Forum posts

50 hours would last me... like... 3 days.

Bitch please...

Voted. Thought about doing this for SMJ but it would have zero impact on it's development. I hope you guys win, I know I'm excited for the core to come out.

That's racist.

That's chocolate rimrook. Its been a running joke. He shows up in the shop in a 1 in 30 chance when you enter. I rarely see him when testing but he does show up.

I'm down if I can get some diamond gear.

I don't know how long the game will be. I'm sitting at over an hour per chapter, and there are 10 chapters. Could very well be a long game...

Photoshop of course, combined with some flash for animation composing.

As far as mathness in the programming, I didn't need much at first, but the more I got into the AI and advanced player controls, I think I've learned enough algebra to pass high school.

I just finished a draft of the controller set up. Its good enough for now but will need an update hopefully before the final release.

We've known eachother for years. Don't you think that if I could, I would? Yes I know their bullshitting me, but if I got Occulus Rift support, it would certainly be a unique experience being a 2D platformer. Never say never...

Eventually I need to write a new article...

I don't even have an occulus to test this stuff. If one of you would like to send me one, that would be great.

Its a bit unanimous with controller support. I told some people about it and they said they didn't like the mouse-shooter setup but would play it if it was on a controller.

No oculus support. Forget about it. Controller support is as far as I can go.

What's up with you guys and your over-frivolous stuff?

Yeah... aiming is a bitch at the moment. The problem lies where the aiming with the controller should be as free and flexible as aiming with the mouse. I have some solutions but controller support is partial at best unless I get some killer java scripting done. So its looking like a much later thing than right now, but it's possible nonetheless. It also can conflict with the many new ways players can attack besides shooting fireballs.

Did some experimenting and I got controller support for SMJ.

Just for you.

Jagged Allience.

Maybe my Reclinotron 4500 extrapolated my dreams and couch-warped me to you!

Nope. It plays most like a shooter with the mouse and WASD keys.

ANSWER TIME!

What was the original catalyst to the idea - what made you decide to make SMJ into a game?

Essentially it was being able to have the right tools that enabled me to make the game. SMJ started out as a Super Mario World mod but like modding anything, there were some tight limitations. I was watching Stencyl's development for a while, and when it finally released, it was the toolkit I was looking for. This came some years later and I didn't know that SMJ was going to be the game I was going to make. I wanted to play around with Stencyl a little bit so I took some loose pixel art I've done that was inspired by the Super Mario mod. In a short two hours, I had the player character running, jumping, double-jumping, wall-jumping, and shooting. This captivated me instantly to try and make a little game of it. I remember how awesome it made the real Matt Jordan feel that he was starring in a game, so I was going to make a small project of it and just put it out there.

What's been the biggest difficulty in making the game?

Uhm... Finding the time to work on it for starts. The most tedious part of the game is linking the individual levels together. There are 108 playable areas in the game right now and that's only about 15% of the whole. Most of it is still on paper. The hardest part is moving into a new section of the game where the backgrounds, foregrounds, enemies, etc., is all new. There's a lot to accomplish artistically.

Your skills are inevitably improved working on a project like this for as long as you have and it must be tempting to constantly rework and tweak early elements with a newer, better skillset. Do you find it hard to actually label things finished?

I don't think about it that much. Yeah I will tweak a thing here or there, but to redo an area, it's all about how it feels. If the environment portrays enough of the emotion or message to the player that is necessary, then its done. Also, making each area consistant with each other is also something to keep in mind so I do still have to go back and improve some parts of the game. I deem it important because the scope for graphics I have at my disposal is unlimited, so I want to make good use of aesthetic story telling.

Can we expect Oculus support?

If I honestly knew how to support it, I seriously would. With the many layers of background and foreground elements, it would actually look pretty bad-ass.

I love the 16bit/pixelated look and art style. Why did you choose to stay low-res?

As mentioned above, I took some artwork that pre-existed. The 16-bit resolution fit immediately and I simply expanded what I already had, which also dictated the style in which the game would take form. Also, I have noticed that some stencyl games that run at 1x pixel or screen-res doesn't run as smoothly. 2x pixel size runs better and uses less memory. SMJ right now is about 50mb which is surprisingly small considering I do a lot of little specific graphics, sounds, and music.

What were your goals when you started working on this project and have they changed since then?

The goal was to just make a game, just to get one under the belt and stop wanting to be a developer and start being one. Unfortunately my simple idea exploded into something far more involved. The issue of money surfaces from time to time, though I always do my best when I forget about making money with the game. Ultimately I think SMJ will be released for free. That would loosen up the creative process (and any unforeseen legal issues) and make a better experience for everyone, and everyone would be able to play it. The goal has changed from wanting to make a game to wanting to make a good game.

Ask anyhting you want and I will try my best to answer your questions. I won't spoil anything though.

well... if you guys [i]STOP SPAWNING FUCKING CHICKENS[/i] there wouldn't be a problem.

OMG i ate so much caek... Like 2.5 food bars worth because I was running and jumping around like an idiot.

Does sledge have the feature from Hammer where you can paste-special and increment the names and targets, or whatever.

There's also the pine forest with podzol or something, and grassless dirt.

Does anyone else want to build up walls, paths, or staircases? I didn't want to start in case we needed more room, but we're not running out as quickly as I thought.

Also, I've been gathering quartz for our spawn point. Unfortunately spawn is in a weird place so I'll have to build it a little to the side and spawn will need to be adjusted to it... if atom doesn't mind?

I may just take my god-tier pick called "The Stoner" into the nether and start tunnelling in a single direction for 2000 blocks.

oh god why?

also, has anyone tried to expand an NPC village?

Not a single new biome found yet. That sucks.

WHY HELLO THAR! I'M YOUR FRIEND RIGHT NOW!
Now that we're improperly introduced, here's how to do it.

To put a new model on an old rig and animation set, you have to borrow the old model's bones. You can achieve this by opening up the decompiled original.

To decompile the zombie model, you can decompiler the model using a tool in Milkshape3D or an external one like this http://www.wunderboy.org/download.php?file=mdldec12.zip&s=2

Either way, once the skeleton is in milkshape, load your model and bind the new model to the old skeleton. May take some tweaking but its never too bad. To rig in Milkshape, there are a million tutorials on youtube.

Export the model using milkshape's export tools and put the mdl file in your models folder for HL. The model will retain all of the animations but sport a shiny new appearance.

There's also should be a note from me in your inbox.

Have Fun!

Breakdown to predictable nether portals.

FOR A NEW NETWORK:

1: Make first portal where you want it on the mainland.

2: Take coords of first mainland portal and divided by 8. Ignore the Y (vertical) coord. Just use X and Z.

3: Enter first portal and destroy the portal on the nether side. You will need the obsidian.

4: VERY CAREFULLY in the nether, dig down to near bedrock underneath all of the hazards and lava. Tunnel to the coords divided by eight and make a new portal and go through it. It will link to the mainland portal just fine and vice-versa.

TO ADD A NEW LINK TO THE PORTAL NETWORK:

1: Go to where you want the portal to be on the mainland. Make a portal and activate it BUT DO NOT GO THROUGH.

2: Grab the mainland coords divided by 8.

3: Find a different portal. Perhaps the first portal or something.

4: Enter that to the nether then tunnel to the coords you have from the mainland divided by 8. Make a portal, activate it and go through.

5: The new portal will link to the mainland one predictably and you have successfully added a portal to the network.

Going from the mainland to the nether is random as the game wants to put the player in harm's way. Building underneath everything is risk free mostly. The worst that happens is you encounter a deep cave or a bit of lava. Its still safer and quicker than travelling the way the game intended you to go.

Even if the distance is short, going from the nether to the mainland this way can link two portals properly and precisely, even though they are 10 blocks apart in the mainland, and only 2 in the nether. This negates how the portal inherently works as described on the wiki.

I already raped a hole in it already.

Efficiency III shovel.

I've kept my promise and I found a wealthy beach so far from town that it needs a special nether portal to get there.NOW PLAY AND FUCK SOME SHIT UP!

Also, let me do the nether portal linking. I know how to make nether portals work efficiently, even if they are close together. If anyone wants to join the portal network, let me know.

I will find a desert and make a nether portal to it. Please play.

My house, completed.

Okey Dokey Linkey Brokey.

Thanks to Rueluck's and LaVolpe's contributions, there's now and auto furnace setup near the cobble generator.

@La Volpe: I was going to encase the cobble generator with stone bricks and make it look really industrial. If you have a cool idea, go for it! I need to build the next civic machine. I'm going to keep it a secret, i know you guys will love it!

Next Order:
120 Iron Ingots
48 Chests
8 Furnaces

I'll be helping to gather the iron for this one.

Whales need beaches too.

That one's mine. >_>

o...k... i've never heard those accusations before.

just play however you want and don't let anyone get in the way of a good time.

Build to Win hasn't has any updates since 1.5

The coders have gone off to other things. One is working on the Aether mod and the other, I have no idea where he went to. Can't seem to get a hold of it.

I'm a little disappointed in the mod. They wanted to do my idea their way, and so a bunch of rudimentary things were missed.

Still fun to play with some people though.

Just built the mechanics of the cobble generator. Thank LaVolpe for the parts!
It needs a nice stone brick housing but a charcoal farm would be needed for massing the stone bricks. That'll come soon.

Can I place an order in if people want to help out with the cobble generator.

16 regular pistons
16 obsidian
8 water buckets
8 lava buckets
9 redstone repeaters
2 redstone torches
25 redstone for wiring

place it in a separate chest near spawn.

Are we going to set up those shop NPCs again or are we going to go without them?

Got quite a lot of area cleaned up. I'll be working on a cobble generator and a starting tree farm. Get some stone and wood for people to use.

Made some building space around spawn. Spawn protection is on so I can't dig up that one chunk.Just a few hours worth with stone tools. Hopefully this gets the town moving forward.

Put all that on its own vis group... or reduce it to bounding boxes.

How about if you want sand, go to a desert. We have those now.

Also, nether portals will be made to be convenient. I need to test to see if the old accurate portal exploits still work or if they are fixed.

game crippling glitch. it's happening to a bunch of people so far and there is no fix. i think it has something to do with the resource packs system. when i cleared mine, it was fixed for about 5 seconds.EDIT: found this in my screenshots folder. this is the previous town i setup up with some people on a server.

OMG i'm going to play so much Minecraft when I'm rendering media next week

Yeah you kinda have to play a little when the updates come out, at least to see things for yourself.

I'm actually a little excited to work together on TWHL town. Is that abnormal?

I'm going to make a hall of haiku. just for lulz.

With all of the tree types now, tree farming and gathering will be a challenge.

holy balls that must have taken a hell of a lot of man-hours to make.