So it only took 3 years.

Time Keepers Release 2 is ready. I tried to upload it to vrpg, but the site didn't feel like it. So it's here.

This release unlocks some new weapons, adds the second mission, introduces the protagonists and makes the game engine about a million times better.

Go download it and such. I have to go make release 3....be back in 2 years or so.

Very impressive.

On a practical level, I find the tutorial text at the beginning of the game to go by a little quick, and the font to be a little small. The controls are a little awkward, at least on keyboard. But all minor complaints in the face of awesome count for nothing.

Ace! Downloading too. I am thoroughly shamed: this work requires that I do some work on Alexandiir and I's game this evening! Shop code here I come.

Awesome game. I can't figure out Mission 2.

By the way, I killed like every guard with the knife alone. Put my ninja skillz to the test.

On Mission 2, I stabbed one of the people in the rooms, and systematically knifed to death every guard that came out (except the first one who charged into the room, and I had to shoot).

Had a lot of fun with this, and hope to see more. ;) I'm impressed with how advanced the UI is.

Quote:Originally posted by Ness

In the first part of mission 2 you're supposed to find a key card laying around the upper two levels. It randomly chooses between 4 positions to spawn at (if only to slow down people doing speed runs :D)

Probably the other thing I didn't make really clear ingame is that stealing also lets you interact with buttons and computers and stuff. That box on the wall with an up and down arrow next to the locked door is an elevator call button. It let you go between levels. It's also a metric tone of awesome timer based code!

Maybe I should make touchable things sparkle...
If it were me, I'd consider using the mouse to just auto-target whatever is at mousex, mousey. You could pop up floaty text and change the color of the mouse cursor whenever the mouse is over something, and you could extend the same system to targeting enemies.

I think it would agreeably simplify the whole control system,and as long as you don't try to implement mouse clicking in the menus, doesn't seem like it would require much code - though obviously that depends on how it's all coded :)

In a less troublesome manner, yeah, you could just make objects you can interact with visually distinct. - give them a thicker outline, or make them sparkle, as you suggested.

Hmm, the more I think about this, the more I think that the entire interaction with objects needs to be simplified. Let the player target something, and then figure out what they want to do depending on what's under the target. In Timekeepers case, everything would basically be done by a more generic, "use" button, rather than having specialised target and aim functions.

I think that's probably the approach I'm going to start taking, too.

void draw_mousepointer()

{

int pointercolour = RGB( 0, 128, 32 );

int ent_no = 0;

string ent_description = "";



  while (ent_no < entities)

  {

    if ( ((mouse.x + xwin) / 32) == ((entity.x[ent_no]) / 32) )

      if ( (mouse.y + ywin / 32 ) == ((entity.y[ent_no]) / 32))  // mouse over an entity?

      {

      pointercolour = RGB( 128, 0, 32 );  // make the pointer turn red

      ent_description = entity.description[ent_no];  // and load ent_description with the entity's description

      }

  ent_no++;

  }

  SetLucent(50);

  rectfill(mouse.x-2, mouse.y-2, mouse.x+2, mouse.y+2, pointercolour, screen);

  setlucent(0);

  

  if ( asc(ent_description) != 0 ) {  bannerbox( mouse.x+6, mouse.y+6, font_builtin, RGB( 0, 128, 32 ), ent_description,);  }

  

//  End of Function

}



void bannerbox( int x, int y, int font_name, int box_colour, string banner_text)

{

rectfill(x - 2, y - 2, x + textwidth( font_name, banner_text) +1 , y + FontHeight(font_name)+1, box_colour, screen);

printstring( x, y, screen, font_name, banner_text );



//  End of Function

}

Sticking that in the map retrace function should give you a mouse pointer that'll print the description of any entity nearby.