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[eigenbom]

Looking good dude.

[mirrorfish]

Really like the art style and color choices.  The lighting effect in your sig really adds a nice layer of polish. I really like simple retro style graphics that combine with modern effects like lighting, glow etc, it's a cool combination.  I checked out your devlog video which looks great, love the details like the light shafts and moving grass. Overall a lot of cool stuff on there! Very impressed!

[SolarLune]

Thanks, you guys. Got some preliminary sounds in (that prolly don't work too well, but whatevs for now). Also got the GUI working.



Scrap, health, and energy. Got the bars working alright; need to tie little numbers to health and energy. I'm not sure if I'll be able to get it to look okay in such a small space, but I'll try anyway, I think.

Energy serves as kind of a hindrance in this game, as using weapons and skills will use up energy. That will push you to use your Scrap on upgrades to cut energy consumption for parts that support it, since it can be annoying that you have to use your weapons and skills infrequently if you don't want to be caught with your energy at 0. I kind of want the player to not just go in guns blazing, since you can easily run out of energy and be stuck without any effective recourse. The more energy you use, the slower the bar refills in kind of a "stair-stepped" manner. Currently, the blade consumes no energy, which makes it useful for backing up your main weapon, which eats a lot of energy in the beginning of the game.

The plan is for scrap to serve as a form of currency. Defeating enemies nets you scrap that you can use to upgrade your equipment and purchase new parts (that may or may not be optional). That should help to make the game flow interesting and varied, rather than it just being "hey, go here. Okay, now go somewhere else".

Kind of unrelated, but I was playing the Metroid Prime Trilogy, and probably the worst part of Metroid-like games is that feeling of "I don't know where to go next, and I've already gone everywhere I could have". That can really halt the player's progress and frustrate them, though it can also turn a 6 or 7 hour game into a 40 hour game by sheer exploration and backtracking.

One of the things that Metroid does right is that even though you might be frustrated and lost, there's still optional places to explore for you to pick up that extra missile pack or life capsule, which helped to drive your exploration. Even when you're lost, you still "progress", in a way, which keeps you playing and exploring. I want to be sure to hide cool stuff around in places to encourage the player to run around and explore.

I'm not sure how linear I want this game to be, as I don't think I can really get the magnitude of a Metroid Prime-level game, though I could make it a pretty solid game, I think. Backtracking can be interesting, though it can lead to situations like I outlined above if I don't point the player to the next area or make it obvious.

[ekun]

I love the sci-fi'ish flavor of collecting scraps and upgrading yourself. Do you think that there will be a branching factor in how you build the character? Or would it work like Metroid where you eventually get all the upgrades anyways?

Either way, looking great so far, following.

[wearepinata]

The artwork in this is great. And, yes, the lighting really makes it look awesome. Nice work!

[andy wolff]

This looks great so far, I can't wait to see where you take it.

[SolarLune]

Thanks, you all.

@ekun - There could be, sure. I'd like to design the game where it's about equipping yourself well for the situations at hand / areas you approach. I don't know if I'll have a "hot-swap" ability, or if it'll be from a save station (which would be slower, but could be more fun and prompt you to think more). I'm kind of setting myself up to stink in that I'm hoping to allow for you to gain items through different means (missions, shops, and secret chests or bosses). I'm probably not going to go with all of these means, or even fully explore any of them, but I like the different ways it could go, anyway.

Working on enemies, and I almost have the first one up and finished - just have to get him to shoot correctly and animate at the same time.

I also have scrap implemented as little spinning nuts.

[baconman]

I'm liking this a lot, too. Have you given much consideration to how you can use your collected weapons/items as tools and not just enemy-thrashing?

[SolarLune]

Thanks! Nah, I haven't thought too much about the weapons or items, though I do plan to have skills as well that do different things (i.e. not everything is a weapon that you use to destroy things). Someone on the BlenderArtists forum mentioned something that made me think of gravity / a tractor beam as a weapon / tool, which might be cool.

Here's another devlog video showing a couple of enemies, the GUI in action, some sounds, and new particles and screen shake.

[CasePortman]

Very excited for this! You're doing a great job with everything, the music, artwork and gameplay are all so great!

[Code_Assassin]

Woah, all your images are broken links now.

[SolarLune]

@Code_Assassin - Hah, yeah. Bandwidth limit... Guess I'm popular, haha. They'll come back soon.

Anywho, I took some time to make some videos - a tutorial on recording gameplay footage with Open Broadcaster Software, and one examining an indie game from 2012 called Inescapable. Check 'em out on my channel here.

I'm working on NPCs now; I have an idea in which when you enter an area that you're unfamiliar with, you won't be able to access their network, which means no MAP and no MAIL. If you're granted access or restore the network if it's down, then you'll get a map available from the MAP screen, and be able to accept and check e-mails from the MAIL screen.

This NPC is the guard of the first village area.

[SolarLune]

Spent some time trying to figure out what to do for a pause menu.



I started off with a menu that was a screenshot of the main game that the camera would zoom out on. The different choices of the game (Items, Options, Map, etc) would encircle the screen and you'd press the left and right buttons to spin them and select one. I got the zooming and screenshot-taking part to work, but the result looks really, really boring.

After that, I decided to actually put some thought into designing the menus. It felt a little weird since I actually wanted to work on the game instead of draw, but this could be the only way to make an actual intelligent, interesting menu, haha. Burping things out isn't a good idea - planning is the way to go!



This menu's (obviously) very scratchy, but gets the kind of idea I'm going for across - a kind of "futuristic hologram" view. I like the colors, though it kind of looks "Deus Ex-y", in a sense. I don't like that dead space in the center. I would probably make the menu a single row of the several options that you would just cycle through.



This menu is a lot more game-like, and kinda feels like a Square Enix game, in a way. I was thinking about the basic main menu in Kingdom Hearts, actually, with the choices on the left and the smaller (not full-screen) opening menus opening on the right (if I recall correctly). I liked the blurred background and the way the game focuses your eye on just what you have selected - just the basic stuff about the KH menu, really. My mockup possibly lacks the HP and SP gauges, but I don't know how useful it would be to have them here. It could be kinda necessary to see that stuff here if you could be low on health and need to use a healing item. If there's no ability to revive your gauges using items, though, then there's no real need to display them.

I think saving and equipment could also be on this screen, tthhough I think I'll make it so that you can only save or equip things at a save point. That way, I don't have to code an entirely separate menu, and you have to put thought into your loadouts before you proceed too far away from save points. I have a few ideas for parts that could be fun - coming up with new ones shouldn't be too difficult.

---------

Also, I started moving the GUI back over to Blender and Python as opposed to using a purely Python-based solution like I had before (a GUI library called BGUI). Building something this complex kinda needs a more visual approach toward positioning the elements, I think. It'll take a bit of time to complete, but I think it'll be worth it in the end.

[diegzumillo]

This looks absolutely stunning!

Do you have any complaints about the blender engine? I'm curious because I don't know of anyone who uses this.

[Irock]

I've been watching the video updates on Youtube since I'm subscribed to you but forgot to check out the thread until now.

It looks really promising. See to it that you finish this one.

[lionfish]

This looks great.  Reminds me a bit of Cave Story.  I'm following for sure!  Great Job.

[collider]

Looks fantastic + loving the youtube vids. Can't wait to see this one finished, great work.

[PixelHog]

Damn looking awesome so far! :D Interesting choice in engine too xD Never thought people would be using Blender Engine to do 2D games.

[poe]

Use http://imgur.com/gallery for your images so they don't break

[eigenbom]

Great progress dude!