Download: Internet Wars.rar (30mb)
Internet Wars is a 2D Game I made in the final semester of university, in the level 0 course “2D Games Engines”. It was made in Game Maker over a couple of months, and received:
75/100 overall
Diary: 15/20
Game: 48/60
Presentation: 12/20
Because of the time constraints, this is only a simple platformer going through the first 3 levels of the Facebook zone. Every zone is based on a different internet website, and would go through most of the popular mainstream websites, fighting related memes and other well-known things.
The main character for this game is the “Nostalgia Nerd” a nerd-become-cyborg perpetually living in the 90′s. An attack on his life resulted in him being brought to present day, and thus being taken away from his precious past. Short story lines were collaborated on between me and my good friend Forte, which goes as follows:
The game follows the story of the Nostalgia Nerd. A super genius beyond his years, he enjoys life in 1994 so much that he built a time loop generator around his house to go back in time and remain in perpetual nostalgia. Packing a custom supercomputer still running Windows 3.1x, he is famous on BBS’ and Usenet alike for his contributions in the Meow War of 1993. Relaxing in his room and watching Nickelodeon, sipping a Sunny D. In this timeline, he is King.
While he lives enclosed in this space away from society, the world continues as it always has done. Web 2.0 is in full swing and the Nerds prized software and hardware irrelevant. It would be an awful thing if his time loop generator malfunctioned… But what really happened was so much worse.
Overlooking the Nerd’s house was an evil genius. Unknown to the Nerd, this genius also lived in perpetual nostalgia… But some things just can’t be dealt with over the Internet. This genius’ name is Tony van Shaunholme. With an almighty yell, he hurls a lightning bolt at the Nerd’s time loop generator, destroying it and hurling the Nerd into present day.
As his Netscape browser begins to crash, and upon loading a few webpage’s he is struck by the “horrors” of Internet memes and the state of popular new websites. “The Internet is serious business!” “No fun allowed!” he proclaimed, weeping for his old way of life.
Enraged by this new silly and fun internet, he makes it his mission to destroy the impure place and bring it back to the days he remembers!
Driven mad from the isolation and current state of the world, he installed horrific cybernetic implants into his body and became mostly cyborg. Whilst destroying his humanity, it granted him advanced combat and Internet navigation skills, skills he will need for this upcoming “War of the Internet”
Whipping out a USB 1.0 cable from the side of his head, he plugs himself into his computer, loads up Netscape and begins his journey to the centre of the Internet.
Will the Nerd find his oppressor? Will he return to his nostalgic heaven? So begins the tale of an Eternal September.
The engine everyone had to work with was Game Maker, a free-ish program that could make basic 2D games and even 3D games if you’re smart. You can code the game either with code or object-oriented programming style buttons containing the actions you want the objects to perform. While the buttons are a great way for beginners to learn the ropes, they are limiting for more complex actions. As I already had basic experience with code (see: RPG Maker games below) I stuck with a mash of both coding and buttons.
Now that my first year of university is over, I look back now and say that this assignment was my favourite one. Designing the characters, enemies, storyline and even the coding side was all really fun. I just wish we had more than 2 months to create the game alongside other assignments so something really decent could have been made. This may be a Summer project in the making, or at least the basis for one.
Internet Wars” – 2D Game Engines idea for 2D Platforming Game
10/02/2011
THE IDEA
The game follows the story of the Nostalgia Nerd. A super genius beyond his years, he enjoys life in 1994 so much that he built a time loop generator around his house to go back in time and remain in perpetual nostalgia. Packing a custom supercomputer still running Windows 3.1x, he is famous on BBS’ and Usenet alike for his contributions in the Meow War of 1993. Relaxing in his room and watching Nickelodeon, sipping a Sunny D. In this timeline, he is King.
While he lives enclosed in this space away from society, the world continues as it always has done. Web 2.0 is in full swing and the Nerds prized software and hardware irrelevant. It would be an awful thing if his time loop generator malfunctioned… But what really happened was so much worse.
Overlooking the Nerd’s house was an evil genius. Unknown to the Nerd, this genius also lived in perpetual nostalgia… But some things just can’t be dealt with over the Internet. This genius’ name is Tony van Shaunholme. With an almighty yell, he hurls a lightning bolt at the Nerd’s time loop generator, destroying it and hurling the Nerd into present day.
As his Netscape browser begins to crash, and upon loading a few webpage’s he is struck by the “horrors” of Internet memes and the state of popular new websites. “The Internet is serious business!” “No fun allowed!” he proclaimed, weeping for his old way of life.
Enraged by this new silly and fun internet, he makes it his mission to destroy the impure place and bring it back to the days he remembers!
Driven mad from the isolation and current state of the world, he installed horrific cybernetic implants into his body and became mostly cyborg. Whilst destroying his humanity, it granted him advanced combat and Internet navigation skills, skills he will need for this upcoming “War of the Internet”
Whipping out a USB 1.0 cable from the side of his head, he plugs himself into his computer, loads up Netscape and begins his journey to the centre of the Internet.
Will the Nerd find his oppressor? Will he return to his nostalgic heaven? So begins the tale of an Eternal September.
THE GAMEPLAY
Upon starting the game, the player is presented with a level select screen, showing the website they can jump into, ala the classic Megaman games. It is similarly presented in a square of 9 smaller blocks. All 8 surrounding levels must be cleared to unlock the middle square, and the concluding level of the game.
This game plays out initially like a normal platform game. The Nostalgia Nerd navigates tricky jumps and enemies (changing depends on the level) and eventually reaches a larger, difficult to beat Boss enemy which represents the Dark Master of that domain. The Dark Master represents the most well known face of the website, for example Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg raining down “Like” missiles, and bombarding the player with “requests” and “notifications”. Just like in real life!
At the end of each level, the Nerd gains a new offensive or defensive ability depending on the website he just assimilated. As you can initially choose which level to start with, this is an important choice to make if you want to have an advantage against later bosses.
Also similar to the classic Megaman games, the Nerd is initially equipped with a basic Data Gun, shooting concentrated bits of data at enemies and causing them to error and crash. Later on more elaborate weapons such as Beam Cannons and Swords can be unlocked, giving even greater destruction power for the legions of defenses that are presented.
The Nerd travels through the depths of the Internet, and thus encounters all manner of domains he must conquer. Levels include the constantly pestering Facebook, the ridiculous video memes of Youtube, the popular fads and characters of Online Games, the dangerous domain of Torrents, the horrific art of DeviantART, and the source of all evils, 4chan.
Before the game and each level starts, depending on the limitations of the GameMaker program there will be a short scene of words and pictures giving a little backstory to the website, if the player does not know already.
11/02/2011 – Creating the animation frames
I feel that the best way to start would be to create all the character frames, so I have something to work with when it comes to object programming. To begin with, I want to make the character running, jumping and shooting animations. With these, I can make the basic movements.
Figure 1 – Idle animation sprite sheet
The Nerds sprite style is based off the image I drew back when thinking up the storyline. On the outside he looks like a normal person, but underneath unleashes android-like attacks, such as stretching out his arm to slice through incoming enemies, and turning his arm into a gun.
I am going with the character design originally thought up during the initial idea. The sprites are around 80×80 pixels, which are a little larger than classic 16-bit sprites, but I didn’t want to lose any detail in the character.
When thinking of how the Nerd should move, I wanted to convey that he is feeling angry and aggressive. When standing still, he is shaking his arms and when running, he moves in confident strides. When shooting, his teeth should be gritted and look even angrier, like he really wants his target to be destroyed.
Figure 2 – Running animation sprite sheet
This is the Nerds running animation. As this is the main character, I wanted a smooth animation which meant 8 frames. It had to be adjusted many times during animation, due to small details such as the belt buckle and areas of shading looking strange.
Figure 3 – Shooting animation sprite sheet
This is the Nerds shooting animation. This time there are only 4 frames, because shooting a gun should not take as long as going through an entire walk cycle. The way he shoots and loops again and again works well however, as my game will contain a “hold down the button to shoot a stream of bullets” method of shooting.
Figure 4 – Initial weapon’s bullet, the “USBullet”
This is the ammunition of his initial weapon. It is called the USBullet because it comes from his arm cannon, which is styled off a USB flash drive. It is a relatively weak bullet, but is faster than other planned weapons.
With these initial sprite animations created, I shall now try and put them into a small test room to create a working character that can be easily controlled.
13/02/2011 – Coding in Game Maker
Today I have started making the basic motion of the Nerd within the game. Using the information from the lesson was extremely helpful in starting with, and within less than 30 minutes I had already made a character that could run left and right, and jump. Extra code had to be added to account for turning the character to face left or right when he ran or jumped:
The “dir” variable is heavily used throughout the object code to show when the different animations should be used. Left is represented by dir 0 and Right is represented with dir 1.
Next up was making the character fire. I did not want to go for the traditional shooting straight left or right, used in games such as Megaman because they feel too limiting. Instead I am opting for bullets being aimed at wherever the mouse is on the screen. With the directions being controlled by the A and D keys, and jumping being controlled by the Spacebar, I believe the right hand is left comfortably free for aiming with the mouse. So far, this is the hardest part of character control thus far, and took many hours of looking through the object list and trying different things until it worked (almost) how I liked.
14/02/2011 – Making the character shoot
First, the most obvious way to start was to set which button should be used to fire. In this case, I used the “Global left mouse button”. The way this works is the gun fires whenever the left mouse is held. Then, I created the two variables to show what happens when the character is facing either left or right. This results in the left shooting animation playing whenever he is standing to the left and the right shooting animation whenever he is standing to the right.
Next up, and the most important part, is telling the game how to fire at wherever the mouse is on the screen. This required a small bit of code within the object: point_direction(self.x,self.y,mouse_x,mouse_y)
Next up is the issue of the rate of fire with this weapon. Normally it will fire a constant stream almost like a laser beam, but that would be overpowered and possibly cause frame rate issues. Using a variable called “canfire” (which lets the player be able to fire) and a timer that only allows “canfire” to be true every 5 frames; this limits the fire rate slightly. I am still working on what the correct rate of fire should be.
At this point, the player character can move, jump and shoot in any direction. Next I will develop the first level in the game, and then try implementing enemies that attempt to attack the player.
17/02/2011 – Making the game look aesthetically better
To make the game look more professional and not just a generic Game Maker platformer game, I found out that a unique icon can be added to the game, along with a “splash” screen when the game is loading, replacing the default Game Maker icon and loading screen. This can be done via the “Global game settings” option. For the time being, I have made a simple icon featuring the face of the Nerd, and a splash screen with a bit of pixel art and a box showing the controls.
Later on, I want to have a stylised “Internet Wars” icon and a more simplistic loading screen, reminiscent of Fallout 3 or Oblivion, featuring just the logo. There will be an option on the title screen for showing controls, so it does not need to be shown on the loading screen at that point.
.Ico file:
Current loading screen:
Note: Later on, I hope to implement this bionic arm stretch into an attack. It will pierce multiple enemies without stopping, just as if the Nerd was able to punch right through them. At the moment I’m thinking this will be a reasonably easy feat to do and will only require the arm to not be destroyed upon collision.
18/02/2011 – Level Design
To begin with, I drew up a few basic layout sketches of the first stage. The stage is split up into three areas: 1-1, 1-2 and 1-3. The first two areas are general platforming levels and the last area will be a boss battle.
18/02/2011 – Level 1: Facebook
The first level of the game is based on the Facebook websites. There will be obstacles relevant to the website such as falling “Poke” blocks and enemies such as Facebook style robots. As this is the first level, I didn’t want to add too many complex jumps or enemies and would rather just get the player acclimatised with the controls. There is a relatively simple straightforward path (Although a side path will reward the player with the “Landmine” weapon) so the level will be completed quite fast.
As of now, the layout of Facebook 1-1 is finished, with tiles similar to Facebooks colour. As the player proceeds through the level, and especially in Facebook 1-2, the environment and enemies become a lot darker, to represent the true evil that is lurking within.
To begin with, I will write an overview of the different features and mechanics seen through the level. Each one will be covered in greater depth in subsequent pages:
- Moving Blocks
Blocks based on the Facebook level will move up and down and try to crush the player. If the player gets hit by the underside (or top) of the block, they will instantly die. As this is only the first level, the blocks are reasonably slow and easy to avoid, although it is easy to misjudge a block and get caught by it.
- Enemy Traps
Taking a bad path through the level (sometimes the most obvious path) will result in falling into the firing range of an enemy, resulting in death or heavy damage. This means the player needs strategy and fast reflexes to get through the level without losing a life.
- Food to restore health
Throughout the level I want to place some sort of health restoring item to make the level easier after a difficult area. There should be two types, a common food that only restores a little health and a rare food that restores a large chunk of health.
- Various types of enemies
I want to have a range of enemies, each with different methods of attacking. Some ideas are a simple patrolling enemy that fires at the player when it comes in range, a flying enemy that drops projectiles on the enemy, a static enemy that acts a trap to be avoided, and spikes that damage the player when stepped on.
Facebook 1-3 is a single large room containing a boss encounter, which will be a robotic stylised version of Mark Zuckerberg, the creator of Facebook. As the Nerd is crusading to destroy all of the popular new websites, this guy is a prime target.
Finished design of Stage 1-1
Figure 5 – Finished design of Stage 1-1 complete with enemy, spawn and health restoring locations
This first level is relatively short, but after extensive play testing it is certainly not easy, which is exactly what I was going for. After letting a few friends from the course play, I noticed that they would fall victim to the various traps and enemy tactics, and would lose a life or two, but eventually make it to the end of the level.
I am happy with the balance of the level although the fire rate may need to be toned down. The way the enemies fire is based on a dice roll of 1/50 every frame, which can sometimes be unfair if the dice roll creates multiple projectiles. To solve this, I may create a different method of when the enemies should fire, which involves constant fire, but with an alarm that limits the enemy to fire only every few seconds. This would be a much fairer and easier mechanic for the player to handle. The problem with this is that at this time I do not know how to do it, but once the second level and boss have been created, I may have the knowledge of how it works.
This is the room being created in Game Maker. The total room size of 1-1 ended up being 1500 x 1050. This does not mean the size of the game window will be 1500 x 1050 however, as there is a way to zoom in at a specific size, called “view”. Using view, a number of different options are presented that has been very useful. The use of views can let the player stay in the centre of the screen without wandering off-screen, and set the resolution of the game during play.
This is the current look of the game when being played. The view is zoomed up to 640×480, with the camera following the player at 320×240, meaning the player is always in the centre of the screen. The background is made up of different aspects of the Facebook website. At this point, no enemies or obstacles have been added. A working health bar is the latest update to the game (see next page)
20/02/2011 – The Health Bar
Today I made the Health and Life interface pieces and added the code so they should work.
I found there are multiple ways to do this, with the same results. Either by adding the “Game Start” event and setting the lives and health via objects there, or by adding a couple of small lines of code into the Create event:
global.hp = 20 (sets the HP of the player to 20 once the game starts)
global.life = 3 (sets the number of lives of the player to 3 once the game starts)
For now I have global.hp defined in code, and the number of lives defined via the Game Start event.
Now that the code was implemented, I needed a health bar to show the player how much health they have. As the game seems so be loosely based off a Megaman game, I drawn up a similar health bar to the classic NES/SNES games. Next to the health bar are the lives, represented by a small head sprite of the Nerd. He will eventually go through the levels and pick up these small head sprites to gain another life.
To be shown on the actual game screen during play, a new object had to be made; a couple of new objects had to be made: obj_hp and obj_life. Each of these objects has a Draw event with the respective “Draw the lives/health as an image” action defined. This is where the health and lives are shown on the screen. What I wanted was for the lives and health to be in the upper right corner, similar to other platformers. As the game is constantly scrolling around the level wherever the character moves, I need the bars to stay in one place in the view I have defined. To stay inside the view, a bit of code is required to be added to the x and y coordinates: view_xview and view_yview, with the coordinates of where you want the bars to be. In the case of the life icons, it is +55, +25.
Once again, there is code that performs a similar task. Also going in the Draw event of its respective object, it goes: draw_sprite(spr_health,global.hp,view_xview+25,view_yview+85). What happens here is that it draws the sprite based on the current hp (defined by global.hp) and then shows it on the screen in the location that is entered, in this case x25, y85. The code also uses the “xview” and “yview” to ensure they are stuck at a constant place on the screen and follows the player when he moves around. This is what the health and life bars look like while playing:
21/02/2011 – The Health Bars do not work
While the health bars display properly, they do not work when faced with damage.
Initially, when collided with my test enemy (obj_spikes, a small spike object placed on the floor) the health bar would not change, nor did any notable HP lower. I later realised that it was because I defined the collision to lower the “health” variable, and not the “global.hp” variable I had assigned to the players health bar.
At this point I was reasonably confident that HP would work now, but there still seems to be many issues. Now the players HP will lower, but once it reaches 0 the health bar will scroll through its frames, and the player will not die.
My initial conclusion is that this is an issue with the controller object for the player’s lives (obj_life).
What should happen is that once the player runs out of health, a life is removed and the player is sent to the start of the level. What happens now is the player stays where he is, and all lives are removed. This is where the health bar scrolls through its frames and at this point the player is invincible.
Another issue I would like to sort out is the fixed amount of damage the player suffers when standing on a spike. What I want is for the player’s health to slowly decrease, perhaps 1 per second (out of the 20 maximum). I believe this can be done with an alarm and timer but I am not sure yet.
22/02/11 – The Health Bar and lives work again
After hours of changing variables and adding/removing objects and code, the Health and Lives work as intended.
The issue was indeed the “obj_life” control object. Previously upon collision with the spikes long enough for the player to die, the player would lose a life, and then subsequently the rest of their lives. This was due to health not being restored upon death, and therefore started an infinite loop of not having enough health and dying. This was solved by simply changing the variable of global.hp to 20 upon going lower than 0 HP.
The only issue with lives now, is what to do when the player runs out of lives and also runs out of health. I haven’t decided if they should be sent back to the first stage (Each “world” has 3 stages – first, second and boss stage) or just send the player back to the stage select screen (not implemented yet)
Also there is an issue with the “Jump to start position” move. Apparently it sends the player back to where they started the level, but it doesn’t do anything. Keeping with the theme of objects that damage the player, next I am going to try and make moving blocks that fall and damage the player.
22/02/11 – Enemies
First off, the design of the enemies of the Facebook level will be mostly robotic. That is because there are not any characters or fads to base enemies off, so the Nerd will be trying to fight against the website itself. To make up for it, the enemies have Facebook themed colours. So far, 3 enemies have been made to be turned into objects:
Drone: This robot moves left and right over platforms and fires “Like” bullets towards the player (normal fire, 1hp damage)
Sentry Drone: This enemy stands still and fires a constant stream of enemies towards the player. Mostly to act as something to avoid rather than destroy (The rate of fire is so high that the player would not manage to fire more than a few bullets before being killed)
Sentry Robot: Replacing the Sentry Drone sprite. (Extremely fast fire, 1hp damage)
Helicopter Robot: This robot flies left and right across large rooms and drops slow moving bombs at and around the player, causing large damage if it hits (slow fire, 5hp damage)
Another damage causing object is the Facebook icon block. Acting as a similar object to the “Thwomps” in Super Mario, if a player is caught underneath one then they will die instantly. The blocks move slowly as to not be too hard for this initial level.
The final damage causing object is the previously seen Spikes. This object causes a couple of damage to the player when stepped on. There is currently a problem with this object, as it only causes initial damage when stepped on. What I wanted was for recurring damage to be dealt to the player if it is stood on for an extended amount of time.
23/02/11 – Adding code to the Enemies
Replacing health bars as the hardest thing to implement. Even during the lesson covering this subject I couldn’t get a grasp on it, but progress has now been made for every enemy. The drone was coded in the lesson, and the first problem was creating a medium where it would stay on the platform without either floating straight off it, or falling down onto the lower platform, while moving left/right whenever it reaches a corner.
A solution was reached, which also works for the rest of the enemies in the stage, but with slight tweaks (Such as removing the gravity of the helicopter enemy so it floats wherever it is placed, and also removing all direction speed from the sentry enemies so they stand still)
This resulted in a number of unique enemies with unique movement and unique methods of attacking. For this first level, I would say it is almost complete now.
24/02/11 – Adding the finishing touches to stage 1-1
Health Restoration
To give the level some more content, and to make it slightly easier, I will add health and life restoring items. To keep with the Internet theme I will make the health restoring items look like cookies and cheeseburgers (Giving *cookies* to people, and the “I Can Has Cheezburger?” meme)
They are placed in relatively out of the way parts of the level, and once the player touches the object they restore a fixed number of health and disappear.
Cheeseburger – Fully restores health, only one per level. These are best placed after a particularly difficult section.
Cookie – Commonly seen around the level. They also drop from killed enemies at a reasonable high chance.
1up – Increases the player’s health by 1. Rarely found in the level and also planned to rarely drop from enemies.
Sounds
There are sounds to accompany some of the actions while playing the game:
- When the player first spawns in the level, a ding noise is played
- When eating food, an eating sound is played
- When obtaining a 1up, a ding is played
- Bullets from the default weapon plays a constant energy bullet sound
Eventually I would like to add sounds for enemy and player deaths and maybe ambient noises for some of the moving objects such as the Facebook blocks crashing down.
There is also background music for this level. It is called “L\assaut” and is from the Japanese show Hokuto no Ken. I feel its fast; energy filled beat transfers well to this game.
Starting at the weekend I will start creating the second level of the Facebook stage, 1-2. This stage will contain even more interesting mechanics and features now that the basic engine has been sorted and I am more confident with the code.
05/03/11 – Creating Stage 1-2
The Concept
When thinking of how stage 1-2 of my game should go, I wanted it to contain many new mechanics to make the stage more entertaining that the straight passage of the previous stage.
The design for stage 1-2 has changed greatly since its conception in February. A lot of ideas have come and gone and so far some new mechanics have already been implemented into the stage. I feel that it is more or less complete, and has gone from the basic sketch shown on 18th February to the complete stage featured on the next page.
To begin with, an overview of the different features and mechanics that I will cover in more depth on the next few pages:
- Breakable walls
There are solid walls stopping the player’s progress through the level, but unlike other walls they can be destroyed by firing bullets or other weaponry at them. The player is also under pressure from other obstacles during this time they have to destroy the walls, making the action more exciting and intense.
- Locked Barriers
There are barriers stopping progress in the stage too. The player must take a detour to another path to find a key that unlocks the barrier. This is heavily defended by enemies to increase the time spent in the stage rather than just rushing through the stage in 30 seconds.
- New weapon to be obtained
Near the end of the level, at a particularly difficult area, there is a new weapon that can be obtained by the player to help clear a path (and also to help defeat the boss in the next stage)
This weapon as of today has not been decided yet, but I am thinking of either have a bouncing projectile that bounces against the floor and walls, similar to the fireball from the classic Mario games, or a homing missile or wave beam similar to the unlockable weapons in the Metroid series.
Once the player has unlocked the weapon, a variable will be set that allows the player to use the weapon in subsequent stages. This new weapon will probably also be controlled via the mouse and fired with the right mouse button instead of the left mouse button. As there will only be 3 stages total for this assignment, I feel that this is an adequate control method.
Some other planned ideas for this update are: health food dropping from killed enemies and new enemies with new mechanics for attacking the player.
05/03/2011 – Stage 2-1
Figure 6 – The final entire layout of stage 1-2
06/03/2011 – Destructible Walls and Locked Barriers
My First idea when creating this level is that there should be areas of scenery that the player can break down with their weapons. I personally always liked this feature in games such as Metroid and Scott Pilgrim vs. The World where the player, when presented with an otherwise empty room with a dead end, can just try and smash through the scenery to get to the next area. Of course this couldn’t apply to the entire level, or the player could just fire down, smashing through the level until they reach the exit. Rather, I have chosen select walls that the player can break through to reach the objective:
Destructible Walls
I have created this wall to act as the destructible scenery for horizontal areas. Right now I hope that it is obvious that the wall can be destroyed, and I have tried to show this by making the sprite look slightly worn down. When finished, I want the wall to show increasing degrees of damage when it takes more damage, until it eventually crumbles.
Coding this wall was simple; it is basically an enemy that doesn’t attack back. It has a health variable, and takes damage from the players’ weaponry, but does not cause the player any form of damage. These walls are usually protected by a number of enemies, making the game more difficult to proceed as they would need to clear the area first before proceeding with damaging the wall.
Locked Barriers + Keys
My next idea was to make areas that could not be destroyed even with weaponry. They are essentially locked doors that the player cannot get past unless they find a key to open it, meaning the player will have to explore the level and take different routed to reach the key and be able to proceed.
This was considerably harder to code than the destructible walls, because it required a new variable, “global.locked” and “var_key”.
The way it works is when the player begins the level; the players’ var_key variable is set to 0 and when they pick up a key, that variable changes to var_key=1. This now means that when they touch the locked barrier, the barrier disappears and the player can proceed. This also means that the players’ var_key changes back to 0, in case there is another locked barrier and key later in the level.
11/03/2011 – Latest version update and ideas for the future
- All enemy fire rates have been lowered to make the game slightly easier
- A new enemy has been added to stage 1-2: The Eye guy. The Eye guy is attached to the ceiling via wires, and is immobile. It sometimes shoots out more enemies, called “Fly eyes” that float towards the player in a homing missile fashion.
Unlike regular projectiles from enemies, these can be destroyed with the players’ bullets. They move slowly, but if they reach the player then they can cause a large amount of damage.
- Music has been added to this second level. This time it is the instrumental track “Ai wo Torimodose” also from the series Hokuto no Ken. I like using this type of music because it is full of energy and power, which makes the game more exciting. I’m not sure if this kind of music is even allowed, although it is relatively obscure and probably does not have the same extreme copyright issues as mainstream music.
- I have been trying to make it so enemies can sometimes drop food when they die. Initially I tried the method of having a 1/3 chance upon enemy death to create an instance of the health restoring item, but that did not work, and for some reason caused an extreme frame rate drop. I immediately removed this feature but will try to find an alternative method in the future.
- When the basic game has been finished (1-3 and the boss finished) I would like some small aesthetic additions to be made such as death animations for the player and enemies so they do not just “disappear” when killed.
- The title of the game has changed to “Internet Wars: Timebomb to Eternal September”. This is a reference to a similar happening back in 1994 where the influx of new Internet users annoyed the experienced long-term users. More information and backstory can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September and http://encyclopediadramatica.com/Meow_wars
- The next important update and the conclusion of stage 1-2 will be the new weapon unlock. It will be a bouncing projectile that can bounce against walls, floors and ceilings for a short while until it hits an enemy. I chose this sort of weapon because it helps clear out difficult areas without having to jump into the fray and lose a lot of health.
11/03/2011 – The unlockable weapon: Flamer
No internet discussion would be complete without some flames, and the Nerd has contained this power for his own just cause. The Flame shoots out of his arm cannon and bounces along the floor, and against ceilings and walls. This lets the player clear out difficult areas before taking the leap into the warzone to finish the stragglers off.
It all begins when the player touches the Flamer “item” which appears early on in stage 1-2.
This icon represents the internet’s power of “flames” which is the word for when someone is hostile to another person over the internet, usually during an argument or calling someone out on what they posted online. Each weapon is a representation of some aspect of the offensive actions of the internet, and this is the first one the Nerd encounters.
Obtaining the item is simple enough; a collision event triggers the variable that lets the player shoot fireballs using the right mouse button. (This is covered in more detail soon)
To make the player feel a greater sense of achievement, a splash image appears on the screen similar to when a new weapon is obtained in Megaman or Metroid:
12/03/2011 – The code behind the weaponry
The way I wanted this weapon to work is for it to be shot out of the arm cannon like a regular bullet, but instead bounces along the floor until it hits a wall or an enemy. For this to be achieved, I would need to set gravity onto the bullet so it doesn’t fly away as soon as it hits the floor.
A gravity of 1 and a vspeed (vertical speed) of -9 gives the correct amount of bounce for it to hop onto and across platforms.
Next, I had to work with how the bullet collides with obj_block, which is what the stage is made out of. First I set the vertical speed to get the correct amount of gravity for the bullet to bounce across the floor, and next I placed a collision check button to check if there is something in the way. I set the direction to hspeed (horizontal speed) so the program knows when the bullet is moving at normal speed, or has stopped (hit a wall). Finally, in the case that the bullet has hit a wall and stopped, there is a destroy instance (self) to remove the bullet from the stage.
As with all bullets and projectiles, there are the two actions of destroying itself once it leaves the room or the view.
Now that the bullet has been coded properly to work in game, I want the player to “unlock” the weapon when he touches the “get flamer” icon. This appears near the beginning of stage 1-2. I wanted it to appear earlier rather than later because I want the player to get some use out of it and appreciate the increased firepower. While the flamer has a slower fire rate and is less accurate (it can’t be aimed with the mouse and instead just bounces straight ahead) if it hits an enemy it is almost certainly going to kill it in one hit. This is a satisfying change from raining bullets upon the enemy, but in reality the slow fire rate of the flamer makes it only slightly better at killing than the default weapon. The true advantage of this weapon is letting the flame bounce ahead onto platforms containing enemies that would be difficult to handle normally.
To unlock the weapon, the player has to touch the Get Flamer icon. There is a lot of code to handle the ability to get and retain this weapon, and was quite interesting to make.
The player starts the game with a variable, called has_fire. This is the variable that checks if the player has picked up the flamer icon yet. When the player picks up the icon, this variable changes from false to true, and the player can now use the right mouse button to shoot fireballs.
To add to the immersion, there is a short jingle to congratulate the player (right now its set to the jingle of Super Metroid, but due to copyright issues that will probably change) and a splash screen appears as seen on the previous page. This picture remains until the player clicks the mouse, where the regular music resumes and the player can continue.
There were a couple of issues while making this bullet, such as the bullets sticking to the walls (I forgot to tick a relative box) and an error whenever I pressed the right mouse key before I had obtained the bullet (I forgot to set the has_fire to false in the player create event) but otherwise this did not take too long to accomplish.
12/03/2011 – The completion of stage 1-2
Now that the level and mechanics have been completed and implemented into the level, the stage is mostly complete. To make the game start feeling like a game and less like a one off level, I have connected the two levels together with a room transition. Fortunately Game Maker has a button to make this easily possible with no extra code or buttons needed. I made 2 door sprites for this, when placed together they make a complete looking door. The reason for this is below:
The way the room transition works is with a collision object. I could have just made the transition happen as soon as the player touches the door, but that would look unrealistic. Instead, what I done was add the room transition code on the far side of the door (the one with the darker shading) and once the player reaches the centre of the door, thus touching the room transition side, the room goes onto the next stage. I did this to make the whole “going into a door” aspect seem more realistic, and it works well.
Now, the player can go through stage 1-1, right into stage 1-2 with a nice looking room transition, titled “push from the left/right” in Game Maker. This scrolls the screen whichever way the door is facing and makes the transition between rooms smooth.
Looking back on this stage, there were so many things that could not be implemented due to being too difficult or not fitting in well with the level. Some ideas that never reached fruition were:
- Floors that fall down beneath the player, threatening to make the player fall and die if he stopped moving for too long
- An enemy that charges at the player causing collision damage
- A room similar to an area with a never ending flow of enemies until an objective is completed (in this case avoiding the enemy attacks until you close the gate on them and stop the flow of enemies from appearing)
The coding for the existing enemies and mechanics went smoothly, now that I have some knowledge of what each button does and have a mindset of how to code something to do what I want it to do, it was a lot easier than stage 1-1, despite taking more time. A lot of time went into placing each individual tile onto the room, and it was only ¾ into the room creation that I discovered that by holding shift and dragging would allow you to select more than one tile to place down. In retrospect this would have saved over a week of time due to the repetitiveness making me lose motivation in the whole thing.
Next, the final room to make before the assignment can start to be called complete: Stage 1-3 – The boss encounter.
12/03/11 – Sidetracking to create a title screen
One of the most important things in a game is the title screen; it guides the player to the actual game and offers options and help such as changing controls, difficulty or sound. I would like to add something similar to this albeit slightly more basic, just something that the player can navigate with a nice picture before they start the game properly.
The menu screen will have 3 options which I believe can be done easy enough and will not require any extensive code. By making the menu screens as “rooms” and the menu buttons as clickable objects, which can replicate a menu similar to other games well.
To begin with, I created 2 basic menu screens, a Title and a Credits page. These pages contain the Internet Wars logo, a concept art drawing of the Nostalgia Nerd, information and buttons leading elsewhere. The menu buttons were created next, and are just words with a transparent background so that blend into the menus well.
The code for each button was reasonably simple, and consisted of four events: Create, Left Pressed, Mouse Enter, and Mouse Leave. In the Create event, I have placed 2 actions: an action to make some background music play, and a change sprite event to spr_startgame which is the original sprite.
This is needed because of Mouse Enter and Mouse Leave. Mouse Enter is the event for when the mouse hovers over the object. In the case of these menu buttons, they are exactly the same apart from a small “>” icon to indicate it is being selected:
Figure 7 – When the mouse is not hovering over it
Figure 8 – When the mouse is hovering over it
The Start game icon leads to the first stages “scene” (will be covered later) which is a direct move onto the next room. If I decide to make a “stage select” similar to the classic Megaman games, then this will change, but at the moment with only 1 stage this is unnecessary.
The Credits game icon leads to a page with a little information just saying that I had made the game, and about the course this game was made for. Finally, a Close Game button that closes the game.
13/03/2011 – Screenshots of the completed Menu Screens
The Main title screen players see when starting up the game.
The credits screen. Players can go back to the main menu by pressing the “Back to Menu” button at the top right of the screen.
13/03/2011 – Getting carried away with rooms: Creating a scene before stage 1-1
As creating rooms linking to another room was so easy, I got the idea to link multiple rooms sort of like images to create a scene. In the scene it will just show an introduction to the Facebook level, the Nerd arriving and coming face to face with Mecha-Zuckerberg (the planned boss for this stage). They share a few aggressive words and the stages start afterwards.
I really like this idea because it gives the game some soul and prevents it from just being an empty platformer. The scene is shown below:
This is the title page for this scene. Background music starts playing and the screen fades to the next one when the “Next” button is pressed.
At this point, another screen transition happens leading to stage 1-1.
While this was easy to make, the main issue was working with all the different background music from the title, credits and stages. Without adding control objects to stop the previous sound from playing, they would all stack up and play at once, which is not good.
If I had more time to complete the assignment, I would have liked to hand-draw these images to add more emotion and humour, but even a single character concept art takes many hours and there just isn’t enough time anymore.
13/03/2011 – Game over screen and issues with the Game over screen
Continuing with the theme of making rooms to add some atmosphere to the game, I made a game over room when the player ran out of lives:
In the game over screen it is simply an image of the Nerd’s disembodied hand (complete with blood and robotic joints because he is a cyborg) and also a button to send the player back to the main menu.
The code that activates this game over screen is in the players obj_lives controller object. It dictates that when the player goes below 9 lives, the game moves to this room.
This has caused a lot of unknown issues however. For one, pressing the “go back to title” button (not pictured) sends the player back to the main menu although the health bar and stage theme still remains. For now I have solved this by resetting the game whenever the player clicks “go back to title”.
Now that that is sorted, the game should game over normally… But there are still issues. I have set an action in the create event to stop all sound (to get rid of the stage theme) and to play a new, game over related background music. This does not work, and for some reason the frame rate takes a heavy hit. I am currently working on how to solve this.
20:09 Edit: By placing the delete_instance for the control objects obj_life and ob_health, the frame rate lag is reduced. This is a viable solution as the game resets once the “go back to title” button is pressed. The game over music still will not play however.
21:04 Edit: The sound_stop_all(); code doesn’t work properly it seems, and even stopped subsequent music. As a solution making two buttons to individually stop the stage theme works fine instead.
14/03/2011 – Concept of Stage 1-3
This is the concept drawing of stage 1-3. This is a short stage because the main focus point is to fight the boss encounter.
When beginning the level, the player has to cross a bridge that falls down as he steps along it. For a focused player, this is nothing more than a cool effect, but players first playing this stage may be caught off guard and fall into oblivion. I have not yet thought of a method to create this effect so I cannot go into more detail just yet.
Upon reaching the main area, a scene will ensue, started by an invisible collision object just nearby. The stage music will change to a more energetic theme, and the boss will start attacking.
As detailed before, the boss in the Facebook stage is Mecha-Zuckerberg, based on Mark Zuckerberg the creator of Facebook. He has traditional attacks such as shooting a mounted turret and charging at the player for collision damage. The player will have to dodge these attacks by jumping onto the adjacent floating platform and opening fire to cause damage.
I aim for the battle to take at least 30 seconds, so unless some kind of artificial time extending mechanic is implemented, the boss will probably just have a lot of HP. 10000 seems like a reasonable start considering the 10 damage of the bullets and a fast firing rate.
The look of the stage will be the same as stage 1-2, using the same tile set.
