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TIGSource ForumsCommunityDevLogsLeilani's Island
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rj
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« Reply #20 on: February 23, 2015, 07:56:46 PM »

i recommend katamari damacy, sonic cd and sonic 3, ducktales remastered, sonic rush, vib ribbon, super monkey ball: banana blitz, spelunky (original) and cave story! and way more, but damn

also actually the ost i put together for omegalodon (link is in my signature) might be up your alley here too, esp "scientific method"
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« Reply #21 on: February 23, 2015, 08:25:03 PM »

Kirby's Dreamland 3 might be another good music reference point for you.
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jamesprimate
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« Reply #22 on: February 23, 2015, 10:46:26 PM »

ahh this is so nice!
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rj
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« Reply #23 on: February 24, 2015, 07:02:47 AM »

Kirby's Dreamland 3 might be another good music reference point for you.

kirby in general! also paper mario the thousand year door. and rayman origins and legends, and advenure time: hey ice king why'd you steal our garbage
i should just compile an actual list

within a deep forest is another one. more mellow,
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« Reply #24 on: February 24, 2015, 09:48:38 AM »

ohhhh im definitely feeling the warioland in this. nice graphics too. keep it up!




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« Reply #25 on: February 24, 2015, 11:12:50 AM »

I love how she loses the flower in her hair when she shrinks. I take it the power up to make her grow was the same flower? Awesome touch there! Smiley

I can't wait to give this a whirl.
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Ishi
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« Reply #26 on: February 24, 2015, 01:12:31 PM »

Thanks for the music replies! I'm familiar with a lot of these games but will give the soundtracks a good listen and pick out some favourites. (Angel Island from Sonic 3 is probably a shoe-in).

I love how she loses the flower in her hair when she shrinks. I take it the power up to make her grow was the same flower? Awesome touch there! Smiley

Yeah it's the flower powerup that goes in her hair. Leilani means "heavenly flower" so it's quite fitting.

I've been working on the game at CB2 Indies tonight. Fire Leilani has had a recolour - she's inspired by Tahitian dancers. I think it suits Leilani for her additional powers to be based on forces of nature. The new mechanics for the fire power are looking promising so will continue working on them through the week.

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« Reply #27 on: February 28, 2015, 01:01:35 PM »

Time for the weekly update!

As I mentioned before, this week the main focus has been on..

Fire Leilani



This is currently the only level-3 powerup in the game (Tiny -> Normal -> Fire). I'm aiming to add another level-3 powerup alongside this to provide some player choice and variety, but I haven't started developing that yet.

A fire powerup seemed like a nice fit for the game due to the idea of a fireball working quite nicely as an extension of the rolling mechanic. Elemental themes like fire and water also naturally fit into the game world.

You trigger the fireball by hitting the Roll button in mid-air. Leilani shoots diagonally downwards for as long as you hold roll, or until she hits the floor. This is the only way for Leilani to destroy blocks from above. It also lets her destroy tons of blocks without rebounding off them like she normally would - this bit is especially satisfying. Cheesy

The original version of Fire Leilani's ability that I implemented a long time ago was more similar to the Fire Shield in Sonic 3 or the Propeller Dagger in Shovel Knight - a gravity-defying horizontal blast through the air. (This 9MB gif from November has some footage of it for those who are interested).

I was never happy with this version of the ability, for various reasons. A few simple changes (from horizontal to diagonal movement, mainly) have fixed all of the issues I had!

  • It was fiddly to aim at things. Trying to hit enemies or blocks with the fireball was a pain because you had to be in a direct horizontal line with the target, and hit the button at the right time.

    Aiming diagonally is a lot more forgiving, because you can trigger the fireball at the top of a jump, when Leilani is moving slowly, rather than when she's falling quickly.
     
  • It was a little unpredictable. The horizontal version of the fireball automatically ran out after a certain period of time, and it was unclear to the player exactly when it would run out.

    I could have helped with this by showing some on-screen feedback to indicate the amount of fireball left, but I still think it would have been awkward. Instead, now the movement is downwards I can just let the player use the fireball for as long as they want, as they'll hit the ground or fall off the screen eventually.
     
  • It was way too exploitable in terms of movement. The horizontal fireball in conjunction with Leilani's wall-jump ability let the player do some crazy moves. There's nothing wrong with that as such, but it was too hard (due to the fiddly aiming problem) to do these stunts reliably. In fact, the only reliable stunt was to infinitely fireball->wall-jump->fireball->wall-jump to climb a high wall.

    One option to prevent this was to place artifical limits on when Leilani can wall jump, or when she can use the fireball. An example of this is Tanooki Mario in Super Mario 3D Land. If you wall jump, then hover back towards the wall, Mario's unable to wall jump again until he floats down below the height that he previously wall jumped. I'm not too keen on artificial limits like this.

    The new version of the fireball doesn't allow Leilani to wall jump, because she now ricochets off the wall instead (as seen in the animation above). It's less exploitable, which can be taken to mean it's less deep, but it's more fun to use for more players.
     
  • It got in the way of the normal flow of play. This problem arose when the player wanted to immediately begin rolling at the end of a jump. The natural way to do this is to begin holding the roll button *before* the end of the jump. Unfortunately, if you had the Fire powerup, this would result in Leilani blasting horizontally through the air, which could often result in missing a platform and falling straight down a gap.

    I haven't fully addressed this issue yet, but it is a lot better, thanks to the diagonal fireball movement: the chances are that after triggering the fireball close to the ground, you will still land in roughly the right place.

Phew. Hopefully that's an interesting look at how this part of the game has developed.

Finally a quick update to how Fire Leilani looks - the new version is on the right.


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Rebusmind
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« Reply #28 on: March 01, 2015, 02:22:58 AM »

It looks awesome and it's nice to see how much thought you put into it (something that is often missing in my devlog). Thanks for the insight.

One thing about the animation: I like how bouncy it looks, but the effect could be a bit more fire-like when the fireball hits the wall. Maybe just add fire particles or show the wildness of fire through the animation a bit more.
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« Reply #29 on: March 01, 2015, 05:32:03 AM »

One thing about the animation: I like how bouncy it looks, but the effect could be a bit more fire-like when the fireball hits the wall. Maybe just add fire particles or show the wildness of fire through the animation a bit more.

Yeah it's definitely in need of some effects work. I want to add something for the brief charge-up moment at the beginning (plus the animation on Leilani is a total mess there), and I want a nice bright flash / shockwave thing when hitting the walls and floor. Will aim to get that done alongside whatever else I work on this week (haven't completely decided yet). Thanks Smiley
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« Reply #30 on: March 01, 2015, 09:53:34 AM »

Since this new "level-3 powerup" is active and destructive, maybe the other one could be the opposite: passive and gentle. Like Pollen or Cloud Leilani, letting you drift through blocks you would normally destroy, or narcotize enemies you would normally kill. Just an idea, I dunno if that would fit your game.
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« Reply #31 on: March 01, 2015, 11:58:05 AM »

god this game is so well made I can stare at these gifs ALL DAY

I love how you showed all the important mechanics of the game so tidily in the first gif. It's also great that you're being tasteful with the screen shake. You have some really good ideas going on here like the entire rows of coin blocks that can be hit by the momentum of a single hit traveling through them. I get the feeling that your approach was "Mario is good, how do I make it better".

The way mechanics tie together (the charging boar hitting the block, rolling into enemies to make them start rolling, the aforementioned activation of entire rows of coin blocks) is really intuitive and fantastically done- it makes the game feel so alive. The instant of friction upon hitting a wall and rebounding with the fireball is powerful and perfect. Everything about this game is so well conceived and executed that it blows my mind.

There's so many perfect little touches that most people will never notice. But they'll definitely feel them and think, "wow, this game is good".
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« Reply #32 on: March 01, 2015, 01:06:50 PM »

Nothing much to add except that I really like how it looks, and I'll be keeping my eye on this!
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« Reply #33 on: March 01, 2015, 03:37:15 PM »

I like this, so I'm gonna watch this.
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« Reply #34 on: March 01, 2015, 03:44:22 PM »

Love the bright, rich colors. The controls look nice and fluid too.
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Ishi
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« Reply #35 on: March 03, 2015, 12:09:30 PM »

The way mechanics tie together (the charging boar hitting the block, rolling into enemies to make them start rolling, the aforementioned activation of entire rows of coin blocks) is really intuitive and fantastically done- it makes the game feel so alive. The instant of friction upon hitting a wall and rebounding with the fireball is powerful and perfect. Everything about this game is so well conceived and executed that it blows my mind.

Thank you, you described a lot of the things I'm aiming for in the game so that means a lot to me! Hoping to really carry that interactivity into every aspect of the game.

Since this new "level-3 powerup" is active and destructive, maybe the other one could be the opposite: passive and gentle. Like Pollen or Cloud Leilani, letting you drift through blocks you would normally destroy, or narcotize enemies you would normally kill. Just an idea, I dunno if that would fit your game.

A second powerup should definitely contrast with the fire one, I agree. I don't think anything too passive would suit Leilani, but something traversal-based rather than destruction-based would probably work. I've mainly been trying to think along the lines of a water powerup, which would fit opposite the fire one nicely, though I'm not sure what it would involve - maybe some kind of bubble-based double jump. Or it could be a temporary bubble shield that has an effect like blocking projectiles, making her bouncy, making her lighter, that kind of thing.

The pollen one is an interesting and different idea, and reminds me of a powerup idea I had way back at the start of the project - Leilani would go inside a kind of kiwi fruit skin and she would be able to roll up walls and along ceilings. It would probably be too game-breakingly powerful and too fiddly to use during play, but some toned-down version (like maybe you can roll up walls a short distance after rolling into them) could work.
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« Reply #36 on: March 07, 2015, 10:57:28 AM »

Hi everyone!

Progress this week has been a little slower than usual due to me being ill for a few days, but I still got some stuff done! I've taken a break from gameplay and focused on the title screen / frontend. I enjoy polishing up these areas of the game throughout development so I'm not left with a ton of UI work by the end. I feel like it helps me define the overall feel of the game at an earlier stage too.

I've added selectable menu items to my UI system and started building the File Select screen, although there's nothing worth showing yet.

I also revamped my font system a little to allow me to include custom characters in fonts. Previously the system only supported ascii characters. So now the string "Press $xboxA;" will display the button image:



And if you don't have a 360 pad connected it'll show "Press any key" instead. I haven't looked into support for standard joypads yet but it's on my list, along with configurable controls.

Tubes

I showed these briefly in last week's update. The tubes are sort of half-way between Mario's pipes (they take you to a different place) and DK's barrels (they fire you out!). I haven't totally finalised how they will be used in the game and how they'll feel yet, but the basic functionality is there.

They can only be entered by rolling into them from the side - so vertical tubes act as a one-way gate. I can use them to provide simple puzzles or to make small areas of gameplay a little more interesting. Maybe they can dispense enemies or items. They also work as exit points to move from one section of the level to another.

Of course, enemies can be rolled into them too..

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blekdar
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« Reply #37 on: March 07, 2015, 11:44:46 AM »

Loving everything about this project. Simply fantastic.

On a note: I don't really think you need to worry too much about button overlays for other gamepads. As far as I know, most people use Xbox 360 controllers on their PC, and those that don't have a controller with the same button layout. All games I've played on PC either use keyboard overlay or xbox, so I'd say you're safe with either one of those.

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« Reply #38 on: March 07, 2015, 12:46:34 PM »

Hey, this looks neat--also, you should have a lava/volcano level please. Okay, thank you. That is all.
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« Reply #39 on: March 08, 2015, 08:38:43 AM »

The tube mechanic looks really cool, but I find it a little strange that the enemy keeps rolling after hitting the block. I think it would be more satisfying if it would be 'defeated' after that, bouncing off the screen.
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