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[flipswitchx]

Looks challenging but awesome. Like meatboy but with grappling. Great promo art (and game art) style.

[naezith]

Looks challenging but awesome. Like meatboy but with grappling. Great promo art (and game art) style.

Thank you so much!  

By the way the splash is done!



I want to talk about something though, character still doesn't have a name. If you didn't read the story, here it is again:

STORY
Naezith the Thunder Dragon was so mighty and magical but even he, just like any other living, had merged in soil ages ago... but his soul still lingered on the Earth.

Naezith, with his soul, started searching for a convenient body to eradicate the remnants of his omnipotent flesh, doing so to prevent people to overtake his supreme powers and play gods by dint of the power that coming from his almightiness he would never consider to share...

The Terran already found the remnants, however, they were never brave enough to interact with them, even a glimpse caused a blue funk because the radiation it emitted was insanely scary. Instead of destroying those remnants, they decided to build a high-level protection around them to ensure no one would ever reach them until they found out a safe way of acting.

Meanwhile... it was an ordinary day for an underground treasure hunter travelling the caves and trying to find precious loot to plunder. He had his rope and rusty hook with him which he needed them for crossing across the big pits if he had encountered one within the caves. Everything was going as usual until his hook slipped from the ledge and he fell down a pit. When he woke up, he saw two claws bound to his hands, Naezith finally found a proper body to use in his purpose and he started possessing the body. Treasure hunter was trying to get off of the claws but it was all in vain, he could not. He went mad and started swinging his arms unconsciously, again it was all naught. All of a sudden, one of the claws was shot off and sticked into the wall. A beam appeared between his hand and the claw, he pulled his arm back and noticed he could pull the claw out of the wall. It worked just like his rusty hook.

Naezith would not fully possess his body, instead, he made a deal with the man that the man would help him get rid of the remnants of Naezith, using his mighty powers. And he would get a gift at the and of the journey; an unlimited treasure he always lusted for.


Question is, is name for the character needed? If yes, recommendations please.

Have a nice day!

[naezith]

Any suggestion? Why do you leave me alone here? #upsetdevisupset 

[FK in the Coffee]

Still absolutely loving it! One of the things you kind of have to get adjusted to on TIGSource is that only a select few devlogs actually get regular commenters. That doesn't mean people aren't interested, though! Usually they're just going to be lurking and contributing to the views.

[naezith]

Still absolutely loving it! One of the things you kind of have to get adjusted to on TIGSource is that only a select few devlogs actually get regular commenters. That doesn't mean people aren't interested, though! Usually they're just going to be lurking and contributing to the views.

Yeah you're right. But sometimes I really need opinions about stuff, not only update show-offs. Like I have a question now,

What do you guys think about game settings? My laptop runs the game at around 90 FPS. I can put toggle for rendering "Background Blur", "Decoration layers", "Background Tile Layers", "Parallax Texture Layers". When I disable all, FPS goes up to 220 but game looks too naked. I already tried hard for optimization on those features. So what do you suggest about this?

My Laptop Specs:
AMD RADEON HD 6470M
INTEL CORE DUO PCD P6200 2.13GHZ
3 GB DDR III 1333 MHZ RAM

[Pixel Noise]

Well...I mean, you only really need 60fps anyway, right? That's as much or more than the average person can see anyway.

[naezith]

Well...I mean, you only really need 60fps anyway, right? That's as much or more than the average person can see anyway.

I added the settings, because when I unplug the laptop charger cable, fps drops to 35-40 so you instantly feel choppy. Adding options might help some people and also they wouldn't hurt, right?

[naezith]

There is an upcoming amazing event named Gaming Istanbul, and they let indie developers have a table there! I just submitted my game with these:

Promo art: http://puu.sh/m99ww/059a30ee9f.png
Gameplay Video:



Screenshots:
http://puu.sh/m99TU/eaa9274fcc.png
http://puu.sh/m99C2/6afab947f5.png
http://puu.sh/m99Y5/6a8deb439f.png
http://puu.sh/m99Wc/2871ef1824.png
http://puu.sh/m99Ps/2c3a27eff9.png
http://puu.sh/m9abn/08e2ee8995.png

It would be a cool experience if they let me in.

[naezith]

Now its time for enriching the character animations.




They look choppy but I think that's because they are "rough".

[lithander]

I always enjoy coming back to this thread and reading your updates. Who made the splash screen artwork? It's awesome!

[naezith]

I always enjoy coming back to this thread and reading your updates. Who made the splash screen artwork? It's awesome!

Thank you for the motivation boost, you made my day!

All graphics and that art, made by the artist Erek, he has the awesome skill and personality at the same time which is very rare!

Old account: http://erek80.deviantart.com/gallery/
New account: http://kwehrek.deviantart.com/gallery/

He helped me a lot during this journey, still helping in every way, not only the graphics.

By the way I experimented again with Bloom and yeah I personally don't like it but some people do so I decided to put it as an option, OPTIONS don't hurt

Comparison GIF:


HD links:
Without bloom -> http://puu.sh/mayLy/14b2eb8edb.png
With bloom -> http://puu.sh/mayJt/5a1aabd407.png


I think it makes the scene more alive but yeah might be disturbing because of the blur and brightness it adds.

What do you think?

[naezith]

Alternative running animation rough:


Current running animation looks too fast so this is something in middle, maybe the normal running if you didn't accelerate much.

Double jump animation rough:

[naezith]

Here is the slower running animation



I will map the hooks by code dynamicly.

[naezith]

weeeeeeeeeeeee

[naezith]

My finals are just passed, I have about 5 weeks of non-university days now. I will spend so much time on the project!

I decided to bind the hooks into the sprites. And draw the hook dynamicly when character throws them. So if both hooks are passive, this is how it will look like (without effects like glow ofcourse)


It will be the one of the random double jump animations I guess.

So both hooks can be active(in air) or inactive(in hand) individually. That's why I will use 3 layers of sprites like back arm, body, front arm. Active hook's arm will draw the hook dynamicly while passive arm will have the hook in his hand, inside the sprite, not dynamicly drawn. That's the plan.

And for some other situations like swinging, I will need dynamic legs. It won't be easy I guess, but if I do everything right, it will feel pretty awesome in my opinion.

[naezith]

Hello folks,

In new animations, player will have the hook in his hand inside the sprite, not dynamicly.

Today graphic artist gave me the sprite sheet of the slow running animation,


The other running animation

feels too fast for slower speeds, so the new one will play between 0 and top speed.

In sprite sheet, there are 3 lines of sprites. First row is the front arm, second row is the body, third row is the back arm. You can see it here:


I also have separate front and back arm sprites to use when hook is active(hook is not in hand).

I hardcoded eye, left shoulder, right shoulder, left hook and right hook coordinates in the sprite sheet into my code so I can map stuff dynamicly ingame like particles going out of the eye, glow on the hooks, trail of the hooks and the dynamic arm with shoulder pivot(when he throws the hook or swinging).

Frame time for running animation was constant, I decided to make it dynamic. Character steps every 6 frames in animation, step size is about 80 pixel in spritesheet, I multiply it that with player's scale so if player sprite is small, step length also becomes small. Character moves "movementSpeed.x" pixels a second which is dynamic, so this calculation gives me the correct frame time for a running animation with realistic steps:

Code:

1.0f / ((abs(movementSpeed.x) / (step_size*player_sprite_scale)) * step_frame_count)

However, because my game is fast-paced, the lowest speed character runs at is too fast, so animation has to be too fast. And it looks very funny when animation runs fast so I slowed it down a little bit. Steps are not very synced to be correct now, but it is okay.

I was spawning a dust particle group for steps in a fixed time interval like every 0.2 seconds or something. But I realized that I know at which frames character really steps, so I can create the dust when he really steps to get a better, more realistic feel.

[Cranktrain]

The new character animations look great!

[FreakOrama]

Nice. Love both looks and gives appropriate "this is fast" and "now this is fast!"

[naezith]

Nice. Love both looks and gives appropriate "this is fast" and "now this is fast!"

The new character animations look great!

Thanks a lot for kind words!   




Today I added the spinning animation as double jump and dash jump (yes this also new!).

Spin in the action:





At the next one, you can see many things like slow running -> dash -> dash jump -> weird water! -> weird water kills you if you're so slow -> epic LIGHTNING helps you avoid death by teleporting you back to checkpoint



Finally, I smoothed the hook trail using bezier curve, following this epic tutorial.

[naezith]

What's your thoughts about screenshake by the way?

I removed all the screenshake from my game because it's more clear this way, but still I wonder if it was a bad idea to get rid of them. I don't really know when can I use that effect tho, only when the hook hits the wall or something?