Collision revisited... again... please may it be for the last time!

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. Try to make the collision detection fail!

If you want to check out the combat go here

Today's been a good day. I like it when I figure out solutions to long standing problems. Do you remember a while ago when I did a whole update about the bugs I'd fixed? Well this is more of the same, really.

I'm sure you've all noticed that I've always had floors sort of overshoot the walls they're over. This was due to several reasons, all of which would have Dreg happily drop through a floor/wall into oblivion. This is not good for gameplay.

I'd resigned myself to the fact that I would I'd have to make the floor extend beyond the wall whenever designing levels.

But then I noticed some other problems. If Dreg jumps just high enough to be above the wall, but not quite high enough to land on the floor above, this happens:

oh noooooooooooooo!

Yeah, that sucks. You can try to do it on the previous post - it's not so difficult once you realise it's there.

Also, You can very easily fall through the geometry of the little podium at the end. As I said before, I'd simply decided that this would be a limitation of the game engine, so I couldn't have that kind of geometry.

Dreg and the podium are one

But today, as I said, was a good day. My brain was working even better than usual, and I though up a solution. Well, specifically it was to solve the problem presented in the first picture, but the solution was so simple and effective, I realised I could extend it to everything, and it would even work for the podium!

Then I did more stuff to deal with all the little problems I knew existed. Somehow the programming muse was on my side today, and I sorted them out. What a good day it's been!

This is a much bigger deal than you might think. I means I've suddenly liberated myself from constraints while designing my levels. I can have the geometry all over the place and not have to worry about the issues from before. It's amaaaaazing. Did I mention this is a good day?

So I quickly cooked up the level you see above, and it shows all the sorts of things that couldn't be done before, but now can. You'll see there's still some overlap at the corners, but this is done automatically - in the level editor I just have the lines meet each other (of course, don't forget that in the final game you won't be seeing any of these lines - just beautiful, beautiful backgrounds, yeah?).

Play around with it - I'm pretty sure the collision detection doesn't fail, though obviously if it does for you, pleeeeaaaaase tell me!

I'm back!

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. Press L then use the arrow keys to look around, and press M to bring up the map (- and + zoom)

If you want to check out the combat go here

Hello!

Ok, so it's been a while. I think I was working myself up over my self-imposed Christmas deadline, and I needed a Dreg holiday. I know that makes my Christmas deadline somewhat less realistic, but let's face it, as well as world fame and massive amounts of money, I'm making this game to have fun, and there's no point in getting stressed, yeah?

Anyway, the hiatus has given me lots of energy to delve right in. I think one of the main reasons that I needed a break was that I'd found a whole bunch of small bugs and issues that needed resolving, and I didn't have the heart to face them. After a week and a half of doing bugger all I was able to sort most of them out (a couple of big bloopers are still lurking around though).

As for actual real changes that are of interest to you, I decided to focus on navigation. With a such potentially confusing level design, full of tricky little platforms and such, I needed to give the player the ability to check out his or her surroundings, so I've added two things: the ability to look around, and a map.

To look around, press L, then use the arrow keys to look around. For the map press M and press - or + to zoom in and out.

I had to think for a while about what form the map should take - I want it to show information, but only for those places the player has visited. But you can see the dark red shape that indicates the general shape of the level. But I didn't want to show secret paths, so they're not included in the silhouette of the map (but if you use them, they'll show up on the map).

I also wanted some way to indicate the gravity in a certain part of the level. I've gone for a gradient, but I'm not sure if that's clear enough. Maybe I should just physically stick some arrows in there!

I also couldn't decide whether the player should still be able to move while looking at the map, or if the game should be paused. I've gone for the former - what do you guys think?

The reason why the map isn't centred is that the right hand side will contain information and instructions - I want to make it so that important buildings and objectives will appear on the map, and the player can add markers on the map. Maybe that'll be my next update!

In any case, as always, feel free to point out all the bugs/issues you come across!

Generic thug fights back! And he's brought a friend.

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

Hullo!

Last week I was rather lazy and neglected poor old Dreg, but these last three days have seen a flurry of programming activity, resulting in the rather hectic mess you see above this.

So as you may have noticed, the thug now has a mind of his own! Wheee! He'll no longer just passively take what you dish out - he'll punch back!

Ok, so this is still very early days. I was just getting started giving the thug some AI and having Dreg react to being hit, when I thought "let's see what happens when I add another bad guy". I enjoyed the result so much that I haven't done any more work since, hence my decision to update my blog!

There's still lots more to do:

- I want to give the thug several new moves, and the interaction between characters needs some more cleaning up. At the moment the two thugs can hit each other, which seems silly (but it does add to the fun, I think).

- I also want to give them the ability to block attacks, so that you can't just keep hitting the same buttons to defeat them.

- You can get hit while rolling or performing a throw, which I want to change.

- The pace is a little too fast. Maybe the thugs should stop when they're near you and sort of side step backwards and forwards... as it is, they feel a little bit too aggressive...

- I want thugs that you have thrown to knock down any other bad guys they hit.

In any case, I have to admit this isn't really worthy of a full update, but it's been so long I feel the need to let you know how things are coming along. Please point out any bugs you notice, of course...