I missed the last two Weekly Game Update posts over the past two weeks.

Nobody even cared.

Oh man, the lols that were had.

Wondering why I split this intro into five lines?

So the image above would fit in well and look nice.  Yeah…  Anyway, let’s begin.

General stuff:

Alright, well, first off, why the delay?  To be honest, I wasn’t feeling too productive three weeks ago.  As a result, I purposely skipped writing a post the Sunday two weeks ago since there was no development to report on.  Last week, however, this damn freak snow storm (in October, mind you) knocked the fecal matter out of my area and power was out for six days. No internet equals no Weekly Game Update post.

I did, however, spend the past seven days getting lot’s of work done, and even though a good majority of that work was “behind the scenes” (bug fixes, minor tweaks, etc), I feel the game has really come a long way from where it was the last Weekly Game Update post I made.  Don’t believe me?  Check out this bitchin’ “accomplished” list:

Accomplished last week:

• Added a hotkey for the eraser in the level editor.
• Updated the logo and menu buttons.
• Added more functionality to the level editor’s menu.
• Added a credits menu.
• When loading, a level dynamically changes certain tiles’ appearance depending on the positioning.
• Menus now support keyboard input.
• Cleaned up and optimized the GameSound class.
• Level goes to the main menu upon winning (temporary).
• Spikes have finally been tweaked and are no longer glitchy. They are also much more realistic / forgiving.
• Shooting spike blocks come in two varieties – slow and fast shooting speed.
• Added a new danger, “Electric Poles.”
• Moving platforms detect their bounds on initialization and ease in / out of these bounds.
• Added a new danger, the “Perimeter Spike” that creeps along the perimeter of walls. Kills player on contact.
• Added functionality for the Perimeter Spike to latch onto moving platforms.
• Added some time before the level restarts after all the players have been killed.
• Trophies detect floors now and can fall through the air.
• Fixed bug where player would “jump” at the top of a vertical-moving platform’s movement.
• Fixed a bug where player would “slide” while standing on a moving platform.
• Tweaked some graphics.
• Added functionality for the “Down” key, user’s can press it to have the player drop down off of a moving platform.
• Fixed a bug where players would occasionally not detect an upward-moving vertical platform and would fall through them.
• Fixed a bug where horizontal-moving platforms would “snatch” players off of vertical-moving platforms if the two shared the same space.
• Fixed a bug where user’s would find it difficult to have the player move left / right into a small 32×32 hole in the wall while jumping.
• General code cleaning / organizing and bug fixes / tweaks.

To-do this week:

• Have the level editor determine if an encoded level string is corrupted when it takes input from the user.
• Add TNT Crates as a new danger.
• Tweak HUD to display the number of living / killed players differently.
• Try to optimize the collision detection / moving platform detection as much as possible.
• Other miscellaneous bug fixes.

So damn, that’s it.  That was a lot of typing there, jeez.

I’m hoping that by this time next week I’ll be ready to finally focus on making levels for the game.  Currency will be so cash.

Screenshots next week (probably). Nothing too new to show just yet, like I said, a lot of “behind-the-scenes” work this past week.

Defective

One final thing before I finally end this friggen post.

I put Defective up for bidding about one or two weeks ago.  If you’re a sponsor signed up with FlashGameLicense.com, go and check it out here.

Alright, I had enough.

We have a name!  My upcoming game will be titled Trophiends, meant to be a pun of sorts on “Trophy-fiends.”  Deal with it.  Also, Defective is ready for sponsorship (sort of).

Alright, let’s get into it. Firstly, some news on Defective.

“Defective” stuff:

On Friday, I received the final two music tracks for Defective, with the grand total being five tracks – a main-theme track, three level  tracks, and one boss track.  They all sound great, and I can’t wait to finally finish this game.

I could finish it today and upload it to FlashGameLicense.com on Monday, but I’m doing to hold out one more week.  This is mainly because it’s currently the middle of the month, which in my opinion is not the best time to put up a new game for bidding.  Why?  Well, mainly because I believe it’s best to upload near the beginning of a new month, since sponsors have a fresh monthly budget to work with.

As a result, I’m going to work on Defective next weekend, finish it up and add the music, and upload it on Tuesday, October 25th.  That way, by the time November 1st rolls around, the game should have at least one or two bids on it already, whether or not those will be the initial “garbage” bids or not doesn’t really matter, as long as there’s activity, other sponsors will be attracted.

Again, this is all my opinion.  Uploading at the beginning / middle / end of the month or on a Saturday / Sunday may really not matter, I don’t really know.  However, I’ll just stick with my current plan.

Okay?  Okay.

By the way, in case you never saw it, here’s the trailer for Defective uploaded back in August.

Alright, let’s talk about Trophiends:

This week was a very productive week.  Not only did I finally get a name for the game, but I practically started and finished the built-in level editor.  I totally didn’t expect it to be so easy (it’s not done yet, but it’s very close).  This upcoming week I intend to spend on finishing the level editor, updating and adding more menu’s, and generally tweaking the actual gameplay.  Honestly, if all goes well, I should be actually looking to build levels for the game by this time next week.

Screenshots:

Have a look at what the level editor looks like.

Accomplished this week:

• Floor buttons activate moving platforms.
• Designed and implemented the main menu.
• Designed the initial logo, will probably go through another revision however.
• Practically built the entire level editor.
• Bug fixes and tweaks.

To do:

• Tweak the gameplay (Trophy objects should respond to gravity, spikes need to be more forgivable).
• Add more tiles, mainly for decorative purposes only.
• Finish the level editor.
• Add to / modify the main menu.

Alright, that’s all for now.  I’m gonna go get some more work done, so get out.

So we’re roughly one month in.  Wow, that was fast…

General stuff:

I still haven’t come with with a good title.  I don’t know, it’ll probably just come to me one day (kind of like how I got the title for Don’t Panic).  Hopefully that’ll happen soon, I’m tired of this “Puzzle Platformer” nonsense.

Anyway, it was a productive week of work.  The main challenge that I finally overcame was adding moving platforms and ironing out any bugs / glitches that arose from them or the other level elements (“jump-pads”, treadmills, etc…)  As of right now everything is bug free and works perfectly.

Accomplished:

• Moving platforms added and debugged.
• Ironed out the performance of other level elements like “jump-pads” and treadmills.
• Buttons & doors added.
• Spike-launchers added.
• More particle additions & fixes (both for bugs and performance).
• Many a bugs fixed and other small tweaks.

To do:

• Add more things for buttons to control.
• Make spikes more forgivable somehow (as of now, they kill players much too easily).
• Add randomized elements to levels just for decoration purposes.
• Work on and implement first menus.

So that’s it.  Sorry for the short update this week (as well as lack of screenshots, nothing new-enough to show yet).  Next week will be better.

(Or not, I may have just out right lied to you.)

Hmm, I should really start looking into figuring out a title for this game. Tell you what, if you think you have a good idea, tell me in the comments. (I’ll finally describe the gameplay / mechanics in this post.)

General stuff:

This was a very productive week. I finally nailed down a solid design for the overall graphics / look of the game and I’m really loving it.  Friday in particular I got a load of nonsense completed.  I’m confident in saying the game is already 25% complete (as seen in the header up there ^) even though the project is only roughly three weeks old.

This is mainly because this isn’t going to be a giant project like Don’t Panic and Defective were, it’s going to be a “puzzle” type of game, much like how Angry Birds is a puzzle game – once the core mechanics are built, all that’s left is to build some levels and plug in the menu’s.

Of course, in my case, I have a little more to do than just build the game… I also have to build a user-friendly level editor for player’s to create and share their own puzzles, as this will be a major feature of the game.  This not only presents the challenge of building a level editor and figuring out the best way to enable easy level sharing, but it also puts more pressure on me to find any and all possible bugs that could arise from the infinite number of possible ways a level can be built.

Anyway, my goal is to have the game at least 80% complete (where 90% marks when I upload to FlashGameLicense.com for sponsorship) by Halloween.  This may be a little ambitious since I haven’t even begun the level editor yet, but we’ll see as the days go by.

So what’s the game about anyway?

Well it’s obviously a puzzle platformer (no way!).  The objective is for the the player to control 1, 2, 3, or 4 characters simultaneously and successfully get them all to reach their corresponding goal (a trophy).  However, as the player progresses, the levels get harder and harder.  Things like spikes, “treadmills”, moving platforms, and powerups that can do anything from freezing a character in place to doubling a character’s speed make the levels that much more treacherous.

As the player reaches the most difficult levels, controlling 4 characters at once while attempting to avoid all of these traps will require much more concentration, not to mention that you’re also being timed – the faster you complete the level plus the amount of surviving characters is how the player’s overall score is calculated.

So that’s pretty much the game in a nutshell.

Screenshots:

Five of them. Five. (Click to enlarge.)

This one is an older screenshot from September 24th. It just shows the original direction the game was going in:

Accomplished:

• Added 5 coins (powerups) in total.
• Designed the backgrounds and tiles of the levels.
• Programmed “treadmills,” jump-pads, spikes, and “drop-floors.”
• Designed the remaining three characters (color palette swaps – red, blue, green, and yellow).
• Programmed the HUD – keeps track of the number of attempts, number of surviving players, and works the timer.
• Implemented a simple particle system for when the player dies – explodes into a bunch of 2×2 particles taken from the player’s BitmapData.
• Bunch of other stuff I forgot, plus bugs fixed and other things like that.

To do:

• Moving platforms (oh God).
• Buttons and the things they control (doors, floors, etc).
• Ladders (not 100% sure if I will implement these yet).
• Spike launchers (shoot spikes).

Other random things:

• I received 3 of the 5 songs for Defective, and I have to admit they are really amazing – they fit the gameplay perfectly.  If I had to guess, I’d say Defective will be completed and up for sponsorship on FlashGameLicense.com sometime after next weekend.  I’ll credit him on the credits page of the game too, but for those curious, the musician for the game is Dave Flemming. I highly recommend him if you’re looking for custom music for your own projects, he’s very talented.
• I forgot to mention this last week, but I recently acquired ForTheLoss.com. It simply redirects here, but I thought it was a good idea to grab it since the old owner offered it to me before he put it up for sale.  If the .net version expires, I’ll probably pick it up too.   The .com however is obviously the most valuable of the three TLD’s, so I won’t go out of my way to grab the .net unless it’s something under $20.

Alright that’s it. Back to work.

“Puzzle Platformer” still isn’t the name of the game.  I’m still having trouble in the title department.

General stuff

Alright, so I’m starting to iron out the details here – it’s looking like this project will actually live to see completion, that’s always a good thing.  I spent the majority of the week (and probably will spend the majority of next week) trying to get the graphics to look right.  I’m getting close, but I’m not sure if I’m there yet.  Here’s a first glimpse at what everything will look like:

Isn’t he just the cutest red thing you ever did see?

Anyway, I still haven’t said much about what the actual gameplay will entail, but I’ll save that for a later post.  I will say, however, that one big feature (and what I’m hoping will make this game really special) will be a full-blown level editor.  This will enable players to design their own puzzles and share them via an encoded string or through something like Playtomic’s level sharing API.  More on that as I get to it, though.

Accomplished

• Lot’s of designing and planning.
• Animated the character’s sprites.
• Many initial bugs squashed.

To do

• Add more coins (powerups), I have two more in mind.
• Finish designing the tiles for the “grassy” theme.
• Design three other themes (space, underground cave, ____ ).
• Implement a second player. (LOL WUT)

So that’s about it.  Hoping I can get enough done so I can get started on building the level editor later this week – that might be too much of a stretch though, we’ll see.

In Defective news, nothing new.  My musician is still working on the tracks, and they’re coming along great.  I suspect I’ll be able to start implementing some of them into the game sometime this week.  I’d love to have the game up for sponsorship sometime during the first week of October, but we’ll see.

Okay bye.