The Beginning of the End

---

Time: 14:21

Despite not much in the way of updates being posted I have been keeping myself unusually busy on my project the past two days. Been working on the finishing touches to the pause menu, title screen and save / load system. I did however with all these new features incoming take a little time out to return to an older task. The task in question was coming up with some new transitions, the idea being I wanted a unique transition for different situations, these situations being starting a new game, loading an existing game, moving to and from a house, moving to and from above ground areas and moving to and from underground areas (I still need to make these underground areas). So these next two videos are a taste of what I've managed to do.

Time: 22:35

Next up is the final part of the fantastic tutorial I have been following, in case I've not mentioned it before, GameMaker: Action RPG Tutorial, this has been an amazing series and I'm proud to have gotten through all 51 episodes. I can't begin to express my gratitude for this series and can honestly say I have learned so much from it. With that said and done all the main features are now in place, now I need to return and expand the quest system even more as well as expand the world and finish up work on the graphics. It might seem a bit late in the game to be messing around with such things but I have been thinking of changing the hero's sprite before the game is complete, or maybe I will save that for my next project. I know I said I would talk about some of my game design inspirations and goals and I will do at some point in the near future. With that I leave you with the first look at the title screen, pause screen and saving system up and running.

---

We Can Rebuild Him

---

Time: 18:34

Small update today, as mentioned yesterday I've added the ability to upgrade the ammo capacity of the bow and bomb weapons. The costs I may well play with in the future, was more a programming challenge than a meaningful feature. I might even turn these into a hidden item the player can collect or stick with my original plan and just have hidden cash stash's and let the player decide what they want to focus on. I think over time I've become more of a fan of letting the player make decisions on upgrade paths. In a future project this is another thing I would like to focus on, levelling up, skill trees or more upgrade choices.

Modified the player UI slightly to also reflect the maximum number of arrows and bombs that can be held. I'd have liked to have better made it fit and actually while writing this I've actually had an idea on how to do this so I might revisit that soon. I may in the coming days talk a little about what influences I've taken idea's from and some design ideas and just general bits that come to mind.

Yes you may have noticed in the video that buying bomb upgrades costs money but doesn't actually grant a bigger ammo limit. This was a small fix I just hadn't added an amount to my global variables. I have fixed this now.

---

Retail Therapy

---

Time: 19:02

Getting ever closer to finishing up all of the game features for this project. Todays job is sorting out the village shop, a nice little place for the player to spend all those coins that have been falling into the players pockets. Sadly this mean no more free handouts when it comes to ammo for the player! However on the bright side find enough of those coins and you'll be able to upgrade your health all the way up from one to five bars.

Got a very basic version of the shop up and running pretty quickly but wanted to make it easier to expand if extra weapons were introduced or if I wanted to change the cost or how many items were given etc. Final thing I want to do is have the ability to upgrade the ammo limit. The pieces are all there I just need to throw together the last little bits of code. Not sure the game will be long enough for all these extras though but it's a good learning experience.

As for the game itself it's going to have a very simple structure of item collecting, each new quest completed will unlock a new item which will allow the player to complete another quest and eventually find the final item. There will be a few hidden spots dotted about with some extra money in it for getting upgrades. I would like to have some boss fights chucked in for variety and as an extra programming challenge, see how far I can I can take the state machine system.

Some of the graphics still need a little more looking at, I need to build an underground cave tile set. Not on this current project as it stands but would like to look into some advanced lighting tricks in the future and other more advanced things as I've only just touched on what it possible.

The final parts of this project are getting a title screen, a save / load system and some kind of intro and ending.

As for longer term plans I plan to revisit another top-down style engine, this one is was more arcade shooter but I would love to combine ideas from the two styles. There's still a third similar tutorial series I want to go over. I don't intend to follow these exactly one for one and will be bringing in all the bits I have learned to give it a bit of my own flair.

---