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[Carpetwurm]

     It seems that people want me to write a devblog for this demo I released last month. (A link to that.) By people, I of course mean my Twitter following. Anyways, I'm flattered that people actually seem to care about what I'm working on, so here goes nothing.

     Journey of Coins is a 2D platform game I've been working on for roughly 3 months now; using the HaxeFlixel engine. I believe the project began in October or early November, but it's not too important when development started. I'm the one doing programming, art, design, and everything besides music and sound effects. My good ol' pal, Joe Swensen, takes care of that.

"So what is your big goal in this game? Who's the big enemy, I mean come on, it's a platformer. I can tell it has to do with coins, just tell me what this game is really about already!"

     You didn't have to be so rude, I was going to tell you. Since you're in such a hurry, I'll keep this explanation short and sweet. You're on a quest to rescue a bunch of coins from an evil guy who hordes them. There's also a faction of spiders or something, and they're at war with the same guy, but that's not too important. Actually, no it is kind of important. You see, my child, the reason there's still more coins outside of this tower our antagonist lives in is because of these spider fellows. Between the tower and the spiders' cavernous homes, there is a battlefield in which the antagonist and spiders battle.

     You yourself are not from the same world as these spiders and nameless antagonists though, no, you are from our modern world. To get into that world though, you built an inter-dimensional portals out of garbage you seem to have found in your garage... Don't ask me how that works, it's your secret. Anyhow, this poorly constructed portal has some really, really awful side effects. It seems to actually erase the world behind you, and create clones of itself in random parts of the world!

"Alright, so you have a really awful story, and you're managing to shove words I would never say into my mouth, how about gameplay? Is that any good?"

     The game plays well, according to my playtesters. (Both the testers on here, colleagues of mine that have played the game, and some of my Twitter following) I've also fixed numerous things people complained about, and even took some suggestions you guys here on TIGSource left for me.

     I was going to write another line of your dialogue here, but then I noticed I don't know what you're thinking, because this post isn't even public yet. So here's some screenshots instead.


Tutorial section, JoC supports both traditional WASD and the arrow keys.


The second section of Level One. Levels are divided in sections so the game can be short but have a decent amount of content at the same time. 3-o is the name of the antagonist, by the way.


The level scoring screen. That red face only appears if you 100% the level, just as a little bonus. The full animation can be found here


Level Two (WIP)


     I guess it's about time to wrap up this introduction post to the devlog. Hopefully you guys continue reading and supply some feedback to help make JoC it's best! As a little token of my gratitude for reading through the entire post, here's a link to the game's
(Intro Cutscene)



and the
(Spider Cavern Cutscene)




Thanks for reading, and feel free to leave replies and all that.  

Edit: I'll try posting new updates weekly.

[dittomat]

really like this artstyle! :D Wanna see the gameplay in movement! :D

[Carpetwurm]

really like this artstyle! :D Wanna see the gameplay in movement! :D

I'm planning on doing a short gameplay trailer soon, I have to confirm that Joe is down with the soundtrack before I do though. Don't want it to sound like garbage 

[lobstersteve]

Nice looking game
I like the playful, sketchy artstyle.
I also played the demo, here some feedback:
The controls are alright. It's a little unaccustomed how long you can press the jump button and jump higher, but it's not bad, you get used to it. It just differs a little from what you are used too.
The idea of the moving spikes is cool, gives a nice feeling of being under pressure.
Some improvement ideas (if you didn't alreay plan them):
Some more player feedback would be nice. Definetly particles when grabbing a coin (or some other indication), maybe some dust on the floor after jumping, a more spectacular level finishing, sounds..
I also read that you are 15 on your profile, so hats off 

[Carpetwurm]

Some improvement ideas (if you didn't alreay plan them)...

We added a nice sound effect to the level ending, but it's still basically the same.

I can definitely add some particle effects, I'll keep that on my list

Also, I thought I was pretty pathetic for a 15 year old, but I'm now noticing that not many people my age have the same level of quality as I, so thanks for mentioning that! :D

[Carpetwurm]

Devlog Update Saturday, January 9th, 2016

     Hello again, looks like you're reading the devlog! That's good! Keep doing that. I have some new fun stuff in store today! Let's get started with the stuff I added!

Tweaks
     I ended up tweaking gravity and jump power for the player, so now jumps should feel a little nicer. They aren't just you rocketing up into the air anymore, at least. Joe also completely revamped the game's soundtrack, so it all sounds really good!

Additions
     In the Spider Cavern level, I added spiders! Wow, who would've thought I'd do that? I also added sections 2 and 3 to the area. Section 4 will most likely introduce more of the spider mechanic. Wait, I forgot to go over that, here's how the spider mechanic works: When they notice the erasing of reality (those white spikes chasing you) they would rather live than be erased, so they run the opposite direction. If they run into a wall, the accept the inevitable and wait for their demise. Though, if they make it to one of the portals, they'll get into it, thus destroying it. Isn't that neat?



Spider



Section 2 of Spider Caverns



Section 3 of Spider Caverns

Suggestions
I do listen to suggestions, so let's list the ones I followed or will follow up on here!

The controls are alright. It's a little unaccustomed how long you can press the jump button and jump higher, but it's not bad, you get used to it. It just differs a little from what you are used too.
Some more player feedback would be nice. Definetly particles when grabbing a coin (or some other indication), maybe some dust on the floor after jumping

      As I wrote earlier, I did fix the jumping issue. I also added landing particles, but I haven't gotten to the coin particles yet. (I'll definitely be adding those though!)



Landing dust! (The gif is double the game's speed)

Announcements

     Since the last post, I got a new friend to help out with development! They'll help with bugtesting and giving general feedback, whenever they can. They're also a HaxeFlixel dev, so sending them builds is super fast and easy. So let's give a warm welcome to Naxe!

     ...That wasn't very warm. Poorly drawn, that's what it was.

Wrapping Up

     That's it for today's update. I'm very thankful for the feedback I've gotten, and I can't wait to get more! I'll most likely be working on some promo art, and maybe even a trailer until the next log. We'll see, I guess. Anyways, it's time to wrap this up. Make sure to spill your thoughts all over it, and if you don't have any thoughts, share it! I'll see you all next time, bye bye.

[Carpetwurm]

    Last night I did some promotional art and album art. Today, Joe released the main theme for JoC on YouTube. Here are those. 


Full-Size image


Full-Size image

[lobstersteve]

Oh hey, promo art and music turned out pretty good
Regarding the improved jumping and landing particles it's a little to tell if they turned out good, because of the 2x - speed of the gif lol
By the way: i have been programming in actionscript for years, so if you have any specific programming questions i'm pretty sure i could help you out (via private message or something).

[Carpetwurm]

Oh hey, promo art and music turned out pretty good
Regarding the improved jumping and landing particles it's a little to tell if they turned out good, because of the 2x - speed of the gif lol
By the way: i have been programming in actionscript for years, so if you have any specific programming questions i'm pretty sure i could help you out (via private message or something).

      Heh, I'll try making a gameplay video (Maybe even tonight, who knows?) so you can see the effect a bit more in the game's glorious 60 FPS. 

     Naxe also knows Actionscript (AS3 to be exact), but thanks for the option 

[Carpetwurm]

Gameplay 1/10/16

Here it is

<Wouldn't embed for whatever reason.>

[ｂ∀ ｋｋｕｓａ]

Congrats on putting everything all together. It's really impressive for your age.
Radious gamedev future if you keep on like that.

[Carpetwurm]

Congrats on putting everything all together. It's really impressive for your age.
Radious gamedev future if you keep on like that.

Thanks! I'm pretty passionate about what I do, so I make sure to put out my best 

[Carpetwurm]

Devlog Special: Spider Cavern Cutscene (With Sound!)

I've decided to start doing "devlog specials", these will be special videos or drawings that you will only be able to find here. Unless some naughty children share them, which you guys wouldn't do, right?

So here, a super special video just for you guys!

[Carpetwurm]

      So I've been working a bit more on the game since last time, obviously, and I have some new.. Uh, news, to share! First off, two new people have joined Team Abysmal (My devteam) although, they're more there for a project in the planning stages of development. My "Teaser" for that Anyways, firstly we have Krons. I found him over on GameJolt, kinda. I mean, on GameJolt's discord server. I also got Dust into the team, I found him over on /r/furry. But really, none of that matters for JoC, so I won't get too into detail.

     The first big change to JoC is the font! Yes, I changed the font to Upheaval. You may recognize this, I mean, you should recognize this. It's the freeware font Edmund McMillen uses a lot. I didn't know the name of this font for a very long time, and when I figured it out I started using it. So yeah, it's a lot more complete than the old font, so that's good. No messed up characters or anything like that.



     Another thing I did was started working on a credits screen with animated team pictures! Currently the only two credits are for Naxe and I, since Naxe is working on a profile picture for Joe. But isn't it neat? You can also click on our Twitter handles to see us on Twitter! Wow!



     I also made all the levels a bit harder, and started teaching new mechanics earlier. Like how in Section 6 of Level 1, there's a part where you need to jump backwards onto a ledge to jump back forwards to get to a higher ledge, I re-did that in Section 3 of Level 1. I also started introducing upside-down spikes earlier in Level 2.





     A smaller tweak was the inclusion of a "READY PLAYER ONE" screen at the beginning of levels, after cutscenes. (There's also a red variant for bosses)



    Speaking of bosses, I included a secret boss called "Professor Embryo" He originated from a game I made for my tech class a few months ago, and is obviously cloning Doctor Fetus from SMB. Anyways, in his game, the hero ends up jumping on his head making him bleed out of his eyes. It was a fun fight, but now he's here, look!


Here he is in JoC


Here he is, in his own game.

     That's about it, I believe, so yeah.

    

[Carpetwurm]

I released the third cutscene for the new "Warzone" area!

It's a lot shorter than the other cutscenes, though, but that's alright.

[Carpetwurm]

Sorry for not updating this devblog too often.

But guys, the game made its release. So rejoice!

http://gamejolt.com/games/journey-of-coins/124226