I think health can be done well if used carefully. My game uses health very much in the same way as Zelda games, and it's done in order to create tension in exploring a dungeon - trying to stay alive and learning how to best fight the enemies, etc. The tough part, is balancing the damage and health refills. Damage too much, and the game becomes ridiculously frustrating, especially when getting enough health for the ride takes time (parts of Zelda I), drop health too much or make it meaningless, and there is no challenge (the double-health-bars in 3D zeldas)
What will the game include other than just shooting the pink things? As far as I can tell the shooting feels fine, you may want to put an in-game dialogue telling about the slowing-down thing though.
Disasterpeace's Rise of the Obsidian Interstellar is the best chiptune album ever made. I will fight (or be educated by) anyone who thinks otherwise.
It's amazing, right!? I especially like "The New Formation" and "Submerciful".
Btw, I'm currently listening to Japandroids - The House That Heaven Built.
One of my favorites from RotOI is Wagering Lights. The section from 1:30-2:30 is well, really amazing - the meter change is really awesome as well as the way he does the transition.
When in doubt of what has changed, check the commit logs...
Music: Not much here. I may have touched up songs, but from reaper's running time count I didn't work much Sound: Added a handful of sound effects, of which you cannot see Art: I worked a bit on the street tileset, I want to continue to add little decorations to give it some...dimension, I guess Game: Added an enemy, the ever-present and annoying bat.
The first dungeon is finished, but now I have to tweak the enemies because hitboxes don't feel right all the time.
I have thought of what constitutes a rough sense of gauging progress, finally. Not 100% how to represent it yet, but there's a menu screen.
Also, this:
was a badly needed "Set your own controls" thing. I've been thinking of ways to as-smooth-as-I-can integrate controls customization into the game...namely, the very first area will be moving, with a message to set controls if the current movement is undesirable - and setting the four other inputs will come later, since I don't want to throw it at them all at once. I've found this to be a tough design point, as I don't want to kill the intro flow of the game, but you can only uh, do so much with limited controls.
Although the bear prompt would be a lot easier, I think, given who has started working (and made it be known), it is only fair to leave it at the original prompt. (Sorry to anyone who may have started on the bear prompt in the past 4 hours) I can't think of a way to judge two incredibly different prompts against eachother fairly and have one winner. The "musical story" prompt now has some random prize I thought of (as opposed to nothing at all, so I guess it's better). The winner of the original challenge of course will get to make the next one.
And as a note to anyone else thinking of joining in, it doesn't need to be a very long piece, I know the prompt is a bit difficult (my fault there). You could perhaps get the idea across with 30 second clips.
So, if you're interested in doing either please give a post in the thread.
Nice sand. The center grass tiles looks a little weird - I think there shouldn't be as many dark 'blades', and they should be more sparse. The edge tiles are nice, though.
Yeah, those are still really janky. It was sort of fun doing the animated tiles and trying to make them seamless from one tile to the next. You can still really see the grid, though, on the edges.
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devlog stuff:
More work on first dungeon. Layout more or less done, I want to tweak the boss sfx and audio a bit...then add a small sequence in the room after the boss. Or something.
Working on a title screen. Mechanics of it in place. Thinking of visual effects to use. Feedback would be nice for this title. I'm thinking of drawing in a person standing in the doorway with their shadow casted, and then some colorful things coming out of the shadow o_o
Finished up more beach animated tiles, worked a bit on the tileset. Still needs a lot of work but looks okay I think.
Grapple Man 2 is one that I'm most proud of. In the original Grapple Man I spent 53 minutes implementing grappling hook physics and 7 minutes making levels. In the sequel I fixed some bugs and then made 20+ levels in half an hour. One day I'll polish it up and make a real game of it.
That will be a fun game. That prototype is already fun - I like shooting to a wall and watching the square sort of just jiggle stupidly.
I feel bad for saying that I'm looking forward to coming home in a couple weeks. Rockford has character, while Evanston does not.
Do you go to Northwestern? I went and work there now (downtown).
Yep! I'm balls deep in finals week now.
HEY I'm from That Other School down in Hyde Park...*shakes fist furiously at you* (how's the game dev scene up there? it's mostly nonexistent down here...)
The game works! And is playable. You finished a game! That's really important, I think.
Now for some criticism...
A lot of the levels boiled down to clicking all the blocks really fast, although I did play a few levels where I had to think for a bit. There are minor bugs, such as the blocks end up drawn over the "next level/restart" popup, and the music track only plays once - you should try to find a different song since the current one isn't very enjoyable to listen to.
Try Stencyl or one of the other programs that helps people make games who aren't as experienced in programming. Or, learn programming! If you can make a few games you will be taken more seriously, and using those programs is the easiest step at the moment.
Anything, to be honest - just live life, but be open to inspiration (i.e. don't just walk around not-thinking)! It works! I swear! Carry a small notebook around. Try to avoid things that are others products for a bit (others music, games, etc), so your own ideas can grow. It's okay to use those for reference sometimes, but most of it should come from yourself
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