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TIGSource ForumsCommunityDevLogsAn Undiscovered Island
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Author Topic: An Undiscovered Island  (Read 3369 times)
Kyle O
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« on: December 26, 2018, 01:27:31 PM »

So I'm making a little game over winter break. I'm attempting to keep it super focused gameplay-wise. It's basically the opposite of my last finished project— so a 2D sidescrolling sunshine demake.

I'm really excited about the control layout which I feel is very elegant, simple, and fun. D-pad moves the player in directions, R1 is the jump button, and the right analog stick controls the water cannon. In this way you can perform essentially all the different FLUDD functions from sunshine but in 2D and with only an analog stick. So you can boost yourself but also shoot at things to clean them, as well as shoot the cannon in the opposite direction that you are running to make yourself go even faster.

Take a look:



The character design is my own but I'm borrowing this Kirby background as a placeholder for the moment. It's been tricky getting the water looking right, I feel I'm still not there yet. It needs to be see through but you still need to be able to see it!  Droop

Most recent GIF:


« Last Edit: February 01, 2020, 09:53:16 AM by Kyle O » Logged

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Kyle O
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« Reply #1 on: December 26, 2018, 01:30:51 PM »

Here's a rainbow effect that happens when you shoot the cannon straight up. Honestly a real waste of time if I want to actually finish this in a timely matter.

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« Reply #2 on: December 26, 2018, 10:46:57 PM »

This looks so fun! Excited to see where it goes.
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« Reply #3 on: December 28, 2018, 08:57:08 AM »

Looks great so far. Will you be needing music for it?
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Kyle O
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« Reply #4 on: December 28, 2018, 10:42:52 AM »

I would never let anybody commit their precious time to make music for me because there is a fantastic likelihood that I will never actually finish anything ever.

Anyway, I added swimming/underwater stuff. You control where you go with the cannon underwater. I'm conflicted about to what extent you should be able to control your swimming with the d-pad once in the water. Right now you can't at all. I will have to get feedback from other people. I want transitioning from land to water to feel really natural. I've been working on getting the momentum to conserve in a pleasing way.

Everyone hates underwater levels, but that's only because you lose freedom of movement and typically have an air meter. In this game there's no air meter and you can move faster underwater than on land, so I don't think anyone will complain.

Water will typically be just bottom of the level ocean style masses of water, and I figure I will save the floating globs of water for end-game advanced platforming.

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« Reply #5 on: December 28, 2018, 07:50:38 PM »

I would never let anybody commit their precious time to make music for me because there is a fantastic likelihood that I will never actually finish anything ever.

Haha, fair enough. Perhaps it's better to wait until the game is further along in development. Smiley
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« Reply #6 on: January 01, 2019, 01:23:37 PM »

I'm really into the character design/animations, it's funny you mentioned the kirby backgrounds, because something about your character reminds me of kirby (which i played for the first time over the weekend and really appreciated as a game). The proportions are also similar to bulbasaur which is super adorable too.

It looks like for the water you are using a black color with the opacity set really low. It would look better if you used a solid blue color and played with the screen/overlay/multiply effects, to make everything behind the water a darker shade of blue. Here's an image from kirby that shows what i'm talking about. You can see the columns continue past the waves, which act as a border of sorts, and under water the same pattern is visible and the colors are just as vibrant, but blue.
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« Reply #7 on: January 01, 2019, 06:00:56 PM »

Very cute and charming so far! I take it the "Sunshine" you're referring to is Super Mario Sunshine?
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« Reply #8 on: January 02, 2019, 10:24:48 AM »

This is BEAUTIFUL! <3
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Kyle O
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« Reply #9 on: January 02, 2019, 11:33:20 PM »

Very cute and charming so far! I take it the "Sunshine" you're referring to is Super Mario Sunshine?

Yes!


I'm really into the character design/animations, it's funny you mentioned the kirby backgrounds, because something about your character reminds me of kirby (which i played for the first time over the weekend and really appreciated as a game). The proportions are also similar to bulbasaur which is super adorable too.

It looks like for the water you are using a black color with the opacity set really low. It would look better if you used a solid blue color and played with the screen/overlay/multiply effects, to make everything behind the water a darker shade of blue. Here's an image from kirby that shows what i'm talking about. You can see the columns continue past the waves, which act as a border of sorts, and under water the same pattern is visible and the colors are just as vibrant, but blue.

I haven't done too much visually other than animating this character and adding the slime effects and water cannon effects. I will keep that in mind though once I start adding in more tiles. I definitely want some fun parallax effects for the ocean in the background. I'm focusing as much as I can on gameplay and the characters before I do all the background/foreground art as that is where I tend to get bogged down and development tends to stop. I become a bit too much of a perfectionist when dealing with level tiles.

This character was originally designed for a different game and I dropped her in as a placeholder but I think I will keep her in it, she does look quite a bit like bulbasaur with that cannon on her back. What I like is how this water cannon can move independent of which direction the character is moving which makes animation so much simpler—if that makes sense? Having a bipedal character holding onto something creates a much more complex animating hurdles.

Anyway, the cannon on her back is going to be sort of a nautilus type sea creature that will talk to you and give you expository dialogue. The story for the game is that you crash onto this island and meet this nautilus creature and you need to help it defeat some bad guy. Pretty deep stuff.

Here is some more gameplay—



Basically, things sink into the slime, and cleaning releases them, helping you advance. I like moving platforms! I plan on animating some sludge enemies next. Maybe even a boss—still not sure of the scope of this project. I don't want to spend forever on it.
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Kyle O
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« Reply #10 on: January 04, 2019, 11:57:28 AM »

Here's a look at combat. Obviously shooting things with water would only do damage to sludge based enemies. I don't know if I want to add in a way to damage other types of enemies by jumping on top of them. I think you will just have to avoid and run away from those ones.

Whats interesting in this encounter is that when you boost over these enemies you have yo clean a landing stop for yourself since these guys leave all that sludge in their wake. It's an interesting challenge I didn't even think of when setting these enemies up.

I don't know. I don't think I will have many enemy types—I think maybe I will focus more on puzzle/platforming. Not sure.



Also as you can see I added a parallax ocean. There's no more placeholder art from other games right now, its all me. The ocean background is still temp though until I get it looking how I want it.


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Kyle O
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« Reply #11 on: January 08, 2019, 10:47:10 AM »



So here is an idea. This vaguely crustaceanesque creature that isn't going to be damaged by you shooting water at it, obviously. Fill this spikey boy with water and he'll become a useful spring—but only for a little while. So I don't know—there could be some interesting challenges from this—a moving spring that you need to activate (and that only stays activated a short time) that can also harm you if you aren't careful. The trick I guess will be somehow training the player to understand that this is what you are supposed to do.

Also you can see I am updating and changing the background and foregrounds. Still working out a good style.
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Kyle O
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« Reply #12 on: January 20, 2019, 09:21:07 AM »

So, at this point I have essentially put in all the "gameplay" the game is going to have. You can jump, swim, shoot and boost. I think if you have really simple and straightforward gameplay—the best way to make it really shine is with good level design and also my game's case good enemy design.

I'm taking a lot of ideas from my old unifinished projects—here is a comparison of how far my art has come in the past couple of years, the earlier version of course being on the top—



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« Reply #13 on: January 20, 2019, 04:21:23 PM »

This is lovely and has great potential. Keep it up!
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Kyle O
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« Reply #14 on: January 28, 2019, 01:48:42 PM »

This is lovely and has great potential. Keep it up!

Thank you! I feel like I've never worked on something that seems to have this much potential. Its just a really satisfying gameplay loop.



Here is the first boss. This will be blocking the way to advance so you can't until you pick up your water cannon at the beginning of the game. As you can see in the GIF its pretty easy to cheese this boss. I don't know, I think I will add some spikes or something to prevent this. Maybe not though.

 Most of my time recently has been mainly doing the art for the levels though... I got to keep reminding myself to do the tiles, finish them, move on—make the levels! It is so easy to get sidetracked.

Also development of this will probably slow down until the summer since I just started student teaching and that is eating up most of my time. Hopefully I can still find time to fit in some work on this. Its nice to have hobbies.
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Kyle O
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« Reply #15 on: March 21, 2019, 08:55:17 PM »

So if your only form of attack is a water gun that leaves you with only a few things you can actually fight—sludge and fire enemies. So here's some fire enemies—



I don't want to complicate combat with a jumping on top of enemies to do damage, so I think I'm keeping the types of enemies to those 2 kinds. Obviously, as previously shown, there are certain puzzles that might involve shooting and then jumping on something—so I don't know actually. Maybe. Maybe not.

What I really want out of this game is a nice even split of combat and platforming. I have some fun Celeste style platforming sections I am roughing out. Instead of gaining an extra double jump by grabbing something in the air, you get to refill your water tank and water pressure.

The combat will center mainly around boss fights, though there are also lots of these disposable enemies—they are very disposable and don't have much "intelligence" in the way they move around the levels.

Any puzzles I add will only be in the context of platforming puzzles and only can be solved using the games main verb—which is shooting things with water.
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Kyle O
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« Reply #16 on: June 13, 2019, 10:39:12 AM »

Summer is here. I found a job so all that's left is to move which may take up some time later on. But until then I can refocus on this game a bit more.

I don't have any super specific plans on where to go from where I am. I guess I would like to just start going level by level like I was before, and in-between prototype different gameplay things you can do with the water cannon—as you can see here with this



I have more plans for movable contraptions that are water powered. I figure like a heavy platforming section where you are learning how to operate them, and then add more complexity and enemies later on.
« Last Edit: December 30, 2019, 03:26:10 PM by Kyle O » Logged

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Kyle O
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« Reply #17 on: July 07, 2019, 09:38:47 AM »

Ahh so I've been failing at my goal to make whole coherent levels. I'm still at the point where I'm adding different ideas and gimmicks for levels into the game without making any. When I say gimmicks here I mean it in the nicest possible way. Luckely I've been able to avoid feature creep by the fact that nothing I've added has really changed that core underlying verb of the gameplay.

I'm not documenting here everything I've added but here is one thing I've been having a lot of fun with:


Bubbles you can jump on that give you a boost and reset your water cannon pressure as well as refilling your water. These will lead to some challenging platforming sections—especially when combined with spike pits and those floating areas of water you can swim into and boost out of.


I think my next goal will be to add a standard level intro and outro and actually include a death animation and way to reset the level after death. Honestly I think not having those 3 things done is whats keeping me from making real life levels. Once I do that I feel like I will actually be able to string some levels together.
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« Reply #18 on: July 07, 2019, 09:53:29 AM »

wow that last footage is awesome !
This looks like a very fun a smooth platformer,

Like said before, I can totally see the Mario Sunshine influence, looking forward to be able to try it Smiley
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Kyle O
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« Reply #19 on: January 05, 2020, 01:06:21 PM »

I've hit the one year anniversary in this devlog and figured I should post something just for fun.

Not too much new to report, haven't worked on this game too much recently but trying to get back into it. I have never in the past year felt dissatisfied with this project in the same way I have felt dissatisfied with other past projects. So that might be a good sign!

Here is just a random GIF of some big slime balls I've been working on recently:

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