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[mokesmoe]

I noticed a couple bugs:
1. You can't use the water blast on platforms.
2. The water form and water blast can't grow flowers. (they could in the old version)

[JasonPickering]

well I was hoping to have another build up soon, but I am having a small bug when the player switches from air to green he is switched to maximum velocity of gravity which although hilarious to see your player rocket to the grand it is a hinderance on gameplay.

and to address some people

RazputinOleander :
thanks for all the comments, I accidently left my debug system in so that is all you found. I am working on the blue movement. the Camera does become jerky and I am not sure why. If anybody has a good camera tracking system for Gamemaker let me know, since I am just using the in window follow.

trabitboy:
are you talking about the green circle that was created? I ahve replaced that with a little better animation. and makes a little more sense.

mokesmoe :
yeah the original plan I had was that the water blast could only be done when you are on a flower platform. I got rid of the water growing flowers, which now that I think about it, it does seem kind of silly. The players base state was green (or Plant mode) and that is the ojnly time you could grow flowers. I am trying to balance everything, but most likely I will add that back in.

I will have an update as soon as I can get that stupid bug fixed. Also I have spent many an hour playing Henry Hatsworth for the DS and it has inspired me to make a much better background then I have now, and I already have Paralax Scrolling working.

[Greg Game Man]

this is really cool, i like it.. but i dont like the colours!

The grass could be a lot greener, and the game could look a lot friendlier.. i grey for blocks, make them slightly blue, or orange or beige..

[sereneworx]

No, the colours are perfect, don't change them.

[JasonPickering]

well the colors will be staying the same sorry.

I took a small break after hitting several snags and I am coming back to this bright eyed. still working on the game and engine. I am almost done with all the code and effects for the main character. then I think I may be moving on to enemies, or I may start creating a few levels since the first levels, will not have any enemies. not sure. I am aiming for 15-20 levels. I am mainly looking at this to be like the game JED, made by Mrpiglet. the game can be played through in about 20-30 minutes. and I will try and add a time attack mode after the game is initially beaten. the next thing is I need ideas for unlocks. I already figure extra levels, but does anyone else have any ideas?

[JasonPickering]

well well well.

so here is how it is going. I recently read through the post about not finishing projects and realized that this project was snowballing. so I went through and distilled it down to the pure idea I wanted. So here is basically the final idea of the game.

your a little green blob of plant life. as you walk on dead grass it changed from live to dead. the game is essential a game where you must travel upwards platforming and dodging enemies. you are started at the bottom of the tower with 50 guys. As you climb, you can "detonate" at any time. the effect of this is it kills you and any bad guys that might get hit. so if there is a particularly tough enemy it may be better to just detonate and not have to deal with it. also there are check points along the way sadly you need to detonate to activate them. so the object becomes scaling the tower to reach the top, but also managing your guys. you can conserve a life by not activating this checkpoint, but now if you do die your going to spawn much further down. there are doors blockign your way and regrowing all the grass in the area deactivates them and allows you passage. and finally the player would get different unlocks depending on how many many guys were used to scale each individual tower.

I had the entire engine completed, and was only left with level desing and creating any enemies that popped into my head.

AND THEN IT HAPPENED

I have recently suffered a massive computer loss, and would have to redo all the coding and most of the animations I had created. I have been trying to run data recovery, and I am hoping after I get access to them I can salvage my work, but I am weighing my options none the less. does this game sound fun, like something you would want to play? Should I continue with it and start rebuilding the engine? 

[Iamthejuggler]

Oh man that sucks. I'm so sorry for you, goddamn computers. 

I'd definitely consider starting again, as the demos were really fun to play, and looked lovely. I'm not really sure about the travelling up the tower mechanism though. What's the point of turning the dead grass into live grass if the aim is just to get higher?

[JasonPickering]

well originally the plan was to have a level where you needed to bring all the life back and then you moved onto the next level. I was playing Bubble Bobble and realized that they kill all the monsters, sent to next level, kill all the monsters, next level. some levels you spend more time waiting to go to the next level then killing the monsters. so I took that idea of small rooms, and cut out the leveling by stacking the levels on top of each other. so by bringin life to this large area it opens the door for the next area. I also liked the idea because it allows the problem of being spawned back at the bottom and the player will have to climb all the way back up. this is of course if they dont feel like taking advantage of the checkpoints.

[shrimp]

Maaan... sorry to hear about the disaster. I was just about to download and have a go, but found out the mediafire link seems to point to an empty folder. Looks really nice though.

I guess there's no way to get a distributed build back off someone who downloaded it and at least recover the assets...? Can you even do that with GM? I have no idea...

[JasonPickering]

its possible, but i kept rather exstensive notes, so i have a lot of my code, I jsut need to slap it all back together.

[JasonPickering]

well heres an update:

I have started from the begining. I am using Chevy Ray's platformer engine. I have the player moving around and all that at correct speed and jump power. I have also started re-doing all the art. I have a lot of the low-spec art saved so we are good to go there.

I figured as long as everything had been destroyed and I was starting from the begining I would try something a little different. with the organic and plant feeling the chunky pixels always felt odd. I am using the following picture as a inspiration.



I have reanimated the main character doubling his frame count. I am using warm yellows for highlights and cool purples for shadows, much like on the above shy guys. I also have some thin outlines, and giving it a painterly brush feel. I am using alpha maps now. so its definetly looking much better. and also my resolution has gone from 320 x 240 to 1024 x 768

I am hoping to have a demo up this weekend, but we will see. by then i should be able to decide if i should keep the new art or go back to the low spec.

the guy does lots of stuff like this. his site is right here.
http://orioto.deviantart.com/gallery/#Videogame-Remakes

[AaronAardvark]

I'd love to see a work in progress screenshot.  I've been thinking about a similar art style, but I don't know how it'd look in practice.

[Iamthejuggler]

Good to hear you are moving forwards, and it sounds like you've chosen a good approach to redeveloping the idea. That picture is awesome, I love that guy's art.

Looking forward to watching the new progress 

[ChevyRay]

Good luck with this

If you need any tech support or anything with the engine, etc. my PM box is open all the time. The engine you're using is already a bit outdated, but it works fine and should work nicely for this type of game (not large amounts of enemies or physics objects on screen, etc).

Lookin' forward to the new demo!

[JasonPickering]

well here is what I have so far. the main character sprite will most likely stay the same.



http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=b30dd42f306864f690a82c7bb0fad7ade04e75f6e8ebb871

arrows move. A jumps. S does the character explosion. 2 places the original Yoshi inspiration piece in the background just to see how the styles look.

probably the only art I will definitely keep is the main character. everything else is still up in the air. I like the stones and the cracked ones especially but I don't want the art to get to repetitive. I still have to finish the animation system on the main character, and he needs an outline on his bottom.

I don't know about the grass I think it needs to have an outline in it. still cant decide if I should go this route or go back to the pixel art.

[pgil]

Just tried the demo. I really like the new look... DI was skeptical when you said you were getting rid of the pixel art, but this is definitely the way to go. With a little more variety in the grass tiles (maybe some wildflowers popping up randomly) and a nice painted background it would be perfect.

[Inanimate]

I like the multiple rock tiles. It makes it look more varied. I think a few more varieties of every tile would look interesting.

[JasonPickering]

well thanks for the feedback guys. I think after all this though I will be going back to the original pixel art style. creating the art for the new painted look, has been very slow going, and in a matter of two days I was able to get all the pixel art made, and the entire engine coded to where I was before the crash. so I will be goign back to that. I have definetly expanded some things though, I have tripled the orginal amount of tiles to give that varied feeling that the painted art did. Right now I have to finish the enemeis I have, and I have been getting help from chevy ray on building a Level Loading system.

[Iamthejuggler]

Wow, sounds like a pretty productive two days. I do like the new art style, but then i liked the old style too so if the pixel style is that much faster then you made the right decision. Can't wait to see how the enemies affect the gameplay.

 

[mokesmoe]

Yeah, I personally liked the pixel style better too.
And what happened to all the elements and form changing?