I beat Meat Boy light world, and I'm makin a stealth game

HI GUYS. I'M drunk as all fuck right now, so if this is illegible, then I'm dreadfully sorry.

First things first: I beat Meat Boy Light World. All the video reviews for Super Meat Boy are complete shit. The IGN one justdescribes the game without tellin you whether it's any good or not, and the Gamespot one is some faggot's poem about video games. So I'll write a quick one for ya now:

Super Meat Boy is great. If you like wall-jumpin, and slidin under traps, and bein a swift-ass ninja, then you should definately get it.
It's super beefed up from the flash version.
I'ts like- y'know how Mario Galaxy took every possible idea for 3D platformers, and made one big crazy mix tape of everything? That's what Meat Boy does, but with 2D platformers. If you think it's just jumping over saws the whole game: It's not. They introduce crazy lasers, evil dudes, keys n locks, I raced a guy, it's a variety act. Also there's a shitload of secret abilities and fuckin- glitch worlds, dark worlds, secret levels, new dudes to unlock, it is SENSATION STATION.

Ok now about my games: The biker game still isn't out. I dunno- I haven't spoke to those guys fr a while, I dunno what the deal is with that.
No Time To Explain- The game with the crab guy who screams alot: I JUST signed an agreement with ArcadeBomb, the same guys who got Robot Dinosaurs and April n Booster. That might be out on ArcadeBomb.com in a week or so.
BREAKTHROUGH: Fuckin- don't hold it to me. I made it in a couple days, I pitched the idea a franchise, they didn't want it, fair enough, I released it anyway. Stricken from the record: It's not a huge deal.
Someone wants to sponsor it, so hey, y'know, not too bad.

STEALTH GAME!!!!
My next game is a top-down stealth game. Kinda like The Classroom (if you remember those games), kinda like MGS2. I shout-out MGS2 specificially because it's my favourite stealth game of all. Fuck the gadgets, fuck the gimmicks, it's all about HIDING, BAMBOOZLING GUARDS, BEING A SNEAKY-ASS MOTHERFUCKER. I don't like Splinter Cell.

Here's a prototype. Use the arrow keys (and the mouse in some spots)

It's JUST A TEST! Not the finished thing. This is just to give you an idea of what I'm doin right now.
Is it good or shit? You tell me.
I spent a good long time on the enemy AI, gettin him to walk around walls and find his way around. That's actually a big challenge, enemy AI is something I'm really interested in. In Crucnchdown I had a companion AI fight with you at one point, and in Johnny I had an enemy that had all the same abilities as you near the end. It's a really difficult thing to tackle, and I think Flash game dudes should shoot for making really interesting AI more often.

NEWGROUNDS NEWS - Someone really fun just asked me to collab on a game, but I had Flash 8 n he had Flash CS5, so I guess we're not compatible :(
+ This is kind of random, but Yotam's game just came out: Cat Game. I know he was waitin fr it to come out fr a while and I'm kinda bummed out that it's come out with like a 3.7.
I mention this cos I love his podcast with Max, it's still super funny. Does anyone know where exactly they do an impression of The Parent Trap girls? I want to animate it.

OH-- SPEAKING OF ANIMATION!!! I got really inspired by Terkoiz' Tentacle Monsters Tribute, and decided to make my own Tentacle Monsters Tribute Tribute. I only spent a day or so on it and got kinda boread though :( I need to catch up on game work cos it's kinda my job now, but I also wanna finish this. Is it worth finishing?? I do really love SWiTCH, I think he's the coolest dude...

I THINK THAT'S IT!?

As allways, here's my Formspring.. I hope it's not just one guy askin all the questions...

ALSO- it pains me to say this, but girls with boyfriends: what the fuck. Leave me alone. Don't play games with my heart- it's fucking annoying. OK? Ok. I'm glad we could clear that up.
END!!

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I-smel 2010-10-25 23:43:47

aaaaaawwwwwrrgh Im full o Red Bull I'm not gonna be able't a sleep fr hours urrrgggghhhh

MindChamber 2010-10-25 23:48:23

that stealth game AI is looking good

definitely a good start

I-smel 2010-10-25 23:48:23 (Updated 2010-10-25 23:52:28)

Thanks. I went to Tigsource n asked them about AI. They all told me to use this "A* method" but I was worried about it, cos it requires me to check every tile every frame for every enemy- it'd basically fuck up the framerate.

So I invented my own method where the enemy goes straight toward his goal, checks around himself for a wall every step, and checks as far ahead as possible for where he can get around it. It's really dumb but I'm kinda proud of it cos I had to come up with it myself. It took a lot of failures to get to this point.
I think stealth games live n die by their enemy AI- usually.

MindChamber 2010-10-26 00:46:43

every thought of doing the stealth game from a different perspective?

kinda like a 3 quarter view / crunch down persecutive? that might mess with how the player can judge distances, but top down view seems so limited

I-smel 2010-10-26 00:46:43

I've not REALLY thought about it, but the first thing I wanted to avoid was being a ripoff of the old Metal Gear games. There's allready an indie game out there called Merry Gear Solid that's an isometric stealth game- and I've seen other stealth games on NG do it aswell.

It DOES limit the art though. Being straight top-down and having good art is really hard.

I'll think about it tomorrow. I wanna do better art, so I might give it a bit of perspective.

Regularjoe 2010-10-26 01:26:25

Stealth game looks pretty fun, but I am confused why it needs a mouse. I am playing this on a shitty laptop, so the clicking accurately is pretty hard to do. I highly suspect people with shitty laptops are also the reason why Yotam's game ended up with a 3.7.

Anyways, since that dude is using CS5 and you called him "fun", he must be either a great animator or a great programmer. Given that he wanted to collaborate with you on a game, he's probably a great programmer. If he's a great programmer, he will probably end up handling all the code while you do the art. I'll bet that he was impressed by the style of Legend of Johnny but thought that he could improve on the code. You should totally get in on this collab.

PiGPEN 2010-10-26 07:01:25

Astar isn't that hard (assuming you already use tiles) and would look a lot better than how they run around hugging walls now. Aalso you could come up with much more complex and smart looking reactions using it.
And it really wont "kill the framerate" as long as you use it smartly...A* is not something you use every frame nor do you have to use it for every single enemy is you're sending a group of them to the same place as you are now.
I learned astar from this site...
<a href="http://www.policyalmanac.org/games/aStarTutorial.htm">http://www.policyalmanac.org/games/aS tarTutorial.htm</a>

I-smel 2010-10-26 07:01:25

I just spent hours tryina do this right n it's an absolute fucking nightmare.

I've still got the path back-tracking over itself for some reason n going the long way round. I'll try it again tomorrow.

I-smel 2010-10-27 20:34:34

OK I just threw myself at a .fla for like 3 seperate days and I'm givin up.

I understand all the concepts behind Astar perfectly- I CANNOT get it to work.
Now I feel kinda shit about the one I made.

I-smel 2010-10-29 15:39:02

scratch that- the game now has real pathfinding! I'm REALLY happy about that, I'm now back to being confident about this game.

Some random guy on FGL helped me out with it. This is easily one step beyond the type of coding I usually do, but now I'm passed the hard part.

How long did that take, 4 days?

The-Bobster 2010-10-29 17:39:52

Have you decided about the perspective yet?

I-smel 2010-10-29 17:39:52

I'm testin it out.
It turns out I'd have to make every animation from like 5 different angles. I dunno man, I dunno

Ditocoaf 2010-10-30 05:28:31

Angled top-down games may sometimes look nicer than straight top-down, but they're usually harder to control. And it does seem like they'd take an absurd extra amount of work.