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[HiddenNatureDsn]

Really coming along.  Really enjoy the style and energy of all the new stuff you've shared.

[JoeManaco]

Thank you. I also think it's coming along nicely. We're prototyping and and try to tweak every detail which is very time consuming - and often times also feels a little bit frustrating because the todo list is getting longer and longer. However most of the time it feels like the right thing. 

[diegzumillo]

Really digging the update!

If you're still looking for gameplay mechanics with the hammer, have you considered a recall thing? Like, after the hammer runs out of juice, instead of returning automatically, it just falls to the ground awaiting for tiny thor to recall it. So then the player can intentionally throw it in a way that it runs out of gas in a strategic location, then the player position himself in a strategic location and the recalling will make it go through a switch or break something etc.

Bad pitch but you get the idea

[JoeManaco]

Really digging the update!

If you're still looking for gameplay mechanics with the hammer, have you considered a recall thing? Like, after the hammer runs out of juice, instead of returning automatically, it just falls to the ground awaiting for tiny thor to recall it. So then the player can intentionally throw it in a way that it runs out of gas in a strategic location, then the player position himself in a strategic location and the recalling will make it go through a switch or break something etc.

Bad pitch but you get the idea

Thanks. We've tried that at first that you can call the hammer back, also making damage to enemies while flying back to the player in a straight line.

I didn't work out well in reality because if you call the hammer back during the flight it mostly felt random because of the speed of the hammer (and lowering the speed to a degree that this will be possible makes this cool mighty hammer feeling vanish (hard to describe)). It was also not really plannable where the hammer runs out of gas. Don't know if this could be fixed somehow, but in the end we decided that you aren't able to call the hammer back.

And this led to some other cool feature we haven't intended for. The player now always tries to plan his shots so he is able to catch the hammer on his way back, so he doesn't lose too much energy. And if the hammer goes completely crazy it's very fun try trying to catch it and getting into dangerous situation because of this vs. ignoring it and accept that the hammer runs out of gas. This whole thing makes up for very interesting situations gameplay wise, and for example if you throw the hammer upwards and while the hammer destroys 2 or 3 enemies in the air you fight against a smaller enemy with the fist at the ground, then running, and finally catching the hammer while jumping feels very satisfying.

[HiddenNatureDsn]

...the todo list is getting longer and longer. However most of the time it feels like the right thing. 

I know that feeling.  Every new bug I fix, I add 3 new features to my own game.

[JoeManaco]

 

[matriax]

Love the work of Henk Nieborg, can't wait to see new gameplay with the new character design.

[JoeManaco]

Thanks.

Will hopefully have the new character design implemented in two weeks (We added tons and tons of different animations, and Tiny Thor will also change his outfit as he gains new skills).

[JoeManaco]

This week we worked on the redesign of the spitting plant.

The spitting plant is an stationary enemy. First it is shooting salves of bullets which makes it very difficult and sometimes impossible for the player to pass. But luckily, Tiny has his mighty hammer he can use to shut the plant up. Afterwards he has a short timespan before the plant spits out the hammer again and restarts firing bullets.



Besides that we have 8 different rotated variations of the plant. They have slightly different bullet patterns as well - but we're still tweaking those patterns right now.




When we carefuly place them the plants can throw Tiny's Hammer around to each other. We also have some interessting things and small puzzles in mind we can build with them.



Steffen worked like crazy on new levels that are very fun to play. They still need playtesting and some tweaking but I think we're on a very good direction.

[Nelvin]

This looks more amazing each time I visit this thread or see the posts on twitter.

Really looking forward to the final game.

[OhiraKyou]

Whoa, neat concept. It's like Breakout, but as a platformer projectile. That's a pretty cool genre kitbash.

[chrilley]

This looks very cool! It seems like you got some fun combat mechanics going and the scenery pixelart is gorgeous!

[JoeManaco]

Thanks.

The combat mechanics were actually the weak points of the game for quite some time now, but it's getting better each day because we redesigning most enemies around the bouncing-hammer-mechanic.

[JoeManaco]

This week our biggest task was to work on tweaking and polishing the aiming mechanic further as well as implementing the gamepad controls.

The aiming has now a very slightly acceleration component which enables the player to aim more precisely. For the gamepad we tried different controls, and for now this is the final scheme we came up with:



The most part should be very obvious. To aim and throw the hammer, the player has two possibilities. First, he can press and hold the "Throw Hammer" Button. The aiming preview appears on the screen and by pressing left/right on the DPAD or the left analogue stick the player can rotate freely.

This works exactly as on the keyboard. But with a gamepad it's also possible to just use the right analogue stick, which immediately opens the aiming preview. By pressing the right analogue shoulder button the player can throw the hammer. If you release the analogue stick you can cancel your shot.

This is quite an advantage when playing with the gamepad over the keyboard. Because of that we had endless discussions if we should allow this or not. Of course we'd love to offer the same player experience for keyboard and gamepad players.

We also discussed switchung to a WASD/Mouse Control Scheme on Deskop PCs, but I don't think it fits the retro vibe of the game well. So - at least for now - we decided against this solution and we even tweaked the keyboard aiming more so the gap between keyboard and gamepad isn't too big.

But we would love to hear your opinion on this topic.

[jron310]

Looking really good!

[JoeManaco]

NPCs and new player animation

First of all I'm sorry that I didn't post updates the last two weeks, I got knocked out by a bad case of the flu. However, this week I felt better and resumed working on Tiny Thor.

Besidest lots of small polishing tasks (smoother aiming, screen shaking for stampers) and minor bug fixes, this is what happened in the last weeks.

Our protagonist got a makeover! We've implemented the new player sprite (156 glorious frames, and it will be even more in the end because we will add some custom animations/outfits later on). It was a lot of work, but Henk did an outstanding job on the animation, again.



Henk also updated all the NPCs (now fully animated) and I already implemented them while Steffen made them speak the first draft of our games story.



Another important piece of the game is sliding into place: The music! Chris and Fabian already sent the ingame tracks for the first three worlds over to me, and they are on the verge of finalising those tracks. The music reminds me of Chris' early Amiga works with a more modern sound. I'm listening to those tracks all the day right now :-) As soon as the tracks are finalised we will prepare some short snippets for you to listen to.



Steffen also redesigned the first world of levels with the new combat design in mind.



They still have some rough edges gameplay wise and some look like construction sites, but we’re happy that they provide more engaging gameplay now. Next up are the two boss fights of the first world!

[Nelvin]

Looks amazing, I absolutely love the progress over the past few months in both, the art (Henk's pixels are just as outstanding as they were 2 decades ago. I even sense a bit of Lionheart in the backgrounds) as well as the game itself.

Keep going ... it's going to be a hit (guaranteed in quality but I hope also commercially)

[JoeManaco]

I've digged out this old post of mine. A lot of things happened. To make it short: We finally started working fulltime on this project by the end of last year because we got funding support by a german government program.

Since then we revised and improved the hammer-mechanic and started to build the whole enemy- and leveldesign around this mechanic.

Here is a video of an easy but interesting puzzle we've build with it:

[McMutton]

Whaaaaaaat!

That was cool as hell

[JobLeonard]

Yeah, that looks really great!

Did you simplify the hammer throwing?