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[skaz]

RAPTOR BALL

Mandatory animated attention-grabbing .gif.

Hi!

This devlog will be a bit peculiar: the deadline of the release of the game is already known and is adamant. I'll try to put as much features and polished it as much as possible before I reached it. This is the continuation of my LD36 project, and as I did with my LD35 entry (which was my first "completed" game), I will release a more polished, tested, bug free and interesting version of the jam one.
The deadline is arbitrary, I'm just more efficient with a clear goal, and I know how I can just spend days tinkering stuff without getting any progress. I've kept working on the game since the end of the jam, but now is the final sprint!

The deadline is sunday 11, midnight.

So much grass.

The game:

Raptor Ball is a 2D platformer about baseball with rocks and velociraptors. You are a caveman, and as everyone knows back in the old days of mankind, dinosaurs were contemporary of men. You use a primitive piece of equipment, a huge club, and to face the threat of the dinosaurs you have to rely on and advanced technique developed by our fearless ancestors: the Raptor Ball. Find a rock, club it as hard as you can, hope it lands in the head of a raptor, and finish the work from up-close while the monster is stunned by the impact. This strategy puts you in total safety, but in the middle of the action things can get a little complicated.

Why clubbing rocks in the general direction of fearsome predators you might ask? Well, it's because just like everyone, you and your family have to eat! And what is more delicious, nutrient and rare than velociraptors eggs?

The jam version is available on the Ludum Dare website. It was made in two days but I had to start a day late, so it only made it to the jam and not the compo this time.

home-run!

Features:

Right now, the game has an handful of levels, 3 raptors types (running back and forth, running and jumping back and forth, and one how actively pursue the player), you have to collect 3 eggs to get to the next level. It's extremely rough, no menu, no sound, the level design was made last and could have been way more interesting. Here is the goal for the finished version:
- re-design the levels, to get the best out of the game mechanics
- add parallax to some of the props
- make some backgrounds, flying pterodactyls in the distance, trees, mountains... no too much detailed stuff.
- make fog for some levels
- make more props: stalactites for the caves, bushes, rocks piles, lights rays, mushrooms...
- a title screen and a menu, to access the levels and see your progress
- a way to save your progress
- add sound!
- make a dilophosaurus, static, but that spits at the player.
- design a BOSS fight: either a triceratops, or a T-rex. Both is highly unlikely.
- add particles to a wide variety of stuff

As to what was done today, I've added a nice platformer camera salvaged from an old project, animated the rolling rock, high grass moves when crossed, I added outlines to the interactive sprites for readability, made a few decorative props, added parallax to some stuff, salvaged clouds from my previous LD entry, and a few other things.


Now to show some sprites I reworked since the jam:


That's a nice looking club.

Raptors:

 

The sprites and animations of the raptors.



The green one, jumper, and the red one, pursuer.



Underground prop.


DON'T LOOK BACK!

And some more screenshots!


So much FPS!!!


Boïnk!


Ruuuunnnn!!!

Any comment/criticism highly welcome! Next update tommorow, hope we'll cross a bunch of lines on the feature list!

Thanks for reading!

- Skaz

[skaz]

Hi!

So the past day progress was meagre, for a simple reason: I realised that the base design was flawed, and decided to remove the attacks of the player and the rocks altogether. Here's why:

After redoing some levels, I realiser there was no incentives to kill the raptors, as they were not blocking obstacles. Dodging them was easier than finding a rock, tossing it and killing them from up close. Solution could be to make the raptors blocking obstacles, and forcing the player to kill them. But those situations could lead to unclear fail state if he pushes a rock in the wrong direction, or miss the shot, or is to slow and don't kill the dino. It was complicated for no real purpose, and the fun in the game was clear to me while playing through the early redesigned level: dodging the raptors was the fun. Killing them just took the fun away.

So on the bright side, the project HAS advanced a bit, level design, global design of the game, some backgrounds for the forest parts, modified the sprite of the player, rays of lights... Here is a screenshot from the last version:


Simple ambient fake light.




I implemented crows that just fly away when you get near them. Did the same with rabbits, they just run from the player if he approach the place where they hide. I use a rabbit to show how raptors are dangerous: the raptor kills the rabbit! Sad... Sprites salvaged from my LD35 entry.


Camera feature: area based shifting. Now I can show the player what is important, when needed.

Now before making a title screen, I'll have to figure out a TITLE for the game. The baseball thing gone, the title is irrelevant.

Any suggestion?

- Skaz

[skaz]

So progress is steady, I've implemented a feature of the list I really wanted to put in, it's alas no boss since it will probably not be possible in the time frame I constraint myself into, but the dilophosaur.



No frill, didn't looked good.

Levels are made with care this time, introducing and developing each gameplay element progressively. I have currently 4 ready, but since I will probably not produce any more art, title screen aside, I can focus on gameplay and level design. I hope to have at least 10 levels, we'll see how the diversity of enemy types lead me.

[flipswitchx]

Love that tall grass! and all the dino bones. I'm thinking the raptors BITE could be bigger. Unhinge that jaw a little for effect

[skaz]

Thanks!

Yep, the bite is a bit shit, I made it quick during the jam by moving parts of the sprite around instead of drawing each one. Compared to the dilophosaur, it doesn't hold up. I'll redo it if I have the time...

[skaz]

Couldn't put as much time I wished today on the game, so tomorrow plans are as follow:

- make sound, can't ship a silent game right?
- playtest my levels some more, I curently have 10, the last one is being finished and will be tough as nails.
- make a title screen. Oh but you need a game TITLE to do that, don't you? Well, guess what, I HAVE ONE.

prehistory + omelet
= PREHISTOMELET

I love it.

[fingerman]

Hey skaz, you seem to be great at finishing games! 24 hours to go

[skaz]

Thanks Figerman! But I still count more unfinished project than completed ones :p



Challenge: completed.

That was hard, especially as the deadline was getting nearer and nearer. The sound was really rushed, as was the title screen. Hope it doesn't show too much.

Right now, I'm going to get some sleep and tomorrow I'll do all the needed stuff on gamejolt to publish the game. I'm not too proud, it turned out to be a really basic platformer but hey, at least it's completed! And I really like some of the pixel art I made for the game.

Here is a link to test the thing, it's 10 levels long, might turn out to be pretty hard at the end and frustrating. Every feedback is highly welcome!

Get the game HERE!

Working on it gave me some desire to make a more fleshed out platformer with dinos. And I might have found the perfect excuse to do so: a 2D platformer adaptation of Conan Doyle's Lost World. I mean, look at my caveman. There is practically nothing to change to make the perfect professor Challenger! And Challenger is so over the top in the book, it could translate to really awesome stuff in a video game.

[fingerman]

hi skaz, i have taken it for a spin. it gets difficult, there are no checkpoints but your graphics are really clear in this game. did i miss any moves? left right and jump... found out different ways to dodge the green raptors also.

[skaz]

Hi Fingerman!

Yes difficulty might still be a bit higher than what I expect. No you didn't miss any move, it's really as basic as it is, move and jump. There is indeed a variety of way to dodge those jumpy bastards, and you better figure it out to get to the end.

Glad you liked the art!

Thanks for your time!

-Skaz

[skaz]

Finally taken the time to publish the game on Gamejolt, it's available HERE! It's 10 levels long, but the game gets pretty challenging toward the end. No fancy moves, just run and jump. Everything is based around you ability to avoid enemies and projectiles.

Any feedback appreciated!

This is officially my second completed game, my gamejolt page starts to look like something 

Cheers!

-Skaz