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[Threepwood]

this animation is perfect, great job!  I really like what you did with the floating eyes 

[Louard]

Sorry about skipping the update last week. I ended up spending most of it working on a wedding card for my cousin who's getting married this weekend.

Anywho!

More boss stuff! Got all the animations done (as far as I can tell) and started hooking things up in Unity. I've got the state machine all up and running and I got kind of carried away hooking up effects and screen shakes and stuff. Here's a before and after of the intro sequence:



So, as you can see, I have also been putting SOME work into setting up functionality such as for the intro sequence: locking out player control, switching camera view etc.

I've also written a simple little averaging script which makes a transform stay between two other transforms (with a weighting value). I'm using this as a target for the camera in order to frame both Suzy and the boss dynamically. You can see it in action during this bite attack:



So, even though Suzy isn't moving you can see the camera following the motion of the boss' head while also keeping Suzy in view.

The next couple weeks are likely going to be spent making the boss actually functional and interactive. Kind of important!

OH! I've also posted a new "Lessons from Suzy" blog post. This one is on level variety.
http://louardongames.blogspot.com/2015/10/lessons-from-suzy-cube-level-variety.html

Until next time!

[Louard]

And the boss is.. like 99% done. I just need to polish up some stuff like effects, audio and things.

 I've spent the week adding functionality to the boss like making it so Suzy can damage it and it can die when it runs out of hit points. With that done, I moved on to building a big variety of actions the boss can perform, like spitting fireballs at you or causing things to happen, like lava columns to shoot up from below. You know, boss stuff! The idea is that each boss in the game will only perform a handful of these possible actions, with every encounter involving a different mix to keep things fresh.

The boss was interactive but totally passive all week. I could set off the attacks using debug buttons but it wasn't a real boss fight until this morning when I wrote up the system that drives the boss. It looks something like this:



If you want to know more about the inner workings of the boss, you can check out my full blog post about it here: http://louardongames.blogspot.com/2015/10/suzy-cube-update-friday-octobre-9-2015.html

The system drives a number of different actions ranging from idling to a raging lava tsunami of doom!! You can check out some of this stuff in action below...



Next week's update probably won't be as exciting as I'll just be doing some polish stuff and taking some time to refactor some scripts that need refactoring.

See you then!

PS: Yes.. that last GIF shows the boss with a couple of band aids on his head. I added these this morning to make it obvious where he's vulnerable.

[Quicksand-T]

The boss design is definitely coming along nicely, and is much improved over that older one.

What are those hat power-ups, just place-holders?

[Louard]

The boss design is definitely coming along nicely, and is much improved over that older one.

What are those hat power-ups, just place-holders?

Placeholders? No, those are the two power-ups you can get: A double jump hat and a ground pound hat.

[Quicksand-T]

Oh, I see. I just meant cuz I hadn't seen you mention what the powerups would be.

[FK in the Coffee]

Stunning work! Suzy looks like she feels incredible to control. This is looking really polished so far; you should be proud!

[Mr Speaker]

He he... Suzy Cube. Great name.

[thomasmahler]

This is extremely effin awesome so far. Keep it up!

Also: Lose the ears. Keep it simple.

[ProgramGamer]

Also: Lose the ears. Keep it simple.

I was told that they were meant to be buns.

[FK in the Coffee]

Also: Lose the ears. Keep it simple.

I was told that they were meant to be buns.

Yeah, the look like buns to me tbh

[thomasmahler]

Also: Lose the ears. Keep it simple.

I was told that they were meant to be buns.

They're cubes. They could be anything. They're not really adding anything, so I'd remove em.

[ProgramGamer]

Well, if anything they help identify the gender of the playable character. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[oahda]

Because identifying female characters by putting buns or bows on them and otherwise assuming male by default isn't a tired trope or a hurtful mindset at all.

But I haven't gotten that impression from OP and the name is in the game anyway so it doesn't really matter. Seems like she would look a lot less characteristic without them. It's already simple. It doesn't have to be overly simple. I like them.

And I like the GIFs! It looks very professional. I could well see this with a little blocky Mario running around, straight from Nintendo as some sort of side series like Paper Mario — Block Mario. Your inspiration is showing and you're doing a great job at replicating that feel.

[ProgramGamer]

I never said anything about assuming gender default as male...

[oahda]

I guess, but it sounded a bit like an old record. But if that's not what you meant, no sweat!

[ProgramGamer]

Thanks, that's a relief. I'm actually genuinely trying to care about these things, especially lately. I've made big changes to some game ideas of mine in the name of gender equality and other social justice topics. Of course this doesn't really show much since I don't ever showcase them anywhere, which now that I think about it I probably should because feedback would be good, but yeah, I do care about these things quite a bit.

[oahda]

Good to hear. ε: And yeah, you should show something!

[Ishi]

I like the buns/ears, from a game design point of view it makes it way easier to quickly read which direction the player is facing.

One thing I felt from this gif is that Suzy's shadow could do with being a lot darker - when you jump on the enemy it's hard to judge where Suzy is, and the shadows are also very hard to see on the mesh floor.

Other than that it's looking great, nice to see a lot of effort put into the boss! Looks like it'll be fun to fight without being frustrating.

[Louard]

Slim update this week. I spent Monday playing Toto Temple Deluxe and Rayman Legends (both awesome, BTW) to recover from an exhausting long weekend visiting Angel Falls (also awesome, BTW!)

So I spend the rest of the week mostly tightening stuff. I fixed some bugs I was having in the level select screen when using a controller.. which looks like this for those interested..



I laid a bunch of ground work for flow through the game. I set up all the level buttons in the select screen (the coloured cubes) and created level stubs for every level I plan to have in the game. So.. I mean, technically, you can play through the whole game now, from start to finish... Only, like 98% of the levels are just a piece of flat grey ground with a goal object and three stars next to where you spawn.. Doing this actually let me sniff out a few bugs I wouldn't have other wise and all things in level select land are now nice and dandy.

Oh, and I finished up work on the boss fight functionality. Again just a few polish items and some bug fixing. Any remaining little issues I'll fix as I create the individual boss fights for realzers.

i also spend a day trying to update InControl to the latest version... No luck.. Man, it really does not like that my game is in Javascript (gasp! I know I know, spare me! The next one will be in C#, I swear!)

Ok, gonna go spend some time properly prioritizing my tasks for next week so I have something interesting for the next update!