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[Franklin's Ghost]

Liking the video gameplay. Game is looking really good. One thing I didnt realise at first is when you went on the jump pad I didnt realised at first why you went up so high. Would be clearer if there was some sort of visual feedback when using it.

Looking great though. Nice job

[vivavolt]

Yeah it needs animation / an effect / I was thinking of adding an arrow to it? But I wasn't sure how to do it tastefully? Maybe little arrows that fade in and out above it... I figure worst comes to worst though, once you've used the pad once by accident you'll understand.

[vivavolt]

Features Added Today:
- New Zombie AI, simple wander behaviour normally and when shot they run towards the player
- The big smashy dudes wander and attempt to crush you
- Health can actually be lost
- The heart on the HUD beats faster / slower depending on your health
- Implemented the interface for gun switching, gun crates will spawn after every round in various parts of the map and you can swap out your weapons (sometimes crates will be ammo topups instead, since you don't always want to throw out your gun)
- New giant zombie and crawling zombie enemies (same AI as the original zombies right now)
- Redraw worms to have a less cute face and a gaping mouth full of teeth instead


You can see the big zombie here, and the crawling one is in the pit in the corner - I'll make him bigger later I think.

I Had some fun with these animations, but I'm not very good at pixel art especially with respect to animation so it's going to be a bit of a challenge being the artist for the project.

The text alignment is off here, I need to keep working on making it look nice - looks more like a debug console than a real game interface.

EDIT: Got a bit more done...


Skeleton dragon is implemented, and there's a YOU'RE GONNA DIE border that shows up now. Also when you avoid damage for a while you can recover health now.

[vivavolt]

Features Added Today:
- Completed redone skeleton dragon AI, works much better
- He breathes fire
- You can get hurt by everything (though, no death)
- Drew a little "landing" animation for the character
- Started mucking around with icons instead of labels for gun box popup, not done with it and not really happy still... I have no idea what the best presentation is here.

Video is coming once it uploads to YouTube... Could be a while there.

[Cellusious Games]

Can we haz playable demo/build/alpha/beta/ceta/whatever? 

[vivavolt]

You definitely will when I've got waves implemented properly (as opposed to instant spawning of every enemy type) and weapon generation done. I.e. when it moves from testing ground to a bit more of an actual game. I really want to get everything feeling spot on from an early point, so feedback from you guys will be vital.  

New video is up, crappy Australian internet took 2 hours to get this on YouTube!

(maybe turn your volume down pre-emptively, sound effects are loud and temporary)

[tchassin]

The graphics looks really cool so far, keep up the good work !

[Alex Strook]

stunning !

it looks sooo good :D

I'm not a big fan of the skull's trail (those big orange & red boxes), it stands out a bit too much for my taste ^^

[vivavolt]

It's actually him breathing fire at you, having trouble with the matching the style for the effect (as you said, it sticks out a bit stylistically). I might have another go later... Not sure how to do it best still.

We're also thinking about a proper name for the project at the moment, so the thread / project may be renamed very soon!

[vivavolt]

Not much to show everyone today, I'm on holiday (skiing) until tomorrow so all you get is a quick concept sprite for an enemy I talked about earlier.



We've been looking at the name (The) Fear Machine (the "The" being optional), it has a lot more interest to it and still describes the hordes of unpleasant enemies we are going for. Maybe we should call it Super Fear Machine RX: The Killinating [Turbo Edition] to fully express the retro feel .

[vivavolt]

The day's only half over but I decided to write about what I've done so far!

Features Added Today:
- Worked on the gun popup display, much happier now (screenshot below)
- Changed the fire effect of the skeledragon, and tweaked his behaviour (you can actually fight him without getting hit now, it's just hard)
- Started work on a titlescreen (also shown below)



Once again I'll just add, I'm not an artist by trade so any criticism is welcome on all my programmer art!

[jakegreer1992]

Looks much better with the coloured stats. Much less like a wall of text.

[vivavolt]

Features added today:
- Weapons boxes now work completely, next up is the generation algorithm for random guns
- Drew some different gun bodies, so you can tell you've actually changed guns
- Implemented independent ammo supply for each gun, hadn't even realised that was wrong before (pistol has infinite ammo)
- Added some new background elements for interest
- Tweaked the gun popup display a bit

Coming up next:
- Display image of the gun in the box
- More gun shapes / colours
- Gun generation
- Enemy generation based on waves
- Death
- Running out of Ammo
- More enemies!

We talked it over and have, for now at least, settled on (The United States of) Nightmerica for the game. There's a bit of conceptual backstory behind the USA theme, but I see it as a combination of cheesy, retro, 80s sort of naming and a good indicator of the type of game this is still. We don't want it to be taken too seriously, etc.



Video also available at:

 

[vivavolt]

Ricky and I actually got together today, so we made some pretty good progress!

Features Added Today:
- Thought about (at length), designed (in a spreadsheet) and implemented gun randomisation
- Working from our previous spreadsheet for enemy spawning, we implemented correct handling of waves
- I drew a bunch more gun and bullet images
- Added the ability for bullets to move in sine waves or spirals
- Added a new enemy, known as a Cranberry between us (he divides into two smaller versions of himself on death)
- Redesigned the test map a little, making for more circuits to run around
- Cut out some excess code / objects
- Got around 60fps performance on an iPod Touch 4, and iPad 1 which is good
- You can run out of ammo now
- Tweaked the HUD, to be less obtrusive and show more game

So, big list above, we spent a lot of time working on a function for generating the different stats of random guns based on the round. It got complicated:




This is basically just us developing a probability distribution that worked... Took some tweaking!



This is the round number spawning spreadsheet, this is also a bit messy.



The interface tweaks and the new enemy, he gets mad when you shoot him.


When you mess up the spawning code... River of zombies.

(click for embiggening)

[vivavolt]

Not too much new stuff to add.

Features Added Today:
- Redesigned the map a bit more, picture of test map included
- Finished spriting and implemented a new type of enemy, spiders jump on to the roof and back down again when they feel like it, they're pretty hard to fight
- Added a "nearest" enemy indicator system, which is really good for tracking down those last few enemies in a round but, not sure if I like how it looks
- Worked on the title screen a bit more

We're really quite close to a demo version being up, I just wonder how much interest there is in giving us feedback on that?




The map, right now. There are gonna be a few of these, though. The prawn blocks are spawn points for enemies, don't ask.

[DustyDrake]

You have no idea how much your game reminds me of one I worked on about a year ago.
Of course I'd love to try this and give feedback.

[BomberTREE]

Oh yes!
I like the look of this 

[vivavolt]

Not a shocking amount of visual progress today, but a huge amount behind the scenes.

Features Added Today:
- Weapons cost money to pick up now, which already adds a huge amount of balance to the game
- The interface includes indicators describing whether the gun is better than your current weapon
- New display elements highlight the new various options weapons can have
- Zombies can now climb slopes in a minor coding victory
- We implemented a new enemy that can chase you through most parts of the map (he isn't sprited yet, though, just a box)
- Messed around with some new tiles, not sure if they'll even make it into the game in any incarnation

This is basically the first one of my own games I haven't gotten sick of while in early development, it's still fun. Which I think is a good sign!




Next Up:
- A visually significant getting-hurt effect
- Death
- More enemies
- Optimisation (for iOS performance, MMF is pretty shit at that)

[vivavolt]

Features Added Over the Weekend:
- New hurt effect, it's pretty clear when you're getting beaten up now
- New enemies, black ghosts that chase you around
- New bullet types (images) and images for guns with effects
- Ammo crates are in, gun crates, ammo crates, special gun crates or something we haven't thought of yet spawn each round at various parts of the map.

When you unlock a new effect on a weapon (by reaching a certain round) you have to go through a "special" round. These rounds only allow you to use your pistol, which will have the new effect added to it and you will have to fight new enemies in a different way to usual. The black ghost enemies are accompanied by unlocking the Fire effect at wave 10.

A decent amount of work went into optimising the enemy behaviours, however this project has officially made me declare that I no longer want to work in MMF2. It's great for fast prototyping but, there are so many annoyances.





New video should be coming soon to show off everything and then, an alpha demo!

[08--n7.r6-79.84]

wow, so pretty style