Vial: A puzzle game

A number of you have probably heard me babbling about this in IRC. I've actually made slight progress on it now, so I decided I'd make a thread for it. (Nobody's ever done that before!)

So let's get this started.

Gameplay:

Vial is going to be a "get-through-the-room" style of puzzle game with an overhead view. The gimmick to the game is that you have a magic vial with a potion in it. Whenever you use the potion, the vial magically refills - but it has a different potion in it with different effects.

At the start of the game, the vial has only two potions in it and the puzzles are fairly simple. At the end of every stage, you gain a new potion, and then you'll be faced with more complex puzzles that require it. (There may be a few other upgrades that don't just give you a new potion, but they'll still be potion-oriented. For instance, towards the end you get a second vial.)

The basic idea for this game comes from, of all things, my [url=https://mspaforums.com/showthread.php?25013-The-Further-Pointless-Adventures-of-Nopor-Puss%21&p=4176468&viewfull=1#post4176468]Nopor Puss adventure[/b]. I introduced a bottle that kept refilling with different potions for the sake of a gag, and then a little later on I thought "hey, I could actually do something with that."

Story:

(Currently suffering from a lack of proper nouns, but I'll come up with something before long.)

There are two warring kingdoms. One is built around magic, the other is built around science and technology. They've been at war for a while now.

The magic kingdom is powered by sources of magical energy, which I am generically calling the Elements. When the game opens, the other kingdom has stolen most of the Elements. You're the princess of the magical kingdom, and you've decided to sneak into enemy territory and get the Elements back.

This is where the vial comes in. It's able to store the Elements, giving our as-yet-unnamed heroine a way to bring them back. Whenever you retrieve an Element, the vial stores its power and uses it to create a new potion.

I do plan to have this plot be more than an excuse, but ultimately it's meant to be a supplement for the gameplay. Because of this, all cutscenes will be skippable; my current plan is a straightforward "Level Select" screen, and when you reach a cutscene on that screen, it's marked as one and you can just go straight to the next level if you don't want to see it. I'll probably code in a way to cancel out of a cutscene, too.

Current Progress:

Not much right now, but what I do have is pretty important to actually working on it. I've been messing around with Game Maker for a few days now, and with some help (and sample code) from Mehg and Norivia, I now have the most basic functions down.

At present, I have a tile-based map where the player always moves a whole number of tiles, stops if they hit an obstacle, and can press a button to examine an obstacle. Examining an obstacle changes the color of the vial. (Everything is currently using placeholder sprites while I figure out the key coding details.) This took quite a bit of work to figure out, but now I understand it, and that means I know what I need to do to make a puzzle.

My current plan is:
-Get some actual graphics, even if they just end up being placeholders
-Put together some basic puzzles
-Start working on enemy behavior
And then figure things out from there.

I do not currently have anything for graphics or music; if anyone's willing to help out with that, awesome. If not, that's fine, I'll look through pre-existing resources instead. The main point of this is to make puzzles; if I end up making puzzles with non-original graphics and music, that's not a big issue for me.

Anyways, that's what I have so far; feel free to ask questions, make comments, or do whatever else it is you do in these sorts of threads.

Actual progress!

After a week or so of thinking about it, I now have a full list of mechanisms and enemies. I haven't figured out the exact details of enemy behavior yet, but I know what specifically I'm putting into the game!

So, the next step is finding some graphics, placeholders or otherwise, and programming some of these crazy mechanisms. Once I've got a decent start on that, expect a demo; hopefully I can have something substantial to show before my birthday in about a month.

Hey! this is looking pretty cool, I'm happy to help if you need graphic stuff. :D

Thanks! I'll take you up on that, expect a PM from me later today. I've got a long list written up, but rather than dumping the entire thing on you at once, I'll just focus on a smaller subset of the items. I'd like to get out a demo with at least one full puzzle in it relatively soon, so I'll think about what I want in that before sending off the PM.

I really appreciate this, and I look forward to seeing your take on these enemies and items.

So, thanks to Lankie's generosity, I now have a basic tileset for the game. That got me to head back over to the programming side so I could try to make them work.

After a lot of messing about (and Norivia figuring out how to do one of the things I was trying to do but couldn't quite get to work, thanks Nori!), I now have code that lets me check the tile an object is about to move to, and find out what it is (and stops the object from moving if it can't be moved to). I'm a little worried it might cause lag if I do this for a whole level's worth of objects, but testing that is a lot more plausible now that I have this code.

My current plan is to get ice tiles working, and then start testing with more moving objects than just the player. After that... well, we'll see where I am! But if this works out, I should be able to start making functional puzzles soon.

oooooooh
this sounds really pretty fun~
if you need any more help (with coding) i might be able to help out as well

Update: I've streamlined the code I mentioned in the previous post. I can now just put a map together, and the player can move around the way I want them to without the need for any additional objects.

Now I just need to get these ice tiles working somehow.

I have ice tiles working! Now it's time to get some actual puzzle mechanisms going.

This might take some figuring out, but most of it is stuff I've done before in getting the player to move properly.