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[racter]

2010-01-10 FINISHED! http://dai5ychain.net/dogandbone/



Server back up!  yay

"The Lost Vikings"-inspired platformer starring two dear friends: a dog and a skeleton.

Dog can jump and bark (to scare away birds). Bone can climb ladders and use magic.  They would like to hang out with you!

I'm using flixel - super fun! This is my first exposure to actionscript (I'm a python programmer professionally).


GRAPHICS
--------
+ Dog sprite by Fifth
+ Skeleton sprite & Tiles by Skab
+ Bird sprite by rpmoura
+ Background images by mr. mnml
+ Arrow graphics by Arachne

SOUND
-----
+ Dog bark sounds by /cheapshot
+ Action (jump/climb/magic) sound effects
   by Big Lons

MUSIC
-----
+ "Calm N Cute" by jrhill
+ "Storytime" by jrhill

[ETG]

Too bad Fifth didn't do a digging animation for the dog, that could have come in handy here.

[pgil]

A dog and a skeleton are ridiculously cute misfit companions.

[Pencerkoff]

Hello this is Pencerkoff

Great idea, though I hope that the dog's back legs aren't lost in the background too often.  Maybe you can adjust the tone/brightness of the background?

-PENCERKOFF

[SirNiko]

Liking the lost vikings inspired gameplay!

No digging animation is necessarily needed. Having the dog's sprite bounce up and down can probably convey the same idea, with maybe a "DIG DIG" text over top to clarify what he's doing.

The dog and skeleton duo suggests all sorts of crazy co-op abilities they might use. Hopefully we will see some clever puzzles here!

-SirNiko

[oryx]

looks great, glad to see those amazing animations going to good use

[Skab]

 

[HanClinto]

Love the concept

[racter]

Hey thanks for the comments I love the digging idea, hope I can work that in.

I'm getting closer to having a public demo ready.  Trying to figure out the best way to build levels right now - Flan looks ideal but it seems pretty buggy running under wine (I'm building this on linux).  I'll try it in a windows virtual machine & see if I get better results.  Anyone else using Flan on linux?

Also a Q for flixel people, what patterns do you follow when building multiple-level games?  Do you build separate FlxState subclasses for each level?  Or have some other state machine running within something like a PlayState?  I'll ask on the flixel forum also & write about my process here.

Meanwhile I am tracking my code on bitbucket - http://bitbucket.org/jakevsrobots/dog-and-bone-are-friends/ - not too much to see there yet but I'll keep pushing updates as I go.

[Fifth]

Heh, what a cute team-up!

If you do need a digging animation, you could try the "pulling" one in reverse.
(Sorry there's no official animation for it...)

[racter]

O Hai!  I have a demo!

http://dai5ychain.net/dogandbone/

It's just the 'tutorial' kinda levels, still pretty rough.  This has been a huge learning experience for me so far, as my first Flash project and the first game project I've gotten this far along with; planning to make it the first game project I actually finish

Source code is still all available in bitbucket: http://bitbucket.org/jakevsrobots/dog-and-bone-are-friends/

[racter]

Oh, I forgot to ask -- any recommendations on music?  I was looking for something mellow and I do like this track, but it has kind of a sad feel. (edit: added some cuter music by jrhill )  Any recommendations for some mellow/quiet/happy music?  Thanks!

[Kazerad]

The concept is cute and works well, but you're right: the music is way too sad for something this cheery. Good start though, I can't wait to play the actual levels.

[J. R. Hill]

Shameless plug of one of my assets.

http://timeforcute.com/cute/2009/10/calm-n-cute.mp3

[racter]

Shameless plug of one of my assets.

http://timeforcute.com/cute/2009/10/calm-n-cute.mp3

Oh good call, that fits much better   Thanks!

[ChiggenWingz]

Nice, the puzzles are pretty cool from what you've got so far :D

[Skab]

hehe, great job !

[Mikademus]

Cute, good basic mechanics. I dislike the linear interpolation of speeds when characters change directions or stop, especially for Bones. Does Flash not allow you to change sound volume (I shunt sounds to my stereo through a USB device, that as a side-effect disables the OS volume control)? I want some graphical feedback when Bones uses ancient statues, and that ancient artefacts would teleport wooden crates (which wouldn't have been there at the time they were erected) requires some explanation

[racter]

Does Flash not allow you to change sound volume (I shunt sounds to my stereo through a USB device, that as a side-effect disables the OS volume control)? I want some graphical feedback when Bones uses ancient statues

Right now you can control volume/mute in the 'pause' menu, but I'll add a mute button that's always visible; I hate it when browser-based games make it hard to turn the sound off too.

I added some better magickal feedback for the ancient statue effect & changed the sound to something spooky

and that ancient artefacts would teleport wooden crates (which wouldn't have been there at the time they were erected) requires some explanation

Oh, right!  "It's magic" 

Dag, making levels is hard!  I'm going to just focus on that from now until the end of the competition & not try to add more features beyond what's necessary.  I have 5 non-tutorial levels now, and I'm hoping to get around 15 by the deadline (I'm back at my 9-5 now also ).  It'll be kind of a short+easy game in the end.

The biggest challenges for me in designing these levels I think are the restrictions I've placed on myself: players can't "die" and they also can't back themselves into a corner with no solution.

I probably won't update the link I posted again until pretty close to the deadline, but for the curious I am still pushing code changes to bitbucket pretty regularly:
http://bitbucket.org/jakevsrobots/dog-and-bone-are-friends/

Ok, back to work!

[jotapeh]

This is fun! Really neat.