P-Star7 wrote:
So here is a couple of things I have to tell you about your engine. This engine is very good, and it is quite accurate while being simple and commented well. Unfortunately, some things are a little hard to use and modify.
1. The weapon-firing system, I was thinking of giving the player a melee-attack instead of a ranged attack, but it was hard for me to find how the player fired weapons so I could change the shot from a bullet object to a slash object. For example, in Hello Engine, the firing event in Mario's step code makes a case for every form that fires projectiles, instead of having a generic shoot command that is informed by the weapon constant, which triggers another script that I could not find. So in Hello Engine, it's all in one place, but in your engine, it is a bit like spaghetti going back and forth between everything and being entwined. There's nothing wrong with making a shoot-event that doesn't need to be modified much for new weapons, but it was confusing for me because it wasn't adequately documented as to how it works. I would recommend comments that show where something is referencing another object, script, event, etc.
2. It seems that to replace Mega Man's sprites you have to actually replace several layers of color? This looks a little ugly when setting it up and makes there have to be more paste work, and it also is important to align the colored parts right. Is this truly the only way, to have several layers instead of one sprite?
Sorry for the very late reply, but thanks! As for your points,
1. All shooting code is actually organised in one script called playerShoot. Non-projectile weapons can also be added without too much trouble (look at Star Crash for example). For a detailed explanation of the special weapon system, I recommend checking out the special weapons tutorial:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtlbXRYzuNQ2. Yes, you do have to replace three additional layers, the so-called "whitemasks". From what I know, there is no other option in Game Maker 8.1, and while shaders could work in Game Maker Studio, they can make the game unplayable on certain GPUs and I did not feel like that was worth it. For an explanation of the whitemasking system (and how to create these whitemasks yourself) check out the beginning of this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXQ2akOV0W4 (it's not Mega Engine-exclusive but it gets the point across, just note that the Mega Engine uses an "outline" version instead of a "static" version for the third whitemask)
[quote="P-Star7"]So here is a couple of things I have to tell you about your engine. This engine is very good, and it is quite accurate while being simple and commented well. Unfortunately, some things are a little hard to use and modify.
1. The weapon-firing system, I was thinking of giving the player a melee-attack instead of a ranged attack, but it was hard for me to find how the player fired weapons so I could change the shot from a bullet object to a slash object. For example, in Hello Engine, the firing event in Mario's step code makes a case for every form that fires projectiles, instead of having a generic shoot command that is informed by the weapon constant, which triggers another script that I could not find. So in Hello Engine, it's all in one place, but in your engine, it is a bit like spaghetti going back and forth between everything and being entwined. There's nothing wrong with making a shoot-event that doesn't need to be modified much for new weapons, but it was confusing for me because it wasn't adequately documented as to how it works. I would recommend comments that show where something is referencing another object, script, event, etc.
2. It seems that to replace Mega Man's sprites you have to actually replace several layers of color? This looks a little ugly when setting it up and makes there have to be more paste work, and it also is important to align the colored parts right. Is this truly the only way, to have several layers instead of one sprite?[/quote]
Sorry for the very late reply, but thanks! As for your points,
1. All shooting code is actually organised in one script called playerShoot. Non-projectile weapons can also be added without too much trouble (look at Star Crash for example). For a detailed explanation of the special weapon system, I recommend checking out the special weapons tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtlbXRYzuNQ
2. Yes, you do have to replace three additional layers, the so-called "whitemasks". From what I know, there is no other option in Game Maker 8.1, and while shaders could work in Game Maker Studio, they can make the game unplayable on certain GPUs and I did not feel like that was worth it. For an explanation of the whitemasking system (and how to create these whitemasks yourself) check out the beginning of this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zXQ2akOV0W4 (it's not Mega Engine-exclusive but it gets the point across, just note that the Mega Engine uses an "outline" version instead of a "static" version for the third whitemask)