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Post by MBitt on Dec 26, 2003 22:58:47 GMT -5
Milkshape www.swissquake.ch/chumbalum-soft/index.htmlIt makes an AVI file of your character, then you would have to break that down to BMP files for GM to make it into a animated gif. Your game sounds nice, I hope to play it some day, I like 360 even better. |
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Post by Noadi on Dec 27, 2003 2:04:23 GMT -5
There is also GMax which is free and made by the same people as 3D Studio Max. There is also Blender which is open source and I've heard is rather good. I don't know, I do much more 2d work than 3d.
A serious question for people, when you play games to you use the 8 direction much or do you use just the regular arrow keys for motion? I have games that are 8 direction but I only ever see 4 of the directions because of the way I'm most comfortable playing.
I'm not against 8 direction I'm just trying to show that it isn't neccesary for everyone to use it. Mostly because I think it's a mistake to tell people that they absolutely need some feature in their game, it limits creativity to say things like this.
*pixel art defense rant* As for that comment about 4 direction gba sprites, my game might be 4 direction but it is not gba sized anything, My world map sprites are twice as big as gba rpg sprites. Also my battle sprites are rather large for rpg sprites all between 96 and 108 pixels tall (roughly as tall as most neo geo fighting game sprites). *end pixel art defense rant*
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Post by MBitt on Dec 27, 2003 2:22:59 GMT -5
Your stuff is fine.
Remember that the player should be free to choose, not the programmer. The player is the client that you need. He/She does not need you. There is always more programmers out there. Also the joystick needs much more use in the GM programing community. The 8 direction change from Keypad to Vk joystick routines are something that needs more use. You also get 8 to 10 more buttons to program, all in your hand.
You can get the commercial copy of Gamestudio for about 89 dollars.
Gamestudio is 3d, Gamemaker is 2d. Plenty of games are being put out there for PSII and PC that are 2D, more and more are shooting for 3D.
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Post by Noadi on Dec 27, 2003 12:09:21 GMT -5
Techinically since this is a game I'm making for fun I don't really need the players, but I do want people to enjoy my game, just not at the expense of what I feel is the way Shaman should be. Since game maker is for people who are making games for the enjoyment of it I think pressure to make games for "the masses" isn't nessesary. This is for enjoyment and to express yourself creatively so you shouldn't be too worried about including features that everyone wants even if you don't just because it's what everyone wants. There was a huge discussion on pixelation about this subject, it was mostly about extending pixel art beyond just game graphics but there was also some good discussion on making games. Also explains a good deal about why I argue on here so much, it's not always because I disagree but to point out that you don't have to conform to what everyone else is doing. web1.t43.greatnet.de/viewtopic.php?t=314 |
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Post by MBitt on Dec 27, 2003 19:18:11 GMT -5
Very good artwork and very serious discussions. They do show a point that the norm is not allways right. But if you look at ART history many forms of art were left behind for the norm.
The DADA era I found to be the most interesting, if you call it Art it is Art. The most famous I can think of is this guy who glued his pants to his bed and hung the bed up like Art.
I should point out that the norm for GM is 4 directions not 8. We will each do our own thing hoping to find the way. Maybe I am just trying to hard to mimic something that can't be done. Oh well I never claimed to be that smart.
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Post by MatrixQuare on Jan 1, 2004 1:23:30 GMT -5
"I should point out that the norm for GM is 4 directions not 8. We will each do our own thing hoping to find the way. Maybe I am just trying to hard to mimic something that can't be done. Oh well I never claimed to be that smart. " - You're being too general, the norm for "GM"( you didn't say "RPG" in specific) doesn't have to be 4 directions, especially other style of games, e.g.: Top view games, RTS, etc... they all usually have at least 8 directions, if not 360 for shooters.
But for RPGs, I like 8 directions better since it allows faster travel by moving diagnolly.
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Post by MBitt on Jan 1, 2004 12:13:42 GMT -5
The better Graphics and the additional directions come with a price, game size. If everyone were on a High Speed internet line it might not be that bad. Currently I have been working on an RPG with 8 directions and it's size has gotten very large. (27 Megs) it appears to be about 20% done. This is going to be a problem. I have checked the sizes on professional games and they range from 800 megs to 2500 megs. I have experimented with ZIP and RAR compression and GM does not compress well.
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Post by IsmAvatar on Jan 1, 2004 16:29:32 GMT -5
you chop about a 700KB off of a game, which isn't bad, if your game is really small. That's half the size of an empty executable  (1.45MB, 10 KB too big to fit on a floppy) |
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Post by Noadi on Jan 3, 2004 0:04:50 GMT -5
I think your estimate is a little off on pro game sizes, I've yet to see one over 800mb. I'm sure some PS2 games are since they are on dvds but that's console not pc which has some major differences. The biggest pro game I've seen for download is Ragnarok online which is over 600 mb I believe which is just ridiculous for web distribution. For web downloadable games the file size while very large typically isn't that big, it's games that were designed for cd distribution that tend to be huge.
Right now Shaman is getting up there on file size. I just started testing and while the test version is 4 mb thats only because I removed almost all the music and sound effects because I don't care much about that at the moment, with them the file size is already close to 10mb without any story, usable items (all items can do is be used they don't have effects yet) or a battle system. I'm going to be happy if I can keep it under 25 mb but I'm not sure that will happen, I'm just going to have to deal with the file size because I refuse to sacrifice quality.
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Post by IsmAvatar on Jan 3, 2004 12:24:54 GMT -5
Train Simulator, 1 GB
Counterstrike i think is another GB.
Morrowind 1 GB
Icewind dale 1.5GB
My sister has a 10 gig hard drive, and 9 gig are already taken up... half of it is 1 gig games.
All professional quality and sold in stores for around 35 bucks.
TS, CS, and MW are 3d. Icewind dale is an astonishing 2d game, but uses RTS style point and click and Dungeons and Dragons engine. All but TS are RPG's.
I have others, but I haven't looked into their size yet.
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Post by Noadi on Jan 3, 2004 15:34:09 GMT -5
I know, but my point was those games aren't for web distribution. When you're only producing games on cd (or dvd with consoles) you have the advantage of not having to worry as much about file size. I was referrring to games available for download online (not counting things like Kazaa because that was not how those games were meant to be obtained).
You can't compare your games to things like Counterstrike when it comes to filesize because those games are sold on cd, what you need to be looking at is other web downloadable games. Some of them are huge like Ragnarok online or Monster and Me but the majority are much smaller. That's the range of games you need to look at to decide what a reasonable file size is unless you plan to sell your game on cd.
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Post by IsmAvatar on Jan 3, 2004 16:47:07 GMT -5
Planeshift (not sure of the website) is a 3d MMORPG. It is free, and may be downloaded off of the site. it is broken into 5x 200MB pieces. It's a 1GB game, but is nowhere near done yet last time I checked. They are still alpha or beta or something. This was a few months ago, so they might have gotten further.
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Post by MBitt on Jan 3, 2004 22:14:12 GMT -5
The curse of RPG vs Platform games, is size. RPG playes want an adventure and that means more than the dozen or so screens you get on a platform game. RPG also means alot of graphics to fill those 30 or so levels. The different encounters means more graphics for the Creatures and NPC's, than like Noadi said, the Sound files take a very large chunk of space.
I was woundering if an online game only downloads the level you are at and holds back the remainder until you get there. Thusly only a small portion of the game is actually in your computer. This would break it down into small download files as you need them.
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Post by IsmAvatar on Jan 4, 2004 1:47:10 GMT -5
lol, not planeshift  that game was full throttle download all 5 200MB pieces, glue them together, and play. no extra downloading... |
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Post by hamalnamal on Jan 5, 2004 20:29:32 GMT -5
a way you could make an rpg 8 directional yet not have the misconvinance of some poeple backing of because of num pad control (i personally dont like to use it) would be to make your charecter the mouse, if you move the moue the charecter moves
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(1.45MB, 10 KB too big to fit on a floppy)
