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[-NEON-]

Wooo dev thread time!

I plan on using this thread to give more nuanced updates about my progress in comparison to the current public build. I'm only one person (who isn't making money), so updates and action items may be occasionally haphazard.

Either way, I hope you enjoy the ride! Here are some tidbits about AdventNEON, trimmed down and taken from the Playtest Thread.

GAME MECHANICS

-Directional Attacks: Just like in platform fighers; press a direction + attack and you'll perform a move based on that direction. These moves change when grounded or in the air.

-Attack Chaining/Canceling: Landing an attack lets you throw out another one instantly, or cancel into a jump/dash.

-Directional Dashing: Ignoring Celeste for a second, you ever play other games where you can dash and ask "but what if I could do them in every direction"? Incredibly fast, versatile, invincible. You get 2 of these before they go on a short cooldown and regenerate. Yes there's wavedashing. Dashes can be canceled into any other action in the game. Use a dash right before getting hit to freeze time and prepare a counterattack.

-Break Attacks (Also Directional!): These are more powerful moves, similar to Smash attacks in Super Smash Bros. The difference here is that they cost one of your 2 dash charges to use, and that you have to press the attack button while holding the dash button to execute it. After dodging with a dash, your counter attack will let you perform one of these without using up a dash charge or holding the dash button.

Nodes: Nodes are the pickups that you find in the game (similar to coins or rings). If you collect 10 regular Nodes, you'll regain a health point! Collect 100 and all your health's immediately restored (You only have 4HP). Nodes are found in the level, when hitting an enemy subsequent times, dodging their attacks, or when KO'ing them. Your source of restoring health in a pinch is being aggressive.

-RESONANCE: Resonance is a souped up combo counter/bonus. With each hit or node collection in a certain time frame, you gain REZ, a direct boost to your damage and speed. With each percentage of REZ, you gain that much damage additively. (I.e. 40% REZ means you deal 40% more damage.) However, you lose this bonus when getting hit or waiting too long.
When reaching 100% REZ, you spike in power dramatically; you deal 2.5x damage, run faster, jump higher and glow green.

Whew, that's a lot.

Alright, after reading those mechanics, you might be thinking "that's jank", and my response is, "You exactly right".

AdventNEON comes from a motivation of simply wanting to be FASTER in a videogame. I absolutely dislike games with incredibly long buffers or animations, or things that you spam the A button 50 times to not go any faster. Clunky menus, attacks that take too long to register, you name it. It's frustrating, and we've all been there, feeling as though the game simply could not keep up with what we wanted to do.

That's why I'm taking it into my own hands to create (and balance) something that lets you go as absolutely berserk as you want, something that can truly keep up with you without leaving you behind.

There are a ton of challenges, pros and cons to an approach like this, but I still believe that what I'm going for here can be, or at least will become a fun experience, and I'm willing to stick with it for as long as it takes to make it so. I'm working on this entire game alone, and I'm willing to put in all the effort on the planet to make it a fun, fast and fluid experience. (I absolutely REFUSE to be one of those people who has to ask at the end of development if their game is even fun.)

This will cover some more general info as well as goals that I've got for the game.

-The game consists of a mix of platforming, combat, and arena fights where you must clear out the room before proceeding. It's visually more similar to classic platformers than beat-em-ups, but the combat aspect is still there, making it  similar to platform fighters.

-Neon's world is split into Territories. Each Territory consists of at least 3 levels (Acts), with the 3rd one ending with a boss battle. Each Territory will (attempt) to be designed completely unique of the others (completely unique enemies & level gimmicks), with a total of 9 of them in the end; after clearing the first Territory, the player will unlock access to the other 8 to be cleared in any order they want.*
(*Update 7/18/20 - this approach is very likely to be changed.)


-Neon can collect Nodes which add to your total Node count and restores health for every 10 you collect. Your total is saved outside of levels, so you can eventually use it as currency for unlocking new moves or up/side-grades for existing ones! (*7/18/20: This is no longer the case. Powerups will mainly be found in levels. Nodes are still planned to be usable for some form of customization, but currently it's not a very high priority.)

(I originally intended for the above to be entirely new movesets similar to Megaman but that requires reworking Neon's entire smash-like moveset rather than giving them a characteristic move or two.*)
(*7/18/20: I still want to do something like that but maybe having another playable character or two after funding.)

Hope you guys enjoy the ride! Gonna go ahead and get started!

[-NEON-]

Gonna go ahead and rapid-fire some updates at you that I've made since the 0.1.0 demo already. Click on the images to go to their respective tweets!

Updating Neon's Idle Sprite

I decided to try making Neon's sprite much simpler in the face to both add character, and make it easier for him to emote.







Getting Started on Attack Animations



Gonna have to animate most, if not all the enemies and sprites eventually, so I'm getting some bigger stuff out of the way first. With this animation, the current melee enemies now have two attacks they can perform based on their distance to you. Will refine 'em more over time, but for now the goal is to just have stuff in at all!


Loudmouth (Boss) Concept Art



Loudmouth is the boss of the Neopolis Territory, and is the first boss you fight. Capable of punching, charging and launching projectiles at you, Loudmouth isn't a boss you avoid by standing still.

[-NEON-]

Spent a good chunk of time today fixing up how Neon's dash works internally.

-You can now dash forward by only tapping the button

-Dashing's distance has been DECREASED, by like half
-This ironically makes it EASIER to use, less overpowered, and it meshes significantly better with combat.



Neon regains dashes after a certain number of hits, regardless of the internal cooldown, so punching groups of enemies will let you go nuts!

Also I should note that that entire combo is my execution; there's nothing in the game that lets you home in on enemies (yet). Lightweights are carried with your dash so you can hit them, but the speed at which you do everything is entirely up to how fast you can input.

[-NEON-]

Today was spent performing some bug fixes along with some additions.

Neon's dash somehow had an issue where it could clip you through walls from the other side of the screen despite not going anywhere near that fast or that far for it to logically make sense.

Turns out the logic I had for making a dash cancel at a ledge was capable of sending Neon into a wall if the place the platform and wall met at was somehow the edge of a platform. Dash interacts with, like, everything in the game so finally figuring that out was a weight off my shoulders, as it was incredibly hard to replicate in the first place. Shoot, I might've just gotten a lucky break with my recent tests after addressing the issue.


Other developments include:



Performing Reversals now changes the prompt on the top left of the screen. It's randomized per dash, so chaining them together will get the interface to generate some humorous text until you actually perform the counterattack (shown at the end).
 



Shortening the tooltip for the Combo Bomb object, and removing a lot of other tooltips from the game.
Additionally, added an explosive area and Node capsule above the bomb to encourage you to figure out how to hit it upwards.

Some people intuitively figure out the bomb and don't need this text at all, others don't and wonder why it's so hard. The response I've seen about just figuring it out is polarized, so I'm going to compromise and simply tell you to experiment for now. I'm doing my best to make you figure this thing out and stop using one attack on it.


Branching off that point, we've now got: GIANT FLYING SENTRIES (Minibosses)


Look, if you ain't figure out how to hit that bomb upwards yet, you will here (or maybe not, you can always dash up there and punch them). I'm iffy about making there be two of them, but I'm going to distribute the next build with it and see what happens. It's one of those things where if you figure it out, it's incredibly easy, but if you don't use the gimmick available, you can still beat it, but with a bit more difficulty.

Biggest challenge I think I've run into overall is conveying to people that their attacks and movements can go in every direction on a dime, and hopefully this helps a bit more in showcasing Neon's utility. Like, I'm glad the barrage is fun, but it's not gonna get you out of every problem and while I don't want to punish people for using it all the time, I DO want to make it clear that it won't always work and that defaulting to it isn't optimal. 




Also, here's a pic of that slash animation ingame, and me dodging the attack with a Reversal (dashing right before being hit). I'm a character artist, not an animator so I'm really enjoying seeing my mans slice at me.





Finally, I'm also starting on the new sprite for Loudmouth so the thing isn't just a giant ball; the world around you both inverts right as the boss music starts. Might nerf the sprite to 128x instead of 256x for my sanity down the line.


Just kidding that's not the last thing; I also have some miniboss music in the works! With instaudio going down though, it's hard for me to be lazy about posting a quick link to it, so you'll just have to wait until it's in the game to hear it lol


Overall, it's 1am and I need sleep; will be back at it again soon, with another build (with Mac support, I hope) ready by this weekend.

[-NEON-]

Minor updates today!



Added a little dps meter to the training room so you can see how much damage your combo's done!





Also gettin' started on a slightly better run animation for Neon; I'm slowly starting to understand how meticulous pixel art is, especially for animation lol



I'm steadily marking off stuff that I wanted to get done this week, so I think this new build will be out relatively on time. Wish I could've done more today though, but it's fine.

[-NEON-]

New Update!!

I've gone and updated all of Neon's sprites and gave them a complete makeover! Here's a comparison of a couple sprites:

Jab Finisher & Charge Attack: Neutral/Side - Old



Jab Finisher & Charge Attack: Neutral - New


Other stuff:

Alongside Neon, the officer enemies have had their design streamlined and updated, and the Melee enemies have a new attack, from that slash animation that I showed before. And also:

The second level straight up has a new segment in it! This is an old image from when I started implementing it, so there's a few differences, but this is the general gist of the layout, still.

I urge you to check out the update to see just how different a lot of stuff outright feels now!

My favorite thing was decreasing dash's distance, because it allowed me to allow them to regenerate even faster in combat, since you can't fly too far otherwise. Making all the poses stronger and more characterized was icing on it all, even though it was very very tedious icing.

[-NEON-]

Doing some refinements to how comboing works, along with refinements to the bossfight!

In the next demo build, building resonance (a damage boost for charged attacks) will be much harder if you use only one move repeatedly. If you continue to use the same attack without stopping or switching to another attack, that attack will then deal 1/4th of its normal damage. The barrage attack is fun, but there's quite a few other moves to make use of, and just nerfing the barrage's damage isn't an effective enough solution to making the player experiment. The first video showcases this stuff in action.





Here's the boss (Loudmouth) in action! It's immune to your punches until you hit it with an explosive, after which it'll be vulnerable for a few seconds. Once the fight gets going, it has a lot of ways to punish you regardless of your incredible speed. Be prepared to react quickly because trying to stand still will get you destroyed.

Note: I've got disdain for bosses where the entire thing is just "stand in one of three places to avoid their attack". This isn't meant to be a bullet hell fight, but it's also not meant to be so easily predictable. Virtually every move has additional properties based on where you're positioned, and the moves Loudmouth chooses are also based on your current position relative to it.

The pace of the fight is dictated by where YOU are and how YOU react to the Loudmouth's attacks.

[-NEON-]

New Update!

This includes the aforementioned refinements to Resonance. There have also been changes to the mechanic so it's easier to maintain your damage bonus when killing enemies. All-in-all, it's up to you to snowball.

Even more tweaks to the little stuff like how the camera works and when ZA WARUDO the time stop occurs. I'm thinking I'm gonna take it a bit easy on development after this, so I can focus on some other life things.

Hope you guys check it out! Been working like mad on this thing.

[-NEON-]

This is one heck of a necro, but for good reason.






The game has been completely reworked!

Movement, combat, visuals, the backend, etc all ended up being revamped to make the game feel significantly more fluid and polished than it was before. Look at that gameplay footage up there my dudes.

The demo for this is available now in the Playtest thread.



So what's happened in the past 9 or so months? I started working as the icon artist for One Step from Eden, and decided to pause development.

The entire time since October, I was planning a pretty significant polish update that got pushed farther back due to wanting to fix a bit more about the game (I originally wanted something done by December of last year lol).

After working on OSFE, though, I realized that my skill in doing UI artwork and icons increased rapidly and dramatically. While that specific type of art isn't what I'm focused on for my own game, it showed me that it was possible to grind a skill even faster than I thought with enough focus.

So, I looked back at my own game, said "this looks cheap", and then said "screw it; I'm learning pixel art for real", and proceeded to start overhauling the whole game (especially visually) around January.

Now, instead of Clip Studio Paint and Photoshop, I use Aseprite for my pixel art.

Instead of placeholder poses and hitbox objects for animations, I'm making full on (albeit wip/rough) attack animations with a far more logical hitbox system.

There's an actual freakin' background now!

Also the tileset is no longer some type of bought asset thrown in Tilesetter, and a majority of the fx are hand animated instead of bs'd from Pixel FX Designer.

The old level designs? Garbage. The new levels were rebuilt from scratch and had more than a week of thought put into them.

Tons of backend improvements to optimize performance and reduce bugs. Still a ways to go, but there's a TON fewer snags than before.

TL;DR I actually got off my butt and started learning how to do everything better rather than trying to tweak what I currently had without really taking a step back and looking at it all. Because I was really about to design the second area without the first one truly feeling like a game yet.

This is the type of game I wouldn't mind spending forever working on, even if it means putting it on hold and working on something else, so I'm using that experience to learn everything I can.


new idle: https://i.gyazo.com/5e2a9c71f0fe4e4acc189c750b381601.mp4
new run cycle, compared to old: https://i.gyazo.com/4f5921e479a0abb00cd3ea04483a9fe9.mp4
some combat: https://i.gyazo.com/da839bee9cd3157f6bff51b5107eafb2.mp4