April 24th, 2016 | by Charlie | Posted in
Uncategorized
Alright, confession time! I’ve been a little bit lazy of late. Schedules changed and PWAH got dropped into the “lower priority” pile of things that I needed to do. Hopefully that’ll be changing now though!
That said, I haven’t been sitting, twiddling my thumbs for the past few months. Stuff has been getting done! I’ve mostly been wrestling with Pixel art, trying to make some nice buildings (terrain) for various levels which has ended up being a relatively slow process… (as I’m still very much in the “learning process”) but, here are a few assorted “Work In Progress” images. I’ll need to do several more passes over these, but I’m fairly happy with them as a starting point:
(Click for bigger!)
And then on the programming side of things I decided that it was about time to get a “Proof of Concept” done. In short, that means “A really rough demo”! Essentially, I need to get a little version of the game out there that people can play and let me know what is or isn’t working. This is mainly going to be on the “controls” side of things, as having tight and responsive controls will be absolutely essential if this game is going to be any fun at all to play! That should hopefully be done by the middle of May. (I’ll host it here for anyone to download at their own leisure)
One of the other things that I managed to get done was to hook up the replay system into the actual game loop. Now, when you complete a level you will be shown a replay of all of your previous attempts show simultaneously! It’s a fun little thing, and I plan to give the player quite a degree of customization over what they can do with the replay too! (Saving individual runs, exporting as .gif etc.)
So, let me leave you with a new video of the replay system in a “very first-pass” version of one of the starting levels! As you can see, I managed to complete it eventually…
Until next time!
– Charlie
February 27th, 2016 | by Charlie | Posted in
Development
The main focus of the past couple of weeks has been to get a proper “Level Loop” implemented. This means that the player should be able to spawn, die, respawn and eventually be taken to the next level, upon reaching the portal!
So, the quest to enhance the game’s rudimentary respawn system was undertaken! Previsouly, upon death, the player would have been re-created simply when their lifeless corpse stopped moving. This wasn’t going to cut it in the full game, as although it may have been fun to watch your remains bounce around the level it would have undoubtedly become a little bit more frustrating after the 20th or 30th death. The time that the player should not have control should always be as little as possible, and so I added some little systems in-place to help!
It’s quite odd, because these are systems you never really think about. They can be often overlooked, but are incredibly noticeable when absent!
The first step was to add a timer so that you can only bounce about after death for a set maximum number of seconds. Not only does this help in areas where there might be external forces acting upon the player’s body (making it take ages to come to rest…), but it also doubles up as a kind of safe-guard, so that if the player’s body simply can’t stop moving, the player isn’t soft-locked into the level. Additionally (And perhaps even more simply), a simple press of the “A” button (Or whatever you have bound to the “thrust” key) will result in the entire death-sequence being skipped. Simple, right?
Some basic “Screen Fade” effects were also added (so that you don’t see all the level elements being reset), and will be made somewhat fancier in the future!
But of course, I couldn’t test all this without a level, could I?! So I took a page out of VALVE’s book, and set up an “Orange Box”. This essentially is the first stage of drafting out a level. You put the terrain in without any detail, and then spruce it up later. It doesn’t look all that impressive (and it isn’t) but it’s a necessary step towards getting the final game finished!
So the next task is to get level transition working. After that it might actually be time to create some “proper” levels! Exciting times ahead!
And for your troubles, here’s a little Gameplay video showing the “Spawn Tube” and the dangers of 45 Degree inclines!
Until next time!
– Charlie 🙂
February 9th, 2016 | by Charlie | Posted in
Uncategorized
Thanks for stopping by! As you can see, the website is still under-construction at the moment so there isn’t much to see, but check back soon for more updates!
