap as $35 if you need one.
Link to build: http://www.myroidtypecomics.com/media/ZeransFolly.zip
There's also a bunch of the new stuff in there like rings, talents, outfits, and prettier environments.
I've been working on NPCs for the past couple of weeks so here are some pics:
(http://i.imgur.com/HxVPYgG.png)
(http://media.indiedb.com/images/games/1/31/30405/merlina.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/WymPwx2.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/9NHxExZ.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/A3tjuzz.png)
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The first five (well, two) playable minutes of the game:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpdMlh5QIZE
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Finally got all my business stuff in order and approved as a Steamworks partner. Zeran's Folly has an appID and a (hidden) store page on Steam now, so that's nice. The process of setting everything up is pretty complicated at first glance!
As far as a release date goes, I'm still gunning for this year. The game is 80%-85% done. There are a bunch of art assets that need to be done, along with some bits and pieces missing from pretty much everything. For example, there are three or four bosses that are scripted but not implemented yet, two of the dungeons need set dressing and some music, the vendor interface needs to be made... you get the idea. Just a mountain of small rocks.
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Did some scheduling and I may have the game finished as soon as October. The ol' "double it" rule puts it at the end of the year. So, it'll make its 2017 release date after all! Hopefully.
So, Zeran's Folly, coming Fall 2017 to Steam.
(http://i.imgur.com/uxO7NOF.png)
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Two months before launch, all the world areas are finally connected and accessible:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxaCQ_FfzM0
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Great stuff, and very interesting. Keep it up!
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The store page on Steam is up: http://store.steampowered.com/app/665030/Zerans_Folly/
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New gameplay trailer for release, check it out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Af1wwCLzcLc
Zeran's Folly launches next Friday!
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I've always loved how well done this game is; it's very polished indeed. Congratulations for the game and also getting it on Steam! :)
Noticed two things, though, in the Release Trailer:
- It starts too slowly. That is, even though the music's upbeat from the beginning, the video is almost static (screenshot-like) for seven seconds. The slower parts later seem fine once you are used to the video pace but if someone only watches the first few seconds of your trailer, they may not get the correct impression of pace.
- There is an odd visual effect where the orange background is apparently "glowing". Unfortunately, the initial impression caused me to wonder what what wrong with the sprite and why it was see-through. Only after checking it did I realise the intention.
It's visible at 1:16 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Af1wwCLzcLc&t=1m16s)
Only minor things, though; overall, I'm very impressed. Nice work :D
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Some updates:
Zeran's Folly is officially out on Steam! You can check out the store page here (http://store.steampowered.com/app/665030/Zerans_Folly/).
There's also a Free Version (http://zeransfolly.myroidtypecomics.com/freeversion.php) available but it is just the base game without any post-launch updates.
Yesterday, Anne's Update launched. It adds a new playable character (Anne) and has some bug fixes. Here's a video showing some of Anne's abilities:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2BtbwTiC1hk
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Congrats on the Steam release :D
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Awesome, congratulations! :-)
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Here are some updates on Zeran's Folly:
There have been a bunch of new updates including two new playable characters (Marco and Penelope) and a new dungeon with procedurally-generated layouts, the Necro Pits:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yg_smd6SzIk
Zeran's Folly is also on sale this weekend, so nab it while you can! Here it is on Steam:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/665030/Zerans_Folly/
I'm also happy to announce that Zeran's Folly will be getting a sequel: Leowald. It takes place 20 years after the events of Zeran's Folly and has new characters, new play styles, new rings, all sorts of new stuff. Bigger and better!
Here's a demo track for it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=emUcnHAIs2w
And here are a couple of dev update things if you're into that:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tUcHb_f298
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N1vTfmBjBVA