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[David Pittman]

Guitarguy Rocks Out

Description This dude is pretty rad and can play some hot licks for the ladies. Also, he doesn't know where his shirt is. He's going to have to go on a quest or something. Maybe an epic journey filled with peril and totally shred-tastic musical numbers. Maybe an epic journey to find his shirt. Built on the Constraint engine, a brand new old school faux 8-bit platform, Guitarguy Rocks Out brings high octane arcade action and blazing metal riffs to your home computer. Gnarly! Rock out with Guitarguy today!		Inspired by

Download
Windows (167 KB)

How to play
Controls:

	Z - Jump
	X - Swing guitar, hold to run
	C - Rock out to stun enemies

Power-ups:

	Guitar Pick - Collect 20 for an extra life
	Cassette Tape - Refill one notch on your rock meter
	Guitar - Strike enemies and rock out harder
	Humbucker - Maximum rockage!

Enemies:

		Snake - Strike or stun these slithering foes
		Skeleton - You can't stun these undead warriors--strike or avoid them
		Bat - Strike or stun these flying pests
		Grim Reaper - The Reaper cannot be stunned or killed--stay away!
		Dragon - Stun the dragon or strike back when he dives to attack

Bosses:

	These dark guardians are Guitarguy's only equals
	Watch out for the enemy's virtuosic meedley attack
	The meedley attack rains deadly sparks down from the stage--avoid them!
	Stay off the ground to avoid being stunned by the enemy's guitar smash attack

Traps:

Spikes - You've played video games before, you know what to do

Phat Beats
Earned for winning the Best Audio poll.

[Inanimate]

This idea sounds amazing, hopefully sobriety will not exile it from realization.

[David Pittman]

I just threw this together as a rough art direction guide. I think I want to mostly stay away from really glammy hair metal bands. Long hair good, makeup bad. I love the cheesiness and 80s-ness of neon Ibanez JEM guitars, so I'll probably work those colors in somehow. I haven't decided if the game will take place in real world locations (guitar stores, music studios, clubs) or fantasy realms, but I thought some Roger Dean environments might be a good fit if I go in a more fantasy direction.



Note to self: I absolutely need to include "guitar face" as a player ability.

Oh man, I forgot to put any Bill and Ted in there. Air guitar is totally going to be a thing in this game.

[tipp]

I love Yes! I'd love to see a fantasy setting for this game, it would be much different than the usual guitar games I see out there.

[Melly]

This has potential for greatness.

[David Pittman]

Instead of actually working on my game, I made a classic video game ad. Hope you like it.

[Melly]

Haha, that looks great.

[Inanimate]

I LOVE THE GUITARGUY

HE'S SO BAD

[David Pittman]

Bump for beta build: http://www.dphrygian.com/bin/GRO-07-19.zip

Bug reports, critiques, etc. are welcome. Post 'em here instead of messaging me.

Edit: I'm removing the update log from the first post to unclutter the page and dumping it here for posterity.

Updates

July 5:
This is actually happening! I got the graphics and audio machines up and running a few days ago and spent yesterday implementing collision and physics and figuring out exactly what the game would be. Today has been a crazy amount of in-game tools work. Hex editing sprites was fun for a few hours, and then I decided I needed tools if I were going to actually get this done before the deadline.



Art and music are mostly still in proxy form. That sprite is probably going to stick, but everything else will change. Music will be slightly altered (i.e., legally distinct) variations on actual rock songs. Incidentally, I am *so sick* of the intro riff to "The Trooper" right now.

July 6
I spent the late afternoon and evening adding a few extra features to my in-game tools (copy/paste, flip/mirror, eyedropper), stubbing out the maps, implementing an animation system, and writing the first AI (a Red Koopa Troopa, basically--patrols between walls and cliffs).

I put a preview on Youtube:

.

July 7
I got a bunch of gameplay code done last night. The core player mechanics are all implemented (except death--does that count as a mechanic?) and the first AI is done. There's a few remaining problems to be solved, but a good chunk of the work I've got left to do is a known quantity, and I think I'm on track to finish this thing.

July 8
Title screen, player death, and tombstones are working. I think I'll work on boss fights, player scripting, and the ending tonight. I should be able to have the game playable through in proxy form after that. Then it's just a matter of making content.

July 9
Boss encounters and level completion scripting are about halfway done. I need to get the boss's second attack working, polish up a few scripting bits, and hammer on it all to shake out bugs, but the core elements are there. The only thing blocking a proxy playthrough now is the ending.

July 10
Boss encounters are finished, and I've got a proxy ending sequence working. The last pieces of tech before I start doing art, levels, and audio is to develop a couple extra AI types and get random spawns working.

July 11
All enemies are in the game and random spawns are done. I've started playing around with the layout of the first level to figure out exactly what kind of platformer I'm making. Also improved a few tools, fixed some bugs, and recorded a bunch of guitar noises that will hopefully make for decent sound effects.

More footage:



July 12
I intended to take a brief break from working on this, as I kind of burnt myself out over the last week, but I did end up making a few critical fixes (Esc pauses instead of instantly quitting now) and starting to get proxy audio in the game. And I made a silly vintage game ad (posted below).

July 13
I dusted off my Strat and recorded 15 minutes of meedleys and crazy guitar noises, then spent the better part of last night sifting through it all in Audacity to find decent sound effects. My secret goal to make all my SFX from unaltered guitar tones is a success!

The entire tool chain, if you're curious, was: Fender Strat -> Line6 POD -> Fender amp -> iPhone FiRe recording app -> wifi to PC -> Audacity -> 8-bit PCM .wav -> HxD to copy the raw wave data directly into my game's audio resource file.

July 14
I jumped from level 1 right over to level 3 last night. I'm struggling to find a sweet spot in the difficulty, something that's challenging but not VVVVVV challenging, because I don't have frequent checkpoints. It should be Super Mario Bros. challenging. I'm going to save the really unfairly difficult pixel perfect jumping puzzles for a future project, anyway.

July 15
I arted up level 3 and the ending sequence a bit last night. Music is the biggest thing left to do. I may post a beta build this weekend.

July 16
I did very little work on GRO last night, though I did take a pass at the title screen. The logo is walking a fine line between cleverly stylized and illegible.

July 17
Polishing and arting up the levels a bit. Have some new screens:



July 18
I spent the evening mostly working on some music. Almost there!

New footage: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38UQ958ogRM

July 19
Beta build is up!

[Melly]

No bugs that I could find. Game's actually pretty fun, but holy shit is it hard. I beg you to add a checkpoint or two per level.

[David Pittman]

That's fair. Mid-level checkpoints will be in the final version! It currently checkpoints outside boss rooms, but only the third boss is challenging enough to really need it.

Edit: I added mid-level checkpoints tonight and decided to call it done. Woo!

[deathtotheweird]

This game is fantastic. Really loved the sound effects and retro style gameplay. Extra points for the badass promo poster.

[prof]

Very nice game. Liked it

.. but i can still play ur guitarr even thought its not in yout hands.. thats was pretty wierd.

[David Pittman]

Thanks, guys! Glad you enjoyed it.

.. but i can still play ur guitarr even thought its not in yout hands.. thats was pretty wierd.

Air guitar!

[cicada]

Very fun and clever. I'm particularly fond of the tasteful shredding sfx. Great game!

[J. R. Hill]

Satisfying difficulty.

[miconazole]

Maybe it's just me, but I found jumping incredibly frustrating. The lack of horizontal movement makes it feel like that bit from the Simpsons where Lisa angrily tosses a crumpled up wad of paper and it lands about a foot away. The rest of the game makes me smile, though.

[MaloEspada]

Just beat it, it was awesome.
The stage 3 song sounded awfully familiar, but I can't remember which song that was!

It was quite difficult but not impossible.

Also I expected more from the ending, meh.

[belbeeno]

I like how this game looks; the music, the sound, the graphics and even the font make me feel like I'm really playing an old NES/Famicom title.

Maybe it's just me, but I found jumping incredibly frustrating.

I'm going to have to agree with miconazole; although the controls feel tight I think some parts of the levels just aren't designed for the jumping model in this game.  For example, single tile height paths like:

Code:

####

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are difficult to jump into from below.  Also, I'm not sure if THIS is just me, but the jump back from losing a guitar almost always puts me directly in line with some other danger without chance for recovery.

[miconazole]

Now that I've had more time to play the other entries I can say this was far more awesome than I seem to remember! The jumping issue has also magically resolved itself, somehow. I had 9 lives when I got to the 3rd boss but he demolished me How far did I have left to go?