ZGameEditor forum

..looks very slick and polished... from the particle bubbles in the background to the slightly tilting and moving text.

Very cool!

Thanks for the nice words guys

Here is the current build, not finished yet but it's progressing... somewhere. Things like cutscene text etc are all taken out of this build - there's a txt file included with the build that goes into more detail...

Edit: link fixed, sorry!
Edit 2: Exiting from the Story mode (if you want to leave and go grab some health in the Training area) is possible only by keeping START / Space for 3 seconds during the battle, sorry about that. Will improve in the future.
Edit X: This build is not really representative anymore, removing. Instead I'm putting an image of something that is not going into the game (also completely non representative!... but at least less troublesome than old builds).

Thanks, but download won't start here? (using Firefox)

Can you please attach it to the post instead? You can remove it afterwards if don't you want to keep it there.

Here is one of the new things in the current build: the menu selection screen! The framerate of the video is pretty low (still haven't found a capturing configuration that works well on my computer) so some effects are lost, but should give you an idea... There are many more additions / fixes etc, will record them some other time. Edit: will try to reupload after I'm done with the cutscenes.

Very nice! The presentation is getting more and more professional. Thanks for sharing the progress of your game.

Thanks Ville, I actually constantly post stuff in the Chat (easier than posting in the forum) but I should report here a bit more regularly too... Anyway here is what I've been working on lately, it's a... cutscene system! Here is a first working sketch version:

https://share.weiyun.com/ab8956ce17bde8 ... 6765cbb4a3
(it's a video with sound)

It's just a bunch of placeholders for now but I was just testing what exactly can I do with it (both technically and otherwise, for example how can I crop the characters etc).

Right now the framerate is a bit low so the effects look very bad + some of the effects are not aligned... for example every time a speaker changes there should be a transition, but I didn't define it properly so it only happens a few times in the video + when it actually happened the frames got dropped from that part.

So far I implemented:
Effects: New speaker effect, screen shake effect
Sound: Every new paragraph can play a sound effect (table slam! shock explosions!)
Background: each paragraph can set a new image
Various text effects etc...

I'll post a proper video in a few days hopefully, with real ingame characters, backgrounds and proper sound effects. (will just update this post)

Nice (I had to download the video using Edge, Firefox would not work)! How do you author your cutscenes using this system? Is it ZGE scripting, components, text file or something else? I'd be interested in learning more about this. I.e. for a specific cutscene where do you store the dialogue, bitmaps, animation info etc.

(updated below)

I'll try to upload it somewhere else next time, sorry for the trouble.

As is, it'll most probably significantly change later, we're discussing it in the chat these days. Right now it's done with components 99%, all the text is embedded in ZGE string arrays (for text) and integer arrays (for codes that indicate which portrait, background, sound effect etc are called). All the bitmaps are stored in a TileSet, so it's very easy to show them using RenderTile. All the animations are done with AnimatorGroups, that contain various AnimatorSimple components which in turn define the animation info.

So here is the first really representative video of the project, where it can finally be seen how exactly should it all work together!:
(It doesn't look like this anymore... I'll upload a better video later!)

I only played the "Story" mode and didn't really show how the game works (so the whole "balance collecting and avoiding with shooting" mechanic doesn't come across at all). There are some problems with the font, will fix it in the next build.The text is not edited at all, but as far as the atmosphere goes it should be pretty indicative of where it's going.

Cool, thanks for posting! I'm sure Kjell will share this video on ZGE twitter if you ask him. The cutscenes are excellent and give the game lots of atmosphere I think.

Good idea, I will.... but I should make a better / real video first (for example I just blasted through the opening levels while playing, so it probably makes little sense for somebody seeing it the first time, fix the font finally etc), this recording is mostly for this thread - up until now I've been only showing separate parts and that usually doesn't convey how it all works together.

I'm happy if the cutscenes work (original versions were all depressing...)! Actually I'm slightly tempted to post some WiP stuff here but let's save that for the next update

Among other things, I started working on an ingame instructions section, here is what I currently have - it's supposed to be shown in a series of panels that the player can go through by scrolling (edit: removed the outdated image). Some things will not be included in the explanation (otherwise where's the fun of discovery) but this is just to prevent the unpleasant "Huh? How is this supposed to work?" feeling when launched for the first time. Also there is a small "playground" room with no enemies that unlocks after reading these (just to test the controls in peace etc, for people playing it for the first time).

What else is new... I fixed the font finally (almost ), added a pause menu, added a few effects here and there etc. Lots of small things basically. Oh and I also changed the intro (changed the music, added some new scenes...). The opening text is also different. And so on!... I'll make a video showcasing these after I'm done with the tutorial.

Actually this isn't really a proper "tutorial", let's just call it "introduction". Anyway here is a preview of what it currently looks like (still have a few things to fix):
https://streamable.com/32im0
(Edit: of course by now it looks a bit different than back then )

There are 10 panels in total (the last one is basically just a connection to the next stage) and once the last panel is reached it waits for the button press to proceed. I just scroll past the last few panels to show that it's easy (but not too easy that it can happen by mistake) to skip through it all, in case someone wants to speed it up (maybe somebody already knows how it works but is playing from a fresh install etc... or doesn't want to read or whatever really!).

After that there's an empty room for testing the controls (shooting, strafing etc) and once all the flowers are collected the "real" game launches.

Looks very nice! Another feature that adds professionalism and polish to this game.