No underwater level is complete without lavapits!!

 ?

Visual Studio 2008?

If you want to make cave like structures, I recommend you use this cellular automata technique. It's really simple and elegant and generates awesome results.

Cellular Automata Method for Generating Random Cave-Like Levels

Why not make it 'stamina' or something similar? You could maybe allow the player to swim along the surface for a decreased rate of stamina loss for slightly less tense boat-return, and you'd still 'drown' when you run out of it, as you've exhausted yourself to the point of not being able to swim any further.

Very interesting.. Thanks for the tip Drogen!

It this OpenGL?

Try adding some shadows. Like under the trees and whatnot.  I think it might help.

done for an english assignment. i'm not gonna have time to change anything but you can still crit if you want i guess.

Great colors

Sepia. Yum

Kickin it old school

[Updates]

It feels sort of weird now how you can't surface anywhere to breath and have to go back to the arrow. I mean logically you have to go back to your boat to board it but I don't buy just drowning cause I couldn't make it to my boat yet could make it to the water's surface.

True, I guess my game is an over-abstraction of reality in that sense. The reason why I defined that mechanic that way is because I want the player to always be near the boat, in which venturing far from the boat means greater risk and more danger.

As for the shooting. I am definitely planning for the game play to only shoot projectiles. I currently only have the primary gun implemented, I plan to be implementing the secondary gun soon. As for the gimmicky mechanics like hooking or netting, not sure how that is going to work within the game. It's a nice thought though..


Updates
Small update for the day. Graphical improvements and changing alot of placeholder assets.





Now onto coding some enemies..

Hey man

I just took a look at your video on YouTube. Here are some thoughts that went through my mind when I was watching it:

Seeing the title screen got me excited because the color scheme was pleasant and it had a nice retro look and feel.

But when you got into the game, it was a different story. The lighting effect was pretty cool but the colors did seem to clash. Not sure if it's currently placeholder art or what. But it definitely needs to be changed if you are trying to sell this on Xbox.

The swirling flies also feel a bit artificial. Can't really tell if they are animated, but definitely does not feel like flies but rather like sprite art being moved along a circle.

Obviously, your game was heavily inspired by VVVVVV. But it definitely lacks the polish that VVVVVV has. If you notice in VVVVVV, it definitely has really simple pixel art, but its mechanics felt much more fluid and environment much more alive and believable.

Anyhow, I think this game has the potential to be really cool if you put alot of effort into polishing it up.

DUDE! Have a female sea monster kidnap the player's gay lover. That'll show 'em.

Progressive. Yum!

but the whole "save yo girlfriend" thing is so worn out to me, it's basically lazy and slightly misogynist.

Thanks for calling my game concept lazy and misogynist. You're way too kind! 

And I'm glad you enjoyed Wasabi. 

[Added features:]

Added features:

• Began integrating new underwater assets. Still need to replace placeholder tiles to make it complete.
• You can also swim around and blow up orange fish. They don't have AI implemented, but will be coming song.
• New sailing song!

Alot of code has been poured into coding a solid and efficient framework to handle such a huge environment of sprites. I've just implemented and tested it.

So now that it's complete, I can begin to code the enemies and battle system!

[ Link ]

The colour scheme that you've chosen for this game is wonderful!

I really like the look & feel of this game. The underwater areas look a bit bland at the moment though, but that's gonna change as the project moves along, right?

Yep, been working heavily on polishing the overworld. Now I am working full-speed on the underwater levels. Hopefully, there will be some fighting gameplay quite soon!

Cute graphics. 

My first impression was that it was some sort of puzzle that I had to solve. Couldn't really figure out how to play..

[@tsameti]

@tsameti - Thanks for the info about the sinking. I do think I will implement it soon, but I don't think I'll need to be as mathematically dense as yours, just a simple decrease in velocity_y will do.

@magnum_opus - I honestly couldn't tell that the boat's sail wasn't physically correct. And I am hoping that the general demographic of players who play this game won't either. But hey, if alot of people do complain, I might change it. It seems fine as is.


Anyhow, I've been working hard on perfecting the procedural placement of treasure. Currently got it to a good state. Going to stream in new art assets as I receive them as well. So stay tuned!

And thanks again for such nice words. Peace!

[underwater swimming mechanics]

Thanks guys!

I've been trying to code the underwater swimming mechanics. But for some reason, the player doesn't really feel as if he is swimming in water. He seems to be just floating in outer-space.

Anyone have any good tips to make the player feel as if he is underwater? If I added a slight sinking motion, do you think it might help the player feel more immersed in this underwater environment? I want to prevent the old school Mario style jump to swim thing.

Any tips or references to other games that had a good underwater swimming mechanics would be greatly appreciated.

Wow! Thank you all for all of the positive feedback and kind words! You all are like angels from heaven who have descended to the Tigsource forums to bless this thread with nice comments. Really motivates me to work harder!

Anyhow, to respond to some of your comments...

'Avast' means stop btw.

Funny, I didn't really look up what "avast" meant. I just thought it meant GO FORTH because I hear pirates saying it in movies all the time. Any other word you would recommend?

(allthough I'm guessing you're going to fix the looping errors and maybe they're not all done yet?)

Yep, much of the music there is just placeholder until I receive the music from the composer who is working on the tracks currently. But stay tuned for some tunes! 


Now back to the code dungeon...