Thanks, Johnny. Let me know what you think of the HUD after you play it.
A bit of personal criticism:
It's big (in relation to the rest of the game window). FYI - We tried to make the map smaller but then it was hard to see and, therefore, wasn't really useful.
The player's level icon (that blue ball) isn't really obvious. I played around with a few ideas (most notably a lightning bolt icon) but all of my other drawings looked crappy. Since I was running out of time to get the HUD done, I cheated and made something that looked good but didn't necessary work for the HUD.
The text on the Inventory screen is hard to read. I was going to make a glowing affect but, again, ran out of time.
Any other criticism is welcome! These are just a few things that occur to me immediately when I look at it.
Dungeon Dash is awesome, Jess. I've been playing it for a few days now
Did you do all the graphics yourself? The enemies look great IMO. Also props for the NES Wizards and Warriors font!!
I really think you should incorporate a shop of some kind though, even if you got to visit a separate shop level with no enemies after the 5th, 10th, 15th floor or something it'd help a lot. You could have all the gear lined up in rows on the ground and make it on another MMF frame so that walking over them doesn't instantly destroy the object but instead adds it to your inventory and subtracts the cost from your gold pieces. I know gold = points however I was constantly looking for a way to spend my hard earned cash and it never came about while playing.
I don't know how much gear you have in this game but you should add a lot more. The only things I got that seemed like rare finds were pink bunny slippers and some awesome sword (of Alyssa?) that increased my attack from 7 to 12 and made a huge difference. I know it's only 20 events but shit that contest is over man, I say add 100 events to this puppy and run with it.
P.S: Enemies with projectiles would increase the difficulty and mix it up more too.
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Yep, I did all of the graphics! I drew up a number of HUD borders before I came up with the one you see now. Most borders were rejected because they took up too much space. I can post some of the attempts here if you're interested.
Also, I really enjoyed drawing the map you see in the HUD. I did some Google image searches on word combinations like "old scroll", "old parchment", etc. to come up with some references. I think I took some seed colors from actual photographs. The rest of the map colors I think I modified in GraphicsGale.
The enemies were also a lot of fun to draw! Thanks! I'll show my age by saying that I played a lot of Ultima III on the IBM PCjr as a teen. So, drawing these enemies (with 2 frames of animation each) was pretty cool. Andy and I really wanted tons more monsters but I just ran out of time to draw them. My wife actually drew the first "fire monster" on a napkin and I turned it into a "fire elemental" with the idea that I'd eventually make water, earth, and air elementals as well. I ran out of time and could only make a water elemental (which is a little crude and would probably have been updated). If I had more time, the next two monsters to be made were a dragon and a unicorn - both requested by my oldest daughter.
A shop to spend your gold would be a really cool idea. We were pretty limited on what we could get away with considering we had the 20 event limit per frame. And, since you mention it, we wanted to do enemies with projectile attacks but couldn't fit that in. If we'd had the room for it - it would have been there!
I do like the idea of a shop to spend your money. I think I drew 5 gear items for each category of helm, weapon, shield, armor, and boots. Some of those special item names you see are Andy and I having fun with the game: Sword of Alessia (that's my oldest daughter), Axe of Maia (my youngest daughter), and Sword of Sum (Andy's last name). Our entry name of JABS is actually Jess Andy Bowers Sum. I also really thought it would be funny to have a warrior walking around in Bunny Slippers -- so those are the best boots you can get in the game right now.
Again, just like the monsters, we wanted to have as many items as possible. Drawing them was fun but, like everything else, I was crunched for time. I would have made them all look unique but had to start doing pallette swaps on a few at the end. I'd love to make more of them - and incorporate your idea of a shop. That'd be a very cool way to break up the fighting and introduce more RPG elements into the game!
Well active seems to be a little problem at the moment.
But since I was mimicking some old version of hooghaar, I was thinking of something like this:
And here are the two HUDs from the two latest version of hooghaar:
(hh beer)
(hhxl)
Bullets and keys will be left out, but coins should be able to receive some attention, here is a mock-up:
Actually I had no idea what to use as backdrop for the HUD, so I made something which looks like some piece of metal.
I disagree with you taking out the keys and ammo status. Unless you have removed the need for keys and gave the hero unlimited ammo that is.
While I don't have any keys in my game, there are guns with limited ammo. If you run out of bullets, but have a spare clip remaining, the reloading animation plays. The thing about that is, you can take damage while this animation is playing.
If I removed the info showing the number of bullets currently in the clip and the number of spare clips.. there is a very high chance that the player will not realize they need to reload. In other words, the enemy could score 'cheap hits' on the hero because the player unknowing reloaded in the danger zone. Something to think about.
I'm with Hayo - I like that last one a lot. Would you mind if I played with it in GraphicsGale and posted a few ideas for you? I wouldn't have time to do it today but should either tomorrow or the day after.
Basically it's just the first one but with a different background and updated graphics.
@Jess Bowers - You can play around in GraphicsGale with the last HUD for posting some idea's, just remember: it was created with the GIMP (and has a little bit of transparency in it).
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It's big (in relation to the rest of the game window). FYI - We tried to make the map smaller but then it was hard to see and, therefore, wasn't really useful.
Edited by Jess Bowers
jenswa.neocities.org
(hh beer)
(hhxl)
