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[ChrisLSound]

I really like how those enemies fall after you kill them. Simple, but makes things so much more interesting and engaging.

[Svanberg]

Update 9

Struggling onward, about to participate in a two week long military exercise here in Sweden, progress on the game will remain slow for the coming months. Hopefully I should have more time available at the end of May... After having had a pretty good pace going at the beginning of the year it feels pretty awful to see progress grind to a halt over this last month, but I have to remind myself that this is a hobby project.

---

One of the things I want to do is add more unique and interesting features to the different rooms. While working on this I remembered this weird parallax "3D" effect I stumbled across a couple of years ago, when first creating the parallax background system: if you layer the same sprite at different parallax values it sort of looks like a three dimensional object.





After a lot of trial and error with the sprites and parallax values I manged to create these pipe objects:







I'm going to try to create some different objects with the same effect, I'm not 100% sold on the look of this in-game yet, maybe its too jarring to have a "3D-effect" in an otherwise flat game?


Thanks for reading, updates will continue to be sporadic the coming months, hope everyone is having a great Sunday!

[szczm_]

This effect looks really cool, but I also kind of agree that it does not blend in nicely with the rest of objects. Maybe we're just so used to having perspective up close, not far in the distance, that more movement in the background than in foreground just makes it stand out? What if you used these pipes as foreground objects? But then again, your static foreground layer (walls, floor etc.) are mostly one solid colour, so it's probably not an option either.

Also, maybe with your pipeline/technology your approach makes more sense, but when I looked at the GIF presenting your method for this effect, I couldn't help but think you could use an additional, single rectangular segment in the middle:



One advantage of this method is, if this segment was to be horizontally uniform (one identical strip top to bottom), then you could stretch it as much as needed. Of course, it would look uniform, but that doesn't seem to clash with your art direction.

Aaaaalso I wonder how I never noticed your game before, I really dig it. Wish you luck on your journey onwards Also all the luck and peace you may need during your incoming exercise.

[ChrisLSound]

I also agree it looks super cool, but could be tricky to get right.

It didn't seem like much of a problem in the small gifs, but once I zoomed in, the effect felt more disorienting. It sort of makes the front of the big pipes feel like they're connected to the "back" of the foreground floor.

Maybe you could apply this technique to things already in the foreground? The platforms, walls, pillars, etc. The work required for that may get out of hand though... Plus, it might look weird having the actors flat while the environment is "3D".

I hope there's some way you could use the effect though, because it really does look cool.


I too wish you the best in the coming months!

[Svanberg]

Currently the levels have 4 parallax layers:

Background - Back
Background - Main
Background - Over
Tiles

The pipes I've made so far goes from the "main" background up to the "over" background layer, I played around with trying to make pipes that goes all the way to the tiles layer, but as you point out szczm_ everything is basically the same color, and I couldn't get the colors to look good going from the shaded background layers up to the fully lighted tile layer, but maybe possible, I'll give it another try. I would like to "sell" the effect so it isn't jarring when it happens, but at the same time using it too much might make other objects like the player and enemies appear flat like you say Chris, hmm.


(higher resolution gif)

I'm not really sure how to proceed, the workflow for creating and experimenting with these types of game-objects have been pretty time consuming, I do think it looks good, but sunk cost makes it hard to be objective, wont be able to work on anything for another 10 days or so, so lots of time to sleep on it at least.

Aaaaalso I wonder how I never noticed your game before, I really dig it. Wish you luck on your journey onwards Also all the luck and peace you may need during your incoming exercise.

I too wish you the best in the coming months!

Thank you both for the kind words and thank you very much for the feedback, I very much appreciated it.


Felt like I rambled a bit, I hope I made some sense. Working 14+ hour shifts during the exercise, it's a staff exercise so not physically taxing or dangerous, just mentally exhausting.

[Svanberg]

Hello,

Everything is good here, still pretty busy with the day job, the military exercise I participated in went really well, will be able to take a pretty long summer vacation after all this work, so that's something, really looking forward to it.

Anyways, another short update, this week I've been reworking the tutorial area, I really want to have a tutorial that teaches the player the main game concepts without ever having the player read anything or really know they are being taught something.

Below are a couple of rooms in the tutorial sequence:



Above is the first room with enemies in it, in the previous room the player has learned how to shoot by having to destroy a couple of crates, and that locked door can be opened by interacting with the "door panel". In this room the player will have to kneel and shoot two enemies, which will open the door, showing the player that killing all enemies in a room will open doors with a "door panel".





First room after picking up an "use item", a grenade launcher, I've tried to design the room so that the player is enticed into trying the item right away upon entry, which will work pretty much always as long as they fire in the right direction, kneeling, jumping, walking forward, etc, it shouldn't matter, the grenade should bounce around and hit the enemy.


In addition to these there are a couple of more rooms, one where the player need to kill enemies by firing in all four directions, and one where the grenade launcher is picked up.

After the tutorial sequence is finished the player will be thrown into a procedurally assembled level and the real game will start.

[Svanberg]

Greetings,

I'm still working on the first area of the game, been updating the different tile-maps to add more details and character, going back and updating already completed rooms with new tiles has been very time consuming, but just doing things and going back and fixing them later is the only way I get anything done..

I'm starting to become pretty happy with the current state of the "background" tiles, I think there are enough detail here now to consider it done, with the exception of adding some more unique features for rare rooms and some more "parallax" objects as I mentioned in a previous update.



Sample background section.

Added the text label and the yellow cable section last couple of days, the text label is randomized so different text would be added to the wall panel each time the room is used. There is also a chance some background elements wont be placed, making the background for the same room slightly different each time.



Room with some new background tiles.


Another room with updated background.

---

Some random gameplay:


Fighting one of the first bosses.


Destroying some drones.

[Svanberg]

Hello,

I have been meaning to add one more boss to the first area of the game for a while, putting the current total bosses for the first area at six. So for this update I thought I'd just do a step by step description of my process and thoughts about it.

I always start by sketching, either with pen and paper or directly in Aseprite, a rough idea of how something should look and what it should do, this process is often very slow for me, I don't really know how others do it when they create stuff, but I seldom get a flash of creativity, I just have to sit down and work on it, sometimes for days before I get something useful, but I suspect this is how it is for almost everyone.


Since this is the sixth possible boss for this area I think about what the other bosses do, what kind of attacks they have, how they look and how they move. Three of the five current bosses flies around, while the other two are more floor based, so there is a spot for something ceiling based. I finally come up with a concept I'm starting to like, a robot with multiple legs that crab walks across the ceiling, I'm not really sure how it will attack the player yet but I start trying to translate the idea into rough sprites.

I'm not a strong pixel artist, so one of the biggest thing for me is to make sure that I can actually animate what ever ideas I come up with. For most things this is the walk cycle, so that's where I start, after some trial and error I end up with this basic animation:




Looks pretty bland so far, so I add another set of legs and a bob.





I'm pretty happy with this look, so next step is adding a head, here I run into a lot of trouble, everything I try just looks super boring and stale. I remember a boss I worked on earlier for the second area that I never finished, it had independently moving neck pieces, so I try to add them to what I have. It works surprisingly good after I've updated the code to fit the new model. And my "standard" robot boss "head/core" works perfectly attached to the neck as well.



In-game recording, head attached and sprites shaded.


Might need some more shading work and some color adjustments but overall very happy with the current look. The head moves somewhat randomly and the eye will follow the player around the room.

Up to this point I've not prototyped any gameplay for the boss, again not sure how others work, I might be a bit odd here? Either way I code the walking and start coding the first attack, going to use a laser attack I've made earlier but ended up not using.



Laser


I'm not 100% sold on the laser yet, but maybe it will grow on me. I also added a "nova" attack that I am a bit happier with.



Nova


Finally I want to add something that gives the player something to do when the boss moves, something that ties everything together. I decide on a rocket attack.
A lot of tweaking and balancing still remains, but this is the current version of everything together:



Latest version

That's it for this update (got a bit delayed, trying to post updates on Sundays), thank you for reading.

Any feedback is greatly appreciated!

[ChrisLSound]

This boss looks great - excellent work!

I quite like the independently-moving head, though I think it'd add more unsettling chaotic intensity if it were to (seemingly randomly) jerk around a bit more. That might also make it harder to navigate its attacks though.

[Svanberg]

This boss looks great - excellent work!

I quite like the independently-moving head, though I think it'd add more unsettling chaotic intensity if it were to (seemingly randomly) jerk around a bit more. That might also make it harder to navigate its attacks though.

Thank you, that's a good idea, I think I'll make it a bit more erratic from the start, then make it even more erratic as the boss takes more and more damage.

---



Been working on the death "animation", made it so the rockets the boss fires can hit and destroy the head in the middle of it.

[SamSerious]

The art style and quality is really nice, but the leg sliding on the player character and enemies somehow attracts all my attention. 

[Svanberg]

The art style and quality is really nice, but the leg sliding on the player character and enemies somehow attracts all my attention. 

Yes, I can see that, it seems like a mismatch between movement speed and animation speed, it should be possible to get it at least a bit better by tweaking animation speed, but will probably not fix it fully. I'll take a look at it, thank you for bringing it up!

[Svanberg]

Yes, I can see that, it seems like a mismatch between movement speed and animation speed, it should be possible to get it at least a bit better by tweaking animation speed, but will probably not fix it fully. I'll take a look at it, thank you for bringing it up!

Well I was sort of right..., I didn't really understand what was going on and why though, just tweaking animation speed didn't do anything helpful except illuminate how little I know what I'm doing.

Most of my walk animations have very few frames, this seems to be what is causing the sliding. And the only idea for solving it that I've come up with is adding more frames. It feels like I'm missing something though, I think I've played games with similarly few frames in the walk cycles, and I've not really noticed this issue. But then again I didn't really see how bad it was here until SamSerious pointed it out, and now I can't unsee it. Definitely going to go back and play some games to see if I can get some insight.

Going to post the process I used to fix this for the boss above.


First I redid the walk cycle, going from 12 frames on the right to 42 frames on the left.


New / Old

This eliminated most of the "sliding" but introduced very noticeable subpixel movement. Below is a slow motion recording of this.


Slow motion subpixel movement issue.


I've had similar issues earlier and they are usually fix pretty easily with something like this:

Code:

transform.position = new Vector2 (Mathf.RoundToInt (transform.parent.position.x * 16f) / 16f, Mathf.RoundToInt (transform.parent.position.y * 16f) / 16f);

For some reason that I don't understand however this doesn't fix the issue, it removes the subpixel movement but the sprite is now jumping back and forth between two "pixel grid" positions. If someone can explain the behavior below that would be very helpful, I feel like I'm missing something obvious.


Still jittering.

At this point I'm basically just trying random things to fix it since I don't know what is causing it. I notice that if i change Mathf.RoundToInt to Mathf.FloorToInt the movement becomes smooth on the very first walk, after that it starts jittering again. The only thing special with the first walk is that the starting position of the boss game object is a pixel grid position, so after the boss finishes its movement I add code that rounds its position to the grid, that fixes the issue. I don't get why this is needed, or why the above jittering is the symptom, is it some sort of Unity3D position rounding issue?



Smooth movement finally!



Boss gameplay with new walk animation.


Still need to go back and fix the shadowing on the new walk animation, once that is done I'll take a look at the player walk animation, since its the first pixel animation I ever made its the most primitive with only 5 frames. After that there is a couple of more walk animations that I need to review and see if they suffer from the same issues, which they probably do.

And truly thank you for bringing this issue to my attention SamSerious, the boss looks so much better with the new walk animation.

[ChrisLSound]

Nice work. Even though the issue didn't originally stand out to me, this looks so much better.

I bet some subtle screen shake on the boss footsteps (plus a nice chunky sound effect) would give it so much weight and intimidation

[Svanberg]

Nice work. Even though the issue didn't originally stand out to me, this looks so much better.

I bet some subtle screen shake on the boss footsteps (plus a nice chunky sound effect) would give it so much weight and intimidation

Good suggestions, thank you Chris!

---

Hello!

Been struggling a bit the last couple of weeks, not getting much done. The amount of work needed to redo the player animations seemed daunting, because the layering of the sprites and some bad back end decisions I made when initially creating them. Basically the shape of the sprite sheets are "bad", so extra code is needed to make sure they line up correctly when they are flipped. I should have fixed this issue when I layered the sprites, but I didn't, I created more bad sprite sheets because that was faster... *sigh*

Well anyways, going to try to fix them, but before I fix all different armor variants I'm going to try to finalize a new walk animation.


The player walk animation is pretty atrocious when you looked closely at it, but not surprising since it was the first animation i made for the game.


Original Walk Animation

This animation has a bunch of problems, the foot "moves" at irregular speeds, from not moving at all to moving 5 pixels at once, there is no correct speed to play this animation to avoid the sliding being to obvious.

So i remade the above animation with more frames to keep the foot movement speed constant, 1 pixel at a time.


Reworked original animation

Not playing fast enough, foot sliding, after some tinkering I figured out that for the foot that is touching the ground to "keep up", the animation needs to play at 90fps if the foot moves 1 pixel at a time. Seems too fast, doesn't look good, and could be some other issues with having it play that fast...

So I did a version where the foot moves 2 pixels at a time.


2 pixel version

I don't like this version either, for the foot to keep up the animation needs to play at 45 frames per second, but this doesn't look good. (In the recording above the walk animation is only playing at 38fps, and still looks too fast to me.)

I test a bunch of more versions 3 pixel, 4 pixel, 5 pixel. I didn't record all of this, but the conclusion I come too is that the 3 pixel version is the best, the animation runs at 30fps which seems fine, and it minimizes the amount of sliding, 4 and 5 pixel versions creates jerkier motion as the leg jumps back and forth more noticeable as the sprite moves forward while the leg moves back. This is still a issue with the 3 pixel version but it is less noticeable, not sure how to resolve fully without trying to force the sprite into the right place with code, but this seems very janky..


Here are a couple of 3px versions I made. I do have a favorite, but I'm not decided yet, would love some thoughts on this.


1. Bouncing


2. Alternating legs, not sure if worth perusing?


3. This is my favorite at the moment.


Always a bit tough to settle on something like this, probably no obviously "right" answer, eventually I just get used to how something looks and settles with the thing I've seen the most, this is how I got used to the initial walk animation.


Here is some walking and fighting with the 3 version (also been reworking some other animations, mainly the jump).






That's it for this one, sorry about the radio silence, would love some feedback and suggestions on the sprites, thank you for reading!

[ChrisLSound]

I'm not really an animator, so take this for whatever it's worth:

I can't tell much difference between #1 and #3, except that maybe #3 is slightly smoother? They both look good to me.
I would say, though, that they all look a little strange due to a lack of upper-body movement. I think adding a little arm movement would help.

Perhaps looking at how Super Metroid/similar games do their walk cycles will help, both with the overall struggle you talked about here, and with incorporating more upper-body movement.

In the end, IMO, it's most important to keep the effort required for art manageable for you. What you have looks perfectly acceptable to me, and it'd suck for the rest of development to be bogged down by this or for it to become a discouragement.

You're doing great work!

[Svanberg]

Keeping the art manageable is definitely something I try to keep in mind. I outmaneuvered myself a bit with this one.. , Fixing the sprite issues is just boring, it shouldn't be a problem to get done, just need to be in the right mindset.

Your feedback and encouragement is greatly appreciated Chris. I must start taking the time to pay it forward.

[Svanberg]

Hello everyone.

I fixed all outstanding issues with the earlier sprite-sheet implementation, all the player sprites are now uniform in size (48x48 pixels). Updating the sprites further is much easier now since it wont require the game flipping different sprites differently, what a mess that was... 

I added a slight arm bob to the walk animation (might be hard to see on the gifs) and updated all the different player variants and layers with the new animations. I also added dust particles when walking, that and the arm bob makes the walk look a bit less stiff, pretty happy with it at the moment.



Close-up of new player animations.




Random gameplay with different player variants:





Thank you for reading!

Should be back with another update in a couple of days, been working on a lot of different things.


Follow development: Here, Twitter.

[Alex Strook]

love everything I'm seeing there !
This is definitely a game I will play once it's out!

I feel the arm should move a lot more during the walk animation, other than that everything looks solid 

[Svanberg]

love everything I'm seeing there !
This is definitely a game I will play once it's out!

I feel the arm should move a lot more during the walk animation, other than that everything looks solid 

Thank you Strook!

I did some quick variants with more arm movement, undecided about the results, will take another look at it in a couple of day.