8 replies to this topic

[blak]

Ambrea 3

The third chapter of the Ambrea Series, Ambrea 3 is another Mario-influenced platform game. It is, however, mostly an homage to the good old Game Boy games, hence the black and white (or yellow and white), simple graphics. The graphics itself is almost 100% original, though a few backgrounds and tilesets were ripped from Kirby, Mario and Wario games. Sounds are 8-bit, though BGMs are MIDIs from various videogames of the Game Boy/NES-era. Most sounds were created with FamiTracker.

In this episode of the series, the main character is once again a young boy. He must stop the evil demon Vorak, who wants to use a magical, talking staff that actually hides an huge secret...

Created with Game Maker 7 Lite.

Well, I hope you like it. Have fun!

YoYoGames Download

Edited by blak, 01 May 2012 - 12:47 AM.

[blak]

Also working on a colored version of the game, though the colors basically "kill" what Ambrea is supposed to be: a Game Boy-tribute.

Before (screenshot taken in 2010)



Colored - still a work in progress

Edited by blak, 03 May 2012 - 10:09 PM.

[FamousJellyfish]

Hi, I've tried the game, here are some of my thoughts (in no particular order). I'm avoiding mentioning what I enjoyed and some of the more minor complaints about graphics and level design, since that would make this post much longer, and I want to tell you the things that will objectively help to improve your design skills in the future.


- Holding X to run is kinda excessive. Maybe make running automatic, unless "walking" has some mechanical purpose ingame that I'm not aware of? With holding X to run, it gets confusing with the wing power-up and throwing boomerangs in mid-air.

- Running is messed up in other ways. There's no momentum, if you let go of X and then hold jump, you'll have friction in mid-air. Similarly, you can accelerate in mid-air. Those two things have made me die multiple times, since it means I have to be very careful with holding X (pretty much all the time). The controls in general are hurt by the fact that they have to be pressed again when changing rooms.

- It's somewhat frustrating when you bounce off of something (like the mushrooms) but variable jumping is still in effect. If you have the wing power-up, you have to slowly glide down, just so you can get the full jump height the next time you bounce.

- One time when entering a pipe above me, I had to jump several times. This let an enemy hit me, making me lose the wing power-up, and almost killing me. Maybe make it less precise...

- It's annoying when I'm standing still and something comes and attacks me from offscreen. Sometimes it's an enemy that uses projectiles, and at some point in its path it can see me and shoot. Other times it will be an enemy that walks or goes along a long path and eventually comes into range. I guess this would be less annoying if I knew where the pause button was...

- The size of the HUD elements seem to be weirdly prioritized. The healthbar, arguably the most important thing there, is given the smallest amount of space --- less even, than the three "P" bars, the score, the coins, and the lives.

- There's some inconsistency in several game mechanics. For example, the Wing power-up decreases one hit at a time, but the boomerang power-up decreases fully each time you die. Another thing is that you can jump on some enemies with round or flat heads/tops to kill them, and although that clearly doesn't work against enemies with spiked tops, there are some enemies with round heads that still hurt you to touch. The boomerang rapidly fires underwater, for no identifiable reason.

- It seems unintuitive to take aspects of other games and then not implement them in the same way. For example, the cannonballs on the ship, clearly inspired by Super Mario Brothers 3 in the way they fire and pretty much everything else about them, are not able to be jumped on. The vines don't make much sense either, as you can't climb them.

- Parts of some sprites seem messed up on the edges. My guess is that you're drawing the sprites on decimal positions. If you're using the draw event for the player character's sprite, consider rounding the x/y positions.

- Some enemies come onscreen is strange ways, like the glowing orb thing, or the hopping things. It's not really possible to predict them, and it results in cheap hits.

- That one room in, I guess, 3-2, where you fall down while trying to dodge obstacles, is poorly designed. The character falls too fast, and the view doesn't shift downward enough. It seems impossible to get through without taking a hit unless the person playing is lucky or has the stage memorized. In fact I didn't really like that level at all, especially the part where the spinning spike thing chases you and you're supposed to jump, because the change in block type is so subtle that you won't immediately know that you can jump through it.

- I think health should regenerate after leaving or finishing a stage...

- The strange slot machine at the end of each world seems unpolished. Pressing the confirmation button instantly stops it, and proceeds to the next room. There is no animation here, it's completely static. As it is now, it's excessive and should be removed, unless you polish it (and potentially give it an additional purpose beyond extra lives, such as filling the boomerang's bar or giving the wing power-up).

- I don't have a specific thing to say on this point, but I really hope you try improving your level designs. Right now, almost all of the levels seem to run together. Even with unique gimmicks, they're still not interesting. Every room is designed as a corridor, a line or path that you go through, without much twisting or exploration or alternative paths. Even in the original Super Mario Brothers, there were still multiple ways to progress through the game (due to the normal pipes, and the warp pipes).

- Elaborating a bit on the point of comparison between this game and Super Mario Brothers, I do think you should rethink your strategy of having a map system in the game. Without any sort of alternative routes through the world map, it seems pointless. You could have gotten away with a Yoshi's Island style map interface and there would have been no functional difference. If you're going to do what Super Mario Brothers 3 and Super Mario Land 2 and Super Mario World all did, why do you present the levels and their designs in such a linear fashion?

- A very big note I want to make here is that you seem to have split this game between "2d platformer" and "collectathon platformer". There is a big difference. The early GameBoy titles that you are trying to make an homage to were not collectathons (unlike, say, Yoshi's Island on the SNES). When they had secrets, they hid them in interesting ways, and the result was never a token item with only a vague purpose (if any --- I only played up to 4-1, I'm not sure what these collectibles even do?). I made a point to get the token items until around 2-3 or so, at which point I gave up trying. There's simply no purpose, no reward, it doesn't make me have more fun to collect these things. Especially not when they're given out in annoying ways (like the plant where you have to throw things into, but you have limited chances and the throwing arc isn't easy to guess).


Overall, it's a better game than the first two Ambrea games (although I haven't played them in a really long time). And I really appreciate what you're trying to do here --- create a consistent series of games that are reminiscent of older NES/GameBoy titles. Most GM games are just one-off and that's it, so it's good to see something reach the number 3.

But, it just seems like you're limiting yourself in specific ways. And in doing so, you make the game less fun than it could be. The reasoning that you're trying to keep it as a "homage" or whatever is kinda arbitrary.

As a specific example, you keep the palette four-color when clearly the second image in your bump looks better. Those kinds of restrictions seriously don't make sense when the game itself doesn't really adhere to GameBoy specifications anyway. There's too much onscreen, the framerate is too high, the amount of sounds/music going on at once wouldn't be possible on a GameBoy, etc., so it's not even somewhat authentic. Why limit the colors like that?

I'm also not sure why you claim the graphics are almost 100% original, when there is actually a lot of things that can be pointed out as having been ripped from earlier commercial games. And while you do mention some backgrounds and tilesets being ripped, you don't mention sprites --- and there are plenty of those that are ripped. You also say that most of the sounds were created using FamiTracker, but I'd claim the opposite, that most sounds were ripped too. I guess it doesn't matter much, I mean, if you can't make those resources yourself and can't find anyone to do so. But you could at least slightly edit some of the stuff you're ripping, and use a sound-creating program like sfxr instead of FamiTracker... the latter of which is either outputting unoriginal sounds, or you've neglected to mention that you've also ripped sounds for the game.

Anyway, I've kind of rambled on. I hope you keep going. Blak, you have the power to make great games... my scanners sensed it. Just bring it out.

[blak]

Thanks for your time and the constructive criticism. Very appreciated.
Please forgive my poor grammar or typos since English is not my first language.

- Holding X to run is kinda excessive. Maybe make running automatic, unless "walking" has some mechanical purpose ingame that I'm not aware of? With holding X to run, it gets confusing with the wing power-up and throwing boomerangs in mid-air.

- Running is messed up in other ways. There's no momentum, if you let go of X and then hold jump, you'll have friction in mid-air. Similarly, you can accelerate in mid-air. Those two things have made me die multiple times, since it means I have to be very careful with holding X (pretty much all the time). The controls in general are hurt by the fact that they have to be pressed again when changing rooms.

- It's somewhat frustrating when you bounce off of something (like the mushrooms) but variable jumping is still in effect. If you have the wing power-up, you have to slowly glide down, just so you can get the full jump height the next time you bounce.

- One time when entering a pipe above me, I had to jump several times. This let an enemy hit me, making me lose the wing power-up, and almost killing me. Maybe make it less precise...

Running is not very Mario-like, yeah.
I'm trying to fix the whole thing in the colored version.
Fixing the Wing Power up "messing up" with the bouncing mushroom is another thing that I have on my "to-do list".
About the pipe, I don't really think that it's that bad, but you're not the only one who found it frustrating, so I think I'll fix that too.

- It's annoying when I'm standing still and something comes and attacks me from offscreen. Sometimes it's an enemy that uses projectiles, and at some point in its path it can see me and shoot. Other times it will be an enemy that walks or goes along a long path and eventually comes into range. I guess this would be less annoying if I knew where the pause button was...

Most of the enemies are programmed to "attack" (with bullets and other kinds of weapons, if they have one, but that's rare) only when they appear in the player's view.
Unless they're walking, of course. Like Goombas. I do have to add a Pause-feature though. I tried to do that, but unsuccessfully so far.

- The size of the HUD elements seem to be weirdly prioritized. The healthbar, arguably the most important thing there, is given the smallest amount of space --- less even, than the three "P" bars, the score, the coins, and the lives.

The health bar gave me a few issues since I really didn't know where to place it. I'll make it a bit larger in the colored version, without (hopefully) making it too big.

- There's some inconsistency in several game mechanics. For example, the Wing power-up decreases one hit at a time, but the boomerang power-up decreases fully each time you die. Another thing is that you can jump on some enemies with round or flat heads/tops to kill them, and although that clearly doesn't work against enemies with spiked tops, there are some enemies with round heads that still hurt you to touch. The boomerang rapidly fires underwater, for no identifiable reason.

Personally, but that's just me, I don't see this as inconsistencies. The Wing Power Up is somewhat rare in the game, so I've added that small health bar so it will last a bit more. The Power-meter was supposed to work like the Wing one, decreasing one hit at the time, but then the game became a bit too annoying (even if we don't count the problems with the running mechanics and other thing you've pointed out...).

Bigger and jumping enemies (mostly jumping ones) were not initially supposed to be weak against the "jump attack", because I had problems in "programming" this "event": the player would get hurt everytime he jumps on a jumping enemy (when the latter's vspeed decreases, at least), even though the enemy is still killed. I actually fixed that with all other baddies, but not with the bigger and jumping ones (such as the monster-thing in the first fortress or the frog).

- It seems unintuitive to take aspects of other games and then not implement them in the same way. For example, the cannonballs on the ship, clearly inspired by Super Mario Brothers 3 in the way they fire and pretty much everything else about them, are not able to be jumped on. The vines don't make much sense either, as you can't climb them.

You're right, of course. I had problems with the cannonballs too for the same reason stated above, though: I simply couldn't do that, at first (not very good with GML for now). The player would get hurt everytime he jumps on the cannonballs (still killing them, but taking damage, which is not supposed to happen). At first, I've even thought that my version of Game Maker was simply making fun of me eheh... (I used GM7 Lite, btw). This was most likely an oversight, though. I'm fixing all of this in the colored version.

The vines were never supposed to be climbed, and I'm probably not going to add a "climb" action (mostly because I don't want to scr*w everything up with my poor knowledge of GML eheh...). The vines are there more for aesthetic reasons actually... and to give me an excuse to use pirhana plants going up and down.

Edited by blak, 04 May 2012 - 04:07 PM.

[blak]

- Parts of some sprites seem messed up on the edges. My guess is that you're drawing the sprites on decimal positions. If you're using the draw event for the player character's sprite, consider rounding the x/y positions.

Yeah. This happens with decimal positions. That's kinda annoying. Sadly, I'm not using the draw event with the sprites (player and enemies, at least).

- That one room in, I guess, 3-2, where you fall down while trying to dodge obstacles, is poorly designed. The character falls too fast, and the view doesn't shift downward enough. It seems impossible to get through without taking a hit unless the person playing is lucky or has the stage memorized. In fact I didn't really like that level at all, especially the part where the spinning spike thing chases you and you're supposed to jump, because the change in block type is so subtle that you won't immediately know that you can jump through it.

In both the falling room and the room before that, coins means "you're safe". In the part where the spinning blade chases you, I knew that just having different blocks wasn't really helpful, so I've placed the coins in the "safe spot" (assuming that the player didn't remember that mushroom-like floor is a jump-through block/platform). But I guess you're right once again since other people didn't like that level (and that must mean something). : )

- I think health should regenerate after leaving or finishing a stage...

That would be make the game a bit too easy, I think (there are hearts right at the start of (almost) every level: unless your health is full; in that case, you'll have an evil lemon-thing that chases you coming out from the block where the heart was supposed to be).
Health does regenerate, however, after finishing a world.

- The strange slot machine at the end of each world seems unpolished. Pressing the confirmation button instantly stops it, and proceeds to the next room. There is no animation here, it's completely static. As it is now, it's excessive and should be removed, unless you polish it (and potentially give it an additional purpose beyond extra lives, such as filling the boomerang's bar or giving the wing power-up).

I'll definitely going to add more bonuses on the slot machine. I don't know why is it strange though. Like everything in Ambrea, even this little bonus is coming from a Mario game (even the music - the first Super Mario for Game Boy, though that bonus game, albeit similar, was indeed a bit more complex).

- I don't have a specific thing to say on this point, but I really hope you try improving your level designs. Right now, almost all of the levels seem to run together. Even with unique gimmicks, they're still not interesting. Every room is designed as a corridor, a line or path that you go through, without much twisting or exploration or alternative paths. Even in the original Super Mario Brothers, there were still multiple ways to progress through the game (due to the normal pipes, and the warp pipes).

- Elaborating a bit on the point of comparison between this game and Super Mario Brothers, I do think you should rethink your strategy of having a map system in the game. Without any sort of alternative routes through the world map, it seems pointless. You could have gotten away with a Yoshi's Island style map interface and there would have been no functional difference. If you're going to do what Super Mario Brothers 3 and Super Mario Land 2 and Super Mario World all did, why do you present the levels and their designs in such a linear fashion?

Well, I didn't add any alternative path mostly because that would be a bit too complex for me, but I know that's not a good excuse / reason. I'll probably add some secret levels in the colored version (those levels were actually supposed to appear in the black and white version). Or even simply switch to a Kirby's Adventure's (NES) or Yoshi's Island's (SNES) style of maps (both of these were terrific games btw. The latter is quite underrated imho, just saying...).

- A very big note I want to make here is that you seem to have split this game between "2d platformer" and "collectathon platformer". There is a big difference. The early GameBoy titles that you are trying to make an homage to were not collectathons (unlike, say, Yoshi's Island on the SNES). When they had secrets, they hid them in interesting ways, and the result was never a token item with only a vague purpose (if any --- I only played up to 4-1, I'm not sure what these collectibles even do?). I made a point to get the token items until around 2-3 or so, at which point I gave up trying. There's simply no purpose, no reward, it doesn't make me have more fun to collect these things. Especially not when they're given out in annoying ways (like the plant where you have to throw things into, but you have limited chances and the throwing arc isn't easy to guess).

Well, if you collect all of the treasure chests (which is a sprite ripped from SMB3, btw), a small, secret area will appear on the main map: a small level filled with lives and bonuses. Not very rewarding, but I thought that was... ok, for my standards I guess. lol
But I know that's not exactly the point. I tried to hide the treasures chests in more complex and interesting ways, like the first Wario Land (GB), but I didn't know how to do more interesting / hidden paths or areas in the same levels without scr*wing up the views and other things. I'll try to do a better job in the colored version (which is basically becoming Ambrea 4).

But, it just seems like you're limiting yourself in specific ways. And in doing so, you make the game less fun than it could be. The reasoning that you're trying to keep it as a "homage" or whatever is kinda arbitrary.
As a specific example, you keep the palette four-color when clearly the second image in your bump looks better. Those kinds of restrictions seriously don't make sense when the game itself doesn't really adhere to GameBoy specifications anyway. There's too much onscreen, the framerate is too high, the amount of sounds/music going on at once wouldn't be possible on a GameBoy, etc., so it's not even somewhat authentic. Why limit the colors like that?

Well, since I knew that the framerate and the music are not very Game Boy-ish, I tried to make the graphics as nostalgic as possible (including the yellow filter).
Also, the music are MIDIs because I'm not a composer (not even with FamiTracker, unless we're talking about simple sounds), sadly. : /

I'm also not sure why you claim the graphics are almost 100% original, when there is actually a lot of things that can be pointed out as having been ripped from earlier commercial games. And while you do mention some backgrounds and tilesets being ripped, you don't mention sprites --- and there are plenty of those that are ripped.

Well, a few sprites (like the treasure chests) are indeed ripped from other games, but I'm not trying to claim (for example) a sprite well-known as the pirhana plant, which is clearly from SMB3, as "mine".
Overall, ripped sprites (not counting tile sets and backgrounds) are:
-> Pirhana Plants (Super Mario Bros. 3 | NES)
-> Treasure Chests (Super Mario Bros. 3 | NES)
-> A Fish enemy (Super Mario Land 2 | GB)
-> Spiny (Super Mario Bros. | NES)
-> Fire-breathing, statue-like Pirhana plants (Super Mario Land 2 | GB)

You also say that most of the sounds were created using FamiTracker, but I'd claim the opposite, that most sounds were ripped too. I guess it doesn't matter much, I mean, if you can't make those resources yourself and can't find anyone to do so. But you could at least slightly edit some of the stuff you're ripping, and use a sound-creating program like sfxr instead of FamiTracker... the latter of which is either outputting unoriginal sounds, or you've neglected to mention that you've also ripped sounds for the game.

Well, if FamiTracker is outputting unoriginal sounds, that would me by fault. lol
It is actually a very good and powerful software (if you know what you're doing) for people who want to create original 8-bit songs (it even has a set of instruments for creating Sega Genesis sounds if I remember correctly).
Original sounds are the "boomerang sound", the "enemy dies sound" and even the "player jump sound", though the latter is maybe a bit too Mario-like.
Sounds were ripped mostly from Zelda games for the Game Boy (Link's Awakening, for example).
That's no secret and I wasn't trying to claim sounds from other games as mine: I would never do that.

Anyway, I've kind of rambled on. I hope you keep going. Blak, you have the power to make great games... my scanners sensed it. Just bring it out.

Don't even worry about that. Your long post / criticism was very appreciated. Thank you very much for your time, actually.
I hope to make better games in the future, of course.

Thanks for playing anyway.

Edited by blak, 04 May 2012 - 04:13 PM.

[Charmeleon]

Nice, I'd rather play Call of Duty tho

[blak]

Thanks for playing, Charmeleon.

[ChaosWormz]

Very good game , I reached world 2-1 planing on playing more later.

[blak]

Very good game , I reached world 2-1 planing on playing more later.

Thanks. Glad you're enjoying it.

Edited by blak, 07 May 2012 - 11:46 PM.