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[Greg Game Man]

WATCH THE TRAILER NOW ON YOUTUBE:




WHAT IS IS NOW (april 2012):

An action platformer set over 3 worlds with tight controls, a simple story and a jetpack.




Old post:

Hey guys,

I'm working with Sam of bitBattalion.com (him-programming, me-art, both-design) to make a game where you use a grappling hook, jetpack, walljumping, sliding and general platforming to fluidly traverse deathtrap filled skyscrapers.

Right now im working on the overall art style, which i really want to nail. Ive got a bunch of tricks up my sleeve to make the game just feel really great to play and give tons of visual feedback, whilst also being easy on the eye to navigate levels quickly.





Above are some early experiments with the overall look. The vision in mind is very Industrial, steampunk, hell, electrical, scrapyard.. whilst resarching some stuff i found some really cool scapyard sculptures of creatures, which seem very cool for the backstory/enemies/traps.

also you can catch updates on my work over on my recently rebooted blog: http://greg-anims.com

[ANtY]

It already looks nice, backgrounds are great. What language/library/engine your friend is using?

[Greg Game Man]

It already looks nice, backgrounds are great. What language/library/engine your friend is using?

Flash AS3. We're using blitting to hold most of the art in bitmaps, so it runs fast whilst still looking really great.

[Greg Game Man]

Heres what the old engine looked like:


Now we are switching to a tile engine, with a parallax background. Levels will be bigger as well. Heres a little test with placeholder art:


You can read more on my blog, i don't want to retype every post onto here, and i don't want to steal people from tigsource either, so il just update on both places. More streamlined version here, more detailed on the actual website. Feedback very appreciated!

ok now onto painting more level art.

Im thinking up traps and such, they need to fit the industrial theme, would like to have them with faces and personality, and also be fun. ideas?

[Nugsy]

Can i ask why the art is placeholder? It looks awesome.

[Greg Game Man]

Can i ask why the art is placeholder? It looks awesome.

sam wanted some quick tiles to test with the engine. It will look basically like this, just polished more

Also, does anyone know more places to blog progress on this? Im updating the places i hang out: TIGsource, Newgrounds and my blog. But if you know other places with people who are interested in this kinda thing lemme know.

[ANtY]

This old engine looks like Gear prototype.


Try indiedb.com maybe.

[Greg Game Man]

Spent a wholeee lotta time in photoshop today painting complicated tiles with textures and lots of smooth lighting- then found that the simple mockup tiles were much nicer and sharper on the eye :/

[Greg Game Man]

Tile engine is taking shape. It has undo functions, a MASSIVE space for really big levels, you can draw lines of tiles, square blocks of em, or simply brush them in. You can use hotkeys to skip through tiles whilst you paint them in with the mouse. Theres foreground tiles and background for slick levels; and parallax background is taken care of for you.
Cant wait to get all the tiles and enemies into this thing.

Story is kind of coming together too. Im thinking SkullBoy is a burn victim thus why his skin is black and his skull exposed, and you must go after the badguy who is building all these traps and dangerous factories- and shut them/him down.

[Greg Game Man]

Got to work animating the hero sprites:
http://greg-anims.com/

(can i embed swf in this site? I'll link to it for now)

EDIT: oh yeah and i started blogging progress on destructoid: http://www.destructoid.com/blogs/Greg-Anims

if anyone else is on there we can be FRIENDS

[deadeye]

This looks friggin sweet .  The washed out, monochrome look of your tile mockup is really nice.

[tim-bo-jay]

Got to work animating the hero sprites:
http://greg-anims.com/

Oh...my...GOD that is adorable and cool at the same time! I actually want a stuffed one to cuddle...screw manliness!

I'll be keeping a close eye on this games development, looks interesting and I've fallen in love with the visual style :D

[Greg Game Man]

Thanks for the interest so far guys! Sams working on the editor, it gets more and more awesome everyday.. those background elements are all rotateable/scaleable and interchangable, you slap down as many as you want, it renders everything into one bitmap so 30fps all day errrday, and you can also save that really quickly online. And you can use the telephone wires as subtle guides to show where to go in a level if you need to.

Im having fun designing traps and items in the game, hopefully you should be able to tweak them in the editor to change.. what force you need to hit a window to smash it, or the zipline speed.. things like that.

[Banov]

Daaaaang, this looks really fun.  I dig the philosophy of making something fluid and fast and fun, it's an ideal I've pursued loosely in a lot of my own work. Best of luck to you in getting this further along, I'm looking forward to a chance to play it!

[I_smell]

I fuckin love the animation on the dude!
The pastel colour scheme's great n how your art all looks soft n smudged n airbrushed or whatever.

Best game yet!!

[Greg Game Man]

broken buildings

[Maisnon!]

Just my small amount of cents:

I'd throw a few big beams/pillars in there to give the building a more sturdy feel. It would also be like, the buildings skeleton your seeing, not just the cracked and peeled away skin

[ANtY]

Dsn't it look too much like Super Meat Boy?

[I_smell]

The windows on the buildings push it over the edge into looking too much like Super Meat Boy.

[JMickle]

i thought it was the silhouette background that made it look like super meat boy. i definitely got a huge PANG of it when i saw that screen. might just be that building, you never know.