Category: Progress

So here’s a new post for ya’ll to spam!

I kid, I kid, just thought I’d share a screen of the level I’ve been working on.

Yeah yeah, I still can’t draw, but I think this is looking pretty swell.

So what do you guys think about the look? The dark browns are quite a bit different from anything from World 1, but there’s actually a reason you’re in a cave, falling… The levels in this game aren’t just a series of squiggly levels, they’re a series of, uh, squiggly levels, only now you’re traveling across them, with a destination! and a purpose! Woo! Something just happened, and now you’re falling into a cave… omigosh itsaplot!

Re-animated the ‘going in a door’ sprite, I figure if I’m going to make you guys look at it over and over it might as well look nice. I’ve also been drawing the infamous Level 5 (my favorite level in the game). I’ve been trying to shove little goofy things into all the levels, even more so than I did in the first World. There were a lot of little things that I threw in there as a nod to the old platformers (and some people actually called me out on some of those tribute bits as evidence that the game was a direct rip of old Sonic and Mario, like those two games play anything alike, right?).

But either way, I thought this was neat:

Okay, okay, I admit it. That little bit of level plays out exactly like a cross between Mario and Sonic.

In the very least, the art is much better than in World 1…

Phew! Finally got that stupid snailshell to quit acting up. Yeah, it worked fine in the demo, but I completely recoded it, a few times…

It’s got a far larger part in World 2 than in the demo, so I had to completely change the physics to some custom code, instead of sharing code with Fancy Pants Man, like the baddies do.

SO… what’s up with the snailshell in World 2? Well, there’s an entire minigame within World 2 that revolves around the snailshell. I’m sure that makes World 2 the first Flash game to not only not be a minigame, but also contain an entire minigame that could probably stand on its own on the internet.

Kinda crazy, eh?

Here’s another quick progress report. I’m currently working on the ‘menu’ system for the game, which, once again, is just a series of rooms, no pointing and clicking in my game thank you very much.

So this time around, I have about twice as many main levels. Not only that, but the cameo levels are turning out so awesome (and some of them rather large) that I want them all selectable from the Level Select room. So World 2 will have a system of doors for a menu that isn’t as simple as the one screen rooms from World 1.

Setting up all the doors that will be unlockable made me worry about something, though. With the game being so much longer than the last one (though I’m sure you can still run straight through fairly quickly if you skip the bonus rooms…), will that be a problem for people who play the game on public computers that can’t save their progress? I’m making sure that the game will be fun even if you only drop in for a few minutes into a clean game with nothing unlocked, but I still want to have enough there that players want to spend more time with the game will have a sense of progression, completion, and even be rewarded for exploration. This is pretty much a problem inherent with Flash games, and probably part of the reason that they’re usually quick fix games.

I’d like to imagine that World 2 is accessible enough to give a player a quick gaming fix, yet has enough substance to reward any time investment (not saying it’s anywhere near as long as a commercial game, though)…

Any thoughts?

So here’s a quick bit of update, I want to start making quick progress update posts on here, since I wont be burying older, more important posts like on Newgrounds. So, last night I was finally able to get the new platform code working, so now the platforms (any ground that can be jumped through and landed on), can be curved surfaces too now. really doesn’t sound like much, I know, but its one of those features that should have been in the game all along, but sounded like far more trouble than it’s worth. Really, though, any feature is only as good as the levels that use it, so I guess we’ll see.

Next mini-update should be more interesting than this one, promise.Who else thinks that Fancy Pants Man needs to be in Smash Bros. Brawl? Someone email Nintendo for me.

For your enjoyment, a picture of Fancy Pants Man's hair blowing in the wind as he rides on a moving platform. Yes, his hair reacts to motion in game now even if he's not running, and yes, I am really that insane.
 
 
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