EDIT: The second part is done. The .rar file includes the entire first tutorial and the second tutorial contains not only a way longer tutorial (roughly 100 pages, albeit with a lot of screen shots) but also much, much more useful code if you just want to cannibalize this stuff. Get it here: http://www.dreamstem.com/files/dla1-2.rar (until verge-rpg's file system accepts the sucka.)

So I just uploaded the first part of my new-user tutorial: DEMON LORD ADVENTURE TUTORIAL. There will be three parts. Each will involve creating a short, terrible game called DEMON LORD ADVENTURE, and each will expand slightly upon the DEMON LORD ADVENTURE universe and its gameplay mechanics.

The current release is still kind of awful, but if one literally just does not want to code anything new at all ever, this offers a "working" textbox, menu system, and battle system, and explains how each is coded so that you can modify them to your heart's content (which you will very much want to do.) The point of this whole thing is to take Overkill's tutorial (which is awesome) as a starting point and then try to build some more simple RPG-like systems and functions and walk new users through the process of building such systems and functions, for the sake of the greater glory and to ease the transition from "wanting to make a game" to "mastering a C-based programming language." There's other stuff that fulfills this purpose out there (Sully Simpletype library in particular), but if you really just do not know anything about C-based programming the Simpletype library won't help just yet. Interim measures are required! The community must grow! That which does not evolve must die!

But, to reiterate: DEMON LORD ADVENTURE. Part Two is in the works and should be done, um, fairly soon now, for anyone like really really new around here who actually uses this.

Quote:Originally posted by glambourine

So I just uploaded the first part of my new-user tutorial: DEMON LORD ADVENTURE TUTORIAL. There will be three parts. Each will involve creating a short, terrible game called DEMON LORD ADVENTURE, and each will expand slightly upon the DEMON LORD ADVENTURE universe and its gameplay mechanics.

THANK YOU! I was needing something like this. ^_^

Great idea glambourine!

Seeing this brought a smile to my face. Can't wait for part II. Actually, if you want any art specific thing for this ask away. I would love to contribute in some way in something that can help the whole community.

Glambourine! If you don't let up you're going to put everyone else in the entire community to shame. Seriously man.

I just downloaded DEMON LORD ADVENTURE, read through the tutorial, and played through the demo. Very good stuff. You've taken a fantastic minimalist approach that I don't think I would ever have been able to match.

And I agree with you about the Verge community needing some good, free-to-use art. Could you maybe draw up a list of resources that you'd like for DEMON LORD, and those of us with time and energy could pick away at it?

Oh awesome--thanks, everyone!

I'm copying this over from a comment I left on Syn's Gruedorf blog after he asked about this same thing--a couple of little revisions.

Here's what I'm looking for in terms of chrs:

Fighter (her name is Fighter)
Healer (his name is Healer)
Wizard (its name is Wizard)
Ninja (secret character! You know the drill)
Elemental Lord (there need to be four of these, earth/air/water/fire, but it’d be better probably if they were just palette swapped. That's classic)
Demon Lord (ultimate nightmare!)
Merchant
King
Townsman
Townswoman
Floozy/Bunny Girl
Old Man
Soldier
Generic Monster (like the little devils in the DW games that represent all monsters ever.)

I’d like these to be maybe 16×24 to 16×32 at max, just to make it easy to use them to jump-start your game without demanding a huge amount of tile work to match a large .chr size. 16×16 would be kind of awesome too if you’d be into it.

As far as tiles go:

Grass
Forest
Hill
Mountain
Desert
Town Floor
Town Wall
Generic poison/damage floor
Castle Carpet/Floors/Walls
Cave Floors/Walls (generic caves for like an early fetch quest)
Pyramid Floors/Walls (earth dungeon)
Undersea Cave Floors/Walls (water dungeon)
Volcano Floors/Walls (fire dungeon)
Beanstalk/Clouds Floors/Walls (air dungeon)
Switches and Levers and Doors (generic)
Treasure Chests (generic)

I’d want this to be like a super-restrictive tileset–no more than 64 tiles if possible, really grid-heavy. Like I said on the forums, the idea is to force you into a less-is-more mindset where you can’t rely on just filling up large amounts of space with beautiful tiles–it’s all about making maps interesting to play through despite limited numbers of tiles and colors. My model for this whole thing is the Dragon Warrior games, which seriously can't have more than about 128 tiles at most up to DW3, but still look really good. So the final public tileset would be really manageable to just plug in and start working with, while at the same time giving a little bit of versatility in terms of environments.

Would this work?

I guess I’d need these by the time Demon Lord Adventure III comes out. II is already done; for some reason I can't upload it to the site properly (the file's all .rar-ed up and ready to go--would someone be willing to help me out with this?) After that I’m not planning to work too actively on DLA3 until the first release of Chocolate Sauce is out or the game is at least in testing–should be October. But I'm hoping it'd be the missing link in terms of usability before users graduate to the much-more-powerful yet much-more-arcane Simpletype library.

Again--thanks, yo!

Quote:Originally posted by Syn

Great to see more people are interested!

Now, the best way to do this would be to call out a certain piece in the forums and do it within a reasonable time(a week) so that no two person work on the same thing. What do you think?
That's probably best. Before anyone starts on character graphics though, it should be decided what size they'll be so we don't end up with a party of dragon warrior sprites and one Darin.

As far as consistent sizes/specs for the .chr art goes:

Let's say 16 x 24, three frames in each of the four directions. Now that I'm thinking about it it'd be nice to have some attack frames for the four main characters (Fighter/Healer/Wizard/Ninja), organized like this:

1. Physical attack
2. Magic attack/heal (doubles as using item/using technique)
3. Being hit (either phys/magic)
4. Being weak
5. Being DEAD
6. Cheer (cheer animation would be like standard frame/this frame looped, all classic-style)

So I guess six rows, three columns, 16x24, for these four .chr files, then four rows, three columns, 16x24 for everyone else?

Whatever else you guys want to do core frame/palette wise is fine with me of course--I agree it's probably best to have one basic model in mind.

Again, this is totally awesome!

(Syn--I just sent you an email)

Eesh. I imagine I'm a little late to the party now, what with V-RPG having been down for the past couple of days, but I just knocked together this. I apologise if it's maybe too simple for your tastes, Glam, but as you can probably see, I'm trying to keep it really easy to edit. And your use of the magic words "Dragon Warrior" seems to have flipped the "8-bit" switch in my head ;)

Accordingly, there are four "slots". 4 pixels for the hat/hair, 8 for the head, and six each for the body and legs.

http://www.spol.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/images/sprite/generic_00.gif

I don't know about anyone else but that image is totally broken, and the link takes you to some sort of weird blog thing with billions of pop ups. What's up there?

It is done. Obviously, the larger version was just for display so that you can actually see it in the webbrowser, and the dungen tiles were really only on the sprite page so that I could get an idea of what generic would look like on an actual map.

I may add more to it later, but everything will stay in it's current position for when it's imported into maped.

(at http://www.spol.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/images/sprite/dungeon_tiles_00.gif)


(at http://www.spol.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/images/sprite/jerry.gif)
Jerry the Generic


(at http://www.spol.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/images/sprite/fighter.gif)
and I tweaked fighter a bit using the changes I made to Jerry. I also added the mid-frame I forgot to include on the first version so that it matches the original spec of three frames per row. I really need to set up a MAK and check the animation of these guys though.


(at http://www.spol.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/images/sprite/merchant.gif)