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[Julien]

Hey !

Finally, here is a devlog that I will see trought to the end !

I say that because, as many others, I have spent years going trough projects after projects for reasons such as "Hooo, I can't bear working on Windows, I'll just drop Unity" or "Hooo Scala looks cool, I'd love writing a game with it !" and, more project focused "Meh, this game is awesome but way too big, I'll never finish it, let's start something more reasonnable. Then let's add thousands of features to make it even bigger than the previous one !".

None got finished

So here is one that I firmly intend to finish. It's small scale, entirely with code, with a framework and language that I like. And it's a joy to work on it

The game is called Twaddle Paddle.

It takes classic Arkanoid, and tries to stay close the original and still be relevant today. If it had a moto, it would probably be Keep It Simple Stupid

The most notable change the gameplay is the ability to change your paddle type.
Blue paddle will make the ball blue and trigger blue blocs that explode vertically, orange for orange blocks that will do some oae
Other changes are more focused on making it feel more dynamic with :
- a paddle that will shoot part of itself to destroy blocks
- a ball that changes its speed according to wether you need it to be fast or slow
- a paddle that can go up and down give you more control on the speed of the ball
- a ball that be kind to you and aim at lonely blocks if you have a hard time finishing a level

My goal for posting here is to get honest feedback

Ho, fun fact, the game as only one asset, a single white 1 pixel

DOWNLOAD



P.S. You can tune down screenshake :D

[Devilkay]

the light effects are great!

[Julien]

Thank you ! That's a simple bllom shader

[Julien]

Ok so the new update is out, I'm quite happy with this one On the menu :
- better looking paddle
- A cursor :D
- mouse control
- better desktop backend
- slowmo for paddle shots
- better looking paddle shot
- up & down paddle changes ball speed again

[Julien]

Hey, new update is out, let me know what you think

There are a few gameplay adjustments and better graphics



The biggest change is that you can now dash with your paddle




https://diocletian.itch.io/twaddle-paddle

[tankorsmash]

Your game's got style man, it looks awesome.

[Julien]

Thank you !

I get a loot of feedback on the visuals, not so much on the gameplay. Just for my information, did you had a chance to try ?

[Julien]

So, I skipped a week because I felt that the last update was a bit weak. Now I feel like there is too much :3

The most obvious ones :

- mouse control can dash
- better blocks anim
- a background that is drawn by the balls
- better level selection
- highscore saved :3
- better looking fonts
- added some 'creatures' that are released when you break a block
- kids mode remember destroyed blocks

[Julien]

Hello !

The new update is out with updates focused on the polish

A better level selection
A larger paddle to allow you to better control where the ball goes
A better looking effect when your paddle shoots
A better, more visible, bouncing indicator (The thing that shows you where the ball will land on the paddle. Very useful)
Some (probably temporary) music !

[Julien]

Hello !


I took a day off in my day job this week, so I have made some really cool progress ! (At least, they look cool to me )


On the 'visual' side of things :

- Each block is composed of particles and I light up those particles every time the ball hits a blocks which create this really cool ripple effect.
Concretely each collision will generate a sorted (depending on their square distance with the impact point) array of 'block pixels'. Each frame will light up the first 1/20 of this array, with a minimum of one, and remove it from the array. That's why it slows down as it progresses

- Some effects are more 'pixel arty', like the trail of the ball, or it's impact, or the twaddies that love you so much.
Quite simple trick here, for those particles, I round their position and dimensions to the closest int

On the gameplay side :

- The biggest thing here is, finally, an interactive tutorial ! I'm often quite bad at those things so please give me some feedback That's what took most of the time

- A first boss ! That's what took most of the rest of the time :D

- A better speed adjustment for the ball depending on its y axis


Some minor bug fixes

[Julien]

I worked on the background and on some lighting

[Julien]

Hey, this is the biggest update so far


Here is the new stuff :

- A new (and beautiful :3) background
- Your paddle can climb on walls
- New graphics for the bonuses
- Better looking balls
- Lighting effect on the blocks
- Better looking paddle
- The paddle control has been improved
- Balls will now accelerate over time
- And a few bug fixes

[Julien]

Hello !

I'm working on the trailer, feedback welcome !

[Julien]

And now, working on the cover image


I'm starting to forget gimp for its quirks

[Julien]

Ok after coding something just to do this image, here is the result

[Julien]

Here is update 18


Twaddle Paddle now has its very own music ! It's still being worked on, not by me, but I was so happy that I wanted to included it even if not finished

It fixes the very first bug report not given face to face ! Silly me, now you can't go to unsupported values for the screenshake. Silly me


For the graphics, here is what has been improved :

- The paddle moves a bit differently, the bottom moves before the bottom which makes it look like a pixaleted jelly

- Blocks of different levels are easier to distinguish

- Paddle size has been changed

- The transition between paddle colors

- The dash

- The '3d block effect' reacts to the paddle position

- Added some text displayed in the background when the ball bounces a lot

- The background of the blocks will be darker when one of their pixel lights up


For the gameplay, here is what has changed :

- Paddle speed

- Paddle shoot timer

- Ball speed has also been adapted


For sound :

- The dash has sound

- When the ball dies

- Tuned down the score sound


The in game ui has also been improved

[Julien]

Ok BIG step today, the steam page is available ! https://store.steampowered.com/app/1008590/Twaddle_Paddle/

It feels weird, and I'm super excited !

[tankorsmash]

On the sidebar of the storepage, I don't understand what "1 pixel brick breaker on steroids" means, what does the "1 pixel" represent? I think if a number is a single digit, you normally use `One` too!

For Roguebreaker, I uploaded a bunch of gifs with text overlaid as pngs (but now Steam supports gifs natively), that I embedded in the store page to give it some more flavour, maybe that's something you could do with yours? I think you've got a good looking game but the store page doesn't list all that much information. I tried to talk about the unique elements in mine, maybe that would help yours too.

I don't know how you've built your game, but adding Steam Cloud support is as easy as pointing it to a folder on your PC, it already has a bunch of presets for like My Documents and LocalStorage and stuff. I thought it would need some sort of API tracking, but since I saved all my savegame data in one folder it was very trivial to support.

[Julien]

You're right I didn't explained this one, I should. I went with 1 instead of one because it seemed to pop out more
And it's one because this is the only graphics assets the game uses : (you can hardly see it but there is 1 white pixel). It's tinted, scaled, and placed everywhere In a very few places it's also rotated but I seldom do it because it tends to break unity :3
In fact, only the bonus animation has a rotated particles. But it's ok because bonuses themselves are 'out of the game world'  

Cloud support ? Yep I'll add it Just need a windows machine for some testing, which I built yesterday (my most unbalanced pc so far, 3go of ddr2, a q6600, a gtx670 and a 1000w gold psu..)


And you're right about the steam page, it would be a lot more detailed. And will be by time of the release

Thanks for the feedback my fellow brick breaker dev !  

[Julien]

I shifted focus to android, the game looks like this now And it runs fine despite all those particles



Yes, it's portrait