next »

[GIRakaCHEEZER]

Tess and the Forgotten Friend is a 2D action-platformer.  Tess is looking for her friend at the public aquarium, as they had promised to meet up earlier.  But the aquarium is a big place, and not as safe as it once was...

This game is the sequel to Tess, a short game I made in 2014.  But the plot of Forgotten Friend won't rely too heavily on the events from the first game, so it will be accessible for new players.

Like its predecessor, this game is being coded in Java.  I've redone the base graphics engine to use JOGL (Java's implementation of OpenGL) to code in lighting effects, and to make the game run faster in general.

Team:

Right now there are 3 people working on this game, those being:

GIRakaCHEEZER (me) - programming, mapping, sound and music, sprites, and the plot of the game
Nightmargin - concept and backdrop art, general art assistance and color adjustment
802pov - game cgs and character art

Music:

Here's few tracks posted from my soundcloud that are planned to be used in the game:

Forgotten Friend
Salts


I'll be making more posts later this week, detailing some of the work already done to the engine in preparation for this game.

[Beanallean]

Very nice! The two tracks you posted are fantastic and the screenshots are very intriguing. How will the game compare to the old Tess in length? As much as I loved Tess, I wish it was a bit longer. I also hope you go more in depth into the masks that the characters wear: why they wear them, what they mean, etc. Eager to see more!

[HyMyNameIsMatt]

It's me.  Art man.

[GIRakaCHEEZER]

Very nice! The two tracks you posted are fantastic and the screenshots are very intriguing. How will the game compare to the old Tess in length? As much as I loved Tess, I wish it was a bit longer. I also hope you go more in depth into the masks that the characters wear: why they wear them, what they mean, etc. Eager to see more!

It'll probably be 3 or 4 times the length of the first game, maybe longer.  That's how much we have planned, but how long it'll translate into playtime is anyone's guess at this point.  But it will definitely be longer.

[Nightmargin]

It's me, Art man #2.

[GIRakaCHEEZER]

Update:

Tess's sprite has been redesigned slightly, for the new game:

Fixed up her hair and head a bit, and adjusted the proportions of her leg length to torso.

Her colors have also changed, but this will only be for the main aquarium area.  The plan is for her to have multiple color palettes, which will switch to match the coloring/lighting of the current area.

She also has a new walking animation:

[Kitkat]

This makes me so happy! I loved the first Tess, and this looks like it's going to be even better in every way.

I'm curious about which characters from the first game we'll get to see again.

[GIRakaCHEEZER]

This makes me so happy! I loved the first Tess, and this looks like it's going to be even better in every way.

I'm curious about which characters from the first game we'll get to see again.

For this game, the focus will be on some new characters, but at least 1 other character from the first game will make an appearance.  Maybe 2.

[maruki]

I love the concept and the premise, which, albeit very simple, are very appealing to me as a gamer :D
But her eyes look so droopy D:

EDIT: I just listened the tracks and showed them to my husband also... We're fans of this game already <3 hehehe

[lobstersteve]

That looks awesome
Unusual setting for a platformer and that's what i like about it. Seems like it's personality will shine 

[GIRakaCHEEZER]

Hey it's been awhile since this thread has had an update so I decided to type up some words.

One of the major mechanics in Forgotten Friend will be water, so one of the first things I worked on for this game was implementing some basic water physics for the game.  Here's some old gifs of an early implementation of the water:


(testing the water with just Tess herself)


(testing with multiple objects hitting the water)

The water physics is actually based on this tutorial, but it took a lot of fine tuning to get it looking how I wanted it to.  One of the main differences is the granularity of the water, which I wanted higher to look more realistic, but this introduced the problem of splash-waves propagating slowly, making the water look too viscous.  To compensate for this, I gave the individual water-surface-nodes an x-velocity, which would increase when the node was hit and would accelerate the propagation of splash-waves in the calculations.  It took a lot of fine tuning to reach a solution I was happy with for this, but I'm proud of the end result.

Since we were planning on having so much water in the game, naturally the idea of Tess using the water as a weapon came up, and thus the water gun was born.


(Tess shooting normal water, and refilling in a small pool of water)

The water itself is pretty simple code-wise, it's just a bunch of really small bullets.  In order to make it look like a stream, the particles will ignore gravity for a set period of frames based on how long you've been holding down the shoot button.  And to make it look like a constant stream of water, she is actually shooting out 3 water particles per frame.  This means there can be up to 150 of these on screen at a time, but this doesn't seem to stress the engine too much, which I was worried about initially. 

Having her just shoot water might get a little boring, so to mix things up a little bit, she won't always be using "normal" water.


(showing off 3 different kinds of water)

So far we have 3 different types of water implemented.  I won't go into too much detail about these just yet, since they're incomplete and level-specific. 

In the gif you can also see that Tess now shoots out air-bubbles when refilling her tank, which will be her primary method of attacking when underwater/swimming.  And just like with shooting out water, if your tank runs out of air then you can't shoot out any more bubbles.  I think this will make the gameplay a bit more interesting, as managing your level of water no longer means just worrying about running out of water, but running out of air as well.  The levels will have to be designed with this in mind, so the pace of play isn't slowed down too much by refilling/emptying your water tank.

[migs]

Listening to that music while watching your dev gifs has me pretty keen; it manages to be both haunting and hopeful. I really dig the water gun as well! I watched that gif for way too long, really nice work!

[Quicksand-T]

Great music, is it made with Pxtone? If not, how did you make it?

[GIRakaCHEEZER]

Great music, is it made with Pxtone? If not, how did you make it?

I've used pxtone in the past for other projects (like in LoliLoli: Race to the Moonlight Party) but the music for this game is made in Psycle, a freeware tracker (that sometimes crashes, but that seems to be VST specific).

Also here's the track that will probably be used for the titlescreen: https://soundcloud.com/girakacheezer/last-day-open
It's sort of a calmer variation of Forgotten Friend, more suited to the mood I want for the title.

[jesseb]

wow, really nice looking. i love her sad eyes.

[Quicksand-T]

Now that I've played the first game (which I really liked) I'm wondering how the stories will connect. I know you said you don't have to have played the first for this one, but how do they fit chronologically? If at all.

[tankorsmash]

The weapons system and general artstyle definitely has that CaveStory vibe, the little numbers that popped up on damage look like they were heavily inspired by CS in a good way.

What are some of the weapons you're going to try to outdo? A lot of the fun in that game was experimenting with all the new weapons you could find and seeing how levelling up would change the way that they worked.

[GIRakaCHEEZER]

Sorry for the gap between updates.  Despite the lack of posts here, the game is still being worked on.  Recently I've been working on making some enemies for the game.

Snails

These are snails, a slow moving enemy.  They can crawl on walls and floors, and will try to hit you by flipping their gravitational orientation.  In the air they retreat into their shell, so they're invulnerable then.  They have the most frames of any enemy right now, mainly due to the mid-air flipping animation.

Floor Frog

This is a "floor frog".  A pretty simple enemy, it peeks at the player and then pops out to fire a few bubbles.  I had fun animating this one.

Squids

Another early game enemy, the squid.  They move simply and predictably, so they should only give the player trouble if encountered in packs (which is how they'll often be found).

I've also changed the shader for the water in the game, to make the water look a bit more vibrant.

Old Water Shader


New Water Shader

The new shader is additive, as opposed to the old shader which was just plain old alpha composite.  The sprite used for the water itself here is the same, only the shader was changed.  Looks less faded now.



Now to answer some questions:

Now that I've played the first game (which I really liked) I'm wondering how the stories will connect. I know you said you don't have to have played the first for this one, but how do they fit chronologically? If at all.

Chronologically the 2nd game probably does take place after the first.  But it won't really be important to the plot of this game.

What are some of the weapons you're going to try to outdo? A lot of the fun in that game was experimenting with all the new weapons you could find and seeing how levelling up would change the way that they worked.

So far the main thing we have planned for weapon diversity is just the different water types (which will have both different combat effects and other practical effects for navigation/puzzles). 

I've toyed around in my head with the idea of maybe having different nozzles for the water gun that could be switched on the go.  Maybe one that shoots at different angles or one that could charge a water burst.  Another idea is letting the player have 2 water tanks they could switch between, so they can carry more than one water type at once.

[ProgramGamer]

This looks neat.

[ChatterBlox]

Is this topic dead at all? I ABSOLUTELY loved Tess and am super excited for the sequel!