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[Thuby]

I'm making a stealth platformer!

Will be updated at some point.

All the download links are broken, so here's the last GM:S version.
http://www.filedropper.com/snotninjav8

I don't update this devlog that much anymore. I mostly post on my Tumblr but I might come back to this one occasionally.
http://thuntech.tumblr.com/

[Thuby]

Devlog 1
I've already made two versions(one of which is playable here: https://www.dropbox.com/s/vv9tzylk6x7c2nu/Snot%20Ninja-0.0.0.2.exe) but to catch you up, and tell you about some plans that are not yet added. Wall jumping and wall sliding is already in the game but contains one or two bugs, and the ability to stick to walls so that you can aim your jump. It's currently very overpowered since you can just sit on the wall forever, but I will add a timer and cooldown of some sort eventually.

And here are some in-game screenshots of the current levels.

[Thuby]

Devlog 2
I got a lot of work done since last time, I added som awesome boogers(particles) that float around, and some super sweet  lighting that I'm really proud of.



I also added the framework for enemy AI, it's pretty stupid for now, since it only walks into walls...
Might put a build of the game right now into the next post, but I don't want to really make the game very public right now. But until next time!

[Thuby]

I'd just like to say, huge thanks to this guy for helping me out with lighting. Couldn't have done it without him.

[Thuby]

Will update in a few days, added some cool stuff considering AI. Also going to include a build then, but I feel like pictures aren't enough for this game right now, so I wait until I can get gifs going.

[Thuby]

Trying to keep this post updated but I can't really show anything off until get som gifs going, and I can't at this very moment. Maybe in a few days. But for now I have this picture of the first version of the game and the lates(unreleased) version.

[Thuby]

Ok wow! I forgot about this entirely sorry about that
A huge amount of stuff has been added since last post, so I'll just cut right to it and use a changelog.

CHANGELOG SNOT NINJA:
- Made the AI a lot smarter! (Now turns around upon reaching wall or ledge)
- Made AI chase the player once withing a certain radius
- Made enemies emit light to represent status
- Added better air control when wall jumping
- Tweaked controls a little bit
- Added the ability to control how high to jump
- Added grenade framework
- Added smoke grenade (neutralizes enemies)
- Added stealth mode (player turns see-through and can't be seen by player) (SIDE NOTE: Way to OP at the moment since you can do it forever, will add timer in the future)
- Added lots more levels (11 in total)
- Acquired level designer (my friend Michael)

I think that's about it! Hope I didn't miss anything here's a build of the current version for play testing purposes, since I don't have an official play tester yet. Until next time!

https://www.dropbox.com/s/mvzlxdz657vam4e/Snot%20Ninja%20V8.exe?dl=0 Version 8 so far!

[BanzaiBrigade]

You've got a nice art/colour style going.

Things I noticed from the demo.

- In most levels, if you tap a certain direction, the player slides slowly in that direction without stopping (relatively nitpicky, but with platformers you want everything to feel completely tight and predictable).

- I feel as though in addition to the normal walljump, there should be a wall-jump-off mechanic similar to meatboy. I found lvl6 far too hard for a relatively simple challenge simply because I had to jump towards the wall to wall jump and then quickly reverse directions to go where I needed to go.

- I would be nice if the smoke particles had some transparency so you can still see the level and enemies behind it.

- This is obviously an extremely early demo so I realise tutorial aspects are way off, but I didn't figure out the button for stealth mode at all during my playthrough, so perhaps a picture of the keys in the first level?

Overall though it felt solid and looked good.

[alvarop]

Nice graphics and art direction. I liked it overall, but the controls are awkward and the levels a bit repetitive.

Conglaturation !!!

Also Notch? reallyyyyyyyyyy?

[LanziVision]

I love this concept and the direction. I can't wait to see where it goes, tons of promise!

[Thuby]

I love this concept and the direction. I can't wait to see where it goes, tons of promise!

Nice graphics and art direction. I liked it overall, but the controls are awkward and the levels a bit repetitive.

Conglaturation !!!

Also Notch? reallyyyyyyyyyy?

You've got a nice art/colour style going.

Things I noticed from the demo.

- In most levels, if you tap a certain direction, the player slides slowly in that direction without stopping (relatively nitpicky, but with platformers you want everything to feel completely tight and predictable).

- I feel as though in addition to the normal walljump, there should be a wall-jump-off mechanic similar to meatboy. I found lvl6 far too hard for a relatively simple challenge simply because I had to jump towards the wall to wall jump and then quickly reverse directions to go where I needed to go.

- I would be nice if the smoke particles had some transparency so you can still see the level and enemies behind it.

- This is obviously an extremely early demo so I realize tutorial aspects are way off, but I didn't figure out the button for stealth mode at all during my playthrough, so perhaps a picture of the keys in the first level?

Overall though it felt solid and looked good.

Wow, love all the feedback, I'll take in dearly. This project is still being worked on, so I'll probably add most of what is suggested here. I've been thinking about switching development do Unity using the 2D workflow. I also need an artist. I myself isn't an art person, and I can't say I'm any good at making textures and sprites for games. So if anyone is an artist out there , I need your help.

I might be able to get this game on Steam, I've been talking to a publisher and I'll very probably get this game on Steam if I can actually finish it, but I can't do it on my own. Again thanks for all the feedback I'm very very grateful.

[Thuby]

There's some huge changes coming soon! Moving the entire project from Game Maker to Unity so I'm currently working on controls still, but I'll make sure that the controls are going to be much MUCH better than in the Game Maker version!

[SamLouix]

This looks great, and Igor Green is a hard worker, so it should go far!

Very nice.

[Thuby]

Hey ho! Haven't posted here in a while. I've been doing a lot of work porting the game over to Unity, this is what the game looks like so far.



I've not implemented any of that cool looking lighting from the GM:S version, I don't think I want it either.

After working on the Unity version for a while I realized that I wanted to differentiate the game in term of both design, art, and controls. One of the more notable design changes has been removing the old "room-by-room" type level design and focus more on an large open level approach instead. Although this is just a small test level, the stages will be much larger and more distinct. The goal for the previous game was to make a sort of stealth-puzzle game, and for that you need to have a good view.

Doing it this way makes it less about puzzle design and leans it more towards the action-y way. I don't want to make an action game where you beat up baddies, it will still have elements of puzzle design. I just thought it would be easier to create fewer large distinct looking levels rather than similar but complicated rooms.

Oh and also I removed wall-jumping which to me was a large movement mechanic but it was causing too much hassle and I decided to just scrap it and exchange it for a double jump and wall slide.

Anyway here's a gif of me moving around.

https://gfycat.com/PettyNeatFanworms
(Direct link beacuse TigSource doesn't support gfycat for some stupid reason)

Edit: All the art is also temporary.

[Joseph]

Hey everybody! My name is Joseph King and for the past few months I've been working on the art and animation for Snot Ninja.

A Brief Bio: I've been working as a professional animator since 2007. I've worked on Flash games and Facebook games but most of my work has been in TV animation. Here's a link to my art portfolio: http://josephkingworks.tumblr.com/

Now I'd like to share some of my work on Snot Ninja. I started off with designing the hero of the game. The original sprites didn't have much to work from except the color scheme so I basically had to work from scratch. Oliver gave me a lot of freedom so I had a lot of fun designing this character. Here are a few early sketches:

     

Oliver and I both really like the design with the loose gi and cape. So I went ahead with a slightly more detailed concept painting in Gimp.



I then sketched up a few variation tests in Toonboom. Oliver liked the first one so thats what we went with.



Then I started setting up the character in Gimp to be animated in Spine. Here's the final hero sprite at the moment.



I decided to remove the cape and headband. We are using the basic version of Spine so we don't have access to the cool deformation features, therefore animating the cape would require some frame-by-frame animation which would be a pain in the ass. I might bring those things back into the design in the future at some point since its pretty easy to add extra slots/items to characters in Spine. We'll see!

BONUS: Here's what the sprite atlas looks like.






Stay tuned for more Snot Ninja art stuff in the future.

[Joseph]

Ready to sneeze at a moments notice.


Nothing clears blockages like cold steel.

[Joseph]

Can't stick around. Gotta run.

[Joseph]

Here's a concept design for the big baddie.


I was loosely inspired by Lo Pan from Big Trouble in Little China

[Joseph]

Here's a mockup for the titlescreen.

[Thuby]

I'm not dead yet!

I keep forgetting this devlog. I haven't forgotten it completely though so I'm trying to catch up on a lot of progress now.

This post will be about the new animations mention by Joseph in his posts.



As you can see they work quite nicely, and are animated very well!

I'm not super happy with the implementation right now it's just a bunch of 'if' statements checking variables from other scripts to see what the player is doing. For example moving around and jumping.

I'm sure there's some infinitely more elegant way of implementing it, this works so I'm not going to change it.¨

That's about all I have to say on the topic that I can think of at the moment.