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[Andy Wolff]

I made it so the smallest beetles take one shot and you can shoot through them, the medium-sized ones take two shots and you shoot through them half the time, and the large ones take four shots and you can't shoot through them. The small ones can spawn in little flocks of four, but I didn't do any hard-coded flocking behavior because they generally stay reasonably close together on their own, at least at first. I also added some better knockback on the shots. Altogether, I'm reasonably happy with it now, though I worry I'm just more used to it and it's not actually much better.

I added a behavior to the snake boss where it moves quickly offscreen in one of the cardinal directions, then comes back from a random point moving in potentially a different cardinal direction. This is a bit scary if it's moving quickly, but it's a lot easier to hit the snake when it's doing this, especially if it's moving vertically, so I'm a little happier with it now.


I very nearly died at the end, there

There seems to be a glitch with the movement on the dead snake golds. I'll have to check it out


I also made it so the mummies in the Dunes can lasso enemies as well as players, which can lead to some hilarious stuff. I'll try to get a good video of it, later. I'll see if I can set up a mummy lasso chain lead by a charging sand shark or something

[rdein]

holy fcking andy wolff, damn

[Ashkin]

The snake appears to be bleeding lemons.

[JMickle]

holy fuck indeed.

[Andy Wolff]

@Ashkin: maybe it's a lemon demon :I

I've been getting some good work done lately, so I was starting to feel more or less like I was getting close to finishing. In an attempt to brutally crush this horrible feeling to death, I'm doing a
Rough Progress Report.

The Cracks
   Cactus
   Outlaw
   GoldBagger
   Shield Bandit
   Jumping Bandit
   Gatling Bandit
   *Bandit King                  (2-3 days)
   Toma
   Archer
   *Chief
   **Snake

The Dunes
   Poisoned Cactus
   Crow
   Dune Bandit
   Stilts Bandit
   Mummy
   Armadillo
   Sand Shark
   Beetle
   *Some kind of Monster           (2-3 days)
   *▓▓▓▓▓                                  (1-3 days)
   **▓▓▓▓▓                                (2-5 days)

The Mesas
    ehhhhhhhhhhh. 8 more small enemies, 2 *mid-bosses, and a **boss.

yeah so I'm cutting the Mesas for now. This makes me very sad, because this means I won't get to put in the goatasaurs, and because the mesas were going to be pretty interesting and different gameplay-wise.
I want the enemies, at least,  as close to done as I can get them before classes start up again on the 23rd, and there isn't nearly enough time for 11 more enemies and the modifications to the engine required for falling off the mesas. Perhaps I'll add the Mesas after release if there's enough interest, as ambiguous as that is. Same with the Streams and the Ruins.

Anyway, by that estimate, I'm at about 16/22 enemies done. I can probably do the stilts bandit and the poison cacti tonight. The remaining enemies altogether will probably take me one or two weeks to do, at best.

Besides the enemies, I still need to:

• Make the cactus forest interesting to play, somehow.
• Implement various cool events like the appearance of the golden cactus.
• Adjust the spawning for the various areas in the dunes. This shouldn't take more than a few hours.
• Make three or four more skins for each of the player characters. I can do one or two of these a night, probably
• Make it so you can unlock characters/skins
• (maybe) Add ghost mode (enemy possession) and enemies in duel mode. This will take basically forever, so, even though it's probably my favorite idea, I might not do it.
• Make more sound effects and put in JMickle's music. I am bad at making sounds so this might take a long time
• Add various accessibility things to the options menu, like vibration settings and probably other things.
• Put more secrets in, especially completion rewards / cool person medals. I started a list of these in my design doc (notes.txt). This could take a long time because I like secrets, but I might not put as many in as I want to.
• Add hd cutscenes, pc controls+compatibility, and netplay. This will take me like five minutes because Xion said I am cool.
• Test thoroughly with multiple players. I probably won't be able to avoid this after school starts up again.
• Go through peer review and publish the game on XBLIG. I believe this generally takes  at least a week if everything is perfect, and an extra week every time you fail the approval process (which I plan to do at least once).
• Invite everyone to a Bandit Party party and have fake golds/other nice things to pilfer.

So, I'm probably still a month or two away from releasing this. My feeling of completion has been successfully crushed. On the positive side, it's definitely looking feasible to release the game this year, which was actually my New Year's resolution or something.

[tso]

i love you, man

been looking forward to this game for ages. keep kicking!

[Andy Wolff]

Hey, thanks. I promise you'll get to play it eventually, even if I have to make an unofficial (or official, we'll see) PC version for people without an xbox (unless you can't get XNA games to run or are on a mac, then all bets are off).

a mockup for the cactus behavior after it gets poisoned by the mummy dust

It only lashes out at you if you get too close to it, and it still has the same chance to dance around as the normal cacti. I think I'll make it so this can attack enemies, as well (enemies are generally unaffected by cacti, so this will be helpful).

animated the stilts bandit. I am very amused with myself for this


Oh, oh, I just had an idea for what the "Some kind of Monster" mini-boss for the Dunes can be. This is gonna be good

edit: Implemented most of the stilts bandit (as player-controlled). Just a bit of attacking stuff and the actual AI left to do, but I'm going to bed. Expect a video of him in action tomorrow.

[Andrew Brophy]

stilts bandit is adorable

[xix]

Totally watching this thread. Keep up the good work.

[Andy Wolff]

@Brophy: you're adorable

thanks

So I said I'd have a video yesterday but I ended up making things kind of difficult for myself regarding the stilts bandit's AI.

edit: oops, didn't mean to post this until i actually had the video. gimme like another hour or two, I'm almost there :<

edit 2: okay here it is. It came out pretty well, I think

[peanutbuttershoes]

Great job dude. Looks so yummy

[Andy Wolff]

this is taking longer than I thought and I've been able to spend less time on it than I thought
have a rough (first pass) animation test in the meantime

it has been noted that he needs more oomph on the kick-up, and that his idle stance is rather goofy. I'll get on it tomorrow, as well as walk and attacking anims, hopefully

[Inanimate]

When he's lifting his legs back to kick up, you eased too far, so they slow down too much -- that's where you lost your 'oomph'.

[08--n7.r6-79.84]

everything in this topic is AWESOME 
everything all

[xix]

I dunno if it's when the legs kick back or when they kick up to stand. I like the kick up, but I think it's just a little slow compared to the rest of it. I'd probably add some more frames when he's kicking back/curling up and then speed up the entire animation.