The Adversaries

(This week's build is up here!)

The pace I've been building this game is, obviously, incredibly slow. I've been working on this for about nine whole weeks! Some of those weeks, I added almost nothing to the game, maybe a few particle effects, some audio, and that's it. Or maybe I added a single level, and that's it. So it feels really good to say that this week I added something a bit more substantial: enemies.

One of the benefits to stretching work out this long is that you can let an idea sit for a week and a half before you implement it, and when you implement it, everything just sort of works the way you thought it might, maybe even a little better. I knew it would be a good idea to have an enemy which shoots out projectiles that interact with warp and bounce walls the same way the player does. It reuses mechanics, which is like reusing a theme or shape in a book or a painting. It's more aesthetically pleasing and makes things feel a little more balanced to the player. It's also practical. I know what these things are going to do because I already have something doing the same thing.

I gave the enemies a bounce wall to spawn as a shield whenever the player charges because a) Again, reusing mechanics and b) An idea I had from the very start was an enemy that had to be struck from behind to be killed. It also had an unpredicted effect of c) Making the enemies seem actually quite clever. If you charge them head on, you'll hit a shield which doesn't just stop you, it bounces you away. The harder you attack them in this way, the harder they rebuff you, like tiny little kung-fu masters.

Feature-wise, I could create a few more levels, (10-15 total) and then polish this up and call it a game, or I could create some other features (walls that teleport you specifically to other walls, walls that can be pushed, Walls that disappear or appear only when you are charging) and keep fiddling with things for a few more weeks... I guess we'll see...

And again, the charging-up noise is by Javier Zumer, and is being used under this license.

P.S. "The Adversaries" would make a great band name

P.P.S. I never noticed that the pluralization of Adversary contains the word "Aries"

Put a little bounce in it

(This week's build is up here)

I got that new goal type up and working... I think the disparity between bounce walls and warp walls is still large. Bounce walls... are just a little useless, and it's very hard to bounce off them accurately. I thought about having the player always bounce such that they end perpendicular to the surface they collided with, but I don't like that so much... It could be interesting though...

I've also been kicking around ideas for enemy AI. So far I'm thinking about an enemy that knows when the player begins charging, and puts a bounce wall shield up to block any direct charges. The idea being that the player must find a way to strike this enemy's back by warping or bouncing around the level. Meanwhile, the enemy automatically shoots out projectiles which interact with bounce and warp walls the same way the player does (these "bullets" are essentially always charging). It could work.

Still settling down into my new routine in my new apartment and in my new job... This post has had a lot of ellipses in it...


Just as always, the charge-up noise is by Javier Zumer, and is being used under this license.

Just a little bit added this week

(Check out the new build here)

Not much to say this week other than two events came up this weekend that I didn't anticipate at all! Not bad things, good things, so I'm happy - unfortunately I didn't spend nearly as much on this prototype as I'd have liked. Anyway, I did add two levels which deal with bounce walls, and it's made me realize that I have a problem I need to solve: the imbalance between usefulness of warp walls vs bounce walls.

Warp walls send you places you might not otherwise have been able to go. Bounce walls simply allow you to change direction. This is useful only if you need to hit two goals at the same time, and only if those goals cannot be connected by a single, straight, contiguous line. But goals can be fulfilled piecemeal in this game, which means that in many situations you can forgo bounce walls entirely and just complete one goal and then the other.

What I need, I realize now, are a second type of goals which are linked to one another, which destroy themselves on contact with the player, and which resurrect themselves if their linked objects are not also destroyed within the stated time limit... I'll think about this for next week.

Also, I need to give bounce walls some audio and particle effect love, like I gave to warp walls. And I need to look into an issue where the player can become stuck within bounce walls before the wall appropriately repositions the player.

And again, the charge-up noise is by Javier Zumer, and is being used under this license.

Back to work!

(The new build is up here!)

Hello everyone. This week I return to regular work on this blog - hopefully for the forseeable future, I'll have several hours a week to devote to this blog. I took a week off last week because well... I was moving, and things were quite hectic. Things are still a hectic, but in a different way, and I'm now settling in to my new environs.

I'm still moving forward with the same game right now, so this week's offering is just the same thing with a bit more offered. I made some minor edits, but primarily I did a little bit of work and added two levels. I still need to add a tip or tutorial system, but I'm hoping these first three levels are really easy to understand (after reading the instructions). Next week should bring with it a better tutorial, and more levels.

As last time, the charging noise is courtesy of Javier Zumer under this license.

Delegates, Blue Walls, and Quick Blippy Particles

I'm going to run out of ways to vaguely say "Making slow progress" if I keep naming my posts as I have. To that end, I'm just going to put what's new right in the post title.

In addition to moving in about ten days, it's also my birthday this weekend! And my parents are visiting! And it's labor day, and tons of other things, and et cetera! I did the following in about fifteen to twenty minutes. Now the player script uses an event system so that I can have other things "know" when you're charging. Handy for making wrap and bounce walls change color to advertise interactivity. You also spawn a neat little particle when you enter a wrap-wall. Makes it feel more like you're "diving through" and less like you're just teleporting.

Like the last post, charge-up noise is courtesy of Javier Zumer under this license.

Progress by Degrees

This week I added a bit of polish (like... the kind you put on a linoleum floor or on a prized trophy... not the type of sausage) on what I submitted last week. Just a few hours working on audio and visual tweaks to get the goal-triggering and the charging to look a bit better and give a better feedback to the player. Check it out here!

Charge-up noise is courtesy of Javier Zumer under this license.

Just the tiniest bit of progress

My requirement right now is that I post something, anything, each week. This week I managed to get this going, in between moving shenanigans and spending a lot of time with some great people (at Bit Bash, no less!)