As of late I've been striving to come up with effective ways to present BYOND games with custom interfaces in a polished, clean-cut sort of way. Most commercial games will adjust your screen's resolution to fit the game, and most FLASH-based games will just run from a web page somewhere. That leaves any BYOND games in want of full-screen support in an uncomfortable niche: having to fill the screen without adjusting the user's resolution. And that means adjusting for different monitor sizes and aspect ratios. A difficult task.

One site that deals in games for casual players showcases a lot of games made in FLASH, and almost every game on that site has plenty of eye candy. I thought about submitting some BYOND games for review there, but looking around, I don't think BYOND has any up-to-date games that are up to par visually with what that site is offering. So hey, lets make some!

Designing full-screen interfaces with BYOND, though, presents a few problems. The first problem is that when you have the screen stretching percentage-wise to fit the player's resolution, things tend to get really, really ugly if the player's resolution has a peculiar aspect ratio, such as a flat screen with 1280x800 resolution (which means its extra wide). In that case, things stretch in a peculiar way and the whole interface starts to look hokey. Then there's the problem that while the interface may want to stretch horizontally to fit the resolution, the map window doesn't. You'll end up with some exceedingly tacky black lines on either side of your map window.

There are two possible solutions to these problems that I can figure. The first and most complicated way is to force the game into full screen mode, then use an invisible control at the bottom-right of the main window to find out what the player's resolution. From there, each game screen must be built dynamically to fit the player's resolution. This can be really cool, but its extremely difficult to have a graphical interface that does this.

The second way is to float the actual game screen in a pool of black or textured background. That means that the actual game window's size doesn't change, it just stays centered in the middle of the screen and any extra padding on either side is filled with background. This way is much more conducive to graphical interfaces, since the aspect ratio doesn't need to change.

As of now I've started testing the first method with a new Solar Conquest interface, and I can say that dynamically designing about 5 different game screens is a major pain in the hindquarters. Plus, as stated earlier, its very difficult to add things like graphical borders and backgrounds to the mix. So now its time to try approach number two: floating the game screen in black.

The Game: Trail By Fire

The game concept I had in mind is similar to the Gauntlet game(s) in the way that the game looks and feels, but the mechanics are somewhat different. Instead of a real-time 'dodge the enemies and use the items' setup, this game will be turn-based. The goal is still the same: dodge the enemies. But the approach is different. Instead of actually moving around pattern-following enemies as they come and go, you need to use items and skills to evade enemies that are actively hunting you down.

In my conceptual application for this idea, you take on the role of a thief attempting to steal the prized treasure(s) from some castle. Of course, the castle guards won't stand for this, and they're going to want to arrest you and stick you in the dungeon as quickly as possible. You'll have to use some tricks and skills to evade the guards.



In that screenshot, the player is using their ability to climb through windows, a skill which the guards lack, to escape from an otherwise doomed situation. Other skills and items would work similarly to help the player escape pursuers, but some items may be in limited supply and some things may not work on certain enemies.

• Climbing through windows - works great against enemies who are slower and less nimble than the player, but an equally agile pursuer may be able to move through windows as well.
• Hiding behind things - If you've ever played My Life As A Spy by Skysaw, you'll know what this is all about. Find something large to hide behind while the pursuers are out of sight, and when they get to where they were expecting to find you but don't see you there, they'll give up and go home. Works well against dimwitted enemies who's senses aren't too keen.
• Blinding powder - a limited use item that'll stop a sensitive pursuer in their tracks, but it'll only work when they're next to the enemy, and will only last a few turns.
• Claw traps - another way to stop enemies in their tracks would be to have them step in one of these. Leave them behind you in clever locations and hope to either trap a pursuer or leave them looking for another way around, especially if used in choke points.

And of course picking locks, opening and closing gates, secret doors, teleporting - all are within the scope of the game's theme!

So as an example, one goal might be to lure some soldiers away from a city gate so you can get through. In order to do that, you'd need to first go into the house next to the gate, open up some windows (since you can't climb through a closed window, and you can only open windows from inside), then head out to the gates and get the soldiers' attentions. Following a brief run, you lure the soldiers into the house, get them to follow you into the room with the windows, jump out a window (leaving the soldiers stuck having to go back around) and high-tail it through the gates and then use the lever on the far side to close them, stranding the soldiers on the other side of the bars.

The Interface

I was thinking of re-using the interface that I'd planned on for the next version of The Gauntlet, which so far hasn't made it past my hard drive other than a few screenshots. The interface, as described in my previous post, requires the use of the arrow keys to walk around, an action key to go into targeting mode, followed by another arrow key to use the selected item in a particular direction. There would also be two keys for cycling through your inventory. However, given that this is a turn-based game there's really no reason why we couldn't include mouse support.

With such simple controls, the only interface elements we need would be a map window, a scrolling inventory display at the top of the map window, and perhaps some statistics below. Everything outside of that would be shrouded either in black or a textured background. We could even put some fancy borders around the game window if we wanted to, or have it fade from textured background to game.



However, one reason why I, in particular, wanted a plain black background is so I can do some cool fade-in effects with labels. If you have a black label with black font on a black background, then you can input some text in the label and, using a loop, incrementally increase the color of the front from black to white in less than a second. The effect is really nice, and I think it adds a lot of polish to any BYOND game (even if it flickers a little bit).

The Story

Here's where the hard part comes in. I've figured out that designing a simple game like this breaks down into three sections. First you have to design the game engine, which is easy enough, but takes a considerable investment of time and effort. The second is graphics, including game graphics, interface graphics, and just plain making things look good in every way, shape and form. The third is content. Its easy to built a game engine and make things look flashy, but after that, you have to actually give the player something to do, and that's where the really hard part begins since if you've also designed the engine and drawn the graphics, you're probably going to be pretty burnt out by now.

Its also going to be a challenge to come up with myriads of situations where things are going to be chasing you, you're going to be running away, and still providing enough variety to keep everything fresh and interesting.

On top of that, I've discovered that I, personally, am horrid at coming up with good stories.

But nonetheless, here's what I have so far. You're a thief. Or a treasure hunter, if you prefer. There is a castle, and according to your sources, the castle houses a very valuable treasure hidden deep within - below the dungeon, below the catacombs, somewhere in the heart. Its very possible the current lord isn't even aware of its existence.

So your job is to sneak into the castle, evade the guards, find your way into the dungeon, find the secret entrance to the catacombs, make your way through that maze until you uncover the treasure vault, and inside the relic that you seek.



Well, the relic in my mind is a nice little ring that, when used, will teleport you to one of several locations. And using the ring would be a wise idea since at that point you'll have lots of guards closing in on you. You may never be able to return to the castle, but you'll be stuck with trying to find your way home, running from whatever those other places have to run from, and moving back and forth between the areas that the ring takes you to in order to find the items you'll need to progress.

In the end, you'll always have a way to escape if you use the ring (unless I slap some limitations on it!), so avoiding death shouldn't be a big deal and that will hopefully take a lot of frustrations out of the game. But in order to achieve your goals, you'll want to make it through these tight spots instead of warping away to safety, since once you've warped away you'll have to make your way back again.

No, I haven't come up with a good ending. I told you, I'm horrid at story telling. I'm also not one of these people who starts with an ending and works backwards. But anyway, this is the story so far, and aside from cramming the game full of content, I can't see any reason why the rest of it shouldn't work.