Updated 2013-12-01 - added a playable demo { Mr. Link }
Updated 2013-12-08 - Three levels! Sound! Animations!

After seeing BaukjeSpirit's game screenshots, I felt like playing around with games myself. I downloaded Stencyl, since it has native Linux support, and came up with something I'm pretty pleased with so far - originally intended to be a game with the "Fire Serpent" ( viewtopic.php?f=11&t=6606 )

It's meant to be a joke on the An Ember in the Wind story I've been posting art from for a while. I don't know if I'll finish it - I just needed a diversion from the actual project itself. If I think I can make it into a polished game, maybe it'd help drum up some publicity for the book, so I'll have to see.

You can play as either Mara or John Bartlebee - the poor man who has grown tired of listening his hitchhiker tell Mara's story - and decided to come up with his own retelling. Mara is the "normal" character, who is subjected to John Bartlebee's assortment of cliche video game jokes. If you win as Mara, you can play as John Bartlebee, who is subjected to the hitchhiker's "revenge retelling." I don't think he'd have a whole new set of levels - he'd just have to go through the original set with one hitpoint.

Anyway, here's a video of the test run. All art was done in GIMP

Video 1!

Apparently Stencyl uses Box2D, so time to have fun with physics! If you charge the enemies fast enough, you can push them off cliffs.

Totally cool!

Thanks

It took me forever to get a basic AI for the enemy skeletons to work. They'll walk toward the player and attack if nearby, but can't jump yet. They'd happily walk off a cliff if the player were on the other side of it.

Very cool, nice work!! Reminds me a lot of the old school platform games, especially jill of the jungle. Nice animations too!

Thanks I grew up on those old Apogee and Epic games. When we were little, my brother and I used to draw out huge levels on paper, but neither of us could program then.

I have a renewed appreciation for Jill of the Jungle. It barely ran on the family 386, even though games with better graphics ran fine. There are quite a few intricacies in the controls (like the knife) other platformers didn't have. Commander Keen IV, for instance, looks more polished, but the controls themselves are simple.

Wow! Much more impressive than my little puzzle, that's for sure! xD
Did you have to code for that to work? I noticed the extension for the game test is .swf which I think would be flash script. :O

Nice work! :3

I've had to write a lot of code; I've forgotten how difficult it can be to get basic things to work right.

Stencyl comes with a good selection of basic functionality you can "plug into" the game - I assume like Gamemaker has. I've had to extend most of the beginning set, though. AI for the NPCs, for instance, was lacking entirely. It's fun when it works, but AI can be frustrating when it doesn't.


Thanks!

Tell me about it! I'm trying to get sound to work in my little test thing, and it likes one sprite but not the other one. >.<
I'm too blonde to code so I use the "plug in" thingy as you call it. xD

That was a pretty cool result Merrek.

These types of programs can be a good way to learn how to code, although a formal education in programming will speed up the process and make it easier to learn new languages. I taught myself how to code by extending MUD servers, and then I minored in computer science in college.

I looked into Gamemaker, but some of the criticisms on its Wikipedia page turned me off of it. I understand their frustration with people not paying for their copies, but they looked to be going after pirates a bit too aggressively.



@lylejk

Thanks I'm trying to make a "real" level now.

I read on a Gamemaker blog that the wiki page on Wikipedea is actually very butchered and mixed up, even people who tried to fix it did a lousy job.

It's an okay program I'm just too blonde and chicken to learn how to code. I have Jmonkey which is a 3D game engine but I'd have to learn Javascript AND Blender...I wish I could do those things but I'm not confidant that I can do that...at all! xD

You got the advantage with taking coding as a minor.
I think only really smart people code. xD

I haven't found the patience to learn Blender yet So far coding this game hasn't required anything beyond what I taught myself in high school. Computer science is more about the theory of computing than learning a particular language.

I'm working on programming this door, which will need a key to activate. Also, the pit to the left was accidentally evil. One misstep sends you tumbling down a shaft of spikes. Oops!

Me too, played a lot of them when I was young, and still playing

I've never heard of the program 'Stencyl' though. I've looked it up, the coding looks a little similar to Construct 2's coding, but more complexer.

Added a playable demo!

http://www.stencyl.com/game/play/22746

Use arrow keys to move
z - jump
x - run
c - attack

Some tips: You can jump off of walls to climb them. Floating green gems heal you, but not beyond 20 hitpoint. Don't take healing gems you don't need; you may want to go back for them later.

Learn the timing of the fireballs in order to safely pass them.

Wow I'm a noob, I keep dying on the spikes and I climb about as good as a carrot.
Nicely made though!

I may have to toy with the learning curve I got really good at making all the jumps after testing the code so many times, I may have a skewed sense of how difficult the game is at first.

Welllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll I am really a n00b with 2D games, I still loose at super Mario. LOL
So it's probably more me than you. xD

~

merrak: ooooh, that is impressive! i ave to try this one!! i really like the mara character in the game, she's very recognisable.

It seemed like 80's games were harder than 90's games, which were harder than 2000's.



I'm making a new level 1 with a gentler learning curve. Originally I was thinking "Syobon Action" level of difficulty for the first level - but Syobon is a play on something familiar and I don't think it'd work here.


@AnMal ~ Thanks The sprites were easy to make. There are a lot of them, but they're only 24 x 48 pixels - not much room for detail