Elysian Shadows

Arce wrote: Haha. Yeah, I'd assume so...;P

Honestly, I fucking hate testing. So many people don't understand what it actually involves. >.<

Hmm, really? I generally tend to enjoy debugging my own source code and trying to figure out what's wrong.

Although I do admit staring at code for two hours wondering why the hell it isn't working to finally notice you've put a "=" where a "==" should have gone can be quite annoying

As far as testing other people's code.. it depends greatly on the programming skills of that person. I'd much rather test your guys' code than some of the code I've seen written in my CS class o.O.

mllarson wrote:Is it too early to sign up for game testers? C'mon... you know you need people to help debug...

-Matt

Imagine you have to go to school afternoon, but you decide to go in night time morning.. In July. That's how early it is.

After we build it, test it, fix it, conclude that it's sexy enough, only then let the testers sniff out stuff that EVEN Peter couldn't find..

After we build it, test it, fix it, conclude that it's sexy enough, only then let the testers sniff out stuff that EVEN Peter couldn't find..

After Peter? come on now.. there won't be anything fun left.

Debugging != testing, though testing may sometimes include debugging...I'm fine with debugging.

Hopefully when we're ready for 'testers' there won't be bugs...Assuming we ever do want testers outside the team. XD

edit:

As far as testing other people's code.. it depends greatly on the programming skills of that person. I'd much rather test your guys' code than some of the code I've seen written in my CS class o.O.

Thanks, I think. XD

Though I seriously doubt we'll need anybody to 'test our code'...Programming capabilities only correspond to testing abilities in respect to communication--it's easier to relay ideas or possible changes if you've got basic programming knowledge to help explain a scenario or change...

Remember, testing isn't limited to debugging...In many instances it's changing good method a to better method b, or simply finding easier, more userfriendly ways to do the same shit. Nobody wants to play through the same level 20+ times on different difficulties just to try and design it perfectly. When it comes down to situations like that, testing blows. ;P

I see what you mean now.. You were referring to testing game play whereas I was referring directly to code. As I've never gotten as far as having a serious project with a working level I've never had to do game play tests haha. I suppose playing the same thing over and over again trying "every" different situation out would get old quick (again.. if the project was my own).

Chapter 15 is up.

What do you guys think?

Awesome work guys. I'm impressed how quickly you got Mario up and running in the engine. And I really didn't expect to see it complete with mushrooms, goombas, and fireballs. Those goombas exploding was hilarious!

Ya know, you guys might be onto something... It would be more work, but you could package the engine and the editor as a pretty slick game creation tool. Sell it, and be rich. ( just wait until ES is done...cuz I don't want you to get side tracked )

Anyways, Chapter 15 was awesome, you guys are really showing off the power of the engine. Now get to work on THE GAME!

Pretty good, guys! As much as I love seeing Marcel suffer, I gotta say his one life where he forgot to set solids shouldn't have been a kill, but I am glad it was! (Sorry Marcel)

I was surprised too, there were a lot of things that looked weird, but damnnn, that's great work for just one night's worth!

It was nice to finally see some other members of the team too, and actually get a more concrete feel for what Elysian Shadows is going to be, it's starting to feel like a real dev project and not just some guys screwing around! You've come a long way from the beginning pages of the Dev-cock, good job everybody!

(btw I think you forgot a few people in the credits )

LMAO on the Goomba explosions... it's the only way to see a Goomba go and I liked seeing the bricks use the particals to show them falling apart.

It's always good to see/hear bits from some of the non-local team members, see their bits that they've worked on. Those are some nice looking graphics... and that tree did look a bit off, but I like the non-full affect where there are leaves missing. I hope you keep that affect for some of the trees.

I'm really impressed, I mean, it's really obvious that a lot has been done and that the engine is a strong and flexible one to be able to throw things together so quickly and make them 150x better than people using Game Maker could even manage with months worth of work. It shows your talents and it's why we all know that you'll finish your RPG and it'll be fun as hell to play. Great vids, keep up the great work!

The sketchiest part was the collision, and I guess it was my fault. Elysian Shadows does something that most RPGs do. It pushes you around solids if you are slightly colliding. Imagine trying to fit into a 32x32 hole when your character's collision boundary is 32x32. It "pushes" you to the hole, so it has a more natural feel.

...now imagine jumping onto a 32x32 brick and having half the character hang off... then being pushed off the brick. That's how it was in the video.

A simple fix would be to add a "DisableTilePush()" or something that Lua could call to tell the engine to quit doing that stuff--but we made the entire thing without even opening or editing the engine or a single C/++ file for that matter.

@trufun: Yeah, we have decided that we are pretty much through "showing off" random things that we can do with the engine. Everybody is ready to sit the hell down and do this thing. We have thought about some day releasing the editor and engine together, but as you said, our ultimate goal is still going to be making Elysian Shadows.

great work on the new chapter, Its amazing how quickly, easily and well done you made a super mario clone with your engine.

Now that you plan on working on the actual game and all are you going be doing much more with the engine itself? Because one interesting idea would be to have some basic networking stuff in
allowing some of your strange minigames to be played with someone else or even your main game possibly.

Random question came to mind and to the best of my knowledge, I don\'t think it\'s been asked before.

How do you guys handle source control?

Meaning, you have 2 engine programmers, a scripter, and a Marcel all adding and changing things all the time and in random times such as the last video or the JForce response, someone like Gyro grabs what he can and makes a level or like Peter with his Chu Chu game. How do you guys get everything up to date and what not? Using anything special to keep track of changes or just shared drives and a phone call?

Just curious...

I think they use somthing like subversion for source control.

M_D_K wrote:I think they use somthing like subversion for source control.

Exactly.

jesterguy wrote:Now that you plan on working on the actual game and all are you going be doing much more with the engine itself? Because one interesting idea would be to have some basic networking stuff in
allowing some of your strange minigames to be played with someone else or even your main game possibly.

There's actually still a huge amount of things that I want to add to the engine.

My priority has been to get the engine far enough along that Elysian Shadows can commence with everybody able to start working on the game. During this period, I still plan to update and add to the engine regularly. It's still nowhere near where I want it to be.

It should be the same for Marcel. He continues to update his editor (probably more slowly now), but he also works on Elysian Shadows. I'm not sure if people realize this, but Marcel is probably the most Red Mage-y programmer we have. He's well versed at C++, Blitzplus, and he is now pretty damn capable with Lua. He can do whatever, really.