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[Siegfried Croes]

Hello everyone

I've been working on a 2D retro-styled platform game for a while now. Just yesterday I made a first video I thought this would be a good moment to start a devlog here to share updates and get some feedback.

Lets start with some basic info about my game:

Name: Tales of Lena
Genre: 2D sidescroller
Engine: Unity
Graphics: Pixel art using DawnBringer's 16 colors palette (http://www.pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=12795)
Platform: Android Windows(/Mac/Linux).

As this is my first game I want to keep it simple so don't expect anything groundbreaking or innovative Of course that doesn't mean I'll rush it! I'll do my best to make it a nice polished game.
Another reason I wanted to keep it simple is because of Android and its touchscreen controls. I didn't want there to be too much different actions so I chose to only have 2 (apart from moving left and right):

• Jump: Destroy enemies and reach higher places (double jump available)
• Interact (depends on the object nearby): Kick and break a block, enter door, use switch,...

The game will be split up in a number of worlds, each world has a different setting, different type of enemies and score collectibles, 2 levels per world, the second one ending with a boss fight.

Each level is a marker on an overview map. After completing a level the next marker will appear/ You can always play a level again to try and find all hidden treasures.

I'm sure there are still things I forgot to mention so if you have any questions feel free to ask Constructive feedback is also very welcome!

UPDATE (latest animation):

[surt]

Nice arts.
The walk looks a little off. Leaning forward and hair streaming behind but actually moving quite slowly.

[Moneyhorse]

good start. The idle seems a little strange. The outline looks laggy

[Siegfried Croes]

Nice arts.
The walk looks a little off. Leaning forward and hair streaming behind but actually moving quite slowly.

Thank you very much
You're right about that I got some other feedback that the character moves kind of slowly so I made her move faster which also makes the animation more believable. The block kick animation needs some tweaking though I think ^^' But those are just details, I'll mostly be doing some more programming these coming days

good start. The idle seems a little strange. The outline looks laggy

Thanks Don't really understand what you mean by "The outline looks laggy" though...

[SolarLune]

Yeah, this looks cool. I agree about the walk cycle, as well. The kick animation looks pretty fine to me, though. You might want to consider using colored outlines when possible, or removing the outlines on the jump and landing puffs - it can make things feel a bit too "heavy".

Keep it up - it's looking pretty fun.

[Photon]

The stuff in the foreground (player, enemies, fruits) looks really great, but the background looks surprisingly bland in contrast. The stuff up front is really good on the small detail, and so I feel like the background needs to look less uniform and stamp-like, if that makes any sense. Nice start you have here anyhow. Keep it up!

[Siegfried Croes]

Yeah, this looks cool. I agree about the walk cycle, as well. The kick animation looks pretty fine to me, though. You might want to consider using colored outlines when possible, or removing the outlines on the jump and landing puffs - it can make things feel a bit too "heavy".

Keep it up - it's looking pretty fun.

Walkspeed has been increased For the kick animation I just want to add some extra details, like her hair staying behind when she kicks forward and maybe also make her head turn a bit as it's kind of weird how her body is turned but her head is still the same ^^

I'll be keeping black outlines for all objects and tiles but you are right about the effects (puffs, hitspark and sparkles), I might go with grey outlines for them, I'll have to see how that looks.

The stuff in the foreground (player, enemies, fruits) looks really great, but the background looks surprisingly bland in contrast. The stuff up front is really good on the small detail, and so I feel like the background needs to look less uniform and stamp-like, if that makes any sense. Nice start you have here anyhow. Keep it up!

When you say background, do you mean the level graphics or the actual background image behind it all? The background image is still kind of a placeholder so it will sure look better in the future. The level graphics will be improved too. It's supposed to be a forest so still lots of stuff missing (background trees with jump-through branch platforms, treetops, bushes and plants moving in the wind,...)

Thank you very much for the feedback, guys Although I'll first be doing some more programming, I'll sure be updating the graphics soon!

[ollie_r]

I like the cute style! Reminds me of the old Skunny platformers on DOS. How did you achieve the by-pixel movement in Unity? Are you rounding the position in LateUpdate or something?

[joeyspacerocks]

Looking good - nice use of the restricted palette, you've managed to pack a lot of detail in those sprites.

Agree about the background needing more detail, but not essential at this stage. I'm always really bad at that - keep iterating over the art/levels instead of getting the gameplay nailed down

Looking forward to seeing what you do with this!

[bornander]

This looks cool, I particularly like the dithering when submerged in water instead of just doing alpha blending on the parts below the surface. It fits very well with the pallette.

The walk looks a bit weird (as have already been pointed out), but I kind of like that as well, it looks like she's walking with very determined steps

Good job, keep it up.

[sidbarnhoorn]

Very cool! Looking forward to seeing more. :-)

[Siegfried Croes]

I like the cute style! Reminds me of the old Skunny platformers on DOS. How did you achieve the by-pixel movement in Unity? Are you rounding the position in LateUpdate or something?

Thanks! Yeah I'm definitely going for a kind of old DOS game look I actually did a few things to make it all look pixel perfect:

• Using fixed resolution of 320x180 (integer upscaling is allowed: 640x360, 960x540, 1280x720, 1600x900, 1920x1080)
• Enabled pixel snap on the standard Unity sprite shader
• Made my own collision system (just simple Rect overlap checks) cause Unity's build in collision and physics are too floaty and not really pixel accurate.
• Have a variable to store the float position of player/enemies but always round the value when using it to set the new position so it's always integer.

Looking good - nice use of the restricted palette, you've managed to pack a lot of detail in those sprites.

Agree about the background needing more detail, but not essential at this stage. I'm always really bad at that - keep iterating over the art/levels instead of getting the gameplay nailed down

Looking forward to seeing what you do with this!

Thank you very much
I'll be leaving the graphics for now and do some more programming, but I'll sure be doing the same at some point, it always takes a long time till I'm happy with how something looks ^^'

This looks cool, I particularly like the dithering when submerged in water instead of just doing alpha blending on the parts below the surface. It fits very well with the pallette.

The walk looks a bit weird (as have already been pointed out), but I kind of like that as well, it looks like she's walking with very determined steps

Good job, keep it up.

Thanks a lot Yeah I had to do dithering cause transparency would break the limited color look, I'm very strict about only displaying 16 colors

Hehe, she's walking faster now I'm quite happy with the walk animation myself, took me a long time till I was happy with it ^^'

Very cool! Looking forward to seeing more. :-)

Thanks I'll do my best to show more very soon!

[Siegfried Croes]

Small update:

I've been doing some "behind the scenes" coding lately so nothing really new to show...
Next up is making the main menu and level overview interface and link that all together.

In terms of graphics I made a logo animation (not too interesting to make a gif of) and now I'm mainly tweaking stuff, getting rid of the black outlines on effect, making some small changes to the player animations,... Next up for art will be menu graphics. I will also be getting some help from a friend do make an awesome title screen background. She'll be doing a sketch and I'll turn it into pixel art She actually drew Lena in the past (though with different colored clothes):



With that you can more or less imagine what kind of style the title screen and eventual cut-scenes might look like

I also set up a Trello for myself to keep track of everything I still need to do That will definitely keep my work more organized!

[Siegfried Croes]

Time for another small update:

Added some more collectibles (jewels) and the possibility for blocks to contain multiple coins, the amount of score appears when collecting stuff and when defeating monsters. Might not look like much progress but more has changed behind the scenes (better animation system and physics, some custom inspectors,...). I'm now designing the HUD which will show all the stuff you've collected (gems and money in addition to your health and score that's already there). While working on that I've also started working on a system to handle level progress and saving/resuming.

As you've noticed, there will be a lot to collect in the levels. There are a few types of collectibles:

Fruits: These just count for score. Each world will have a different theme for its score collectibles (For example: Forest = Fruits, Cave = Mushrooms, Beach = Seashells,...)
Coins: Will be added to your previously collected money once you finish the level.
Gems: Every level will have a specific amount of each gem type, try to collect them all.
Treasures (coming soon): Each level will have a special treasure to collect (For example: In the Forest level you might find "Robin Hood's hat" or a (green) "Mushroom of Life").

I have some more ideas of what you'll be able to do with the coins and gems but not sure about it so I'll think about it some more.

I'll end this little update with a GIF showing some of the changes since the video I made a while ago. It includes faster player movement, effects without black outlines and some of the other things I talked about in this post:

[Siegfried Croes]

Small update:

Wasn't able to work as much on the level graphics as I had wished last week... But making more progress now Just wanted to do a quick update and share a WIP screenshot of what I have now (this screenshot also includes a near final HUD).



Finally it's starting to look a bit like an actual forest Hope you guys like it

[Siegfried Croes]

Here's a short GIF to show off the current state of my game Hope you like it! (Please note that a lot of graphics are still work in progress)

[Gtoknu]

Wow this looks nice, keep on it!

I think you're still giving some more details on the tree foliage, yes? It's alredy looking great, but could be much better!

[Siegfried Croes]

Wow this looks nice, keep on it!

I think you're still giving some more details on the tree foliage, yes? It's alredy looking great, but could be much better!

Thank you very much :D Yeah I sure will! The foliage is what still needs the most work

[Ishi]

Looks really promising, keep it up! Looking forward to more updates.

[makis]

cute little platformer, keep working on.