Nexus/Sirius Continued...



Been working on the Nexus demo a lot recently.

Check out the updates. Elevator now works. Choose a floor (1-5 are explorable) and tap D to operate the thing. You can now enter rooms and use the UP array to search through the junk in them for objects.

When you leave rooms the doors tint to red to let you know you've been in them. At a later stage that'll change so they'll tint only when you've searched the entire room.
Don't bug me about stuff in the game being wrong. I'm not asking for beta testers here, and I'm fully aware that some doors tint before you've entered them, rooms not existing and levels doing funny things. Cheers.

Sirius, the brightest star in the sky. That's the new working title since I can't go completely ripping off Nexus now can I? Truth be told I've thought of a few little changes I'd like to make to the original game anyway. So, it's now not a blatant Nexus but inspired by Nexus. I hope to retain the atmosphere of the first game but evolve it with a few added extras such as a couple of new weapons and some other stuff I've been mulling over.

So, how would you set up a world similar to mine?

myMap = [[16, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12],
[11, 9, 8, 7, 7, 7, 7, 7, 0],
[5, 4, 6, 4, 3, 2, 1, 2, 0],
[14, 15, 14, 15, 15, 14, 15, 14, 14],
[12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12, 12]];

This is the array that represents the rooms for each level. So we've got 5 levels at present (elevator levels higher than 5 don't exist). The numbers in the array are used to reference the tiles that are used in the background.


//GLASS CAVERN
floor3 = [[[0,0],[10,0],[0,0],[0,0],[0,0],[0,0],[0,0],[1,0],[1,0],[0,0]],
[[0,0],[1,0],[0,0],[0,0],[0,0],[0,0],[0,0],[0,0],[0,0],[0,0]],
[[0,0],[102,0],[102,0],[0,0],[2,0],[0,0],[0,0],[102,0],[0,0],[0,0]],
[[1,0],[1,0],[1,0],[3,0],[3,0],[1,0],[1,0],[1,0],[1,0],[0,0]],
[[1,0],[1,0],[1,0],[1,0],[1,0],[1,0],[0,0],[0,0],[0,0],[0,0]],
[[0,0],[101,1],[101,2],[0,0],[0,0],[0,0],[1,0],[0,0],[0,0],[0,0]],
[[0,0],[0,0],[1,0],[0,0],[3,0],[0,0],[0,0],[0,0],[10,0],[0,0]]];


This 2d array is for the main tiles on each level. It's 10x7: 10 tiles per screen, 7 screens per level. 0,0 would be an empty space, 2 is an elevator (for now), and anything from 3-100 is a graphical tile with no properties (so 1,0 is a barrel). 100 and up is a door. Each level uses a different door mc, so we need 101,102 etc. the second part of the array represents the room number. so [101,10] would work as say "Use tile with linkage tile_101 for the graphics and 10 we'll keep for later so we know what room it leads to".


myMiddleMap2=[{roomnumber: 1, image:0, entered:false, tile:"room1", roomArray:[[11,0], [12,0], [3,0], [13,0], [14,0], [1,0], [13,0], [14,0], [0,0],[10,0]]},
{roomnumber: 2, image:0, entered:false, tile:"room1", roomArray:[[11,1], [12,1], [2,1], [13,2], [14,3], [13,1], [14,0], [1,1], [0,0],[10,0]]},
{roomnumber: 3, image:0, entered:false, tile:"room1", roomArray:[[11,0], [12,0], [3,0], [13,0], [14,0], [1,0], [13,0], [14,0], [0,0],[10,0]]},
{roomnumber: 4, image:0, entered:false, tile:"room1", roomArray:[[11,0], [12,0], [3,0], [13,0], [14,0], [1,0], [13,0], [14,0], [0,0],[10,0]]},
{roomnumber: 5, image:0, entered:false, tile:"room2", roomArray:[[11,0], [12,1], [3,4], [13,5], [14,2], [1,8], [13,3], [14,2], [0,0],[10,0]]},
{roomnumber: 6, image:0, entered:false, tile:"room2", roomArray:[[11,0], [12,0], [3,0], [13,0], [14,0], [1,0], [13,0], [14,0], [0,0],[10,0]]},
{roomnumber: 8, image:0, entered:false, tile:"room3", roomArray:[[11,0], [12,0], [3,0], [13,0], [14,0], [1,0], [13,0], [14,0], [30,0],[10,0]]},
{roomnumber: 9, image:0, entered:false, tile:"room3", roomArray:[[11,0], [12,0], [3,0], [11,0], [12,0], [11,0], [12,0], [14,0], [30,0],[10,0]]},
{roomnumber: 7, image:0, entered:false, tile:"room2", roomArray:[[11,0], [12,0], [3,0], [13,0], [14,0], [1,0], [13,0], [14,0], [0,0],[10,0]]}
];


This is the array of objects for our rooms. We can give it as much information as we went, in this case roomnumber, image (no use right now), entered:- has the room been entered, boolean. tile: linkage for the room background mc, and roomArray is another array similar to the maintile array for coordinating object/furniture tiles across the screen. This time the second array number carries special information about what objects can be located when the player 'searches' the tile in question. Anything above 0 is an object. I've yet to incorporate anything such as puzzle pieces or weapons so at present all you'll receive is a "Got Something" message when you search objects in the rooms.

..little Nexus update...

I haven't quit the Streets of Rage engine, nope in fact it may have found a home.
I was approached by a talented artist about 2 weeks ago enquiring about a possible collaboration and it looks as though we may be working on a game together!
It's too early to say much about the project but suffice to say we've both agreed that it will be a medieval Hack'n'Slash a little like Golden Axe but with a lot more gore. There's a lot of ideas and concept art flying around at the moment but little else, so I'll leave the rest of the details for later.
Regarding progress, since my engine has to be custom adapted after we've set the framework for the character sprites and such, I've had some spare time on my hands to work on other projects. Therefore I broke out the old Nexus.fla and have been working on that. Goddamn was there some shitty code in there. But that is to be expected -it was the first game I had worked on since I started using Flash for making games, after all. It's nice to know my coding skill has upped and 1 year ago I wouldn't have dreamed of using arrays of objects to contain all the 'room' information in the base. I've put all my gained knowledge back into it and now things that screwed with me a year ago are working like a charm.
You can check out the update on the right. Now you can walk into rooms using the UP arrow and er..that's it. The doors to the rooms go red when the room has been entered, just like in the original Nexus. (You wouldn't believe what a bastard that was to get working, btw). Just laying foundations dudes.
I still haven't figured out how I put XML in Flash to good effect. People keep telling me they can't live without it these days but I haven't seen what use it would be unless we're talking about loading info on the fly. Saying that, I'll probably eat my words a year from now.
Laters.