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[Ishi]

Update

Sort of an update. I had a long weekend in London so I'm too tired to do any actual work.

I did a bit of thinking about the structure of the game. Not sure about the story yet, or how it'd play out, but I thought it might be fun to have three things:
- Treasures: the important or valuable items that the players has to find.
- Trinkets: optional quirky items that would be secret and stuff (similarity to VVVVVV's trinkets is actually coincidental, on a concious level at least!)
- Trophies: these could be an endgame thing; speedruns, challenges and the like to add a bit of longevity for those interested in mastering the game's mechanics.

Those are just rough thoughts at the moment really. I mainly like it because it fits into the alliteration scheme. As for this evening's work, it's halloween so I'm allowed to draw Trixie doing Harry Potter cosplay.

[Ishi]

Update

Going back to work on Trixie's movement and animations for a bit. Spent the evening making some tweaks here and there, and added a new state for slipping off a ledge when landing/standing right on the edge of it.

In most platformers standing mostly off the edge of the ledge would be fine, so features like this might feel a bit unintuitive, but that's fine as far as I'm concerned. The environments won't be cruel enough (at first?) to punish the player too much for slipping off ledges and stuff. Also, in the action of slipping off the ledge, Trixie turns around which gives the player chance to grab the ledge and hang on if they're quick enough.

In fact, if the player wants to they can actively use slipping off action as a means of hanging from the edge of a ledge that they're standing on. Although I think there are 5 methods of doing that now and all of the others are faster or more reliable.

I like to keep the pictures rolling so here's yet another drawing of Trixie from the archives. Think I'd just watched Ponyo so I tried doing it Ghibli-style.



By the way, in the game she wears contacts because I couldn't fit glasses into the sprite.

[ink.inc]

haha the first thing i thought when i saw that picture was 'miyazaki'

good job

[Zack Bell]

haha the first thing i thought when i saw that picture was 'miyazaki'

good job

You totally beat me to it. That was my first impression, as well. Awesome work. 

[PsySal]

YES, PLEASE THIS!

[Lazycow]

By the way, in the game she wears contacts because I couldn't fit glasses into the sprite.

What's that trick that so many of your sprites wear glasses? Why?

[ANtY]

By the way, in the game she wears contacts because I couldn't fit glasses into the sprite.

What's that trick that so many of your sprites wear glasses? Why?

They have much bigger heads probably

[Ishi]

Trixie wears glasses just because, and the sprite in my avatar is me. Can't really think of any other glasses-wearing sprites I've done!

[Ishi]

Update

Added a movement anim that's been needed for a while.

Made it so the grip gloves (easier wall jumping, wall sliding) are activated using a button, as a test. Will see if it makes them too awkward to use, or if it improves them. I found myself sticking to walls and stuff when I didn't want to.

Did a fairly quick painting.

[SolarLune]

Great painting. Her hair's really long in this one, but it doesn't matter - the painting's beautiful. 

[Ishi]

Thanks Solarlune!

Update

Added a skid-into-wall anim.

Started thinking about ladders. Don't think I've mentioned them in the devlog, but I always intended on adding them at some point. I started a climbing anim to see how well it works. No hair yet because that covers most of her body anyway, but I wanted to make sure there was a decent anim underneath.

The ladder ended up 7 pixels wide, which is a little awkward, but I can work with it.



It'd be nice for stuff like rope ladders to be dynamic rather than a static part of the scenery, so they can swing a little when Trixie grabs onto them. It'd also be cool to do ropes/vines. Will see how I feel in the future.

And, another painting!

[Belimoth]

I love platformers with tons of animations in them, they are so much fun to code and look at and play

[HöllenKobold]

The rope ladder idea would be a very good touch. I also really like the latest artwork you've done. Nice colors.

[Lazycow]

Trixie wears glasses just because, and the sprite in my avatar is me. Can't really think of any other glasses-wearing sprites I've done!

Yes, thought so about your avatar. But well... I like your pixeling style and so I can remember some of your previous work:



Older sisters from Trixi? 

[baconman]

^ The last one is Trixie, for sure (from Treasure Treasure), and the middle one looks suspiciously like it's her for certain. No idea about the first yet, though. As for why, though... that's pretty obvious. The specs = the sex.

Seems like scenery/wall interactivity is a very core part of the game. Trying to bust out some pixart characters this past month, I envy the ridiculously high pace with which you can produce this wonderful stuff!!

Haven't looked at it yet, but I already appreciate your documentation of the world editor. No doubt it'll be quite helpful to me, because even though I've yet to read it, I'm still working on my first few from-scratch projects. Generally when I've edited levels/worlds, it's been from something like Zelda Classic which already fundamentally IS (or includes) a world editor.

Keep it rockin', superpro!

[Ishi]

Hope I can be of some help baconman, like I said if there's anything you'd like to hear more detail about just let me know. I'd like this devlog to be as informative as possible. Good luck making your stuff!

Trixie wears glasses just because, and the sprite in my avatar is me. Can't really think of any other glasses-wearing sprites I've done!

Yes, thought so about your avatar. But well... I like your pixeling style and so I can remember some of your previous work:



Older sisters from Trixi? 

Well I'm flattered that you remember some of my stuff

The second one is Trixie, from this mockup:



It's essentially the same game as Trixie Treasure, but the art style was way too time-consuming to produce, so that's why I ended up with the current low-res graphics.

The third sprite is also Trixie, from a Treasure Treasure 2 mockup. I lost interest in making another multiplayer platformer for now though.



The first sprite is a scientist girl so it's more lab goggles than glasses

While we're on the subject of mockups, here's a mockup for a top-down game called TT Mini. Sort of a puzzle game version of Treasure Treasure that would be more suited to playing on a touchscreen. Tap Troy, tap a block and he'll push it, etc.

[Ishi]

Update

Made some tweaks to wall-jumping, as it was pretty awkward to do. Trixie has to be moving above a certain speed to be able to wall-jump. I changed the speed threshold for the most dramatic in-air sprite to match that of the wall-jump speed, so you can tell in the air if you're moving fast enough. I also reduced the required speed a bit.

I added a Type setting for each scenery material. Currently there are Standard, No Collision, and Ladder. So next I can start actually implementing the ladder stuff.

I also decided I need to decide on the story and goals in the game, so I have a bit more focus. I'm gonna try and make a lot of progress on that this week. I even installed a trial of Word! This evening I sketched some of the potential characters, to get a bit of a feel for them and decide if they should be involved.

Also watched The Castle of Cagliostro again because it's a great influence, if that counts as work.

[Ishi]

Update

Further collision system improvements and additions. I added a debug display mode to visualise the collisions and things. It shows the vectors that are generated from the tiles.



There's a gap in the surface (below-left of Trixie), because the code doesn't take into account the case of half-way-up slope tiles meeting walls. The movement code just sort of glosses over the gap though, so that's OK. (When Trixie is 'buried' in a bit of floor, she snaps back up onto it. So she won't walk into the gap in the collision because she'll end up on top of the grey block).

I added jump-through platforms and ladders too. The orange lines are provisional ladder collision data but I'm not doing anything with them yet (in fact they just act like walls because they're collision vectors).



The jump-through platforms don't really work yet, for the same reason mentioned above - if any part of Trixie is touching the platform's collision vectors, she snaps up on top of the platform. If you try and jump up through it you just sort of glitch up on top of it. So for those surfaces I'll have to do extra checks.

I also wrote down some info about the world and its characters that was only in my head. Good to have it stored somewhere else.

[motorherp]

Nice work, its cool to see some the inner cogs and gears  . 

The jump-through platforms don't really work yet, for the same reason mentioned above - if any part of Trixie is touching the platform's collision vectors, she snaps up on top of the platform. If you try and jump up through it you just sort of glitch up on top of it. So for those surfaces I'll have to do extra checks.

If you know trixies velocity or direction of travel, you could filter out unwanted collisions by rejecting any overlapping collision vectors whose dot product with trixies velocity/direction vector is positive.  That is, unless they're pointing in opposite directions you ignore them.

[Ishi]

If you know trixies velocity or direction of travel, you could filter out unwanted collisions by rejecting any overlapping collision vectors whose dot product with trixies velocity/direction vector is positive.  That is, unless they're pointing in opposite directions you ignore them.

I do do that already, but it'll still collide with the surface if, say, her head is overlapping it. I think the best way is to only allow the collision if Trixie's position at the start of the frame is above the surface. I'll probably get the slope collision mentioned a page or two ago sorted first, as it could complicate matters if I add that afterwards. None of it's too taxing, it's just a case of actually getting round to implementing it