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[Bones]

Nearly 10 posts in a row... Always fun to develop a game by myself with no feedback on anything I'm working on.



Update
Bees have gotten more added to them.
They now have a priority based system.

0 - Wander
1 - Flower
2 - Agrro
3 - Home/Hive

Which allows for them to wander about randomly before they decide to find a flower.
However if they are too far from any flowers their priority changes to flower and they go find the closest one.

The Hive now spends honey on creating new bees, so it has a bit of an RTS to it's self.
The Bees return with 2 honey allowing for exponential growth even if they are beeing killed off.

[Savick]

May I ask why you're directly copying super mario brothers related gameplay mechanics and not thinking of original ones? Or ones that are adaptations of those mechanics? It's one thing to pay homage to a game you like, but making the same game down to exact details like this isn't going to get your anywhere.

[Bones]

!Great question ALERT!
Hopefully my answer is more of an explanation than me attempting to sidestep the fact that I am making a philosophical Mario

The reason why mario has influence on this game is because my Grandmother gave me Mario Bros as a child. It was my first interaction with video games and is therefor very important to me as a game developer as it's the entire reason I do what I do with pixels and video games.

I don't feel like I am directly copying - I'm adjusting. By taking all of my favorite games, combining all the things I liked about them and fixing the things I didn't like about those things. And do new things that the Mario team never touched on.

Such as:
Koopa's never got to come back out of their shell and the shell never had friction.
By adding friction to the shells, their mechanic has already changed drastically they no longer become this scary constantly moving object. Then they can stop and get out of their shells and stop being a threat.
Other enemies who can jump such as the Monopod or the Frog can both jump off a turtle shell.

It's basic mechanic has been copied but it's new interactions make it feel different.

None of the enemies act exactly like any of the enemies in Mario.
They are similar in concept, and their execution feels familiar but the game does feel like it's own entity, it doesn't feel like it's a Mario Clone.
I want people to feel like they have played the game before by having these familiar mechanics, combined with the systems of interactions I have in place. I want a lot of the interactions to happen between the creatures without Atom interfering.

As far as I know, that doesn't happen very often in any games let alone Mario.
Enemies don't usually passively have any effect on each other.

The only enemy that interacted with other enemies was the Koopa shell after it was hit by Mario.
In my game, there are many more creature interactions than simply hitting them with a shell.

Hope that answers your question.

[Linkshot]

(Koopas have been emerging from their shells since Super Mario World, as well as being able to jump back into them)

[Bones]

This is true, however if a turtle was forced out of it's shell - that would kill them.
So turtles in my game are timid, and they hide in their shells whenever in danger. They don't come out unless it is safe.
They can not be killed by any normal means, they are indestructible unless hit by a DrillPig drill from the side, or a Thwomp brick from above or it falls down a hole and goes out of screen.

I made it so when a turtle is hit by a shell, they go into their shell and stay put.
Causing the other shell to bounce back off. Meaning other turtles shells can't kill them.



This is also the first game I've ever made - so I feel like I am allowed to make a mario clone that is better than just a mario clone.

[QOG]

There may be a lot of mechanics from SMB, but they're being taken a bit further. Plus there's bees and suchforth that are more unique. I think the art and ideas make it quite unique even if it does play with some familiar mechanics. Looking forward to playing it someday. 

[Bones]

Update
Straight from the horses mouth.

New horse concept

• You can mount it
• It can eat you
• Possibly kick?

One mouth or Two mouths?


Eat your heart out mario.

[Bones]

So this weekend I was working with a friend on trying to flesh out the demo levels and start introducing all the new features I have added.

The first 4 levels have always remained the same.
Fall of Man -> East Eden -> Yggdrasil -> Malkuth Temple
From Malkuth Temple you are given four options for each elemental realm.

AIR, WATER, FIRE, EARTH
Each of these realms will have basically 10 levels.
The demo will contain 5 of those levels.

AIR realm demo is now conceptually completed.
Here is a list of the introduced mechanics and enemies

1. Newton's Tree

• Apples
• Clouds
• Cupids (static and moving)
• Grab-able object
• Rooster

2. Skyland

• Sylphs
• Lightning Clouds
• Spear Cupids
• Mushrooms
• Rainbows

3. Three of Swords

• Health Powerup
• Three sword minibosses

4. Rooster Tale

• Rooster Eggs
• Thwomp Bricks
• Seeking Cupids

5. Towers of Light and Dark

• Switch palace in Tower of Light
• Switch creates platforms in the Tower of Dark
• Must bring an item from Tower of Dark to Tower of Light

[Bones]

Update

[Bones]

Today's Update

• Mounts can now go through levels with Atom
• Door interaction button has changed from 'S' to 'Q' to allow Atom to bring mounts with him
• Added teleporting doors that bring Atom to an invisible "PointB" a secondary teleporter separate from portals

I also tried adding a sliding action.

Sliding seems like it could be fun to play with.
But the player gets stuck in the terrain if they come out of the slide from under it.
There is also the potential they could slide into a walled area and get stuck in a corner.

     |___________
 (player)->>        |

So there could be a problem with implementing such a mechanic.
However it feels much more Run and Gun which is what I am going for.

[QOG]

Most platformers with sliding treat sliding as a crouched state and then allow the player to walk (slowly) in that crouched state, thus preventing the player from getting stuck. Not sure if that's what you're going for. I guess the bigger question is how you want sliding to be used.

[Bones]

Sliding would only occur when moving.
Pressing down while not moving causes the player to sit down and meditate, there is no crouch.

Was going for a run and gun/endless runner feel with the slide.
Could be used for scrolling levels ect.

If I can't get it working well I'll probably just scrap it.


Decided to scrap it.
It was a nice idea but it just doesn't work in the way the game works.

[absenter]

Wow, I just noticed this game now? This looks awesome.

[Bones]

Hey thanks Dinosword guy.

So I've come to a strange fork in the road called Music Design and deciding how I am going to do the music for the game. I have some existing music but it feels too disjointed from the project at this point. The songs aren't evoking the theme or mood of the level like they should be.

My original "plan" was to try and get 60-80 songs for 110 levels from a ton of different musicians.
That would mean you would only hear a song once and only once for the whole game.
Attempting to organize that many tracks for each level with multiple musicians seems rather hard/slightly impossible to get it to work.

The other option is to work with a solo musician or 2-3 musicians in creating a solid cohesive OST.
But that probably means I would have to pay for the musicians...

So here is my study on how other games did their OST.
Let's start off with the classics.

Mario Bros. 3

• 30 tracks
• Level victory, You're dead, Game Over, Bowser Battle, End song
• 2 Overworld theme songs aka Outside (Slow tempo & Fast tempo)
• 1 Underwater theme song
• 1 Underworld theme song aka Underground
• Different music for every world map and unique levels

Zelda II

• 24 tracks
• Treasure found, Temple clear, Level up, Boss, Game Over, Ending
• 1 Overworld song
• 3 unique flute songs
• 11 unique level tracks for each level theme (Battle 1+2, Village, Indoors 1+2, Temple 1+2, Great Temple

Super Metroid

• 34 tracks
• Item Room Ambience, Item Acquisition, Failure
• Roughly 2-3 songs per each world (Crateria, Wrecked Ship, Maridia)
• Unique event tracks
• Cinematic transition tracks

So this seems like a pretty basic set up for a sound track and seriously less complicated.
3-4 game theme tracks that can repeat throughout the game (slow tempo, mid, faster tempo, double time), a world themed track that could cover multiple sets of levels and game status based tracks with some unique tracks to separate them all.
Seems like this allows the music to have more quality rather than have a huge quantity of different sounding music. Which could allow for more catchy tunes and less background noise.

[Bones]

It's been a while...

I'm back and alive, for now.

Currently getting back into the groove of things.
I added a few small player based effects such as cloud puffs and little stars when he bonks his head or jumps on things.

At the moment my main focus is trying to make the player inventory more intuitive and user-friendly.


Having this big red arrow seemed like a good idea, but through a few play tests. It was easy to see that it went unnoticed.
I've decided to remove the ability to organize your inventory with left-click.
Instead left-click will now do what right-click did.
Except there will now be an option to "Organize" or "Arrange" from the item option menu.

[Bones]

There may be a solution to the inventory problem.
Perhaps as long as the information is displayed upon mouse hover the player will see it?


I originally had the inventory button information displayed where the item info is displayed.
But it would dissappear when the player put their mouse over the inventory.
So essentially they were unable to see the information I was providing to them.
Hopefully this new visual cue will be enough to teach them the inventory system.

In other news...
I have a good portion of levels prototyped, it comes down to putting everything in place.
Have to stop making new things and get everything that exists to be represented in the right levels.

[Bones]

Tried adding some extra information when the inventory is closed.
I don't particularly like it... I want to avoid using direct text whenever possible.

The tutorial text on the right stops displaying after you have opened and closed the inventory about 5 times.

[Linkshot]

You could make opening the inventory a puzzle of itself. "To retrieve your belongings, look into yourself. Who are you? You are the key."

[Bones]

I added some more behaviors to the Rooster/Cockatrice.
They end up getting stuck in holes.

So I decided to give them some attributes from our old friend the monopod.
Now it will attempt to jump on it's own rather than not at all.

It still needs some tweaks but it's fun to play with.

Also because it is practically a giant chicken, I have decided to make it automatically run from you.
The player will be able to lure the Rooster with Apples.


I forgot how much fun it is to make animated gifs of my game as I'm working on it.

[Bones]

 
November 20th

Worked on some standard things.
Buttons are in.
Cannons shoot fists, deadly fists.



Now if only there was a way to combine the buttons with the cannons...


Bullets + Buttons = Good fun