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[Preece]

Frauki's Adventure

preecedev.tumblr.com

Demo (Playable in browser w/o plugin)

Frauki's Adventure is a melee combat platformer where you explore down to the mysterious center of the world. The whole world is one big map where you unlock shortcuts, discover secrets, and fight tricky baddies. Inspired by Dark Souls and Mega Man X.

Controls:
Arrow Keys - move
Space - Jump
Z - Attack
X - Roll

Gamepads now work!!





My current focus is on three things:

1. Level design. The whole world is one map, skinny and long. You start at the top of the map every time, and the goal is to get to the very bottom. To do so, you have to learn how to navigate the world, it's secrets and quirks and traps. As you go down, you move through "strata", which have different themes and looks to them. My goal right now is to get the first strata done, and then start iterating on it and adding detail and exciting events. I'd say I'm about 80% there.

2. Enemy design. This involves adding new kinds of enemies, and refining the behavior of each one. I like enemy designs where they are complex and smart, but also very coherent. So, a  beginner might be able to brute force a win, but an experienced player can efficiently defeat the enemy without taking any damage.

3. Combat refinement. All the specifics of combat are subtle and will make or break the whole thing! Stuff like, how far does the enemy fly back when you hit them, how long does it take, how quickly can you attack, how much damage you do/take. And so on.

I've been working on the project for about a year in my spare time. I worked with a pixel artist for a while, but he had to move on. You can see his awesome animations in the game. I am looking for another pixel artist to help me bring this game to the finish. I'm not sure if i'm going to sell it or just give it out for free. PM or email me if you're interested.

I'll be posting occasional updates here, along with some footage and images.

Thanks for reading!

[Preece]

Finished a very important update today. The camera now works on a sub-pixel level, giving the game an incredibly smoother feel. Some technical details on the implementation for those interested:

The game itself is scaled in integer increments (1x, 2x, 3x, 4x) in a 16:9 resolution, depending on the screen size. To achieve this, everything was rendered at 1x on an invisible canvas, and then the result was re-rendered to a larger canvas. The problem with this, was that the camera was controlled at the 1x level. So the smallest increment it could move was 1 pixel at 1x, which was 2, 3, or 4 pixels once it got scaled up. This gave a choppy feel at higher scales, because the camera could only move in increments of 2, 3, or 4 pixels.

The solve this, I made the initial hidden 1x canvas the same size as the final scaled canvas would be. If you look at it, you can see an enormous amount of the map. Then I changed the camera in the 1x to simply follow the player directly. Next, the camera sized section of canvas around the player is scaled up and rendered to the visible canvas. The offset of the rendered section then has the camera lerp code applied to it (instead of the actual camera).

The result is that the section being rendered can appear to lerp less than 1 scaled pixel, and you get much smoother movement out of it. Try it out yourself, let me know what you think.

I continue to work on the world and enemy design, and began animating a "combo" attack. The combo has three attacks, each one has a unique value in it. The first attack is the default front attack you already know, the second one will do additional damage, and the third will have additional reach and knockback.

Also, I added a little system where if you "roll" in the air, an energy bubble will come out around you and push back anything near you. It's currently kind of hard to use, but I will keep tweaking it until it feels cool.

Thanks for reading

[Preece]

I've added some new enemies that move the game in a very positive direction. They use swords, so the combat with them is more paced and interesting. You have to find openings in their attacks and time your strikes correctly, while also not leaving yourself open to their attacks. As I design more enemies and refine the underlying systems, I hope to draw out the tactical element of fighting.

It is definitely designed for 1 on 1 encounters. At most there will ever be 2-3 enemies simultaneously, it's not my intention to just swarm the player with opponents, creating a sort of false difficulty. I would like each fight to be a clear and learnable experience. Here is a gif of the combat:

http://i.giphy.com/xTiTnEQzjno6KPyTSM.gif

Try it out and let me know what you think. The link in the first post will let you play in your browser.

[JctWood]

That death animation! I played the demo and it is already huge and incredibly fun. I love how fluid the motion feels while retaining the tightness of a good platformer. Is the game made in HTML5? If so kudos for something so smooth. Look forward to more!

[Preece]

That death animation! I played the demo and it is already huge and incredibly fun. I love how fluid the motion feels while retaining the tightness of a good platformer. Is the game made in HTML5? If so kudos for something so smooth. Look forward to more!

Wow, thank you :D that's super encouraging. The game is made in HTML5 canvas using Phaser. I'm still working to make it play smooth on weaker computers, it can sometime get choppy 

[JctWood]

Do you plan to add some kind of weapon switch? I think it would be nice to have a ranged weapon although that may not fit the world.

[Preece]

Do you plan to add some kind of weapon switch? I think it would be nice to have a ranged weapon although that may not fit the world.

There may be various secondary weapons that you can equip, some ranged stuff among them. But they will likely be Bloodbourne-ish, in that they are not meant to do a lot of damage but to incapacitate enemies, or to boost yourself in some way. Right now if you roll in the air, you can see one of the weapons, which explodes a bubble around you and pushes everything away from you.

[Pixel Noise]

Wow, very cool. This is great for where it's at. I thought that overall, the "energy" balance was a little harsh. I ran out of attack juice pretty quickly it seemed, and it could be hard to recover sometimes. It chops up the action and kind of slows down the pace. Not sure if that's intentional - or if I'm just bad

[SunWuKong]

Played the web demo. Really nice stuff. Good graphics and like the overall feel. Would love to see more. I also kinda wish the demo natively supported a gamepad. I'm not really prone to get another program and fiddle with it to run with a gamepad. This is obviously a nice wish and by no means a "must do" for a web demo. That said - I bet the game would certainly show off amazingly with that.

Keep on keeping on and I'll be tracking!

-Tim

[Preece]

Wow, very cool. This is great for where it's at. I thought that overall, the "energy" balance was a little harsh. I ran out of attack juice pretty quickly it seemed, and it could be hard to recover sometimes. It chops up the action and kind of slows down the pace. Not sure if that's intentional - or if I'm just bad

Thanks  I'm constantly tweaking the energy usage, amount, and replenishment amount. I haven't quite hit on the winning combination yet but I will keep exploring. Thanks for trying it out!

Played the web demo. Really nice stuff. Good graphics and like the overall feel. Would love to see more. I also kinda wish the demo natively supported a gamepad. I'm not really prone to get another program and fiddle with it to run with a gamepad. This is obviously a nice wish and by no means a "must do" for a web demo. That said - I bet the game would certainly show off amazingly with that.

Keep on keeping on and I'll be tracking!

-Tim

Thanks for trying it out!! You're right, I really need to add native gamepad support. I've just been dreading it since I tried last time. So many weird issues 

[Sonoshee]

I saw the webm videos and heck it looks very smooth! Awesome work so far, unfortunately with my crappy computer the demo doesn't run as smoothly as advertised in the videos  Any solutions?
Let me know when you do some performance rework on the game so I can test it smoothly.

[Preece]

I saw the webm videos and heck it looks very smooth! Awesome work so far, unfortunately with my crappy computer the demo doesn't run as smoothly as advertised in the videos  Any solutions?
Let me know when you do some performance rework on the game so I can test it smoothly.

Dang I'm sorry to hear that. It's written in JavaScript so getting good performance can be tricky. Ultimately I plan to release it as an executable bundled with webkit, so that should help some. I am also working on a contribution to PhaserJS that will reduce the memory for the large multilayered tilemaps considerably. May I ask how much memory you're running?

[Preece]

http://i.giphy.com/3oEdv260jGL6V1UmPu.gif

Took some footage of a new enemy I am working on. In the robo-samurai stable, this guy is the weakest and easiest, but he's got a lot of heart <3

Also:
- native gamepad support! If you haven't tried it yet because you didn't want to mess around with joy2key, try it out now! There's even a little icon that shows you if the gamepad is recognized.
- performance improvements. Nothing major but definitely noticeable.
- Effects work. The spread and direction of particles for when you clash swords with an enemy has been improved. The effect is still not perfect, but it's getting there.

[Sonoshee]

May I ask how much memory you're running?

If you mean how much RAM my pc has, here are the specs:
intel core i3 370M 2.40 Ghz
4 gb ram
intel hd graphics

as you can see the integrated graphics make it hard for me to run stuff smoothly, but that also helps in my games since I'm obliged to optimize stuff to work with my current specs.

Anyways, I'm just gonna follow your work here through gifs/webms and pretend there is no demo. Cheers!

[Preece]

Here's a little image showing some of the level design zoomed out. There are three overlapping maps that interconnect at various points. You must navigate between these layers to descend through the world. Think of it like a mini Z-dimension!

In terms of gameplay, it opens up some opportunities to tantalize the player with existing but inaccessible areas. This is kind of hard in a 2D game, because there is no perspective. You can only show them what it actually on the screen. It also allows the map to cross over itself, which is very liberating when designing the level.

[Preece]

Here's a new enemy I've been working on:

http://i.giphy.com/xTiTnunqsr6sOueXok.gif

I've also been building up systems around fighting enemies that have weapons, such as this one. All of your attacks and all of their attacks have a priority rating. If your attack has higher priority, you will break through their attack and hit them. If not, you will clash swords and bounce off each other. More powerful attacks have increasing priority ratings, but they are generally slower as well. This system was inspired by Super Smash Brothers, which I think has potentially the best melee combat ever implemented in a video game.

[ShalottFSG]

Ah, I love this! The fluidity of the gameplay and the sprites look lovely And oh my gosh I'm not even starting about the attacking in this game.. Brilliant! Question, can we get a close up of Frauki's outfit? I'm having trouble figuring it out 

[Preece]

can we get a close up of Frauki's outfit? I'm having trouble figuring it out

Haha yeah it's a little weird. It's meant to be a "Frogsuit". Basically a suped-up bathing suit Frauki is a frog person, from Frogland. She's also wearing special sneakers that let her double jump (and roll jump). There's not really any concept art or anything, but here's a few larger experiments with how she looks!

[ShalottFSG]

Haha sweet! I love it Please post more stuff soon! This is awesome

[ShalottFSG]

Just played the demo, I love the mood of all of it! I'm glad there's gamepad support so I can test that out soon Also, do you need any help with all of it?