it has not.
i was very busy, crunching on my last work
development of carapace will continue soon!

a dynamic pause between breaths would be cool, but that later later later
first I want to have a good set of animations, so I can hack together a prototype
then I'll refine as I go

Something that occurs to me while reading your plan is i curious how you will handle the player taking off their gear. Will there be some sort of inventory system where the player has individual control of each piece of their gear or will there just be a button that takes off a piece of gear, or will loosing your gear not be under the players control at all? Maybe pieces of gear just break/fall off at certain points.

gear drop will be sequential, but the player will decide when to drop the next piece
I want it to be a significant moment (and of course not accidental, so the control will be something like press Z+X+Down for a few seconds, with a two step animation, crouch down and drop armor)

so

step down animation: approved
smashing through walls: nice, but difficult to implement! (and not being able to jump makes n°2 less of a problem! I didn't think about it)
sword cutting through walls: still dunno, will deal with it on prototype phase

thank you!

i did some animations, idle and run

   

did two version of the run cycle, this one is a 20 frames cycle at 24 fps
but i think it's a little too fluid
the other one is 16 frames at 18 fps
(here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8520368/carapace/salaryman_run%2816%29_18fps.gif )

stil don't know which one to use (probably the second one but at higher framerate)
will decide later

[1)]

thank you guys!

did some more mockups
trying to figure out how the character will react to the enviroment

here are 4 hypotetical moves: small step, slightly higher step, little climb, and wall climb (4+ tiles high)




here i encountered some problems:



1) with such small hitbox some elements (sword) may cut through the tiles
   solution 1: enlarge hitbox - don't like it
   solution 2: deal with the problem in level design, avoid 1 tile wide walls
   solution 3: who cares, minor glitch


2) platform too small to stand on, unpredictable behavior (and looks awkward)
   solution: again, deal with the problem in level design, avoid 1 tile wide platforms (during knight sections) ?


3) common problem in platforms
   solution 1: make him fall down after half body is over the edge - rough
   solution 2: do a "step/jump down" animation, when you approach the end of a platform - better



now the tile size is 10X10, instead of the usual 16X16
will it cause problems? is too small, considering character size?

ah decisions, decisions... 

adapted the mockup to a 10x10 tiles grid




also
a boar sketch, which ended up looking kind of cute.. 

[working on:]

a quick mockup
mostly brainstorming on furniture and stylization

haven't decided the tile size yet
edit: (thinking about 10x10, is so uncommon? so the suit guy would be a little less than 4 tiles high)




working on:
- moveset scheme
- running and jumping animations

must sketch more on:
- xeroxes and punched cards
- forest/fantasy setting
- some enemies?

Thank you guys for the warm welcome!
Yep, it's a bit ambitious, I hope to get the hang of it, step by step

@Belimoth: wow, that's brilliant, I'll consider it for sure, thanks!

[What is it?]

What is it?

Carapace will be a simple 2D platformer, developed in actionscript3 with the flixel framework, and will be distributed freely via web once completed.

The gameplay

Carapace will be a small but polished interactive experience to be played in one brief session (about 15-30 min. of gameplay). It will play like a little marathon: no savegame, big health bar and no health pickups.

Actually, no pickups at all; instead, the core mechanic of Carapace will be inverse character progression. Dropdowns. I have yet to nail all the details and the background story, but basically it will play something like this:

you start the game as a pretty big and clunky knight, in what appears to be a traditional fantasy setting (on a traditional fantasy quest). After a few easy fights (you’re almost invincible in your heavy armor), you encounter some little physical obstacles in your path; to go on, you must leave some pieces of your armor on the ground (small pieces at first, like the helm or the shoulder pads) to gain a little bit of agility. As you go on, you encounter stronger enemies and bigger obstacles, so you keep getting weaker, but also faster and more agile; you acquire a little different moveset every time you drop something (example: no jump –> little jump –> normal jump –> running/long jump –> ability to climb over ledges –> wall jump etc.). In the end, what remains is only a man and his suit.

The (only) level, will spawn vertically, with numerous floors, and slowly becomes a strange mix of classic fantasy and ’80s corporate office hell (it’s tied in some ways to the story, but more on that later)

Development

First of all, I’m doing this to learn; I would like to make games for a living, I already know the basics of programming, but I’m a total rookie regarding game mechanics and game programming (on the other hand, I’m kinda experienced in doing graphics). For this reason I’m starting this devlog, which will be published here and in some other places; I will need help!

Of course I will be doing this on my spare time, so no daily updates, hopefully once a week, I already expect a long long development time.

First Milestone

Get the hang of flixel and platform physics/control and implement the first character, the guy in a suit with sword and shield.

Soon (hopefully)

Forgive this wall of text, more graphics next time!
First animations for the main character, and maybe some moveset/control scheme.



a few notes for last:

- yes, the visuals are heavily inspired by superbrothers works. I choose this style for a few reasons, it's cool, it's easy, and it's fast. I will have to do a lot of animations, and I want them to be very fluid, which would be a pain to do with a more realistic style (and classic super-deformed pixel-art doesn't fit the theme very well).

- i also have an official dev-blog here: http://aboutlivingthings.wordpress.com/ but i want this thread to be the place of WIP and discussion!

walk little man, walk

what. is. this?
 

wow... i just did 7800..
now i see the screen sliding to the right

awesome little game! expand it! 


the ship at 5000 is distric9 inspired?

Camstudio -> AVI -> After Effects -> FLV is the workflow I would use myself under WinXP.

i do:
everything->after effects->avi->premiere->some other codec

but maybe premiere is not an option, right?

just finished Where.
very nice indeed

interesting discussion!
jumped in just to remember how genius was death in Planescape:torment

yeah lot of fun
my steam id is clawsa86

Oddworld inhabitants are one of my favourite studios!
for those interested here there is a LOT of concept art from their games:
http://oddworldlibrary.net/archives/togg/index.php?menu=home&page=home

please enjoy!

this is brilliant!  :D
can't wait to see how it ends..

hey guys!
my homage to one of the greatest mecha design of the decade

and last (a picture speaks better than 1000 words)
an illustration i did some time ago that fits almost perfectly:

I want to make a flight sim that ephasises riding wind currents and hiding in clouds over real world accuracy, and I want it in a steam punk world.

wow, this actually lit something in my head!

(in short: shadow of the colossus in the sky)

Now i imagine a world where everything is floating in an infinte (?) sky. there are flying islands, ships, zeppelins.. a lot of steampunk (i love it)
you are a young guy and you fly around with your little aircraft (pretty much like a glider, small engine, big wings.. manuverability similar to the meheve from nausiica).
now. gameplay is focused on exploration, mood, clouds, atmosphere, flight (also Cloud comes to my mind http://intihuatani.usc.edu/cloud/)
you are very small, and places are very HUGE.
about enemies well.. i would say no small ones but, again, similar to SOTC:
HUGE ships, zeppelins, creatures etc..
you have to fly around (or even between and inside) them to find a way to kill(?)them.
everything is story driven, but with few dialogues. everything must be uhmm.. poetic.

wow, this would be the game of my life.
I have to do it.
(read: i have to find someone to do it for me, under my supervision )

sorry for the rush of ideas! (and the poor english!)

What they said.