Today the controls got a bit more interesting, there's some new placeholder sounds, and the end of the level isn't totally abrupt anymore.
Here is the latest version: ActionJump 0.012
There are now three levels of jumping. The height of the jump depends on how long you hold down the spacebar. If you just tap it our hero jumps a little, if you hold it longer you get a medium jump, and if you hold it for even longer you get maximum height. It feels OK right now, but this will possibly be adjusted in the future depending on how the character interacts with future game elements.
By getting some control over the jump height we'll be able to put in some challenges into the more difficult levels where the player has to use the correct height to get past some obstacles.
The two new sound effects are death sounds borrowed from a couple of classic arcade games from the early eighties. Do you recognize them? The first sound happens when you die against the first monkey. The other one triggers when you die against one of the later monkeys.
Finally at the end of our one and only level there's a little celebration, a little bit of waiting, followed by starting the level over again. I just had to put this in, even though it's most certainly going to get replaced by something better. These glue animations (they glue the game together) are a lot of work, and you might not even notice them as a player in the heat of battle. You sure notice it though when they're missing like in our earlier versions.
-- fxl
P.S. I'm giving up trying to predict what I'm going to do next. Just read the next blog and you'll find out. It felt like my past self was my boss, and a tough one to boot. I almost fired myself yesterday, and that would be embarrassing. Besides, it's a tough job market out there for fired classic arcade sidescroller programmers.
Here is the latest version: ActionJump 0.012
There are now three levels of jumping. The height of the jump depends on how long you hold down the spacebar. If you just tap it our hero jumps a little, if you hold it longer you get a medium jump, and if you hold it for even longer you get maximum height. It feels OK right now, but this will possibly be adjusted in the future depending on how the character interacts with future game elements.
By getting some control over the jump height we'll be able to put in some challenges into the more difficult levels where the player has to use the correct height to get past some obstacles.
The two new sound effects are death sounds borrowed from a couple of classic arcade games from the early eighties. Do you recognize them? The first sound happens when you die against the first monkey. The other one triggers when you die against one of the later monkeys.
Finally at the end of our one and only level there's a little celebration, a little bit of waiting, followed by starting the level over again. I just had to put this in, even though it's most certainly going to get replaced by something better. These glue animations (they glue the game together) are a lot of work, and you might not even notice them as a player in the heat of battle. You sure notice it though when they're missing like in our earlier versions.
-- fxl
P.S. I'm giving up trying to predict what I'm going to do next. Just read the next blog and you'll find out. It felt like my past self was my boss, and a tough one to boot. I almost fired myself yesterday, and that would be embarrassing. Besides, it's a tough job market out there for fired classic arcade sidescroller programmers.
Its amazing how quickly a project changes. I played this a little while ago when the player was just the yellow ball, and now it seems completely different. I've never actually thought about how quickly my projects change oddly enough though.
ReplyDeleteI love the monkey head texture, it looks really nice on the model, especially at the face. Or maybe it just reminds me of Gubble...
The horizontal speed seems perfect for something, but I'm not sure what. It feels like its fast enough to keep the game running smoothly, but slow enough for some precision.
If you haven't decided on any audio tools yet I have some suggestions:
- Audacity (http://audacity.sourceforge.net/) is a free tool that I have found very useful. It can handle wav, ogg, and mp3 (with an external encoder, LAME, which is also free).
Its got a lot of neat features, although it probably doesn't have as many as a commercial program.
- SFXR (http://www.drpetter.se/project_sfxr.html) is another free tool that randomly generates wav sound effects. It probably wouldn't be what your looking for in the final version of the game, but it should be useful for placeholder sound effects if you need any.
I really think this game development blog is a great thing and something new.
A lot of blogs, especially independent developers, show the progress of a game in its later stages every now and then. Also I found something called 21 Prototypes (http://21prototypes.blogspot.com/) a while ago, where a game was usually made every day in one hour and then evaluated at some stage.
However, I have never seen anyone do something like this on such a big scale, start to finish, writing about progress on most days. I think this will be a really neat experiment, and most likely successful.
Good Luck! :)