Space Quest: By Ben Moran

[James]

Screenshot of the game.

SpaceScreeny.png (39.06 KiB) Viewed 2450 times

Dear all,

Just recently I have been helping a young user of mine by e-mail and he has submitted his game to me, asking for it to go on the website. I am proud to present his space-themed game.

Just so you know, there is a 10 second time limit in each level, so watch out! I was able to complete the game on my second go.

As always, please post your constructive criticism so that the creator - Ben Moran - can improve. I will send him a link to this topic.

As I see it, this is an excellent first project covering quite a few aspects of using DSGM. If you are just a beginner and want to make something like this, you can take a look at the project - the .DSGM file - that I attached.

[Jake]

This game is pretty good, for a young user.

[CZ Games]

the only challenge is the time, should add in some AI. For example, have the cacti move, and also have the enemy space ships come torwards you and make the bullet only destroy one enemy at a time (delete bullet object at collison)

[Thungbard]

As always, please post your constructive criticism so that the creator can improve.

Okay here goes:

Overall, it's a great game, I love the choice of music, although it doesn't appear to loop and you're stuck in silence after a while.

Now on to the advice:

- If the game has a 10 second time limit, it would be great to have your time left displayed someplace, maybe the top screen since it's relatively empty

- Transparent Backgrounds: It doesn't actually say it anywhere within DS Game Maker but to make a background see through, it's as easy as colouring it Magenta which is max Red and Blue and no Green or [(255,0,255) if you prefer] when selecting it from a palette in a drawing program, that way you could make the square border around the coins and the player disappear

- In the Step event for the Player and the Spaceship, you should add some code to make sure you can't walk off the screen

- I didn't look at the source so I can't really comment on why, but your scoring system works well, until you swap over to the Spaceship boards, then your score get's replaced with a 2 permanently, if I had to guess I'd say it's because when you kill a spaceship, instead of increasing your score by 2, you're accidentally making your Score equal to 2.

- You should make the bullets get deleted after they hit a UFO, right now you can shoot up to 3 Spaceships with 1 bullet because they just keep going after they hit stuff

- Not sure if it's supposed to, but the Spaceship boards don't have a time limit, so there's no real way to lose at them

- On the Death Screen, you should display the text "Press A to Try Again" or something, so people know what they're supposed to do, the first time I just sat there for a few seconds waiting for something to happen, when it didn't I started pushing buttons to try and make something happen

- You should switch the Continue Screens after beating all of the Cactus's and Spaceships to 'Press A' instead of 'Touch Screen', because the rest of the game is played using the A button and the Directional Pad, it's a little inconvenient to have to reach for the screen at those times when the rest of the game doesn't require it

- If you have most of the action taking place on one screen for much of the game, you should leave it there instead of swapping the action to the top screen for the last 2 boards, just for a bit more professional and consistent feel, but I suppose it's not horrible because you have 2 screens and up till that point you're only using 1 of them, in the future try to utilize both screens better by having stuff on each, for example if all the action takes place on the bottom screen, display the score and timer on the top screen just so it doesn't feel so empty.

That's about all I can think of right now, Once again it's a very good game for someone's first. A lot of good stuff in it, so hopefully he doesn't get discouraged by my large list if suggestions, it was just intended to help.

I didn't bother to get into things like gameplay, and how to make it more challenging, etc. that's a lesson for a different day I guess

[YoshiInAVoid]

Fist time you play it, it is hard to understand what is going on. Add more things to explain, like "Avoid the cactus's and get the coins, quick!"

Maby have a menu, where you can pick a "help" screen or "play". That would be easy to make too, just have a global boolean and If you press Up make it 0 and if you press down make it one. Then when you press Start, if it's at 0 make it switch to play, and if its' 1 make it switch to help.

But when you get going it's a great game, you just need to sort out the obvious things like add in the transparrent colour.

[James]

But when you get going it's a great game, you just need to sort out the obvious things like add in the transparrent colour.

Ah yes, on the topic of that - You can't use actual transparency for the sprites, you need to use magenta (not directed at you Chris).

The difference is shown in the 2 attached turkeys.

[Bobbyloujo]

I like the music :D

[YoshiInAVoid]

I don't understand the last bit in the space ship. You have ten seconds, if you don't do it in 10 seconds you die, and if yuo shoot one your score just goes to two?

[pichubolt090]

Ok, this looks good for someone very young (woot reference to 12 year old boy nicknamed pichubolt090 ^___^). The main thing to improve is that the guy sprite and the coin sprite should have magenta backgrounds. Alpha transparency turns black and that's not good on a DS.

[Trenton]

Why doesn't it use alpha transparency if the file size is enormously smaller? 393 bytes for the alpha turkey, as opposed by 1.11 kilobytes for the magenta version.

[James]

Why doesn't it use alpha transparency if the file size is enormously smaller? 393 bytes for the alpha turkey, as opposed by 1.11 kilobytes for the magenta version.

It's smaller on the PC side. The reason for that is that with magenta, you save it as an 8-bit PNG, which doesn't compress as well (blame the algorithm).

On the DS, it really doesn't matter about the filesize of the PNG at all. Every pixel is exported to a massive array so if the PNG is 1kb or 32kb, the array will be the same size because the same number of pixels are present.

[spng1096]

this is it hoory! well there is going to be more.

[James]

In future, please condense your information into just one post.

Hello I am ben i am going to stop making games sadly because when i try to download DS game maker theres a error bye

We can only assist if you specify the error, as always.

Instead of puting DS games on am going to put COMPUTER games on

The title of this forum is 'DS Game Maker forum'. We don't develop PC games here, only DS games.

this is it hoory! well there is going to be more.

Your DS game was original but I can see that your 'Super Mario' game is just a graphical modification of the Game Maker platform example. It's not your own game if you just load an example and change the pictures/level designs.

If you do not wish to use DS Game Maker any more, you can post only in 'Off Topic'.

[YoshiInAVoid]

this is it hoory! well there is going to be more.

Hmm. Code is very bad. Half the time he just randomly falls off. Animation is awful. Half the sprites have white around them with no transparrent colour. No storyline. Its' a terrible game I'm sorry.

[spng1096]

Hi i am going to make a great game!!!!

[kalfster]

Hi i am going to make a great game!!!!

kind of useless information, in the wrong post. If anywhere it should go in Game Design & Ideas
and you should tell what you are going to make. On top of that you should finish it as well, or else you will have wasted everyone's time, like many have did before you.

This is one of my favorite quotes from another post; after 3 people took time to reply to him ;

Re: ds game help
" i dont need help with that game anymore i need help with a pokemon game "

[spng1096]

hi i have been gone for a while but this is very good game okey it doesn't have animation but if you want animation then you are gona have to send me a tutorial!