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Mike and I are working on a flash game called Liferaft.

It's a grappley platformer action game where you play as a girl in a world where 95% of the world is ocean. Relatively recently some deep sea squid-like creatures surfaced from the ocean floor, which has given people the ability to float around using their buoyant carcasses.

We're in the prototype alpha phase right now and still working towards better combat and getting that pinned down as to what would celebrate the grappling while still being tactical enough to tease out a variety of interesting combat situations.

Anyway, the latest builds will be going up from time to time.

We're interested in any and all feedback.


last update: 9/18/2009

CHANGELOG
9/18/2009

• Added new parallax BG and tiled parallax system
• New strut/pipe things for background

9/4/2009

• firefly particle animation 2nd draft (they're on fire!)
• firefly shoot animation
• new enemy explosion animation
• fixed elevator glitch (couldn't rise due to bad physics sim)
• half-ass miniboss roughed in
• performance fix now standard, increased initialization time so please be patient

8/24/2009

• death!
• yellow lanterns act as checkpoints when you grapple them
• added new enemy "bull"
• fleshed out more of the level
• added a good many more instances of the enemies, seems more challenging/fun now
• created a temporary performance edition (to be implemented soon) with bitmapdata solution

8/20/2009

• fireflies reflect off walls now
• enemy culling issue resolved
• added new enemy "wallCrawlers"
• added a couple lanterns
• basic (and shitty) soundFX and particleFX

8/15/2009

• level 1 overhaul, now a sketch of Act 1
• level culling
• physics simulation optimizations
• beefier tileset, new lights, tweaked player sprite
• jumping enemies that get hit by fireflies

7/23/2009

• level 1 designed with mini-tutorial in mind (still too hard probably)
• fireflies you can shoot and they come back to you!

6/30/2009

• optimized particle boss in level 1
• title screen WIP
• lots of behind-the-scenes Mike stuff that he's been playing with (levels/encounters and things)

6/16/2009

• new particley bosses replaced the old custom pixeled ones[/i]
• new starting area bg art)
• no more hittable boss areas for this build, still working on integrating the new boss system

6/12/2009

• couple bosses (same, but repeated) in level 1[/i]
• balloons compound your upward force (as balloons do)
• "DOWN" to release balloons one at a time
• "P" to pause

6/10/2009

• new controls for grappling enemies - hold D to charge grappled enemy
• changed lantern lighting
• level 1 - new terrain to show off tileset

6/8/2009

• level 1 completely replaced with new art
• added functionality for fullscreen [no usable option as of yet]
• continued controls/feel tweaks
• removed debug graphics from new assets/player sprite

6/4/2009

• 3 new "levels"
• added support for multiple levels [hacked menu]
• animated platforms in some levels and a bunch of other cool animated stuff
• removed old implementation of enemies

5/26/2009

• removed zoom, now permanent 2X look
• updated color profile on all graphics

5/14/2009

• dual grapple mechanic (hold "D" when near enemies)
• placeholder pixel dudes
• sized down platforms
• new hitch style non-collideable points (acts as a bit of a bridge)
• a bit better parallax layers, more atmospheric perspective

5/1/2009

• camera zoom while standing on platforms
• added paralax scrolling
• different background for higher contrast
• melee combat instead of guns, removed cannons
• enemies (green circles) to hit off the platforms
• ground pound (press down while in air)

Was definitely fun. Though, I was just swinging around as fast I could, doin' the Tarzan thing.

You might want to look into getting a writer.  The game lore seems a little 'prolix', and should be broken up into paragraphs, rather than 'Wall of text crits you for 1000'.

One approach might be to describe this from the little girl's point of view, rather than omniscient narrator.  The little girl might describe her first encounter with Ekiuna, and how she knew this creature was somehow different from the stories she'd heard of the beasts other villages had caught and killed to make their homes.  Some village elders might suggest that they should follow the other villages' paths and kill Ekiuna so they can enlarge the village, others might disagree and say that their beliefs (which they are 'faithful' to, according to your narrative) forbid such a thing.

I should add, the graphics are lovely. :)  The game controls didn't make sense to me when I tried the demo, the mouse doesn't control where you're aiming or facing.

If you want a little copy editing, I'd be happy to help.

An editor at least, yes.

I feel the major problem right now is that the sprite is incredibly tiny. I hope the main character is larger than that in the later versions. I've noticed that tiny sprites are the bane of all indie games, too many indie games have incredibly tiny sprites.

To be honest, I hate Greg's writing ;).  The final "story" will probably be super minimalist, we'll try to tell it through events and stuff in-game instead of a narration.

Hey guys, thanks for the feedback. I took out the paragraph of my shitty writing, but thanks for the tips. We'd rather have feedback on the game itself at this point. Looking at it now, it's actually outdated now as there's no real friendly squid character at this point.

As for the tiny sprite, I know what you mean Paul, but there are sound reasons behind small sprites, especially when movement is this fast paced. But this version does include the zoom we've added, which will work better for melee/combat situations i think.

I just uploaded a new version with a lot of new things. Fighting is now all melee and enemies are simply physical objects. You can ground pound (a bit ineffectual at this point) and there's some paralax scrolling, a different background and new level to try out. Let us know what you think.

EDIT: Thought i'd log screenshots of builds and other stuff on a per-post basis to retain the history:

just some concept stuff, working on enemies... The only colors I like are the ones I just tweaked, of the girl's hair. I think i'll try to push a more saturated, vibrant palette for interactive objects like enemies, grapple points and so on.

Anyway, after much deliberation and trying out different modes of combat we're going to try a dual-grapple system. Hopefully that'll be more in line with the spirit of the grapple-centric gameplay. Hope to have that prototyped up soon.

(http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2335/3527196625_11a113b674_o.png) (http://www.flickr.com/photos/aeiowu/3527196625/)

Poor girl, stuck in with all those slug-like creatures.  :wtf:

Updated a few things. We've been chipping away at this trying to figure out a fun combat system that doesn't take away from the fun we already had with the grappling. At first we tried guns, then melee but none of it felt right. So now we've got this new fangled double grapple system that seems to flow pretty well.

There are a few bugs with it and certainly many more others but we're happy to have finally came to a conclusion. As always, let us know what you think.

(http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3304/3531686379_767eab409c_o.png)

This is looking really promising

The game is interesting but it looks much better in your screen shots where you are zoomed in.  Being zoomed out that far is really annoying to me since I cant see anything.  You could implement a camera system that begins to zoom out when you are swinging so that you can see more in front of you but if you are required to fight those little badguys in the game at that small its going to be annoying.  I really like the graphics on the platforms I like the industrial/ steam punk style of it.  Can't wait to see this shape up some more.

This is awesome.
I like the whole fencing idea and how you can't push too many people off the edge unless you try hard.
It's quite cool I like it.

Also flying+grappling hook is instant win, so fun to maneuver around.

I like the graphics style though, I didn't quite get the point of zooming in.
But now that I've played it I actually know what the screen shots are.

thanks everyone! :)

----------------

I messed around a lot with the colors, there were some color profile issues in previous builds which were making everything look a little off. Also this "level" is a bit mixed up now with no zooming and 2x all the way through. I went 4x with the big "ships" (black bg on some of the longer platforms, to attempt to make them feel more massive. Let me know what you guys think of the scale now, I think it _looks_ better but I'm not completely convinced it _feels_ better...

(http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3630/3568840282_262bc54850_o.png) (http://www.flickr.com/photos/aeiowu/3568840282/)

Also, we took the last week or so to take a look at Unity (http://unity3d.com). We were considering moving liferaft over to unity, but for a bunch of different reasons were not going to go that route with this game. Though we'll probably be moving over to unity for some future games...

Looks delicious.

made a new enemy. Most of the enemies in the game will be big and more "minibossish" like this one.
(http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3319/3571386050_438e7efca5_o.png) (http://www.flickr.com/photos/aeiowu/3571386050/)

this just keeps looking better and better.

Sweet!  I like the dark feel of the world a lot.  Yeah, it would be too difficult to navigate with a larger character sprite or a zoomed in camera.  Maybe if there was a nice large pixel art image of the character on the title screen or some story moments between levels with sexy pixelation scenes that might satisfy the player.  Flying (aka cheating) is a blast, too.  A very limited version of it combined with the grappling could make for some pretty strategic gameplay.

It reminds me a little bit of Joust (http://www.tedmartens.com/wp-content/img/temp/joustcomic.jpg) in a very good way  :handthumbsupL: >:( :handthumbsupR:


P.S. I'm in Ames right now.  You guys wanna hang for a bit?

Woah, that's an enemy? Sweet! The demo had a lot of fun in just learning to swing around- good luck on your game.

Been working on the logo/title screen stuff. Here's a couple failures that i quit mid-way through:

(http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3010/3589631661_e568595572_o.png) (http://www.flickr.com/photos/aeiowu/3589631661/)

Thinking about going with something a lot simpler/straightforward.

We're working on levels now, mike has implemented a kickass scripting system alongside pulling the inertia from animation right on the timeline. It kicks ass and we can make bosses, moving stuff and other crazy shit really fast in Flash. He'll probably post in more detail on the blog or maybe here I dunno... Or maybe he won't, he's kind of a shut-in.

Anyway, now there's a few levels in there, some of them are repeats but you get the idea. I recommend level 7 for a crazy bee-box that flies around and you ride it.

------

Alright, bit of a challenge here.

Check out the new build (http://intuitiongames.com/games/liferaft/) and play level 1 and try to do the Slalom Challenge. I've demonstrated here in the video below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ib256D2f1GA

It took about three times the amount of tries than that, any more and you would have gotten bored even with the speed-up effect. :) I've only done it once and this will probably never make it into the game but I like hardcore stuff like this and it helped really get a handle on the limitations of the character.

It's very frustrating to lose all your inertia whenever you swing above the x-axis of the grapple point.

It does look a lot better visually when zoomed in, although it's hard to tell where the grapple points are without knowing the level beforehand. Even in your video, you had to grapple to points without seeing them first.

yea I hear ya, I was thinking about extending the size of those "lanterns" by making some animated lighting sprites that would be much larger so even if the lantern wasn't in view you'd see the light coming off of it. Also... the distance between these objects here is basically the maximum possible which is why it's so difficult. I'd never want to _actually_ put that in the game unless it was for an easter-egg secret or something.

Nonetheless it is a problem, and i'm a bit worried about it still...

Bit of a drastic change here, though there is still some rif-raff in levels 2-7. I scrapped 99% of the art and focused on the only thing I was really happy with, the dark background. It's still in there but the tileset is completely new and much more tiley as opposed to special set pieces. This will give us a lot more flexibility for levels and modularly creating whatever we want. I'm not happy with the lights/lighting ATM but I do like how it provides a couple levels of feedback about grapple radius and player guidance...

(http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3660/3608550641_5cf48834a9_o.png) (http://www.flickr.com/photos/aeiowu/3608550641/)

As usual, check out the latest build in the first post to play.

Phew, today felt good. I think I'm finally honing in on a tileset I'm happy with. I was trying to be too painterly with my pixels but now things are much more ordered and legible. Beyond the new tileset Mike has thrown in a "badDude" grappling things. I made them little eggs for now, but the idea will be that you throw these at enemies/boss-weak-points. The controls are a bit different for when we had them in there earlier to hopefully aid a few things.

Now, to grapple an "egg" tap D and you will have it attached to you indefinitely until you tap "D" again to release with your inertia. If you continue to hold "D" at any point after you've grappled (or just hold D from the beginning) you will charge up and bring in the egg closer to you. Once released after holding you will jettison off the egg in the direction you are facing regardless of intertia. Let us know what you think. here's the live build in case you don't want to scroll back to the 1st post: http://intuitiongames.com/games/liferaft/

(http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3310/3614963715_b8b6d01b28_o.png) (http://www.flickr.com/photos/aeiowu/3614963715/)

New news here. Come get 'er.

Finally have bosses in there with some art (level 1) When you hit his weak spot a lo-fi 'spolsion sounds the bell. Also, balloons now compound your lift as opposed to having a limiter as before. We're still working out how we're actually going to construct the bosses themselves. We've got some kind of particle thing going right now that could work for rotation among other things. We want to be able to make these bosses as big as we want fairly easily so developing a system for that that looks good at the same time is our next hurdle. Here's the Ugly below, his jaws are so powerful they don't need connective tissue.  :tired:

(http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3615/3621051636_9432460924_o.png) (http://www.flickr.com/photos/aeiowu/3621051636/)

Got some new ways of doing bosses. Ultimately it looks uglier at this point (check the upper parts of level 1) but they are a lot easier to create/animate since they are basically just bound particles. Also, I worked a bit on her starting area. The idea here is that she's been trapped down there basically as long as she can remember so she uses her hair as a bed, a modest living but she gets by... Wanted to tell the story through environment as much as possible. That little box next to the bigger box with the orange stuff is where she eats...  :epileptic: She eats the squid materials!!!!!! ughhhhhh  ::)

(http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3610/3633418501_82380f07ab_o.png) (http://www.flickr.com/photos/aeiowu/3633418501/)

the second one will work if you have it as a playable screen and the lights on the letters turn on as you pass them to actually draw it from the background

Shaping up really nicely, this one.  There's an Akira feel to it somehow...

Oooo, yeah that would be awesome :handthumbsupL:

Duddde, that's pretty grodddy   :Skype's Vomit Emoticon Should Go Here But Instead I'll Use This One:   :beer::handshakeR:

Oh, you're a real SWINGER!

I stumbled onto this game by mistake; great, but man, weird. I spent ten minutes trying to figre out what to do...I thought I was supposed to shoot the rocks at those target things, before I realized you could swing on them. Also, spent a few more minutes trying to kill that puffy pink tentacle.

"Hold S in the air to grapple" is total bull.

Strangely, flying around using W is one of the most gratifying freeform experiences I've had in a while - more so than swinging, even. :handthumbsupR:

build before last ran fine but the newest runs so choppily it's rendered unplayable for me. like srsly it was probably around 1fps. I'd jump and land before the next rendering so it looked like I was standing still.

Isn't it great?  Maybe it could be a mid-to-late game reward once you've been a lot of places and accomplished a lot...

So, I've been on vacation for the last week, it was awesome for me the human, but not so much me the game developer.  :concerned:

Anyway... here's the WIP title screen I've been working on just before I headed off. We're actually going to take another week-long break to work on a little flash game idea we've had as kind of a recharger. Both creatively and financially... We'll be back though next week.

(http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3628/3634262191_b65d66db64_o.png)

Also, Mike had been working on some set-piece encounters. They are _very_ rough and they don't have any collision/feedback for hitting them (nor health) but hey, it's something. I'll try and see if I can get him to upload the latest of that. But for now, check out these stalactites: http://intuitiongames.com/games/liferaft2x/

As far as the level1 update (http://intuitiongames.com/games/liferaft), I've been working on optimizing the boss animation system (from the art side) by having custom larger background pieces behind the idling particles. Before I think I had hundreds of them moving around in a single boss, now there's a total of 25, plus I think it looks better, even if it's not completely done with particles in Flash...

FIREFLIES!

(http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3531/3750162529_8d8911be75_o.png) (http://www.flickr.com/photos/aeiowu/3750162529/)

We plan to use them as a kind of gun/health system. Similar to sonic in the health system, and the gun will be chargeable ala megaman. Next stop, mobs! looks like we're back on track.

Wow aeiowu!  The last demo was great.  Im glad you zoomed in on the character last time i played you were so small that I couldn't really enjoy it.  I really like the new size and the little demo was awesome, theres a lot of great possibilities with this im really excited for this game!

awesome! thanks for the kind words Caliper9. =D

i got an itch to redo the player sprite. I liked the sleekness of the original, but i always felt there wasn't enough personality to it. i.e. can't see her face. So i decided on going with a more classic front-view. I like it a lot better so far, and it looks much, much better in game. I'd love to hear crits or ideas about the sprite. The thing i was most concerned with was keeping her agile/limber looking and getting across womaness.

(http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3503/3807016426_aac219be81.jpg)

Other behind the scenes progress... We completed the 2nd draft of the whole story. We've always had an idea of the kind of world this took place in, but never really settled on a solid story that we felt would hold up. Now we've got one though that we're both pretty pumped about. I have a hard time sharing that though as it'll spoil the game for anyone that reads it. Besides, most of it is just for us and will never see the light of day (at least explicitly).

Secondly we've been hitting the level design really hard and we've finally come up with a collaborative process that works really well for both of us. It was actually more of a struggle to figure out _how_ to work together on level design than anything else really... More on that later if you're interested (or maybe i'll post some sketches anyway)...

Also, we've got someone awesome doing some music for us. We're really excited. I'm tempted to unleash it along with a test track he pumped out but I think i'll hold off until we get a little further.

EDIT: might as well dump this here too. it's not finished but it's what the sky bg will look like at the end of Act One. Act Two will be during the night time.
(http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3445/3801683661_3cfeb284f5_o.png)

After building out about 75% of the first act i realized there's not enough of a sense of direction for the player, mostly because there's no ground fill telling the player where they'll never be able to go.

(http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3451/3815886585_9081fe1ede_o.png) (http://www.flickr.com/photos/aeiowu/tags/liferaft/)

So I made that thing above, made some plants too that grow from the light of the luminescent orbs and stuff. I think that'll be a good way to direct the player towards grapple points if the light aura is not in view. Also, it'll be fun to animate them.

Player sprite has gone through about 9 revisions since the last post. I animated her in all her poses and it's coming along. I think it's closer but still doesn't feel perfect.

Mike has been doing a lot of performance optimizations doing a collision list so we can have a bunch of stuff in a level. We hope to have a semi-vertical slice (probably no boss fights) of the first Act completed by friday. I might put a rough build of the first act tomorrow if things go well with finishing up the new additions to the tile set.

The stance was much better in the original, imo.  I think she looks a bit stiff now, standing!

This. Changing quality to low got me to maybe 6 fps.

I liked how she had her hair cover most of her face, and how long and flowing it was. Gave her a bit of mystery, and made you imagine details that weren't there.

I also agree with what Derek said.

Awesome idea.

Can't wait to see your bosses.  They're going to be rad.

@ted it was actually my roomate's idea. =D but yea, i think it'll work well.

@derek and Kenneh, good points. i adjusted the stance and I think the hidden face thing with the hair is a good call too. whadya make of these? personally i like the farthest right/bottom, naturally since it's the last one i did/settled on.

(http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3501/3816155607_0507a49dc6_o.png) (http://www.flickr.com/photos/aeiowu/3816155607/)

She's still very stiff and it seems like she's looking to the camera

I think I prefer the very bottom right too, should be good for an idle pose.

got a playable build up with the new content in there. the running animation needs a lot of work still (as do all the character animations) but I've mostly been working with the new tileset and trying some stuff out with the lights.

(http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2556/3819423825_584de59e7d_o.png) (http://intuitiongames.com/games/liferaft)

this build has some problems with the depth sorting of the lighting effects but that'll get sorted out real soon. Also, the first part of level 1 is really the only place i've worked with the new tileset and am marginally happy with the look. The rest (except for the last room which still needs the basic architecture) is still basic and just there for you to jump around on. NOTE: if you do want to see the lighting effects on the spawning area, you can fly (W) up to the top of the level and fall back down. once that area is culled out, they respawn with semi-correct z-order

link is here: http://intuitiongames.com/games/liferaft

the fireflies/health system and damage from enemies isn't in either, but they're jumpin' around and stuff!

I uploaded a fix for the lighting depth sorting stuff.  It should be looking mostly right now.

the springyness and secondary motion of those creatures is really awesome!

I give it a whirl!  It is neat!  Thoughts!

• I love your guys' pixel work.  The levels are very neat
• The lights add to nice atmosphere, although they make the fireflies turn harsh-looking
• I love the creatures and general ambiance.  (The giant dead squid at the bottom of a shaft was a nice touch!
• The jump mechanics feel a little weird.  In particular, while I like that you can slow down your horizontal motion in a jump to land on a platform, the fact that you can't speed add much horizontal momentum is troublesome.  It makes jumping out of shallow pits feel much harder than it should, especially if there isn't much room to get a running start.
• The part where there are a lot of things to swing from is fun.

I tried it - I got annoyed by the air acceleration being too small, so jumping straight up was frustrating because I couldn't move to the left or right fast enough. Getting onto platforms was annoying - I kept slipping off the corners. Really frustrating. I felt like I wanted to jump through the platforms rather than bash into them from below.

Grappling was okay, never been a huge fan of it myself though. The mechanic was implemented fine, although it has the clasically annoying physics thing where you can drop out of your spin and lose a great deal of your momentum - not sure what can be done about that that wouldn't make it suck horribly, though I suppose you could translate the speed of the player when they hit the grapple max length into angular velocity.

Graphics were nice.

I felt like I wanted to shoot firefies upwards.

Collecting the fireflies was a little laborious, but that was before I discovered you could alter the length of the grapple. I liked the lift which you could use to propel yourself high into the air.

I found a large area of grapple hooks above and to the right of the lift in the bottom left, followed them over to the right and found a chimney with platforms on either side. I got frustrated with the platforming here and turned it off.

Great start. Hope you finish it!

More thoughts, mostly regarding fireflies

• Holy crap, you can shoot fireflies!  Somehow I missed this until I read the last comment.  The first time I played I completely didn't notice this fact.
• Fireflies orbiting you feel weird.  It looks like they're just following a (possibly random) pattern that is attached to a node, rather than flying on their own.  This makes them look very odd when orbiting the player when you are moving rapidly.  I expect them to follow more of a swarming movement pattern, where if I move quickly in a direction, they take a moment to adjust and keep up.  Minor nitpick I know, but it bugged me!

Love the improvements in this version, but still irked by a few nagging complaints:

• Give the player more horizontal control over jumps. Running around on foot in a game about freeform swinging is frustrating enough (see Bionic Commando: Rearmed, Spider-Man 3) without having to struggle with gimped platforming.
• The gameplay feels quite aimless, more like a sandbox to run around in than any sort of progressive story with set goals and narrative. Try to vary the environments/background a bit more.

There's a lot of good comments here, and we're working right now on a few of them.

I've actually implemented shooting up and down for the fireflies in the latest version, and they also seek to targets a little bit, which I think will help a lot.  The enemies are quite small at the moment, and fireflies are just points, so without a little aim assistance it would get pretty tedious.

The horizontal air control and slipping off platforms problems have been around for a while, and you guys convinced me to address it finally.  In the current version online, the avatar is simulated as a circle versus the ground and wall objects, which was probably dumb from the start and resulted in the slipping off of corners and such.  I just made her a square which is proving a lot more reliable.  I also increased the air control when your horizontal speed is low, it should make jumping straight up and moving over a lot easier.

In a much earlier version, the fireflies did just swarm about the player, but they tended to get lost when you started moving really fast.  They'll probably continue to get tweaked, but there's a lot of other things to get to as well.

As far as the level goes, it's really just a rough playground for Greg to mess with the art style and for me to chuck enemies into.  The plan is to have a solid story and a good progression, but there's still a lot of details to figure out.  Hopefully we'll have something more resembling an actual game level by the end of the week or so.

I'll try to get up a version with the new collision response and air control tonight.

New version, she is up.

http://www.intuitiongames.com/games/liferaft/

Let us know what you think of the new platform collisions.

Great improvements, both visually and technically. The platforming is now much more fluid, and feels a bit less annoying.

The platforming is much better, but I'm still having issues trying to grapple at all. I can hardly launch myself upward at all. Especially with the little floaing jellies that are right around the first grapple. If they hit you, you fall into little pits below, and trying to climb out with no offensive ability is really frustrating.

Also- it looks like you are punching when you press the 'd' key, but you can't hit anything. Then I got some fireflies, and I was just walking around and it kept having two of them fly off randomly at a time, and my control got jerked like I was getting hit by an enemy. Is that supposed to happen?

that's a bug with the culling system right now. You are essentially running into an invisible enemy. We're working on 'er right now. Thanks for the feedback :)

We'll try to make the start a bit friendlier too. Right now we just throw the enemies into the beginning so it's easier for us to test stuff. But I can change that quickly for the next update.

alright, so we fixed that bug with the invisible enemies. let us know if there are other troubles.

beyond that we've added some really basic (and not-good) soundFX and an enemy explosion animation in an attempt to spice up the second-to-second battle. Also we added a new enemy the uniquely named WallCrawler! Yea...

Oh and also, fireflies bounce off walls now, so you're not so penalized for missing. The idea will be to eventually have you die if you don't have fireflies around and you get hit. It's kind of your swarming health system ATM.

link is where it's always been: http://www.intuitiongames.com/games/liferaft (make sure to clear your cache)

I'm very interested to see where this game is headed. The atmosphere and visuals are gorgeous. The camera and controls seem very "swimmy", however.

Minor request: Could you add lighter shades or magic sparkles to the grappling rope? It's hard to see in the pitch-black of the upper parts of the level, so I can't tell which points I'm anchored to.

What do you mean by swimmy?  I actually just put in a "look-ahead" effect for the camera, basically an attempt to just rip off the camera effect in cave story.  Maybe that's part of it?

That's probably it. Sorry to be vague, it just seems like the camera is always moving around by itself. Maybe make the effect a little subtler?

Love the atmosphere, and the pixel art is really fantastic.  The jumping is kind of strange, though -- does the character sometimes speed up mid-jump when it's got a running start?  Sometimes it felt hard to judge where I was going to land.


Yup.  But also, since when are ropes are ink-black?

The game's shaping up really well though.  Can't wait to see where this is going.

forming up well.  i await death being added :)

run animation looks a little queer to my eyes.

Same here. I might be seeing it wrong, but it looks like her legs stick out horizontally when forward, which if so is really awkward.

yep, i recently changed the player sprite given some feedback. so the run animation is really bare bones (shitty). But you guys just convinced me to move it up on the priority list. I'm gonna spend today refining all the character animation. hopefully i can get down the firefly flick i want as well. she'll flick her hair forward and it'll send one out. wish me luck.

also... @godsavant we're going to do a tiled rope here soon enough (with the colors of the player's coat). so yea, it's on the list but we got hung up on performance. Luckily mike has a plan to back everything into big BitmapData objects and it seems to be working out alright. it was touch-n-go for a second there.

Hooookay! big chunky update here.

(http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2603/3850582371_d53337fce6.jpg) (http://www.flickr.com/photos/aeiowu/3850582371/)

We added death. Yellow lanterns are now checkpoints. A ton more instances of enemies are now everywhere (in the first few rooms). Built the level out a bit more with prettier assets and more "lush" level aesthetics (until the grapple room, at which point the level is thrown together-looking). I revamped all the character animations, let me know what you think of those, please. Also a new enemy (pictured above) who stampedes and kills you good. Mike also came up with an awesome way to optimize performance and we know it works it's just a bit ugly at the moment (deals with copyPixels and whatnot so there are a bunch of seams to deal with). If you get poor performance on this build, hold tight Mike's working on integrating his performance fix into the next build.

link: http://intuitiongames.com/games/liferaft

If you're having framerate issues (which you probably will) there is the jacked up performance edition here: http://intuitiongames.com/games/liferaftPerformance

The death sequence is really great.

The new hair whip for shooting is alright, but I feel like it should be as a result of the arm thrust and not by itself.

Alright, the performance fix is officially in. Had to iron out some weirdness with that but it's there now and performance should be drastically improved now if you had trouble playing earlier. It's not rock-solid of course, but it's a relatively big leap ahead.

Some notes on that... When you load up the game now (click on "Level 1") you'll probably get a spinning pinwheel/hourglass as what we're essentially doing is drawing each piece of the level (2000X2000 or so) to their own flattened bitmaps in Flash itself. For the final release this load won't exist as we'll just do it manually. If we did it manually for every build that'd be a ridiculous time sink but this allows us to put out regular builds with higher performance while sacrificing some initial load/initialization time on the front end.

In other news: We just launched Liferaft on Kickstarter (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/aeiowu/liferaft-episode-1-a-retro-platformer-video-game). We made a bumbling video and put it up there hoping we'll see a bit more action. So right now we're trying to push the Kickstarter page as a way for us to run a bit of a pre-order system as well as possibly have some assurance that we won't go starving on release day. If anyone is interested in Kickstarter for their own game check out the thread here to request an invite and keep the chain alive: http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=7561

A bit about Kickstarter: Kickstarter is an interesting fundraising site that is kind of an all-or-nothing deal. If you hit your goal in time you get the money and any that continues to come in is icing on the cake. Though, if you don't hit your goal, you get nothing. So it encourages aiming for something that's realistic as opposed to blue-sky. I think it's a really great opportunity for indies and can be that extra boost to try their hand at doing this full time.

Alright, that'll do it. Next we're tackling our first finished in-game Boss with a capital B. Hope to have him roughed in there by Friday.

That website is really cool...
If you don't get all the money foes kickstarter get it?
5,000 is a big goal...
I hope you get it...

Nope, if we don't hit the mark then nobody gets any money, so that kinda sucks, but it makes sense.  If we fail we could always start another one at a lower price point.  We're more looking at it as a way to start setting up pre-orders and get more promotion going now, but if people really want to donate a lot we're more than happy to take it :)

Really entertaining piece of work here, I hope you get what you deserve so very much.

Just backed you on Kickstarter.com.... really interested to hear if that works out for you.  it could be a great tool for other indies.

This is really great. I love the art and combat's neat as well. I did encounter one glitch (sorry if it's been mentioned already) Whilst falling and shooting fireflies I was lunged at by one of the toothed-wall thingamabobs. This pushed me backwards and I assume I just caught the edge of one of the downward crushers which shot me through the floor and I just kept falling through the sky. It might have just been an isolated incident. I tried to do it again with no luck but just thought you'd like to know.

Haha, yeah.  The crushers don't kill you right now, they just push you through the floor.  I'm gonna have to get creative about handling crush situations, the physics system just kind of gets confused right now :P


Thanks a lot! So far, it seems like kickstarter could be really awesome as just the place you handle pre-orders. Everyone who pre-orders can feel a lot more secure in that if the game doesn't get enough funding, they didn't spend money.

this game is pretty rad - nice job so far!  The world has a very cool creepy feel - nice color pics for that.  it's pretty original looking.

I died allot - so maybe you could make a button push skip the death cinematic what with the flies.  I spend most of my time watching the fireflies pick me up. (^__^)b

i'll have to keep watch for sure.

Thanks! =D That's a good idea to skip the cinematic. I always get annoyed with those too.

We've kind of had a bipolar week between liferaft and releasing Fig. 8, bug fixes and doing administrative crap (we're on the hunt for an intern!). Nonetheless a lot of the work we're doing is behind the scenes. Mike is taking the lead on making a bunch of levels which are shaping up really nicely. Our goal is to finish up the roughs (un-detailed without art) by the end of the month and then spend all of October on polish.

As far as updates to the demo version in this build we've got... new firefly particle effects, a new enemy kill explosion, fixed the elevator jerkiness, added a half-broke boss to the upstairs room.

http://www.intuitiongames.com/games/liferaft

BTW, thanks for all the support guys! Kickstarter has shown a lot of growth over the last week or so and we're really excited by that. If you're one of our pre-orderers (or even if your not) you especially kickass!  :-*

ps. oh yea, also I posted a bit on our experiences with level design. We can't really show those off as we want that to be a complete package that's experienced on its own. The demo that we have up is more of a vertical slice without much of a narrative progression. anyway, here's that write up on my blog: http://mile222.com/2009/09/the-trouble-with-not-knowing-what-were-doing/

Work continues under the hood. We have the first 3 "levels" roughed in and I've been working on making the mechanical side of the spectrum more interesting. As it stands now, the game starts you off in a relatively stark part of the facility and compared to what you guys are playing it looks pretty boring. It's been a struggle but last night I had a bit of a breakthrough and got out of my funk.

(http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2437/3932124967_3cb385e1a1.jpg)
 (http://www.flickr.com/photos/aeiowu/3932124967/)

As for what's playable, I added in three layers of parallax to give a better sense of depth, as well as some large struts/pipes to help make the interior feel like it was anchored. Originally the interior seemed pretty flat and floaty. I think this helps a lot. I'm not going to add it to the whole level as I need to keep working on the actual _game_ but this demo should give you a good idea as a type of sandbox.

Linky: http://intuitiongames.com/games/liferaft

Updates to the playable version will be less frequent (and have been lately if you haven't noticed) as we won't be making the actual game game publicly playable until release. If you're interested in testing privately and what-have-you, let us know though.

The paralax background works really well.
The shooting butterflies mechanic is great.
The grapple stuff works just fine.

Love the death animation.

Keep at it, I hope you get 100% on Kickstarter!

I'd love to beta test with the private version :D

Hey.

Welp, we decided to stop production on Liferaft. About a week or so ago we had a serious sit-down over some soup and decided that we were in a bad spot and needed a change. We're not really sure where we're going, but we do know we'll be starting development on a couple smaller games. It turned out that Liferaft was simply too big a project to take on, we grossly underestimated the amount of time it takes to make a good level, let alone tell a story through environment like we wanted. To do Liferaft justice we'd probably need a few years and we simply can't afford that right now.

We may pick it up down the road when we can, so if this thread ever gets dredged out of the mucky-muck lookout! Make sure to warn us and say "HEY! you can't do that, remember what happened last time!" so that we don't make the same mistake twice.  :durr:

Anyway, we appreciate all the feedback you guys have given, it's been crazy awesome and really helped the game out. We wouldn't have gotten as far without you.

 :gentleman:

We've learned a lot from this whole experience, just as we always do with every game we make, but it's always the failures that teach us the most. I'll be writing a bit more about it, in the weeks to come as we reflect more on why this all happened the way it did.

here's a bit of a post from our blog elaborating a bit more about the matter: http://www.intuitiongames.com/2009/10/is-hiatus-the-correct-word-here/

Oh, wow, that's too bad! I was excited.

Really sad to see this one go...

Goo luck guys!

Dang, this was looking really cool :shrug2: I understand the refocus though... I've done so fourish times before the current project. Good luck on the smaller stuff!

Noooooo!

Just played this for the first time. I thought it was really promising.

Will be sad to see this go.

Sorry to hear it. Good luck with whatever's next!

Actually in shock, you guys will be great at whatever you come to, and keep this one in the vault, it's a great piece. Good luck!

This project has been obviously taking a lot of your team's time so I can definitely understand the decision to postpone/cancel the game, especially if you guys would need a few years to complete it.

But what you managed to complete was really nice and appealing. If nothing else your next game will probably be even better! Practice makes perfect, and all that.

Thanks for the support guys, it actually makes the decision that much harder to bear when I hear how many people actually were looking forward to Liferaft, but it's the right decision.

Maybe someday we'll go back to parts of it, but it's just become this crazy beast that we don't know how to feed anymore :P

 :ninja:

(http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1275/4681779852_305cc0f7a5_b.jpg)

Oh, Sh*#!

ello ello ello whats all this then?!

Liferaft sadly got shelved before I even came to TIG so this thread being resurrected is my first viewing of it, and my god it's sexalicious! So even being a fan for going on 10 whole minutes, I squealed a little when I realised what the image above could mean! :-D that or your being a horrid tease :(

I believe the correct response here would be "Yeee!!!"

Cute glasses guys now?  :beg:

Is this just meant to be a weird hype picture?

yes.

but it's real. here's a mockup:

(http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4062/4659316204_8ec4d18f46_b.jpg)

Looking boss, Greg. Color me hyped.

Awwww  :tearsofjoy:

(http://img707.imageshack.us/img707/7606/liferaftzerolabbg.th.png) (http://img707.imageshack.us/i/liferaftzerolabbg.png/)

They tell me I'm doing just fine...

haha awesome! :)

Just dropped in to say that this is awesome. I'm posting mostly so that I can keep tabs on this project, hope ya don't mind.  :whome:

it's here, probably not what you expect but yup! :)

http://mikengreg.com/liferaft-zero

Just heard about the release on TIGRadio.  Loving the tiny little animations and the fact that you play a different clone every time you die.

God, since Portal came out it's like every Flash game n his mum wants to be set in a sneaky evil lab.

OH, it was really fun also. I couldn't do the swing at first, but once I'd worked it out I was super badass.

Hey, this is pretty fun  :) :handthumbsupR:

only one I've played recently that is like that is Spewer. care to name a few others?

Ok well Spewer, Shift (and all the others), Hunted Forever (and all those others), Exit Path was pretty recent, there's one called Survival Lab, and probably a dozen others out there I just don't remember.
I get that it's a good setting for a game, it gives a good excuse to run a weird game mechanic through an obstacle course, but d'you have to make the scientists be secretly evil aswell?
The first time I saw it I thought it was genius, but now I'm so bored of it.

Y'know, just sayin. I still played the game. Maybe I was just sad that you went from something I'd never seen before to the same thing everyone else is doing.

Holy crap this art in the OP playable is gorgeous!  I'm rubbish at jumpy, twitchy games though.  Any chance of a good screenshot gallery so I can see more of everything I missed?

 :tired: It's rather late, but I fucking love the friction of controling this character. I know there's something else lurking beneath, but I'm gonna need a night's day's rest before then.

i feel it needs to be said that these sound effects are friggin' superb

The only thing its missing is a level editor  :eyebrows:

its good, solid, and fun but its too "portal-like". it feels unoriginal, while the one in the op felt pretty unique and weird in a good way

I definitely like Liferaft 0 (minus the pixelart blood, but i can tolerate it :P). I agree that the evil lab thing is pretty unoriginal, but other then that the game is brilliant with the character controls and behavior, especially with the grappling. I have to agree though, i preferred the original in terms of graphics and style.