Another way to Tokinsom

Tokinsom

This is the thread I pmed you I was gonna make.

For everyone else here's some history, on the last several threads (probably 2) I made, there was heavy discussion about transitions between layouts.

If I remember correctly, in

Tokinsom made showcasing his work in the Construct2 engine, he said he used clamp, lerp with camera scrolling on the door to create that transition.

Since I first saw that video, I've cried, cried and cried some more either begging him to show me how to do that transition, attempting to make that transition myself the way he did it, getting help on the forums to make that transition.

There were suggestions of getting the door to have a bullet behaviour and then making it scroll using detectors, bullet behaviours, viewports and other jazz. Point is that didn't work so well. Then Tokinsom himself made a post with an answer, I couldn't that to work either (either I was too stupid to make sense of it or he made it work where I couldn't).

After that I made a couple threads on which Tokinsom joined on about nagging Ashley (sorry) to make a multi-layout editor, which turns out to be near-impossible on the current engine. We racked our brains and I came up with the idea for a room object that basically later turned into a "Reset Layout x1, x2, y1, y2" thing.

A couple days after that while waiting for Ashley to come out with r189 (which didn't have it, so now waiting for r190 or whatever)

I got an idea of how to recreate Tokinsom's inter-layout transition, and it works.

[attachment=0:whtjhq2y][/attachment:whtjhq2y]

So there we have it folks! I finally figured out how to do something that imploded my brain thinking about how to do 3-6 months ago!

Feel free to ask questions, I'm honestly just posting this out of sheer joy that I got it to work the way I did

One of the great things about game development is that there is often no "right way" to do something. Everyone thinks differently and approaches things in a way that makes the most sense to them, and with a good understanding of the engine you're working with, anything is possible.

Anyway congrats on getting this to work for you. Keep us updated on your game

(Now you get to experience the joy that is coding misaligned room transitions! And a variable mini-map! Good Luck! Bwahahaha!....if your game calls for it at least. They didn't start doing those until Super Metroid.)

Yeah, that is one of the beautiful things about game design. It's sort of like rubbing sticks together, there's not just two sticks and that's it, there are whole forests out there! xD

Thanks man! I'm actually kind of on the fence about making a dev log or something and keeping it very private.

Might sound like a noob here, what are misaligned room transitions? Sorry lmao.

Could I contact you if I need some help on enemy AI? I keep wondering about that.

Nice job!

Nesteris Kind of hard to explain. It's what happens when the camera zones of the two rooms your transitioning between don't align. One example is entering or exiting the middle of a vertical shaft (where the Y camera is focused on the player) and the next room is a horizontal shaft (where the Y camera is focused on the top of the room). You need a sort of secondary transition to align them. One of my older prototypes did that:

But it all comes down to how you design the rooms. Metroid 1 and 2 didn't do this at all, but the later games did because the rooms & connections were more complex.

As for the enemy AI stuff...I don't mind helping people out every now and then but I am very busy with my own projects so I'd prefer you just post to the "how do I" section ^^; I visit the forums regularly so I'll probably see any questions you'll have anyway.

Ooh I see, I actually had that problem before. I just had to calculate the doors y positions and align them correctly.

How did you do the secondary transition, did you just get the camera to scroll up or something similar?

A question about general game design, do you first design your enemies or the game map you play on?

I was thinking it might save me time to design the map first and focus on the enemies later, is there any order you make your games in?

I was using Tiled for that project and loading the next room before the transition. This gave me access to the camera zones and the difference between them, which made it pretty easy for this particular project. C2 can't do that with layouts though, so it will be a bit trickier, and the alignment will have to happen after the room transition instead of before like in the .gif.

As for the enemies...Level design accommodates the contents the areas define. So...figure out what the area looks like, design your enemies based on that, then design your levels to make the most of those enemies i.e.

Cave > Bat > narrow tunnel which makes the bat hard to dodge.

Jungle > Monkey > Climbs trees and throws things at you. Need ranged weapon to attack them. Weapon is nearby but must fight monkeys without it for a while first.

That's what I usually do, anyway. It's an iterative process regardless.

This Tile Engine?

[quote:2at8a54l]As for the enemies...Level design accommodates the contents the areas define. So...figure out what the area looks like, design your enemies based on that, then design your levels to make the most of those enemies i.e.

That makes sense, do you use the same process for power ups or do you think of those before you start the map?

I've got a general idea of the power ups I want in my game but if I create a map I might need new power ups to help traverse it.

Like my new avatar? I designed it a while back while drawing sprites for my game, it might actually turn out to be my name's icon or something.