I saw that this is out now: https://store.steampowered.com/app/625740/Rifter/

Very excited to try it out!

Coming to the meetup tonight?

That destruction looks great!

If you hit my dev site (https://tjpalmer.github.io/zym/), you get about a dozen starter levels now. More later.

Also, I've been toying with 3d sculpting for later redoing of graphics. Still tiny (because that's the game), but here's an idea of what I'm trying to do:



441 triangles, says blender. Hopefully that would be the most for any model. Maybe I could fill a screen with 800 such models with no speed issues?

I think being forced to choose a place for a fire as a turn could be interesting if the mechanics are worked out well for that.

The core gameplay (except many bug fixes) is feature complete with falling blocks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmOpiSxElJQ&feature=youtu.be

This feature was suggested by one of my kids a few years ago and effectively takes the place of fake blocks.

Need to make levels and fix bugs now.

Posting to follow now!

Here's the bookmark I use for my own devlog, by the way, to keep it from marking as a view: https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=44573.new;topicseen#new

It also goes to the most recent post with the ".new" and "#new".

Branching option 2 seems much better to me than clicking on the map. Make obvious branches on screen, and up/down arrows or whatever can be used to follow them. Or some such. The transition would be the hard part. Either temporary (semi-)3D or fade out/in are possible options. Whatever's easiest to start with would be fine.

Zelda 2 got around this by having all distance travel be overhead, but I get that you want to maintain side view for travel here.

Second to last major gameplay feature, blocks that break after you use them:



That shows a partial run with a failed sequence, followed by one with a correct play. There's also a flash of editor mode in the middle.

Rather than using the breaking graphics from the original, I apply a consistent mask to all blocks, so I can make other types breakable.

The last feature I need to implement is falling blocks, which are to take the place of fake blocks. Fake blocks were in original Lode Runner and in my original plans, but I'm not convinced they are a good game mechanic.

I love the animation. And I've heard said that everything good in life happens because of a deadline. Consider imposing some if you're serious about this!

Space chef platformer sounds cool. Looks like a great start!

I just found some graph paper drawings from a time after I made the original graphics (but still 1995), but when I didn't have a computer handy. I forgot I'd ever made these drawings. And there are other pages I didn't include here, because they're more boring or even uglier.





Obviously some ideas different from or beyond what I had in the graphics and therefore out of scope. And I'm sort of happy with the limited physics of original Lode Runner style rather than the more elaborate physics and control I describe above. And I'm not sure what some of those robots above were supposed to do.

Anyway, just seemed like fun to post these after I found them today.

In actual game dev news, I've now made it so that robots flip switches and activate crushers instead of just the player character. Maybe I'll post some gifs of that sometime.

Lousy capture again, but here's the latest:



Few things left to go, beyond fixing physics. That impacts the implementation here, too.

I got tired of feeling forced to make large levels. I also got tired not being symmetric for odd widths. I felt these were making me choose poor designs. So now you can crop to whatever size you want, such as this tiny game of chicken (just for testing, probably):



I've cropped a lot for pictures here, but they were always parts of larger levels before.

Question is whether I want to zoom larger on screen for small levels, or just leave them taking up only a smaller part of the screen. Probably defer that decision for now. In edit-and-test cycle at least, it's better not to have things jump around.

I've always imagined these as acid:



They kill the player. I have guns currently kill the droppers, and the drops themselves also stop drops (slim chance of that collision in most cases) but not destroying the drops. The drops don't kill enemies for now, and I'm inclined to keep it that way. Unlike guns, they drop even without seeing the player first, so they could randomly kill enemies for no good reason.

I have them dropping at 3 second intervals at fastest, only one drop at a time per dropper. The first drop initializes based on position, which causes the alternating shared drop times seen above.

Nothing too exciting, but I've been reworking my physics some to allow for unaligned motion inside ladders (and in open space), if you can make out the guy among all these bright yellow ladders:



Original Lode Runner and at least some clones tend to keep you aligned to rows and columns, and I started that way, too. But in my case, it was making some of the other physics broken, especially when walking off enemy heads. And some upcoming features might exaggerate that.

Also, in mythical new graphics land, I want patches of ladders to be rendered more as mesh fences, so it would make sense to allow freeform motion inside them.

But to allow entirely freeform motion doesn't work, either, because you need to be able to fit into exact openings in the grid, so manual pixel alignment is too hard. And sometimes unaligned motion looks bad. So I have to align you sometimes. I think I almost have the logic worked out, though.

And in unrelated distractions, I've also been toying with Flatland-ish actual 2D game ideas. It's pretty mind warping.

Looking great!

For a bit of status, the tiles circled in cyan are the ones I haven't done yet but intend to do:



These are:

- Single-use breaking blocks
- Acid droppers
- Smashers to destroy things beneath them when you fall on them
- Ice for slipping

The hashed tiles circled in yellow are for fake tiles, like the fake bricks in original Lode Runner. But I'm not convinced I like them. One of my sons is trying to convince me to make dropping blocks instead that fall after you use them. Maybe.

Everything uncircled is implemented to some extent. But I might still want to improve things.

Thanks for the feedback!

I've added invisibles as an option for most tile types. You can see all invisibles when near any. And an invisible bonus both makes you temporarily invisible to enemies and able to see all invisibles wherever you are.

Invisibles can be abused, but I think they can also be used for good. And you can already make broken levels, anyway. So I figured that level designers can be given the tool and be allowed to be wise in how they use them.

And invisibles were in the original graphic, too, although I now represent them with translucency rather than using the specific invisibles editor tiles from the original graphic. I did a similar generalization with enders earlier.

I've also added enemy respawn points. These were supposed to be portals, but I repurposed the tile. Figured that the directional launchers were good enough teleporters.

Figured I'd post an update, since that's easy enough. But I haven't had feedback for a long time, so I might not bother with a screen capture.