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[Triplefox]

I'm not sure if we're agreeing. I guess it turns on what happens in the end: the author has a "don't do that" message in mind, but the message is probably going to be ignored - nobody is going to change their game-playing behavior, and nobody is going to avoid abusing these mechanics in the future. That's why I say the joke is on the author. But maybe I'm wrong about that.

This line of discussion is confusing to begin with, anyway. It was an offhand remark!

[Inanimate]

But Titch DOESN'T have that message in mind, as Titch said. Titch is just pointing out the leveling mechanic, and showing the inherent silliness of it. Titch isn't saying it's BAD.

[Montoli]

Poor Titch!  He just wants to make a game that is fun, and it's not even released yet, and we're already arguing discussing things like "the game's message", "intent of the artist vs. perception of the viewer" and other post-constructionalist stuffs.

Does that mean it's officially art?  :D

[Gainsworthy]

Thanks. Really. I like to think my games are fun more than anything else. I'm not trying to make a massive artistic statement about something. I'm not trying to pin the player down and shove it down their throats. I'm not making an art game here. I'm making a fun game inspired by a slightly cynical attitude to how much levelling is used simply as a carrot in a carrot/stick model.

Hooray! I'm glad to here this. Sorry Titch, I was in a bit of a mood. Like, I was feeling good & cheery, but also slightly irate.

This is by far the nicest cynical game I've played, and I wasn't criticising the fun. I was kind of worried that, once finished, it'd go all "JOKE'S ON YOUUUUUUU" though. This kind of stuff rubs me the wrong way sometimes.

[Loren Schmidt]

Gainsworthy, you are one of the most diplomatic, kind hearted folks around. I don't think Titch will have any difficulty finding it in his heart to forgive your completely valid (if slightly confrontational) question.

[Titch]

Thanks. Really. I like to think my games are fun more than anything else. I'm not trying to make a massive artistic statement about something. I'm not trying to pin the player down and shove it down their throats. I'm not making an art game here. I'm making a fun game inspired by a slightly cynical attitude to how much levelling is used simply as a carrot in a carrot/stick model.

Hooray! I'm glad to here this. Sorry Titch, I was in a bit of a mood. Like, I was feeling good & cheery, but also slightly irate.

This is by far the nicest cynical game I've played, and I wasn't criticising the fun. I was kind of worried that, once finished, it'd go all "JOKE'S ON YOUUUUUUU" though. This kind of stuff rubs me the wrong way sometimes.

Yeah, I can see where you are coming from. Well I promise no unpleasant, or at least totally unpleasant surprises in the finished game. Money back garunteed, 100% of 0 is after all, still 0.

Today I did dialogue boxes/NPCs. Designed the boyfriend/romantic interest, did a third version of the NPCS. Added some extra areas to the map. Laid out some XML for handling dialog and such.



I also animated the jerk boyfriend twice. Because my art program bugged out on my after I neglected to save. Swear it looks better for the re-try anyway.

[Inanimate]

Hehe, any animation you re-do after a crash is always better than the first.

[Titch]

Yay for repeatedly revising NPC design:


Squarien designs on the left, Roundites on the right. Running left to right from oldest to newest.

[Montoli]

I like how the round guys slowly improve left-right until they're wearing togas, while the square guys gradually evolve pants.

[Tom Sennett]

Hey Titch! I remember you from Drunk Duck. (Ages ago) I think your pixel work has definitely improved.

Reading the description for this game, it sounded pretty laborious, but it's actually quite fun! I would say the platforming makes the leveling up more interesting and the leveling up makes the platforming more interesting. Looking forward to seeing it completed.

[Titch]

Hey Titch! I remember you from Drunk Duck. (Ages ago) I think your pixel work has definitely improved.

Reading the description for this game, it sounded pretty laborious, but it's actually quite fun! I would say the platforming makes the leveling up more interesting and the leveling up makes the platforming more interesting. Looking forward to seeing it completed.

I remember Drunk Duck...vaguely. I've had a lot of practice since then. Went to games design school, came back (although I can't say it's done anything for my pixel art abilities). Made five or six games in the mean time. Interestingly enough I got out of game development to make web comics because I couldn't get the narrative content I wanted into games easily enough. It's funny how these things come around.

I like how the round guys slowly improve left-right until they're wearing togas, while the square guys gradually evolve pants.

Hahaha. Well I decided they needed to be more humanoid because there is quite an interesting array of enemies now and I don't want people to mistake them for enemies and ignore them. Anyway, I did another itteration trying to nail a look I liked and this is what I got



Funny story. All the roundites are in order evolutions from the base version on the right hand side. You can tell from the fact it still had the toga from the older version. I was sat down pinging the designs backwards and fowards with a friend trying to nail something. When I looked back up I was thinking'hmmm, I could use all of these as separate NPC's '. They are similar enough to all be recognised as the same species, but different enough to have personality.

The Squariens where all just variations on a theme. I particularly like the Amorphous Widescreen one.

[Titch]

I was planning to post stuff more often, then I had my UBER MAP DISASTER and wound up spending a week fixing the map. During which time the game evolved a lot. For a start it is now going to have a day/night cycle where you fight a boss during the night and explore during the day. Somewhat similar to Majoras Mask time, some of the things you do during the day will be persistent, other things will reset each time you loose to the boss. I don't want to reveal much more about it untill I start coding the boss encounter.

The other thing that happened in the map got bigger. Much MUCH bigger. Probably about 120% of the size it was originally. It has about 7 distinct zones now, including the three town areas.



Screengrab doesn't quite cover the entire hight, the tower does stretch to the top at the top of the screen. The main areas are hammered out, it lacks a lot of the charm of the older map simply because I haven't spent as long going over and adding lots of little details. Details are my watchword when doing the map because the game is so exploration heavy. There should be plenty of interesting visuals around to reward the player for looking around.

I've changed the health to Zelda style hearts. The max health is no longer tied to fortitude. It is possible to increase, just not through leveling right now. Dying now sends you back to the last postbox you touched (don't ask). You should also be able to warp between boxes but it's as buggy as hell right now.

For a limited time only you can mess around with double jump, I added it in to test how difficult it was going to be to integrate extra abilities into the player code (as it turns out, very very easy). Also there is a new air recovery ability, by hitting jump whilst you are flying after being damaged you can avoid the stun period and run away before you take more damage. With double jump this means you can literally backflip out of damage.

Dialog and cut scene system is mostly written now. I've never seen anything like this with flash before so I'm pretty proud of it. Basically it allows me to write cutscenes and manipulate variable in game through XML scripts. Since everything is loaded from embeded XML this opens the door to interesting propositions such as modding and user story editing. It's definitely something I'll be keeping over and working on for future projects.

Code:

<event>
	<speak >Girl:...</speak>
	<emote >Boy:...</emote>
	<speak >Girl:...</speak>
	<speak >Boy:...What?</speak>
	<speak >Girl:I was just wondering if you had anything else to say for yourself</speak>
	<speak >Boy:Not really.</speak>
	<emote >Girl:angry</emote>
	<speak >Girl:Did you forget how to be polite too</speak>
	<speak >Boy:It's not my fault I broke your fence</speak>
	<speak >Girl:Doesn't look that way from where I'm standing. Besides how would you remeber, Amnesia Boy</speak>
	<speak >Boy:Fine. I'm sorry for breaking your stupid fence.</speak>
	<next />
</event>

There a lot of unfinished stuff in the new update I'm not very happy about, but thats what happens when your project gets bloated with too many features.

[MaloEspada]

The map looks interesting. I didn't like the choice of colors (looks like MS-paint standard colors) and some of the designs.

I look forward to more of this.

[Titch]

This is something that is holding me up right now.

I'm probably trying to make the event/cutscene scripting system more extensive that it needs to be, since I'll be using it with future projects. It's nice though, opens up the possibility for a stupidly customisable game in the future.

[Inanimate]

Real nice! You are going to include punctuation, are you not? 

[Titch]

Real nice! You are going to include punctuation, are you not? 

Yeah, I wrote a lot of that stuff as place holder. Haven't had a chance to look it over and make it look 'right'. Was particularly peeved at the missing "?" on the choice popup.

[Glaiel-Gamer]

I think, if you want to make the point, you need a ton of things to level up. Such as reading comprehension. Level 1 you get a filter on all the text in the game that removes adjectives, "a", "an", "the", and punctuation. Each level adds one of those things to it.

Level up how much EXP you can get

and lots of pointless ones too such as how much hair the character has on her head

It could be pretty funny if you do it right

[Titch]

I think, if you want to make the point, you need a ton of things to level up. Such as reading comprehension. Level 1 you get a filter on all the text in the game that removes adjectives, "a", "an", "the", and punctuation. Each level adds one of those things to it.

This = BRILLIANT

Level up how much EXP you can get

EXP bonus is awarded for max level on CODEX which is awarded for seeing stuff, so it levels up the more enemies/enviroments/npcs and other stuff you encounter. Most likely by the time you get it, it will be useless.

and lots of pointless ones too such as how much hair the character has on her head

It could be pretty funny if you do it right

I'm thinking about a quieter way of leveling the more ummm... comedy catagories. If all the stuff I had in mind as additional things got messaged like the main skills you would end up with a bunch of visual mess.

[Titch]

New update out. Skill buying is in, you can get two of the five possible skills from NPC's in the upper and lower areas. At the moment there is probably enough gems to find that you can buy everything. Dash is crazy awesome. Dialogue chains are in, but a little buggy. Game keeps clipping the last few characters from each string. Some of it is place holder because I was getting sick of writing stuff just so I could get a release out tonight before my Birthday tomorrow.

Once I get the last few NPC's/Skills in I can start working seriously on this:


KNOWN BUGS
Lag causing Oilers to go through walls
Getting 'stuck' when dying during a dash
A few missing tiles in the level
A lot of text boxes missing last 1-2 characters
Squarian characters clipping through the ground.

[Titch]

Boss is not progressing as well as planned. I've had to change some of the core code to get it to work right without bugging out.

Anyway, I've implemented the two core phases of the Boss. Although it's currently missing the bit where the boss throws out gems when damaged (you'll have to collect them to drain the boss of it's exp and eventually kill it). Everything is a little rough right now.