It's squishtastic!

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.

Yay! More stuff!

Well I've considerably worked on the whole moving platforms thing, the best bit being the implementation of squish mechanics (that's the technical term) so that Dreg can be crushed and squeezed to your delight. It also allows for some fun pseudo-puzzle acrobatics which test your block negotiation skills (also a technical term).

It's still a little buggy in places - sometimes Dreg grabs onto a ledge when he shouldn't, and there's the occasional odd sticking to walls. I've uploaded it anyway because I need more attention!

I'm certain there are plenty more bugs. That's where you, my play-testing monkeys, come in - I want to hear all of the weird bugs and quirks you find, and I'll do my best to fix them!

This has got me really excited about the possibilities for level design. This little demo is only scratching the surface - I can make the moving lines be at any angle, and travel along a path of my choosing (I've even half-coded something that would allow me to use the paths within Flash to create paths for my platforms).

The nice thing about this being a science-fiction world, and a 2D computer game, is that I can get away with crazy level design, involving huge moving parts and whatnot (I'm toying with the idea of a giant robot, trapped and spanning across various gravity zones and feeling generally unhappy with the world).

So can you navigate Dreg through the fun? There's also a little "secret" room (not much of a secret now that you know about it) of which I hope the game will have plenty!

Tell me what you think!

transportational joy

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.

I have moving platforms!

This is still just a simple demo of new stuff. If you want something more involved, and haven't done it yet, go fight some thugs and upload your high score here.

Yeah, they're glorified collision lines that have velocity. I had to do a lot of fiddling to get everything working just right, but I'm happy with the final result.

I was going simply to have a platform helping you get across the pit, but that would be too boring, so I've given you a very simple puzzle - can you get to the other side? a brain teaser that should take you all of two minutes to figure out! Fun fun fun!

So, the nice things about what I've done in these last two posts is that there are multiple uses for each - the line that kills Dreg then resets him could also be used to avoid game-breaking bugs. If for dodgy collision code or dodgy level layout Dreg falls through the floor, I could have a sort of "safety net" that will put him back where he should be...

As for the moving platforms, they could also be things like floating objects, or cars, or whatever, to keep the level layout interesting.

So what's next? Well I still need to integrate moving platforms into the level editor, as well as design different kinds (those that move in loops, those that are only activated when Dreg jumps on them, etc.)

After that, here's my "to do" list:

- menu screens
- NPC interaction
- the HUD
- items
- cut scenes
- stitching zones together (as in, the whole game can be explored freely, but to avoid too many demands on the processor, the world will be split into zones that are loaded as the player enters them...)
- level design - how are events triggered? how are missions given and stored?
- potentially other acrobatics (monkey bars, ladders etc.) but I'm not sure I can be bothered with them

Once I've got all these engine elements together I'll be able to get down and busy with making the actual game - designing, animating and maybe doing some extra coding for enemies, designing levels etc.

The plan is to have the whole game done before Christmas. Excitement.