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[Eendhoorn]

out now : http://store.steampowered.com/app/458170

It is time, for another devlog  

My GBJam entry Dungeon of Trials had a pretty good response.



The pong-esque room was the most fun to work on, so I wanted to do something more with that.
I recently went to an arcade and played some air-hockey, somehow that stuck with me. So I want to go towards that direction.

I will be recycling and polishing up some of the assets from the GBJam, since I was pretty satisfied with them. This time I will go with an NES colour palette instead of the gameboy palette. I'm trying to stick to the limitations pretty close (3 colours per sprite/tile) but I might make some exceptions when deemed necessary.

Here's the mockups I have now.


This will be the forrest level, the grass will contain stuff like items, coins or mana when you break em. Some monsters might pop up too.


Not sure what I want to do in the dungeon level yet, but I wanted to re-do the tiles from the GBJam and play around with some color schemes. Looks like I didn't finish the corners, forgive me.

And I started on the recolor of the GBJam character and started on a second character.

[Eendhoorn]

So here's what I have so far.



Movement and attacking is pretty much straight from the GBJam assets. But I added a dash, in the case of this character it is a roll. The other characters might have different dashing behaviors, I'm not sure if I want to differentiate the characters or keep it 100% skills based yet.

There's also some basic AI, mostly for playtesting purposes right now.
I also added a palette swap shader when selecting duplicate characters, so I don't have to recolour the entire spritehseet myself.

Somehow I feel like a vertical stage is better for the game, it feels like I predict where to align myself with the ball better. But this means I will have huge  black bars at the sides of the game window. I'm thinking of filling those up with all the UI stuff, score, special meter, stuff like that.

I will showcase some of my editor stuff later  

[Eendhoorn]

I worked a bit on a new move.



It's a charged move; you hold down the button to charge, and release to execute the move. When this move hits you have some control of the ball's knockback direction. Based on the duration of your charge you can curve the ball for a short time after the hit.

You cannot move while you are charging, so you have to predict the trajectory of the ball pretty precisely. It's a high risk - high reward kind of move. I think I might want to enable very slight movement on the player, as the risk of the ball going past you right now is pretty big.

Other than that, I've tweaked the ball's physics a bit. I'm pretty satisfied with the behaviour when you hit it, but I have to playtest to see which maximum speed would be best.
I'm not quite sure how the ball should react if the player simply bumps into it, or when a player is hit by the ball.

It's a real epic battle to manipulate unity's closed up collision response 

[Jasmine]

Dude, this looks awesome! Subbing!

[flipswitchx]

mhmm yup, very cool.

The gameboy zeldas are some of my favorite things ever so all of this goin on here has me like 

[Eendhoorn]

mhmm yup, very cool.

The gameboy zeldas are some of my favorite things ever so all of this goin on here has me like 

That's exactly what I've been playing lately haha.

Thanks guys!

[QOG]

As everyone's said, this is looking great. Are you planning to have the whole game be the sort of pong/zelda mashup, or is that just your current focus?

[16soft]

This already looks real solid, I'd love to play this game when it comes out!

[Eendhoorn]

As everyone's said, this is looking great. Are you planning to have the whole game be the sort of pong/zelda mashup, or is that just your current focus?

It will just be the pong esque gameplay. I'm thinking about some challenges for a singleplayer mode, but the ball will always be present in some form.

I'm not sure how busy I will be, but I want to get something playable out in about a week so I can get some feedback from you guys 

[Eendhoorn]

I made some art for spirits in the game. Somehow I always end up making too many females, so I'm not sure if I should go with the lizard or the girl. I'm pretty satisfied with the fire girl so she's hard to give up  



[edit]
I just did both, I feel like all the humanoids are a bit better.

[melos]

Nice Zelda!

[Eendhoorn]

Nice Zelda!

I don't know if that is a compliment or if you calling it a rip-off 

I've tried working on some more playable characters. I have this warlock that I'm pretty satisfied with.


I'm trying to differentiate on the movement. So far I have the girl who walks on 2 legs, the dog walks on 4, and this guy flies.

I also tried a boss-type character. I kind of wanted a flying guy with a cape, but I can't quite pull it off. I have no clue what to do with the head mostly.



Using 3 colors is prety damn hard. Especially when the outline is already removing one of the colors 
I cheated on mermaid in my previous post, she has 4 colors, but I think I want to change her to 3 colors to keep the gameboy feel real.

[16soft]

Ever thought about adding bullets that would effect the ball like a sword swing? This would allow for more unique player characters, on top of the Zelda-like effect of swinging a charged shot and having a projectile come out.

[yaomon17]

-snip-

So what would be the difference between the players? Would they have a wider/narrower swing radius or higher strength in hitting the ball? It looks really exciting so far, looking forward to more!

[Eendhoorn]

Ever thought about adding bullets that would effect the ball like a sword swing? This would allow for more unique player characters, on top of the Zelda-like effect of swinging a charged shot and having a projectile come out.

Yes I have, but it would be pretty unbalanced. A big gameplay factor right now is wether you want to move to the center of the map to increase your offense, sacrificing your defense because it will be harder to block incoming shots.
Having a character with projectiles would remove the risk.
I could balance it out by decreasing that character's other abilities though.

-snip-

So what would be the difference between the players? Would they have a wider/narrower swing radius or higher strength in hitting the ball? It looks really exciting so far, looking forward to more!

I'm still thinking about keeping it 100% skill based by keeping all the characters the same, or if I differentiate on their stats like you mention.

I want to solidify the foundation of the gameplay before I experiment. It's probably wise to make some different level setups too, so I can keep that into account when I play with character stats and abillities 
Ot

[BadIdeas]

Wow that reminds me of Cave Noire on gameboy. 

[Eendhoorn]

Wow that reminds me of Cave Noire on gameboy. 

Had never heard of the game looks pretty cool.
I decided that the black bars at the side of the screen were just to plain ugly.
Now I'm using the space to show an audience.


The audience reacts to the game, I have to see if it isn't too distracting though. I purposely didn't give them any animations, to convey that gameboy feel. What do you guys think about that, does it add charm or is it just too primitive?


Did some other polish, some graphical effects, and players and the ball move towards the starting point after a goal.
I will continue to work on polish, I want to remove the score-ui with something in-game.

I will also need to make a main menu and character select before I release a playable thing. I want to get all those last-minute rush things out of the way early this project 

[QOG]

I don't think its too distracting, but maybe tone down the jump height and speed a little--right now it seems like they might explode.

[Eendhoorn]

I don't think its too distracting, but maybe tone down the jump height and speed a little--right now it seems like they might explode.

Yeah you're right, I might have to tweak it a bit.

I wanted to add some kind of confetti effect when a goal has been made. but I'm challenging myself not to break the setting. So now sparkles come out of the ball whenever a goal is made.
I also made a dialogue box which you can see briefly when a goal has been made.



Almost all the polish for a basic playable version is in now, so I'm moving on to some UI stuff.
I've tried making a logo. but my art skills just cannot handle anything bigger than 32x32 

It's still wip, but I feel like many things about the trail and the perspective of the sword are incorrect.

[Eendhoorn]

Somehow every sword I draw ends up looking like the master sword. Damn  brains. 

This was totally not what I was going for, but I kind of like the right one. It's out of style with the rest of the game though



I might try something more abstract and otherwise I'll pick one of these for now.