JLJac on May 04, 2012, 12:33:21 PM:

To at least give you something today, here's a bit of concept art. Some parts I'm happy with, others not.



I'm happy with the... face, not the head but the face. The way the head ends needs work. The body in general needs to be less anatomically realistic. I want the face to be more emotionless, I think, like a mask that looks like something that could be a biological part of the creature but could as well be added on. It needs to work better together with how the Bear looks...

Well, as you can see there's a lot that will change, this is just a rough sketch. The technical implementation will also have a huge impact, that likely won't increase or decrease quality, but just change everything fundamentally. My original sketches for the Bear looked like *deep breath* THIS:


And ended up like this:


So the technical implementation phase can do good things as well...

We'll have to see where it goes! This is an interesting part of making games, technical solutions and limitations bring something unpredictable to your art process, and if you go with that stuff might end up somewhere unexpected.

JLJac on May 05, 2012, 03:49:44 AM:

Yeah, I was thinking along those lines... Well, as I always say, we'll see where it ends up

Update 42
Today I did a (preliminary?) visual representation for the short cut entrances. They're still impossible to spot, but it took me like an hour to draw so I'm not doing it all over again until I know what they're finally going to look like. At least it's theoretically possible to spot them now!

I've started to make a few levels as well. The alpha needs levels of great variety, because I'll need to know what kind of levels you guys think works best.

Apart from all this stuff there has been a change to the gameplay mechanics. Instead of consuming the flies on touch like mario coins (or pac-man pellets) the bear cathes them in its hands. You then have to get away and sit still for a short moment in order to eat them. It's very quick, and hopefully won't try your patience too much, but I felt it needed to go in the game. As it was, because of flies gathering together, you could suddenly get something like five kills in a second by just jumping through a swarm, and then continue for a minute without getting anything. This evens things out a little, as you can't catch more than two at a time.

Also I think it fits better with the game's style, the lizard doesn't eat you on touch but rather carries you back to its hole, and I wanted the player to do something similar. I didn't want you to eat while chased. Instead you have to hunt, then escape and find a safe spot where you can quickly munch down what you caught before getting out there again. Another benefit is that sometimes the game would have small moments of dead time, when you where just ducking in cover and waiting for a croc to pass by. Now those moments have a purpose, and you can get better at trying to time them and get them to work with your hunting-escaping scheme.

It's all either not animated or horribly animated at this point of course, but the mechanics are in. The game eventually will have a bit of an animation overhaul, for example the vertical pole climbing looks unacceptable at this point. Maybe I'll get to this at the same time I give the croc its legs.

JLJac on May 06, 2012, 12:26:21 AM:

Update 43
Added a test rendering for levels, so you can get an ugly-looking thing to try out before you go through the huge process of actually rendering a level. It's a good thing, because there's often a few changes you find yourself wanting to do once you know exactly which jumps are possible to pull of and so on.

I've made a few levels as well. Still don't know what kind of layout works the best though.

Crocs don't necessarily spawn right on start up any more. You'll be able to specify from the level editor when they'll spawn. They spawn after a certain number of caught flies with an added time delay, to make it a little bit less obvious. If you want you can set them to 0 flies but a greater time delay.

JLJac on May 07, 2012, 10:43:52 PM:

Update 44
OK, now the alpha is more or less ready to be sent out. I just need to add some instruction text, and maybe a calm little turorial level where you can learn how to move.

If you play two people it'll rank you at the end of the game, according to a system where a surviving player is always ranked above a dead one, and aside from that it goes by how many flies you've caught.

I realized that the fun of playing a level is doubled if it's given at least some graphics, so I'll actually do renderings of the levels. Note that these are just quick renderings with a default tileset, the real levels for the game will have quite a lot of custom graphics going on.

Next thing I'll put togther a questionnaire to go with the alpha and then I'll send it out. We're almost there!

JLJac on May 08, 2012, 12:59:58 PM:

Alpha is out!

Here's what the main menu looks like:



I have a three year university education in graphic design, and I've gotta say, it's not every day you pull something like this off. Going straight in the portfolio.

So, hopefully I'll get some feedback from the play testers in a couple of days (if they can find the start button), until then I'll just do a little tweaking of the level editor.

JLJac on May 10, 2012, 06:05:45 AM:

Hi!

I'm mainly waiting for the feedback from the testers at this point. Did try a few things in the level editor, but didn't keep them, and made a new tileset. Other than that, nothing much. Hard to find motivation to do stuff that I know might get changed once the feedback starts coming in.

JLJac on May 11, 2012, 04:40:53 AM:

Bad news
I got to know today that I'm in a bit of a tight spot concerning certain school work. This means that for a week or two, I will have to focus on that. The game will have to be put on ice.

Note however that I'm not abandoning the project forever or for an indefinite amount of time. Within two weeks I'll be back on track. Maybe this isn't the worst time for this to happen, the alpha is released which was a huge mile stone for the project, and now feedback has started to get back to me. In a couple of days when I look at the project again I might be able to do so with fresh eyes, and by then I will have quite a lot of feedback to fall back on as well. Those of you who have an alpha, please let me know what you think! I will have time to read it.

So, a short break. See you in a few days, wish me luck!

JLJac on May 25, 2012, 10:10:52 PM:

I'm alive!
They told me I'll likely have to complement my thesis later though, so this beast is merely fended off, not slain.

Has been really interesting to recieve the comments from the alpha testers! The opinions have been incredibly diverse... The levels that are some peoples' favourites are hated by others, someone writes that wall jumping is the biggest flaw in the game, someone says it's their preferred aspect... There are some glitches that everyone seems agreed on, but other than that people are pretty much all over the place. The game seems to be a tad too difficult though, which isn't surprising as this difficulty is what I imagined for the final levels, while you guys have been thrown straight into it. I'll sit down and try to make sense of it soon, and maybe post a list of what I'll change because of the feedback.

Thank you!

Update 45
The croc is getting feet! It looks weird and unfinished still, but it's on its way. Even at this stage the poor creature consists of no less than 13 sprites, and that's going to increase quite a lot more...

JLJac on May 26, 2012, 10:27:15 PM:

Update 46
I'm a little bit stuck, on a silly thing. I need to know the point inside a three-edged polygon that is closest to a point outside the polygon. I realize this is something programmers probably do in their sleep, but as I never got any real programming education I always get stuck on this kind of stuff. I solve it eventually, but it might take a while. Tips are appreciated.

What's happening is that the croc is given some behaviour for its legs. Each leg is supposed to reach forward to a place that has grabable terrain, grab on to that, hold there while the body is hauled forward, and then let go and repeat. In order to find grabable spots on slopes I need the polygon-point-distance thingie.

Right now it looks like it's going to look very weird, but hopefully also cool. Will have to see how long the legs will end up, maybe it'll vary across the different crocs.

JLJac on May 27, 2012, 10:02:22 PM:

Update 47
More work on the crocs' legs. It still looks more weird than cool, but I hope to be able to improve it. The movement will be somewhat awkward, like it's hauling itself forward rather than actually running, and will hopefully give it a nice, creepy vibe. Still haven't solved the slopes thing.

JLJac on May 29, 2012, 10:28:35 PM:

Update 48
The legs are moving now. It still needs a lot of work, I too see the weird black things shooting out, but the framework is up.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Die5vsuLGs&feature=youtu.be

JLJac on June 01, 2012, 12:38:26 AM:

Update 49
A friend helped me with the traingle problem, and it's out of the way! The croc legs are just about finished. They've reached a good-enough kind of level, where I'll leave them to maybe revisit them later. The movement looks quite different now, they're like... hauling themselves forward through the corridors.

The movement speed is determined by how many legs are grasping, if all four limbs are holding on to something it moves very quickly, if all of them are in the air the body barely moves at all. There is a little cheating though, even with no legs contacting terrain there is some movement, so that it won't get stuck.

Still some flickering going on with the knees though, more fine tuning needed.

JLJac on June 02, 2012, 12:13:38 AM:

Update 50
Taking a first look at how I'll actually implement some graphics for the croc.



Not super happy with any of the heads, but hopefully I'm getting there.

JLJac on June 02, 2012, 11:44:44 PM:

Update 51
Implemented a jaw for the croc, that's separate from the head and can open and close. Also started to set up a framework for how the head will rotate depending on the angle of the body.

The crocs now climb poles in a slightly more reasonable manner, instead of just gliding along on the centre of the pole like a monorail then will climb on top of horizontal poles and on the sides of vertical ones.

JLJac on June 03, 2012, 10:24:24 PM:

I will have limited internet connection for a couple of days. I will still try to work on the game every day, but updates might be a bit more irregular.

JLJac on June 07, 2012, 09:42:12 PM:

Hehe thanks for making me look like less of a *forever alone*  
You didn't like the corridors? Seems everyone liked different aspects... it'll be hard to find common points in this feedback. I'll get to it, though! If you feel your feedback has not been considered, don't worry, it'll kick in for real once I get to designing the levels. Hopefully I'll be able to do a post where I summarize the feedback and describe what it made me change, so you really feel that your input made a difference.

Update 52
Do you remember the light raytracing? I came up with a new way to do it, and it baffles me that I didn't think of this before. To put it simply; imagine that instead of going through every single pixel and trace a ray from that pixel through every single layer to see where it hits, you use a bitmap. The bitmap is white in the places where there is light and black where there's shadow. It repeats through all the layers once. When arriving to a new layer it applies the "shadow image" to that layer, and then adds that layer's contour to the shadow image. This means that when the next layer is supposed to get its share of light, the pixels that were blocked by the previous layer are blacked out, creating a shadow. As it proceeds through the 20 layers the shadow image gets more shadow and less light, as the different surfaces absorb the light.

The effect of this is, sadly, almost exactly the same as the previous system. The difference is that it takes like 15 seconds to render instead of 7 minutes. You don't really care about this progess I guess, but it has implications. Being able to more swiftly regenerate or make changes to a level will make the levels better, because it'll feel worth it to regenerate a level even because of smaller flaws.

JLJac on June 09, 2012, 10:30:57 PM:

Yeah, the corridors are a bit different. Essentially there are two games, one that's a maze game like pac-man, when in the corridors, and one that's a platformer, when out in open areas. When out in the open the game is more about jumping and doing cool moves to avoid crocs that have inevitably seen you, while in the corridors the game is about making them never spot you in the first place. Try to play slower, and make sure they don't see you.

I'll look at the ledge stuff!

Update 53
As you who played the alpha are aware of, the flies are able to dive back in their hives when chased. I did some tweaking of this today, and made it so that burrowing takes a little bit of time for them, instead of them dissapearing on contact with the floor. This means that if you're right behind them you can still catch them while they're burrowing, making it a little bit easier and less unfair. To compensate for this I also implemented that flies won't appear out of a hive that a player is close to, so that you can't just wait on a hive for them to pop up and then exploit that they can't dissapear as quickly.

Furthermore, the croc AI had an error going on in its simulation of the movement of unseen players. It would assume that a player would fall through the passable floors, making it behave weird in a situation where the croc is below a floor with a player up above. As soon as the croc left the site to get to the player it would imagine that the player had fallen down to the lower level, and turn around. Once there, it would see that the player was actually still up there, and turn around again. This behvaiour would then repeat. It was easily fixed by making the "ghost player" in the croc's head interact with platforms in another way, which has probably created a whole batch of new, exciting errors for me to discover tomorrow!

JLJac on June 10, 2012, 01:44:48 AM:

A little weak on the art side lately, so here are some sketches:

JLJac on June 10, 2012, 11:14:28 PM:

Update 54
Started implementing graphics for the fly. Also fixed that AI problem I described earlier, for real this time.

JLJac on June 11, 2012, 11:23:08 PM:

Update 55
Further animation work on the croc. I made its head change color, a weird art direction choice that has actually been around forever, but which I don't think I've told you about. Will try it out some more to see if it works, if so it'll stick. The color changes are between black and a color, not all around the palette, and they help communicate whether or not the croc has spotted you. It looks cool but needs a lot of polish. Other than that the croc's jaw has gotten some more animation, now it opens it up when approaching a player and snaps it shut when attacking.

Hopefully the next video I upload will be a graphically exciting one.