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[st33d]

Heeeyy:

http://kotaku.com/5938405/an-indie-platformer-for-those-who-love-metroid

[Hempuli‽]

Yeah, a friend mentioned about it. That's pretty cool!

In other news, I've been working more on powerup stuff. I wanted to make a GIF of this because it looks kind of cool, but this isn't really how the powerup will work in the end:


EDIT: a slightly more likely situation:

[DustyDrake]

The top one seems like it's range is too long, and the bottom one's range seems too short.
It also seems more useful as a wall trans-versing item than a dodging one as shown in the lower one.

[Hempuli‽]

You can fly in any four directions, and it makes you intangible while also damaging enemies that you pass through. The game already has plenty of tools for moving about in the form of double jumps and the hookshot, so this powerup is mainly meant for combat.

[Bandreus]

Thi is.. so.. BEAUTIFUL 

[Hempuli‽]

Whee

[melos]

Whee

llooooking swell. i smell the mystery.

[Swaggermuffin]

Robot guy's about to fall on spikes.

[Irock]

Naw man he's gonna jump in time.

[Hempuli‽]

Deepest apologies for not putting up any updates as of late - been busy and sick and busy and again sick and everything is happening at the same time.

Apart from that, my plan for the seventh boss didn't quite work as I intended - I have to redesign it a bit.

[kleiba]

Deepest apologies for not putting up any updates as of late - been busy and sick and busy and again sick and everything is happening at the same time.

Hempuli - you know what?

Your thread on Environmental Station Alpha was the reason I sign up for tigsource in the first place. I was in awe when I first discovered it.

Your game is absolutely amazing! Whenever I check the devlogs forum I really hope to see a new post in this thread. And today I came back here just to see if perhaps I had missed a post. Now I'm writing this just so that you know that there are people out there who would absolutely love to see this game finished! What you have achieved already is truly awesome.

So, please, once you feel recovered again from stress and sickness, please, please, please keep working on this! :-)

[Sigma_100]

First time poster here, seconding kleiba's post.  I've been lurking here for 6 months now, checking back weekly for updates specifically for ESA.  Can't wait to play it Hempuli, it looks absolutely amazing.  I'm also looking forward to more music from Noby; the track he put together for the trailer is just awesome.  Hope things clear up for you soon, Hempuli, but you know, take your time and all that jazz.

[rek]

Apart from that, my plan for the seventh boss didn't quite work as I intended - I have to redesign it a bit.

What were you trying to achieve and why didn't it work out?

[Hempuli‽]

Awww, thanks for the encouragement, dear ex-lurkers! I definitely don't want to give up on the project, even if my schedule didn't really allow me to finish it as quickly as I had hoped.

rek: The concept was that the player would fight against a copy of himself, i.e. a robot that could perform quite much all the moves the player has at that point of the game. Problem is that the player's moveset isn't really all that suited for quick maneuvers, and with the boss dealing damage on collision I couldn't figure out a good movement pattern that'd both look good and be fun to fight against. Another problem was shooting - the boss was supposed to use the same weapon as the player, but to do that it would have had to telegraph the bullets beforehand as to not make it feel unfair. In the end, the bullets were very easy to avoid and kind of underwhelming.

My current plan is to use the same concept but instead work the boss into a more intimidating one.

[fylth]

Another exlurker here, joined up because of this and several other games in development here, so I would like to say what a great job you're doing!

An idea to make the last boss more difficult could be to scale down the difficulty even further (bear with me) but after beating it introduce two clones to fight at the same time, and after that three clones. Might be a nice way to ramp up the difficulty incrementally while remaining a fairly original and interesting fight. If each of the clones had different weapons or abilities then that could make it even more interesting I suppose.

[Hempuli‽]

An idea to make the last boss more difficult could be to scale down the difficulty even further (bear with me) but after beating it introduce two clones to fight at the same time, and after that three clones. Might be a nice way to ramp up the difficulty incrementally while remaining a fairly original and interesting fight. If each of the clones had different weapons or abilities then that could make it even more interesting I suppose.

Ah, I wasn't talking of the last boss here (although a clone for one might be sweet in a sort of clichéy way); this is just a miniboss. Also even though your suggestion would indeed make the battle harder and more interesting, there's one ground-level problem with the clone enemy - it doesn't move very well. For common enemies and most bosses the movements are quite simple, because they follow set patterns or otherwise have pretty simple rules. This isn't the case here; the clone should convincingly move about and even use the double jump without either a) losing track of the player or b) actively running into him.

Thanks for the compliments!

[Lynx]

Why not do it slightly differently-- several variations of the player, but each only uses one special ability, they just do it better than the player?  Not necessarily in the 'more skills, better reflexes' way, they might do more damage or their attack might cause explosions, or leave a fire trail.

[kleiba]

Why stop at two or three clones? Have us fight against a whole army of undead zombie clone warrior boss fighters!!!!!!!!

[Hempuli‽]

So then - I got a new idea for this boss, and hopefully will get it done relatively quickly.

[26PM]

Just saw your trailer for the first time. Looks awesome. Has that perfect sci-fi feel.