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[OMGWTF Games]

The Goatse of Jarvis.

Really though, this shit looks amazing!

[io3 creations]

The game's looking good!

I did some back and forth yesterday and ended up with a few more ideas:
Lil' Warlock Jarvis
Once Upon A Jarvis
Prophecy of Jarvis
Warlock Hero Jarvis

I only skimmed a few pages Blaze of Jarvis could work, but I like Lil' Warlock Jarvis this the following reasons:
"Little":
-The style of the game and the promo image has a slight cuteness to it.
-Jarvis seems so be shorter than many of his enemies.
"Warlock":
-it hints at having RPG elements more than an action game.

[Dave_C]

I also like "Lil' Warlock Jarvis" +1 from me!

[chrilley]

Surprised that Lil' Warlock Jarvis got a few votes too! So far it seems to be between "Blaze of Jarvis" and "Lil' Warlock Jarvis" but I am trying to see if I can get an even better idea out there...

It would certainly be neat to get some of the game play aspects into the title.

BTW - In the spirit of Halloween, a new enemy:

[torcado]

danng
spooky

[Kyuugatsu]

FYI these days "blaze" is associated with 420/Marijuana culture. Might want to steer clear of it just in case... 

[chrilley]

Thanks for the suggestions guys. I will try to incorporate them into new title ideas!

It's a bummer that "blaze" is a popular stoner term now. Wouldn't want to mislead people at all so I guess I'll have to drop that title idea. Although... If you play the game while high maybe you'll overlook the game's shortcomings and have a superior experience


In other news I recently experimented a bit with some knock back mechanics. You can now send your opponents flying and set them up for follow up attacks:

[NoLocality]

+1 for both Blaze of/Lil'warlock Jarvis.  I see the point of people possibly relating blaze to pot but...I imagine that it would amount to a passing giggle at most until the person sees some gameplay or a screenshot and realize pot has nothing to do with it.

I looked up some synonyms for blaze and I gotta say I like 'conflagration' but it's a bit cumbersome for a word in the title.  On the other hand I can't think of another game with conflagration in the title so...

Lower on that synonyms page I saw one for burn that I haven't heard before...'enkindle'.

Dig this..."Jarvis Enkindled".  Not the best for a title for various reasons but it kinda rolls off the tongue to say it heh. 

[chrilley]

(Warning: Gif Heavy Post!)

Hey guys!

Sorry for little dev log hiatus - I've been busy elsewhere(less fun for Jarvis but good for me and my rent ).

Trying to get back on track. Starting with titles...

Blaze Of Jarvis & Lil' Warlock Jarvis seems to be the most popular ideas thus far. Jarvis Enkindled is an interesting idea as well! Anyone else on board with it or happen to be sitting on some other cool ideas?

I put up a new article on indieDB a month ago.

Managed to get featured too, yay!

A little spotlight even for just a few days is neat.

The article covers a bunch of stuff. Combat, new areas, testing, etc. I'll just post the gifs from it here too so it's logged properly!















As usual any feedback is welcome - Also in the future I'll try to keep this devlog a bit more active. I am also about to start fetching some game testing volunteers if any Windows users are interested

[chrilley]

Oh! A feature that I've also forgotten to mention in this devlog which has been added in the past months is the legendary and often times overlooked SKIP BUTTON!



No longer will you be forced to watch cutscenes filled with my terrible writing if you don't want to. A great asset to both speedrunners and other players who just want to beat the boss without having to listen to his speech for the 39th time in a row.

Some may even say it is Jarvis greatest spell of his arsenal - rivaling the time bending powers of Doctor Strange himself!

[chrilley]

I finally got around to make it so that the text in the game align to center properly. The pop-up frame also properly re-sizes itself to fit the content of the window now. Basically I sliced the pop-up image into 3 parts and moved the edges while the middle part scales between them.

[io3 creations]

Oh! A feature that I've also forgotten to mention in this devlog which has been added in the past months is the legendary and often times overlooked SKIP BUTTON!

 

It should be mandatory to have such a feature in games.  I still find it somewhat strange nowadays that quite a few games don't have it ... but I guess we all have to start somewhere.

I know certain things are engine + specific game code dependent, but were there certain things that you had to change for the SKIP button to work?  For example, dealing with aspects of the current cutscene animation.

[chrilley]

Mandatory indeed!

I regret I didn't pay it much attention until so late in the process as I had to rumble through all cutscene scripts and add "stops" where the game checks if player has pressed skip. From there go to the "skip cutscene" function where I basically stops the cutscene and move everything(props, player, npcs, etc) where they should have been had the player watched the entire thing.

Would have been cool if I could have some kind of "super fast forward thing" instead... Oh well.

[io3 creations]

Mandatory indeed!

I regret I didn't pay it much attention until so late in the process as I had to rumble through all cutscene scripts and add "stops" where the game checks if player has pressed skip. From there go to the "skip cutscene" function where I basically stops the cutscene and move everything(props, player, npcs, etc) where they should have been had the player watched the entire thing.

Would have been cool if I could have some kind of "super fast forward thing" instead... Oh well.

What kind of engine you're using? Just quickly looked at a few pages but didn't see it being mentioned.
I'm just wondering because I'm curious how your cutscenes work and if that "super fast forward thing" is a possibility.  I've been using Flash for most of my games, and it is easy to move/animate objects on a timeline.  Then during gameplay, you can skip to the last frame.  Or have a similar container object and then just read the position of various objects.  But even if you have some and array (or similar storage system) that holds where objects should be, then it should possible to create a "super fast forward thing" but running through the array with the script and determining where objects should be and their properties.

[chrilley]

I use Clickteam Fusion 2.5 so there are some limits like no animation timelines or anything like that but I am sure that if I from the start had made the cutscene system with the mindset of having "fast-forward support" it would have no doubt been very possible. It's just a result of bad planning on my part really!

Lesson learned for next time though

[io3 creations]

I know what you mean.  I've had plenty of "I wish I had done that already" moments.   

But in our defense, sometimes certain features aren't considered in the beginning or don't seem important and get placed on the "Maybe if there's time" list.  On the other hand, I've had times when certain things weren't implemented due to deadlines from the "Wishlist features".  But, as you mentioned, once you're aware of it, then you have a much better chance of planning accordingly next time.  May Random Number Goddess be with us!

[Silkworm]

Oh! A feature that I've also forgotten to mention in this devlog which has been added in the past months is the legendary and often times overlooked SKIP BUTTON!

Yeah, I really need to add this to my game. If a section is kinda wordy and the player isn't feeling it, it's pretty painful.

Anyway, this looks amazing. From the unique art-style to the combat and spells. Everything looks super polished and fun. Can't wait to play it!

[quantumpotato]

Hey came here from your Screenshot post. This looks cool.

I do agree with an earlier post about "too much white", maybe darker blues for your blue blades indicating damage or skill upgrade level?

I like that attacking is moving, one of my favorite things about Chess that video games tend to lack.

I am concerned about how powerful your character is though. It looks like you cleave through enemies quite easily and they don't do much about it because they are in hit-stun or just a slow attack rate and cannot attack out of being hit.

My hope for this kind of game is that each room would have a different "combo puzzle" to solve the best way to kill the enemies. Going for certain combos would lead you into other enemy's attacks. If you've played Rogue Legacy? Some of the monsters shoot 8 directional bullets while moving which works well, those demon homing fireballs look a little easy to dodge.

Your uppercut whirlwind looks way too good, there doesn't seem to be a limit? It looks like I can simply spam this move.. I understand that moving gracefully through rooms is probably the point but I am concerned it will be too easy to perform the same 2-3 patterns through rooms without thinking much at all.

/Writing so much gif criticism because the gameplay core looks fun  !

[chrilley]

I know what you mean.  I've had plenty of "I wish I had done that already" moments.    

But in our defense, sometimes certain features aren't considered in the beginning or don't seem important and get placed on the "Maybe if there's time" list.  On the other hand, I've had times when certain things weren't implemented due to deadlines from the "Wishlist features".  But, as you mentioned, once you're aware of it, then you have a much better chance of planning accordingly next time.  May Random Number Goddess be with us!

In my case the text thing was just twelve times more boring than making new enemies so been neglecting it until now

Hey came here from your Screenshot post. This looks cool.

I do agree with an earlier post about "too much white", maybe darker blues for your blue blades indicating damage or skill upgrade level?

I like that attacking is moving, one of my favorite things about Chess that video games tend to lack.

I am concerned about how powerful your character is though. It looks like you cleave through enemies quite easily and they don't do much about it because they are in hit-stun or just a slow attack rate and cannot attack out of being hit.

My hope for this kind of game is that each room would have a different "combo puzzle" to solve the best way to kill the enemies. Going for certain combos would lead you into other enemy's attacks. If you've played Rogue Legacy? Some of the monsters shoot 8 directional bullets while moving which works well, those demon homing fireballs look a little easy to dodge.

Your uppercut whirlwind looks way too good, there doesn't seem to be a limit? It looks like I can simply spam this move.. I understand that moving gracefully through rooms is probably the point but I am concerned it will be too easy to perform the same 2-3 patterns through rooms without thinking much at all.

/Writing so much gif criticism because the gameplay core looks fun   !

Yeah the difficulty is something I've been messing with for a while now and still not done with it. I think the enemies needs to be trickier rather than nerfing some moves too much. I also tend to use the weaker baddies as my punching bags.

Though the gifs are a tad misleading as I know by heart where every enemy is located and I'm more or less running on auto-pilot as I've been playing the same parts over and over. New players will probably not survive long if they charge right into a room swinging blindly. Or well hopefully... I will be running testing sessions soon since I need feedback.

Also I totally agree about the "too much white" thing. I am currently experimenting with different tints right now. The Level Up/Obtain Ability flash effect is currently a shade of blue rather than the white you see in the current gifs and the enemies go red when struck now. Gifs coming soon!

Oh! A feature that I've also forgotten to mention in this devlog which has been added in the past months is the legendary and often times overlooked SKIP BUTTON!

Yeah, I really need to add this to my game. If a section is kinda wordy and the player isn't feeling it, it's pretty painful.

Anyway, this looks amazing. From the unique art-style to the combat and spells. Everything looks super polished and fun. Can't wait to play it!

Thanks! The need for a skip button became painfully clear when I had to test the same boss fight approx. 50 times in a row and not being able to skip his speech.

[Eyon]

Waw the game looks great ! The character's moves are fluid it's nice.