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Hi!
Yeah, a HUD with numbers would actually probably be much easier than hearts, haha, and you would write a script for this, just as you already have a script that displays health as hearts. The Solarus engine doesn't display any HUD, all of that is done via game scripts. If you're not really familiar with how scripting in Solarus works and stuff, I'd recommend waiting to change the HUD until once you're more experienced, as that's more abstract than other concepts like map entities.

Here's an example of a bar-style health HUD element, if that's useful:
https://gitlab.com/maxmraz/yarntown/-/blob/master/data/scripts/hud/health_bar.lua

Hi!
So you could add code like this somewhere in your game where it will run, like the game manager if you're using one, or something like that

Code Select Expand


function game:on_joypad_button_pressed(button)
  print("Pressed button:", button)
end

function game:on_joypad_button_released(button)
  print("Released button:", button)
end

function game:on_joypad_axis_moved(axis, state)
  print("Axis moved:", axis, state)
end

--etc...


See https://www.solarus-games.org/doc/latest/lua_api_game.html#lua_api_game_on_joypad_button_pressed and below events for the details of all joypad inputs.
This will let you see what the engine is seeing- you can compare this to what you're actually pushing, to see if the problem is that the engine is getting the wrong inputs, or if the game is processing them incorrectly.


Also, this is maybe obvious, but your controller could also maybe be broken. You did say it's an old game controller, maybe the most obvious thing is to try a different one and see if the problem is just with the controller.

Also, feel free to post on the Solarus discord, the forums aren't nearly as active : )

It's not a stupid question! It just wouldn't work for controllers, which only have 4 face buttons, and I like to keep functional parity between input methods. Feel free to mod your copy to use that though, haha : )

Hi Jim.

That trailer is really cool, the production looks great. Seems like a fascinating world, I like the aesthetic of the trailer. It's cool that you found Solarus and think it'd be a good fit for the game you'd like to make! Just a little bit of advice, you don't have much bait on the hook to be fishing for volunteer labor. Also, please take this as advice because your trailer seems cool, and it seems like it could make a really cool game, not me trying to tear your idea down. I'd love to see it succeed, but your asking for help in a way that probably won't get many takers. There are a number of things you could do to help yourself out though.

- You aren't really giving much information about your plan. What kind of game are you wanting to make? You don't really even have an elevator pitch in here. Is this a combat-focused action game? A detective adventure game? What's the scope? Seems like you've got a fascinating world and aesthetic based on your trailer, and if you're a writer I imagine you're familiar with putting together a pitch.

- Do you have any experience making games? Directing development of some other creative project? General managerial experience? Do you have a plan for development of this game, are you going to pitch publishers at some point (if so when?), get investors, do a kickstarter, etc? Again, what's the scope of your game? Are you trying to make a small experience, something someone might play for an hour or two? Or a grand epic, exploring multiple levels with complex gameplay and a lot of systems?

- If you're insistent on this plan where you ask people to volunteer their time to something that could eventually pay off, what are you offering to show people your game is worth investing their time into? You mention your expertise is in art and design- show some sample art, design some example maps. Solarus doesn't really need any coding knowledge to just make some maps a character can walk around on. And there's a ton of free code we've created that you can just use too, just importing it into your game like a module.

- Get started by yourself. We've very happy to help people learn if they want to make an effort. It'll be a much easier sell to ask people to help you if you've proven this is a good project, and people can see its potential.

- What about not asking people to do this for free? Why don't you get together a budget, talk to a publisher, and get some funding for this game? Or do a kickstarter once you get together a prototype, art, etc yourself? If you're looking to hire people, that's still sketchy to take a job from a forum on the internet, but it's easier than working for free for someone from a forum on the internet.

- Address a couple of the red flags in your request. Besides asking people to work without pay, you also linked a trailer with a release date of over a year ago. I can't find anything about the movie having been released, or see it for sale anywhere. Is it stuck in a bad development cycle? Severely delayed? Cancelled? Also, your book is self published on Amazon. Not that there's anything wrong with that, that's probably a great for some writers' situations. But it also means there wasn't a big financial support for your book, like there would have been if you'd gone through a publisher. At least from what I understand about the industry. Again, nothing wrong with planning a film that didn't end up coming out, or self-publishing a book. But those are red flags when you're asking someone to volunteer a huge amount of work? Better to address them upfront.



That's all assuming that, like you say, you want to develop this game with a team, looking for commercial success. I think a very valid approach is to just start working on this as a hobby yourself. Watch the youtube tutorials on how to get started with Solarus, ask questions in the Discord, share screenshots of your progress so people can support you. Then maybe when you're not a stranger on the internet asking for unpaid work out of nowhere, but a member of a community, people will be more willing to invest their time to help you.

There's a Solarus port for android currently in development, but it's not been released yet. As far as I know, the port is going pretty well and it's definitely possible. The code for the port is somewhere on the solarus-games github I think

Lol yeah, I saw.

So I looked into it, and the way this happens is when a game is given a rating in some countries, it's a general rating for every platform. But for some reason it gets listed individually for every platform. So OH is rated in Brazil (idk even what the rating is haha), so each platform has that rating listed. If that makes sense?

Anyway yeah, we're going to start talking about a switch port once the game is released on PC.

By the way, some resources for testers could help. I walked around for a couple hours and never found where I was supposed to go after the house at the beginning. Some chats might help too, the tiny tiny range of the sword was hard for me and I died a bajillion times. Some cheats for testers could help them keep going even if the game is supposed to be hyper-punishing.

Hey Mcbanhas, there's never been a free version of the game, I just didn't initially have the repo set to private like I do now.

The free code will probably be on github or gitlab when the game releases- most of the code is GPLv3. As far as the free assets, those have basically all been included in the solarus Free Resource pack- https://gitlab.com/solarus-games/solarus-free-resource-pack (it was mainly tilesets)

Either way, I'm working on a more complete, less specific set of assets at the moment which will include a bunch of systems like items, elemental effects, etc which will be better anyway- and won't have any potential to be confused with Ocean's Heart.

I think they're actually talking about like this attached image, like Final Fantasy or Zelda 2, where you walk around the overworld.

Nobody's made a tileset like that as far as I know yet, but it'd be really easy. There are tiles for what Llamazing posted, which would work to make the same thing I imagine

For sound, I do everything by combining and editing samples, some I record myself, most are from freesound.org , you can search and filter by license. I've never had much trouble finding what I need with a CC0 license.
Also, listen to podcasts and youtube videos about foley. I recommend Twenty Thousand Hertz, episodes 12, 51, and 67. Maybe 27 and 30 depending what you're doing. Look up youtube videos for like, "how did they make the ___ sound".

Tools are useful, I just use audacity for sound effects because it's lightweight and does what I need, but they're not nearly as important as creativity and knowing how to make the sound you want. Which, all of that just comes from studying how others made sounds. For example, the enemy getting hit sound effect in one of my games is a stack of canvas being punched layered a few times, some vegetables being broken, and the sound of some wet, rotten meat being dropped on a cutting board that I happened across. That's a pretty classic combo for people/things being hit. Then sometimes you get a weird tip from a podcast or youtube video or friend, which is how I found out pigs scream, and that's the basis for most of the monster noises in Ocean's Heart, mixed with my dog growling.
Then all the processing of slowing down, or pitch shifting, or adding some synth bass behind it to make it really hit hard, etc.


Music is way more commonly understood. I use ableton to record and mix, but whatever you have will do. I think audacity is a bunch of trouble for music just because of some of its workflow stuff and I don't know that it snaps to bars, but it'd work fine too.

Haha, yeah, search on itch.io if you want to see how I distributed it there, it's a free download.

Yeah, exactly. It's the same as Yarntown, downloading the "game" is a bundled version of the game and solarus-run.exe

Shane, I also really want to see an official Switch port. Time will tell but I'm hopeful.

There's the argument to be made that even better than that, is a tileset that- for example, arranges the house within the tileset so you don't need to use tiles from several different places. This uses more space though.

If you're using the tileset from ZSDX, you can open ZSDX and copy directly from there, if that's helpful.

.it is I believe "impulse tracker"
I think it's impossible to convert and audio file to an .it file. They're not the same kind of information. That's like asking if there's a program that can convert a WAV to sheet music. You can transcribe music to .it, but converting isn't possible since .it isn't an audio format, it's closer to midi

By the way, "local" isn't a command to create a variable, it's just specifying scope for the variable : )
I'd recommend not worrying about looping music and menus and stuff until you're more familiar with coding in Lua. Creating maps, and starting with coding there things like opening doors, is a better place to start generally. If you keep at it, you'll learn and eventually be able to create the menu music thing you're talking about.

Glad you liked Yarntown! Development on OH is actually pretty much done at this point and I'm past the beta testing period, but thanks. At this point there's basically only localization and a few engine bugs left before release.