Flame the Dragon (Demo released!)

[smbmaster99]

DEMO HERE:
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http://www.mediafire.com/?e9y6e99m3g8ke6d
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=I9INSSJC
And as of right now, this project is on hold. Not canned, but delayed. I've spent well over a year on it and I've got new game ideas in mind. Enjoy!
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Some credz early so you won't get the wrong impression:
NO Body the Dragon has permitted me to edit some of his chars to look like mine, so I  thank him much for that ^( ^
many graphics have come from various places, from the engine itself, to TSR, MFGG, and other random places that I can't remember
Music and sound effects by Nintendo, Capcom, and SNK

Please let me know what you think ^( ^

Hey, it's me. Some of you may remember a while back that I made a game of NB's characters. I had made a big mistake. XP NB and I got things settled and he let me change the sprites to my characters and the story-line was also re-written.

The game's title is simply, Flame the Dragon, my 4th game (after making a few examples, 2 non-serious joke games, the NB game and Super Difficult Mario Bros, which was my first game)

This is the game that I always went on about in my topics for help in GM (mainly on the old message board and on MFGG)

It's about a young Dragon named Flame, his bother Alexander (usually called Xander), a few friends from school, and his best friend Crystal who dream of exploring the world.
info ahead

(click to show/hide)

The setting is Mineria, a world 10 times larger than the sun, in a different universe. The main race of this world are the Minerians, the dragons. They are very similar to humans; There is another race much like the Minerians, Fengoriyans.

They are almost the same as Minerians except for: they possess demonic powers, they appear more dark, & they are branded with scars as they get to a certain age. They are scared for their dark nature, the gods having created the world of Mineria to be peaceful. Since they tend to be more violent, they begin having severe burning in the area where their scars appear. After a day of much burning and pain, there is a scar.

The other main races include: Warlocks, Lansaiya (which are tribal, archaic humans that are freaky), Garashites (arabic humans that live in the deserts of Mineria), Skalemites (ice mountain people), Soldiers (does this really need to be explained? =P), and random monsters XP

The main type of combat used in this world is all medieval, like swords and all that good stuff.
The soldiers however, use firearms and modern technology, and make their weapons in a way that no other race can learn it

The entire world is ruled by a King and Queen. Laws are simple and crimes are few. But theft means 5-year imprisonment, a repeat of theft means 10 year imprisonment. A third time means death. Rapists are executed without any sentence to prison, so are murderers. But thanks to the way the gods created Mineria, Things are peaceful 99.999999999999999999999 % of the time.

Diseases in this world are extraordinarily rare (and because you never see this in video games, the only use for bathrooms is for PUKING and bathing LOL yeah, why not? Since it's always like that in games, it's how my universe works XP)

The most common sicknesses in this world are:
the stomach virus (the rarest)
the flu (fairly rare)
and the common cold (quite common XP)
HIV's don't exists in this world, nor does cancer, nor other deadly diseases

The sprites used for the main characters (and a TON of NPC's) were edited off of NO Body's sprites, WITH HIS APPROVAL; And the characters you see (Flame and Crystal) are MY characters, and are not free to use

A majority of the enemy sprites were custom made by No Body the Dragon

this game was inspired by the Zelda series, and thus, there will be lotsa Zelda stuff in this game, from enemies, to exploration. I've had this game in mind for about 2 years, and finally started working on it about 2 months ago. I built this game off of the MKFDev source, but I assure you, almost everything you'll see in these videos were coded from scratch by myself, or they were heavily edited to do what I felt they should.

If y'all got questions, ask them.
4 PARTS TO THE ENTIRE PREVIEW the credits are at the end of part 4 (or should I say, a link to them XP)

(click to show/hide)

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8rGDgKoaIs" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8rGDgKoaIs</a><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64YlMgkLHMc" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64YlMgkLHMc</a>
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DLlVCAHGdw" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DLlVCAHGdw</a><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKE6CAK7LqQ" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKE6CAK7LqQ</a>


the rooms you see me playing in are the DEBUG ROOMS which is why there are invisible grounds that I appear to be walking on; Some of the stuff you see in this video are obsolete; these videos are a few weeks old
NOTE: NO Body has brought to my attention how too close this game is becoming to Zelda; as of now, I am going to try to avoid adding more Zelda elements then there already are and save the rest of the planned Zelda elements for a Zelda game (Zelda, Zelda, Zelda XP just about all I talk about)

---Aug 11 2010---
Oh look, a major boss character


another main boss


---Sep 4 2010---

(click to show/hide)

he follows you with the turret; trying to knock you out of the air

---Sep 23 2010---
Garash are coded

(click to show/hide)

Ignore the '0' over Flame's head; it's another thing I left in by mistake for testing a variable XP

They are quite similar to the Lansaiyans, but are notably faster and more aggressive in their attacks; their attacks also reach farther out:

(click to show/hide)

They jump higher than Lansayians:

(click to show/hide)

And there's a 1/9 chance that a fireball will burst from their sword as they swing at you. [small][small][small][small](wow, being in the desert a lot teaches you some things XP)[/small][/small][/small][/small]
They also run away when you try to counter attack them, so they're harder to overcome than most enemies.
---Oct 13 2010---
I finally made the AI of some NMEs more epic and some will try to stop you from jumping on their heads

As you can see (with some difficulty) the Lizalfos will (probably) run away if you try to jump on them. They're more annoying than ever before.

The Stalfos, Who are more affected by your stomping, now (occasionally) hold their shields above their heads when you try to stomp them.

They may even shield against your over-head counter attack


And I finally made it to where Flame's and Crystal's shield reflects NME projectiles

---Nov 7 2010---
HYEASZ  a new video
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xESkciMG1Xs" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xESkciMG1Xs</a>
---Dec 14 2010---
Here's asdfghjkl:

Sunset:

And the one that took the longest, nighttime



Some of this is still being worked on to this day. Sometimes the night theme restarts btween room transitions and I don't know why >=[

---Dec 29 2010---
more [big][big]qwertyuiop[/big][/big] with the dialogue engine fixed, as well as adding a gizmo that allows the player to swap between Flame and Crystal during gameply

and then back to Flame:



The reason Flame jumped foward so much is cuz I was actually testing the dialogue again by changing from Crystal to Flame and vice-versa to ensure that the glitch with displaying their names was fixed 100%
---Jan 22 2011---
I'm not dead =P and neither is this project

I've just been thinking of some bosses for the game and decided to go ahead and code some
People that love metal slug games will recognize these dudes:


It fires lasers, bullets, bombs, it's a tough boss! It shows up later in the game though, so don't worry about excessive deaths and little health =P



this one was tricky, but I managed to get him to work

it breathes toxic gas, spits explosive seeds, and it's root "tentacles" try to hit you from below

this one's an earlier boss, but it's weaker than the wall-crawler
---Feb 9 2011---
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDZzILHliHY" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDZzILHliHY</a>
Note: I meant to change "10 times the size of the sun" to "size of the sun" but I forgot lol
---Apr 16 2011---
Well, I'm working on the first "dungeon" area of the game. It's the school where Flame, Xander, Crystal, and all their friends go, and it be in a slightly burning fire
the bullies set the 3-floor school (including a storm shelter and a roof ) ablaze... it was Farrus' idea XP and are holding Crystal and a few others captive to get back at Flame and Xander. It's a bit tricky to design, seeing as I'm terrible at designing houses or their insides XP, but I think it's coming along rather well for my first shot at something this big.

This is the music I'm using for the stage:
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cgOtRYhltc" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cgOtRYhltc</a>
---Jun 27 2011---
Good news, gooder news and bad news:

Bad news is, the vertex water was starting to cause more problems than fix them (such as: swimming when there was no water near the player, ear rape, random instant deaths in poison water (with ear rape included sometimes qwertyuiop ), random water level increase when the water was touched in some cases, and bizarre error messages that were seemingly unfixable)

Good news is, I found a replacement 8P and  the gooder news is, the swamp and it's dungeon are just about done
This is the entrance:

This is somewhere:

And this is the new water (shown here is poison)


There are lots of Lansaiyans here, and a couple other monsters, such as mutated plants =P
---Jun 29 2011---
#Invalid YouTube Link#

EDIT: Video's back up, with better quality
---Jul 9 2011---
#Invalid YouTube Link#

The dialogue has been reworked and is alot less cheesy imo
---Jul 24 2011---
Here's the second dungeon's first room (shown from GM's room editor, so there's no special lighting effects shown, unfortunately)

(click to show/hide)

I'm trying to make this dungeon feel more "compressed" I guess you could say, than the swamp dungeon. Tight spots, bumpy terrain, and fall spots will be more common here. The cave also has a lighting system that makes it feel more cave-ish, with a small light surrounding the player. I plan to post pictures of this in action once more of the cave is done.

music I currently have chosen for this level:

#Invalid YouTube Link#
---Aug 2 2011---

Boss of the Adrian Cave "dungeon":

---Most recent updates---
Here's some pictures of Adrian Cave:


And lately there has been a bug causing music not to play when you die and restart in the room you died in. It was irritating. And today, I finally CRUSHED THAT BUG LIKE AN EXTERMINATOR CRUSHES A FLY UNDER A FLY-SWATTER. I can now resume work on Adrian Cave, which is almost done I'll probably have a video of it up in a couple days.

Stay tuned!

[TheomanZero]

Glad to see this topic here.  I'm quite getting used to the new place.

[smbmaster99]

Yeah, I like the new place too. It was a slight surprise at first, but after a little while, it has grown on me XP

I fixed a youtube video error in my first post (it was the trailer video). And tomorrow marks the ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY of work having started on this project You know what this means? A new video It'll be showing Adrian Cave, and I hope that anything that is found by whoever sees it can be fixed ^^

[smbmaster99]

It's been one full year today that work started on this game, so have another video
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiM51CnKJBI" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiM51CnKJBI</a>

Please tell me what y'all think about this level ^^

Edit: Oh yeah, and the frozen enemies land on slopes now XP I fixed it after the video was recorded, and the stone monsters from Paper Mario (Clefts?) aren't supposed to freeze, so that's been fixed too.

[Triggerpigking]

Looking nice are you going to release a demo soon.

[smbmaster99]

No plans for a demo right now, but I might release one in the future.

[TheomanZero]

Hooray for a new video!  I've got lots to say about this one.
It looks a bit cramped . . . but it's a cave, so that's appropriate.  What concerns me is the prevalence of low ceilings over bottomless pits this early in the game, especially if you lose a whole heart every time you fall in.  Then again, maybe it's a sign you're supposed to use Flame here, rather than Crystal?
This might sound very strange at first, but . . . I think the movement speed in this game might be a little too fast.  It just seems like it's too easy to avoid combat by running right past it.  If you still want them to be able to move that fast, maybe give them a slower walking speed and some sort of dash or sprint function that is discouraged somehow when exploring new dungeons -- maybe they take collision damage from all enemies while sprinting?  Alternatively, you could just give enemies greater means of stopping the dragons, and maybe you were planning to do that in later dungeons anyway.
It'd be nice if the red spear-throwing enemies had some sort of death sprite or animation rather than just disappearing.  It'd up the catharsis factor, and as-is they just seem to fade away in the cloud of breath.
Now this is a totally crazy idea that just popped into my head, but . . . what if the elemental breaths started out really weak (just hitting a small area right in front of them, not much larger than the punch) and got more powerful over the course of the game (say, every time you beat a dungeon)?  It occurred to me that it seems a little overpowered right now, but weakening it would make it useless in later dungeons . . . so I thought of this.

[smbmaster99]

It looks a bit cramped . . . but it's a cave, so that's appropriate.  What concerns me is the prevalence of low ceilings over bottomless pits this early in the game, especially if you lose a whole heart every time you fall in.  Then again, maybe it's a sign you're supposed to use Flame here, rather than Crystal?

Yeah, a sort of claustrophobic feel is what I'm aiming for Don't worry about some of the pitfalls, I've noticed this as well. I've fixed some of them in this video, but I still need to work on more.

This might sound very strange at first, but . . . I think the movement speed in this game might be a little too fast.  It just seems like it's too easy to avoid combat by running right past it.  If you still want them to be able to move that fast, maybe give them a slower walking speed and some sort of dash or sprint function that is discouraged somehow when exploring new dungeons -- maybe they take collision damage from all enemies while sprinting? Alternatively, you could just give enemies greater means of stopping the dragons, and maybe you were planning to do that in later dungeons anyway.

You gave me an idea here. While Crystal is supposed to be faster and have a higher jump than Flame since she has no wings, the running past NMEs is something people could abuse. It almost makes the walking useless =P Perhaps some NMEs, instead of causing damage when you run into them, you bounce back a little. Maybe not the ones with more aggressive AI (such as Stalfos, who take a swing at you any chance they get), but the NMEs like the red imp.

It'd be nice if the red spear-throwing enemies had some sort of death sprite or animation rather than just disappearing.  It'd up the catharsis factor, and as-is they just seem to fade away in the cloud of breath.

Maybe I could make the death sprite bigger? It does seem a little strange for the mid-sized enemy to just sort of "poof" XP

Now this is a totally crazy idea that just popped into my head, but . . . what if the elemental breaths started out really weak (just hitting a small area right in front of them, not much larger than the punch) and got more powerful over the course of the game (say, every time you beat a dungeon)?  It occurred to me that it seems a little overpowered right now, but weakening it would make it useless in later dungeons . . . so I thought of this.

That is a great idea. I was noticing they seemed a bit overpowered as I was recording the video, but I wasn't sure of a way to fix that. Thanks for the C+C ^( ^

[TheomanZero]

I'm glad you liked my feedback . . . and that I could be of help.

[smbmaster99]

2nd dungeon completed

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkJKORkaZ58" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkJKORkaZ58</a>

The Stone Demon is much, much more powerful than the plant monster, so you'll need to be quick and alert when he attacks. If you get crushed under his fists, you lose 2 whole hearts, and as you'll probably only have 4 when you fight him, it'd be a bit painful

[TheomanZero]

Heh, I certainly wasn't expecting that little mage guy in the center.  I assume that the rocky shell can only be damaged by bombs, while the mage can be hit with anything?
By the way, can bombs explode in your hands?  They look pretty powerful and easy to use, but most enemies will probably be smaller and/or faster than Secret Rock Mage here, so bombs won't be as useful (also, I imagine bomb pickups are more common during this boss fight than usual).
Oh, and be sure to fix that bug with the frickin' laser beam.

[EvilMariobot]

I think the stone form needs to try to smash you more, especially when his health is low. He only tried it once during the battle.

[smbmaster99]

@ TheomanZero

Yeah, the Mage is trying to help the evil that already existed inside the cave grow faster. The Stone Demon had been there before the dungeon became an underground cave and was the source of dark and powerful magic in the game's history. With the Mage's magic, he was able to re-awaken the monster, but not long afterwards, Flame and Crystal kinda ruined it all for him

Some more is explained about the Stone Demon and a few other things later in the game- maybe halfway through. But the methods by which they're explained is a for now cuz it'd spoil some of the game's plot Oh, and the laser glitch is fixed too =P

@ EvilMarioBot: Yeah, that's true. I went ahead and fixed it when you pointed it out ^^

Also, I'm gonna try and make the field more "filled" I suppose is the right word. What I mean by this is, some areas I plan to add little caves in larger rocks, some floating land to fill the empty space in the air and make the field areas more unique, and other small things such as replacing NMEs that are too overused right now in the field.

[Emerald Master]

The footage of gameplay is very entertaining, and nice dungeon ideas. I seen a second video, the second video I watched was the "Swamp Dungeon".

[WhiteRoseBrian]

Perhaps I can offer ideas for the soundtrack?