Back at it, then.
I’ve written up a few notes for A. Cyborg, solidifying what would be the plot and characters if it was ever turned into an actual game. But for now I think I need something where I don’t need to worry about basic issues of where the game’s going, so it’s back to Neon Galaxy for a bit. Tonight I just did a few simple things — fixing a longstanding glitch in one of the level XML files, and making the neat little text-typing-onto-the-screen animation work again even with the new more efficient text rendering. Not sure what I’ll work on tomorrow. I’ll just see how it goes.
Don’t ask me, I just work here!
Since I haven’t yet settled on a practical concept that would make good use of the landscape engine, I suppose I should either work on Neon Galaxy or A. Cyborg some more. Neon Galaxy needs the third level set fleshed out and the fourth set balanced, it needs the boss fight to be cleaned up, it needs an ending sequence, and various front-end menus have to be filled out. Plus I want to do a full rebalancing pass on the weapons and smart bomb controls. A. Cyborg needs, well… everything, obviously. It might be fun to try to do a “vertical slice” and fit out a full level with scripted enemy patterns, dialogue, and a boss. Oh, and gameplay too, can’t forget that.
Of course I’ll actually just end up surfing the Web a lot and playing video games until the break is over. I know how this works.
There, I Fixed It
OK, the needed frameworks are now distributed with the application. (Yeah, “statically linking” is apparently the complete wrong way to think about it on OSX.) It’s hardly been done in the optimal fashion, which would require more time than I have just at the moment to set up, but A. CYBORG should now run properly on machines that don’t have SDL already installed. Again, this is the link to click, and we thank you for your support.
Important Service Announcement
Oh wow, I guess I should have statically linked the A. CYBORG executable, huh? You can download and install the SDL and SDL_Mixer frameworks to make it go if you want, or just wait for me to upload a fixed version tonight.
Welp. Time is up!
I can say that A. CYBORG now lets you fly around and slice stuff up a treat, and the art is not half bad. It doesn’t have a few things I’d originally hoped to slip in to the game, such as multiple enemy attack patterns, sounds, music, a boss, a special move, scoring, animated hair, any effect from letting hostile fire hit the heroine, or witty banter between her and her eccentric creator Dr. Grand-Mal. But then that’s video game development for you, I suppose: a few minor features will always fall by the wayside.
With regards to being “experimental gameplay” I’m going to decide that the point was for me to experiment with things — namely, drawing sprites — and I consider it a success in that respect. I do have some non-programming projects that need my attention for the next little while, but I’m going to consider the idea of perhaps spending a month or two sometime developing A. CYBORG further, from a tech demo into something worth genuinely calling a game. ‘Cos I have a few ideas. And I want to draw more sprites.
Please feel free to download the game from this link, unzip it someplace, and double-click on the obvious thing. If you do, let me know if it actually works — I’ve run it on my laptop, at least, but who knows what little detail I overlooked that might affect other Macs. And while you’re there, marvel at how I somehow managed to get XCode to build the least convenient, most out-of-date possible packaging for Mac users! Though I’m not going to accept all the blame, as 99% of the online docs, blogs, and forum posts are about creating IOS applications. I picture walking up to XCode 4 and stating that I’d like to use it to write a program for the Macintosh computer, and XCode just staring at me like a dog that’s been asked to balance a checkbook.
IT’S THE FINAL COUNTDOWN
6 hours’ work left on my Experimental Gameplay Project title. The player can now successfully slice apart enemies, but the newly created geometry isn’t correct yet. Also fixed a crash caused by carelessly allowing the same enemy to be targeted twice. At this point I’m hoping I can add a) some sort of explosion effect, b) player lose health/game over from hitting stuff, and c) that’s about it.
I’ll upload a new screenshot when this is All Over, promise!
Briefer A. Cyborg Update
6 days’ work down. The logic for slicing the enemy sprites in half is actually pretty annoying.
Brief A. Cyborg Update
Brief update for 5.5 days: The slicing mechanism is now in, although the code is grotesquely unsustainable. It needs destruction effects for the enemies, still. Also, though collisions between the player and enemy bullets are detected, they don’t do anything; that has to be implemented too. Then some sound effects and that ought to be that. New screenshot once I’ve got proper explosions in.
Five days’ work (and a bit) down and we now have our heroine! There’s some issues with her sprite I want to tweak — her right foot doesn’t look right and her mask doesn’t really pop as it should — but by and large I’m surprised at how good she came out. Her wings emit animated exhaust particles and the sword she’s carrying has little space-y burny particles coming off of it as well. Her arm can rotate so she should be able to operate the sword as needed when the time comes to actually attack stuff, which I guess will be tomorrow. Also her hair should ultimately be animated, thought I haven’t bothered to make additional frames for that yet. There’s now an animated sprite class to make that work more easily when the time comes.
Am I cheating at Experimental Gameplay by only counting eight hours of working on this as a “day,” and not calendar days?
A. CYBORG update: Enemy components now render correctly, enemies can rotate as part of their attack pattern, bullet sprites are fixed up, background elements have been tweaked…
Yeah, I’m definitely stalling now. That’s really all there is to say on the matter.
