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[Mckenon]

Hi, I've been developing a game for a good while now with my team, I'll be using this page to chart the development of it, and generally post screenshots/gifs of some gameplay.

What the game's about:

The main point of the game, is to progress through each level(duh! ).

Anywho, that'll be enough(joke-wise) for now.

The real beauty in this game's concept, is how you get to the end of each level, and the skills/thought required to do so.
In the game, the player mainly controls a human, however the player holds a special ability, which is to shapeshift.
This is implemented in various situations, like for instance if there is a small area where the Human can't reach, the player could shapeshift into a dog and crawl into the space, or if there was a weak wall in front of the player, the player could shapeshift into a Bull and break down the wall.

All in all I believe that this game shall progress at a steady pace, and I hope to take you along for the ride, so that you can see how things go, and how things change.

EDIT: What it looks like now, for those who judge this off of this first reply.  


Now, here's a screenshot to get me started:

[Voltz.Supreme]

Sounds interesting but the shape shifting sounds a little too simple but maybe you just haven't explained enough? It seems to simple if all you're doing is being confronted with an obstacle and then choosing an appropriate "shape" to shift into. I'm assuming there must be more to it.
Something like only being able to shape shift into one other shape at a time. You'd have to find the appropriate shape in the level and make contact before being able to shift. Then you might set up puzzles based around shifting into different shapes and using their abilities in a specific order. Or simple physics based puzzles would probably work too...

All the best!

[Mckenon]

Sounds interesting but the shape shifting sounds a little too simple but maybe you just haven't explained enough? It seems to simple if all you're doing is being confronted with an obstacle and then choosing an appropriate "shape" to shift into. I'm assuming there must be more to it.
Something like only being able to shape shift into one other shape at a time. You'd have to find the appropriate shape in the level and make contact before being able to shift. Then you might set up puzzles based around shifting into different shapes and using their abilities in a specific order. Or simple physics based puzzles would probably work too...

All the best!

Ah yes, I did seem to under-explain it, to further it with a bit of detail(hopefully not spoiling too much  ), I'm going to be adding totem poles(or something in that area) which the user can change into different animals at, and only change there. Which should open up a lot for level design.

[Mckenon]

Alright, after developing for a bit, I've got an update log.

>added base movement
>added gravity
>added jumping
>tweaked lighting
>added global variables for code, for instance Player.Health works now.
>added movable crates
>added levers, along with functionality with a connection between them to other items(ie. doors)

Here's a GIF of some of what was added in action:

[Mckenon]

Alright, alot of things have changed, and alot has been added, here's a gif showing a good bit of what's new:


Now, for the list of added things:
>Shapeshifting(base)
>RuneStone(Stone used to shapeshift)
>Ladders
>Better collision
>New Artist & Art!

There's some things that I probably skipped due to lack of sleep, but oh well 

[Mckenon]

Changelog
Phew, been a while(again  ) However I have came back, with some additions, including:

• Animations for the human
• Refined control system
• Bird(with special(flight)
• Bull(With special(breaking weak walls) )
• Spikes

Here's a gif of a good bit of it in action, note the lack of animations in some spots, along with developer textures in certain places


While doing all of this, and adding what I have, I realized something. At the point I am now, I believe that I do not need to focus on adding more mechanics, but to design levels around the mechanics I already have. So I said to myself, I said "Self, how am I going to make a level that is so complex that the player has to use different animals to progress?", and after pondering this question for a while, I realized something. Simplicity is key. After brainstorming for a while on a level, I came up with this base idea:

Green=Runestone(location that the player can shapeshift at)
Purple=Pressure plate and gate
Small grey box=moveable crate

This idea later evolved into(You might need to right click, and open in new tab):


And finally, into the full level(You might need to right click, and open in new tab):

Note that the green and the 'gate' are placeholder  

Alright, well that's enough for now, I'll see you later!

[Mckenon]

Added a dialog system, and got a new artist!

Changelog:

Code:

v0.0.2_InDev
	>Changed Bird movement system, bird now flies at all times, use WASD to move.
	>Added Background music
	>Modified Health script
	>Added ingame Developer Console
	>Added Keyboard support for rune stones
	>Added A portion onto the map
	>Added door texture to map instead of debug gate
	>Added timed buttons
	>Added in-game dialog system
	>Added spikes that can damage the player
	>Made the game reload the level once the player loses all health

v0.0.3_InDev
	>Fixed player's movement stopping when the player gets to an edge.
	>Made it so that only the bull and the human can push crates.
	>Implemented a physics matrix system, so that I can toggle collisions between certain objects to off.
	>Added Developer Stats(Shown on left side, toggled with the P key)

Here's a GIF of the dialog system in action!(You might need to right click->Open in new tab)


Things are going great, now that I've seen what it looked like in the beginning, the progress is undeniable.

If you have any questions, by all means, please ask!  

[Mckenon]

Art Update: Waterfalls 

[Mckenon]

Changelog:

Code:

v0.0.4_InDev
	>Added moving platforms
	>New art assets!
	>Modified runestone background fx
	>Modified physics a bit.
	>Fixed the foreground being lit, when it shouldn't be.
	>Added parallaxing for backgrounds.

And, an endless gif, for your enjoyment. 

[Mckenon]

Ok, so I posted the game to Steam Greenlight Concepts.   

Here's a link: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=386181606
Well, it's really late, and I'm half asleep already. Just thought that I'd share this as soon as possible to whom it may interest. 

[Mckenon]

New animation system for jumping/falling/landing.

I've recently realized something, and that is that the current animation for jumping in thje game is much less than optimal. 
So, you may be asking: "Well Death, what did you do to fix it? ", well the answer to this is.. I modified it. 

So to start with, here's how the old jumping/falling animation system worked:
In the animation system there is a variable called 'State', which is a universal variable for all animators for the characters, since we have 5 different animation sets. Here's a quick run down of what each state int makes the animator do, along with for what animals:

Code: (Animation states guide)

	0 : Idle		[All]
	1 : Walking		[All]
	2 : Jumping		[All]
	3 : Falling		[All]
	4 : Interact		[Human]
	5 : Climbing		[Monkey]
	6 : Rushing		[Bull]

Now that that's out of the way, I can continue.
In the previous animation system, the 'idle' node would check to see if the state = 1, and would change to walking, check for 2 and change to jumping, etc. All in all this is an ok system. However the problem comes in when the player is falling. It's constantly recalling the 'falling' animation. Now you could say that we could just have the animation play once and then a still frame, but this doesn't look well. Especially when the player lands on the ground, because it seems as if there is no impact. So my idea to fix this(that is already implemented) is to change the animation system in this way:

Code:

[idle] 		->if(state=falling) ->    [falling]
[falling] 	->if(state=onGround)->   [impact]
[impact] 	->		    ->	 [Idle]

Now for comparison purposes, here's the previous system:

Code:

[idle] 		->if(state=falling) ->    [falling]
[falling] 	->if(state=onGround)->   [idle]

Now, you may be wondering: "Well, so what? You added one more state to an animation system ", well, the point of this is to allow the animations to seem more real. If you fall down you don't just stand like nothings happening when hitting the ground. No. You slightly crouch.

I know this is a bit too much of a lengthy post to just be about adding one thing, and especially something as small as a state in an animation system, but this is a developer log, and I wanted to log this, for some reason(that I can't figure out.), anyways.. I'll see you in the next update.

[Mckenon]

Here's a gif:

Now let's go over what's new in it. 
For starters, look at the Rune Stone. See how it kind of pulses once the player gets close? That signifies when it can be used.
Continuing on, the dog was completely redone, along with animations made for him.
Now, cut me some slack about the white tile, ingame it's going to slightly fade away, revealing the passageway. However for now it's just white. 
See that room the dog went into though? Those are secret rooms. You'll probably be able to find notes in these, that will reveal some of the backstory when picked up. 
Well, that's all I have. See ya next time. 

[oahda]

Wow. This is a page full of amazing work. Where are you guys's devlogs? Get some signature links!

I don't know if you were talking about my game or not, but I added a link to my sig anyways.

Your too surely! I've been looking at this thread before but I'd forgotten the name. Nice to see some animations coming along now. The waterfall is gorgeous. And fun to see someone else using lights and normalmaps in a 2D game like this (I haven't implemented my normal maps yet, tho, but that's been my plan!).

[Mckenon]

Phew, been busy trying to get certain features working and such. I don't have any screenshots/gifs to show you for any of the features I've been working on, however I do have a gif of the door's animation, which is at the end of each level.

Besides this, I don't have anything else, regarding media.  

Now, on to what I've been working on.

Among other things, the glaring thing that I've been working on is the animation system. (Yes, I am aware that I've spent a lot of time on it so far.) My most recent addition to the animation system, came in the form of jumping animations. As we began implementing the animations into the game, we began to realize that the jumping animation didn't exactly look quite right when jumping vertically, and not laterally. Due to this, I decided that I'd modify the animation system to support both. Here's a screenshot of how the current animation system looks for the human character:



Yes, I know, it looks horrible. But that isn't the point. The point is that it works, and at the moment that's all that matters.

To sum up what's happening here, here's how one sequence of the animation playthrough goes for Laterally jumping:

Code:

(In the animation handler script):
System checks if we are jumping
System checks if the player is moving left and/or right
if{    AnimationState=2}else{    AnimationState=7}

(In the actual animator):
if our animation state is 2, go to -Jumping-.
Once we arrive at Jumping, the animator continues through this animation, and holds the last frame until we are 'falling'.
Once we are falling, the same basis of jumping is repeated, however with a falling animation. It doesn't change until we hit the ground.
Once we've hit the ground, the impact animation plays through, and we are back on our merry way.

Past the point of this, I've also been working on fixing some bugs. For instance, we've had a bug with animation's playing at insanely high and then slow speeds.. here's a gif:
Disclaimer: Bug has since been fixed.

After all of this, I've been working on making a level that my colleague and I have been busy creating an actual working level.

Phew, that was a lot to say. If you still don't understand something, or have any questions, feel free to message me, or just reply on this post!  

[Mckenon]

Pixel Perfect camera, bug fixes, and other stuff.
Welp, it's been about a month. I've began to realize just how slow development is moving for this game..
But like the 'good dev' I am, I must continue on.

I'll start with the alterations made the bird's movement system. For comparison, the old system was simply that the bird moved up,down,left and right with WASD.. no gravity or anything of the sort.  
Now, the bird's movement is based off of a sort of 'stamina' system. So for instance, you can fly up for 8 seconds, and then once landed wait for 8 seconds, and then fly for 8 seconds again.
To explain better, here's a gif: (Note - I have since tripled the speed of regenerating stamina.)


So, of course I've done more than this alone in a month's time. Along with this, I've made the player's camera move slightly in the direction that the player is facing.(Can be seen in the above gif), concepted a title menu(Gif Below), and added a pixel perfect camera(Comparison gif below).
Title Menu Gif:

Pixel Perfect Camera Comparison(without, and then with. Watch the waterfall specifically.):


With all of that out of the way, I fixed a few bugs.  

• If the player touches the side of a moving platform he is dragged along with it.
• Player's speed boosts when going down 1 tile.
• The player is only hurt when entering collision with spikes.

If any of you have any questions about anything, please feel free to ask!  

[Mckenon]

Well, due to my idiotic choice of installing Windows 10 TP, I haven't been able to work on the project for a while. However I have been working on it for the past day, so I thought I'd update you peeps on what I've done.  

-Modified the dog's animation system to support the transformation animation. Even though this doesn't look like much, it helped tighten up the transition from human to dog. Here's it in action:
^{There's also a hint to another feature, see if you can find it.}

-Modified the human's animation system to support spawning and death animations GIF(Note-still a little buggy.):


-Added pressure plates for moving platforms, along with modifying the code for moving platforms to accomodate turning on and off.

-Added global file system for certain textures that have a high possibility of being changed in the future(ie. Pressure plates, spikes, doors, etc.)

-Updated the bird's stamina bar GUI. if you will, ignore my dev textures. GIF:


-Modified the bird's stamina bar to only show when the player is a bird.

-Locked horizontal movement on ladders

-Implemented new walking animations

[AwkwardKnightGames]

The art style of this is looking amazing and the concept seems to be coming along great.

In my opinion, the bird's gravity and fall speed seems a little to fast and harsh. But, the other aspects of its movement seem like they'll work well.

Keep up the work!

[Mckenon]

The art style of this is looking amazing and the concept seems to be coming along great.

In my opinion, the bird's gravity and fall speed seems a little to fast and harsh. But, the other aspects of its movement seem like they'll work well.

Keep up the work!

Yeah, It still needs quite a bit of work and refining.

On to the update:
Well, in spite of my failure at a map editor (I've actually decided to scrap all that I have and re-start, hopefully for a more structured editor.)
However I do have some concept art to show 

[Mckenon]

Level Editors
Hi. Recently I've been working on a map editor. I actually got quite a good prototype working, which included level saving and loading, destroying and placing, along with dynamic texture placement(Automatically adding edges to tiles and such where needed, for those who didn't know.). This was all well and good, until I realized that tiles would have to add tile variations and such, which was the first problem. Since I had built the entire system on a 2D array of Int's, I could only store 1 value, which I had been using for the texture type(so for instance, cave.), however at this point I would need to store at least two variables, one for the type, and one for a variant. Along with this I hadn't even thought of how I'd make save files without using my regular old' ints. My final idea was to scrap the editor's current state, and restart from scratch.(Yes I am aware that I had done this before, however that was for a completely different reason.(Which I guess I could go over if needed.))

The concept
I've began making some small design documents for the editor, in hopes of having this more thought out this time around. I'll go ahead and post them here:

Layer System - http://i.imgur.com/dLm83NW.png
Code stuff - http://i.imgur.com/diabPJj.png

The implementation
Well..urr... I do have code. However that code currently doesn't do much to show besides creating the actual grid of tiles, which are of course empty. I will however be updating this dev-log about the map editor as it progresses.

New Art
Recently my partner has continued work on the images shared before, however now turning them into an entire image:

Along with this, the bird is finally in pixel art, and no longer only a concept. Here's the flying animation:


Future posts
As I was conceptualizing the map editor, I got an idea. How about I update this dev log at a minimum of weekly? As I've seemed to notice a pattern in my posting here. I will post for a few days, and then stop for quite a while, and finally come back and apologize   Well now I'm going to stop that. I'll post my progress Weekly now. So you can get your weekly dosage of Remnant!

Edit - The artist for Remnant has created a website and posted a devlog which can be found here.

^{Note - All Content of this post is subject to change. Including but not limited to: Code, Design, Art, and Sound}

[Mckenon]

Reminder - The artist has created a website to share his own recollection of the progress.Reminder - Our group site is located here.
Code
In-Game Developer Console
Over the course of this week, I've been working with another developer to get a developer console working in Remnant. The purpose of needing a developer console is usually to have the ability to debug problems/new code in-game.(Or just summon wheels of cheese everywhere..^{cough skyrim cough}). I had began working on implementing enemy AI, and realized that I had no way to turn on and off my debugMode variable, besides changing it in-code/in-editor, and such was the birth of the command console.

GIF:
To answer one or two questions:

Code:

Will it be in the final game?
-Yes, no, I don't know. Still debating it.(However I'm leaning more towards a no.)

What have you accomplished so far, commands-wise?
-I haven't added any new commands so far, and am currently trying to find a solution to referencing JS's Eval from C#(Thinking maybe through referencing a JS script on a gameObj from a C# script or something.), aside from this, you can see a few of the default commands in the gif.

Enemy AI
I've also been working on enemy AI for Remnant, I haven't added actual enemy movement yet, however the framework for it is in place. What I do have though, is enemy sight. What I mean by enemy sight, is, well, where enemies can see the player. The code for it works like this(It's pretty generic, and used in most games.)

Code:

Check Distance to player
if it's less than x distance{
  Cast a 'ray' to the player
  if it hits the player{
    Change sight variable to true.
  }else{
    Change sight variable to false.
  }
}

After I finished this bit of code, I decided that for fine-tuning the distance variables, it'd be helpful to have a line drawn, between the Enemy's position, and the Player's position. This in-turn led to difficulties with getting GL.LINES to work, along with converting coordinates to on-screen coordinates.

GIF:

Art
Stylistic Changes
Several changes are going to be made to the art style of some of the characters, to hopefully provide a more concurrent and fluid art-style to the game.
First is the animation, which will be pushed for an overall more lively, bouncy feel.
Second is the visual style, which is currently non-distinct and lacks character.(Not super realistic, but not really cartoony either).
Some examples
The revamped human, next to the previous human sprite:
   
The revamped dog, next to the previous dog sprite:
   
The two together:
   

Along with this, a coloring system has been thought of, which will ensure that the contrast between lights and darks will be uniform across all sprites.

Barking animations
The original idea for the barking animation was to have it mesh into the dog's walking animation, however after debating it for a few moments, we decided on making the dog's bark animation be a stand-alone animation, that would take place whilst the dog is standing still.
This not only allows for easier code on my part, but also a more fluid animation. It gives great room to allow the dog to brace itself before barking, and also room to add effects(some seen in the gif.).

GIF:
Alright, well that's it for this week. I'll be back next week(possibly before then), to share more info on how things are going.  
^{Note - All Content of this post is subject to change. Including but not limited to: Code, Design, Art, and Sound}