Hey all, I have to first thank you panda3d community for helping me make this possible, and so I present a alpha build of my project, a long time ago I developed little gamebooks, but about 10 months ago people on reddit said that they couldn’t get it.
And so, I was given advice to turn the gamebooks into a video games, daunted but determined, I searched out a way to do this, I eventually found Panda3d and you guys, and so with your help came this demo, thank you.
A game about a anthropomorphic wedding gown that goes on adventures, inspired by the likes of “Crash Bandicoot” and “Tony Hawk Pro-Skater”, Vortex (and her brother Victor) get tied up in a perplexing mystery, join them in this perpendicular platformer as they spin off half pipes into the air, spin on walls, and fling away many enemies!
EDIT: I have updated the screen shots with the look.
Screenshots:
I look forward to the feedback, the game is still in it’s alpha stage, so things are subject to change, I,m still looking into video capture to get some videos up on youtube later.
Edit: I have included a video, sorry for no sound, but I have replaced the silence with the game’s music, take a look. (this is the 10/12/19 speed update)
Updated Gameplay:
oh, well, the thing is I don’t know how to use linux, I can output a runtime, but it would be purely up to people to test it from start to finish.
But thank you for the congratulations.
Edit: can you bootcamp linux? (IE dual-boot linux on a mac)
Edit2: so I spent the night installing linux to a virtual machine to test the runtime, and I,m quite impressed, it ran at full speed while being in a virtual machine! now that is what I call efficient.
So here you go! a bit hastily tested, but I was able to complete both levels, click on the download link below to obtain the linux version (tested with Linux Mint 19.1 xfce 64bit). http://www.literaturegames4all.com/vtp1lin.zip
Hey everyone, as I was working on my new project, which was built off this one, I used the assets from this one to update some features for that project, after doing so, seeing as the assets completely worked with this game, I just went ahead and applied the updated script to the assets of this game.
Which there updated this game, what fallows is better loading times, a fixed skybox, fixed physics for the enemies, and a new cartoony look, enjoy (updated links and pictures are in the original post)
Hey there! it has been some time, but I have just been tinkering with somethings all this time, while my tinkering I discovered the shader in blender 3d and I had it on “flat” as the default, which is cool as it gave me the polygonal look, but then I tested smooth, and oh boy, does it now looks more like a 6th generation game now.
I so I edited all the models with this shading and here I’ am posting a update for you, I have changed the screen shots and added the new links in the 1st post above, over the time I had to use up more disk drive space and my thumb drive does not work anymore.
Because of these, sadly the linux and windows compiled versions go untested, though they should fully work just as the tested mac version, but just in case, if you encounter a problem do not hesitate to contact me or post here, thank you for your cooperation.
Oh, I forgot to mention, there were some bug fixes done to this version, such as the characters do not just slide out of no where, the game does not scramble the sliding sound (nor does it slow down because of it), some sound effects where fixed in the title screen, camera during warping does not just fly in random positions.
And a couple of hud features being put into place.
You are the first ever to give feedback you have been a big help, thank you for playing the game, sorry, I believe that you can “Twirl dive” while airing (while the character is in the air twirling, or you call shuriken), by hitting the “S” key.
The thing is, the “shuriken” animation is the character actually twirling so fast he/she is like a spinning top or that saw on the adventures of sonic the hedgehog, it’s just I don’t a have good transition between the two animations yet.
I have included a PDF manual for the game which you should find in the package, but I wanted to include on screen HUD features for guiding the player, and I was going to but didn’t have enough time then, anyway enough of my rambling, thanks for playing, I will use this feedback to improve the game.
Okay, I’ve played it a little. I can confirm that it does run under Ubuntu Linux 18 (on my machine, at least).
I’m honestly struggling with the controls a bit. (I will say, however, that I seldom play games that control in this way, so part of the issue may be my own unfamiliarity.)
To start with, the camera feels a bit counter-intuitive to me–in particular, I keep expecting the camera-controls to work in the opposite manner to the way in which they do. I also find that “Z” feels like an un-intuitive control for camera-tilt when its opposite control is “W”.
The movement controls are for the most part fine, I think. However, I do find it a bit awkward to press “X” while keeping my fingers on WASD (for the camera).
Overall, I do wonder whether the game might not work better if controlled via a gamepad than the keyboard.
By the way, kudos for including both male and female characters, while nevertheless letting them both be dresses.
Thank you for playing Thaumaturge, the camera is still in alpha and is not far removed from the roaming ralph one, do you have a key combination suggestions of the camera? you are right that this game was designed based on console games.
So the “A”, “W”, “D”, and “Z” is thought of as a second “D-pad” and the “S” and “X” keys are thought of as a like a gameboy/NES button setup, I did actually hurt my hand a few times from this setup, so I thinking of ways to implement a better button combination, suggestions would be a big help.
Hahaha Thanks, But you know, the whole male dress idea was not intentional, actually the male character “Victor The Pretty” was supposed be Vortex The Pretty’s (the female dress) “Amy Rose”/boyfriend from ideas from a future later installment, hence the casual name compared to Vortex’s.
However, I have encountered some people who are either uncomfortable with or change their mannerisms when playing as a girl (both in real life and on the internet), and made changes to the game to reflect this even before this was a video game some years back.
Long story short, it was a cheap way to prevent the game from being labeled a “Girl’s game” (even though ironically it still is), and I made him a dress to simply fit the gameplay and style of the game, but anyway, If you have ideas for the key combinations, I,m open to them.
That said, I think that a NES controller, at least, places its action-buttons quite separately from its D-pad, while this places them very close together.
But perhaps more importantly, I think that the hand-positions that are generally used for a controller are rather different to the hand-positions generally used for a keyboard. Thus I’m not sure of the wisdom of attempting to emulate a controller layout on a keyboard. Instead, I’d suggest coming up with a layout that works for a keyboard.
I think that you’re already partway there: having one hand on the arrows-keys and one on the left of the keyboard seems like a good idea.
What I’d suggest from there, then, is this:
Instead of controlling the camera with “WADZ”, control it via the more-standard “WASD”. (Unless you have a keyboard that lays out the keys such that “Z” is placed where “S” generally is in the US layout…?)
Instead of “S” and “X” as action-buttons, I suggest “space” and one other–perhaps “E”.
Specifically, I’d suggest using the following:
“Space” for the “spinning” action–it’s easy enough to operate the space-bar without moving one’s hand away from the WASD position, I feel.
“E” for interacting–it’s a fairly common key for that these days, I think.
Oh, okay I see what you are saying, essentially a “secondary directional layout” for the left side like the directional pad on the right, once again sorry, I meant the action keys only are laid out like a NES layout, the whole layout as a whole was trying to capture more of a N64 layout.
Where there were directional buttons for the camera controls while having a joystick (the keyboard directional keys substitutes this) control the player’s movement, and 2 action buttons for the player’s behavior, but I’ll get back to you later, I,m going to attempt your setup now, thanks for the tip.
hmm, okay, so I tested your setup, the camera setup is okay, but the space bar felt a little too far, especially because I,m moving the camera while spinning, maybe because I,m using a laptop? the “E” key for interaction would have worked but it also tied to a crucial feature and that is “Twirl Diving”.
What that does is when you are in the air spinning it will cause the character to move forward and if there is a perpendicular surface the character will adhere to it, you also need to hold down the twirl key (in this setup it would be space) to adhere to these surfaces.
That’s fair–finding a comfortable control-scheme may take some experimentation. Use my suggestion as a starting-point!
(I will say that, with my left hand resting on the WASD keys, my thumb rests comfortably on the space-bar. That said, if you’re finding that it doesn’t work, then that’s the main thing, I think.)
maybe that is it, I was using my index finger instinctually, not my thumb, but you are right it is going to take some work to find a decent slot for the now “e” key.
Ah, yeah–moving your index finger like that is likely to be a pain, I fear!
As to “Twirl Diving”, what about assigning that to “shift”? That way the player needn’t move their fingers from the WASD keys to activate it. (On my keyboard and with my hands, at least, “shift” falls just under the pinky finger.)
Can that be done? what would be the panad3d syntax be? “shift” and “shift-up”? sorry I haven’t read up about this in manuel because the roaming ralph demo already had syntax in place.
But placing my hand in those positions real quickly seems like you got something here.
Edit: so I tried the shift key approach and some of the controls lock up while holding it down, I wonder if that has anything to do with mac os?
Edit2: what about the “X” key, it is near the space anyway, I noticed when I was playing that only one of these keys need to be held down at a given time, but there were cases where both needed to be pressed.
