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[Ishi]

Thanks Plastiware!!

Ugh... I don't know if I'm being too picky... But for the crate drop shadow, I would start it as a dot, but then make it more and more square as the  :wizard:crate gets closer to the ground. That is, unless this is a generic shadow used for a bunch of things, then nevermind me!

I mistook it for an opening hole, so maybe pitch-blackness is confusing too.

misreading it shouldn't really happen more than once though, and I'm sure with accompanying sound effect it'd be hard to see it as anything but a shadow

I enjoy getting feedback over these minor things It always ends up making the game better in a small way.



I made the shadow a little more square towards the end, but I like it having some curve to it. And made it dark blue rather than black which I think does read better and fits in with the world map's art style better anyway - black is only supposed to be used to outline important things.

Sound effects will certainly help too when I eventually get around to them!

Oh also I added a small bounce when the crate hits the floor.

World Map spending UI

I've been unlucky with getting sick recently, so haven't been as productive as I'd like. But feeling better this weekend so spent some time on polishing various world map features. Some of it is secret! But here's one I can show.

As I've mentioned before, Leilani can buy powerups from these plants on the map.



I made the positioning of the bubble smarter so it doesn't overlap the edge of the screen or the other UI:



And then made it clearer what the player's actually buying, as I had feedback from playtesting that it wasn't very obvious.



And all of the above in animated form:

[JobLeonard]

And made it dark blue rather than black which I think does read better

Somebody knows his impressionism!

Anyway, the new shadow works a lot better, yes.

The bounce is more of a "depends on what you're goind for" deal - it's playful, but makes the crate feel light and more empty - the other one felt like a solid THUD! suggesting it was full and heavy. Guess it all dependson what material feeling you want the crate to have. But if they are combat levels, maybe a heavy solid feeling fits better (and the bouncy would be more fitting for like.. acrobatic platforming challenges?)

[PixelDough]

The bounce is more of a "depends on what you're goind for" deal - it's playful, but makes the crate feel light and more empty - the other one felt like a solid THUD! suggesting it was full and heavy. Guess it all dependson what material feeling you want the crate to have. But if they are combat levels, maybe a heavy solid feeling fits better (and the bouncy would be more fitting for like.. acrobatic platforming challenges?)

Maybe if you replace the bounce with a bigger screenshake, that way it gets the same sorta feel, but give it more of a thud look!   I like the boucnce, but some people might not

[EJlol]

For me it's not clear the first time when I saw that screenshot that you were going to buy a powerup. Maybe this work ingame better than with just a screenshot as you are actually collecting the shells then, and therefore recognize immediatly what they mean (currency). In the screenshot you are lacking this kind of context. If you want to improve it though, you could add an arrow or something. But like I said I'm not sure whether this is really neccessary ingame, as you would have had more context then.

[LyricalReverie]

The overworld is so pretty! As with everything you have showed of your game so far.

[beetleking22]

This is going to be my Super mario bros 4 <3

[dyarosla]

This may be an unpopular opinion.. especially as you’re pretty far into making the overworld levelmap- but I could imagine seeing Leila maybe benefitting from having hubworlds in 2D platforming style over the classic super mario overworld level map. Level maps are just so... dated for this genre?

Loving the rest of the game though

[Forstride]

This may be an unpopular opinion.. especially as you’re pretty far into making the overworld levelmap- but I could imagine seeing Leila maybe benefitting from having hubworlds in 2D platforming style over the classic super mario overworld level map. Level maps are just so... dated for this genre?

Loving the rest of the game though

Definitely disagree with this.  I feel like a hub world with the same platforming style as the actual levels would really cheapen the feel of the game.  Then again, I REALLY love overworld maps, especially in more classic-styled platformer games like this, so maybe that's just me.

[Josh Bossie]

This may be an unpopular opinion.. especially as you’re pretty far into making the overworld levelmap- but I could imagine seeing Leila maybe benefitting from having hubworlds in 2D platforming style over the classic super mario overworld level map. Level maps are just so... dated for this genre?

Loving the rest of the game though

I like the idea of hub worlds, but almost never the execution. Both hubs and overworld maps are just gameplay versions of a level select menu, but hub worlds are far easier to get wrong as you run the risk of them feeling boring or convoluted.

I'd argue SM64 is the pinnacle of hub worlds, but even that series had a gradual decline before they just got rid of them entirely

[Ishi]

And made it dark blue rather than black which I think does read better

Somebody knows his impressionism!

Anyway, the new shadow works a lot better, yes.

The bounce is more of a "depends on what you're goind for" deal - it's playful, but makes the crate feel light and more empty - the other one felt like a solid THUD! suggesting it was full and heavy. Guess it all dependson what material feeling you want the crate to have. But if they are combat levels, maybe a heavy solid feeling fits better (and the bouncy would be more fitting for like.. acrobatic platforming challenges?)

I removed the bounce going back to it, you're right, it did lose some of the impact. Plus when crates fall from the sky during gameplay, they don't bounce either.

For me it's not clear the first time when I saw that screenshot that you were going to buy a powerup. Maybe this work ingame better than with just a screenshot as you are actually collecting the shells then, and therefore recognize immediatly what they mean (currency). In the screenshot you are lacking this kind of context. If you want to improve it though, you could add an arrow or something. But like I said I'm not sure whether this is really neccessary ingame, as you would have had more context then.

Thanks for the feedback, when I get round to more playtesting with more of the world map available, I'll see how people find it.

This may be an unpopular opinion.. especially as you’re pretty far into making the overworld levelmap- but I could imagine seeing Leila maybe benefitting from having hubworlds in 2D platforming style over the classic super mario overworld level map. Level maps are just so... dated for this genre?

Loving the rest of the game though

The map is a really important part of the game for me, for various reasons:

• It breaks up the platforming gameplay a little so should help to stop the player feeling fatigued with rolling and jumping. I don't have any levels containing drastically different mechanics (e.g. underwater levels) to break up the core gameplay, so if I can encourage the player to wander around the map for a few moments instead, I think that's good.
• The goal of the game is to reclaim the island, and I think an overworld map is the best way to display that. It gives a sense of the geography of the island, and more of a feeling of journeying across it from level to level, that I don't think a hub world would convey.
• It's also great for nostalgia factor. It seems that the world map is a big thing that people fondly remember about their favourite games, so I want to create one full of secrets and details that people can enjoy and remember.

It's good for me to spend time considering why I wanted to add a certain feature to the game in the first place, it helps to keep me focused on my personal goals for the game. So thanks for your comment If you have any favourite platformers that had 2D hub worlds I'd be interested to know. All I can really think of is Kirby's Adventure.

[Schoq]

The hub world in Monster World IV is great

[dyarosla]

It's good for me to spend time considering why I wanted to add a certain feature to the game in the first place, it helps to keep me focused on my personal goals for the game. So thanks for your comment If you have any favourite platformers that had 2D hub worlds I'd be interested to know. All I can really think of is Kirby's Adventure.

NP. Of course I realize that lots of people enjoy an overworld screen for various reasons (many nostalgia, some utility to escape platforming for a bit). From personal experience the amount of development you end up putting into a completely different layout/pathfinding/graphics/etc for overworld just takes time away from what you could be focusing on: putting together elements that you already have together into a great hub world.

Hub worlds are pretty uncommon in 2D games I admit but I definitely know I've enjoyed 3D hub worlds tremendously over menu-like navigation. A 2D hub world would certainly make your game even more unique

[Louard]

Your continuing to do great work on the overworld, man. And I think it's the right way to go, especially for a 2D game. I don't think a 2D platform style game is a good fit for a hub style design and, besides, if you are going mostly linear with a bit of branching for your progression, I think the hub just becomes a level select menu you can get lost in.

[Ishi]

Factories

I finally got around to adding factories to the world map this week. They are this game's end-of-world boss levels.



Complete with satisfying destruction sequence! I couldn't decide whether to show this or not, click here to see it if you like.

I've also added a small idle animation for Leilani on the world map, where she looks left and right, which can be seen in the gifs above. It's not very elaborate but I think just adding a little bit of movement makes helps to make her feel less static (previously her sprite would have zero animation if you didn't move her around).

There's a week of March remaining, and only one major code feature left that I'd like to work on for the world map, which is some kind of cutscene support. This is mainly required for the start of the game, where some brief animations / camera pans will demonstrate the island being gradually invaded. After the first few levels, the player will just be left alone to progress through the game without cutscenes.

[Forstride]

Looks great, although I feel like the smoke billows from the factory kind of take away from the beauty of the island, especially since the animation is kind of fast and there are 4 of them.  Might be better if the smoke was only there after the level opened up or something (Although that might already be the case for all I know).

[JobLeonard]

I think the destruction needs more "Vlambeer"

[qMopey]

Hey Ishi (and anyone else reading  ), your posts about Tiled over the years have inspired me to try out Tiled as my editor of choice (especially this post). Thanks for taking the time to describe your use cases! It helped a lot for me to get out a good implementation of a Tiled json map loader in a single-file-header library implementation. I doubt you would want to swap out your already-working EasyXML loader for something else, but I at least thought you'd find this interesting: tinytiled.h. And a full example/demo (just loads and prints entire map contents).

The idea is to parse the json input into a bunch of plain-old-data C structs. The user can then read fields directly from the structs.

Example of loading map from memory, grabbing some contents, and then freeing it:

Code:

tinytiled_map_t* m = tinytiled_load_map_from_file("map.json", 0);

// read from structs directly
int w = m->w;
int h = m->h;

// loop over layers
tinytiled_layer_t* layer = map->layers;
while (layer)
{
	int* data = layer->data;
	int data_count = layer->data_count;

	// do something with the tile data
	UserFunction_HandleTiles(data, data_count);

	layer = layer->next;
}

// finally free map from RAM
tinytiled_free_map(m);

[Ishi]

Looks great, although I feel like the smoke billows from the factory kind of take away from the beauty of the island, especially since the animation is kind of fast and there are 4 of them.  Might be better if the smoke was only there after the level opened up or something (Although that might already be the case for all I know).

The factory is meant to be a bit ugly, it gives good incentive to destroy it! But yeah the smoke is too fast, thanks.

I think the destruction needs more "Vlambeer"

The style of the game is intentionally nowhere near as intense as that Vlambeer video about juice. But, yeah maybe a little more punch in the factory destruction effects would be good.

Hey Ishi (and anyone else reading  ), your posts about Tiled over the years have inspired me to try out Tiled as my editor of choice (especially this post). Thanks for taking the time to describe your use cases! It helped a lot for me to get out a good implementation of a Tiled json map loader in a single-file-header library implementation. I doubt you would want to swap out your already-working EasyXML loader for something else, but I at least thought you'd find this interesting: tinytiled.h. And a full example/demo (just loads and prints entire map contents).

That's great, I'm glad I could be of inspiration! I hope you get a lot of use out of your system. It's a great time to be a Tiled user as it seems to be getting lots of improvements recently. I see you're supporting the new Point object type, I recently added support for that too, and am using it to place the factories and some other world map objects.

[Forstride]

The factory is meant to be a bit ugly, it gives good incentive to destroy it! But yeah the smoke is too fast, thanks.

Good point!  Maybe have the factory turn into something more natural when it's destroyed too, or have it covered in vines and flowers or something

[Josh Bossie]

Yeah, seconding that. Reclaimed by nature, baby!