next »

[DarkWanderer]

Sorry for compare it to other game but this theme come to mind when i look at the gif. Nice work.

That's probably one of my favorite tracks from SM. I'm really anticipating what the score for ESA will be like. The trailer music was great. I think the score will do a lot to carry this game outside of it's highly detailed yet lo-res pixel art. I'd love a teaser of some tunes, I hope the next trailer teases another track from the game   

[Hempuli‽]

Thanks for the compliments!

Music

Hopefully there'll be some teaser stuff coming at some point of time.

Today I've been working on the in-game 'inventory' or pause menu. Earlier it has been just the map and the game time showing, without any further player input. However, I'm going to implement a couple submenus, like a legacy map you can scroll through, and a status screen where the game'll display some useless data about the player character. Working on the legacy map has been fun, but I've run into a bit of a problem with the design, which I'll have to look into later today.

The game reached 81% completion yesterday! Yay! One more room, and that'll be 82

[Pineapple]

Oh, oh, I can do music. I can do chiptunes, if that's what you're into.

[Hempuli‽]

Oh, oh, I can do music. I can do chiptunes, if that's what you're into.

Unfortunately I already have a composer, Noby (https://soundcloud.com/noby), he's just been very busy lately. Your stuff sounds neat!

Wait what, this is my second progress post for today! Oh well. I managed to beat the design issue and have been working on the second-to-last area as well as the other submenus. I'll have to ponder about some enemy designs, since at the moment I'm slightly out of ideas. Eventually I'll also have to revisit some of the enemies made earlier and make them less dumb because some of them are pretty stupid at the moment (not stupid as in unintelligent, but rather poorly designed).

It was interesting to draw a larger picture of the player character for the status screen, I haven't really thought about what he actually looks like!

[kleiba]

Early testing of the new gun:

Happy New Year to everyone!

Sorry to come back to the gun issue after you've probably moved on already. But I just wanted to add that for my personal taste the laser now seems just a tiny bit too big graphically. This is not about its function or oomph, just about the visual appearance. The comet shape makes it very prominent in the above screenshot -- and I wonder if that is not a bit too much for something that you'll probably use a lot throughout the game? Do you think a slightly more humble shot could be visually less tiring over a longer period of game play than a bigger one like the this one?

[Hempuli‽]

@kleiba: A good point, I'd say. I just drew the animation as I went, and it might very well be that the laser is too large at the moment. The only thing is, even as it is now it is sometimes quite hard to hit enemies when falling or moving over/below them, so the beam must be at least somewhat wide. I could try making a tad thinner, though; that'd increase the "oomph" of the charged shot, too. Thanks for the feedback!

[DarkWanderer]

I think it looks good as is, but I hadn't considered the contrast of the charged shot. You'd certainly have to make it look like it has equal or greater power behind it.

I forget, did Noby do the trailer music? Good stuff.
He did, checking out his other stuff now to see what may be in store 

[Hempuli‽]

Yeah, he did. I really like the theme tune, although I guess one shouldn't say that of something that's going into their own game.

Anyway, big news of sorts! I finally took my time and optimized the room loading code; it has been very slow for a long, long time. I changed the game to only look for tiles according to the size of the room, whereas before the game would just assume that every room is of the maximum size. A very simple fix, yeah, but I was kind of fearing it'd be jarring how in this new system some rooms would take longer to load than others. This didn't turn out to be much of a problem in the end (I think!)

Have a gif comparison before-after:
3+ seconds

less than 2 seconds

[DarkWanderer]

Nice transition. Real Smooth

[JobLeonard]

I was kind of fearing it'd be jarring how in this new system some rooms would take longer to load than others. This didn't turn out to be much of a problem in the end (I think!)

I think waiting a long time for a small room to load would be waaaaaay more frustrating in the long term, so I am all for this new loading style.

[kleiba]

Could you already pre-load the next room in the background as the player gets close to the exit of the current one?

[kleiba]

The only thing is, even as it is now it is sometimes quite hard to hit enemies when falling or moving over/below them, so the beam must be at least somewhat wide. I could try making a tad thinner, though.

If the effect is subtle enough, you could also just make the shot a bit thinner graphically, but leave the hit box as it is so as not to make it harder to hit enemies?!

[Hempuli‽]

Today I created some new enemies and worked some more on the second-to-last area. Progress was kind of slow due to me having quite some other things to do and also being very very tired. I also did some planning on how to make some existing stuff better and how to approach certain design things, so there shouldn't really be that many design-related problems in the near future.

Could you already pre-load the next room in the background as the player gets close to the exit of the current one?

Not really, no, due to the way MMF 2 works. MMF does not support proper free scrolling (it allows infinite scrolling to certain directions, but the coordinate 0,0 is always in a corner and you cannot scroll to negative coordinates), and thus the next area would have to be loaded off-screen and then re-positioned to its correct place, which would probably have plenty of problems.

[DarkWanderer]

How many enemies/traps/monsters/robots/bosses would you estimate this game has by now? I'd imagine it's a decent sized number.

[antoniodamala]

I'm kinda late but just wanna say loved the new shooting animation and the loading screen transition. I have to play it to see how good they actually are, but for now they do seem great.  

[Hempuli‽]

How many enemies/traps/monsters/robots/bosses would you estimate this game has by now? I'd imagine it's a decent sized number.

Actually I hadn't counted them before; thanks for asking. There are currently
66 enemies (some are variations of others but generally they're unique)
27 traps (spikes & lava counted, meh)
12 bosses

I have to play it to see how good they actually are, but for now they do seem great.  

A great fear of mine is that despite the gifs the game is going to disappoint! It's hard to say beforehand whether the game is satisfying to play or not :/

[phi6]

Don't worry about that, even if the gameplay needs improvement at least players will be able to give you feedback about it - which will only help to make the game even better!

[TurboGun]

This is somehow my first time seeing this game, and it looks like exploring this world is going to be a blast! Are you doing any play testing with it?

[RealityShifter]

Every time I see something Metroid, I think to myself someone should make a Metroid-esc creepy, lonely feeling exploration platformer, that doesn't involve digging.

Thanks.

[Hempuli‽]

Thanks for the compliments!

@TurboGun: Currently the only proper testing is conducted by me, the composer, and a friend of mine (and I guess I should be disqualified as a 'proper tester' anyway). I think I'm going to try to get some real testing going on once the game is in a state where it can be beaten. Which might be surprisingly soon!

Today I reached 83% completion (counted based on rooms finished, so a bit wrong but hey), yay! Only one more room to go before the 13th boss. After that there'll be mere 5-7 rooms to do before the final boss! (Although even after that there'll be some bonus areas to do, I'm just trying to get the story-related obligatory content done as soon as possible.) Earlier I pondered making the second-to-last area something you visit also earlier in the game, and I've implemented some map changes for this to work. Hopefully it'll be cool to visit a place and then later on revisit it and see a drastic difference!