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[OniWorld]

Oh wow, those fluid mechanics are awesome! They really make the game feel alive and natural. Not sure if you guys have divulged this already, but what language or tool are you using to create Kara?

[Konidias]

The next obvious step is to do some quicksand 

[adnzzzzZ]

Oh wow, those fluid mechanics are awesome! They really make the game feel alive and natural. Not sure if you guys have divulged this already, but what language or tool are you using to create Kara?

LÖVE

The next obvious step is to do some quicksand 

Don't think I can do quicksand using the same mechanic that I used for fluids, but it's a nice idea.

[mdwheele]

This looks amazing!  I'm very curious to know if you've made any posts on how you accomplished the "moving blocks from behind others" (I would think this would be a pain to pull off unless you just "turn off" physics for this objects while you move them into place manually.) for your puzzles in box2d as well as the fluid dynamics. 

[adnzzzzZ]

What do you mean by moving blocks from behind others? I don't understand.

[mdwheele]

What do you mean by moving blocks from behind others? I don't understand.

Sorry! You had a few:

Platform rising after pressing switch.


Receding platform.

[adnzzzzZ]

box2d allows you to set which objects ignore each other:



So all I have to do is set the class of the MovingWall object to ignore the main level Solid objects. Same for the fluids. There's no need to turn off the physics calculations for any objects while doing this, so it's not that hard at all.

[adnzzzzZ]

Wrote a blog post on my usage of mixins in Kara. It's kinda language specific (I'm using Lua) but I think this is possible in Javascript as well. The post basically goes over some of the advantages mixins have over other ways of organizing code.

[adnzzzzZ]

I've been playing Nuclear Throne a lot and I've noticed that their explosions feel really really good. So I made a video to study it and played a bit with the explosions in Kara:





Enemy explosion death is faster than before so it feels more responsive:



Bigger explosions (like from TNTs) now are a lot like Vlambeer's now: tweening in radius white circle -> change circle to black and at the same time spawn smoke puffs with high velocity and lighter color -> start explosion animation and at the same time spawn smoke puffs with low velocity and darker color;



Also changed the character's hit box a bit so that it looks better when the player is colliding with oddly angled objects. It also gives me automatic stair climbing (instead of having to manually teleport the player up a bit) and automatic ledge "unstucking" (basically when the player's lower half is pretty close to a ledge, instead of it blocking the whole player and making him fall, now he sort of climbs it and keeps moving):

[Silvermaan]

I've been playing Nuclear Throne a lot and I've noticed that their explosions feel really really good. So I made a video to study it and played a bit with the explosions in Kara:





Enemy explosion death is faster than before so it feels more responsive:



Bigger explosions (like from TNTs) now are a lot like Vlambeer's now: tweening in radius white circle -> change circle to black and at the same time spawn smoke puffs with high velocity and lighter color -> start explosion animation and at the same time spawn smoke puffs with low velocity and darker color;



Also changed the character's hit box a bit so that it looks better when the player is colliding with oddly angled objects. It also gives me automatic stair climbing (instead of having to manually teleport the player up a bit) and automatic ledge "unstucking" (basically when the player's lower half is pretty close to a ledge, instead of it blocking the whole player and making him fall, now he sort of climbs it and keeps moving):

Looks great! Definitely think that the reduced explosion time does a lot to improve the feel and pacing.

Since you mentioned looking at Vlambeer for some inspiration, have you seen JW of Vlambeer's talk on how to build a better action game (

)? Not entirely applicable to a game like Kara, but figure you might be able to dig a few tips out of there if you're a fan of their work.

There's a downloadable version of the game/tutorial he ran through during the talk at https://www.dropbox.com/s/c0i6jidrvk6r2io/controlconf.rar if you're interested in cutting to the chase. Keep up the good work.

[adnzzzzZ]

Yea I watched that talk before and it's a really good one. There's also an article I read where they pretty much explained (in less detail) what was in that talk, so that also helped. I feel like learning how to learn how to do certain effects is more useful than just having them given to you, though. So either experimenting a lot or just analyzing how other games do it and then, based on that, coming up with your own way of doing it.

But yea, there are surprisingly few no BS straight to the point tutorials/lists like the one on that video that simply lay it all out like that, so it's useful too I guess.

[adnzzzzZ]

Working on a particle systems editor for LÖVE 0.9:





This post sponsored by Google.

[oahda]

Oh, man. That screen shake when the hammer hits the foe. Such great feedback.

That particle editor, too. Almost as pretty as the game.

[adnzzzzZ]

Finished particle systems editor:





BIG GIF 1
BIG GIF 2





Now to use this in the game somehow... ;_;

[adnzzzzZ]

♪ ＲＩＤＩＮ`　ＯＮ　ＣＡＲＴＳ ♪

[OniWorld]

i just love how you seem to have an explosion of some sort in every gif 

[FraktalZero]

That particle editor is really neat!

[adnzzzzZ]

i just love how you seem to have an explosion of some sort in every gif 

This game will be known as the Citizen Kane of Michael Bays.

That particle editor is really neat!

Thanks!

[matwek]

I think I'm going to have to sprite some more explosion animations, so it doesn't get boring seeing the same one all the time.

[ekun]

I really like the technical behind the scenes posts.

This is looking awesome so far, keep up the good work!