Tilly's Rose Garden: Memory Lane..

Memory Lane

I've been working on Tilly's Rose Garden going on 7 months if you include breaks in between and other things going on where I couldn't work on it even when I craved it in every fiber of my being...So well, I wanted to show some evolution from where I began with gamemaker to where we are now, it will mostly be images with some random comments...or should be, once I start talking I don't shut up.

The First steps:

Well, here is my first tests of gamemaker, it was quite crude but well I won't lie I was so proud of it and in a way I still am even if it's terrible..hah!
All graphics but the background were done in gamemaker itself I wanted to get the hang of it w/o going overly "pro" on the graphics.

First Demo:

I wanted to make my own splash screen so I just threw together a drawing I drew on paper and random graphics to make this splash screen.

The first demo was a proud achievement when I made it, it was colorful and usable, but well there were many faults with it, for instance the non-closed-off ends of blocks weren't rounded, the playable character didn't change direction until the "Official Demo" which is 2 versions after the first demo, at this point I was trying to just get stuff done fast, it took months in between the "version 1.2" and the latest demo (Extended is coming soon!).

This demo only had 3 levels that looking back on them now were very incomplete looking and well, it was kinda rushed to be honest people were curious and I didn't wanna dissapoint them so in the name of speed quality was lost, but well, you learn from foolishness I suppose.
All in all at this point it was very thrown together, the enemy was a drawing I already had (although we've kept him haha!) and the moveable character was a drawing I had already too I just cut it out.

In this version you could use the arrow keys to move but you couldn't move diagonally.

Version 1.2:


For this splash screen I actually put some heart in to it other than I wanted to impress that I had my own splash screen. I actually spent a day and a half drawing it in GIMP and I still use the main picture of Tilly and the Rose for other graphics.

This version had lots of points added as well as moving enemies and point drainers, much of the foundation for the currently released demo and the soon to be released extended demo and the soon to be worked on FULL VERSION (so much more to come on that!) happened in this version, 3 or 4 of the levels in the Demo are from this version, they survived the scrapping of the .gmk file for that version I'll probably referbish some of those levels in the future.

Also in this version changed the keys to:

W - Up
S- Down
A- Left
D - Right
Q - Diagonal up left
E - Diagonal up right
Shift - Diagonal down left
C - Diagonal down right

This version had a very limited menu but a menu nonetheless! I loved this version pratically just for the menu the fact I could do it!

Official Demo:

This splash screen comes from a drawing I drew to kinda redo an old drawing of "What if Tilly were real", I liked it so much and figured another splash screen would be a good idea so I used it and added text.

This version had all new features and things as well as total audio overhaul, I made all point noises .wav files so they didn't cut off each time you picked up a point, Summertime's End allowed me to use his music so the game finally started to feel complete, I made many new things like point-converters that transformed drainers in to points, and speed which was in the shape of a butterfly, as well and a new menu and a how to play menu and so much more, like opening animations and timelines everything just came together I felt so proud!

I narrowed it down to 10 levels, and the playable character was changed so now when you move it's more "animated".

New Playable Character.


Old Playable Character

The controls were updated in this version a lot, you could use either WASD or the arrow keys to move and pressing combonations are used for going diagonal instead of more keys.

Extended Demo:

Reusing the 2nd splash screen Tilly with the rose to make a whole new splash screen!

This version has updated graphics, new main menu background, 5 extra levels and a few random fixes and additions, I hope to release it in a few days, stay tuned!