VB Mario Contest

[William]

Info
Creating a super mario style game, like this:

It should of course be in visual basic 6.0

Rules
1. Must be 100% made by you, we will know if you cheat.
2. Need to have the option to move forward and backward and include jumping.
3. Does not need scrolling.
4. Only 1 map is required.
5. Custom gfx is not required.

Award
The honor to be better than the rest

Judges
Poll on the community So everybody will try out your game.

Deadline
2007.11.10

Please post if you join the competition!

I will anticipate.

[William]

My mockup, I'm just making a simple one

[Rezeyu]

Yeah, I got graphic design HW coming out of my ass.

[William]

Okay, I changed the deadline, 23 days should be enough for everybody. Do a little each day or something like that.

Download my first mockup with the moving player
http://www.key2heaven.net/Marovia.rar

[Matt]

Okay, I changed the deadline, 23 days should be enough for everybody. Do a little each day or something like that.

Download my first mockup with the moving player
http://www.key2heaven.net/Marovia.rar

Nice. I vote you use the space key for jumping. That was just the key I kept wanting to hit..

[William]

Yeah, I added jumping now. Working on detection and thats a biatch

Edit: Damn, I need to change my detection system to a getpixel system. So it will check for a certain color like rgb(0,0,0). And if that color exist under him then he wont fall.

[Dragoons Master]

I'll participate!
I'm not the best graphics designer but I'll do my best with paint!
I'll try to finish it on time... but I'm totally out of time right now, because I'm on M$'s Imagine Cup and I don't have much time to program in VB right now...
But I'll participate!
BTW, where is my trophy??????

[Rezeyu]

I'm too busy playing Halo 3.

=/

[Spodi]

Funny, I actually just started a project that is a side-scroller like this. I don't have to release the source or anything, do I? :wink: Hopefully by then I'll have NPCs done and a very simplistic stat system.

Does MMO support give me bonus points? :lol:

[smchronos]

I'd like to give it a try. If I don't finish on time, do you want me to just release what I have?

[William]

BTW, where is my trophy??????

You mean for the competition? Nobody got a trophy since there was so few participants, hopefully next time there will be more.

Glad you guys join, and remember that it needs to be made by you. So no base sources.

[William]

Test it out. You can now:

• - Jump
  - Fall
  - Walk on upper tiles

http://www.key2heaven.net/MaroviaV02.rar

[William]

Yeah, the thing is Im using getpixel to see if the pixel is black, if so you cant move. And for that to work you need to move only 1 pixel each step. It would all be better with a map editor, but thats too much time for me to make.

[Spodi]

Well what you can do is run a loop through every pixel he moves through instead of just moving one pixel at a time. For instance:

Code:

Dim StartX as long
Dim ToX as long
Dim i as long

'Move right
for i = StartX to X
if GetPixel(i, UserY) = RGB(0,0,0) Then
   'The user stops here
   ToX = i
   Exit For
end if
next i

UserX = ToX

Pixel collision, though - badass. Wish I could say I was doing the same. I had to go for grid-based attributes (ie collision) since the server has to be able to process it quickly if I want it to run at any decent speed.

How are you drawing? BitBlt? I just saw a little tearing so I figured it wasn't DirectX.

Working on detection and thats a biatch

Seconded.

[William]

Great, idea about the collision detection, no need to check each step. But instead run a loop and store the closest wall into memory etc..

Just using bitblt for the bkg, and transparentblt for the player. Just the very basic.

Mario uses grid detection, too. I wouldn't bother doing it pixel by pixel ;-;

Its for fun, since then you can draw your maps in photoshop.

[William]

Crap, this is what I made:

Code:

Public Function CanMoveRight() As Long
CanMoveRight = 1000
Dim x As Long
For x = CharX + 32 To frmGame.Map1.Width
    If GetPixel(frmGame.Map1.hdc, x, CharY + 16) = 0 Then
        CanMoveRight = x
        Exit Function
    End If
Next x
End Function

I keep changing my ways of doing things in my game, so I think I will have to start all over again cause it all gets to messy.

[Spodi]

Heres what I got so far:

http://www.vbgore.com/temp/platformer.wmv

Just did the NPCs today/yesterday. They randomly spawn on the yellow attribute tiles (spawn tiles). Have yet to add a place to define what NPCs spawn and how much per map, though. This is just 1000 randomly-moving/jumping NPCs. Theres two types of tiles - platform, which you only have drop-vertical collision on, and blocked, which you can never occupy the same space as (not shown in this).

The bandwidth usage is a bit insane*, but then again what do you expect from 1000 constantly-moving NPCs. As far as performance, the NPCs take about 0.00003 milliseconds to update individually for the collision information, and all-together the server uses about 2% of the CPU with all this going on. Not bad, not bad.

*Just realized you can't really see the debug info. The bandwidth in is like 7+KB/sec, including packet headers.

[William]

Do you have a server, since you mentioned packet header? And also, did you make a map editor?

Looks very good though, can't believe you made that all so quickly.

[Spodi]

Yup, its all multiplayer. The server keeps track of every client/NPC's movement, and they stay in sync with some Dead Reckoning algorithms along with just using the same physics. And yup, theres a map editor. :wink:

[William]

When did you have time to do all this?

[Spodi]

I'm getting paid to make it, so its all of my time. :wink:

[Matt]

I'm getting paid to make it, so its all of my time. :wink:

Done in VB? How much are you getting paid and is it from a major company or just some kid?

[Spodi]

Same rate I charge for everything else - $15/hr. :wink:

[Matt]

Same rate I charge for everything else - $15/hr. :wink:

Nice. How long have you been working on this?

[Spodi]

About 60 hours or so thus far.