Couple of new enemies

Neither of them have names yet. The one on the left is probably going to go in the hub area. The thing on the right, that I'm now calling an "Evil Roomba" is for the volcano base and will wind up and jet steam to move around as well as shooting with it's cannon.

Nuke/Flight/Boost Video

Abilities Tester Video

Nothing playable just yet, as flight so overpowered it gives access to areas of the level I don't want anyone near right now. Also I want to polish a few more rough edges and crash causing bugs before I make it playable as well as add a half decent tutorial sign. I'll probably take the player through ALL the abilities as part of the starting tutorial.

It was mentioned yesterday about autofire. You don't have to use it. You tap X to lock on and now as long as you still have a target he will stay locked on until you have got about 2-3 seconds without one before putting the gun away again. Yes, you can just blaze away at everything anyway, but the number of misses you will get due to recoil and loss of damage for not getting perfect critical hits will cost you in the long term.

So work plan for tomorrow. Clean up the ability code a bit, prep the new stage area and try and get the player in it with a couple of new enemies spawning. Perhaps lay some of the ground work for timed hits, although it's getting harder and harder to work with the guns since there designs are still subject to change.

New Battle Alpha Version

A new version of the Prototype

The final iteration of the combat controls. I'm pretty settled with the setup I have, although rolling needs some tweaking, as the player needs a little more control over where it ends, or you roll into enemies way too much.

You can roll/backflip/shoot any time. There are a few small animation bugs and damage can occasionally make the character misbehave. The new meter in the top left that increases when you shoot is basically a special attack meter. You hold down to charge it up and unleash a special attack which does crazy awesome stuff. Right now only the basic Nuke move is done (does massive damage to all nearby enemies) with a simple effect.

Tomorrow I'm going to work on adding Flight and Boost/Vampire to the specials and tweak out roll a bit so the player can adjust momentum within reason. Which when finished should cover all the complexities of the combat/movement part of the game. The new level should be preped enough that the next alpha version can be there rather than the temple, which I'm getting a little bored of myself. I don't want to make that leap until the new enemies (Basically ones that attack you to do damage rather than being damage on touch) are ready.

Also, yes, I was back to work yesterday. But I found out a friend had been in a car accident over christmas and it kinda knocked me for six when it came to focusing on development. So I didn't really achieve anything notable to post about.

Office Tidy Day

Usually on Fridays I have 'office tidy day'. This is when I clean up the junk on my desk because a tidy clean workspace makes me more keen to work on stuff. It's not Friday today, but it is almost Christmas and I spent most of the day cleaning anyway. So today was office tidy day.

There is a deep and meaningful reason behind having an certain weekday for cleaning. During my 'heavy' periods I start to pull 10 hours a day working on a game out of enthusiasm for the project. Doing it for a long time burns my brain out a bit, so the idea is by tidying, I've got something to force my mind of work for a bit. Or at the very least spread it out between bursts of tidying/cleaning that give me time to think about what I'm doing.

Due to my Christmas commitments, I won't be back to work until the 27th of December. Tomorrow will be my last game related post until then. Until then enjoy this slightly buggy animation loop of a 'riser'. You can grab them, they drag you up to higher ledges.

Eternal Ascension Floor 1

New demo level went into production today (I still have the map for the Volcano base, but it's going on the back burner for now). Going to do the first area from Eternal Ascension. The 'hub dungeon' for lack of a better word. You'll need to work your way through this dungeon to access other areas and progress through the story. After each story checkpoint the dungeon will change slightly, so what you see here is ONLY the lower levels. It has a couple of unique properties. It's multi-pathed, although some paths will become blocked based on your choices progressing through the game. You don't gain any levels in it, Exp is just converted into currency. It will contain 'ghost' objects from other that can only be unlocked and become usable by completing said levels.

It awaiting some enemy designs and other bits. Should be able to start putting something together right after Christmas (I've got family around during the Christmas period who would glare at me if I spent it working on video games). To get a demo out in the second week of January, assuming I don't get nuked with something out of nowhere ruining my schedule.

I'm working on something to make navigation and combat more interesting right now. Don't really want to talk about it too much until I've proven it out on the prototype. Talking about features too much makes it too easy to get carried away in the hype.

Also is this awesome, or what :-

Simplifying

Today I took the plunge and pretty much removed most of the features I wrote into Gather Up recently. I wrote the Z targeting system, it didn't work. I was in fact getting hit more with a system that was supposed to make it -easier- to dodge which made the whole thing a tantamount failure. I had half sense it wasn't a good idea because it was straying from the 'two button' paradigm, multiplying complexity (I have a rough calculation for it, but I'll talk about that another day).

There is a positive side to it. I've lost about 3-4 days of work, including some other stuff to do with the way ammo is handled. I re-wrote a huge chunk of the code to support the Z locking which transfers well (I had to remove/tweak a few lines of code to get back to the stage I wanted) so overall everything now works better. My issues originally was handing the gun between during dodge moves and I had to write that for the last system to work. So everything that respect is cleaner and better than if I had directly switched from one system to the other.

I've returned all the dodge controls to something even simpler than the demo. No more 'toward' and 'away' nonsense. You shoot the nearest thing pressing or holding X. You can roll any time but tapping down + direction. You can backflip any time by pressing up. Next up I'm going to alter the 'hover mode' to be a bit less crap and be more like a short period of floaty/flight type movement to add a Ariel dimension to fighting. I want to create something like the air suspension moves in Devil May Cry, sans actually having to shoot to stay in the air. If done right it should add something else new to the platforming element as well as combat. I've still got the issue of weapon and target cycling, but I think they will be manageable.

The other paradigm shift (see what I did there) is that I've changed with level I'm going to be doing for the demo build. A few people expressed concern about the lack of exploration and I think I need to address that as part of proof of concept. I'm quite happy with the results for linear areas, which feel a bit dead right now because they are awaiting the epic story content that is going to make them interesting to play. Since the movement mode has changed so much, I think I'll need to re-prove the open world mechanics of Level Up under Gather Up's altered movement mechanics and focus on fighting as well as collecting.

In other news. I worked on a house:
I'm not really sure about using this style right now. It feels a bit too busy and distracting and the windows/doors -really- clash with the brickwork. I do like the colours though.

Timed Shots and Dodges.

I was supposed to update this blog a couple of times a week (perferable every day). I've been slipping and also missed my deadline because of the Kongregate version of Level Up. The API did not want to play nice. Since I've been getting good publicity there and some half decent revenue I decided to work it out so I would get badges (Achievements) on Kong that would drive my traffic up a bit. Which took me the entire weekend. It sucks when a 20 minute job winds up taking several days.

I've done a bit of work on Gather Up. The new dodge mode is working, albeit buggily. As well as the new key layout, which doesn't feel entirely natural but I'm working on it. Will have a playable version up real soon, I want to do a couple of either enemies or trap so the changes I've made make more sense in context. With the current mechanics of the enemies it doesn't really fit.

Anyway, I was going to talk about timing and rhythm and what a subtle and awesome element in design it is. Using a rhythm or timed press is one of the better ways of getting the most out of simple controls. Just look at something like rhythm heaven. It also sneaks it's way into other genres. Particularly fighters where you deploy attacks at a certain tempo to control a juggle and brawlers where enemies block when attacked repeatedly.

A rhythm of taps on a single key is usually a lot more natural to memorize than a combination of buttons. I think it closes the gap between skill and memorisation in a game adding a kind of aural pattern along with the physical movement. It also improves the sense of direct interaction between the player and the game. I'm planning to use a kind of rhythm mechanic in Gather Up! called 'perfect shots' where well timed shots do additional damage.

Every gun has three important stats (and a few other minor factors) that effect aiming. Distance, Recoil and Aiming are core of shooting. Certain guns optimize at certain distances, this is a no-nonsense thing players are used to. Pistols work well at med/close range. Shotguns work well up close and crummily at mid range, and so on. Perfect shots are tied up with the -other- two vital stats, Aiming and Recoil.

Aiming ticks up over time when you are standing still. It scales differently with different guns. The sniper is enhanced by aiming a lot, where as the shotgun isn't. Recoil shoots up a bit every time you shoot a gun and ticks away when you don't. At the moment both of these things are at 0 at the same time there will be a window for a 'perfect' shot. Shooting in this window scores critical damage. This establishes a perfect 'rhythm' of shots for each gun for maximum damage per bullet (but not necessarily best damage output overall). Since gun stats will change over time, it's going to be another factor players will need to consider when altering their gun.

The other timing factor I want to add are Dodge Reloads. A well timed dodge (ie, one that means you an attack sails past you) gains extra EXP during a battle. A well timed dodge when your gun is empty will trigger a full reload and perhaps a damage bonus for that clip too. The idea is that it will create another risk:reward choice for the player. Pay more attention to clip length against position and risk taking damage needlessly, or reap the rewards of audaciously getting up close and rolling around an enemy.