14 replies to this topic

[maxthethrax]

Bionicle Universe
Download:Here
Info:I demo - only the Ta-Koro town

Its a strategy game,when you start in ta koro in the first demo

Hints:Click the houses to get new toa or new matoran

Warning!It must be played on Windows XP!

I don't mind where are you going to download it.It must be played on XP!

[CeeCee]

Im sorry? Where is the download link. Also I though backwards compatabilty worked on most games.

[Katuko]

The notification e-mail I got about a new game topic showed the URL: http://www.brickshel...le_universe.ttf

It seems that he did not put a name for the link, and so it doesn't show up otherwise.

Two things, before I even start this game:

- According to the text file I found in the Brickshelf folder, the *.TTF file has to be renamed *.EXE. I guess this was done in order to circumvent Brickshelf's ban on directly uploading *.EXE files. The correct way to do it would be to host a *.ZIP, though, which does not force the user to do any "manual labor"; especially since most users would not have turned on the showing of file extensions in the file names on their computer and thus might not be able to correctly change the file type. I have, but that is because I work with different formats a lot. Your average user will not even know this function exists.

Edited by Katuko, Dec 10 2012 - 02:55 PM.

[Jedi Knight Krazy]

Thanks to Katuko's link, I played the game and can provide a review:

 

I am very confused. 

 

I can use the arrow keys to move Tahu, but it's Pac-Man style controls - once I press an arrow key one way, Tahu will continue moving in that direction until he hits an obstacle or I press another arrow key - typically for top-down games, players will expect more traditional controls where Tahu will not move if no key is being pressed. 

 

If Tahu touches the blue thing on the top-right corner of the screen, the game just stops. I assume that means I died?

 

After a long time of randomly clicking things (Edit: I realize now that you described it in the opening post, but I was too confused by that post's missing download link to read further) I found out that if I click on the hut, an "MT" button (I assume that stands for "Matoran") appears in the top left of the screen. If I click that, a Matoran appears there, but he can't move - I'd expect to be able to select him like in Age of Empires and other similar games. Similarly, the... building... thing that Vakama is standing on seems to produce a "Toa" button, which spawns a clone of Tahu. This has a rather amusing side effect: all Tahus on screen will respond to the arrow keys. Interestingly, if any Tahu touches an enemy, they all disappear. If any Tahu touches the Deadly Blue Thing, the game exits.

 

Then there's some bugs. There's some Bohrok near the wall... but after a few moments, they seem to disappear. I can't seem to make this happen consistently, though. The Rahkshi pace back and forth menacingly at the beginning of the game, but then they retreat to the left side of the screen and stop moving. If I "glide" over to the wall, I'll stop, but if I hold down the arrow key, I'll phase right through it. 

 

You've clearly got the beginnings of a strategy game here, but honestly, I would have worked a bit more on it before posting it here. If you wanted to post a topic, some screenshots would have worked to show the essence of the game, perhaps even better than an unfinished demo. 

 

Also, I'm playing it with no difficulties (besides the ones described) on Windows 8. Why are you so insistent that it only works on XP?

[maxthethrax]

Thanks to Katuko's link, I played the game and can provide a review:

 

I am very confused. 

 

I can use the arrow keys to move Tahu, but it's Pac-Man style controls - once I press an arrow key one way, Tahu will continue moving in that direction until he hits an obstacle or I press another arrow key - typically for top-down games, players will expect more traditional controls where Tahu will not move if no key is being pressed. 

I am only a begginer,i cant make something like this,but I will try!

If Tahu touches the blue thing on the top-right corner of the screen, the game just stops. I assume that means I died?After a long time of randomly clicking things (Edit: I realize now that you described it in the opening post, but I was too confused by that post's missing download link to read further) I found out that if I click on the hut, an "MT" button (I assume that stands for "Matoran") appears in the top left of the screen. If I click that, a Matoran appears there, but he can't move - I'd expect to be able to select him like in Age of Empires and other similar games. Similarly, the... building... thing that Vakama is standing on seems to produce a "Toa" button, which spawns a clone of Tahu. This has a rather amusing side effect: all Tahus on screen will respond to the arrow keys. Interestingly, if any Tahu touches an enemy, they all disappear. If any Tahu touches the Deadly Blue Thing, the game exits.

The Deadly Blue Thing is the water,

Then there's some bugs. There's some Bohrok near the wall... but after a few moments, they seem to disappear. I can't seem to make this happen consistently, though. The Rahkshi pace back and forth menacingly at the beginning of the game, but then they retreat to the left side of the screen and stop moving. If I "glide" over to the wall, I'll stop, but if I hold down the arrow key, I'll phase right through it. 

Thanks for the info.

 

You've clearly got the beginnings of a strategy game here, but honestly, I would have worked a bit more on it before posting it here. If you wanted to post a topic, some screenshots would have worked to show the essence of the game, perhaps even better than an unfinished demo. 

Thanks

Also, I'm playing it with no difficulties (besides the ones described) on Windows 8. Why are you so insistent that it only works on XP?

Because i thinked that in windows 8 and 7 they can't be renamed like XP.

[Jedi Knight Krazy]

You're doing pretty well for a beginner! If this is one of your first projects, though, I'd recommend not doing a strategy game. Strategy is pretty hard, what with the pathfinding and the AI and the state management and all. Heck, I consider myself pretty experienced and I try to avoid making strategy games. 

 

Start small and simple. Believe me, getting too ambitious too early will only lead to disappointment - but at the same time, never think "I can't make this", just "I don't know how to make this yet". 

 

As for Windows, the default option in every recent version of Windows (back to XP, I think) is to hide file extensions. Unbeknownst to Microsoft, this annoys pretty much everyone and the first thing I do on any computer I use is turn that off. I think the best solution, though, is just to not use Brickshelf - MediaFire is another good file upload service which allows you to post EXEs and ZIPs.

[Katuko]

I'd like to recommend Dropbox as well in addition to Mediafire. You can host basically any file there.

This game has been made with Game Maker, a program I so happen to have a lot of experience with. Therefore, I'd like to suggest a few things for fixing the current issues:

- First, the controls. Releasing the arrow keys doesn't stop the Toa, but take note that there is an event called "Key Released". You can use this to provide a stop function (set speed to 0 like when on wall collision).
- Walls are not entirely solid, as you can go through them by pressing the button more than once. Either tick the checkbox to give them the solid attribute, or make the player jump to position: xprevious, yprevius upon collision.
- Spawning extra Toa controls them all with the keyboard. As a start, you might want them to use the [move towards object] action instead, and follow the player object.
- Hitting a Rahkshi kills all Rahkshi. Hitting a Bohrok kills all Toa. This happens most likely because you have set the destroy action to use [object: Toa] as the target. Instead, set it to destroy "other" and only one will be affected.
- Game closes upon hitting the water. This is not only annoying, but there is no warning that this will happen.
- The Rahkshi images are still filled with the background color, as seen when they move over things. Open them in the sprite editor and choose Remove Color to make the background transparent.

[maxthethrax]

The notification e-mail I got about a new game topic showed the URL: http://www.brickshel...le_universe.ttf

It seems that he did not put a name for the link, and so it doesn't show up otherwise.

Two things, before I even start this game:

- According to the text file I found in the Brickshelf folder, the *.TTF file has to be renamed *.EXE. I guess this was done in order to circumvent Brickshelf's ban on directly uploading *.EXE files. The correct way to do it would be to host a *.ZIP, though, which does not force the user to do any "manual labor"; especially since most users would not have turned on the showing of file extensions in the file names on their computer and thus might not be able to correctly change the file type. I have, but that is because I work with different formats a lot. Your average user will not even know this function exists.

 

 

But brickshelf do not upload the zip file

[Jedi Knight Krazy]

 
But brickshelf do not upload the zip file
 

/endquote

Right, that's why Brickshelf is a bad place to upload games. You're better off uploading to MediaFire or Dropbox.

[maxthethrax]

You're doing pretty well for a beginner! If this is one of your first projects, though, I'd recommend not doing a strategy game. Strategy is pretty hard, what with the pathfinding and the AI and the state management and all. Heck, I consider myself pretty experienced and I try to avoid making strategy games. 

 

Start small and simple. Believe me, getting too ambitious too early will only lead to disappointment - but at the same time, never think "I can't make this", just "I don't know how to make this yet". 

 

As for Windows, the default option in every recent version of Windows (back to XP, I think) is to hide file extensions. Unbeknownst to Microsoft, this annoys pretty much everyone and the first thing I do on any computer I use is turn that off. I think the best solution, though, is just to not use Brickshelf - MediaFire is another good file upload service which allows you to post EXEs and ZIPs.

 

Thank you,cool guy!

This is one of the first games,yes.But i havfe made many games and i now making a new game - Kolhii the Match!You are with one team and you are triyng to do not have goals

[wolf66849]

What program do you suggest opening the download with?

[maxthethrax]

It must be renamed something.exe

[Katuko]

I try to open it and rename it "bionicle_universe.exe" but what shows up is something along the lines of "are you sure you want to change this name to bionicle_universe.exe.tff?". a little help here would be appreciated   and like what the others said, I would recommend Mediafire.

Yeah, that there is why I also recommend even non-tech-savvy people to go into their folder display settings and turn off "Hide file extensions for common file types". For example, if you open a program folder, you might see files called:

• Paint
• Paint
• Paint

...and that can leave you confused. However, then you turn on file extensions, and see:

• Paint.exe (now you know this is the actual program)
• Paint.ico (and this is just the icon)
• Paint (and this is a shortcut, since it has no extension at all)

Alternately shortcuts can be labeled ".lnk", but they usually have a small arrow icon on them anyways. Plus, seeing file names means that when you click Rename, you will be able to edit the extension as well. As your question shows, you are renaming the file, but it still has the old ending and is thus still treated as a font file.

In order to properly rename it to ".exe" (and thus make the OS treat it as an actual EXE, since it's the last part of the filename that counts even when you have dots earlier) you need to turn on the showing of file extensions.

But in the end, this is the reason why it's better to use a host suited for EXEs rather than forcing users to mess around with manual setting such as these. There's always the option of someone doing something wrong. Heck, people have had trouble with my game because they moved the EXE out of the folder rather than creating a shortcut to it, something I know will break any program but that obviously not everyone else knows.

If a new host is not possible, the first post at least needs to be edited to clearly state how to change the file name properly. There is still no download link either, so that's a big problem too. The only link here is the one I posted, and I only got that because I'm subscribed to this forum and the note e-mail showed it to me.

Edited by Katuko, Jan 26 2013 - 02:46 PM.