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[Ishi]

Aloha everyone, and welcome to Leilani's Island!


Title screen image updated Feb 2016

Leilani has gotta roll, run, jump, kick, and smash things to protect her island!


New gif added Jan 2020


New gif added Feb 2018


Original gif from Feb 2015




Gameplay footage from May 2020




Gameplay footage from October 2018

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=607PlOlDg7Y
Gameplay footage from June 2017

Probably a good way to describe it is a cross between Mario, Wario Land, and Donkey Kong.

I started work on it around a year ago on a whim because I was reading a lot of game design articles and couldn't resist the idea of a small platform game. It's really expanded a lot beyond that though! I'd like to start showing it to and discussing it with more people as I continue. The aim of the devlog is to show new exciting things that go in, but also discuss some of my design processes and that kind of thing.

I'm developing it in C++ on PC, using SDL 2.0 and OpenGL 2.1.

Music by the amazing Leila "Woofle" Wilson, you may know her music from Freedom Planet. Here's an example track: Leilani's Island - Sunshine Sands on Soundcloud

Devlog Contents
2015
Core abilities
Character design
Fire Leilani (first pass)
Tubes (first pass)
End-of-level machine (first pass)

Block collision improvements
Level editing in Tiled editor
Controller rumble
Steam vents
UI / Frontend

Fonts
Sequences
Tiled editor: Code-side
End-of-level machine (second pass)
Invincibility (first pass)

Fruit objects
Checkpoints
Lava level (first pass)
Ropes
2016
Joypad support / Improved screen scaling

UI / Input improvements
Soil blocks
Enemy collisions
Tubes (revamp)
Mid-air crouch

Level level graphics step-by-step
Machine design / Debug expanded camera view
Event timer / Rainbow drops (first pass)
Object interactions / Missiles
End-of-level sequence

Bubble Leilani / Sprite Packing
Sprite packing continues / Invincibility (revamp)
Mines
Spinner enemy / Volcano music
Carrybox enemy

Mechanical Base entrance
Fire (revamp) / Bombs
Rainbow Drops (revamp)
Flower platform / Powered doors
Boomerang enemy (first pass)

Toggle blocks, powerup pickups
"Flower Jungle" level design
Wall-sliding level design
2017
Audio system - sound effects
Audio system - music and reverb

Audio system - additional features
Boomerang enemy (revamp)
Fireballs
Explosive Blocks level design
Rope Cliff level design

Rope rendering method
Norwich Game Festival prep - Magnets, course select, thank you screen
Norwich Game Festival prep - T-Shirts, cloud backdrop
Fluffy cloud rendering methods
Norwich Game Festival prep - Business cards, opening cutscene

Norwich Game Festival
Work Plan, Moving Platform Improvements
Moving Platform Parenting / Velocity
Objects and Platforms on Paths
Sprite Packing

Build Configurations, Steam API Integrated
Steam Page Live, Corrupt Save Files
World Map Month: Initial Structure
World Map Month: First Pass Graphics
World Map Month: Using Tiled Layer Groups

World Map Month: Spending Shells
World Map Month: Enemy Crate Levels
World Map Month: Camera Movement, Foliage
Debug Features
Buzz Enemy (flying robot)

Jungle background, background art process
Boss: Basic movement
Boss: Solid collision
Boss: Animation maths
Boss: Driving calculations

Boss: Tilting Under Acceleration
Boss: High level code structure
Introducing Kuila!
International Keyboard Support
World Map Facelift

Sinking Platforms
2018
Gameplay Recording (for playtesting)
World Map Month #2 + Fan Art
Layered/Dynamic Music - Part 1
Layered/Dynamic Music - Part 2

World Map Month #2: Underground areas
World Map Month #2: Destructible objects
Spring Cliff level
Cameras Part 1: Horizontal Movement (Leilani's 4th Birthday!)
Cameras Part 2: Vertical Movement

New enemy: Drillbit
World Map Month #3: Sorted sprites
World Map Month #3: Spending UI improvements
World Map Month #3: Factories
Theming Month: Cliff makeover

Theming Month: Factory Internal
Theming Month: Colour tweaks and animated Jungle
Tilesets: authoring collision
Theming Month: Roots Tileset, Autotiling description
Sprite Animation XML format

Fonts with non-ASCII characters
Main Menu polish
Controller rumble in SDL
The bug-fixing process
Collision System: Part 1: Introduction

Collision System: Part 2A: Solid Collision
Collision System: Part 2B: Solid Collision additions
Boost rings
Collision System: Part 3A: Interactions
Entity class inheritance, related to Interactions

Rainbow Boost Rings
Background Particle Effects
Gameplay Trailer #2, Video Creation Tools & Process
Display Settings Improvements - Scaling Modes
2019
Post-level flow polish, pixel softness option

Waterfalls - First pass (plus moving platform discussion)
Waterfalls - Lava, Air
Waterfalls - Moving
Challenge Mode
Challenge Mode - Polish

Poison Pipeway level - Part 1 - First pass at level section layouts and visuals
Poison Pipeway level - Part 2 - Intro, Ending, more layout experiments
Tubes - Metal visuals, moving tubes
Rumble bug at high framerates
Gameplay tweaks: Backspin, Grabbing objects, Fire Leilani improvements

Poison Pipeway level - Part 3 - Complete playable level
Seeds and Vines
Vine Valley Level
Boss Intro Cutscene
Boss Fight Polish

More Boss Fight Polish
Metal Crate Polish
Enemy Alert States
Spinning Flower Platforms, Rotating Platforms
More Challenge Levels, Rotating Platform Details

Rainy Mountain Level, Checkpoint System Improvements
UI / Game Flow Polish
More UI / Game Flow Polish
Waterfall Visuals Improved
Slopes aka Collision System: Part 2C

Volcano Climb Level
2020
Boulders
Sprite Packing Improvements aka Video Compression
General Polish (Intro cutscene, visual effects, auto-grab)
Optimisation

6 years of development
Audio system - reverb zones, data-driven sound controls, semitones
Sound overhaul - menus
Sound overhaul - factory intro and bosses
Long screenshot (Instagram)

Character limit reached: Devlog Contents are continued in my next post.

[Balrog]

I mentioned this on twitter but this looks so good. It's just so polished.

[surt]

Arts are adorable.

[jaharley94]

Agreed - Art is adorbs :3

[Quicksand-T]

Probably a good way to describe it is a cross between Mario, Wario Land, and Donkey Kong.

I'm curious what influences you're taking from those latter two.

Also do you mean the Donkey Kong puzzle game for GameBoy, or the Donkey Kong Country games?

[Ishi]

Balrog, surt and jaharley94 - thank you!

I'm curious what influences you're taking from those latter two.

Also do you mean the Donkey Kong puzzle game for GameBoy, or the Donkey Kong Country games?

Wario Land 1 is a big inspiration and one of my favourite ever games. The main things I'm drawing from it are the slightly slower pace, and more complex enemy interactions compared to Mario (e.g. even the simplest enemy involves a lot more than just jumping on it - I'll go into my enemy interactions in more depth at some point).

I also love how Wario Land 1 is clearly Mario-influenced but has so much of its own personality. I want Leilani to have a lot of personality too and not just feel like a copy of something else.

As for Donkey Kong, I meant Donkey Kong Country, and more specifically the recent two Retro Studios games. Leilani's roll move is reminiscent of the DK's. Similar to DK's roll it can be used for attacking but also gives her more agility, so is useful for traversal too.

They both have thematic influence too, with a good sense of location as you play through the game and occasional more atmospheric moments / music (e.g

and

). It would be nice to achieve something similar.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

Edit:
Devlog Contents continued (original post reached the forum's character limit)

2020 continued
Sound overhaul - waterfalls with Area Sound system
Leilani's idle anim showcase
Quick re-roll ability and improvements
Chaos-reducing mechanic changes
Rope mechanic improvements

Challenge medal colourblindness changes, Poison Pipeway improvements
More polish, Poison Pipeway full playthrough video
Title shine anim, statistics system, How To Play screen
Control Hint popups first pass
Control Hint popups continued

Control Hint popup polish, Powerup Plants, Volcanic blocks
Bubble Berry Tutorial Level
Red Eye enemy - step-by-step implementation
Totem enemy - step-by-step implementation
Fire Leaf tutorial level, lighting effects

Sprite glow layers, controller icon/binding improvements
How To Play screen - optimisation of video compression
How To Play screen - further optimisation
Poison Pipeway - post-feedback improvements
More feedback-based polish

Wall-jump challenge level
New boss fight, 16:9 aspect ratio
Boss ending fly-away animation, switch blocks revived
Red Eye enemy - event timer support
Boat level - initial work

2021
Boat level - finished
Boat level - boat system details
Flying enemy revamp, new flying Red Eye enemy
7 years of development
Collision System part 3B: Interactions again

Charging grunt enemies revamp
Missile collision improvements, damage feedback improvements
2022
Roots mechanic

[falafel]

There's so much going on in that first animated screenshot! Already I'm excited for this game I've never played Wario Land but I got a Gimmick feel from the way you've set up the systems to interact with each another. I can imagine playing this game and challenging myself to pull off fancy tricks just because the game allows it. Lovely pixel art and animations too. Good luck with it!

[Ishi]

Leilani's Abilities

I'm sticking to a pretty limited set of abilities. These have had a lot of revisions since I started the game, particularly the rolling and enemy interactions. They define both the gameplay and Leilani's personality so it's important to get these right. Here's an overview of what I currently have:

• Run: Leilani's run is pretty slow and not slippery. It's safe to use but won't provide enough speed for all situations.
• Jump: Leilani's jump is smooth and has variable height (press longer to jump higher), and she has good mid-air control. However her maximum jump height is only 3 tiles (with Leilani being around 1.6 tiles tall). As is traditional, jumping into the bottom of a block will bump/break it.
• Roll: The main focus of the game. Rolling allows Leilani to move faster, bump/break blocks from the side, attack enemies, wall-jump, fit through small gaps, plus some other actions.

Enemy interactions:

• Walk into: Walking into an enemy that isn't stunned will hurt Leilani.
• Jump on: jumping onto an enemy will stun it. Leilani can do a 4-tile-high jump off an enemy's head.
• Jump beneath: jumping into an enemy from beneath stun it.
• Roll into: rolling into an enemy causes the enemy to also roll. A rolling enemy interacts with other gameplay elements the same as if it was Leilani rolling herself. A rolling enemy dies when it hits a wall.
• Kick: Running into a stunned enemy causes Leilani to kick it diagonally upwards.
• Spikes: Enemies with spikes will hurt Leilani if they come into contact. For example, a spiky-topped enemy cannot be jumped on, and an enemy with a spike at the front can only be rolled into from the back.
• Big enemies?: I haven't yet decided how big/heavy enemies will differ.

I think that's most of them! Leilani is pretty no-nonsense and doesn't let things get in her way. When she rolls she's a bit of an unstoppable force of nature. Rolling around is fun so I'm giving it as many uses as possible, and limiting her run speed and jump height emphasizes that rolling is the focus. Hopefully the enemy interactions will allow for interesting gameplay and a lot of player choice.

My recent focus has been trying to finalise the enemy interactions in particular, and provide feedback with particle effects. Here are some of the latest effects:



These duck guys are the simplest enemies and are called Macas.

[Quicksand-T]

Wario Land 1 is a big inspiration and one of my favourite ever games. The main things I'm drawing from it are the slightly slower pace, and more complex enemy interactions compared to Mario (e.g. even the simplest enemy involves a lot more than just jumping on it - I'll go into my enemy interactions in more depth at some point).

I also love how Wario Land 1 is clearly Mario-influenced but has so much of its own personality. I want Leilani to have a lot of personality too and not just feel like a copy of something else.

This comment made me want to finally play Wario Land 1, and I got hooked and beat the whole thing in one day. What a great game. So thanks! 

Your rolling and kicking move seem to be a really good addition to that game's system of enemy interactions. I also really like that Maca squish in the latest gif. Most of those particle effects are really good and communicative, but the circular gas clouds don't quite fit for me. Maybe because they're used both for the movement of a kicked enemy and when an enemy hurts you, but there's no clear relationship between the two uses.

[Ishi]

This comment made me want to finally play Wario Land 1, and I got hooked and beat the whole thing in one day. What a great game. So thanks! 

Your rolling and kicking move seem to be a really good addition to that game's system of enemy interactions. I also really like that Maca squish in the latest gif. Most of those particle effects are really good and communicative, but the circular gas clouds don't quite fit for me. Maybe because they're used both for the movement of a kicked enemy and when an enemy hurts you, but there's no clear relationship between the two uses.

Awesome, glad you enjoyed it! I imagine it's a really interesting game to play for the first time these days, since it's so different from the subsequent Wario Lands with their invincibility and transformations.

That's good feedback on the particle effects, thanks. I was a bit lazy and used the smoke for a few things so I'll pick something else to use for the player damage effect (I wanted some lingering effect that shows where the collision happened in addition to the red stars). The purple smoke trails are a bit scrappy too and need neatening up, I think they add too much visual noise at the moment.

[Ishi]

This week I've been continuing to polish/improve the enemy interactions, and also added some missing animations for tiny Leilani. Here she is in glorious 20fps action! (the game normally runs at 60)



She doesn't lose any abilities compared to full-size Leilani. Just some height. Since I've been working on her this week I thought I would talk about..

Leilani Character Design

Leilani's design isn't particularly sophisticated, but I think a simple, strong character fits the game well. She doesn't have any nuance to her personality - she's gonna protect her island and that's all she cares about. So her visual design should match that simplicity.

Since the project was initially just a throwaway thing I was doing on a whim, I didn't put too much thought into the initial design. The inspiration is pretty easy to figure out - my girlfriend is from Hawaii, and at the time I was a few months away from my first trip there. (It's lovely by the way.)

Here's the very first sketch:



The grass skirt is a bit cliché but identifies her as an island girl. The tank top is simple and modern (I didn't want to take the coconut bra route..) I haven't felt the need to change her much since then other than a few tweaks mainly driven by making the sprite more readable. These are the four revisions her sprite has had:



The bracelets help to separate her arms and hands, and make them easier to follow during animations. (Now I see why Mario has white gloves.) Bigger feet and shorter size emphasize that she's tough, and keeping the skirt simple (without the fuzzy edge it had in the second sprite) fits better with the game's stylised look. The sticky-up hair is just cute and fun to animate.

[Rebusmind]

This looks so charming, great art style and the interaction between the character and enemies/blocks looks incredible. I'm very curious to see more.

[Thomas_]

Impressive!
The gameplay seems to be perfect!
Good luck and cya

[Schoq]

ugh this looks so good!

[Rebusmind]

Somehow I'd love to play that game on my GBA right now. :D
But seriously, bring this game to the 3DS or Vita!

[Ishi]

Thanks guys. Will keep working hard!

Somehow I'd love to play that game on my GBA right now. :D
But seriously, bring this game to the 3DS or Vita!

3DS would be my dream platform to put the game on - the game is at 3DS resolution (400x240), just in case.

For now I just want to make the game as good as I can and will see where it goes in the future.

[Quicksand-T]

It just keeps looking soooo good!

I suggest having a little bit more difference between the tiny and big versions of the character. EDIT- Oh, I just noticed the flower in her hair changes, that's a nice touch. Maybe that's all it needs.

[Ishi]

I suggest having a little bit more difference between the tiny and big versions of the character. EDIT- Oh, I just noticed the flower in her hair changes, that's a nice touch. Maybe that's all it needs.

Yeah she has a little pink circle (a button or shell or something?) in her hair when small, which gets replaced by the green flower. The flower is more of a noticeable change when you're playing it in a big window rather than watching a tiny gif, plus her small size makes her feel a bit different (though there are no actual control differences). It might also help if the footsteps/rolling sounds are slightly higher pitch for tiny Leilani, so will keep that in mind.

Different hair accessories will also be used for other powerups, but those will also change Leilani's colours. Probably will post more detail on one of those powerups at the weekend.

[rj]

i'm super into this, dude. these colors are great and the pixel art is so cute

it's so cute

ye

what kinda music are you putting on this, please tell me it's happy boppy wariolandy stuff

[Ishi]

what kinda music are you putting on this, please tell me it's happy boppy wariolandy stuff

Absolutely! Music isn't in progress yet but I have been thinking about it a lot. This is the kind of stuff I've been listening to for inspiration:



- Love the tropical feel and the really clear bass line.


- The Wario Land music, especially the core stage themes, just have so much of Wario's personality in there somehow.
Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze - You can't argue with the sheer quality of music in this game. Personally I think there was actually a bit too much music and would have preferred if the music had more chance to shine through in the game. It's a good example of the more mysterious / atmospheric style that I'd like to include alongside the more upbeat/energetic themes.

If anyone has any other game music (especially from indie games, or from non-Nintendo games generally!) that you think would be good inspiration, I'd love to hear it.