next »

[Mothil]

Today I've animated the death menu screen, as well as added a death image.
By death image I mean a sprite showing Akiro dying to whatever mob hit him. I was hoping it would add some personality. Of course, those are placeholder images.



Oh, and I almost forgot - Updated playable. https://mothil93.github.io/akirothesquid/

Edit: forgot to hook up the scoreboard though... My bad. 

[JobLeonard]

Love it! Especially how it's just BAM! INSTADEATH GAME OVER SCREEN IN THE FACE!

I mean it was always instant death, but now it has much more impact.

[Mothil]

yeeaaahh! 

[Mothil]

It's a bit embarrassing to upload this, but it shows that I too can learn programming given time.
They should be flipped though - The right one is the previous pufferfish script, which had a bug that sometimes evolved the puffers just as they spawned. This normally only happened on my android, no idea why.

The left one is my new puffer script, which does exactly the same thing. It took me about an hour to do this, but I'm happy I managed to complete it. It's so much easier to read now, I love it.

[JobLeonard]

Ah, that point where the logic clicks in your head and the code becomes so much cleaner. Don't worry, that's normal and will stay that way

[Mothil]

The pufferfish is almost exactly as I envisioned it now. There's just one final tweak; they should rotate based on the position of the player, to further enhance the feeling of "aaaah, I really want to get that player, but I'm floating away!"



I don't know if this is true, but I feel like the pufferfish is a better designed enemy than the rest. I guess some balance is needed by having a bit more static enemies (jellyfish/boulders) else everything is going to just surround the player. It feels like I should rethink the swordfish, so I guess there's going to be a lot of sketching today.

[jctwood]

Really lovely to see how you have improved in terms of programming, thank you for sharing! Also the new game over screen is adorable!

[Mothil]

Thank you so much jctwood. 

[Mothil]

I think I just got a fantastic enemy idea which will replace the swordfish. I'm really excited to try implement it. If all goes well, let's see if we can get a playable version with that enemy later today.

[PetterBergmar]

This is starting to look cool! I like the way he moves. If you have questions about c# and unity I might have answers. Good luck!

[Mothil]

Hey Petter, thank you so much! I frequently get stuck in programming, so I'll hit you up if I do end up not having the slightest idea what to do. 

And when it comes to the enemy I hinted at...
it's in the game!

Behold, the resurrection of the turtle!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=St-m7vdbR64&feature=youtu.be


I am so glad I got this idea, it really feels like it fits into the enemy pool. Basically, the way the turtle moves is:
It first spawns on either side, and it swims until it can see Akiro, then it kind of "lurks" for two seconds, then swims at max speed toward the player.

The fine tuning is going to be, obviously the art, and make it so the turtle goes into its shell when swimming towards the player. Maybe also shoot bubbles on the way. And I'd like to experiment with sending the turtle in curls... ehm. It's easier to show what I mean with a drawing.

[Mothil]

Mhh, I'm really tired but this was way too fun. My code is a mess, but the turtles are so silly now.

[JobLeonard]

You're starting to really juice up the game, awesome!

[Mothil]

Just throwing out a couple jellyfish design ideas. Well, the second one isn't a jellyfish, but rather a manta ray of some sort. I remember watching some aquarium videos on youtube about a year ago, and I really loved the way they swim up on the glass. Not sure which one I will go for, or maybe I will go for both and just randomize between them.

I'm thinking that either could 'replace' the current placeholder jellyfish art. I'm basically just trying to find out what creature best fits a neutral enemy that swims in one direction. I should probably switch out the boulders as well for an actual creature, but I'm not sure.

[JobLeonard]

It all depends on how they're animated, tbh

[Mothil]

My brother and a friend of mine playtested the game yesterday. I believe they both got a score close to 10. My brother thought that they spawned way too fast, and everything sort of came crushing down, and I do see that. My friend did sort of agree to that, but he thinks it worked. It opened my eyes to something I should have done a long time ago, especially considering the game is pretty casual - easing in the spawn rate.

Here's what I have in mind:
0 points - only the tutorial shrimp is on screen

1 point (collected tutorial shrimp): Very slow spawn rate. For example puffers at 4/5 seconds, boulders and jellies at 2/3 etcetera.

5 points: "medium" difficulty, sort of. Introduction of the turtle, as well as slightly faster spawn rates.

10 points: "hard" difficulty, this is the intensity for the rest of the game, sort of like it is now.

I've already implemented it. I've been denying it being a problem cause I didn't think I could do it, but it took me 5 minutes. I mean, it's basically just 15 lines of code. I know so little about programming, but this goes to show that I know something at least.

[jctwood]

I like the idea of the ramping difficulty although a hard mode could work well where you essentially start with 10 points.

[Mothil]

Hey jctwood. Right now it's basically hard mode when the player reaches 10 points. It seems to work pretty nice, but I'll have to playtest more to see for sure.

Right now I'm working on making the shrimp more juicy:

[Mothil]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFNW_ujowSY&feature=youtu.be

I've added some sort of combo points thing. The sound effect goes lighter for each shrimp if you manage to keep the combo up, and if you get to 5, you get +3 score as well.

[Mothil]

What? Jellyfish is evolving. Art upgrade!
I think it's decent, but I'd like for the stuff under to move slightly more.