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[eyeliner]

I meant about the sequel to Flashback.

A wee bit too much mechanical blood splatter.

[Alec S.]

I meant about the sequel to Flashback.

Oh, haha.  No, I haven't seen that either, but I'm watching footage now, and I like the look of it.

A wee bit too much mechanical blood splatter.

Yeah, there are going to eventually be different explosion effects for different enemy types.  Just using this one for everything for now since it looks better than having nothing there.

[Alec S.]

One of the mechanics in the game is a Jetpack powerup that you can find in each level. In addition to giving you more mobility in combat, it will also give you access to side paths and hidden areas which you couldn't reach on foot.  However, if you take a hit with the jetpack, the jetpack will explode, giving you only 3 seconds in which to detach yourself from it.

[Alec S.]

9/18/15

So far, for the most part, my level design has been mostly focused on functionality, getting the overall shape of the level blocked out in broad strokes.  Today I decided to try my hand at polishing a section of a level a bit.  Making things less boxy, making the ground more uneven, giving the rocks-faces of the cliffs some more shape and definition.

[Alec S.]

Took a little break from this to deal with the release of the other game I had been working on, Ninja Outbreak (available now on Itch.io, vote for it on Greenlight!), but now I'm back, and working on the powerup drops.  I can now give each enemy a drop table which lists the percentage chances of dropping whichever powerups I want them to drop.

[Alec S.]

Jetpack Soldiers.  Hit them once to destroy their jetpacks and send them back down to earth (...in pieces)

Also, new ground textures for the city environment

[danespacey]

Hey guys, looking good! I know you're going for low polys but how much tweaking to the overall look of the game do you think you will change? I like how it looks now but maybe a bit more of a subtle palette could look good? Or higher def textures?

[Alec S.]

I'm still tweaking the look, so we'll see, but I like the low-poly low-res look, so whatever it ends up being, it's going to be some variation on that.

[Alec S.]

Changed how the fog effects work (Changed from exponential to linear).  It lets me directly set an end-distance which is important for gameplay purposes (Since I limit the player to fighting enemies within a certain range, it helps for them not to be able to see enemies outside of that range) as well as lets me preserve an area around the player that isn't effected at all by the fog, so the colors don't get washed out.  The transition to fog doesn't look quite as nice, but I think the benefits make up for that overall.

[Alec S.]

A couple more screenshots:

[Alec S.]

Here's an example of how the Jetpack can open up new paths through the level.  One of my main concerns when designing around the Jetpack is to make it so that you get access to different challenges, or different ways to approach existing challenges, but you can't use the jetpack get out of having any sort of challenge.

In this alleyway, Barbarians jump out of the windows to ambush you.



However, if you have the Jetpack, you can fly from window ledge to window ledge, completely avoiding the Barbarians.  But there are soldiers waiting up in the windows to attack if you fly over, which wouldn't come into play if you stayed on the ground.

[Alec S.]

Added an effect where the point value of each enemy will pop out when you kill them.  Also, added a mechanic to have locked-in areas for self-contained combat encounters.

[Alec S.]

Screenshot Saturday

[Alec S.]

Chasms

[Alec S.]

The stopper mechanic has allowed us a bit more freedom in how we design encounters, since now we can keep the player from running/flying past enemies.  The main thing this means is we can freely design mini-bosses.  Ben and I had a design meeting to brainstorm potential miniboss ideas.

[Alec S.]

Bombers

[Alec S.]

Screenshot Saturday: Missile Drone



Also, for anyone who is interested, I'm currently running a Pay What You Want sale for my previous game, Ninja Outbreak, for the day of Halloween: http://itch.io/s/2486/ninja-outbreak-halloween-sale

[Alec S.]

Proximity Laser Mine

[Alec S.]

And, while we're at it, here's a gif of a miniboss I put together today:

[alvarop]

Posting to follow.
Your 2D level design tutorials really helped me out, so let's see what I can learn from your 3D endeavours.