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General => SFML projects => Topic started by: AFS on January 17, 2016, 10:54:54 pm

Title: "Our Dear Paper Fighters" - Top down shooter
Post by: AFS on January 17, 2016, 10:54:54 pm
Hello.

This is a a pet project of mine. I've been working on this since August 2015, although the code behind it is much older.

The game itself is nothing fancy, just a top down shooter inspired by games like Desert Strike and Urban Strike, which I played on the SNES when I was a kid.

(http://i.imgur.com/xknV1rl.png)
- One of the first screenies. January 2016

(http://i.imgur.com/xlwhBdV.png)
- A more recent screenshot. It has a different HUD for the healh and fuel, plus the adition of ammo. April 2017

(http://i.imgur.com/ntbqmXP.gif)
- The first gif of the game, when buildings were just part of the background and the screen-shake was obnoxiously strong. For some reason the GIF came out too dark. January 2016

http://youtu.be/18G0E6pvhNE
- First gameplay video, with awfully loud sounds. February 2016

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OV1xO9Rz_bA
- Making a small part of the level with the editor. May 2016

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2FA5esHWwk
- More recent gameplay, showing the general structure of a level. April 2017


Sorry for not sharing the source, this is made on a personal engine-of-sorts. Feel free to ask how anything is made, though, and I'll try to answer the best way I can :P

Cheers!
Title: Re: "Our Dear Paper Fighters" - Top down shooter
Post by: Hapax on January 18, 2016, 02:27:39 am
I love this art style. I hope the final game always looks this good!
I saw this in the screenshot thread too but got too distracted to comment  ;D

I think you should add a video of the gameplay. It will allow all users to see what the game looks like, even if they can't play using your provided binary.
Title: Re: "Our Dear Paper Fighters" - Top down shooter
Post by: AFS on January 18, 2016, 04:23:03 am
I love this art style. I hope the final game always looks this good!
I saw this in the screenshot thread too but got too distracted to comment  ;D

Thanks man, I'm really glad that you like the art style. I really struggle with graphics as I'm not an artist, so hearing that people like it is a huuuuge relief, so thanks again ;D

I think you should add a video of the gameplay. It will allow all users to see what the game looks like, even if they can't play using your provided binary.

Good idea. Considering that the game barely has sounds, I decided to make a GIF instead. I edited the main post, thank you ;)
Title: Re: "Our Dear Paper Fighters" - Top down shooter
Post by: Satus on January 18, 2016, 08:15:04 am
Wow, art looks really cool.
Title: Re: "Our Dear Paper Fighters" - Top down shooter
Post by: Elias Daler on January 18, 2016, 08:24:35 am
The art looks very good, yeah. :D
I tried to play your game, but it crashes for me after I press "Play". Grid appears and then some rectangles and it all crashes. Would like to check the game out, though. :)

(I wish I knew how to make music ::))
There's no need for that, search for some music there: http://opengameart.org/art-search-advanced?keys=&field_art_type_tid%5B%5D=12
If you want original music, search for a composer, I think some people might be willing to do music for free.

Sorry for not sharing the source, this is made on a personal engine-of-sorts. Feel free to ask how anything is made, though, and I'll try to answer the best way I can :P
No need to feel sorry for that, it's completely okay to make closed-source project. :)
Just a suggestion: maybe you should store all your data in English. It looks like your project is very data-driven, which is awesome, but this make it almost impossible to mod for people who don't speak Spanish. And I think that your game may interest some modders.


So, nice project overall! Would like to be able to play it later (maybe you should make some log file which will help identify the problem).
Title: Re: "Our Dear Paper Fighters" - Top down shooter
Post by: Mario on January 18, 2016, 09:41:10 am
Yep, very nice. :) Once tried to make some  "paper cutout" graphics as well, although I didn't think of adding scribbles for detail. Makes it even better looking for pretty much no work to be done. :D

But I'm  curious: How do you draw the island outlines? Haven't had time to try the actual game, but I assume those aren't pre-drawn?
Title: Re: "Our Dear Paper Fighters" - Top down shooter
Post by: Resethel on January 18, 2016, 07:51:36 pm
Wow looks so cool! I wish I could play it :/
It would be great as Apax said to post a small preview of your game on Youtube!

As for music, you can find some great ones here for free: incompetch.com (http://incompetech.com) and some free sound there freesound.org (http://freesound.org/) (quite well known hehe)
Title: Re: "Our Dear Paper Fighters" - Top down shooter
Post by: AFS on January 18, 2016, 09:13:27 pm
Thanks for the good vibes, guys :)

Wow, art looks really cool.

Thanks! :)

I tried to play your game, but it crashes for me after I press "Play". Grid appears and then some rectangles and it all crashes. Would like to check the game out, though. :)

That's... weird.

Can you describe to me what appeared on screen, please? How was the grid, and of which size? How were the rectangles? Was the background color blue/cyan?

Or, if you don't mind, can you upload an screenshot?

This has never happened to me, but then again I haven't tested it much. I have a desktop with Win7 and a laptop with Win10, and I have also tested it on my sister's laptop which has Win8, and it's all good on those, but that's all the testing I can do.

By the way, did the main menu (the one with the "Play" button) have any background or was it just a blue color?

Just a suggestion: maybe you should store all your data in English. It looks like your project is very data-driven, which is awesome, but this make it almost impossible to mod for people who don't speak Spanish. And I think that your game may interest some modders.

Yeah, translating the files to english is on my to-do list :)

Initially I was thinking of just hiding those files, but then I thought: "what the hell, let people do whatever they want". But yeah, I need to translate it.

Also, the format of the data files is made "by hand", because back then (two years ago) I didn't know about XML, JSON or things like that, so undertanding the files may be a little complicated, even after the translation to english. I need to write some instructions or something if I want people to get their hands dirty. Still, my main worry right now is actually finishing the game :P

So, nice project overall! Would like to be able to play it later (maybe you should make some log file which will help identify the problem).

Thanks a lot!

I have no idea how to make a log file, though. Is there a library to do that or something?

Wow looks so cool! I wish I could play it :/

I'm thinking of doing a Linux build soon (I already have Ubuntu installed, but I have never used SFML on it). A Mac build is more unlikely, as I don't own a Mac machine (unless there's a way to compile for Mac on Windows/Linux, or better yet, a way to compile for all three operating systems on one go.)

As for music, you can find some great ones here for free: incompetch.com (http://incompetech.com) and some free sound there freesound.org (http://freesound.org/) (quite well known hehe)
There's no need for that, search for some music there: http://opengameart.org/art-search-advanced?keys=&field_art_type_tid%5B%5D=12

Thanks for the links, guys, I'll take a look, because playing a game without music feels so weird to me. I still want to learn how to make music, though.

Yep, very nice. :) Once tried to make some  "paper cutout" graphics as well, although I didn't think of adding scribbles for detail. Makes it even better looking for pretty much no work to be done. :D

Thanks, glad you like it. I guess the choice to use this art style was due to lazyness more than anything, because it's so quick to draw (and I can't draw better than this anyway, haha).

But I'm  curious: How do you draw the island outlines? Haven't had time to try the actual game, but I assume those aren't pre-drawn?

The outline is actually a pretty small line:

(http://i.imgur.com/b03nNw3.png)

It's white so I can change the color using sf::Sprite::setColor().

I have a map editor of sorts. At first it worked with tiles, but I found them to be kind of tedious so eventually I got rid of them and switched to a "free-placement" approach, allowing to place sprites at any position and to change their color, their size and their rotation.

So, the island outlines are made somewhat like this in editor:

(http://i.imgur.com/cB9QXGS.gif)

It's a little tedious, but I can make islands of any shape without drawing more textures, and considering that I hate drawing, that's good enough for me :D
Title: Re: "Our Dear Paper Fighters" - Top down shooter
Post by: Hapax on January 19, 2016, 04:33:37 pm
Wow, nice clip!
I have only just noticed the tape holding the sheets together and that's not my favourite part  ;)

I think you should re-consider your helicopter graphic, though. Seeing it in action, it shows that you can't really see that body under the rotor blades so you can't easily see which direction it is facing. You could reduce the length and/or thickness of the blades but I think the most important part would be making the tail stick out past the rotor (especially as it tilts forwards).
Title: Re: "Our Dear Paper Fighters" - Top down shooter
Post by: AFS on January 22, 2016, 04:36:26 pm
Wow, nice clip!
I have only just noticed the tape holding the sheets together and that's not my favourite part  ;)

I think you should re-consider your helicopter graphic, though. Seeing it in action, it shows that you can't really see that body under the rotor blades so you can't easily see which direction it is facing. You could reduce the length and/or thickness of the blades but I think the most important part would be making the tail stick out past the rotor (especially as it tilts forwards).

That has been bothering me for a while but I never took the time to fix it. Thanks for the suggestion, I'll do that now.
Title: Re: "Our Dear Paper Fighters" - Top down shooter
Post by: Elias Daler on February 05, 2016, 09:27:23 am
I tried to play your game, but it crashes for me after I press "Play". Grid appears and then some rectangles and it all crashes. Would like to check the game out, though. :)

That's... weird.

Can you describe to me what appeared on screen, please? How was the grid, and of which size? How were the rectangles? Was the background color blue/cyan?

Or, if you don't mind, can you upload an screenshot?

This has never happened to me, but then again I haven't tested it much. I have a desktop with Win7 and a laptop with Win10, and I have also tested it on my sister's laptop which has Win8, and it's all good on those, but that's all the testing I can do.

By the way, did the main menu (the one with the "Play" button) have any background or was it just a blue color?
Here's how main menu looked: http://i.imgur.com/FNJ1A4T.png
I can't screenshot what happens after I press "Play" because it's one frame and then a sudden crash. It's just a dark grey background with some dark blue cells. My system is Windows 7.

I have no idea how to make a log file, though. Is there a library to do that or something?
Just make something like LogManager class which stores std::ifstream which can be used to write to simple .txt file which will be a report about the stuff which went right ("Loading textures... OK") and wrong ("Can't load texture.png!"). This way it would be easier to find what goes wrong.
Title: Re: "Our Dear Paper Fighters" - Top down shooter
Post by: Satus on February 05, 2016, 10:19:26 am
Quote
I have no idea how to make a log file, though. Is there a library to do that or something?

You can just use Boost log (http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/master/libs/log/doc/html/index.html).
Title: Re: "Our Dear Paper Fighters" - Top down shooter
Post by: eXpl0it3r on February 16, 2016, 12:16:48 pm
The Dropbox link for the binary just 404. :(
Title: Re: "Our Dear Paper Fighters" - Top down shooter
Post by: AFS on March 15, 2016, 07:25:13 pm
Sorry for the late reply, I was on a break.

Here's how main menu looked: http://i.imgur.com/FNJ1A4T.png
I can't screenshot what happens after I press "Play" because it's one frame and then a sudden crash. It's just a dark grey background with some dark blue cells. My system is Windows 7.

That's bad :/

Normally the main menu has a background (which is actually an unplayable level). If the background is all black it means that for some reason the level files didn't load (which also *kind of* explains the crash when you hit "Play").

It's weird, because the menu buttons ("Play", "Options", and "Exit") are good. The text of those buttons are also stored in files, and the game apparently loaded those files just fine, otherwise the buttons wouldn't have text at all.

Another possibility is that the levels loaded fine but it was the textures that didn't load, but again, the buttons are fine, so I really don't know.

Thanks for giving it a shot, though.

Just make something like LogManager class which stores std::ifstream which can be used to write to simple .txt file which will be a report about the stuff which went right ("Loading textures... OK") and wrong ("Can't load texture.png!"). This way it would be easier to find what goes wrong.

You can just use Boost log (http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/master/libs/log/doc/html/index.html).

Thanks to both!

The Dropbox link for the binary just 404. :(

Ooops. I was cleaning up my Dropbox folder (I'm always near at the 2 GB limit), so I probably deleted the file by accident. It's fixed now, sorry.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/vad812s5e072fsy/Our%20Dear%20Paper%20Fighters%20%28WIP%29.zip?dl=0

The build is actually a little different now, as most of the data is temporally hard-coded to avoid Elias' problem until I find a solution. Also, I made sounds and music using LMMS, although the music is kind of crappy, but hey, it's a start.

I also set up a Game Jolt page a few days ago if anyone's interested: http://gamejolt.com/games/our-dear-paper-fighters/132839, but you can just download the game via Dropbox, same thing.

Cheers!
Title: Re: "Our Dear Paper Fighters" - Top down shooter
Post by: Tukimitzu on March 16, 2016, 05:04:39 pm
Looks great!
My impressions:
- The art is very nice, well done.
- I like the humor hehe.
- I wish WASD controlled movement only and use the mouse for aiming.
- I wish the camera shaked only when explosions happen. When you shoot it does it and it's a little anoying I think. But hey, that's me!

Good luck!
Title: Re: "Our Dear Paper Fighters" - Top down shooter
Post by: AFS on March 18, 2016, 10:04:01 pm
Looks great!
My impressions:
- The art is very nice, well done.
- I like the humor hehe.
- I wish WASD controlled movement only and use the mouse for aiming.
- I wish the camera shaked only when explosions happen. When you shoot it does it and it's a little anoying I think. But hey, that's me!

Good luck!

Wait, so does this mean that the game actually started and loaded everything fine and didn't crash or freeze or burn your computer?

That's awesome!  ;D

- I wish WASD controlled movement only and use the mouse for aiming.

I don't think I can achieve mouse aiming at this point, as the game was made with keyboard-only in mind from the get go  :-\. Shooting with the left click is just by default, though; you can rebind the controls in the menu if that helps.

- I wish the camera shaked only when explosions happen. When you shoot it does it and it's a little anoying I think. But hey, that's me!

I'll add an option in the pause menu to activate/deactivate them: one option for the shaking when you shoot and another for the shaking after an explosion.

Thanks for taking the time to test it. Cheers!
Title: Re: "Our Dear Paper Fighters" - Top down shooter
Post by: Tukimitzu on March 20, 2016, 09:00:42 pm
Thanks for taking the time to test it. Cheers!

Sure! It worked perfectly!
Title: Re: "Our Dear Paper Fighters" - Top down shooter
Post by: piluve on March 23, 2016, 01:25:01 pm
Love the art style and the idea :D (that firewall tho :P)
The only 'bad' thing for me is that those fast paced games make me a little sick :S

Buen trabajo!
Title: Re: "Our Dear Paper Fighters" - Top down shooter
Post by: AFS on March 23, 2016, 08:10:10 pm
Sure! It worked perfectly!

:D

Love the art style and the idea :D (that firewall tho :P)
The only 'bad' thing for me is that those fast paced games make me a little sick :S

Buen trabajo!

Gracias! :P

By the way, I made a small update (v. 0.1.1). I changed the player sprite, mostly because, as some people pointed out, it was difficult to notice the direction that you are facing and in turn it was hard to aim. Also, I added health pickups (a red hammer), making the level much easier...

(http://i.imgur.com/OmO8h4L.png)

I also nerfed some enemies and made items more abundant, because apparently the level was way too hard. Also, I changed the default controls to keyboard only (you can still rebind them if you like). Oh, and now you can toggle the camera shaking on and off ;)

https://www.dropbox.com/s/piw5aaqk047fuow/Our%20Dear%20Paper%20Fighters%20v.%200.1.1.zip?dl=0

Cheers!
Title: Re: "Our Dear Paper Fighters" - Top down shooter
Post by: Hapax on March 29, 2016, 12:14:41 am
I changed the player sprite, mostly because, as some people pointed out, it was difficult to notice the direction that you are facing and in turn it was hard to aim.
(click to show/hide)
Nailed it  ;)
Title: "Our Dear Paper Fighters" - Top down shooter
Post by: paupav on April 06, 2016, 11:46:34 pm
Wow, very nice. What program did you use for your art?
Title: Re: "Our Dear Paper Fighters" - Top down shooter
Post by: AFS on April 07, 2016, 11:34:12 pm
Nailed it  ;)

:D

Wow, very nice. What program did you use for your art?

Well, the paper background is a texture that I found online a while ago, and the rest is made by me using GIMP. The assets are mostly very basic shapes, so even using MS Paint would have been enough.

Most of the stuff is composed by two parts: the drawing and the cutout of said drawing, so the textures are usually like this:

(http://i.imgur.com/a5RihIc.png)

So, when it comes to code, I use two sf::Sprite, so I can change the color of the drawing using sf::Sprite::setColor() without messing the color of the cutout.

I also use a third sprite to make the shadow, which uses the same texture as the cutout but applying a black transparent color using setColor().

So, finally I put all three sprites together, like this:

(http://i.imgur.com/TlHphpA.png)

Same applies to the blades and most of the things that can be destroyed. :P
Title: Re: "Our Dear Paper Fighters" - Top down shooter
Post by: AFS on April 22, 2016, 06:54:00 am
Aloha!

I made an update if anyones's interested. I made a new level, which serves as a "prologue" of sorts, so it plays before the original first level in the previous version.

(http://i.imgur.com/63XCH8y.png)

Also, after you complete the prologue level, a cutscene plays to give some context to the game, if you are into that kinda thing :P

(http://i.imgur.com/9wNQidI.png)

You can advance the dialogue during the cutscene by pressing the shoot button (default Space), or you can skip the whole thing by pressing ESC. After the cutscene, the mission in the previous version plays as normal.

I also made some minor changes, especially with the sounds. Music is still as crappy as always, but I'm slowly learning; hopefully I'll manage to make something decent by the time I finish this, but don't cross your fingers ;)

Download v. 0.2.0 (Windows) (https://www.dropbox.com/s/tf1q8r7w0jdv8nx/Our%20Dear%20Paper%20Fighters%20v.%200.2.0.zip?dl=0)

Cheers!
Title: Re: "Our Dear Paper Fighters" - Top down shooter
Post by: gamepopper on May 06, 2016, 10:01:37 pm
I really like the pencil and paper artstyle, it looks like you've done a lot on this in a short amount of time. Hopefully I'll see more updates soon!
Title: Re: "Our Dear Paper Fighters" - Top down shooter
Post by: AFS on May 10, 2016, 07:11:33 pm
I really like the pencil and paper artstyle, it looks like you've done a lot on this in a short amount of time. Hopefully I'll see more updates soon!

Thanks! Lately I haven't worked too much on this due to my job, but I'm still making progress, albeit slowly.

I made a IndieDB page last week, by the way: http://www.indiedb.com/games/our-dear-paper-fighters . It got a warmer reception than on GameJolt, which was nice, so I'll probably stick to it.

Cheers!
Title: Re: "Our Dear Paper Fighters" - Top down shooter
Post by: AFS on May 21, 2016, 04:55:45 pm
Hi.

Slow progress on the game itself, but I managed to make a new video regarding level creation. It's sped up, like those timelapse videos about paintings and stuff, but crappier.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OV1xO9Rz_bA

Cheers!
Title: Re: "Our Dear Paper Fighters" - Top down shooter
Post by: Hapax on May 25, 2016, 09:37:29 pm
Nice!

I really like the visual style of this game and very pleased that you're continuing work on it :)

This may be a silly question but what do the scissors at 0:33 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OV1xO9Rz_bA&t=0m33s) do?
Title: Re: "Our Dear Paper Fighters" - Top down shooter
Post by: AFS on June 02, 2016, 03:26:40 am
Nice!

I really like the visual style of this game and very pleased that you're continuing work on it :)

Thanks a lot, man. I'm really glad that most people seem to like the art style, because like I have said many times before, I'm not an artist at all.

Now I'm trying to tweak the gameplay, because apparently it's too random. I'm thinking of making the levels with fewer enemies, but making them more unique, with different patterns and stuff, because right now the few enemies available just shoot straight at you and that's it, there's nothing to learn, so the combat is not very engaging, you just brute-force your way through them.

I'm also trying to learn how to make music, and while I'm slowly improving, I still don't like how they are turning out. I searched for free music online, but so far I haven't found anything that fits, unfortunately, so for now I'm just practicing to make my own music a little less crappy.

This may be a silly question but what do the scissors at 0:33 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OV1xO9Rz_bA&t=0m33s) do?

Oh, the scissors are just for background, they don't do anything gameplay wise. I use them in some cutscenes and in the main menu screen:

(http://i.imgur.com/pPbnnhL.png)

I'm thinking of adding pencils, glue and stuff like that as well :P
Title: Re: "Our Dear Paper Fighters" - Top down shooter
Post by: AFS on March 17, 2017, 08:21:40 pm
Hey.

Sorry to bump the thread, but I didn't want to post this on the Screenshots one, as I've already posted there twice.

I've been working on the game very slowly (only a few hours per month, although lately I've been more productive), and I've made some progress since last post 9 months ago. Here are some of the changes, including some GIFs:

Rubble particles:

I already posted this in the Screeshots thread, but I'm reposting them here. Using a VertexArray (which, when I first started using SFML a few years back, I thought it was called VectorArray, ha!), I made some "particles" that appear when objects are hit with bullets or when they explode.

(http://i.imgur.com/RXU4lRq.gif)

The particles stay on the map, even if you go faaaaaaar away and then come back, so after you complete all your objectives and are tasked to go back to base, it's nice to see all the destruction that you managed to make.

One exception of the "stay on the map" rule is in the space mission. In this case, the particles simply go flying and once they are outside the camera they disappear.

(http://i.imgur.com/7IpmKV7.gif)

Those are some old GIfs, though, when the particles were as big as oranges. They are considerably smaller now, with some random variation in size, so the effect is a little more subtle.

Secondary weapons:

From the very beginning I wanted to have three playable characters, Green, Blue and Red, each with a primary weapon and a very powerful secondary. I inmediately had an idea of each primary weapon, but I had no clue about the secondaries.

A few weeks ago I finally took the time to implement some ideas about the secondary weapons, yay!

For Green, seeker missiles, which took me more time to implement that I want to admit:

(http://i.imgur.com/SsCrKya.gif)

For Blue, a melee charge (or whatever you want to call it. I just call it Kaio-ken):

(http://i.imgur.com/ZfLWP14.gif)

And for Red, a freeze ray. Enemies drop a different rubble particle if they are frozen.

(http://i.imgur.com/1gSG7GI.gif)

In all cases, the idea of the secondary weapon is to complement the primary and to get out of trouble. Blue has a very hard to aim primary, so the secondary is used to clean lots of enemies quickly; Red as a shotgun has a primary, so it has trouble with long range enemies, so you can freeze them to get close and BAM!; finally, Green has a machine gun as a primary, so it's kinda good against everything but the helicopter itself is pretty slow, so the seeker missiles serve more as a "panic button".

Once you use the secondary, you have to wait a little bit to use it again.

Gameplay changes:

- Fuel is now spent by movement, not time: At first, fuel was spent by time, but the game has dialogue popups. If the player stops the helicopter to read the dialogue in peace, he's spending fuel. Basically, I was punishing players for reading the dialogue, and that's not ok. So, now the fuel is spent only on movement, so you can stop to read without having to worry.

This was HUGE for balance, because I tested levels on which I both ignored and read the dialogue: in the former case I ended up having plenty, while in the latter I barely had fuel to complete the mission. If I put more fuel items on the map, you ended up with way too much fuel if you ignored dialogue, but if I didn't put enough items, the mission was unwinnable if you did read them. It was a nightmare to balance a mission, but with this change now I don't have this problem.

- Secondary weapons now recharge by kills, not time: Players (and by "players" I mean "me", ha!) could just use the secondary, wait the 15 seconds it takes to recharge, and use it again, basically completing the whole mission without using the primary weapon. This was even more effective after the change in fuel previously mentioned, because now you are not spending fuel by waiting.

Now I changed it so that the secondary recharges after 10 kills, that is, enemy helicopters or turrets, but not neutral buildings. Now you HAVE to use the primary, and use the secondary more wisely, because there's a limited number of enemies on the map, and therefore, limited recharges.

- Item detector tabs: The game uses objectives tabs to represent, well, your objectives.

(http://i.imgur.com/r8V2psV.gif)

You change this with the keyboard, and a little arrow will point in the direction of the objective you have selected.

An unrelated problem was that it was difficult to find items, like fuel or health. You basically stumble upon them by pure chance, and the worse thing was that you actually spend fuel by looking for items. This was not cool.

So I decided to simply add tabs for each item, so if you need something in particular, you simply select the tab and the arrow will point to the closest item.

(http://i.imgur.com/cdmhpEB.gif)

Yes, this makes the game easier, but I prefer an easier game than a tedious one.

- Checkpoints!!!: Before this, if you died, you had to start the level all over again, including waiting for dialogue, uugh. Now you only start since, well, the last checkpoint, which is usually after your last objective completed. Thanks to this, I can make the game harder 8)

To implement this I don't save a copy of my Level class in memory, because not only that's very slow, but I also have the problem of pointers pointing to incorrect places in memory. Instead, considering that each mission is stored in a text file in an specific format, I simply save the level at that checkpoint in that same format (but in memory, not in a text file) and then load this level in the same way as If I'm loading a level from scratch. As far as the code is concerned, I'm loading an entirely different level, not a checkpoint.

This works surprisingly well, althought it was a little tricky, because it's not as simple as saving the positions of each enemy and call it a day, I also had to tweak the events (scripting system) up to that point, which includes timers, variables and stuff like that, but all in all, I was happy with the results.

- Ammo: This game is inspired by the Strike series of games from the MegaDrive and SNES. In those games, you had to manage your armor, fuel and ammo. In my case, I decided to scrap ammo pickups and just leave armor and fuel, so your weapons have unlimited ammo, but a few weeks ago I thought: "ah, what the hell?" and added ammo anyways. It's not the most significant change, but at least it stops the player from just holding the shoot button for the whole mission.

And I guess that's it. Not that many visual changes, more like details, but the game feels better overall, like more fun, less tedious. I'm actually liking it.

By the way, I'm not making this game to sell it, I'm just making it as a personal thing, but with the recent news that Greenlight is going away, I started considering putting the game there, for curiosity more than anything, and if the rare event that it gets greenlit happens, sell it for like a buck or something (as the game is pretty short), but on the other hand I fear that I'm going to get destroyed in the comments.

Anyways, sorry for the long post. I'll upload a video of gameplay soon.

Thanks for reading ;)
Title: Re: "Our Dear Paper Fighters" - Top down shooter
Post by: Hapax on March 18, 2017, 12:51:21 pm
More things! Yay! ;D

Checkpoints sound like a massive improvement on playability but this, of course, depends on whether a player prefers to play the game or compete with the game.

The different vehicles (red, green and blue) are interesting and it's good to have variety and choices for play styles.

The fuel "burning" during dialogues could have been solved with a much more simple solution: pause the clock! ;)
This allows fuel to burn when hovering (as one would expect), for example, but keeps balanced whether or not one reads the dialogue.

Secondaries charging by kills is an odd choice. You've already mentioned that they're a panic button (missiles/charge) or to be used in conjunction with the primary (missiles/freeze). Charging by kills means that once you've used it up, you have to be fine without it or you will die. Charging by time allows the ability to evade until the weapon is available where you can then engage properly.
If 15 seconds charge makes the game easy, increase the charge time! :P

Another option for secondaries appears with ammo. You can require a certain amount of ammo to use it or maybe have specific "charge" items to pick up.
For example, charge fully in 2 minutes, add 10% charge for each kill, and add 25% charge for each normal charge item picked up.
That way, you can have repeated usage with constant engagement (kills), begin engagement with a full charge (time and/or items) and have the option to build up that charge during evasion (items).

Sorry to bump the thread, but I didn't want to post this on the Screenshots one, as I've already posted there twice.
I think Project threads are (or should be) exempt from this rule, particularly with posts from the creator. How else would updated information be shared? Another (newer) thread would be horrible, right?
Title: Re: "Our Dear Paper Fighters" - Top down shooter
Post by: AFS on March 18, 2017, 07:05:35 pm
More things! Yay! ;D

Yay, thanks for the interest ;D

Checkpoints sound like a massive improvement on playability but this, of course, depends on whether a player prefers to play the game or compete with the game.

Yeah, at first I was fine without them, but the game is kind of slow paced, with lots of traveling, and doing that thing again and again after dying would quickly become tedious. The missions themselves are already structured in "parts" (that is, you get a batch of objectives, and after you complete them you get a new batch in a different part of the map), so having a checkpoint between each batch seems natural. 

I've been thinking of adding a "Hard mode" after the game is completed, and this mode would disable checkpoints (while also disabling cutscenes and dialogue). That would be neat.

The fuel "burning" during dialogues could have been solved with a much more simple solution: pause the clock! ;)
This allows fuel to burn when hovering (as one would expect), for example, but keeps balanced whether or not one reads the dialogue.

By "pausing the clock" you mean like making it not burn fuel while a dialogue is up? If that's the case, then players who don't care about the dialogue will get the advantage of free movement while dialogue is up, and there's a LOT of dialogue.

I forgot to mention that dialogue popups don't pause the game, they don't behave like proper cutscenes on which you can't control your character and have to skip the dialogue with a button press. No, the popups just appear as you play and disappear after a few seconds. They serve as commentary by the kids that are playing the game, and for the most part is tongue-in-cheek and not critical to completing the mission.

I didn't want to make the dialogue interrupt the gameplay, so the player is always in control, and that's why I can't pause the clock. With that in mind, making it so you don't burn fuel while standing seems to me like the only solution: if you don't care about the dialogue, just ignore it and keep playing, but if you do, you are free to stop and read, you won't get penalized.

Secondaries charging by kills is an odd choice. You've already mentioned that they're a panic button (missiles/charge) or to be used in conjunction with the primary (missiles/freeze). Charging by kills means that once you've used it up, you have to be fine without it or you will die. Charging by time allows the ability to evade until the weapon is available where you can then engage properly.
If 15 seconds charge makes the game easy, increase the charge time! :P

Yeah, even though the secondaries serve as a complement to the primary, you can still play fine with just the primary. The GIFs are kind of misleading, but in the real game you don't fight that many enemies at once, that would be a nightmare. :P

I played around a lot with the recharge timer, but I could never reach a proper "balance". If the timer is too short, you can abuse the hell out of the secondaries (which are VERY poweful), but if the timer is too long, you feel like you should save it for that special moment in the mission where you really need it, and end up only using it once, or maybe never (like the BFG9000 from Doom)

Also, people play differently. A fast, careless player that wants to complete each mission in under a minute would only have the chance to use the weapon once or twice, while a slow player will be rewarded unfairly with more uses. Playing slow is already safer as it is, so rewarding the slow player with even more charges would make this playstyle way too effective.

By recharging it by kills instead of time, it doesn't matter if you play fast or slow, you will only get roughly the same amount of uses. If anything, it makes playing fast more exciting, because you will recharge the secondary sooner.

Another option for secondaries appears with ammo. You can require a certain amount of ammo to use it or maybe have specific "charge" items to pick up.
For example, charge fully in 2 minutes, add 10% charge for each kill, and add 25% charge for each normal charge item picked up.
That way, you can have repeated usage with constant engagement (kills), begin engagement with a full charge (time and/or items) and have the option to build up that charge during evasion (items).

Thanks for the suggestion, although it seems a little complex. I would prefer using only one method to recharge, not a composite, just to keep things simple.

I didn't think about using an item to recharge, though, so thanks for that. However, using a item then makes the secondary be dependable of fuel (because, by finding the recharge item, you spend fuel on the way), so I'll have to add more fuel items to compensate. This brings the problem that if a player never uses the secondary, he will have a huge surplus of fuel. I guess that's a valid trade-off, but I need to think more about it.

The other option is to make the secondary share the ammo of the primary, with the secondary eating a huge chunk of ammo (say, half the bar), which would make the ammo management a little more in depth, but then again, you could only be able to use the secondary if you have more than half the bar, otherwise you are stuck with the primary, and this would force player to use the secondary, find ammo, use the secondary again, find ammo, and repeat and repeat, until eventually you don't have more ammo on the map, and suddenly the mission becomes unwinnable. While that's the player's fault, as the developer I need to minimize those situations.

Man, balancing gameplay is hard  :-\

I think Project threads are (or should be) exempt from this rule, particularly with posts from the creator. How else would updated information be shared? Another (newer) thread would be horrible, right?

I guess you are right. Still feels weird to post on a thread whose last reply was made 10 months ago, though.

Anyways, thanks for stopping by. :)
Title: "Our Dear Paper Fighters" - Top down shooter
Post by: eXpl0it3r on March 19, 2017, 12:29:07 am
Project threads can and should be updated whenever you have something new. Like it doesn't matter if you have a 3 years old thread you just created a new version for. It's"your" project thread. :)

Nice to see this game still going strong!
Title: Re: "Our Dear Paper Fighters" - Top down shooter
Post by: FRex on March 23, 2017, 10:28:38 pm
I've not commented before but I have to say I really really like the paper cut outs art style. It's very stylish, unique and looks SO well in motion on the gifs.
Title: Re: "Our Dear Paper Fighters" - Top down shooter
Post by: AFS on April 04, 2017, 07:34:44 am
Nice to see this game still going strong!

I've not commented before but I have to say I really really like the paper cut outs art style. It's very stylish, unique and looks SO well in motion on the gifs.

I know I've said this thousands of times, but I'm not good at making assets, I'm not a game artist at all, so I'm really glad that you guys like the art style, as simple as it is. So thanks a lot, guys ;D.

Nowadays I've been working on making a video, and it's taking me more time that I thought it would take (yeah, what a surprise). In the meantime I made a little GIF at 1080p 60 FPS. I don't know if I can embed it here, so I'll just leave the link: https://gfycat.com/HoarseSmoggyDolphin

Cheers!
Title: Re: "Our Dear Paper Fighters" - Top down shooter
Post by: AFS on April 17, 2017, 06:53:24 pm
Hey, I made a new video if you guys are interested. It shows a full mission, with a set of objectives, dialogue popups, getting items and so on, all the way to the end.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2FA5esHWwk

The mission (or level or whatever you want to call it) was specifically made for the video, so it's a little bit rehearsed, but I want the real missions to be similar, although a little longer, with bigger maps and not as linear as in the video, but overall with the same structure: get a set of objectives that you can complete in any order, shoot stuff, get items, and then go home.

It was supposed to be a short video but it ended up being 4 minutes long without realizing it, but hey, at least it represents the overall gameplay well enough, so people can know what to expect, and now I can focus on making shorter, more specific videos in the future, like showing an specific enemy, a new weapon, things like that.

In the last few months I felt that I wasn't making enough progress, but now that I watch this video and the older ones back to back, the game indeed feels different. I still have a lot of stuff to do, though.

Cheers!
Title: Re: "Our Dear Paper Fighters" - Top down shooter
Post by: Mortal on April 17, 2017, 08:10:49 pm
awesome, i really like your work.
Title: Re: "Our Dear Paper Fighters" - Top down shooter
Post by: sjaustirni on April 18, 2017, 08:19:26 am
I love the dog part  and the self-destruct button :D I hope that you will keep things like these in the release. (I'd probably work a bit on the dialogues though, they could really make the game more fun. I understand however, that the dialogues featured in the video are just a temporary placeholder until the real ones come)

At 3:08 (https://youtu.be/H2FA5esHWwk?t=3m8s) though, are those guys worshipping the box? It made me smile :D
Title: Re: "Our Dear Paper Fighters" - Top down shooter
Post by: AFS on April 18, 2017, 05:30:28 pm
awesome, i really like your work.

Thanks man, glad that you like it :D

I love the dog part  and the self-destruct button :D I hope that you will keep things like these in the release.

First of all, thanks a lot. I was a little nervious about the vid, because it's the first time that I upload a proper gameplay video showing a full level, so I'm glad about the positive comments so far, thanks a lot.

Yeah, I want to make each level to have little fun "moments", so to speak. In the video it's the dog, the volcano, the little guys that are indeed worshipping the ammo box, things like that. Those moments are not necessarily laugh-out-loud funny, and frankly that's not my goal, I just want those moments to make each level somewhat different from each other, to reward exploration and hopefully crack a smile in the process.

(I'd probably work a bit on the dialogues though, they could really make the game more fun. I understand however, that the dialogues featured in the video are just a temporary placeholder until the real ones come)

Oh, man, the dialogue. To me that's the biggest challenge in making the game. I've never written anything in my life, and english is not my native language, so it's pretty hard to me to write decent dialogue.

The game is supposed to have three characters, codenamed Blue, Red and Green, that are playing the paper game, and they have dialogue popups on different parts of the screen with their respective color, so I need to write some good banter (which requires wit, which I lack) while also making each character have their own distinctive personality.

So far, the only things that are well defined is that Blue and Red are kids while Green is an adult that is invited to the game. Green is grumpy and thinks that the game is stupid; Red is a tomboy that enjoys destroying everything, and Blue, the youngest, is the only one who can break the fourth wall. Besides that, I'm still trying to define their personalities, and only after that I can start writing the "real" dialogue, but even right now with blank personalities is extremely difficult for me to write the lines.

Writing code seems trivial in comparison :P, so I'll be grateful for any pointers regarding the writing.

Anyways, thanks for passing by, glad that you guys like it!
Title: Re: "Our Dear Paper Fighters" - Top down shooter
Post by: Mario on April 19, 2017, 11:28:44 am
Is it on Steam Greenlight already? Don't remember. But I'd say that "gameplay video" should be enough to get the game greenlit in no time. :)
Title: Re: "Our Dear Paper Fighters" - Top down shooter
Post by: AFS on April 19, 2017, 06:11:35 pm
Is it on Steam Greenlight already? Don't remember. But I'd say that "gameplay video" should be enough to get the game greenlit in no time. :)

Wow, that's a huge compliment, thank you.

No, it's not on Greenlight. Honestly I don't feel confident enough to do so, I feel like the game is gonna get destroyed in the comments (I've seen other greenlight projects and the comments can be absolutely vicious :o).

Besides, I barely have "presence" online, and as far I'm aware (reading post-mortems and stuff like that), most of the votes from Greenlight don't come from within the site itself, but from external sources. If I just post the game there, it'll probably just get ignored.

That, and also Greenlight is getting shut down soon, so it complicates things a little bit.

I'm still on the fence about it.
Title: Re: "Our Dear Paper Fighters" - Top down shooter
Post by: AFS on May 20, 2017, 01:33:10 am
Hello everyone. Just making a small update.

I've been making a "ransom text" class for the game. So far looks like this:

(http://i.imgur.com/Uf0Jgfk.png)

To make this I needed two classes: one class that creates a single sf::Text with a paper background (which was previously done, I've been using it for most of the HUD already), and another class that holds several instances of the previously mentioned class while also managing the random colors, random fonts, rotations and everything in order to create the whole text and place it on screen.

I had to manually make a list of background/font color pairs to avoid situations where I could randomly get backgrounds and fonts of the same color. The rest of the properties are generated at random, which includes size, rotation and font, with the latter being chosen from a pool of four different public domain fonts that I found.

The whole thing still needs some tweaking, but so far I'm liking the results.

I'm planning on using this for the little cutscene at the beginning of each mission. For reference, check the video a few posts back: at the very beginning there's a little cutscene with the helicopter sideways and the name of the mission pops up at the right side. Imagine that text but with the ransom text style.

Besides the text, I also made a rain effect, which as of now looks like this:

(http://i.imgur.com/oRSWomO.gif)

More and more rain drops appear over time. The screen will get slightly darker depending of the amount of drops as well. Keep in mind that I made the transition much faster in the GIF to keep it brief.

Back from the days when I wanted to make an open world game, I made a Map class that loads stuff on screen in an array of 3x3 "chunks" of 2000x2000 pixels each. So, for instance, if the camera moves to the right, the game unloads the column of chunks on the left and loads a new column on the right, and so on. Same applies to rows.

The following old, crappy gif explains the idea. The cross represents the center of the camera, which follows the player:

(http://i.imgur.com/7hpuDle.gif)

As the chunks are big enough, the unloading/loading happens off-screen, so you don't notice it while playing.

So, for the rain effect, I simply re-used this Map class, but I made it so the camera always moves up at a constant speed, creating the illusion that the drops are falling, and most importantly, forcing the unloading of the bottom row and the loading of the top row every few seconds. At the same time, using a clock I modify the data that the Map class looks up to when it loads a chunk, so that new loaded chunks contain a different amount of rain drops. At first, a whole chunk only contains one drop, but over time it contains four, then nine, and slowly continues to over a hundred.

It sounds complicated for such a simple effect, but I made it this way to use what I already had, avoiding writing new code. It works so far, but just like the ransom text class, it still needs some tweaking to do.

Besides those two things I haven't made much progress, because lately I've playing GTA Online non-stop. I'm not obsessed at all, I swear...

Help! :'(
Title: Re: "Our Dear Paper Fighters" - Top down shooter
Post by: GameBear on May 20, 2017, 07:55:28 pm
I really love this project, and follows it religiously.. reminds me of all the "games" we made back in the school years (age 10+ i guess)

So much imagination and such awesome presentation!

One question, the shadows (in your video above) are all the same offset from the objects that cast them.
Have you considered dynamic distance? so the helicopter will cast a shadow higher up. misiles shadows will change distance as the get near the ground?
(okay, last one will require they know where/what they will hit.... but that could be done with ray casting)

dont know... just thinking out loud... either way... its an awesome game so far...

keep up the good work and thumbs up :)
Title: Re: "Our Dear Paper Fighters" - Top down shooter
Post by: Elias Daler on May 20, 2017, 08:11:33 pm
Your looks cooler and cooler every day. :)
Love how the text looks with that effect, the whole "paper" stylistics is executed very well. :D
Title: Re: "Our Dear Paper Fighters" - Top down shooter
Post by: AFS on May 21, 2017, 12:21:05 am
Your looks cooler and cooler every day. :)
Love how the text looks with that effect, the whole "paper" stylistics is executed very well. :D

I really love this project, and follows it religiously.. reminds me of all the "games" we made back in the school years (age 10+ i guess)

So much imagination and such awesome presentation!

Thanks guys, I'm flattered!

One question, the shadows (in your video above) are all the same offset from the objects that cast them.
Have you considered dynamic distance? so the helicopter will cast a shadow higher up. misiles shadows will change distance as the get near the ground?
(okay, last one will require they know where/what they will hit.... but that could be done with ray casting)

That's a neat idea, I love little details like that, but the thing about projectiles is that they can hit other helicopters too, so it wouldn't make much sense to make them look like they are going to the ground. Besides, even things on the ground, like buildings, cast shadows too, so even if I make dynamic shadows for the projectiles the difference with the offset wouldn't be much, being barely noticeable.

The point of the shadows is primarily to let the player differenciate between the interactive stuff (shadows) and the background (no shadows).

Thanks for the suggestion, though!
Title: Re: "Our Dear Paper Fighters" - Top down shooter
Post by: Sub on June 11, 2017, 06:00:27 am
I love the custom text you've made.  It really fits the game nicely.  Well done!