California is pretty swe... oh right an update

The move went very smoothly, aside from a highway being blocked off and having to find an alternative route, so... yay! The area is awesome! Everything is close by and lively, it helps to live in the middle of the city and not out in the middle of nowhere. Hooray! Oh and the beach is awesome. There are lots of nice restaurants with surprisingly low prices around there too! Lots of things to see and do here!











The Game
Which by the way, you just lost! The game is coming along at a fair pace. A lot of new systems, so a lot of debugging this past week. Trying to make things efficient and lag free. And fixing up past areas that lag. (Distortion) Lowered the lag there a bit anyway.

Lots of new mechanics and level obstacles that will make many appearances in later levels.

There's finally music on the title screen. Very out of place music, but then again, when ISN'T something out of place with this game?

Not too much to say right now, I'll probably edit more into this later though. I want to thank everyone again for their comments and feedback, it helped me find a lot of bugs.

New Demo Before I Leave

Just a quick update, I've posted a new before I leave for California. It has a lot of fixes and some changes in response to the feedback I got. :)

The download links have both been updated! Thanks again for the feedback, it was a lot of help. Still a few issues need to be worked out, but this has a lot of fixes. And a new area too! Has the start of the newest area, you can play around in it a bit, but nothing too much there yet.
(I'm aware the keys hover over enemy health, I'll move that next time.) x_x

Enjoy! :)

Edit: Forgot to mention this, if you want to keep your previous data, move the GameDetails.ini file over to the new demo and you'll have everything you had before. (Thanks for the comment.) :)

What a Travesty

Horrible puns are... ... ... bad. horrible Just a heads up, there won't be a post new week due to me moving. Going to get settled in with new roommates, apartment, new area, etc. The area of California I'm moving to is very nice and about an hour walk from the beach! :D Never lived by a beach or even in California for that matter. Closest for me would be when I was in school in Phoenix, Arizona. The move is pretty exciting for me, going to be a nice change as I seriously need one. Been wanting to move out of Texas for a long time. Not that Texas sucks, it doesn't, but I personally don't like it here any longer. It's time to move on... with this post!













Various Changes
- Water Barrier now lasts 1 1/2 seconds longer. Approximate Duration: 8.5 seconds
This is the final change on Water Barrier.
- Zephyr nows lasts 1 second longer. Approximate Duration: 13 seconds
One more note with Zephyr, it actually behaved incorrectly and has now been fixed. You may not notice a difference, but it now affects other objects properly. No more sending enemies zooming off the screen with it.
- Earth Shift now lasts 3 seconds longer. Approximate Duration: 15 seconds
- An enemy's current life total is displayed in the bottom-right corner of the screen when they are hit. It is displayed via percentage meter. This can be turned off from the options sub-menu.
- Resources loading into memory again after returning to the title screen has been fixed. No more memory wasting and sound loading errors.
- Various help boxes have been placed around the world in the form of what is called a "Binary Index". There are 2 types, one that gives hints/info about the game, the other is notes left behind by a mysterious character, which will give more insight on the story. The story related ones have distinct difference in appearance.
- New "Pointless Records" have been added, there is another page and 1 or 2 entries have been moved for consistency's sake.

Platforming Stuff
Some of you are going to love me and the others are going to hate me for what I've put in the game, or at least what one of the new areas I'm working on has in it.

Conveyor belts, these will add a lot of level design fun for me, as well as ways to screw you over. ^_^ They work with everything, you, your summoned rock, everything.

Some New Hurtful Enemy Types
This new area has some nifty yet potentially destructive enemies. One being a mechanical turtle that fires a laser from it's mouth. The screenshot above shows one. It may not look like much from what you see there, but this has infinite range until it hits a wall and is out in an instant. You must be out of it's way before it is fired. This will pose a nice threat on bridges and some platforming areas.
There's a few other nice ones, like spread missile launching mechanical turtles, laser sight scanner bots, scatter flame launching... well you'll see. Understand your spells and your dodging and you will be fine.

The new area isn't as densely populated with enemies and traps since backtracking through an area will come into play there. This will be the first of the dungeons that you are given a map for help. I noted on maps in a previous post, again, these work roughly like they do in Zelda. I've kept the map/compass system, I even used this in THFG. In this though, you can see which rooms you've been in and where game progress sensitive(GPS) points are. (Don't use that, it sucks.) Actually THFG had all that, except for noting where you've been. o_O

Other Game Stuff
Brutal Legend is released the day before I move. BLARG!! I've been looking forward to this game forever now. It's going to be the best thing since Psychonauts. It's okay, I played the demo and I will indeed be getting the game, I just need to wait a bit. It's not really a major concern of mine considering the obvious though. :P

On Time This Week

Actually got a decent amount done on the system itself. Lots of little fixes and tweaks to help things go smoother.

Stuff
Got the rest of the next area completed. Just getting through it isn't too hard, except for one choke area. Trying to get all the pickups requires some finesse though. The boss of the area I wouldn't say is ultra hard or anything, but it'll definitely have you on your toes. It uses a few new things that you haven't seen before. It'll definitely catch you off guard the first time.

Various signs have been placed around the game to serve as little reminders and for random fun.

So this post isn't really about my game, but rather about someone else's game that NEEDS to be mentioned.

Other Games
I took a little break this week and played some other games... well one in particular really.
A game by Daniel Remar called Iji. This link takes you to his site.

It was also made in Game Maker and is very well done. I highly recommend playing this. I've actually played through it twice. The game is level based and linear like a lot of older games. But what you do throughout the game determines how the ending and various things play out in the game. There are consequences for your actions. I actually felt bad about those I killed throughout the game.

You play as a girl named Iji, who wakes up to find that her home (Earth) has been taken by an alien race known as the Tasen. She has been given a protective shield through nanotechnology and must find the Tasen leaders in hopes that she can convince them to leave Earth. I don't want to spoil anything, so I won't say anything else in that regard.

The game is an action-shooter. Eh... you know what, just click the link I provided, it tells you everything there. The game even has a wikipedia page. Definitely made it to the top of my favorite independent games.