In Spritesheet Hell

Well I think I’m finally satisfied with the run-cycle sprite animation. Now I just have to fine tune the attack, climb, idle, and jump sprite animations. Yup this is somewhat fun at times but not sure that animation is for me. In either case it’s come along and I’m using lots of resources for reference purposes. As far as game-mechanics go, I have added a heads-up display class for showing hit points and such. So now when collecting coins it will indicate how many points it’s worth and when attacking enemies hit points are displayed. Also tweaked the particle physics a little. Sometimes I stop and think…”Why am I doing this when there are already fully developed physics SDKs???!” But when it comes right down to it, I’m not making a game that is ultra realistic with full-on fluid physics and rigid body  physics. I’m making a platformer/sidescroller which should be fun yet classically basic but convincingly immersive.

new particle class

Made a new particle emitter sub-routine to the level class that will make new sprites/particles that fade over the elapsed gameTime variable. This will come in handy for smoke particles or more specifically the magical dust particles from the boomerang. The game is still being worked on folks

Added some weapons

Now there is a nifty keen boomerang that has just been implemented. Took a while to tweak the trajectory formula to make the boomerang have a nice fluid motion and return back to the player but I’m satisfied with the outcome. Will likely add some particle effects along the trajectory to make it look all magical and what not. Also added some throwing-bombs that explode on contact with enemies because that’s what bombs do, they blow up stuff. Been a very productive day. Even messed around around with post-processing bloom, saturate, and blur effects which will come in handy later with some of the gameplay concepts.

Serving your own website

One thing that sucks about not serving your own website is that you have to rely on the host to install the proper modules. I would love to write my own Twitter feed in PHP but it appears that the host doesn’t have the proper modules installed for me to do so. So I’m stuck with possibly using a predefined Twitter widget which is fine and dandy but I want to customize it to my liking with all the @mentions and what not. Maybe the widget has settings that I don’t know about yet but still it would be easier to do my own Twitter feed via PHP

new additions

Recently added a few more game elements. Added a springboard which the player can bounce off of to achieve greater jump magnitudes. Also the main and most prominent addition is the advent of vertical scrolling. Which in-turn means that the levels can have a vertical depth rather than just a left to right and the end. Now I can implement levels that you can traverse vertically. This is something that will be needed for the final product and we will be showing in a video of very soon.

new additions

Added a random item scatter routine for the enemy class. Certain enemies will scatter coins and items at varying random direction vectors multiplied by velocities (all of which are affected by the physics algorithm) along an arc. This will also come in handy when adding the blood splatters which will work in the same manner, except the bloodSplatter (item/game object) is not collectable by the player(s) and will likely have a decay rate and be removed over time from the render routine to reduce processing time.

update

I’ve been cleaning up code tonight and removing superfluous code. As the game stands right now, I’ve added an enemies under attack queue. Which will show in the HUD which enemies are being attacked along with their HP meters and identifying animated profile graphic. Somewhat like the original Shank game. It’s coming along quite nicely. Code is streamlined. Taking a break for a bit since I’ve done a lot of programming tonight that makes the class objects relate more logically.

yikes

Cell animation is tedious work and more than I bargained for but it’s still coming along. These kind of blog updates are better suited for a twitter account but I rarely/never use the twitter feed as of yet. Maybe I should. And possibly add the live twitter feed to the website while I’m at it just to get myself away from this monotonous animation work.

projectiles

The projectiles (class) is/are 90 percent done. Next step is working on enemy AI. OMG the enemies…they are watchin me….ahhhhh!

reworking the projectile behavior

I’ve decided to go with a different way the projectiles behave. They will shoot straight out horizontally and not use the angle of the ground on which player is standing. Instead as they shoot straight out they will have a horizontal velocity. Further more, I’m implementing an ApplyPhysics() routine which will apply gravity and air drag creating an arcing path for the projectile. This is all together better since the player can better gauge where they want the projectile to land and not have to take into account if they are on a slope.

projectile class

with object oriented programming it’s rather difficult unless you planned from the get go. new projectile class that integrates seamlessly.

new variables

so just added some variables to the player class. two of them actually, one of which stores the type of tile collision. And the other variable stores the angle at which the ground pitches. This will come in handy when programming the projectiles (which are throwing spears and such) are calculated. The projectiles will travel on the same angle as the tile groundType in which the player resides. It doesn’t seem like much but this is integral to gameplay. Once again possibly in-progress screenshots coming depending on how brave I am. As of now, I'm using rather shotty animations and unrelated character sprites. Soon enough your eyes will melt since I’m implementing post render effects such as bloom to give it that light-bleed effect and working on the animation cells. It’s lookin good for a free game, ya’ll will enjoy playin it. And that’s what we all want, a fun game! Cheerz.

new file format

implemented the new TMX file format. have the game engine working with the new format. All the XML didn’t take too long. Really love this new file format as opposed to text based though. Focusing now on some unfinished collision detection with the tile based system and once the kinks are worked out I can focus more on the art and level design. Things are progressing nicely. Stay tuned for screenshots sports fans.

Long overdue update

As of late I’ve been focusing on a slightly newer endeavour. Have made tons of progress over the past couple of months. Working on a new game examining new challenges such as pixel-perfect collision detection, basic physics, sloped surfaces and arbitrary objects handling which will give the game a more realistic feel. All of this has been implemented and have been working on the level editor. Have recently decided to go with an open source level editor called Tiled but in the meantime using my own level editor and tweaking code here and there. Still leaning towards the other level editor the further I get into development. The next step is using this new file format in the game which shouldn't be too difficult since the file format is in XML. XML is easily parsed in C#. Once this is all complete I can turn my focus to level design and the artwork. Have worked a little on the animations using Illustrator and Photoshop to draw the tileset frames and have also just purchased a new Wacom Intuos4 tablet that has proven very helpful. Will keep you posted and stay tuned to the main LaFlamme Studios news feed for possible screenshots of the progress.