Something to do! Finally!

Arrow keys for movement and crouching, spacebar to jump. Use arrow keys while swinging to increase his spin. Hold down spacebar to make the jump last longer. Hit spacebar again when holding on to a wall to wall jump. A is punch and D is kick. Press A while running against an enemy to throw him. Click on the game to start interacting with it.

To avoid the thugs, your best friend is the roll - jump while crouching, and you'll avoid those nasty punches and kicks

See further below for a list of Dreg's fight moves

Wahey!

As I predicted, this new update is probably the most awesome you've had yet - you actually have something to do now! Yup - there are 10 thugs hanging around in the level, and your mission is to defeat them all. They have health now, and they die once you get them enough times.

But the extra fun thing that I've done is I've dusted off my php and MySQL skills to cobble together a little ranking page. Once you've defeated all 10 thugs, you get a score which is the sum of the seconds it took you, and the damage you received (both of which can be seen in the crappy little HUD at the top left). So the lower the score, the better.

Then you can write your name into the little textbox and upload your score to this horribly ugly page. Maybe when I'm bored one day I'll play around with CSS and stuff to make an attractive page that isn't the very, very bare minimum...

I know some people get personally offended by the use of Comic sans. But the thing is I'm kind of trying to recreate the aesthetic of the comic strip, so comic sans makes sense... sort of.

Now I'm pretty happy with the combat, but I want to hear from you - I've been playing it so much, that maybe it's actually far too difficult and I only find it easy because I'm used to it. Or maybe it's too easy. Or maybe you have some suggestions for new moves.

One thing I think would be a good idea is to give some indication of how much health a thug has left. The best system I've seen so far is, once again, from Oni. Each time you hit a character in that game, you have some attractive particle effects, and the colour of said effects depends on the character's health (green, to yellow, to orange and finally red). I feel like I've ripped Oni off enough for one game, so maybe you can come with some good suggestions. I'm not a big fan of the enemies health bar appearing in the corner like in... er... Street of Rage, is it? I find that I don't notice the health bar. The genius thing about Oni's system is that it's integrated into what I'm focusing on.

Now it's not like it's a big map or anything, but here's an image of the level editor, so you can see where the thugs are waiting for you:



So, just to remind you, here are all the moves again. Remember, you need to vary your moves or the thugs will start blocking you all the time. Also, the throw from behind (breaking his neck) does considerably more damage.

punch him in the face lots:
A + A + A

kick'im:D

upper-cut:
DOWN + A

get his ankles:
DOWN + D

dirty my trousers:
D while running

flying kick:
D while jumping

kick 'im onto 'is butt (more powerful kick with ever-so-slightly different animation):A + A + D
OR
DOWN + A + D (this one is fun - you fling him into the air then kick him off into the distance)

Sort of roll over backwards then then kick him in a sensitive place, thereby flinging him away:
A OR D while moving into him

No, look over there!
move into him and press A while he's facing away from you

slingshot! (my favourite):
Run towards him and press A just as you get to him

Double dragon rip-off:
DOWN, release DOWN and press D while rising.

Also, while trying to remember how to embed text again, I had a look in an old project of mine - a remake of pong. It's pretty simple and stupid, but it's quite fun if you can find another person to play it with. It was a fun little project that I did in two weeks (unlike this project which is taking months!)

So here, have a blast! Two games in one!