Hello new person here....>_>

haneko

Green Slime
Hello my name is Haneko and I am a new player here. my hobbies are games, anime, manga and a bit of game design as a hobby. nothing big right now but I hope to have fun here. I support this game based on the impression it left on me with the trailer. I hope the developers continue to keep this game going forward as it has much promise.

on my own end, I hope to one day make something this beautiful and fluid.
 

haneko

Green Slime
well its a bit of a monster trainer rpg that is its own universe. I have been spending three years on it. but im a bad programmer since im self-taught in coding so there is a lot I do not understand. I have filler graphics since im bad at graphic art. trying to figure out how to program my own map engine. the Idea is that from a default 'zone' I can add more zones within my world map. so I also have to think about the loading and saving of the progression of the game. so it doesn't load everything all at once. but that's what im working on right now.
 

KoBeWi

Jumpkin
Hi!

I only hinted it few times, but I'm in game design (isn't it called gamedev actually?) too. What are you using for making your game? I know some very easy-to-use tool. I'm also self-taught in coding, but I finished my first game in 3 months :v
 

haneko

Green Slime
im using game maker studio cause its free and user friendly for sprite making. im learning a bit of gml, I know a little basic 256 and a little c# and c++. My game is a big idea. might be too big for me to complete on my own but I cant give up on it.

The problem is that everywhere I look is not the right kind of answers I get for the questions I ask and I do get cold shouldered out of a community. they act like I had college or university but my last year of school was highschool and back then we didn't have game design. my last year was in 2005-2006. our computers had windows 95 on them that's how bad it was.

I want to know about how to build a structure and they tell me show us the structure or shut up. so its not exactly easy for someone with a learning disability to try and figure out from scratch. im no genius. there are some things I don't understand and there are things I cant understand as my logic just wont register it.

I hope people can understand, how difficult it is to learn when your dyslexic. so I have to deal with a lot of confusion.

Note;" this is to avoid double posting..."
the area I want to work on my coding skills is a map engine that works like clock work where I can add zones and edit zones to change some decorations, upgrading a zone will move some zones away. the theme which is behind my idea of the map engine is a world and changes and grows with the player playing an active role in it. through crafting and placement of gates to create new zones. crafting modules to fill in the zone.
 
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The G-Meister

Giga Slime
well its a bit of a monster trainer rpg that is its own universe. I have been spending three years on it. but im a bad programmer since im self-taught in coding so there is a lot I do not understand. I have filler graphics since im bad at graphic art. trying to figure out how to program my own map engine. the Idea is that from a default 'zone' I can add more zones within my world map. so I also have to think about the loading and saving of the progression of the game. so it doesn't load everything all at once. but that's what im working on right now.
Sounds cool!
I want to know about how to build a structure and they tell me show us the structure or shut up. so its not exactly easy for someone with a learning disability to try and figure out from scratch. im no genius. there are some things I don't understand and there are things I cant understand as my logic just wont register it.

I hope people can understand, how difficult it is to learn when your dyslexic. so I have to deal with a lot of confusion.
Wow, what nice people o_O Don't worry, you won't get any of that here, although sadly it's unlikely anyone's going to be able to help much.
I only hinted it few times, but I'm in game design (isn't it called gamedev actually?) too. What are you using for making your game? I know some very easy-to-use tool. I'm also self-taught in coding, but I finished my first game in 3 months :v
Oh, never realised you were a self-taught coder. Funnily enough, same here :3 Although annoyingly it's all web-design. I know the basics of HTML, Javascript, CSS and jQuery, and it's the first three I'm using to build my game. It's going to be an ASCII-art action-puzzle game based around hacking. Because it's ASCII-art, I've decided to lay it out in one massive table, to make sure each character has equal spacing. Currently I'm working on the bulk of the programming - the Javascript. I've just finished making a function that allows me to type out a string and each letter of that string gets put into the table. This is what it looks like so far (minus table borders, there to show you the size):

upload_2016-3-18_21-5-40.png
 

haneko

Green Slime
I see well this is kind of my idea.

basically the default zone which I name home island, is a square of 21x21 units with a row of void cells around it this row of void cells cant be crossed unless a gate is placed on it. a gate is essentially the thing that creates and protects the zone within from overlapping. I figure I want to avoid weird collisions. so since home island is an uneven square it makes sense to make it the center of the world map. the void surrounding a zone will and must overlap other void areas so the zones and the gate can connect to each other. so if a certain zone expands then other zones are moved the only zone that cant be moved is home island. I hope it make sense.
 

KoBeWi

Jumpkin
Wow, I didn't know that GM:S went free. Unfortunately, I've never actually used it to make anything.

I'm mostly programming in Ruby language (it's also used for RPG Maker scripting), with Gosu library. It's the best tool I've used, when it comes to easiness. It gives you a lot of freedom, giving only the most necessary functionality (drawing, playing sound, and handling input). It's surprisingly easy to learn, despite being just a bare programming language without any framework. But that's it's power: you aren't limited by any software, so if you want to do something, you only think how to do it. When using a program for making games, you also need to know how to do it in this particular program. I learned the whole programming from looking at other's source code, reading documentation for what I needed and sometimes googling.

Before I started programming, I used only The Games Factory (2) and RPG Maker. I of course tried few engines/tools to make games after I learned Ruby, but... it's not the same anymore :/

Eh, I was writing it for too long and few posts appeared by this time T_T
Anyways, I can't seem to get your map explanation. Maybe some concept image could help. I don't know much of GML, but I know programming in general and I made already different kinds of stuff.
 

The G-Meister

Giga Slime
Ah that sounds cool haneko! I need to start working on hacker prevention early on, otherwise it might be very simple for people just to type in a command into the console and get up all the game variables. Ideally I'd like it to have online leaderboards, which is why I'd do this. That would involve me getting into SQL for databases and php to make sure it can connect to them.

My best resource when coding (and I need one because JavaScript is sooo difficult >.<) is http://www.w3schools.com/. It covers so much stuff in so much detail it's hard to find things that don't work on there. At the moment I'm trying to get the x.addEventListener method to work for a devmode which allows me to press a key, and that letter goes straight into that co-ordinate on the table. I can then hopefully make a "save" function, which converts the picture I've made into a string for me, so I can recall it whenever I want!

I've heard that Ruby is pretty easy to use, and was on my list of stuff to learn the basics of, just haven't got around to it yet. I might get into Java, which could let me boot the game up without the use of a web browser.
 

haneko

Green Slime
but ruby is only easy to use If you already know c++ or C# that's the problem and rpg maker is too limiting when you don't know how to code. But if someone oculd help me with that it would be nice.

now for the map engine. lets think like (dungeon maker) game the only difference is its not a dungeon we are making its a world map. its on the psp from what I know.
thisl ink will should what I mean by modular maps. as dungeon maker hunting grounds is making a dungeon map with rooms and corridors.

online leaderboards should only be about online competitions. otherwise people will want to hack to be at the top. I've been dethroned with place switching and fake scores it wasn't funny.
 

The G-Meister

Giga Slime
Unless my game gets taken by storm I'm sure it won't be an issue :p Actually, on Grindea, they manually remove anyone from the leaderboards who hacks to the top. If I just send a few extra snippets of data with the leaderboard submission, it may be much easier to uncover any cheaters.
 

KoBeWi

Jumpkin
but ruby is only easy to use If you already know c++ or C#
lol, nope.

Ruby is the simplest and easiest programming language ever. You'd rather say that "Ruby is easy to use if you know how to program", however I picked it up when I was a complete utter newbie in programming. It lets you make programs in more natural way, because you just write what you want to do. In other languages, you also have to deal with variable typing, exception catching (in Java), memory management, array bounds, compiling and all this crap.

I just don't understand why C/C++ are the first languages you usually learn. When you don't know anything about programming, they are just terrible, because you don't know what is happening. Especially when C++ compiler throws you long error report which you have scroll few times to see where it begins.

On Ruby's main site there is a "getting started" section on the right. That's where I started. Then I don't remember what I did, but I somehow found the game library called Gosu, which I use till today.

And I didn't suggested anything about using RPG Maker. I only said I used to use it and that it uses Ruby for scripting. But I don't recommend it to you, unless you just want to make a Final Fantasy clone.

_____

I now sort of understand what map you wanted to make, but I can't really help you when I don't know how you manage maps. What is the problem you have? The "algorithm" is basically broken into two parts: creating the layout and filling it with content. Creating layout really depends on how you store your map, because you need some access to adjacent zones to check where they lay and know their borders. When your layout is created, you then need to use the zone data to create objects within the zone (like actual tiles or trees or whatever).
You could store your zones inside a list, so it's size can be modified. I don't know if Game Maker supports lists, but a normal array won't work, because they are usually fixed-size. If your zones are rectangular then it's pretty easy and you only need access to their position and dimensions, so you know where to fit new ones.
Does this help you somehow? I don't want to go too deep into this unless I locate your exact trouble :p
 

haneko

Green Slime
well you see my problem is getting the layout there. i mean on paper its not a complicated theory but in code its a problem.
I want to use a layer system for storage purposes, so we are talking about a 5 layer pileup.

1.Top = weather effects and event storage
2. overhangs
3. obstructions and actors
4. terrain
5.Bottom = parallax background

so I want to use layers and ds grids to store information on tile placements.
so first type of template should be a default size.

but yeah I was planning on using arrays to store information on default terrain dimensions and terrain traits and limits. and combine the rest of the data with a save file.

Note; erm isn't gosu written in jdk javascript? I cant even make sense of it.....TT_TT
 
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KoBeWi

Jumpkin
well you see my problem is getting the layout there. i mean on paper its not a complicated theory but in code its a problem.
I want to use a layer system for storage purposes, so we are talking about a 5 layer pileup. [...]
First, you need to separate "layout" from "terrain"

You need to define your maximum world size. Let's say your whole map will be 1000 x 1000. You then need arrays to store the data for the whole map. Like terrain, it will actually be always 1000 x 1000, but it would have holes where there are no zones (nulls or some dummy terrain, whatever you have planned for this).

Then you need to think of a way to store zones. But first, you need a Zone class, that will have position and size stored. Then you can do this like terrain: in two-dimensional array, but it might be complicated, because each zone would need to occupy every square it lays on. For example, if you have 2 x 2 zone at [5][5], then you need set reference to this zone at [5][6], [6][5] and [6][6].
Second possibility is to store zones in one-dimensional array, and define a find method, that will iterate through the zones. With this approach, there's less work and it would use less memory, but it will work slower. However if the game isn't too complex elsewhere, the speed won't really make difference.

Note; erm isn't gosu written in jdk javascript? I cant even make sense of it.....TT_TT
Gosu, as a library, is actually written in C, but it's designed to be used either with Ruby or C++. You won't have any use of it, unless you move your whole game out of Game Maker to Gosu.
Also, if it happens that you'd want to try it, I suggest you to start from the tutorials provided with the library when you install it.
 

haneko

Green Slime
I kind of wanted an infinite map size. so I can focus on what I actually put in.

or maybe start with a small map size where I can expand on it with the extra zones. if we talk in cell size start with a world map size of 23x23 where a zone of 21x21 is the home island zone. and when you place the gate for another zone the world map increases in size to make room for the route or area. how would that work in code?

oh wait, wait, wait! I don't know even how to make inheritance work with parent classes and child classes....might be usefull to explain on that...
 

KoBeWi

Jumpkin
If you want infinite map... maybe hashtable (they are called "maps" in GM) will work. Hashtable consists of keys and values. It's like array, but uses any variable type as an index. You can access elements by string, for example hashmap["somestring"]. The idea is, to make two-dimensional arrays like previously, but store them in the hashmap.

Now, that's where it becomes slightly complicated. You need a way to consistently translate coordinates into keys for the hashmap. You can, for example, convert them to string, which looks like "X,Y". When you want to access a specific tile, first you need to access a proper key in the hashmap, and then look inside the array that is stored under this key. Of course, you have to make sure to create the array when you want to access it for the first time.

This will allow you to have virtually any-sized maps, but you need to lookup on how to use "maps" in GML. Here's some link I found: http://docs.yoyogames.com/source/dadiospice/002_reference/data structures/ds maps/index.html

For the inheritance, just google "gml inheritance".
 

haneko

Green Slime
ok. I will look for the inheritance. this is way more helpful then where I have been before. So if I want to essentially make a list its not like an array where I just place an "@" label and use goto commands to go there.

I need to understand a reference system. and a template system. I understand im going to need a reader and a loop check to make my map engine work.

note; about the hashtable thing being reffered to as a map that thing gets me so confused. it has nothing to do with a game map....TT_TT
 
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haneko

Green Slime
Boy its more complicate than I though I might need more time or cheat with rpg makerXP...;P
I want to change a few things on it so I can change attribute logic on it... and attributes, also making the combat more like pokemon should be an option....
 
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