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I started my FMP a week or so before the project started to get a time advantage. Doing this will give me can give me some extra time programming, asset creation and sound design and any extra research I may need for this project.
When I created my new project on construct 3 I named my game just 'Monica' as it is my game title after all. I choose the preset ast landscape as this game would be more effective with a landscape screen compared to a portait screen beacuse most games today have a widescreen which I also made the viewport size 1920x1080 (16:9)as it is the common standard HD resolution many tv screens and monitors will use and my game can easily be scaled up higher and lower from this resolution when I decide to allow screen scalling in my game.
Lastly I did not tick the 'Optimize for pixel art' as my game wont be using a pixel perfectart deisgn, instead the lines are of a higher resolution (above 32 pixels) and the assets such as the characters, backgrounds, level designs will have more detail which cannot be achived with pixel art.
Above is a video on the current progress of the combat system for my game.
So far I have successfuly made a few of the main player mechaincs for my game such as:
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The player can take damage until they die which will display a death screen and lets the player "respawn" again with full health.
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The punch mechanic which lets the player damages the enemy each time they press the punch key ("F"). When the punch key is pressed a small red collision box will spawn in front of the player, depending on which way they are facing. This box overlaps the enemy character then they will lose -1 health. If the enemy's health reaches 0 or below then they are destoryed from the game.
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The player can pick up coins and is saved each time the game saves.
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The save and load funcions are displayed at the bottom of the screen if they are successful: If the games saves = "Game Saved!", if save failed = "Saving Failed".
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Gampad input found is displayed on the screen as well in the same place as the saving textbox.
So far these mechincs are simple and not finished or will need me to work on the enemy sprite so I have a completely working beat-them-up game prototype.
I would like to expand on the enemy death mechanics as I could have the enemies drop some coins when they are defeated by the player, have a death animation too. I would like to add a spawn point for the enemies to spawn at when a level loads up and have a timer which will respawn that same enemy if the orginal is destroyed - (like a delayed wave system confined to one enemy at a time?)
Lastly a feature to spend the players cash as there is no way to spend it, which this is where the cafe would come into play: a place to spend the player's money for food to restore health and possibly buy hints for the game.
For the apartment I had a few ideas for it which makes it a place the player has to return to
heal themselves for free, in turn for moving across the whole town to heal and run back to the mission - (I might work on that..) That and a place where the player can manually save and load a different game file. So far the apartment just lets you save and load from one save file which isnt great as you can easy rewrite you data if you are jumping into a random level from the contrust 3 development engine and the saving with zero stats and money.
Although this wont be an issue as i made sure the player starts a game properly (not from the contsuct 3 editor) they should load stright into the game where they left off with all their stats and cash. though i have noticed issues with spawning when laoding in or dying in any other level.
It seems that when a player loads form the main menu they can spawn exsactly back where they left off, so in a fight for example which doesnt give anyone an advantage when they laod up a save file. I want to instead have the Apartment as a safe zone which the player respawns back with their money and stats. The fact the apartment is on another level and has no enemies in it give the player a change to try again or do soemthing else.
I could also ad a checkpoint system if i have spare time and set them in some relativly safe areas in the town or other points in my game which enemies lerk which would make jumping back into action easier and faster. but my first aproach of the apartment being a safe zone to respawn at make a faster and easier idea on my side but i could add the second idea if i have extra time.
I had a issue since i tried adding plug-ins to my project to see if i can use any that could imporve aspects of my game, moslty visualy make it look nicer. I tried only three plug-ins which all boast about adding show effects to layers and the sprites that are within that layer. These shadow plug-ins can be found on the contruct 3 plug-in pages when you click the "find plug-ins" on the menu tab in the C3 editor. When I tried these plug-ins one was broken anad wasnt removed from the marketplace, which was fun so i ahd to remove it. Shaodw plug-in two was not working or i didnt know how to set it up, i played with the options for the effect in the layer settings (found on the left of the editor) and nothing changed.
Lastly the third shadow plug-in worked but not how i wanted it. None of these plug-in in the description explains how to use them but all talk about they work with construct 3. This working shadow plug-in only works for platformer games. Just on how the shadows react by getting longer the further the sprite moves along the +Y axis.
Since this fun experiance testing plug-ins I gave up and went back to adding them as strechable sprites on a shadow layer within each level or adding them to the background of some level designs, which i should of stuck the in the first place.
I have now have a issue which one of the plug-ins are perminatly stuck to my game and i need to install that same plug in into every computer i use as the plug-in file is not saved to the project saved by cloud. i have no idea how to remove it but i feel a sprite is still using it and all i need tot o is remove it and the plug-in required message shoudl go away.
NOTE TO SELF: DONT USE CONSTRUCT PLUG-INS...
I went into adding some dialog mechanics without looking into it and it works but having to edit it and keeping track of code or even replication said code for another NPC is messy. Ive tried to clean up my code leaving detail comments and tabs in my code pages but my dialog system is untidy and i feel i coudl fo improved the way I created the base system.
(rant)
One thing i dislike about construct 3 is the code pages are tied to a system which if anything in a level needs code its all shared in one large page which can be freely added to any level or swapped with another code page. I like this idea as i can program the game first then create levels after this by copy and pasting the orignial level, then applying the same code to the next level and nothing should break as long as the assest the code is referancing is in each level he code is used with.
My code alreay has 80 lines and 90% of those are commented with text or in tabs which make it eastier to hide code im not interested in but on the flip side makes it annoying for me to scroll through this on giant page and remember where i felt off of. For some this might be easier than reading code and not having a easy coding system but i like gamemaker for those reasons. The code were tied to each object you created which could be placed in a game and you didnt need a "level code page" to keep all the infomation. that infomation was stuck to an instance which could be added to a level and it would do its job.
i wished i used gamemaker, more work but i could of had the freedom to do cooler tricks with the engine whivh conctruct 3 can't to - like having a options system which lets me program screen sizes and resolution.
The dialog system that exists in contrust 3 is the code is telling certain sprites and texts to appear and disapear at when and what times. there are no buttons for these dialog boxes so you cannot skip or advance the dialog like most textbox dialogs do in games - which is soemthing i want to add as its hard to antisipate the player's reading speed or if they want to read at all. Alot of games i researched have had dialog boxes which can be skipped at will or have the option to progress when ready before the audio dialog is finished which gives the player freedom of choice.
I feel if i looked at some youtube videos or forums to see if there is either a cleaner code alturnative to creating a dialog system or just create one whcih lets me replicate and paste the same code with minor changes for each character i want to have dialog based text, that would be great.
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