Mystic Order

[moridh]

Sorry, I've been working on this for almost a year now, haven't got the time to put it here before..

Anyways a bit of an introduction:

Last year I entered a game design competition. The competition is to propose a game idea, and then pitch for it. Winners will get a grant to develop the game idea to completion.

I pitched a game for the NDS. I don't have the license and development kit for NDS, so after winning the competition, the organizers asked me to change into another platform. Without any game development experience whatsoever, I was lost. Wanting to keep the game mobile, I chose to develop for Pocket PC instead.

Imagine my relief when I bumped into PPL. With its GAPI, it really help me a lot in developing the game.

Anyways don't get high hopes yet on the game. I'll be posting a few screen shots only. It's not working properly yet. By the way, it's a strategy game, with its 'fight' scene portrayed as card-based game.

do comment on the UI and graphics and stuff.
[br]../../e107_files/public/1198652462_220_FT0_lct.gif
[br]../../e107_files/public/1198652462_220_FT0_exp.gif
[br]../../e107_files/public/1198652463_220_FT0_rlt.gif
[br]../../e107_files/public/1198652463_220_FT0_cnf.gif

[~J~]

Although it's not my type of game, I have to say that it looks quite stunning! (and I'm usually very critical person!! :))

Seriously, that does look pretty damn good.

[PointOfLight]

The graphics look great.* A couple of the screen shots look a bit cluttered, but that's probably just because I don't know what's going on.* The game itself sounds pretty cool as well.* I like card combat style games.* Please feel free to keep asking questions on the forum if there are things you can't get working right.* Even if it doesn't necessarily have to do with the language itself.* Right now it would be really great to see a few more released PPL products, so I will do anything I can to help you out.

[moridh]

Thanx for the positive input.

Currently our major issue is to balance between the game's running memory size and loading speed between screens. currently the game uses 700+ images totaling 6Mb in size for sprites.

loading all sprites at the start of the game, then set visibility on and off between screens will definitely speed up the game, but costs a bomb in the memory requirement. on the other hand, deleting and loading new sprites between screens takes too much loading time.
my current approach is to load only a fixed number of sprites, then replace the image of the sprite on screen change. i think the time it takes to load new sprite and to replace the image is about the same.

any better idea in balancing size and time?
thanx..

[Mike Halliday]

You could have all the sprites on a large bitmap (like they used to do in the 80s/90s) and then use DRAWSurface2/3 or EX to copy (say) 30 x 30 portions to new sprites, then remove the larger surface from memory.

I have not tested how quick this would be, but that is how I did the Starwars style scroll demo (Which was too quick)

Dont know if that is any help to you?

[~J~]

I agree with what Mike said about a large bitmap.

One other alternative would be to draw the sprites (where possible) within PPL itself, this speeding up loading AND reducing the size of the graphics.

As an example, one of your cards looks has a green circle with a plus in it, another has a circle with 3 solid circles in it and another has what looks like a flask of potion!

I'm sure these could be drawn using the drawing functions of PPL at runtime.

[moridh]

mike, can you paste some example for that? from loading the large bitmap right to putting the copied portion into a sprite.

j, i havent tried drawing within PPL. not sure if it will work with alpha blending. like drawtext, the text drawn will always be topmost right. drawing using ppl, if i put an alpha blended sprite on top, will it work?

thanx..

[Mike Halliday]

Just tried some quick code and I think there may be a flaw in my thinking.

You can assign a sprite to a surface, but they you cannot remove the surface from memory. If you do, the sprite is removed.

I think there may be another way to do what you want, so I am having a quick go now.

[moridh]

hi. there's this .mod music for this game. when played using players (winamp, etc) it plays fine. but when played within the game, it sounds a bit different. like some beats are out of sync, etc. can someone check this out a bit? thanx..

[moridh]

sorry.. here's the .mod file..[br]1199957665_220_FT8660_stats.zip

[PointOfLight]

Now that you've released your puzzle game, are you going to go back to working on this one?* It seems like there's a lot of potential here, and it would be great to see it finished.

[moridh]

yups.. we're working on this one as we speak..