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[Rat Casket]

Glyph made those for me. He is super great.

[Derity]

Really great idea here

My only critique is I feel like she really should have a Tower Shield instead of a kite shield, infact I feel like if her shield was actually a perfect square it would give her a much more unique appearance.

Apart from that, great job and keep it up!

[Rat Casket]

Playing Fez again has made me less worried about making platforms and junk. The reason being that in Fez (if you haven't played it) everything is a jump through platform and that works really really well. You never slam into stuff, you never bump your head and cut your jump short, you never have to make any sort of goofy pixel perfect jumps etc etc.

Fez is chill. I like chill.

So who here hasn't played suteF?

http://gamejolt.com/games/puzzle/sutef/4195/

This is one of my favorite games and a source of heavy inspiration for me. You never have to wait for the game to do things before you start solving puzzles. Almost the exact opposite of Escape Goat (see earlier posts). You never have to make weird trick jumps or do things that feel like you're "cheating" the system to make it work.

This is my goal. Be even remotely as good as suteF.

[SolarLune]

I didn't like Fez very much gameplay-wise. It was okay, but it opened up way too early, and AFAIK, it's just platforming, which isn't too interesting given the lack of challenge in the first few minutes. I'd see why other people liked it, though.

Never played Fetus backwards.

EDIT: Oh, but not having trick jumps and stuff's probably a good idea.

[Superb Joe]

thanks joe

youre welcome

[Rat Casket]

I didn't like Fez very much gameplay-wise. It was okay, but it opened up way too early, and AFAIK, it's just platforming, which isn't too interesting given the lack of challenge in the first few minutes. I'd see why other people liked it, though.

Never played Fetus backwards.

EDIT: Oh, but not having trick jumps and stuff's probably a good idea.

I will never finish Fez because after I get to the area thats all in the dark I just hate it. That area, I mean. I really dig the overall vibe from Fez though.

@Superb Joe
<3

[oodavid]

I hope there's a retro mode where you can play as the original marshmallow chap

[Rat Casket]

Somewhat related. Working on AI, hit boxes, death, etc. Ended up building a tiny state machine for the enemies that basically says "you see the dude chase them forever until one of you is dead".

[Leon Fook]

Add one thing: when the enemy is knockback, add some delay time before the enemy start getting back at chasing you.

[Rat Casket]

More adventures in AI.



I've created a simple melee enemy that wants to get in your face and then promptly smack it with whatever he may be holding. The first thing that happens is the enemy must notice the player and become "active". Until this happen he stands idly by, waiting for external input before doing anything. In this case, runnin' and smackin'.



Enemies that are not currently active, such as the guy above, will not become active unless certain conditions are met.

Exist within the viewable area.
Be facing the player.
Be on the same x axis as the player (have line of sight to him)

OR

Exist within the viewable area.
Be near another enemy that is alerted to the player. (even if hes not facing the player)
Be within a certain distance of the player doing things like shooting, or blowing shit up.

Using these conditions you get a couple of cool things. The most important of which is that enemies are not being aggro'd from off screen without the player knowing it is happening. Another cool thing is this prevents enemies from standing around like morons while you blow the shit out of their buddies.

This is the first "AI" that I have ever tried to program and it is a little sloppy. It was much harder than I thought it would be... especially jumping and tracking the player. Basically what happens is once the enemy is "active" he then always knows where the player is. You can't lose him. However he is always checking the area between himself and the player. That is the black line you see. When something comes between the two, such as a block, the line of sight is broken and he has to figure out how to get around that object. He looks in front of him to see what the fuck is in his way, then above it to see if its empty and he can jump into it. THEN HE DOES.

The code is a mess and needs to be a little more modular but really I should be able to use this as a baseline for all enemy behaviors.

[jgrams]

So who here hasn't played suteF?

http://gamejolt.com/games/puzzle/sutef/4195/

This is one of my favorite games and a source of heavy inspiration for me. You never have to wait for the game to do things before you start solving puzzles. Almost the exact opposite of Escape Goat (see earlier posts). You never have to make weird trick jumps or do things that feel like you're "cheating" the system to make it work.

I've been debating whether to post this: my preferences and yours don't seem to line up at all. So feel free to tell me to shut up and stop wasting your time. But I tried suteF and there's a lot I don't like about it...

You do have to wait for the game quite a bit. Not as badly as Escape Goat 2, apparently. But there are a lot of cutscenes and such. When you start each chapter there's an unskippable 5 seconds or so while they show off their cool graphical effects for the chapter title. They tell you that you can skip the cutscenes, but the skip button only jumps to the next line of dialog, so you have to hammer it a million times to get through each scene. And there are a couple of "teamwork" levels where you have nothing to do but sit there and watch the other guys push blocks around. But I guess that yeah, in most levels they place the triggers pretty well so that you don't have to wait too much for that.

And you may not have to "cheat", but the game cheats constantly. And I recognize that that's a conscious design choice: it's a theme of the game. But I find it annoying as hell. The design actively discourages you from trying to think through a whole puzzle. You can get through nearly all of the first three chapters without ever thinking ahead any farther than "well, going left is instant death, jumping causes instant death, so I guess I'll go right." If you try to think ahead, you realize that several of the levels are clearly impossible, so you just have to go ahead anyway, and hope that something will magically change to make it possible. And one of the first times they shift the level on you, it's instant death if you keep moving one step in the direction that you were going.

And they just keep pulling those kind of things on you. Everything in the game is turn-based, except all of a sudden, at the end of one level, oops, you didn't move instantly after pushing that button? Now you're screwed and you have to restart the level. It's always very clear where you're trying to get to. Then they start flowing the levels together, and that's a nice transition, except...oh, wait. You weren't supposed to keep going that direction: when you reach this screen you were supposed to turn around and go back the way you came from and there is magically a whole different set of levels there now.

And once you get into late chapter C and chapter D, where they start actually being puzzles, it seems to me that your complaint about the switches in Escape Goat hold -- they all switch different blocks, and you have to run around and hit them all to find out which ones switch which, and some of those options trap you so you have to restart. Which is sort of a staple of puzzle games, but still.

And they like to put boxes between two things so you can't tell which direction their gravity goes. Which, again, makes it difficult to plan ahead, and feels like the game is cheating on you.

I do like the mechanic and the way there's generally no time pressure. I just feel like it's poor puzzle design in general.

[jctwood]

Really wonderful tiles!

[8-Bit Ape]

Quite the roller-coaster reading through this thread! Looking forward to the next updates. Gotta say I really like that early sprite based on the concept art. Reminded me of Monkey Island SE...

[Rat Casket]

More adventures in AI.



I've created a simple melee enemy that wants to get in your face and then promptly smack it with whatever he may be holding. The first thing that happens is the enemy must notice the player and become "active". Until this happen he stands idly by, waiting for external input before doing anything. In this case, runnin' and smackin'.



Enemies that are not currently active, such as the guy above, will not become active unless certain conditions are met.

Exist within the viewable area.
Be facing the player.
Be on the same x axis as the player (have line of sight to him)

OR

Exist within the viewable area.
Be near another enemy that is alerted to the player. (even if hes not facing the player)
Be within a certain distance of the player doing things like shooting, or blowing shit up.

Using these conditions you get a couple of cool things. The most important of which is that enemies are not being aggro'd from off screen without the player knowing it is happening. Another cool thing is this prevents enemies from standing around like morons while you blow the shit out of their buddies.

This is the first "AI" that I have ever tried to program and it is a little sloppy. It was much harder than I thought it would be... especially jumping and tracking the player. Basically what happens is once the enemy is "active" he then always knows where the player is. You can't lose him. However he is always checking the area between himself and the player. That is the black line you see. When something comes between the two, such as a block, the line of sight is broken and he has to figure out how to get around that object. He looks in front of him to see what the fuck is in his way, then above it to see if its empty and he can jump into it. THEN HE DOES.

The code is a mess and needs to be a little more modular but really I should be able to use this as a baseline for all enemy behaviors.

paged

@jgrams

Yeah you have to wait for cutscenes and the like but once you are in a level and doing things you never really have to wait. The buttons are sort of the same though. Having to check them before you can really figure out what they do is a pain in the ass at times. Most of the time there are a lot less buttons than EG2.

I cant think of a single level in which you have to act the second the level starts or you fail. It isn't twitchy, which is what I mean by doing trick jumps or cheating jumps.

[Scylla]

Loved reading this devlog, the gameplay definitely is getting a lot better!
Awesome stuff!

[Rat Casket]

Thanks, Scylla. <3


More on the subject of enemy behavior.

I recently played Metroid for the first time ever. Aside from Prime I had never played *any* Metroid games before. Playing it gave me heavy respect for enemy behavior in games.

Everything is very simple and easy to deal with if you know exactly how to do it but for the most part enemies do very little.

I have been trying to brainstorm some ideas for enemies that have very simple behavior in this game.

Also.

New mechanic.

If you are holding the shield up and walking into an enemy you will push the enemy like you would push a block. Some enemies will need to be KO'd first but... this is fun to mess with.


Funding. Or lack thereof.

I'm broke as shit so I will probably just be doing all of the art myself (unless somebody wants to do it for free and expect nothing but my undying love and admiration in return). One of my best friends is doing the music. His name is Tice and his music is here.

https://soundcloud.com/ticebilla

[Rat Casket]

On room transitions:

So this is a thing I have been fucking with for a long time now. Longer than I should have been for sure. Given that this is a metroidvania style game you be going in and out of rooms all the time. So what happens when you leave or enter a room?

Instant Transition:

A lot of games have an instant transition to their rooms. When you walk into an exit you are immediately teleported to the next room. Nothing fades out, nothing fades in, no sounds etc. Just BAM and you're there. This is fine and you can check out the video below to see it in action. It obviously works.





So what is good about this?

Its fast, and keeps the game moving.
Its easy to program.
Player never has to wait before they can keep playing.
You can easily transition to new rooms in all directions.

What is bad about it?

Personally I find it extremely jarring. I lose the character and have to search for them again.
It feels half-assed. Again this is a personal opinion.

Fade Transition

Taking a look at Symphony of the Night, a very fast fade in/out transition is used when moving from room to room. Generally, when you have something other than an instant transition, transitioning from room to room through a vertical space can be tricky. If it fades in and out you get a weird pause in the vertical movement of the player. It just doesn't feel right. To get around this a lot of games will just not really let you hop in/out of rooms vertically unless there some sort of indicator that you can. Such as a jump thru platform. SOTN has a super fast fade in/out transition so thats another way to do it. Otherwise, the camera just follows you and the rooms arent really vertical most of the time.

Here is a video for SOTN.




Whats good about this?

Side from falling, it feels really good.
It looks really good.
It can be used to help set the pace and tone.

Whats bad?

Its slow(er).
Makes the player wait.
Feels goofy on vertical transitions.

Slide Transition

Zelda. Do I need to say anything else? You leave the screen and it slides in whatever direction and you move to the new room.

Here is a video in case you have never seen video games before.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4bvZZa5Mtg

The good stuff!


You can be "retro".

The bad stuff!

Its slow!
ITS SLOW!
In a platformer environment, it feels really weird if you are ever jumping UP into a new room. What if you miss your jump and fall back down? That sucks.




TL;DR

Fade in fade out is what I will be using and it will be speedy because there will be top/bottom room transitions.

[Ticebilla]

That music sucks. I could do much better than that guy.

[Rat Casket]

Not dead.

I've been making a thing with Mono for a bit. http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=43401.0

Cool thing is that since Planetoid is also a platformer a lot of stuff I have learned working on Shield transfers over, and vice versa. I was able to work out a lot of problems while working on Planetoid that I had with Shield. It sort of feels like working on both games at the same time despite not actually opening the Shield project for over a month.

I also started working on a game about two dudes jerking each other off to find out which one of them is the gayest. Classic college bro "no YOU'RE gay" type stuff. Fun multiplayer game, tbh. Makes me want to make some sort of truth or dare sex game for your phone.

Oh and I started this adventure game thing yesterday http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=43894.0 because I don't want to use Twine to do the same thing. This is more fun.

I played way too much Destiny. Don't make the same mistake. It is not a good game. Shadow of Mordor, however, is awesome. So is Alien Isolation.

I finally got around to playing Batman Arkham Asylum and I learned a lot about level design and freedom, or the illusion of freedom. You can read that here if you want. http://www.destructoid.com/blogs/GRabbit/batman-arkham-asylum-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-love-level-design-281947.phtml

In between all of this I had a severe lack of motivation, which is nothing new, but it always sucks. It has been a really long stretch of "what the fuck am I doing with my life? why is monogamy so fucking stupid? why does my reptile brain always win over the human brain? why am I so worried about anything at all?" and wishing it was Tuesday every day so I can get pizza for a dollar at the mall. I guess depression is the easiest word to describe it but I really get tired of using that word.

Okay so anyway what about Shield?

Basically everything I have been doing lately has helped me turn my Shield idea into a more complete game. I have solved a lot of design problems, at least in my head. I've decided that digging needs to stay in one form or another. By controlling where the player can/can't dig and not allowing some sort of fail state from it nothing is actually lost. I was under the assumption that this would somehow cheapen the experience, that the player would get bored if they couldn't just dug up anything they wanted. This is simply not true. Thanks for the lesson, Batman.

I feel a lot better about this game now. I have a better idea of what I want it to be, and it makes me much more excited to work on it. Albeit slowly. 

[Rat Casket]

I am so far from my original idea that I feel like I shouldn't even be posting here anymore.

I worked on some really simple AI stuff again. This time its patrolling behavior. I added a bool to the player and all enemies called canAct. If canAct is true they can go about their business. If canAct is false, there is a timer that counts down until they can move/act again. Pretty simple but it lets me give enemies certain behaviors. For example.

https://twitter.com/fucpk/status/529070300466786305
(no embedded gifs because im not at home to upload them to imgur but whatever)

Most patrol enemies in 2D games just walk back and forth into walls and then immediately turn around. Goombas, basically. Thats fine for goombas I guess. However I always thought it was stupid when human or enemies that werent lumps with shoes and eyes exhibit this behavior. I have been playing a lot of Oddworld lately and the Sligs have some pretty interesting behavior.

For those of you who don't know, this is a Slig.



And here it is in game. Hard to see when its not moving but whatever. Its the yellow Slig shaped thing on the bottom.


So whats interesting about this is that the Slig CAN leave the room. He can exit on the right side. So lets say he saw you (he cant right now because you are above him on another platform) he can chase you from screen to screen. You can make noises like saying Hi, Hello, Follow Me, various whistles, grunts, and even fart. The Slig will react to all of these. Usually by shouting WHAT and turning toward where he heard the sound. Then, after a short pause, he will walk towards the source of the sound (left or right. Sligs cant climb or jump). If he sees you he will immediately shoot you and kill you. Then laugh.

However in his idle state, or his patrol state, he will simply walk back and forth, pausing at the walls before changing direction. This adds a bit of tension because at first you aren't sure how long he will say facing a certain direction. I'm still not convinced that its a set time or that all Sligs in the game pause for the same amount of time.

Anyway, Abe can also possess Sligs. Remember what I said about them being able to leave the screen? If Abe starts to possess one they panic. Running back and forth screaming HELP before they forfeit their mind, but always staying on the screen. Here's a video.





Pretty convincing "panic" mode. Here is an enemy that will instantly, can chase you through screens, through rooms (as long as you are descending), kills other NPCs, HAS DOGS HE CAN SICK ON YOU (called Slogs), and all kinds of other shit that makes you dead. However they completely lose control and start running in circles when shit gets real. This makes the Sligs so much more alive despite only having 4 possible states. Asleep, patrol, chase, and panic.

Its a great example of how simple AI can be so convincing and how the player often fills in the gaps, expecting the AI to be smarter than it is. Knowing how to toy with Sligs and Slogs, they still catch me off guard all the time. I hope to create some AI that will do the same.

My dudes throw spears though. Here is a spear test.

https://twitter.com/fucpk/status/528979097205370880