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[oahda]

dem graphics

[Miguelito]

 Given people are commenting on the art, I thought I might chime in for a bit.

 We went through a few style iterations right at the start of the project - mainly character proportions, which then would set the basis for the rest of the entire game. From lanky builds like, say, Gunstar Heroes over thicker Zelda-type proportions Konidias preferred the latter, and that is why not only the characters look like that, but subsequently everything from clothes to bushes to police cars evolved to suit that style.

 Same thing for the character design itself. Again, a few proposals were made as the very starting point of everything, with completely different archetypes (I'm leaving it to you Konidias if you want to post that specific image), each changing the setting and feel of the game completely.

 Sparrow, the main guy, has this blue-white-magenta color scheme going on which is reflected pretty much everywhere else - cool colors, pink, blue, white... That specific shade of magenta is reserved for sparrow though, and there's one particular location in the game where the colors are warmer. You'll find out, or at least feel it I hope. It's not jail, that's for sure.
 I'd lie if I said that Superstar Saga wasn't an inspiration for the colors. SS has to have been the last Mario game with any sort of creativity in it, visual or otherwise, and I remember being really impressed by the direction the artist took for the main illustrations - even changing the basic hues of the characters (Luigi is turquoise/fresh blue). I think if a guy tried that at today's Nintendo they'd get fired on the spot.

 Looking at the game's progress, I still see the colors do need some tweaking, but that's quickly done as the game comes together. At the moment things still are a bit WIP, at least on my side here. But I'm very glad people like it, and I hope it's gonna become even better!

[Konidias]

Yeah, sure this one?



I'm a huge Zelda/Mario/Pokemon nut so that style influence is going to rub off on anything I work on just because I enjoy that aesthetic so much. It just has a very welcoming feel.

[Konidias]

Oh and the different possible heroes:

[Slader16]

Sparrow ftw!

[Miguelito]

First rule of art: Every time you create several suggestions/variations, the first one you did will always win out.

Always.

[Calum Bowen]

sparrow is the man but oh boy i love flash too! it'd be fun if you kinda run into this rival thief - or perhaps see him selling stuff at the ol' pawn shop.

[Conker534]

Yea I like flash a lot.

[Konidias]

It's funny you mentioned him because I've considered including him as a rival.

[increment]

Those thieves are all cool, I really like Smoke's hair.  Loving all these updates too keep up this great work.  My money is totally ready for this.

[jO]

I like how Carlito is reminding me about the Shadow

[christopf]

Steal my money!

[Konidias]

Just updating with more lasers/smoke. Testing out in full residential level environment. Finally started optimizing it! Got it smoothly working at 60fps and no slow down. Not to mention the smoke now layers properly, and the smoke also has collision detection to keep it contained in rooms (instead of moving through walls)

Still need to add the trip detection back in for the player but that is trivial at this point. I'm just super happy to work out the framerate issues I was having with the laser stuff since it was eating half the framerate with lots of lasers/smoke on screen.



Still need to add in the little mirror objects to block lasers as well, but again, trivial since I've already coded that stuff in earlier versions.

Also in the gif you can see a bit of the idling animations for Sparrow along with me sneaking momentarily. Oh! and dust clouds when he moves around quickly... gotta have those little dust clouds

Finally... gifcam is far superior to licecap, IMHO

[jO]

Looks so good!
What will you actually be able to do about the lasers other than making them visible? In the little gif you just walk over them, I suppose this will trigger some kind of alarm?

Also, yes, gifcam is better than licecap, however I experienced that when you want to record larger pictures that are not so depending on framerate, licecap seems to have the better performance.

[Beaulamb1992]

This is so cute! really nice animations on those characters too

[eobet]

To me, the smoke breaks with the aesthetic style of the rest of the game currently. But I bet you are aware of that, and I guess it's a pretty tricky fix... looking at the individual sprites, they seem to fit, but the result is still more "noisy" than the rest of the game... perhaps you're simply spawning too many transparent sprites?

[Christian Knudsen]

Also, yes, gifcam is better than licecap, however I experienced that when you want to record larger pictures that are not so depending on framerate, licecap seems to have the better performance.

A word of warning to anybody out there looking to give GifCam a try like me. Do not get it from download.cnet.com. During the install process, I made sure to unclick everything so I wouldn't get other crap installed, but after installation, I still suddenly found "My PCBackup.exe" running in my task manager. At no point did the installer ask if I wanted that particular malware installed. Fuckers.

[Jad]

To me, the smoke breaks with the aesthetic style of the rest of the game currently. But I bet you are aware of that, and I guess it's a pretty tricky fix... looking at the individual sprites, they seem to fit, but the result is still more "noisy" than the rest of the game... perhaps you're simply spawning too many transparent sprites?

i agree with this, look into simplifying the original particles so they create less complexity when they combine

[Konidias]

Looks so good!
What will you actually be able to do about the lasers other than making them visible? In the little gif you just walk over them, I suppose this will trigger some kind of alarm?

Thanks!
You'll be able to place down little mirror blocks which basically just block the laser path. You need to figure out the origin path of the laser. (note the little box with the pink dot in the gif) You'll need to be on the lookout for these little laser emitter boxes when you navigate an area... If you see one, you know there are lasers active somewhere, so you'll want to spray your smoke canister to reveal them.

Yes, when you walk over a laser (even when it's not visible) it will trip the alarm system, which doubles the rate that the timer clock goes down. If you trip an invisible laser, the whole laser beam becomes visible (so you know why the alarm went off)

To me, the smoke breaks with the aesthetic style of the rest of the game currently. But I bet you are aware of that, and I guess it's a pretty tricky fix... looking at the individual sprites, they seem to fit, but the result is still more "noisy" than the rest of the game... perhaps you're simply spawning too many transparent sprites?

Yeah I noticed it too. Right now they are are just spawning when I hold down the LMB. The final version will have them spraying out from the player by using a little smoke canister. There definitely won't be as many smoke sprites in the final game, as I'll be able to control exactly where and how many smoke sprites appear. So hopefully that will fix the issue for the most part.

[ericmbernier]

That is a very secure house!

You mention timers doubling in decay rate if you trip an alarm. I assume this means all the missions have a time limit to get in and get out before the cops show up? If this is the case, is the mission over once the cops come, or can you wiggle your way to steal another day?