Update

Here's a quick status update. The game has remained largely unchanged since my last post. I've had a series of tests in quick succession and haven't had a chance to update it. I'm happy to say I should be able to get back to work on it tomorrow. And I'm super keen to get back to it. I have a strange desire to... animate things. It's not very fun drawing each frame but when you're done and you see things moving and looking natural it's an awesome feeling.

So in the mean time here's a skin I made of Centure for minecraft a while back. It's not exactly perfect so feel free to edit it and turn him into... a zombie or a goat version of himself or just make a better version if you're artistically inclined. I'm okay as an artist and I hope I improve while making the game. Half the fun of making this will be to improve all my skills.

Minecraft skins sure are tiny. Now I need to study for another test.

The Story

So today I took it easy on the coding and wrote a basic outline of the story. It's surprisingly sci-fi! I'm not even a huge fan of science fiction but there you go. I added a synopsis to the right of the blog there. I'm sorry if it's hard to follow. I want to tell you what's going on but also... don't want to tell you what's going on. If you know what I mean.

Here's a description of the major players (so I don't forget haha). I'll add the character art as I design it:

Centure: Created by Lera, he's the newest Biological Creature and our protagonist. He doesn't say much but he knows more than you think.

These are Centure's 2 forms

Lera: The creator of Biological Creatures. She's wanted after avoiding the police following a terrible accident that occurred during the creation of the Biological Creature she attempted to make just before Centure. Several people were killed in this accident - serious stuff!

Lera - early version - I might change her completely

The Corha World Government: They funded and powered the Biological Creatures operation but are now trying to wash their hands of it. And that means destroying every Creature Lera has ever made.

I will never ever animate this - well maybe one day

Biological Creatures: Creatures created by Lera as requested by the Corha World Government. Lera wishes to save them and does not believe they deserve to be destroyed. They are slowly losing power as their power source has been removed by the Corha World Government. Centure, the newest, suffers the least from power-loss issues.

Lera and Centure

Nybble: Lera's computer. A lighthearted A.I. who communicates with Centure by writing on the world around him using a new technology developed by Lera. In contrast to Centure, Nybble never shuts up stops talking.

EDIT: I've since changed this idea. Though writing on the world sounds cool, I feel like it'll be basically impossible to read while moving which breaks the flow of the game. I have another idea though :)

Hopefully, armed with this information, you can more easily understand the synopsis.

Moon

Moontastic!

Hey dudes! It's been a while. I've made quite a bit of progress since my last post. I worked on my new collision detection system (mentioned in the "plan" post) and managed to get it about 80% working. Enough to make it playable which is good enough for today since I'm tired of working on it. I also did my first background. It was a pretty hasty job but it looks pretty awesome! I can always go back to it and make it look even better later. It really adds to the atmosphere of this first level.

Click for a mini version of the background art

The first level's aim is to teach the player the game mechanics as seamlessly as possible. See the "z" in the first picture? It's a puzzle of sorts since it's up to the player to notice it and press the corresponding key on the keyboard to see what it does or they'll be stuck falling into that pit forever. I'm certainly not going to tell you the controls!

Next up is to complete the design for this first level (I'm about 50% done), work out the bugs in my collision detection system and finally finish the animations for the big character.

Moving Slowly Onwards

Things are gradually moving along. I've added a box around my character to cut down all the collision checking the game has to do. So now if something's in the box it can worry about a collision in the next frame, if not it can just idle along. Yep I'm saving processing power on a 2D platformer.

I uploaded a video where you can see what the box actually looks like and a nice glitch I've run into. I figured I'd be able to see why it happens in SLOOOW MOOOOOTIOOOON but no luck there.

The box wont actually be visible in the game I just made it like that so I know it's working as intended. Good. Great. Now to fix those bugs.

Minigame: Evil Eye

This was designed in my car

So I made a little "game" I've decided to call Evil Eye to play around with per-pixel collision detection. Actually it's more of a toy than a game. I did half the coding while in the car! I'm on holiday now and may not be able to work on the game much in the next few days. But I'll get back to it ASAP. As for what I've been doing until now... getting my driver's license. Not even joking.

So Evil Eye is a test. I'll put it up for download for you guys to mess around with. There's no goal to it and if you can't get it to work you're not missing much. Trust me. I'll put it up on mediafire and hope for the best:

Evil Eye - A per-pixel collision test program. Let me know if the download works.

Next up is to implement this in the actual game, after that I have to complete character movement for the big version of the character and then I can start enemy and level design!