Tops the Pig is a kind of mascot I invented one day when trying to make my own comic series. Before I owned a computer. Although I had designed a large number of characters for my comic preferred Tops and another of my characters (Buzz the Squirrel). After getting a computer around 2000/2001, and discovering The games factory and the click community I quickly churned out a few quick games starring them. *Ah the days when you could make a game in a week without being flamed to kingdom come.*
Well anyway it's been a really long time since I last made a Tops the Pig game and they are REALLY dated. I wasn't all that happy with them at the time but I lacked the know how to make anything better. But hopefully ive learned a few things in the 9 years since then. Well, Tops 3 was finished in 2003.
I'm determined to make this much better than the original.
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Since the last update ive actually spent most of the time on my game fixing the engine after inexplicably breaking it. I'm working again now so progress will be slow.
First of all adding some events broke some of the attack moves and animations, so i had to recode it all. Then I decided to recode all of the enemies events, but i can't remember why now lol.
However even more recently Ive discovered some unusual quirks with the MMF2 runtime. I wont say it's a bug because it could all be just bad code on my part however it's getting a it annoying seeing things not work when ive never had a problem with the same code in all my other TGF and MMF2 games before.
An example of these kind of bugs is an enemy that just flat out refuses to shoot (launch) projectiles. I spent a long time trying to find a reason for it and eventually just gave up. They now have an object created next to them that gets moved manually.
Another thing is a problem with Fine collision and Box collision. I couldn't work out why fine collision got ignored with my detectors on active objects when backdrop objects worked fine.
Apparently MMF2 doesn't like mixing fine collision with box collision so it makes both objects use box collision.
Thanks to Rox Flame for confirming it.
Ok here is a video showing off a nice parallax water surface effect Phizzy helped me to code. (ok he did it all for me)
It's based on the Sonic 3 parallax effect seen in Hydrocity and Launch base zones.
Hello.
It seems like Ive been doing an awful lot of work on my game without really making any notable progress.
I'm yet to actually make any levels for the game. However this is what Ive done since the last update.
Added changing backgrounds at runtime.
Basically instead of a single background per level it can swap between two. I don't think it's a very useful feature really but it might look nice if I make two slightly different backgrounds and swap between them mid level. I dunno.
More complicated baddies
This has been a pain to code. Ive never made enemies with internal detectors before so making them all interact with the player in so many ways takes a lot of time. They have around 40 lines each plus more for the qualifier events they share.
An example of interaction would be an enemy that carries a weapon. You can land on their head and make them drop it. Landing on their head a second time stuns them for a short period. Or you can just kill them with punches and such.
Conversations
In an attempt to add more of a story I needed to add a conversation engine. I dunno the correct term for it. Displaying text from an ini. It took me ages to work out because Ive never even bothered trying anything like that before. Thanks to a tutorial on the Clickteam website I learned a few things you can use in the expression editor .
Overworld map
Instead of just copying my Lil' pirate map with fixed positions representing different levels Ive decided to make the map completely free to walk around on. It's not exactly difficult to do either and is probably easier to add hidden rooms and make the game more of an adventure than just a platformer.
2 player support
Just a little experiment I tried with an AI player. It was much easier than I thought it would be. I thought if the game is going to be an adventure there is no reason why the player can't have the odd companion in certain levels. You should be able to swap between computer controlled AI and a second player. But once again Ive never tried any of this before so it might take a long time to get working perfectly.
Some useless facts
This will be my 6th Tops the pig release.
The main MFA is 810kb
There will only be 3 frames used in total
So far there are 1176 events!
So yeah, quite a big update but little real progress, lol.
Maybe I should start making levels or something.
Since the start of making this remake Ive wanted to actually have a bit more interaction with Non player characters and a small story. But I'm still struggling to decide what kind of game I'm really trying to make here.
The original thoughts of a 2D Mario 64 seemed great but actually going back to the same levels again wont be very interesting unless i make them big.
So I figured just making them typical A to B levels with hidden collectibles that will open up new areas should suffice.
I also had a long think about how my games are often fairly generic. Then I thought, 'sod it I'll make it however I want'. I'm not actually selling it so I don't have to appeal to try to be innovative just to keep marketing happy and get a few more sales. But hey no one said a bad word about New super mario bros for being TOO much like the old mario games. I just think people don't know what they're talking about.
Also I recall people calling my previous game a Kirby clone based on what the main character looks like. So yeah, I'm not changing my game based on quickly formed ignorant opinions.
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AndyUK 
Tops the Pig is a kind of mascot I invented one day when trying to make my own comic series. Before I owned a computer. Although I had designed a large number of characters for my comic preferred Tops and another of my characters (Buzz the Squirrel). After getting a computer around 2000/2001, and discovering The games factory and the click community I quickly churned out a few quick games starring them. *Ah the days when you could make a game in a week without being flamed to kingdom come.*
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