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[Dr. Cooldude]

The animation is crazy! (In a good way)

[rundown]

looks like you can do everything in this game o.O

[Terrorbuns]

Man that's one really rad gif, even if that's supposed to be a rare occurance.

I'm pumped for this game, it looks like it's really coming together extremely well!

Are spears a limited resource? Do they wear out? The option to nail creatures to a wall is cool because it opens up to some interesting choices [even if it isn't supposed to really happen often during normal play], especially if it really ruins a spear or something.

Regardless, it's still really cool! O:

[clemzio]

There really is a great work on the animation part (so smooth and so natural if we can say so).

By seeing that latest gif with the lizard stuck on the wall, I was wondering how you handled animation. Do you have any kind of procedurally generated textures / shapes? Or is it all hand-drawn pixel art frames?

Can't wait to get my hands on this game 

[Sustrato]

"But I like to have neat little details like this, even if they occur rarely. It gives the game another dimension of depth."

That is definitely true and this looks pretty sweet. Can you only pin them to walls, not floors/ceilings?

[JLJac]

Thank you all for flattering me with questions!

looks like you can do everything in this game o.O

Well, that's actually one of my goals, in a way... Don't get me wrong, the game is not at all a "Spore" kind of thing where the goal is that you should be able to do everything. Rather the game has an extremely narrow scope - there are only three types of creatures and a rock and a spear for weaponry - but I've tried to make the interactions between those few objects as fleshed out as possible. So you can't do everything, because there are very few things, but you can do quite a lot with those few things.

Are spears a limited resource? Do they wear out?

Yes, and no. They are a limited resource - in custom mode there's usually only one per level that the players have to fight over, and in world mode they are even more precious as you will have to take a detour in order to get one. They don't wear out, but are still spent in a way. When you hit a lizard the spear is lodged in the lizard, and in order to retrieve it you'll have to get close to the lizard, which is extremely dangerous. If you hit a wall there's a risk it might get stuck. So basically, when you throw a spear there's no guarantee that you'll get it back.

Do you have any kind of procedurally generated textures / shapes? Or is it all hand-drawn pixel art frames?

Very little is done with traditional animation, almost everything is done by the computer. Track a few pages back here, and you'll see a little more about how I've animated stuff.

Can you only pin them to walls, not floors/ceilings?

You only throw left or right, not up and down.

[MasterLee]

Wow. Just stumbled upon this. That last gif is... as you said, brutal. But man, it's beautiful.

[artemi]

So I noticed something in this and the last gif that I thought was just a graphics artifact but now I'm wondering.

Is there water dripping from the ceiling? It's just after the first and second spears, it looks like a streak of black drop from below. Because that a neat look if it's intentional, as everything is wet and dripping before the rains. I could see things like small pools of water you and the lizards splash through, scattering droplets everywhere and it running off of ledges and such.

[JLJac]

Yup, there's a little water dripping from the ceiling. It's difficult to include more effects though, becuase of the strange 2D/3D level image. I can't really draw something like a puddle on the level - as I'm restricted to draw everything between the foreground and the background it's impossible to draw anything that's aligned with a horizontal surface.

Update 161
A lot of work, but little to tell. Little visual details and so on beaing tweaked... Created a function for checking whether a custom game should end, so that in hopeless situations where you're captured by a lizard it just ends it rather than having you wait until you're carried to the lizard's den. If you're captured by a lizard but have a friend there to save you the game plays on until it's sure that all hope is gone.

[JLJac]

Update 162
Added a few missing interactions between objects. It's fun to see how for every possible interaction the narratives get richer when we play. Quite often something unexpected happens, and we scream little stories at each other about what happened. I think that the decently smart pathfinding/AI that was such a time sink was also a good investment in a way, because it allows you to read a lot of personality into the enemies.

The game has become insanely difficult. Since custom mode is so easily available I've been using it for most of the testing, and balanced a lot of stuff for it. But there are big differences - in custom mode there are a lot of spears available, and when you die you can instantly restart. Single player has few spears, and when you die you have to start over from several levels back. I find myself unable to finish some of the missions in single player, and I'm the second best player in the world (after my 15 y/o cousin, who always beats me). I think the solution might be to add more spears to single player, which will make the game less of a sneaker and more of an action kind of thing. That will be a little change in direction, but I think the game will still be fun.

The only thing I'll need to think about is to not make the spears too abundant, I still want you to hold on to them a bit, and try to retrieve them from lizards etc. Hopefully there'll be a good balance to find.

[JLJac]

Update 163
I made the red lizard spit. If you try to camp out somewhere high on the level it will hit you with a few sniper shots of black slime, and you'll fall down into its jaws. Just because shit wasn't insanely difficult enough.

[jamesprimate]

Update 163
I made the red lizard spit. If you try to camp out somewhere high on the level it will hit you with a few sniper shots of black slime, and you'll fall down into its jaws. Just because shit wasn't insanely difficult enough.

OH GOD. i was just getting destroyed by those sticky tongue bastards too.

the recent build is gorgeous btw. those sunset levels are stunning and the active rain effect looks sooooo good

[ConnorUllmann]

the recent build is gorgeous btw. those sunset levels are stunning and the active rain effect looks sooooo good

Could anyone provide a link to a build I could try? I'm not sure if it's public or anything, but I can't seem to find one from looking around in the topic 

[jamesprimate]

Could anyone provide a link to a build I could try? I'm not sure if it's public or anything, but I can't seem to find one from looking around in the topic 

oh, there isnt one. Im just working on the audio so get to play with it while its in development

[ConnorUllmann]

Could anyone provide a link to a build I could try? I'm not sure if it's public or anything, but I can't seem to find one from looking around in the topic 

oh, there isnt one. Im just working on the audio so get to play with it while its in development

I figured that was the case  Well I'm happy he's going to get some great music for this awesome-looking game!

[JLJac]

James, maybe you could take a look in your archives to see if you have anything suiting for a tounge shooting out? Or for a lump of mucus hitting a wall? For the latter I've been using your "egg splat" samples, they work wonderfully but have a bit too much echo perhaps.

Also, what do you think we should do about single player? Add more spears and make it more of an action game? 

[Arnold]

nice, you cannot go wrong with james, i approve him as awesome

[artemi]

Personally, as a guy who's watching from the outside and has NO vote, the idea of 'every lizard gets a spear' is... a little worrysome. Stealthy action with brief bouts sudden violence is what I would prefer. If there are enough spears to just stab everything, that seems to take away from the idea.

Maybe the way to fix it is to change how things respawn? The first might be to keep the spear numbers the same, but put a slow respawn on them so in a stage you might start with one spear, but then have to run around for a minute hiding or retrieving your first spear before the next one appears. You'd get MORE, yes, but perhaps not enough that you could ignore sneaking entirely. If you brought a second spear from another area, that's fine, but it certainly wouldn't respawn (except maybe back in it's home location?), so you had better use it wisely before you loose it.

The second idea might be to change the PC respawn location mechanic. Perhaps instead of (presumably) restarting in the lair and needing to run back to your current stage/hunt, you could just restart the room? Or you respawn one room back, with each hunt also having a respawn room just before ala Megaman's boss hallways? This allows for gameplay similar to N+ or Super Meat Boy, where the player is presented with a puzzle room of sorts, and they try out multiple attempts until they get it... just... right. This allows the game to keep it's higher difficulty level, and just gives the players a shortcut on time so they can focus on the hunt rooms, and not deal with the annoyance of running through safer areas every time they die. If they decide they want to really just be done and try again at a different hunt, they could simply turn around, passing through the respawn room. It would then would deactivate until they find another hunt with it's own respawn room, or go back to the lair, which presumably is the 'master' respawn area.

[JLJac]

Yeah, I share your concerns. It seems like the game could be very mechanical and monotonous if you just speared the lizards one by one and then caught flies in peace and quiet. There's no need however to worry about the respawn rate of spears, because they don't respawn at all. Once you've used it you have to retrieve it or go get another one.

The respawn stuff is interesting, and it made me think. I don't really want a megaman style respawn room, because I want to restrict respawning and saving the game world to the hibernation sequence. If I had a respawn like that I couldn't really save the game world, because if you went out again and "deactivated" the room as you describe, there would be trouble. Would objects you've moved inside the room still be moved? Would the room be tagged as visited? Also, as I have a timer ticking when the player moves about, it couldn't really save the game every now or then or the player could get stuck with an impossible save. I could have two different save systems, so you could revert back to the start of the mission, but I prefer to keep it simple and I don't want interacting with menues to be a part of the play experience.

However, I can see two possible adaptions of the idea to fit my game. One could be that there could be shortcuts, perhaps one-way routes, to many parts of the map. That way you could very quickly get to most places, but you'd still have to worry a little bit about going back. The other one is that there could be many different shelters, perhaps one per general area. That could also be interesting because it would save the extra flies you've caught separately. So, for example, you might have 4 spare flies in one shelter and only 1 in another. Whether you survive or not depends on which shelter you go to.

[jamesprimate]

i reallly really really like the idea of shelters. i think that would add a continuity element. at least for me as i always get absolutely brutalized by the rain

Well I'm happy he's going to get some great music for this awesome-looking game!

nice, you cannot go wrong with james, i approve him as awesome

DAWWWWWWWWWW thanks guys