When you can do HTML5 games on your own >:) Yesterday I realized that since my new PT engine doesn't use the built in GM collision engine, I could probably port it to javascript myself without spending hundreds of dollars. 24 hours of off and on working later and I have this: http://gameplague.com/test/collision.php It has basic collisions, walking, running and depth. I'm thinking I could eventually export maps from game maker, if I ever decided to port PT itself. Obviously this alone isn't too impressive, but its a lot better than I thought I could do in that short amount of time.
Considering how quickly that went together; I think I could make an entire Pokemon engine in javascript/php with relative ease. The overworld engine is probably the hardest part, the battle screen and menus are just basic website design stuff hooked into a PHP engine with AJAX. Client side storage = hacking, so this could finally solve the biggest security worries I had with PT.Of course I need to finish up the engine and create some large rooms to see if it gets too laggy, but even then if I just wait a year or two browsers will be faster. As a bonus, if its not too laggy then I should be able to get it working on any modern browser. Including those on game consoles, cell phones, etc.But that's not what has the most interested in this idea, the biggest possbility is if I toss the pokemon name and turn this whole thing into a giant pile of profit. The main game alone could earn me advertising + a "dlc" store. If facebook has taught me anything, its that people will spend a ridiculous amount of money on worthless junk if its in a game they like. I could sell character customization stuff, basic items, access to regions, etc. It would be harder to advertise without the name pokemon to catch peoples eye, but if the game is pokemon quality then word of mouth would be good enough. But even more interesting, I could create a "monster collecting/battling game maker" which would essentially allow people to make their own games using my engine. Lots of people have decompiled PT and tried to make crappy games from it but just imagine if all they had to do was upload sprites, choose stats/moves/etc and then map out the game. Anybody could make a Pokemon style game with little or no programming knowledge and unlike with PT, half the source code would be server side so no theft. I could even let them customize basic pieces of the engine like the types.I feel like this idea is almost kickstarter worthy =p
If you named it Pokemon and started to make money off of it I bet your ass would be sued so fast
Yes, which is why I said I would toss the name if I did that. Although for years one of the top earning websites on projectwonderful has been a site called pokefarm which even uses real Pokemon in it.
Nice :) The level editor is the core bonus to GM:S (aside from the hope of future features) so if you can port rooms this makes a lot of sense.
Say, this is sexy! At some point I would say add mouse control to make it more accessible on a touchscreen phone (tap to move).
I especially like the ideas in the last paragraph, having other people design their own games with it seems like it could have really interesting results.Yeah I'm going to work on touchscreen controls at some point, but I don't actually own any touch screens outside of the 3DS =p I'm trying to at least get those arrow buttons working on a touch screen until I can do proper testing.
I know bad DLC can turn customers away, but I wouldn't ever spam it everywhere like a lot of these games do. It also won't be anything like $1 for a costume pack or something cheap like that. I could do it in a subscription format where you pay a couple dollars to unlock a whole ton of useful and useless stuff for a month or year or whatever. Or I could just provide so many options that $1 doesn't seem overpriced to unlock them all. In the end though, it would just be an option thats there for the people who want it and anyone else could easily ignore it.
HTML5 :D
I was going to complain about the movement feeling sluggish but then read it's supposed to be a Pokemon-ish thing and stopped myself. Pretty cool you were able to put that demo together so quick though.I bought GM:S. I was able to afford it and wanted to see what it was all about. Aside from the compiling and faster processing of complex scripts, it's not worth upgrading to if your games work perfectly fine with the standard version of GM. Studio has all the bells and whistles though. For the GM user that "likes" GM and wants a nicer level editor, enhanced code error report, and numerous other things they added then sure. It's a nice tool to have. I like it a lot. But if you're able to do everything you want to in GM 8.1 or the future GM9 standard, then studio isn't needed. And the editor/code upgrades will most likely appear in GM9 anyway. The porting to other platforms and compiled .exe's are the only big difference I see.
Regarding Pokemon Twilight, I would like to see a person from our community working on an online game that wasn't heavy on client side features. Making an efficient web based game would be pretty cool. I like testing those types of games. The security and organization in online programming intrigues me.You don't use GM:S because it's expensive, unstable, buggy, slow, etc.
You do use game libraries because they would probably save you 95% of the time you spent on this and you don't have to worry about minor little details like all of your code being potentially horribly inefficient..Although I guess if what you're making is a "game engine" then you'll have to know what you're doing without silly libraries anyway. But for the average person, don't make things hard for yourself please…