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[Hangedman]

Day 28/29:

Doing some minor fixes and work here and there, and charting out art assets.
Mostly a bit of downtime, as today was my graduation, and yesterday was mostly spent preparing and running around the city

[Daid]

Took me a while to notice that you need to use 'x' to open the text boxes. Other then that, really cool =)

[Cosr]

I'm liking the roll when you fall far enough...I managed to do this neat looking tumble down the two-block stairs on the far right.

I'm probably just being juvenile, but this is a rather unfortunate line-break:


Really, though, you might want to think about adding dashes when a word wraps around to the next line; I think doing so can help readability in general.

[Hangedman]

HAHA woo

I tried to code a word wrap function but it freaked the hell out and drove me up the wall, so I just stuck in the test strings. Unless I summon the courage to fix the function, I'll be properly parsing the strings by hand so no more butts are distant

[mokesmoe]

Erfly even ends in an 'ly' which makes it sound like a real adverb. "I erfly walked to the store."

[Hangedman]

Day 30:

Going to let this fairly final engine build speak for itself.
Tomorrow begins the arting in earnest now that the mappings and the objectings and the happenings are all but sorted.

Check it out.

As usual, bugs and suggestions and comments are floppidy bloopidy blah

[HDSanctum]

I personally would prefer no auto-text box change. Also, when you die and read a text box, the message remains (try it on the one far right where you can death drop).

[mokesmoe]

If you roll off a platform and hit the ground from high enough to cause another roll, you just glide along the ground. Also, if you fall and clip the edge of a platform, it resets your speed but not your fall distance. Dieing from this looks and feels odd.

[Hangedman]

Must not be repeating the rolling animation. Easily fixable.
Clip as in hang or clip as in land on momentarily?

[mokesmoe]

Land on momentarily. You hit the ground for about a frame, it resets your speed, but doesn't do any of the other things that happen when you land, like rolling or dying.

[Hangedman]

Could you tell me where exactly you can do it?
Trying to replicate it is proving difficult.
I can guess why it's happening but I'd like to be sure before I go tinkering.

As for the rolling, I think while it may take out some neat glitches, it can easily be fixed by negating rolling when hanging/a roll ends.

[mokesmoe]

Stand here and hold right:


Odd that it's never happened to you, because it happens all the time for me. Not just in this build either.

[Hangedman]

Ah, now I see what you mean.

...Honestly, I can't decide if I should try to fix that or not. If you land proper you'll roll just fine, even right on the edge. I think what it is is the collision hasn't met up with the object yet, so to speak, so you don't actually hit the surface proper.
I'm not sure whether to try to fix that, as just barely clipping the edge and dying anyway makes a bit more sense? And if you turn at the right moment you can still catch the edge and save yourself.
I'm going to experiment a bit more.

EDIT: Well, noticed a big bug right there: fall distance when jumping is less than fall distance when just falling. It should be equal (or at least worse when jumping, to simulate velocity, but I won't worry about that)

[Hangedman]

Day 31:

Woo! Fix one big bug and accidentally fix three more related to it.

I think this is the final final engine test.

Changes:

• Collision detection when falling SERIOUSLY improved (fixed edge clipping problem)
• Fall distance is always properly calculated (rolling/death counts may need tweaking, but it'll do for now)
• Rolling animation continues properly if you roll off multiple edges
• Jumping/hanging mildly rebalanced (fixed occasional missing of hanging edges)
• Friction mildly decreased to prevent sliding, ease catching edges behind you as you walk off

[mokesmoe]

Looks good, although you accidentally fixed the roll-hang glitch. I finally got around to finding all 7 textboxes too.

[Hangedman]

Roll-hang-roll glitch was collateral damage, so to speak. A necessary casualty.

Day 32:

Today I start the level building in earnest.
From the levels which I blocked out in the image I posted earlier (below), I'll construct more detailed levels and think about where I'm going to place objects and text nodes.



I'm doing it in a labour-intensive but effective way: blocking out the levels in a grid, and then building the art based on where I put those blocks. All the actual solid objects will be background, with an invisible grid of solidity in front. While this will take more work to essentially draw everything by hand, it means far less repetition in non-BG elements, less mucking about with tilesets, and less level building time in-game. It'll be a long process but I'll be posting screenshots as I go, as level builds will just give too much away (besides being impractical).

As well, I've been thinking about how I'm going to convey the flavour of the world. I don't know how much I want to give away... so I won't, especially since I want the game to speak for itself. I will, however, say that due to the graphical limitations music will play a big part and it appears that I will be working on this with the excellent KomradeJack, who also is working on the music for Oddball's Hack, Slash, Loot.

I'll leave you for now with a song that, if listened to in the right mindset, will make you feel what my main character will feel.

[Hangedman]

Days 33,34,35,36,37,38,39:

Daily updates fell by the wayside because I'm in the thick of level building.

Adding final programming for level transitions, flags so levels can have multiple exits, planning possible puzzles, dividing and scripting dialog, and building levels brick by brick by brick by brick by brick by brick. Not even gotten to the art yet, but I've got some planning to do before I get there, and I need all the levels in line first.

Also, a nice evening or two off to get stuff done.

Here's another song that suits the atmosphere of my game, that I'm using as reference:

[McMutton]

I thought you said you were on day 33 billion for a second.

[Hangedman]

Fastforward to day 52:

Sorry for radio silence, I've been swamped with work and preparing for my new course and core level work.

I'm looking at possibly IGFing Vision, and since I'm more than able to make the deadline I'm thinking I'm going to extend the game somewhat.
I realized that my original plan would only take about 3 min to complete if you rushed through and maybe 15 at the most with exploration and etc, so I'm just going to double the size of all the areas, still keeping to my idea of three separate sections.

This'll make it a bit more silence before I can start posting art screenshots and etc, but it's for the best for the game as I think that extending it will actually make it feel less insubstantial. I'll also be able to work more detail into the story.

In the meantime, I'm going to keep at the levels, and I may try to bring in KomradeJack to talk a bit about what he's doing for the music, as he's doing a fantastic job so far.

Cheers! 

[JackMenhorn]

Audio Update: Apologies for the scrollbreaking images


So I am super excited to be working on Vision.  I have wanted to work on a full-on retro game for a while now.  I am glad to have that opportunity.

Well let me back up a tad.  For those of you who dont know me my name is Jack and I am a freelance composer and sound designer.  Some people may recognize my name from TIGForum's Hack Slash Loot or a few ModDB/IndieDB projects.

Tackling music for Vision is not quite as easy as it sounds.  It was agreed that much like the visuals the sound would reasonably match what the Game Boy hardware was capable of.  Now it would be possible to use carts like LDSJ or mod tracker software.  This approach would be a impractical and a bit time consuming given the size of the project and my other commitments.

Instead I recorded different sounds and notes output from my nanoloop 1.5 so that I could create a virtual instrument that could be used in Logic Pro or another DAW.

I work in the GBC but output with the DMG-01

Once I had recorded the sounds I set them up as instruments in Kontakt 4, which is a very common sampler.  I could have elegantly set all the sounds up in one "instrument" with velocities, regions, and keywitches but that would have been a P.I.T.A and unnecessary for what I need to do.

So instead you just mute the ones you're not using!

So once all that was set up I made some music with the Kontakt instruments + Logic Pro +some other authentic sounding synths.  Both of the tracks below follow an A-B pattern which is a common video game structure (especially for brief tracks).  I have kept the length of the track's loop to around a minute, also in keeping with the hardware restrictions, as well as our own possible needs.

In addition to using "period" sounds I used a fantastic plugin in Logic Pro called Match EQ.  I recorded the main theme to Link's Awakening DX on my DMG-01 and imported that into Match EQ.  Thus, these tracks only have the same frequencies available to it that the original Game Boy had.

So let's take a listen.  These tracks are still works in progress, but I hope you enjoy them!

http://soundcloud.com/jackmenhorn/vision-music-01-4post

http://soundcloud.com/jackmenhorn/vision-music-02-4post


Vision will have quite a few more tracks than this as well as sounds to accompany you on your adventure.  Please keep an eye on this devlog for any new updates from Hangedman as well as the ability to play the latest test build.

You can follow me on twitter @komradejack

Thanks for reading!  This whole project has been a blast so far, can't wait to show you more!