Demo Sm4R [Crazy Sidescroller RPG]

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ScimitarDD

Guest


Hello!
So this is my first game I'm going to publish. I started this project on February 2016. It's my 9th sidescroller RPG (the first one from which I think the quality is good enough that I can actually publish it soon). My older projects started 2008, so this is the result of 10 years of ideas and improvements creating sidescroller RPGs. Sm4R is made with GM 8.0 because that is the version I always used (except for GM 7). I've already tried GM Studio but disliked many things about it, but that's another topic.


Sm4R is a crazy singleplayer 2D sidescroller RPG where you hunt monsters, complete quests, party up with other (bot)players and play minigames. By doing that you collect experience points and level up to increase your stats and skills. Find rare items and upgrade them to the max to become #1 of all players in your personal offline Sm4R world! Sm4R is a satire of typical MMORPG grinders. You'll be involved in varied and weird stories that may or may not remind you of your personal MMO experience.



Sm4R features:
  • Over 60 maps containing more than 300 different mobs
  • 12 boss monster maps
  • 5 special maps with many diverse minigames
  • Over 1300 unique items to equip and activate
  • Over 500 different skills to learn
  • 150 levels (each level unlocks new items and skills)


My favorite part of the game is starting to play with a weak character and getting him really badass by leveling up, farming items and upgraders. When upgrading equipment it adds visual effects to make your character look even more badass starting from +1 to +XX (find the limits out on your own).



Some facts about this Game Maker 8.0 project:
  • Around 50k-100k lines of code
  • 4000+ sprites used (doesn't contain any map parts because they are externally loaded)
  • Around 3000 hours of work (not counting the parts that I could just copy from older projects)
  • Wrote an own map editor that compiles the map to only a few layers of images with different properties
  • Wrote an own 2D skeletal animation system and editor





DEMO: https://scimitardd.itch.io/sm4r-demo

I hope you've got some feedback for me :)

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ScimitarDD
 
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trg601

Member
This looks great! The art style is very vibrant and colorful. I hope you can push out a little demo soon :)

I really like the idea of the "fake" players. I think there is a lot you can do with that. Like maybe you can find players in the world or in certain spaces for time-specific events.

So the maps are all premade right? I'm curious how they all tie together. I mean, is there an overarching story that takes you through the world, or is the game more about exploration and randomized quests?
 
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S

ScimitarDD

Guest
This looks great! The art style is very vibrant and colorful. I hope you can push out a little demo soon :)

I really like the idea of the "fake" players. I think there is a lot you can do with that. Like maybe you can find players in the world or in certain spaces for time-specific events.

So the maps are all premade right? I'm curious how they all tie together. I mean, is there an overarching story that takes you through the world, or is the game more about exploration and randomized quests?
Thanks! :)

You can find those fake players in the world. Each of those players has 3 different randomly generated characters. One character for farming, one for leveling and one for PvP. When you start a new game a list of 200 players is generated. They represent the top 200 players of the world. Those players get updated all the time (they level up, get a new equipment and get new PvP arena ranks). So it can happen that you meet the same player multiple times when you play e.g. you meet him at lvl 80 farming. Some hours later you meet him again: "Oh, he is already lvl 92". All other players that are not in that top 200 list are temporary and you won't meet them again (psst, better not tell that detail anyone :D).
Here is a small list how you can interact with the fake players:
  • Spawn them (there is a rare item for that) or find them randomly spawned
  • Invite them to a party (if they think you are good enough. They don't want to powerlvl you)
  • PvP them in the arena
  • Watch them getting stronger in a top 100 lvl and arena ranking list (their stats increase live when you see them and also passively when you can't see them)
  • Talk to them in a chat (scripted for stories)
  • Annoy them (e.g. kill steals, they really don't like that :D)
About the maps: Yes, they are premade. There are different biomes in which multiple maps are lined up e.g. the first biome contains the maps from lvl 1 to 60. Each map has its own climate so each biome has its own appearance for cold and warm weather. I want each map to be unique so they are not random. Quests aren't random too and they are irrelevant to the story. The story is about you playing the game and interact with the fake players and follow their stories. More of that is shown in the long gameplay video which is linked in the first post ;). Quests from NPCs (static NPCs, no fake players) are just parts of the "fake online" world of the game.

I'm going to show you some of that soon in new screenshots and videos. :)
 

trg601

Member
Wow. I didn't realize how in depth that is with the fake players. That is really super neat. I think it would be so interesting to interact with them and watch them grow and change.
I actually have had some ideas for games with ai humans that learn and grow like real people but I've never gotten around to making anything so it is really cool to see this!
 
S

ScimitarDD

Guest
Well done :) looks very in-depth. How about some parallax backgrounds?
Thanks :). I tried that in a very early version of the game. But I didn't like it that much so I removed it. Maybe it didn't look good because graphics were really bad back then and now it would look better. But now it is not possible to implement it anymore because before the final maps are created they run through 3 different programs to create fully optimized images which are used e.g. for coloring, collision, lighting, ... . That means that images get cleverly combined to improve performance a lot. For each map there are 5 to 7 images in total that overlay to create the final map. Making parallax backgrounds would require like 3 more images to keep the current coloring and lighting system working which means there would be like 10 overlaying gamescreen-sized images. And that would make the game a bit laggy for older laptops.^^

Wow. I didn't realize how in depth that is with the fake players. That is really super neat. I think it would be so interesting to interact with them and watch them grow and change.
I actually have had some ideas for games with ai humans that learn and grow like real people but I've never gotten around to making anything so it is really cool to see this!
If you are interested how that works, here is the code of the "growing" simulation. This is just the boring part, because that simulation runs when you can't see the fake player but the code for the fake players leveling live is a bit too complex to show :D.
To sum it up, this code decides randomly and by some parameters how much experience a fake player gets in a certain time period. This script is executed once each few seconds.
When that fake player is spawned later it obtains the simulated stats (new lvl and exp) and the random seed of that player decides which new equipment and skills are then generated so it matches to that player's unique style.
 
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ScimitarDD

Guest
To show some interactions with the fake players I made a short video about hunting with them together and annoying them. More about that soon! ;)
 
S

ScimitarDD

Guest
Today I wanna show you the PvP arena in which you can fight bot characters and watch bot characters fight to death. You can also feel the strength of your high level character by fighting and maybe one hitting a low lvl noob. :D

 
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