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[dqhendricks]

Update #21:

This giant rock golem fight is inspired by the Crocomire fight in Super Metroid. If you know your video game history, you know there is only one way to win this battle.

[tjpalmer]

I don't know Crocomire, but giant enemies are awesome. I do agree with some folks that the main character seems a touch more cartoony than the rest of the world.

[dqhendricks]

Update #22:

Doing some extra promotional art. This time it's a poster with some of the main characters you will meet throughout the game. It's a work in progress. Eventually it will be full color and high res.

[dqhendricks]

Update #23:

New mechanic I am working on. Crates with explosives. Using a bomb on one sets off a chain reaction and destroy everything in it's path.

[dqhendricks]

Update #24:

Wanted to post one more gif of chainsplosions because they're cool looking. Gotta find a way to get the conveyors to go the right direction before you can start this chain reaction.

[dqhendricks]

Update #25:

Hey guys! I wanted to mention that I'll be at GDC Play this year, booth PL 104. Come stop by to say hi and check out Trial by Viking if you like!

Today I spliced together a few clips showing how to get one of the treasure chests on level 93. I can show a bit more in depth how the game will play with gifs like these, so expect more like this in the future. Let me know what you think!

[dqhendricks]

Update #26:

GDC is just around the corner. In case you didn't hear from previous posts, I will be at GDC Play showing off the game. Feel free to stop by booth PL 104 and say hi!

[dqhendricks]

Update #27:

I had an awesome time at GDC! Thanks to everyone who stopped by! If you haven't gone, and you ever get the chance, I highly recommend it.

In this update, I want to show you a new playable character, Kara. You only get to play as Kara for very specific levels. You won't have access to your regular inventory for these levels, but you will have a bad ass pair of swords, some pretty nice melee combos, and a spinning blade attack. Here she is exterminating a couple of rats on level 99.

[dqhendricks]

Update #28:

Been working on a new boss. This guy does some fly by homing projectiles, and then lands to breathe electric breath and rain a few lightning bolts.

[dqhendricks]

Update #29:

Been revamping the throwing axes. Check it out and let me know what you think.

[dqhendricks]

Update #30:

Today I would like to talk about player tracking flyers. This basically applies to any sort of player tracking where the enemy can move in any direction.

In essence, the idea is simple enough. Move the enemy towards the player's position. There are a few things you can do to improve on this however.

You can give the enemy a direction, a target direction (toward the player's position), and a maximum turning speed. This gives the enemy more of a homing missile movement feel, where they have actual momentum and cannot just change course at full speed on a dime. It's much more interesting to battle against as well.

You also have to worry about obstacles like walls. With just the basic code (following the player position), your enemy will run up against walls while aiming towards the player, making it extremely easy for the player to evade it. You can do some sort of path finding, but I don't really think that's fair, unless we are assuming the enemy is tracking the player using hearing alone at any distance with walls in between. Instead, I like to use line of sight to set the enemy's target. Line casting to find obstacles between the enemy and the player can be pretty expensive processing-wise, so I run it on a timer that only executes every 0.15 seconds or more, with a randomized lead time so the line casts for all of the enemies do not all fire on the same frame. The effect is, the enemy only sets it's target position when it can actually see the player (has a clear line of sight). This way the enemy chases the last position it saw the player at, allowing it to follow the player around corners.

Here is a gif comparing the flying enemy tracking the player's current position, versus having the enemy tracking the player's last "seen" position:

[dqhendricks]

Update #31:

Due to popular demand, I have added a melee ability. If you hold still and press up or down while attacking, you can do a high or low melee attack. This, along with the dash ability, helps a lot when you are trying to get a small critter, too low for throwing axes.

[dqhendricks]

Update #32:

I wanted to talk a little bit about how I do cutscenes using the game engine. The cutscenes move the actors around the screen according to a script. It may include dialog, position movements, rotations, following with an offset, most with easing options. Here's a sample of what a piece of one might look like:



I used to use a giant state machine to handle this, which was very difficult to edit. Now I use a helper class with a bunch of coroutines to handle each of the movements, then just put yields in to wait for their completion. Yields basically wait, and resume the code after a certain length of time. Coroutines are like functions, except the calling code does not wait for them to complete before continuing.

This way I can stagger movements in any way I like. I can start a position change on an object that occurs over the course of 2.0 seconds, then wait until 0.5 seconds in to that movement, then start a rotation change on that same object that occurs over 1.0 seconds. The rotation movement will complete before the position movement finishes, because this is all going on at the same time. It makes it really easy to make complex synchronous movements in one big linear script.

The helper class I created to move things around the screen is full of functions that look like this:



It lerps over a period of time. It can ease in, out, or in and out if needed. So you can imagine the helper class has functions for rotations, beziers, fades in and out, music changes. Basically everything that I'm going to be using in cutscenes over and over again (Except for dialog, which is handled in a separate class). For dialog, the main cutscene script can choose to wait until the player has clicked/closed the dialog window before continuing.

The result is a fairly easy to read linear script (sorry for the lack of comments):



You could take this a step further, and make it run off of a text file full of text instructions that the class decodes into actual instructions for the cutscene. Something like that might be useful if you have a non-coder scripting your cutscenes.

@0xlastlifegames

[dqhendricks]

Update #33:

Have been working on the melee attacks a bit. They are now all one button, and you can combo your attacks with increasing damage. A little bounce back on the hits feels really good, but it does have the tendency to knock you off of small platforms, so I'm not sure exactly what to do yet. I'll keep tweaking this until the end.

[dqhendricks]

Update #34:

I have ben working on redoing the lighting and adding lightmaps to the game. I like the way it's turning out. Here's a few new screenshots.

[dqhendricks]

Update #35:

I think I finally got the shield belt how I wanted it. What do you think?

I'm using Sin and Cos to find the position at distance and angle, so that I can rotate the balls. Then I use another Sin to modify the distance for that formula, making the shield balls pulse in and out.

[gereon]

Nice artwork and particle effects!
And very promising gameplay with all this cool enemies/AI and physics stuff, I'm looking forward to the final game.

This "line of sight" behavior is very interesting. I'm using line of sight in my game too, but currently simpler (some enemies attack only when in line of sight, but they don't remember the last seen position). Good idea, I have to think about it...

The shield belt is nice. I like the idea of loosing the shields one at a time instead of a timeout. You are already using particle effects, so maybe you could add some there, rotating glitter or something like that.

[dqhendricks]

Nice artwork and particle effects!
And very promising gameplay with all this cool enemies/AI and physics stuff, I'm looking forward to the final game.

This "line of sight" behavior is very interesting. I'm using line of sight in my game too, but currently simpler (some enemies attack only when in line of sight, but they don't remember the last seen position). Good idea, I have to think about it...

The shield belt is nice. I like the idea of loosing the shields one at a time instead of a timeout. You are already using particle effects, so maybe you could add some there, rotating glitter or something like that.

Thanks gereon! That's a great idea for some sort of light particle trails following the shield balls. Could make a cool effect, as long as I don't go overboard and make everything too busy heh.

[dqhendricks]

Update #36:

Kara has always had this owl friend that follows her around named Bregoa. Sometimes during the cutscenes, and in game dialog, she will grab onto Bregoa's claws and fly away with him (or is it a her? i don't know). I made Kara a playable character for a few of the levels recently. She moves similarly to the main character, but instead of throwing axes, she has some very powerful double sword melee attacks. I had to give her a secondary action as well since you can't access your normal inventory during these Kara levels. I thought it would make sense to go ahead and make Bregoa her second action. An attack owl basically.

There is a level where you as the main character get to ride Bregoa like a zipline, but they are on predetermined paths. I think it would be cool to someday give the player full control over using the owl like a hang glider. Perhaps you hold down jump, and the owl will swoop you and let you glide for a moment, similar to how the princess in Super Mario Brothers 2 works. I may never be able to get that into this game depending on time, but if the game does well, maybe there will be a sequel.

[gereon]

The owl animation looks really nice!

I may never be able to get that into this game depending on time

I know that problem very well - many ideas but no time to implement