JLJac on July 27, 2012, 01:12:56 AM:

Update 71
Ok, so the world is divided into hub rooms and hive rooms or whatever you want to call them, rooms you pass through and rooms where the flies are. I don't really want to include a map, but I still need to somehow lead the player towards a hive room that is currently swarming, as you won't have time to go check them all.

What I've started working on today is that when you enter a hub room, you'll see a fly dissappearing into one of the exits leading to another room. If you follow it, it will eventually lead you to the closest swarming hive room.

This has required some work, becuase there needs to be a little bit of inter-level path finding going on. It has been managable though, as I don't really want flies actually moving around through the world. Instead I can do this inter-level pathing stuff just once when loading a new room and then spawn one single fly that is very close to the exit. The idea is that you shouldn't be able to catch it, just see where it goes.

JLJac on July 27, 2012, 05:23:49 AM:

That's a good idea! If it's needed I'll implement it, I think it won't be though, because as a room is loaded the player will be in shortcut-mode half a second or so before popping out in the actual room, and during this time you'll have nothing else to look at except the fly.

This is a balance act for me. The feeling I want to create is a sort of "law of the jungle" thing, where there is a world and it's painfully obvious that no other entity than you yourself care about your survival. Like, there's no deus-ex machina leading you along, but staying alive is very much your own responsibility and failing is a very real risk. I think that in games like that it's much more satisfying when you actually do manage something, because you know that you did it yourself. Think for example of the difference between defeating an AI enemy and defeating another player in a game - online you know that you weren't favoured in any way and that makes it feel more awsome.

Guess what I'm trying to say is that if the player isn't very observant, they're welcome to die and then be more observant the next time 

On the other hand, it has to be playable... So yeah, balance act.

JLJac on July 28, 2012, 01:07:23 AM:

Update 72
Did some brushing up on the work I did yesterday. Now your score follows you between levels, as well as the flies you're holding in your hands and how many bites you've taken out of them.

I also noticed that it's way too easy to catch the "lead flies" as I call them, the ones that inhabit the hub world and are there to lead you to the actual level you're going for. I put in some pretty harsh measures to keep you from catching those, because otherwise you'd never go to the levels but spend your entire time going back and forth between the first and the second room in the hub world, and that wouldn't make a very good game.

So, now there will only appear lead flies once in each level and each direction. This means that if you've already had your chance at seeing where to go in a room, they won't appear there again.

On top of this there's a counter, so if you catch too many lead flies they'll simply stop appearing. This symbolizes that it's actually the same few flies you chase through all the rooms, and catching and killing them will ruin your opportunity to follow them to where their friends are. I guess that the first time you see one there could be a message saying "don't catch it, it'll lead you to the others" or something like that.

The effect of this whole system is supposed to be that if you're a first time player and play by the book, you'll easily be able to follow the lead flies to the closest swarming room. If you're an experienced player trying to exploit it, they'll dissappear. The goal is that the game should be... not easy, but fair, as long as you're playing fair. If you mess with it you ought to know what you're doing, because then the help will be withdrawn.

JLJac on July 29, 2012, 11:21:47 PM:

Update 73
Feature creep monday!
There's now a new and pretty fun element in the game. There are pebbles that you can pick up and throw.

Holding the pebbles is tied in with the same framework as holding flies, so you can hold two pebbles but then you can't hold any flies, and carrying around one pebble you can only catch one fly.

Pebbles can be thrown at other creatures. The lizards respond quite differently to this depending on size, the big green is barely affected, while the blue one which is the smallest in the family is tossed like a rag doll for a few frames, and then needs some time to recover. Other players and flies are of course affected too.

When a pebble hits a wall it makes a sound that can be heard by lizards.

Maybe I'll add a few different versions, such as something made out of glass that can be heard all across the level but only has one use, or something sharp that makes a lizard flee back to its hole. It's easy and fun to work with this stuff.

You will never be able to actually kill a lizard, because that would undermine them as being dangerous and put them in the "enemy" category, but at least you're now able to fend them off and buy yourself half a second. Actually I think you can kill them now, with a well placed shot exactly as they are climbing across a gap, but that would be very hard to do.

JLJac on July 30, 2012, 11:17:24 PM:

Update 74
Boring but very necessary work today. Started on some kind of main menu that holds the level editor together, from where you can load and save level projects and access the different editors.



This has been needed for a long time, but I've neglected it because I've been able to work around it. Now I'm getting to it as I can no longer make levels from scratch, I need to be able to save a level editor project as some kind of file, so I can return to it later and make changes. Once this is done it will finally be worth it to start making levels for the world, knowing that if I need to make changes of any kind that won't necessarily mean building the whole thing from scratch again.

As always when working with user interfaces the progress is painful and slow, but now I at least have some basic buttons up and running. For the first time ever you can add some tiles in the tile editor, then change your mind about some geometry stuff and go back and change it, then return to the tile editor again. In this case you'd likely have to clean up some tiles that are hanging in the air or otherwise occupying illegal positions, but it's a lot better than not being able to at all.

JLJac on July 31, 2012, 11:22:48 PM:

Thanks! I will!

Update 75
Earlier I've started to do some sound implementation, today I continued with that. Sound is really my weakest spot, and it takes a lot of trial and error to get stuff to work out.

It's been a while, so here's a screenshot of what the game looks like right now:



This level is called "shooting range", the flies keep to the middle and you get them by throwing stuff at them from the balconies. You see the little black things on the lower platforms? Those are "pebbles"(actually their graphics are most often representing different kinds of scrap metal and machine parts). When you get close to them they blink a little, so you can see them.

Right now throwing stuff when climbing on a vertical pole makes you lose your grip, I guess I should attend to that.

JLJac on August 03, 2012, 04:13:59 AM:

There's some school stuff going on, and updates might not be daily for a little while now. I'll still work on it though, and I'll try to let you know how things are progressing.

JLJac on August 04, 2012, 01:03:47 PM:

Update 76
Finally I took some time to work on some graphics!
Today I did the intricate pipe tileset, the big heads and the moss like plant shown in this screenshot.



Note how the head thingie is a little three-dimensional, you can se the slightest difference in direction between the leftmost and the rightmost face, and on the ones in the background you can see how the shadows play a little over the shapes in a way they wouldn't if they were entirely flat.

As always when I have schoolwork hanging over me I got terribly inspired, and still have ideas for pieces of graphics I didn't have time to do today. But I'll get to them!

Slowly but surely I'm getting to the point where the world starts to take shape, and I can work more with actually conveying what this place looks like rather than just working on the tools I need to get there. Still, there's a lot of tool making left to do...

JLJac on August 05, 2012, 09:56:54 PM:

Update 77
An insignificant step for the thread readers, but a huge leap for the developer! I've managed to save a level editor project and load it again. This means that I don't have to start over every time I want to make a level, but can continue from where I left off. This, in turn, means I don't have to have all the tiles and plants and stuff I could possibly ever want for a level in order to start working on that level, as I can add in stuff later. This, in turn, means that I can finally start making actual levels for the actual game.

JLJac on August 07, 2012, 01:39:14 AM:

Oh, that's a problem. I need to think about the name then!

I'll leave you for a week. I need to concentrate on a deadline for school, and the only way is to completely purge my mind of this project.

Here's a farewell gift though, a makabre little application in wich you can watch the crocs eat two dead bears. The sound is stripped away as I don't have anything I'm happy with yet, but you'll at least get an idea about what stuff looks like at this point.



See you in a week!

JLJac on August 16, 2012, 05:05:55 AM:

Hi, I'm back!
From now I'll return to the previous ~one hour a day work schedule.

Update 78
Enabled you to bring objects from one level to another in world mode. When carrying pebbles their look is consistent between levels, and when carrying flies the number of bites taken out of them is saved. If in the future I want to add other objects than pebbles the framework supports this as well.

JLJac on August 17, 2012, 04:15:46 AM:

Thanks! The way I animate things is by a combination of pixel animation and a vector animation. I don't remember how much detil I go into, but there is some stuff on animation back there.

Update 79
We've got spears! Since the early stages when I had only animated the bear character, and the setting was more jungle/temple-ish, I had always imagined the character as spear wielding. So I added it, and it seems to work OK with this setting as well.

The spear is thrown in the same way as the rocks, but is much more powerful. Most of the lizards will retreat back into their holes after one hit, possibly taking your spear with them if you don't run up to them and pull it out again. Players are killed instantly. Now the lizards have a health meter, and can die. In most cases you won't see this though, as they flee way before they're close to dying.

The red lizard, which is the persistent one, never gives up chasing you no matter how messed up it is. I had a pretty epic fight with one, where I several times threw the spear at it, then quickly jumped on it and pulled the spear out before it got out of its stun. Different lizards can take different amounts of abuse, and the red one is of course the toughest.

The health meter means you can make a lizard retreat by bombarding it with rocks, but that would take quite some time even if you're two people doing it.

JLJac on August 18, 2012, 01:46:49 AM:

Hehe! Those lizards only get a graphics update every 4:th frame though, so they might not look very smooth. I'm thinking about removing that optimization, the game seems to run OK witouth it. Oh, and a pro tip: I forgot to disable the C and V keys for the demo, try holding them!

Update 80
Made spears stick in walls. Added a few new sounds. There is a yellow lizard that hunts in packs. If one of them sees you the entire pack knows where you are.

JLJac on August 19, 2012, 08:34:25 AM:

Update 81
Did some small adjustments and added sound for the flies.

JLJac on August 20, 2012, 02:52:26 AM:

Glad to have you on board!

Update 82
Resolved several minor issues in the level editor and the game. Added some graphical stuff that makes it clearer when a lizard has spotted you.

JLJac on August 22, 2012, 03:14:50 AM:

Internet connection will be a little shaky for a few days, but I'll still be able to work on the game.

JLJac on August 25, 2012, 09:27:52 PM:

Hi!
I'm writing this from my phone, you'll get more insight into what's been going on once I get to a computer with an internet connection. Just wanted to let you know that stuff is still happening.

JLJac on August 26, 2012, 10:52:35 PM:

Update 83
Still no stable internet connection, but at least I can upload some pictures.
Most of my recent work has been on the editors:



Some of you probably recognize them, it's the level overview, the geometry editor, the tile editor and the effects editor. They are brushed up UI-wise, functions are added, projects can be saved and loaded, and the whole thing actually works as a stand-alone-application for the first time, as almost all the functions can be accessed through actual UI-solutions instead of by feeding lines into the debug code window.

Apart from this there has been a lot of small stuff in the actual game, which you never knew was missing but had to be added in. Such as up-pickable objects blinking when approaching them only if your hands aren't full, the ability to let go of flies in order to pick up spears, some work on the lizards, and so on and so on.

Art-wise there hasn't been a ton of progress, but at least some. For example these are in:



The signs are randomly generated from a set of parts:



Long ago I promised that I wouldn't make graphics and then try to fit them into my levels, but instead make levels and then create graphics for them. This didn't happen, I'm still making a lot of loose tiles. I'll try to shape up though. Now is the time to start actually building the world.

jamesprimate on August 27, 2012, 11:06:47 AM:

its got my attention!

 

JLJac on August 29, 2012, 11:59:00 AM:

 

Announcement
After a few days of mailing back and forth James and I have decided to collaborate. James is an awesome artist who has made the score for several famous games, and I'm much looking forward to what he'll bring to the project. Check out his page!

At this point it looks like James will not only make the music, but also the sound effects for the game. He sent me an amazing sounding sketch, and I have sent him a beta version of the game.

This feels great, because as I've mentioned sound is really one of my weaker spots. The work I had done up until now I felt was just passable, but with someone who's really good dedicated to it I think it'll be not only passable, but a really good element that will add to the game.

Of course it's scary to let a part of the project out of my direct control, but it's a leap of faith that will likely bring a lot of good stuff. Now this part can develop more independently, and hopefully the whole will end up greater than the sum of the parts in a way that wouldn't be possible if I did everything myself. I'm much looking forward to seeing where this goes!

Welcome James! Say something to introduce yourself!

Update 84
Thank you people for your attention!

Once again I've been wrestling the seemingly (to me) impossible task of capturing and uploading a video. Stuff just will not work. Finally I managed to get a .avi file, but it's uncompressed and too big to upload. I also have an .swf, but that one got some buggy lines in it when I uploaded it. Once again I simply got too tired of it and decided to quit, but if anyone has any tips of how capturing video and uploading it can be done they're very welcome to tell me

In other news there has been a little progress here and there, as usual. There's now a very simple function for making cracks in walls, so that you can make a passage while at the same time conveying that a structure was actually meant to look in another specific way. For example if you want to make a level that has two identical pipes at each side, but want the player to be able to pass through one but not the other, you can use the function to create a crack through one of the pipes. It'll then be passable, while it will still be conveyed that it was meant to look like the other pipe. It doesn't look awesome, but it does the job.

Also started to get back to the game engine for the campaign game mode. This needs to be finished in order to get to the long promised building of the actual world that we should be getting to soon now, I hope.