Bunch of things should be fixed. There’s one more thing, but I don’t want to point it out. Let me know what you think. It’s something that I’ve been going back and forth on for awhile now, but I figured see how you guys feel about it.

If you’re having some trouble figuring out what I did, go fight something with the pencil, should be most obvious there.

Sneak Peek. Might want to just go ahead and clear your cache first.

[Unrelated Thought: So how many of you would like to see a really difficult bonus level, something that would separate the men from the boys, as they say? Or would that just be too frustrating?]

Play the latest Sneak Peek online now!

Report 33!

I actually didn’t notice that I was playing with the very latest build, with most of the squiggles finished already. Oh well, guess I’ll upload that, too.

Backgrounds done! Bugs fixed! Thanks to everyone would sent in replays, and your welcome for fixing them 😉

Can’t remember all the things I did, at the moment, I’m going to get some sleep then make a real post about it later…

Actually, better idea, here’s a few more bug fixes for now, and I’ll make another video tomorrow.

Got a nice bundle of tweaks here, let’s see what you guys think:

– Mouse health lowered, from 120 to 80. For reference, Spiders are at 40.
– Animated the Spider’s head to be a bit bouncier during the walk cycle. I don’t know, seems to fit better with all the new bounciness.
– Speaking of which, mouse bounciness tightened up some.
– FPM ‘stall’ jump clip finished, though it should appear less now, anyway. Hopefully now no one thinks it’s the game bugging out anymore, heh.
– Fixes to the player’s sliding clip, should be impossible to get hurt while slide tackling spiders, even when they’re protected.
– Jump rolling attacks properly.
– Plenty of little fixes to interaction with stunned, stun jumping, and protected baddies.

Check out the new changes for yourself here!

Alright, back to work!

Play the Sneak Peek now to check out all the updates!

Update 2 – 1:

Lots of little bug fixes, mostly. More background work done, should be finished with the frontmost background soon.

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First up we have the Caverns background. At least, the beginning of it. Like I said before, I tend to concentrate the most effort into the beginning as I try out new things, but here, you can take a look at my scribbly rough outlines in the rest of the level. That’s just to make sure that everything lines up properly before spending the time drawing decent lines. I also plastered a the color around the temporary background throughout most of the level, just to make sure it looks good everywhere. I keep everything on separate layers, since I tend to make up my mind a few times on the colors as I progress.

For the background, I’m trying out the three tone shading that Over the Top introduced to FPA while working on the console game, to keep the closer backgrounds simple enough to not obscure the player, but not too simple to look flat. I’m actually not sure if I want to make the closest layer less detailed, then move the stalactites back one layer, so the camera doesn’t look so cramped. Whatchy’all think?

I almost hate Googling for real life caves for inspiration, they just look so much better than any level I could ever draw. Real life in is, like, SUPER HD or something 🙁

Lots of bugs with the baddies should be fixed, I went back through all the code handling player interaction and fixed a bunch of it (some of this code is over 5 years old :O).

I really liked how springy the spiders with hats felt, so I extended that bit of code to work with regular spiders to. They’ll react properly while being slide into and headbutted and kicked and all that now, looks much more dynamic, I think.

Also, gave the Spiders some non-festive headwear, but they’ll need a few more hats to keep things fresh. I’m kinda looking forward to making some level specific hats for them (and no, sorry, W3 Flash won’t have hats for FPM like the console game does 🙁 )

So there it is, keep those bug reports coming, and remember to clear your cache before playing to get the latest version!

Update:

Foreground finished! Next update should be a new post, and a start to the backgrounds.

I messed with a bunch of code this time, so feel free to let me know how badly I broke everything. Remember to clear your browser cache to be sure you have the latest update!

It’s always a balancing act with World 3, my drawing has been getting better, but I still want FPA to have that scribbly look about it. You might be able to see some of that internal struggle here with this level. I’ve added some more scribbly texture since last update, but it’s still a pretty clean looking level.

I think I’m going to focus more on the background for this level, since it’s very open in spots, so the foreground will only have a few different designs on it (plus, I need to hurry up and finish this game!).

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For Halloween!

Here’s an idea that I’ve been playing around with for awhile, and I think this is a fun way to debut it.

Check out the Spiders in the Caves. They’re… armored! Basically, this would introduce tougher baddies in the late game, to be fought specifically with the pencil.

Gonna make a post about it soon, but I figured anyone checking the site often should get the first view.

Sneak Peek Halloween Test

And remember, if you’ve found a bug and it’s at all a possibility, please email me the replay string. That way I can be sure that I’ve fixed your bug!

This is probably cheating, but I needed a thorough bug fix update. Not that I don’t expect y’all to promptly break it or anything, but that poor mouse, all his code was broken 🙁

Oh, and poke at the scratch he fires.

And a huge thank you to everyone’s who’s sent in replays, you really are speeding up World 3’s development significantly. I can’t thank you guys enough!

Quick update: Cave’s up in the Sneak Peek. Check it out at FancyPantsAdventures.com! I messed up the mayor’s dialog, so if he’s saying the same old thing, it’s not updating. You might need to clear your browser cache. I’ll update the preloader and make a real post about it soon, but until then, Misplaced Cave is one of my favorite levels, so have fun!

Hi ho, everybody! Looks like the natives are restless, so let me show you what I’ve been working on, and what the plans are for the near future.

First up is the Beach. Finished the background, touched up the sand a little, and animated the sand castles falling over. At the end of the day, isn’t getting kicked what sand castles are really for?

In World 3 in Flash, I’m handling the Beach challenge a little differently. Instead of having it’s own level, the challenge takes place all over the main level. Hunt down the castles! Those castley jerks…

Just for reference, here’s the first time I showed off the Beach level and sand effects:

So, what’s next? For awhile, I was planning on putting a poll on Facebook, to see if everyone wanted me to add the Forest level to the Sneak Peek (World 2 demo had 2 main levels, so why not), or add the Misplaced Caverns. Thing is, Forest is finished, Caverns isn’t. I can upload Caverns as it is, then while I work on it, I can upload new versions, and everyone can basically watch how I build a level. Basically, adding the Forest would be boring, so I’m going to overrule everyone here anyway.

And building levels is pretty much all I’ve been doing lately, and that’s what’s been holding World 3 up. I figure everyone will get a brand new level to play with while they wait, get to see it be built piece by piece, and even give some feedback as I create the MiniTrial and extra levels that go with ever main level. Everyone up for that?

So then, I’m going to go through all my files and give the Sneak Peek a good updating. I’ve actually updated a lot of the collision since then, also, so hopefully nothing goes wrong in the transfer. Let’s see if I can get the Caverns in there tonight…

And here’s exactly what it looks light right now. Beautiful, isn’t it?

Sadly, I don’t have enough content for a full update, but I should be finished with the Forest soon. I’m liking this style of grass better, and I’ve been doing some coding work to get every level set up for mini trials, challenge levels, and all that (before that was just sort of hacked together for the Sneak Peek).

Any questions in particular? I might do another video soon going through a few of the other things in the Sneak Peek. Need to get consistent with those again…

Mostly just going over everything that I’ve been posting, just to get the videos up to speed. Hopefully these will become a regular occurrence again, but you know me 😛

And apparently there’s some storms headed my way :/

[Update: Fixed head bumping and slash sounds. You guys need to have my back, I usually upload builds when I’m quite sleep deprived 😛 ]

Work on World 3 continues! Besides what I’ve been uploading to the Sneak Peek, I’ve been able to finish a lot of animations that were planned but not completed in time for FPA on consoles.

For the console, we had a very specific goal: to make a unique FPA game for home consoles that couldn’t have been done in Flash. Multiplayer was the biggest focus, along with a few new levels and game modes crated with 4 players in mind. Because of this focus, along with the fact that it’s far more difficult to get animations into the console engine than it is in Flash, there are going to be a few differences between the Flash World 3 and FPA for consoles. I can focus a lot more on animation and little details this time around, and even more importantly, I can do a lot more cheating since there will only be one player on the screen at at a time.

Can you tell?

(Sneak Peek updated again, can y’all check it out on fancypantsadventures.com to make sure it’s actually working right? I need some sleep…)

Check out the level I threw into the Sneak Peek Beta.

It’s just an unmarked door next to Stress Testing, but I’ll make an entry for it soon. Hopefully we can find the rest of the bugs soon so I can push it out to Mochi.

I’ve been experimenting with something like this for awhile, but I’ve been afraid to go too far with it since, well, Sonic has always been the pinballish platformer. I think FPA already gets compared too much to Sonic as it is, but what can I say, I’m sort of obsessed with pinball, so I’m leaving this one in your hands, dear fans: Do the pinball mechanics work well enough? Are they fun? Would you like to see a level like that where the goal is to defeat all the bats in a certain time limit, or should I stick to expanding the mechanics for some Fancier Golf? Is it just too much Sonic and not enough FPA?

I’ve been coding for way too long today, I almost tried to comment out the old text… Sheesh.

Update: Hammer on this a bit, guys, I want to make sure it’s bug free enough to upload to fancypantsadventures.com.

Beta Clicky!

One more beta before I update the full Sneak Peek online. Sorry I’ve been so quiet over here, I’ve been working like crazy on World 3, and know everyone wants it to actually come out, so there’s a good deal of work left to do. Some things are turning out different, since it’s just me making the game instead of Over the Top and I, I might highlight some of those changes in a video soon.

This build should fix a good many bugs, if you don’t see ‘Behind the Curtain’ on top of the door in Squiggleville, you might need to clear your browser cache.

Check out the Underground Lake for some changes that I’ve been making to swimming, I was finally able to have a bit of fun and work on a few new little touches.

Looks like I broke a few things, whoops! Going to go through the bugs in a minute, but first, let me highlight a few changes:

– New ledge down animation to go better with the duck animation (after pressing down and usually seeing the head go down so quickly, my eyes expected quicker downwards movement when pressing down near a ledge)
– Swim flip!!!
– Bubbles!
– New splash effects!
– Splashes are now caused by either entering or exiting the water, instead of by the changing states. Much more natural.
– I changed the color of the water to go with the tub’s water, since I made the splashes for that, but I can’t get the backgrounds to look right, they actually are the same color as the foreground)
– Rolling swim state, can roll into water from the ground or from a jump, I believe baddies actually do the same thing when they’re stunned…
– Yet another handful of ground collision bug fixes
– Combat fixes for the shell
– Can climb up ink again (can’t remember why I keep breaking that then fixing it again, there’s probably a reason, oh well)
– Oh, right, a HUGE fix that I’m proud of is the zooming. I’ve been avoiding zooming because of how bad the backgrounds behaved before, but I think it’s finally looking good enough. In the Sneak Peek, the King and the Scientist will be zoomed in on, but it’s mostly for the cinematic parts of World 3 that aren’t in the Sneak Peek.
– Took out the ability to kill background scrolling. People just thought it was a bug, anyway. Will have to have more quality options for older computers.

Looks like I broke the cannons and combat effects, hmm. Should be fixed soon.