Pixelmoon

Hey All,

I am prototyping an action RPG, and wanted to experiment a bit with height from the top down perspective.  Traditionally, height in RPGs such as Zelda: aLttP used pixel art to give the illusion of height, when actually all it was really doing was setting a collision, and making it look like it was a hill.  What I am looking for is a system where the game actually allows the player to access different heights from a top down perspective.

Is there a way to efficiently implement such a system into this type of game?  I thought about assigning each object with a height, and then instead of checking to see if the player is colliding with a certain object - it checks to see whether the players height is the same as the object.  If it is then it can walk over it (Its on the same level), but if the objects height is higher than the players at that present time, then a collision occurs and the player cannot move in that direction. However my GML experience isn't exactly amazing and I kind of hit a wall when trying to get something like this working.

The reason I ask was that I would like to try and implement an element of destructible terrain into my action RPG where the player can add / delete blocks to give the impression of digging / building.  The ground level would be a height of 0, and then the player could perhaps build or access up to 2 more levels above ground level.

Anybody have any thoughts or ideas on the subject?

Thanks in advance

Hey All,

Experimenting with time / plants and I have an issue with making a plant "Ripe".

I have implemented a timing system where the room speed is set to 60, and every 12 seconds it adds 1 to a variable called 'daysPassed'.  It then resets the timer to 0 and runs again until it equals 12 which is simple enough.  This way I can calculate how many game days have passed.  This is attached to a hud object also.

I then created a plant object with the idea that in 3 days time, the plant object would become ripe.  What I need to do is take a time stamp of the daysPassed when the plant is created, and then add 3 to it.  Then when daysPassed equals this number, make the 'Ripe' variable true.

However when I tried to make a variable equal to the current daysPassed value + 3, it kept throwing me an error, which I would assume to be because the value is changing every 12 seconds.  

My question is how can I get a quick snapshot of a variables value and use that?  Or is there a better way that I can handle the timing process?  My other thoughts are that I might be better off using alarms - but I wasn't sure because I guess further down the line I would like the plants to be persistent in case of room changes etc.

Thanks in advance.

Hey all,

I have been thinking for the past few weeks about how I can implement height into a top down, Zelda type action RPG.  I know that traditionally, height is basically an illusion using tiles and solid collision code.  But what I was thinking about was how to actually have the player on a different height / level...

The reason I was looking into this was to experiment with destructible terrain, and I couldn't really figure out a way to do it?

Any one come across this kind of challenge or have any ideas about how this could be implemented?

Hey All,

I have been putting together a platform engine and recently noticed that when the player is falling at a fast rate or running - there tends to be an unintentional motion blur effect behind the player.  I have the room speed set to 60 as it makes things smoother, and have tried options such synchronisation but nothing really seems to help.

I did a search to try and find some answers.  There seem to be a few people who have the issue, but has anyone else experienced this or find a way to reduce the effects?  I am running this on my laptop at the moment, and will try it on my desktop later on when I get back to the house - but I don't imagine the graphics card to be the issue.  I understand that its a natural occurring thing, but I don't see it as much in other peoples games? 

Any thoughts welcomed

Hey All,

I recently added the old 1 way platforms to my platform engine, however I more or less hacked the code from a video I found on the subject since there were quite a few options available to achieve the same result.

I wanted to know if someone could help me understand the logic of the following code in layman's terms so that I understand exactly what I am doing.

The way I have it working is using 2 objects, obj_jump1 and obj_jump2.  The first is set to solid, inherits a normal solid blocks properties and has the following code in step;

if obj_player.y > y -30 
{
instance_change(obj_jump2,true);
}

The second object is set to not solid, does not have a parent associated and has the same code but reversed in step;

if obj_player.y < y -30 
{
instance_change(obj_jump1,true);
}

Am I right in saying that all this is doing is making the object not solid while it is below the players y axis, minus 30 pixels, and then solid once it is above?  I should also add that I place obj_jump2 in the room.  Apologies in advance, I am still studying as many examples as possible but like to understand the logic of what I am coding.

Thanks