Game looks real nice, but unfortunately freezes for me when I try to enter the cellar.

ah yes, dark buttons over a dark background, I wasn't totally smart there lol, but the UI is totally temporary right now, a lot more thought will be going into its appearance, especially the dungeon level select, I cant wait to get to work on that bit actually :D

the first spell ribbon-trails are a little slow IMHO, it feel weird to have you character almost as fast as the spell it launch.

Yeah, I have yet to really get into tuning the attacks and stuff yet, but that attack will likely stay at that speed until you get the more stronger versions which will have faster projectiles, fire rate, and mybe stuff like homing and/or spread shot, I dunno, lots for me to experiment with

Although it's unclear how much the final game will cost.

yeah, even I don't know that lol, I'll charge what I think it's worth at the time but I just dont know how good it will be when it's done.

Is that white outline around the HUD elements by design or is it poor aliasing?

it's actually by design, heres one of the graphics in a larger size:

but yeah, the border looks quite horrid when scaled down to what it is in game, I'll probably have to resize the graphics myself instead of letting the unity importer to do it, but honestly I havent even played with the import settings.

I'm not really sold on the 2D sprites and textures. I get that they're trying to have that rough/cutesy kid-with-a-crayon appearance, but I'm not entirely convinced it's working.

a lot of the graphics are totally placeholder (esp. dialogue portraits lol, those things are uuuggglllyyy!) a few people elsewhere said they liked the 2D-item-in-3D-world stuff, but it's something I'll guage what people (and what I myself) really want, there is already support for items that have 3D models in the game, but I plan on having hundreds of different items and the thought of making 3D models for them all right now is a bit of a put-off, so for the time being, 2D they shall stay I guess, but my mind is on it

Unity, but I think she's getting the halo because she's using PSDs and not PNGs (I may be wrong)

actually I'm making the graphics using paint tool SAI, not photoshop, and I do save a .png for unity, I dont like dropping source stuff into unity even though it can handle it.

i wonder if a price model would work where, every time someone buys it, the price goes up by 1 cent, and it starts at 1 cent

by the time it reaches 100$, you'd have had 10,000 sales

that certainly sounds like an interesting model, but I dont know how fair it is, right now I'm more comfortable setting the price to be whatever I think the game is worth, plus I have no idea how to increment the price every sale without going totally mad lol.

I wonder if pirates would be more or less compelled to pirate your game while it's being sold for cents. Some people say they can't buy because of no credit cards, so maybe offer another way for them to pay (ie, community activity).

I recall with the humble indie bundle, there was a lot of piracy and people could pay whatever, so I dunno if having a super low price would make that much difference to pirates, and I dont see pirates as lost sales anyway tbh. if they are the kind of people who would pirate a cheap indie game, they arent the kind of people I would ever get money from anyway.

I like games with the happy, toony charm, although I am not sure the character outlines fit the rest of the scene in those screenshots.

yeah, I've been thinking to myself about that, since the witch is the only character with an outline, originally it was to keep her from blending in with a similarly coloured floor (and because I have a 3D model outline fetish) but I dont know if there is still a need with how the lighting is now, I'll experiment without a bit

it kept not crashing but just suddenly jumping to a blank webpage.

thats not cool, have you gotten other unity content working in your browser?

-

anyhoo, thanks everyone, you've given me lots to think about

wow, you add a little colour and the gifs turn to underpants, I guess I'll just have to start uploading playable builds instead in future :D

Will you be adding wall slide/jump?

well you can slide down steep slopes and jumping jumps at the angle of the floor, but I wont be having wall running, I got enough of that in my main project and I dont want to take a break from something by doing something exactly the same

Also what type of shader are you using to get that effect?

the character/environment is a slight tweak on the diffuse and toonshading shaders that come with unity, the hair is solid black or white, and I make it outlined by placing a thicker black strand slightly beyond the hair, so each hair 'point' is .1 further from the camera than the main hair point... if you know what I mean.
oh, also the BG fade out is just regular fog

...is that slender man's girlfriend?

woa, hadn't heard of the slender man till today, but nope, this is nobodys girlfriend. (yes, I even planned my story that far )

Looks amazing, though I think you should really change that animation ASAP.

ya, its right near the top of my to-do list I promise! ^_^;

figured I would try to incorporate the original cart artists idea of jumping super high and stuff;


tweaked the hair some, not sure if I dont prefer how it was before, if someone thinks its developing in the wrong direction let me know why plz

I can't wait to see the bubbles!

That's next! :D

Some sort of BFG reference is obligatory. 

haha, don't have any plans for giants... though I was playing shadow of the colossus this morning and it gave me some cool ideas for environment/narrative approach...

Thanks for the translation IngisKahn!

It's funny how she's still holding the sword, even though it's not there anymore

hah yeah, I really should throw together a fresh model and anims, she looks ridiculous with her hand/arm like that

anyhoo, trying to give the hair more volume, not there yet but I'm getting closer;


I really want to have the hair get a little thicker about 2/3 along each 'strand' but the unity line renderer only has a start and end width, so I may have to take my code apart some to get hair made out of multiple line renderers.

should I be working on gameplay? nah, not in the mood =p

thanks for the nice words guys :B

That concept looks cool. Make the game look like that and you win.

just tweaked a little thing I was working on to test visual stuff, I think I can pull it off:

so I'm thinking of lots of bubble related gameplay possibilities, dream hopping ideas have yet to show their heads but I'm about to head into Nod anyway so perhaps I'll find some there

[Dream Hopper]

Dream Hopper

Description "Dream Hopper" Sophie Houlden / Insane Girl This game will be the coolest game ever. it will be the complete merging of lucid dreams and ludological win... ludid... lucologica... ludca... whatever, coming soon to a browser near you.		Inspired by " ドリームホッパー " エンドウ / 超漫画家 今夜の夢は跳ねる夢です。屋根より高く空より高く飛び、風より速く落ちる。スーパーボールの様な彼方。風にタッチしたり翼を持った少女に幸せな記憶を届けたり、何が起きるかわかりません、夢だから。 "Dream Hopper" Endou/Super Cartoonist Tonight's dream is a hopping dream.  Leap higher than the roofs, higher than the sky.  Drop faster than the wind.  Further than even a SuperBall. Touching the wind, bringing the happy memories of a girl with wings, who knows what could happen - it's a dream. (big thanks IngisKahn for translation)

Download
not yet, don't get ahead of yourself baby.

How to play
I haven't decided yet, but it will be AWESOME

[EDIT:]

So down for this

this is in fact the cart for MY ACTUAL LIFE.

EDIT:
concept art get!

> thread here <

So recently I've been working on loading and unloading levels for when Hyades moves between different areas, and got bored so I made a portal type thing as the doorway graphic, of which there wont be anything of the like in the game lol, but meh, I guess I could squeeze some in if I feel like it later:


and also today I had a bash at coming up with idea concepts for the enemies:

(this is actually the second load of enemy concepts I've done, the first had enemies I think were 'too human'

if anyone cares, the crystals piercing the baddies are fragments of 'trouble', which is a plot device corrupting the world!

So basically you run a preprocess that tag the level for you?

I'm just saying that would be one way to do it if you didnt want to lay out the edges yourself and a whole level collision check was too expensive

I use triggers and then raycasts, (with tags and stuff) not sure if it makes more sense or not though.

I think it does, in unity trigger collisions are in most cases much cheaper than raycasts, when it comes optimising time I'll definitly be looking into doing trigger checks and before raycasts

anyhoo, in more hanging news, I have a different animation for overhangs and 'wall' hangs:

...well I say 'animation', what I mean is 'pose', I havent gotten round to making prototype animations for the hanging stuff yet ^_^;

They do not use Tag, just fed them with geometry and they work if appropriate.  I have yet to find something as solid as that! I will share any new discovery of any new trick.

I think it's pretty much the same approach but you cant cheat by just getting local space and transforming stuff, if I were to try I'd say cast a ray at the level sheet, check the normal angle to see if its facing up, check surrounding triangles to make sure its a ledge, and treat the edge of the triangle closest to the player as the ledge itself, and the direction to move along too.

you'd have to do a bit more juggling to make sure you want to treat it as a ledge but I imagine the principle is the same, and if it runs slow theres no reason you couldnt run a script to lay out ledges like I am using when the level is loaded based on the geometry.

instead of moving the camera, move the near plane to the point of contact.

that is a brilliant idea! I'll be sure to play around with that once I have the time, thanks! :D

I'm curious to know how you did handles "hang"

well it just so happens I can draw diagrams, dont know if they are much help though:

hopefully you can decipher that, also I left it out but considerations need to be made for which side of the ledge the player is on, the local scale of the ledge and I think there were some rotation problems, but they were solved by measuring distance along the top of the ledge and not down the center of it.

once the player has grabbed of course shimmying along the ledge is simply a case of moving in the direction of the ledge's right by whatever the shimmy speed is.

I'll prolly add to this a bit so there is a check to see if theres a wall beneash the ledge so hyades can push her feet against it and shimmy faster too.

reminds me of the old ps/pc game "dreams to reality" especially the video...

ooh, I checked out a youtube video of that, I'll have to see if I cant get a play in sometime.

I can imagine you don't plan on keeping such an abstract theme forever.

well for the most part I didn't, *but* platforming in this level is much more fun than I thought, and my story allows me alot of licence to make the world how I want. so there will definitley be bits like this :D

The only thing I think should be different is the character's shadow, I think it should be harder.

yeah, that will likely change, even from area to area, and if I can sell enough pre-orders when the time comes to afford uinty pro (i'm prolly dreaming here) I'll have *proper* shadows

aaand because I dont like to make a post without a screenshot, here's a pic of a horrible 'burst wave thing' from doing an air dash that will likely change or get pulled:

I'd post something cooler but I havent added anything since last time since I was making a game for miniLD.

anyhoo, thanks for the comments and pointers guys, you're helping keep my motivation at 200% :D

lol, thanks for the nice words and emotes guys :D

today's update: character hangs, game doesen't 


gonna take the weekend off for mini ludum dare if the 'theme' strikes me, but it might be hard to pull away from this project whilst I have such steam built up

I want to drool, but I'm afraid I might smudge the prettiness the wrong way.

can't wait to see more :D

ok, heres another recording, where my computer lagged whilst filming, and whilst getting the video from the camera too. I am starting to think this shows up my PC more than it shows off the game

if you can put on optimistic glasses, and pretend you are squinting whilst watching the video you might be able to see the game how I do and fall in love, but that's very unlikely. I guess I'd best just quit with the video and once I've finished all the base gameplay I can work on making more pretty things to show off in screens.

[@ ExciteMike:]

@ ExciteMike: I'm glad you like it! :D (and thanks for the twitter psoting <3) I will likely be scrapping the second level as it does put people off the game really quick, I think the diagonal space is just too tight. (it used to be tighter too lol)


@ Hayden Scott-Baron: felt like VVVVVV? you offer too much kindness sir!
you're totally right about the corridor floors, they arent helpful at all, but I recently figured out how to pull geometry from unity into blender so an AO map or some similar will be a piece of cake, consider something added! :D (oh, and I'll work on the quitting thing too)


@ OneSwitch.org.uk: diagonal corridors will likely get a cut, or as you suggest, a laser that rotates the input to match.

not sure how I would handle a speed control whilst maintaining the one button system without any anologue either, so I'll add a slower speed setting if you think that's a good idea oh and the difficulty select will definately have the hold to slow, release to select mechanism, I was just too lazy to implement it before submitting to gamma lol

and of course you are welcome to link once the game is done, I'll get in touch once there is a final version online


thanks for the very kind words and feedback guys, it's a big help 

Thanks allen amd Katamaran

RE: lives, I will prolly get rid of them (or at least the game over if you run out). the only reason I have any was due to the five minute max playtime rule for Gamma.

I'm not a fan of playing the whole game over and over until you beat the last level anyway ^__^

and expect more levels like the sewer levels, theres alot of... well, quick route planning type gameplay stuff I wanted to include but ran out of time :D

ok then, release it I shall! (I guess I dont take much convincing lol)

we'll call this the beta release then (zip contains windows and OSX versions):

• Download from my site (possibly slow)
• Download from mirror

any and all feedback will be appreciated 

so I got my email this morning, the game didn't make the cut but that's not getting me down, I learnt plenty working on it and seeing as I only spent a week on the thing in total it's not much of a loss at all. besides, the quality of even the other 'dropouts' is really brilliant :D, I dont mind being on the losing team when the team is so awesome

I'm not sure if I'll release the gamma version now or not, I plan to update it with a few more levels and cutscenes. plus the very cool flashygoodness has agreed to make some music for the game too.

what do you guys think, a quiet 'pre-release' version so you can play what there is, or would you rather wait till it's whole?