As obsessed as I am with keeping track on everything I do that can be considered productive at some point, I found this site called The Backloggery.
It's good-looking and very handy, I like it ;P

Since the past week was school-free, I took my time and, while working on my last SFM (Source Filmmaker, an animating tool) video, I finished Soul Reaver. Gosh! It was a hard, but inspiring game! Hard in the puzzle meaning; sometimes the solution wasn't clear at all and there are, pretty much, no hints anywhere to aid you in your quest.
And yet I have to beat its sequel (SR2) and a prequel-esque game (Blood Omen 2), to play the game I wanted to, in first place... Legacy of Kain: Defiance. I remember having that one in a DVD ages ago before I lost it... I wonder if I'll ever get another retail copy of it :/

The storyline is beautiful on the Legacy of Kain series, you know... S_S

As Darkstar2 pointed out, it would also be helpful to know if other Java applications are exhibiting this translation bug. Also, please attempt to File->Preferences and change the translation.

The only Java application I've "installed" besides LGM would be the Runescape Launcher, though it works fine about this; displaying everything in english.
Switched to every other language, some labels do translate, but there are still some missing ones, like if they were never translated at all.
Also, the last selectable language (Turkish I think) causes LGM to crash while loading :/

Had no problem importing APNG to LGM, after all if not mistaken that is is the format used internally.

BTW I noticed when I opened your EGM file in LGM, the enigma settings below extension displayed in spanish......   How is this possible that LGM change language based on the EGM file, first time I see this

Well I can't import them myself, APNG don't show because they're not a "SPI supported image" format (and if I use "All types" then it throws me an error, lol).

Another fact here: I haven't even set my ENIGMA installation to Spanish. But somehow it has always been like that, in spanish by itself.

APNGs can be viewed trough Firefox, Robert.

Very strange indeed.

Ok I extracted the spr_0.apng
I could view the sprite just fine.

How could you view a 169 bytes-sized sprite? It doesn't contain anything! Or at least that's what my Firefox tells me from my point of view here.
You mean you extracted the EGM file I attached, and viewed those APNG files?

Before you saved that project and sent attachment were the sprites visible?

Try making a new project with the sprites,
save it once and attach it.

Yes, and that's exactly what I did.

Ben, I am also unable to reproduce this issue. What format are you saving in?

The one I attached in my previous post; EGM.

Well I reproduced the error.
BTW, get used to that, there are tons of ways to force a crash in LGM Remember the tip I gave you, save your projects frequently. There is probably shite pile of stuff to be fixed / redone, more so than any remaining dev(s) will ever have time to fix

This is not even remotely the first time I've dealt with this kind of problem. I often backup everything I develope.

Can you reproduce this with a new project, importing just this sprite, saving project and reloading ?

That's EXACTLY what I tried.

I attach an example then. It only contains the sprites; spr_0 for the PNG source, spr_1 for the whole GIF strip, spr_2 for a single image from the GIF strip.

Does the sprite only disappear in the resource tree or also in the room ? Is it still visible in the room?

It becomes a blank sprite. Like when you make a new sprite without loading anything into it yet. That's what happens.

What I do usually is clear the temp, close enigma, delete programdata/enigma and re-install from the latest portablezip. Try that, even if you have run the latest version.  I'm using the latest portablezip from 22nd may and I've loaded / closed the project containing your sprite many times here and it worked.

I still get the issue after performing all those tasks... I'm amazed how it doesn't happen to you, but only to me ;/


Btw it throws an error (not a crashing one) if you try to load a sprite out of its boundaries (e.g. trying to make a 32px heigh strip off my 24px sheet).

Like a week ago. Maybe two. I don't really update often unless I really need to, so I don't keep my track on it :/
I also tried the current release just now (such coincidence) in another folder and it doesn't work any better there,either.

I use EGM already, that's not the problem.

It's a problem I've had since a good time ago, while making my game (from scratch).
Even making new projects don't help me, the sprites don't load.

This is my issue: I have this 144x24 spritesheet (heheh, quite simple).



If I try to load it as a normal sprite from PNG format, or as a strip from any format, next time I load my project it'll be a blank sprite within my resources.
It's not a critical issue, but it's very annoying, at least.

I think you're not only referring to tilesets, but also objects and collisions involved within a whole landscape, which should be done trough paint tools. Am I right?
That's near to impossible in the current ENIGMA state, mainly because the collision system is very primitive and only supports rectangle hitboxes. UNLESS you program a collision system yourself, which is a quite hard task in itself :/

The autotileset can be done by scripting. I bet you can find some examples of this in the GMC.
The multiple tiles thing is something useful, but not really because it serves to little specific cases where you don't want to waste 10 extra seconds to place the tiles in your room.

I see you're getting a little obsessed about Harri's standards, from your post
lol :p

If I made a game I would like as many people playing it and I would make it flexible and configurable such as:

* Tutorial being optional.
* Hints/subs along the way optional.
* Waypoints/saving optional.

Well I considered that first one too by, like said in my OP, adding a tutorial option to the main menu.
I didn't think about the ability to turn hints off, because despite being a good and simple method, my game won't keep telling the player to press X to Y, every time Y is possible.
The last one is more like a difficulty setting. Good idea in itself, though.

Mind you the gaming industry is like show business / music industry, film industry.....you will get harsh criticism no matter what.

I know that, but it's always a good challenge to avoid them as much as possible.

[TL;DRHow far should I go about tutorials on my platform game? Should I even include 'em? What do you think?]

Brief introduction.

By the 90's, some games were including tutorials, explaining how to play. Some were just explaining the most complex areas. Some weren't, but since they had control configuration one could figure it all out.
Today, most games are really explaining you how to do everything. While this remains mostly good for complicated games with loads of buttons and actions to do, there are things that shouldn't be told in my opinion, like "PRESS W TO MOVE FORWARD" (basically, everything that is too obvious already).


Some people consider that tutorials take away part of the essence about a game's fun factor; those prefer to learn by themselves. This is an issue I noticed since a group that's within a YouTube channel, loooong ago -I can't recall the name-, talked about this. What they said could be resumed in this:

Without tutorials, playing a game from the beginning to the end is like life itself. You first try to move on yourself. Smash buttons around, those you think that would be used for such purposes. When you discover how movement works (left-right, 4dirs, whatever), you then proceed to advance in that game; that's when you find boundaries/limits, obstacles, or death itself (in this last case you'll probably be within a game with multiple lifes so it doesn't matter). In the first case, it's a cycle until you get to any of the other 2 cases. In the second case, you'll have to get over that obstacle. This can result in learning a new part of the gameplay (like attacking or jumping), or stopping to figure out the obstacle, for the case of puzzles. You'll end repeating this formula until you end the game.

While I liked this concept, I'm perfectly aware that some people don't like putting all this "effort" into games (and as a product "seller", I'm trying to cover the most amount of public I can). The first moments of the game (if not the whole game) experience is greatly affected by the simple idea of tutorials. What I aimed to, in my game, was including some sort of help within the game, which shouldn't be in the first level, and either as a plain "help/controls screen". It was more like a "tutorial" option in a main menu. However, this method may be kind of annoying, at least to myself, because I wouldn't feel like I'm progressing in the game while in that tutorial - and that's what I hate the most.
There's also the idea of gameplay hints, which I'm using for my current early release (within the levels for now), trough the placement of signboards where it feels needed.

I'd like to read other points of view, though. I'm not really sure what to keep doing here.

TL;DR

How far should I go about tutorials on my platform game? Should I even include 'em? What do you think?


Off-Topic side note!

©2007-2012 The ENIGMA team
ENIGMA - home of lesbian seagull raps.

...k
Didn't notice this before...

...lol.

Just about everything EA gets its hands on these days it destroys.

I have to agree with this. There's this one -modern- franchise from which I really enjoyed the first title, but then two sequels came and destroyed most of its essence.




Oh, CRYSIS. The first game wasn't all about fighting and destroying everything. I actually finished the game playing in that cloak mode and using strategy to avoid being detected as much as possible. Of course there were parts that did focus on killing, but they were fun and not present all the time, so they didn't get repetitive.
The sequels... Exactly the opposite :/

Which is the creepiest game you've ever played?

I don't really play that many creepy games. The last one I actually was scared of playing was Doom3 back in the day. Nothing else really comes to mind.

DOOM 3 was just great. So many tense moments where darkness was everywhere and you couldn't see where were you shooting at all.

But haven't you tried, like, Amnesia, Penumbra, Resident Evil (3 and downwards), Silent Hill, Obscure? Not of your interest?

And I also think that maybe PC gaming could have a revival. We start to finally get games that previously where often console exclusives.

I never thought different from that. Or even more critical, I didn't ever think that PC could be dying. Steam gets good sales as it serves to show you how many people are currently still going for the PC games. There's also pages like this to demostrate that.

Anyway, I still play SimCity 2000 from time to time in my DOSBox. You can not convince me this game was not phenomenal for its time, and is not still the same today.

I played that on SNES when I was child! It's not my type of game but at the moment I had fun already by looking at its beautiful isometric pixelart graphics. And the music was, as expected from Maxis, pretty good too! Another example of great Maxis music here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujAUJN-VR8M

As far as your last comment, I don't know exactly who you are aiming with this, but I have not gone "oh older games are better just because they are" I usually back up my arguments in length if you bothered to read my posts.  Not a one liner person.

I could have said the opposite but you deleted your post :V