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[bZoo]

Hey there! I'm somewhat new to these forums, although I have been lurking for about a month or so. Out of all the boards I'm always drawn to the developer's log section, its really inspiring to see whats being created. So I figure, what the hell... I might as well start my own.



There exists a race that travel through time and space to collect and enslave those that inhabit the universe.

They have initiated the harvesting of Earth and her heroes.

They have made a grave mistake.



Aaaaaaand cue intro music


So I intend for this to be an action platformer with lots of alien gore, lasers, and robots. The overall tone is intended to be somewhat goofy and over-the-top, yet still try and be serious in a humorous sort of way.

The idea is pretty simple. Wake up on a spaceship. Fight through levels and bosses. Overthrow the seers and save the universe. And throw some story elements in there.

The idea for this concept came out of me creating all these individual characters and wanting to make something out of them. I had short concepts for them but not enough to make a full fledged story driven game. With the idea of a time-traveling, space-faring alien race I am able to make these characters come to life and then run them through a gauntlet.

So because these aliens can, I guess, exist anywhere in time and space I can create some really wacky, and out-there ideas in terms of the characters. Ideally I would like a reasonable amount of playable characters, either unique play styles or simply cosmetic changes. Right now I have 4 characters. The plan with having these characters with their different play styles will introduce different ways at approaching a level.




Ignore the puft of smoke lol  all animations are still a WIP, I'm teaching myself and I'm having quite a bit of fun and frustration.

This is just a bad ass cowboy. Nothing else to it really. I just always found sci-fi westerns super appealing and this was something I wanted to do. The thought of fighting your way through the levels of a huge space station with nothing but a six-shooter and a bullwhip just sounds kind of awesome.



This is a personal favorite. The inspiration for the look of the character came from this Japanese band that I saw play live. The singer was running around with a similar mask and sword. Unfortunately I cannot remember the band 

In terms of background, and because alternate realities exist, this character is from a timeline where geisha's are the military noble class and samurai are non existent. For play style I picture something very agile and deadly. Wall jumps, blinking, bullet deflection, etc. And frankly, I can't wait to draw up the animations for this character.

Here's a little mockup of the opening cutscene for when you first wake up on the ship.


And here's a floating head. Probably welcoming you to an eternity of servitude.



Right now, its just me and a buddy creating this game. I'm doing all the art and "programming" and he is composing the music. And were both designing it.

I've made a lot of progress and I'm aiming to have a playable demo by the end of the month!
I am by no means a programmer, I've dabbled in AS3 and part of me absolutely adores the aesthetic of flixel and flashpunk but I just couldn't figure it out! So far I've managed to get pretty far with pseudo-code through construct 2, but its worrying to think about all the time I'm putting into something only to have it be possibly unplayable. And I'm very unsure on whether or not construct 2 could handle the game that I want to make.


Regardless, I would love some critique or feedback! Let me know what you think!!! 

[jeko88]

Very nice the shooting animation, maybe too slow, but very cool effect!

[bZoo]

Thanks jeko88! I'm just now learning how to use gifs, and I'm having the worst time at trying to make them work haha 

Here are some more rough attempts at trying to document where I'm at so far




The movement and shooting is similar to how tanks work. You run in one direction and shoot in another.

I mapped the shooting keys to QWEAD. Movement, jumping, and crouching are set to the arrow keys.

So Q and E would be diagonal shots with W shooting straight up.

For example,
If you're running right and you press Q, you'll shoot over your shoulder towards the left upper corner. If you're running left and you press D you'll shoot behind you.

[eyeliner]

You show promise.

The shooting mechanic seems adjusted to twin-stick controls and mouse (shooting direction) + keyboard (movement). 5 keys to control the shooting direction is a bit too much?

Looks good, though. The running animation in the game gif seems quite nice and adjusted to the character.

[bZoo]

Thanks eyeliner!

Regarding the controls, the design decision to keep everything bound to the keyboard was to keep the game playable on a laptop. I commute by train a lot and I like to play video games to kill time. Some games are unplayable because they require a mouse, and using one while sitting in a full train can be pretty uncomfortable. By keeping the controls on just the keyboard, the game is more accessible in certain settings. 5 keys definitely does sound like a lot, but I'm hoping it will work out 

And most times I'm just too lazy to plug my mouse into my laptop 

[bZoo]

Here's the general idea for the first level!

So the aliens are running you through a simulation room to see what you're made of. And they don't particularly care whether you live or not 

Through the alien's perspective, the level is based on a rough idea of what environment you you were from. So they have constructed an artificial environment based on your background! This level will serve as a somewhat introductory/tutorial level and I plan to have this first level style change depending on the character you play as.

[bZoo]

Whip Action!!! I really need to smooth this one out a bit. Still looks a bit unnatural.




Testing out some enemies, still lots of work to do, I need to make so many animations!

[yui_jegnan]

lol I don't know what makes people draw fox mask with pink kimono. Including myself.

[bZoo]

@yui_jegnan Ha! That's funny, I don't know though. I just find it to be a really compelling image.


So it's been a while since my last update, but I've been working on it as much as I can.

I've made some pretty basic enemy types, y'know ones that just patrol back and forth, chasers, etc. Here's one of them.



Still need to tweak some pathing issues and animations but i think it's almost there.

I worked on the camera to function like arcade shooters where you run, hit a point, and have to kill whatever is on the screen in order to progress.



I might have shrink down some things to increase visibility. I set a deadline to have a playable demo by the end of the month. Hopefully I can hit it, most of the enemies are in and I have a rough idea of the level layouts. Always looking for feedback or critiques  

Here's some scenery for a town stage.