■     How To Play                      

Press Space on the Title Screen

Player 1: WASD to move!
Player 2: Arrow keys or 2468 on the numpad to move!

Collect as many COINS as possible!
Avoid ORANGE and the SPIKE TRAP at all costs!
Hit ESC to PAUSE!
Hit the WHITE revival tile ASAP!
LIVES and COINS shown in the corners!
LIKE us on Facebook!
HAVE FUN!

                                        
 ■     Live Twitter Feed                

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 ■     Introduction                     

RED is a continuation of the development that went into theory's old RMXP game, GREEN. Where that game fell short due to the constraints of RPG Maker, this game aims to shine as something significantly better. However, RED is not GREEN. In this game, you start off as RED, rather than the more familiar GREEN. He has different abilities, a different color, but the same goal: to survive as long as possible, and to collect more treasure than ever before.

                                        
 ■     Screenshots                      

                                        
 ■     Report a Bug                     

If you find a bug in the game, and would like to report it, you can do so here. If you do so, I would like to ask that you first check to see if one of the open issues on the tracker reports the same issue. If it does, but you have more information on what you did to cause it, please post a comment on the existing issue rather than making a new one. If you have nothing you can add to the existing issue, please avoid unnecessary posts in the tracker. I would also like to mention that I will keep any bug reports open in the issue tracker until I update the hosted game to patch them, rather than closing them as soon as I fix them in the code. While this results in more work for me (I have to manually reopen them after I mention them in a change, then close them again later when I update the hosted game), it means less work for you when trying to report a bug. I would like to thank anyone who takes the time to report a bug in the tracker, especially if they can document the cause, because that makes it significantly easier to give you guys a newer, better game.

                                        
 ■     Changelog                        

                                        
 ■     Support the Project!             

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Interesting idea, and I must say I LOVE the camera....

I do have one suggestion you could maybe look into though:

Due to the visual presentation, in my opinion atleast, I think it would greatly benefit from having some sort of tile based movement, I mean, if you're not thinking of having it, atleast give it a try and see what you think, since I sometimes got caught on corners while trying to move around the map...

I agree with Jason. Or even if not tile based, you can use the "90 degree" option in the 8-direction behaviour setting. The moment will still be smooth but the angle is fixed to 90 degree turns, and it will still adjust automatically if you try to roll over a corner or squeeze through narrow bends.

A bit laggy on my work computer using Firefox, but my work computer is trash (it was supposed to be upgraded last year -_-).

I've certainly been thinking the same thing regarding tile-based movement. I'll definitely look into it, because as it stands, I don't really like the current movement schema. My only qualm regarding setting it to tile-based is in regard to a few of the planned open map types, where movement being limited to tiles will make it significantly more difficult to avoid your enemies.

That said, I think that if I manage to implement it (it's harder than it seems to do that!) I'll probably end up keeping it for simplicity. The best part is, if I do it right, I can set it to tile-based only on maps like the maze map you start on.



Actually, the movement that I'm using there is a heavily modified version of the default movement you're talking about. I had to make some significant changes, most notable being the fact that you now move relative to the screen rather than relative to the layout. (Try rotating a layout by 90 degrees and then moving in it using the default movement) That said, even in the default version, the 90 degrees option is specifically for the sprite rotation. There is a four-way option, but it was significantly more annoying for me to use than the 8-way I'm currently using. I'll probably have the same problem with tile-based movement too, in that it doesn't feel very intuitive to only go one direction at a time, even when you should theoretically be moving more than one. (For example, I'll have a tough time making it so that if you're holding up and right, and hit a wall, you slide right instead of up. The default behavior has the exact same issue, to boot.

That said, I could probably keep the 8-way while still making it tile based. It shouldn't be too difficult to do, I think. But I have yet to try, so I don't really know for sure.

Edit: I just realized EXACTLY how to do it. I know that pac-man is NOT tile-based, and I was remembering how they implemented it when I realized exactly how to do it for my game. It's pretty simple, and I'll mod the demo to include it in a minute, as soon as I work it out. It would basically amount to forcing you down the center of a lane, and not letting you change direction unless a tile in that direction was open, and you would still remain in the center of that lane too. I'll make it so that the last button pressed is the current direction of travel, but in the event that you hit a wall, it reads any other pressed buttons to see which way it should go.

╒╕▄╒■╕▀╘═█╕ Azthec ╒█═╛▀╒■╕▄╒╕

Yeah I reckon if it is a lot of hassle to make it look 4-way, then keep it as it is. Being able to move in the game is more important than deciding 8 way or 4 way XD

Good luck with it!

Hmm, I'm not particularly sure how to fix this issue, to be honest. At least, how to fix it while keeping a dynamic character speed. That said, I would like to note that there is no friction while you are touching something, so you can easily slide along the side of a wall with no issues. I am going to see what happens if I make the player a bit smaller, though.

╒╕▄╒■╕▀╘═█╕ Azthec ╒█═╛▀╒■╕▄╒╕

I'm liking this a lot so far. The movement is very fluid. Even if there isn't a second player, the single player can still control both squares at once (I had some fun trying to properly move both at the same time ... Which is a real challenge :x)

Anyway, I already know to expect a lot from you, so good to know you won't disappoint!

All right, to accommodate the movement issues, I made the characters smaller. It's not the best fix, but it's far better than the buggy stuff I tried before that. I also added more copies of ORANGE to most of the maps, to give a slightly better example of what you can expect to see ingame.

Anyway, what do you guys think of the rest of the project, aside from movement? Jason already commented on the camera, but what do you guys think of the title screen? The pause screen? The game in general?

╒╕▄╒■╕▀╘═█╕ Azthec ╒█═╛▀╒■╕▄╒╕

I didn't see how to start the game when I was at the title screen, so I was confused until I hit an arrow key. Some indication would be awesome.

I love the multiplayer feature. In fact it also contributes to one hell of a single player experience trying to control both at once.

The walls and floors can use more contrast to differentiate each other, unless you meant for the walls to look similar to floors in order to blur the player's sense of direction?

Interesting concept... I can definately see how you could reduce this to six events only. It's definately a programming task here ;)

Unfortunately, I can't try it out right now, as I only got my smartphone. With that, I can check out the title screen, but that's it ^^ It's lag-free, though :)

Looking forward to playing this one definately.

I'll definitely throw an indicator up there as soon as I finish up what I'm working on right now. (Basic GUI, player death, resurrection, etc)

Thanks for the bit on multiplayer. I had tried that myself, but stopped when I realized it was taking too much from the testing. One thing I would like to note is that when this reaches final release, it will start with just RED. It will be up to some lucky player to unlock INDIGO for everyone. Yes, that's right. This game will have unlockables. And not just unlockables, but global ones, that everyone shares. Ideally, it'll also have an online stats page that immortalizes the players that unlock stuff.

As for the walls and floors, anything that isn't the basic background color is a wall. However, due to the fact that some people may not have their contrast high enough, I can certainly make it so that the walls can't be quite as transparent as they currently can. (Currently, they have a random opacity, and anything that is below 35% opacity will disappear entirely, thus making more floors.)



What's this? A compliment from BlueScope? I'm going to have to look out my window in a sec, but I'm pretty sure that's a sign that the end is nigh!

Sorry, couldn't help it. You're pretty stingy with compliments when you could be giving constructive criticism instead, so it's kind of rare to see anything that could be taken as one. Thanks for posting, and I look forward to when you can tell me what you think of my progress.

Also, since English isn't your first language, I think I should point out that it's actually definitely, rather than definately. Think of it as being based on the word definite. (I have the same issue sometimes, and that's my workaround)

╒╕▄╒■╕▀╘═█╕ Azthec ╒█═╛▀╒■╕▄╒╕

Thanks for the language hint, I indeed had no idea ^^"

And yeah, I can only criticize what I can play, so you're not entirely off the hook now ;o I just think it might be a cool and uncomplicated game that fortunately for you also seems to pinpoint the judging criteria... in other words, I let you pass by instead of giving you a fight I can't win ;)

If you need comments on the title screen, you are a silly goose. The title screen is a work of art ~
(Like Rosa said though, it could use a [Press Space] or something to indicate what to do)

More like I would need a keyboard to press that ;)
And thanks for the trust in me there, Ven... XD (it's actually kind of disturbing that you actually think I'd be sitting in front of a desktop PC and be completely lost due to missing guidance... :/ )

Bluescope, I think she was responding to my asking comments on the title screen.

Anyway, I just added a few basic updates. First and foremost, a VERY basic HUD, so you at least know how many coins you've collected. The lives are still nonfunctional, though. (It's a quick update, but I'm not doing it yet) Second, I added placeholder blinking text on the title to tell people how to get past it. I'll bug theory for a better image to put there later.

Also, has anyone paid attention to some of the finer details? For example, the squares on the title screen are in random locations, and the background in-game is somewhat random, although it tends to be blue.

╒╕▄╒■╕▀╘═█╕ Azthec ╒█═╛▀╒■╕▄╒╕

Ah, my bad then... ^^" My apologies.

I finally got around to play your game now! And it's as interesting as I thought, but it needs some minor guidance on what's going on here and there - especially on the position of your two characters, as I had quite a time trying to locate either of them :D
I'd suggest a camera zoom-out, but as you got two players, you'd need to do something else. Maybe the sprites scaling down from 500% in the beginning, looking as if they "fall down"? Well, dunno if that's the perfect solution... just something to tinker with maybe.
A similar issue happens when switching areas, as the characters don't end up next to doors as I assumed, but instead in the middle of no-mans land ^^

The moving-around-corners thing is something you might want to improve still... it wasn't anything as hard as I expected it to be from the comments, but I'm having a hard time getting the character to do exactly what I want.

And you might consider changing the title screen's text color to white, or something less bright than that and still better readable than black.

But yeah, you know I'm just mentioning the nit-picky things. Liked it overall, and even though I was just trying it for a second, it had that addicting thing kicking in already: You know you're going to stop playing in a minute, so no need to collect those yellow bits... but let's do it anyway. Ah, and those as well. Damn, been five minutes!! The music adds to that and really makes you stressed about playing it - but in a good way. You just want to be fast, agile, and maybe watch Tron again sometime soon... ^^

Also... your characters are pretty square.
(had to)

Glitch + Theory = My mind is already blown

I really like your idea of showing where the two characters are, and as soon as I get Construct downloaded on this computer, I'll try it out. As for the switching areas bit, it's mostly because I have yet to program the behavior for it. Once I do, you won't be able to switch until both characters are at a gate, and then you will end up at a gate on the opposite side of the map from the one you took. (And if the players took gates on different sides of the map, it still follows this, per player. Don't question the physics of this, the game isn't on Earth)

As for the moving around corners bit, I'm having a great deal of trouble with that. Short of changing the shape of your character I am going to have a lot of trouble making it work just right. The problem is, changing the actual shape of the character isn't really an option, and varying the shape of the hitboxes just makes it even more confusing. At the moment, I have no idea how to make it effectively run on rails with the same ease that pac-man did, which leaves me with very little in the way of options to work around it.

Regarding the title screen, I considered it, but I'll definitely want to ask theory about it before I do anything, because he's the one who did most of the title screen, and I'm far less visually inclined than him.

Finally, I'm glad you liked the demo, and I hope my additions make it even more fun! And yes, your comment on the characters was quite punny.



We used to do this on a regular basis. About half the scripts in my signature, as well as most of the ones he posted, were, to some extent, a team effort between the two of us. We work quite well together.

╒╕▄╒■╕▀╘═█╕ Azthec ╒█═╛▀╒■╕▄╒╕

i find that i work well with Blue, he mostly helps me organise all my thoughts and focus my energy. :D but he also taught me alot over the years

All right, I just made a minor update to the demo. It incorporates BlueScope's suggestion regarding locating the players, as well as a new sound effect. Now you can actually hear yourself collecting coins! It's so rewarding!

Next up is adding the next enemy and making players actually die. New sound effects will come with that stuff, too.

╒╕▄╒■╕▀╘═█╕ Azthec ╒█═╛▀╒■╕▄╒╕

It's pretty cool so far. The camera works wonders so far. It is pretty impressive.
The gameplay/graphics are pretty neat too. The style just...fits. It matches the theme of the game (at first I thought it was Dwarf Fortress or something though so a tutorial would be nice).

The only thing is, what's the goal of this thing, exactly?
It got kind of boring later on.

And once I got dropped into a random pit of blue. Then I went all the way up (read: all the way up) and found a teleport.
But other than that, pretty sweet. I love the AI too.

Thanks for the compliments! A tutorial will be accessible from the selection screen, which will show up after the title screen in the future.

As for a goal, I mentioned it in the main post, but I guess I'll reiterate: Survive as long as possible, get as high a score as possible. Pretty simple, but it will be quite challenging, especially once I finish up player deaths/respawning. (I've currently got player death, I'm working on the respawn bit right now. One thing I would like to note is that respawning will not be a matter of just wait for a respawn. If you activate the spawner on the current map, dead players can respawn there after five seconds. (If they died before the spawner was activated by another player, then they'll still have to wait another five seconds) If all players on a map die, but at least some have lives left, then a new map will load, with the spawner already active, and the players will appear around it.

As for the big blue map, that's actually an empty map I have yet to finish. It's set to become a treasure map. At the player levels calculated for in the current demo, that means that there will be lots of treasure, and no enemies. Also, the map isn't always blue. The maps are actually all green in the editor. It's not until you start a map that its color is determined. They just tend to be blue because blue is the last color handled.

Anyway, what I've finished and what I have yet to do before the next demo, which should be tonight:

Finished

• Player death, complete with sound effect.
• Capability to respawn a player, editor-side. This took up a few unanticipated events, but there's no way around them. At this point, that means that aside from the five events already mentioned, I'll have one event per character. (Not player, but character. That's all I'll say about that for now.)
• Player respawn tile. This has no behavior yet, though.
• Added background handling for up to four players, minus the necessary gamepad controls. (Those will be handled via an edit to the gamepad object for a later demo)

Unfinished

• Respawn tile behavior and sound effects.
• Respawn sound effect.
• Respawning on a new map if no players survive the current map.
• Kicking players to the title screen when all lives are gone.

I would also like to note that, by now, this would be over 100 events if I was not using custom behaviors. In point of fact, the current project would be at 45 events right now if I had been using global variables rather than data stored inside an array.

Edit: The rest will have to wait for tomorrow. I got caught up on a small issue that proved quite annoying. Specifically, upon the death of a player, the camera "snaps" to the other player. I know how to fix it, though. It's pretty simple. I made a new object, one that the camera treats as a player, but has no sprite. When a player dies, they spawn one of these at their location. When this is created, it picks the first player in the player array and moves toward it. As that happens, the camera scrolls toward the remaining player, rather than simply snapping. Once it actually collides with the player, or if no players are on the map, it despawns again. Unfortunately, I have no time to implement that tonight.

╒╕▄╒■╕▀╘═█╕ Azthec ╒█═╛▀╒■╕▄╒╕

Wow, I really like the concept behind this one. I think the visuals lend themselves well to the gameplay concept. In fact, I've got a number of game ideas I'm working on right now that have very much the same blockish appearance, but my hope is to keep the graphics simple but make the gameplay immensely deep, sort of like a roguelike. It seems to me you're going that exact route with this and it seems to be coming along great.

I'm very interested in the progress on this, especially given the roguelike nature of it. I've always loved roguelikes and played Rogue, Nethack and Moria around the time they were first circulating BBS systems. Looks like you've got the random levels done well on that note. They seem interesting enough to me to maintain interest. Plus, the way the monsters chase you works very well given the hybrid roguelike/realtime gameplay.

Given the blockish appearance, how do you envision the sounds best done? I was guessing you might want to go the 8-bit route? If so, there are infinite sources of sound for that. I work with lots of different audio software and I guess I tend to focus more on audio than anything. If you're interested, I can throw some ideas your way. I'd love to see this one progress quickly.

I'll respond to your post later tonight, Ugotsta. Unfortunately, I'm short on time before work.

Anyway, I just uploaded a new version! Check out the changelog for details, but by now I can guarantee that if I wasn't scripting behaviors, I would be at more than 100 events. Kind of odd, considering how simple the game is.

Unfortunately, I didn't have time to script it to kick you to the title screen after all lives were lost, so you'll have to be content with refreshing for now. HOWEVER, you can be left on the map with no players but lives left if a revival tile is active. Just wait the for the respawn count and move on from there.

╒╕▄╒■╕▀╘═█╕ Azthec ╒█═╛▀╒■╕▄╒╕

I had a go. Here's my top score! :)

All right, I'm sorry for taking so long to reply to this. Thanks for the compliments, they really do help me keep going with this project. As for the sounds, I contemplated using legitimate chiptunes, but was unable to find a site with enough resources that fit what I needed. I am not a composer, nor am I particularly good with audio in general. If you could link me to a site with a large number of chiptunes that are up for a creative commons or creative commons: attribution license, I would greatly appreciate it. Unfortunately, I cannot let myself use anything that's licensed as personal use or royalty free (the kind where you pay up front for use), but that's about the only limit. As it is, I'm using sound effects more akin to synth from the 70's, like you might see in the original TRON movie. I'm not sure how much I like them, so the opportunity to compare would be quite helpful. Again, thanks for the suggestion, and I hope you enjoy the finished product.

I would also like to note that the game is now hosted on one of my own domains. You can access it any time from either http://red.vg4life.com or http://red.game-development-blog.com! (This is mostly because dropbox is filtered at work, and I want to try it there, to see just how bad it really is)

╒╕▄╒■╕▀╘═█╕ Azthec ╒█═╛▀╒■╕▄╒╕

I stopped because I didn't know how to respawn. DX

Ever try http://www.chiptune.com/ ?
(Once the AMIGA interface loads, browse through songs via the little "Chipbench" window.)

Also your game is not subject to being forced to adhere to commercial use requirements. You're not selling it.

(Unless you plan to in the future ... But you can worry about that after the contest.)

The song in the title is amazing and awesome ... But the ... BGS??? That plays during the levels grinds on my nerves after a short time. Really needs to be replaced by music or something less ... Irritating.

I totally agree with you on that one. In point of fact, lemme update that right now. There was something I was considering replacing it with, and I think it's time to do so.

Edit: nvm, that totally didn't work. :/ I'll just take out the current bgs for now.

╒╕▄╒■╕▀╘═█╕ Azthec ╒█═╛▀╒■╕▄╒╕

Just hit the four white squares toward the center of the map.

Also, you guys need to be more careful. I was barely into this game, when I took the cap. (For your sakes, I won't count it towards the top score)

╒╕▄╒■╕▀╘═█╕ Azthec ╒█═╛▀╒■╕▄╒╕