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 ;)