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[Pemanent]

Hello everybody, this will be my second project on my plate at the moment. It is called Missing. (at least for now, the name might change as time goes on)

Background Info -
My art teacher said we can get some extra credit by coming up with our own project, a game instantly came to mind. She liked my ideas and said to go ahead. Here is my devlog for said game.

You are a cube who is missing a piece of himself. So you must find your missing piece.


The game must be 2d, grey-scale, and playable within 10 minutes.

Direction / Plans -
Everything in the game is going to be organic except for the player and the missing piece he is searching for. This is to create contrast between the player, his goal and the environment, which in turn makes the player and his goal the focal point.

The missing piece is going to be a spinning 3d cube, I realize this breaks the whole 2d rule, but heck rules are made to be broken and I believe I have a solid argument.

Since I will be having a classmate play the game in class I want to make it as accessible as possible.

I plan on it being fairly straight forward, move toward the right until you find your missing piece. In the beginning I will have some text which says, "This is you." "You are missing a piece of you." "Go find your missing piece." that way the goal is obvious; hence the accessibility aspect.

I want there to be one maybe two puzzles to make the game interesting, maybe a push the block in the hole or jump on the moving platform type deal.

The map will be simple, some hilly lands, an underground section who's exit immediately leads to a hill and at the top of the hill is your missing piece.  Simple.

As for scenery there will be some parallaxed trees, clouds, grass, and cave plants.

Aaannnd thats about it! Here are some design documents which you probably can't read but they prove my validity!




I have started working on the character movement and am happy with what I have right now. I put together a quick demo with some physics objects for you to play around with if you so please.

Play Here
>>>http://dl.dropbox.com/u/12949169/Missing%20WebPlayer/WebPlayer.html<<<

Now! On to devising some simple physics puzzles.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

did you really have to name the game the same as another indie game called "missing"?

from my site: http://studioeres.com/games/missing

that said the game looks promising, good luck

[SirNiko]

I like this game concept. Your goals are simple and small, a good start for a first game. The organic design promises to be a step above the typical world-made-of-bricks design of simple platformers.

Good luck with this, and your class!

[Pemanent]

@Paul,
haha yeah sorry about that. Although I hardly doubt I'll get enough publicity for it to actually matter.

I made some trees and got some basic parralax scrolling. I also have a rate variable so I can easily change how slowly the trees move compared to the player to create that layered effect.

[Pemanent]

Some rain and parallax grass.
Really happy with my grass, totally the feeling I had in my head, but the rain still has a ways to go.

Maybe I'll work on clouds next.

[Pemanent]

I updated the build so you can play around with the new stuff.

I added more grass and some physics rocks just to fill the level up more. I need to start actually working on level design instead of just assets. I also created a fourth tree to hide the copypasta. Aswell I added two sounds, one background rain sound and another sound when the player hits the ground.

There you have it.
Next I'll work on the actual level!

[leonelc29]

look nice

ohh, and the missing piece, why should it really be in 3D?

well, if you really wan it to be in 3d spinning stuff, why don't just render it into 3d then rotoscope it? it eliminate the "3d" and you can said it's a rotoscope

[Tumetsu]

It looks nice thought I think I would like the style have even more curving vines/trees. And lots of different kinds. Right now it is clear there are only few different ones. But I understand this is till in works

[Pemanent]

Thanks for the feedback! I added another tree and am planning on adding a sixth.

For some reason I was being dense and didn't realize that I could actually have a hole in the player mesh. Up until now I have had a white cube in front of the player but in the shower today I realized how stupid that was. Thanks leon for bringing this to my attention. Do you like that better this way? I do.

I added quite a lot in this update.
- Spikes which kill the player.
- Player death particle system.
- Level restarts 1.5 seconds after death.

- Got a good start on the cave.
- Created a light which fades in when you enter the cave.

I am really excited now because I feel that I am actually creating an experience and said experience is getting closer to what I have planned.

The more I work on this the more I feel the limbo influences. Even though I have never played Limbo I have watched trailers and reviews. I want the spikes to feel really dangerous and scary. I think that by letting the player only nearly able to make the spike jumps increases the intensity. Also the insta-kill makes the spikes very menacing.

Build has been uploaded so you can play the changes if you so choose.

[Pemanent]

I am working diligently on another update but for now, some plant-fungi for the cave.
Also a name change which will be explained soon.

[Pemanent]

Alright so I updated the build. Included in this build is the complete cave level complete with some cave fungi and the cave exit. Outside of the cave exit to the right is the missing piece you're supposed to find.

Now to talk about the name change.
I was thinking about the game Beacon by Randomine. (this game http://wootfu.com/beacon/) I'm sure most of you have never played it but whatever. I really loved the ending and it really made quite an impactful and inspiring game for me. I was thinking how I can apply the same deep ending to this game and I just couldn't figure it out. Then I kinda realized something. Maybe this piece you are looking for is symbolic for the missing part of the game that I wanted to add. Basically the main character is symbolic for me searching for the missing piece to the game which would make it deep and impactful. To me the missing piece always seemed out of reach and unobtainable (unobtanium?) so in the end when the main character tries to get his mssing piece it will float away from him and he must chase it further down the level. The piece will then stop over a pit of spikes where the player can never reach it. This is symbolic for how you can never seem to find that missing piece to your game or art.

I am quite tired right so hopefully all that made sense  if not then oh well.

Also sorry for the huge text block, I know that a bad practice for devlogs.

Also my deadline is this Thursday soooo TIME TO JAM! 

[leonelc29]

YAY! I'VE WON!

nice thing, it's really really short.

the complaint :

-the jump is little bit awkward, thus make it really hard to jump over a long patch of spike.

the bug :

-did i just did a rocket jump with some stone under me? i can also do it at the sharp edge of the ground. don't know how i execute it, sometime it happen, but sometime nope.

-I DID AN AIR JUMP! when i goes off the ground(without jumping) on the decline of the little hill, i can do another jump! 
maybe the code doesn't register the player is in the air, instead, it allow the player to do the jump?

-AND I ALSO DID A WALL JUMP! 
when i hit the wall while jump over the spike(at the last spike jump), i can do a wall jump! it save me, though

-OHH, A DOUBLE DEATH! OR TRIPLE(if you did it right)! better than
get this when i hitting the spike when jumping(or, the character is going up). how i notice? when the character dead, the cube explode and alot of particle splash out(one time). i notice that when i do the above-mention trick, i get two to three particle splash.

what i like  :

-the time i enter the cave, the lighting slowly come to me. that's awesome.

-the graphic. i love silhouette and those art style.

-the environment 

what i don't really like  :

-the rain. it bring my fps down. well, my pc spec are low in the 1st place
maybe stop the rain when the player enter the cave? and start the rain when player re-enter the 1st area?

-the jump. the jump is really hard to control.(see above)

-the large patch of spike. not really hate it, though. maybe either improve the jump, or shorten the spike length(horizontally).


P.S.: it's almost done! keep the polishing up!(maybe add some more hazard to avoid )

p.p.s.: i wonder if i will get the warning from mod for overusing emoticon

[Pemanent]

Well this is probably the worst devlog in this history of devlogs but I would still like to put some closure to this project.

I did give a presentation in class while a classmate played this game. He did great and was the perfect person to play. I would have liked to let anybody in the class play but I just can't trust their game-savy-ness. I didn't want to spend the whole time teaching them how to use wsad. :/ Anyways!

The presentation went good and so did the game. Casey (the player) only super jumped once!
(There were some bugs I never had time to work out such as the super jump and the instant respawn)
There were no real intense problems such as the camera not actually looking at the player or a texture not loading or something unforeseen! Which is great. I was able to say everything I wanted to say and didn't fumble my words to much.


Whats next?!

Well I like this game concept, although kinda to much influenced by limbo, but I think Ill just let it be. I have fulfilled my goal and am happy with what I presented.
My biggest success with this is what I produced is quite close to what I had envisioned in the beginning, and that, is quite a big success for me.

Also, thanks Leonelc!! Your feedback was great and I tried to fix as much as I could but just pretty much ran out of time. So thanks for the help and feedback! In reality you were really the only play tester I had! haha well besides myself.

So the link on the op is what I presented to the class if you are curious as to the state of the game. If I decide to do anything else, I'll probably say it here.