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[TonyManfredonia]

Wow. 

That blood looks incredible. Fantastic work. Absolutely fantastic.

[Tadakuni Amano]

Thank you everyone!

Very interesting game. What do you use to render the world? Tile maps?

Yep! Tiles.

The aesthetic of the game is brilliant. How do the special moves play out? Is it more like a fighting game or more like a metroidvania where you activate a skill?

There's a set control scheme for your moves. Slowing down time, slashing, rolling, and throwing things (or using other secondary items) are all mapped to their own keys. It's too combat oriented for constantly switching around moves, and it's a lot more simple combat-wise than a fighting game (there are no combos).



Unrelated, here's a work in progress screenshot of my new DKC2 fangame

[Tadakuni Amano]

Sort of a tech-post this time.

Due to some incompatibilities between my lighting engine and Game Maker's room editor, I have to place every tile in the game individually. Without grouping, making large levels becomes a huge chore - though it hasn't been much of an issue until now.

Working on the minecart stage posed a new problem. Since the minecart travels very quickly, the minecart levels have rooms that are 6 times the size of a normal room. Tiling the whole room by hand would mean placing ~13,000 individual tiles for just a simple textured background, which would have taken me several hours per room!

To fix this, I wrote an auto-tiling program which crawled along the ceiling of the room and placed tiles vertically until it hits a floor. This worked well, but due to the massive size of the room, it ended up creating a 3-5 second delay every time the screen reset - which was definitely not acceptable for a game where you're expected to die very often.

So after some digging into the game maker room code, I was able to write a script that directly injected the generated tiles into the room code. It completely removed the 3-5 second delay, but since game maker's instance naming conventions are a mystery to me, it may result in unforeseen errors in the future (I pretty much just named all the tiles arbitrary things and hoped that it would work, which it did!). The other downside is that the room code is now a whopping 2mb rather than the average 300kb, but that's a small price to pay to make the game infinitely more playable.

[Tadakuni Amano]

I've been having some fun with the little details of the game.

[and]

Love the look on the cat's face 

[Krisjet]

That blood trail left on the wall when a guy is thrown like that is a sweet detail!

[gimblll]

Love the gore and the finer details. The hit effects and timing are just beautiful!

[Tadakuni Amano]

Thanks everyone!

Here's the minecart level in action -

[Tadakuni Amano]

You feel your sins crawling on your back.

[samurai_zane]

^Very nice.

The striking animations with the blood splatter are so well done!

I can hear the sound of every strike

[Tadakuni Amano]

New trailer!

[Ashedragon]

Just. Pure. Awesome.

[Tadakuni Amano]

"Cut the deck."

[Tadakuni Amano]

Getting pretty far with development! Been working on implementing a lot of music and sfx recently, as well as a lot of metal slug-esque enemy behaviors (playing cards, practicing with weapons, playing rock paper scissors, etc)to make the game feel a lot more alive.

Also the game will be playable at the Adult Swim Games booth at PAX East! If anybody wants to get their hands on it, now's the chance.

[and]

Still in love with the blood on the wall. Did you do a post on that before? Would be cool to see how you do it (so I can steal it and turn Mable into a gore fest...)

[Tadakuni Amano]

Still in love with the blood on the wall. Did you do a post on that before? Would be cool to see how you do it (so I can steal it and turn Mable into a gore fest...)

Blood on the wall is just a lot of cleverly placed tiles and layering tricks! I haven't done a tech post about it, but I may after release if there's enough interest.

Also sorry all for the lack of updates. I may have mentioned this before, but I'm getting to the point of development where it's hard to find new things to show without spoilers, but I'll still try to post brief gameplay clips while I can.


Bonus gif :

"Need a light?"

[fall_ark]

Just saw the game on Steam store page saying the release date is this month:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/460950/Katana_ZERO

Would that be the case? Because HYPE.  

Nevermind. There isn't a set release date yet. Still...HYPE for whenever the game releases!

[Fat Pug Studio]

 

[gullinbursti]

I remember seeing one of the trailers a year - or so - ago. The art is STUNNING and the 80s vibe is just oozing... I really can't wait to try it out!

I am kind of divided though. When I see a game and I can't understand what's happening on screen, the controls are either too guided (so it's easy) or too convoluted (and it's super hard to play in style). In any case, it all looks soooo smooth I could cry.

[Tadakuni Amano]

Well it's been a while since I posted here!

The main game is DONE (missing a bunch of art and sound assets though). I'm going to be spending the time until release just adding post-game content and polishing the minor alternate paths. Here's a new combat gif too!