New Website!

Hey guys,

I've set up a new website for myself. I included a blog on the site which I will be updating now instead of this one. I'll be posting updates on my new facebook page too, so if anyone is interested in keeping up to date with my game development escapades for some reason, I'd say keep an eye on that.

Cheers :)

New Video

Hey guys, just uploaded a new video. It's just a demonstration of the first level in the game.
Enjoy :)

Update

Hey guys,

so I'm pretty much done with gameplay and graphics at this point. There's still a bit of polishing to do but the main bulk of the work is finished :D. Now all I have left to do is the music and sound effects. I'll be getting some gear together on wednesday the 29th for that, so until then I'll just be doing some polishing and bug fixing I'd say.

Once the sound is done, I'll put the game out for beta testing. I'm going to try and use Desura for that. As far as I'm aware they allow you to publish a beta version of your game on their system, which you then control the access to. This would be pretty cool seeing as I hope to use Desura as my main retail platform. Then I just have to find people willing to play the game for me...I'll obviously be offering any testers a free version of the final release once it comes out :D.

I've also decided to only release on windows for the moment. I know this seems like a bit of a waste seeing as Love is cross-platform, but I'm not too familiar with mac or linux, and I don't even own a mac so If there are issues with a mac version I can't quickly fix them. And building for linux is fairly tricky. At least for someone with bugger all linux exp. That said, I do plan on releasing on mac and linux in the future, but for now I'm going to stick with what I know.

That's it for now. Be well ;)

Update

Hey guys! Just thought I'd make a quick post to revive this blog a bit. I kinda forgot about it again...

I have been working on the game for the past months of no blog activity. I've mainly been doing a lot of nit picking type tasks such as small changes here and there, fixing small bugs, adding new things to some of the existing levels, updating graphics etc. I've also got the intro done for now. I still have to make the last level and the ending cut scene and then I'll be moving on to sound. Once I've finished that I'll do a final polish and then start beta testing. I'm not sure how I'll go about that yet. Desura seems to have a system set up for developers to find beta testers so I'll prbably use that.

Anyway I probably won't be showing any more development videos and images cause I want some of the content to be a surprise ;)

New Swinging Power

Hey guys, just a short video showing the new swinging power in more action.
Enjoy :D



Take it easy ;)

Zone 3 Start

So after getting some very helpful feedback over the past 2 weeks or so, I've been doing a fair bit of bug fixing and a bit of redesigning for some of the levels. I completely redesigned the tutorial. It is now split between two levels and is hopefully a bit more intuitive than the force-feeding of information I had before. The rest was mainly just adding more checkpoints, and moving checkpoints around so that they are a bit less annoyingly placed.

I've also started tackling the design for zone 3. After a few days of messing around in photoshop (using my new graphics tablet :D), I've come up with something that I'm happy enough with for now. The graphics aren't final yet, but they look good enough to give an impression of the atmosphere I'm trying to create. I've also coded the functionality for one of the new powers unlocked in zone 3. It's a swingy about power. You'll see it in the video below.
For this section of the game, I'd like to swing (bad pun I know) the gameplay more in the direction of platforming, with slightly less intense puzzles. So there will be more jumping around, dodging stuff etc than in the previous levels. I'm hoping this will bring a new flow into the game, keeping the gameplay fresh and less monotonous.

Here's a short video showing my idea for the design of zone 3:

Take it easy guys ;)

So I've finished the 6th level now, and I have a (somewhat) stable version of the game ready. I'm hoping to get a bit of feedback on what I've done so far on the game. Which I'm pretty excited about :D Most of what I've done so far hasn't been tested at all by anyone but me, so it will be interesting to see what people say about it...if they say anything at all ;)

At the moment I'm mostly interested in seeing what people think of the conceptual side of the game. I.e, the puzzles and level design and stuff like that. Also what type of in game play-time my current version provides. I'm interested in the play-time because this will determine how many more levels I need to create. Originally I had planned on making 12-16 levels, but seeing as it's taken me around 7 months to make 6, I may cut that down, or else I'll never finish this thing. As I said it all depends on how long my current version keeps people entertained for.

Anywho, here's a new video showing some gameplay:


take it easy ;)

Update

Just thought I'd make a quick post to let ye know what I've been doing. I'm kind of doing things as I feel like them at the moment, and not sticking to a specific schedule. That way I work on the bits that I feel enthusiastic about at the time, resulting in better work overall. I've done a fair bit of debugging and optimisation lately, there were some serious bottlenecks in my code that needed sorting out, and other major/minor bugs too that have been annoying me for a while.

I'm still working on the final level for zone 2. That's level 6 over all. Here's a screenshot from that:

I've also updated the visuals for the main menu a bit. I thought what I had before (as seen in the last post) was nice enough, but maybe just a little dull. So I spruced it up a bit. I made a little video to demonstrate:


Anyway that's what I've been working on lately.
Take it easy ;)

Menu Update

I got a bit of work done on the main menu, settings menu and key menu. I didn't show the level select screen in the video because at the moment it's just a black screen with some dots representing the levels...
The video shows what functionality I have implemented so far.

Zone 1 Graphics Update

I've been a bit sick there for the last week, so I decided to get started on that graphics overhaul I was talking about for zone 1. Was too lazy to build the last level of zone 2, so i did that instead.
I also started adding in the collectible energy pieces to the levels. Some are easy to get, others not so much. Some require another play through of the level with an unlocked power.

Here's a look at the new zone 1 graphics so far. I decided to ditch the indoor scenario in favour of another outdoor one. I think it looks better :)

Update

Hey guys, still working away on this thing. Haven't updated the blog in a while cause there wasn't any major breakthroughs or anything to report, but work is on-going.

I currently have one more level to do in zone 2, and then I want to do a graphics overhaul for zone 1, make some proper menu screens (the ones I have at the moment are pretty ugly) and have a go at a proper level select screen (i.e, a map type affair with little dots representing the levels, that get joined up as you complete them).

This will probably take another few weeks, and at that point I will only be half way through the game in terms of levels. I want to have around 12 over all. This is turning out to be a bigger project than I originally thought. But it's fun as hell to work on it, and to see it coming along.

Here's a screenshot from the latest level I have made:

Take it easy ;)

New Shape Possession Power

So I've been doing some work on the new shape possession power that the player unlocks in zone 2.

So far it works as follows: the player can possess a stationary shape, the shape can only be possessed once (see in the video, the mouse goes pink when hovering over a shape that can be possessed. After the shape has been possessed the mouse goes green when hovering over it again, indicating that it is now a basic shape), there must be a line of sight between the player and the shape in order to possess it, when the player pops out of a shape again they maintain the shape's velocity if it has any.

I have good few ideas for puzzles using this new power, but here's a small video showing some basic examples of how the power works:

Getting to Work on Zone 2

So I was away on a little holiday for a few days and took the opportunity to fix a good few of the bugs from zone 1 during that time. I also started to get cracking on the first level of zone 2. I changed the look a bit from the bright pink sky to a night time setting, and added a bit of scenery as well. After deciding to remove the shape possession power from zone 1, I'm going to introduce it to the game now in zone 2. Let the puzzles commence!

Here's a little screen shot of the level I'm currently working on:

Back at it Again - New Character Concept

So after a long break from the game, brought on by pre christmas busyness and other distractions (space marine *cough*), I'm getting back into developing this bad boy.

I thought I'd like to change the character a bit because, as one of my friends said, it doesn't feel like you are playing as a plazma being but as a little robot. So I came up with a quick new look for him. I also got rid of the whole "needing to possess object to move around" aspect of the game, so now you just float around as the little plazma guy. The object possession side of things is now only for puzzle solving and not a necessity.

I still want to have the player unlock extra abilities as the play the game like before, but now I think they will be purely energy based powers instead of new "bodies" to possess. The character will have different "forms" to switch between which will be shown by a change of colour. For example, so far I have a red form which allows the player to move, jump and fire the energy ball, and a blue form which allows the player to manipulate objects.
So as the player progresses through the game they will unlock new abilities for certain forms and new forms which will allow them to do completely new things.

Anywho, I made a video again of my idea for the new little plazma guy. It just shows me playing through one of the levels from zone 1. I finally bought fraps, so no water mark this time :)

EDIT: i deleted this video cause on hind sight I thought it revealed a bit too much. However you can see the new character in the above videos

Take it easy ;)