Friday, August 16, 2013

Update: 8-16-13 - Blocks and other VERY Important News!!!

For the past couple of days I've been busy revamping the code for item blocks (those blocks that you shoot and they occasionally drop items and stuff). they look better graphically, and they have a few slight improvements as far as their existence goes. Recently I thought it would be an interesting idea to include the mechanic of head bumping these blocks [Mario-style] as well as ground pounding them [also Mario-ish] which would also get you the items inside them. Its not a neccesary mechanic, but it kinda does look neat.

Also I've been adding the functionality of other types of blocks. As mentioned in recent blog posts there are some blocks that you'd need certain ability charms to get past. So far there are only three of these types of blocks.

 - bomb block: when a bomb explodes in its vicinity it too would explode, and if there are other bomb nearby they too would activate causing a chain reaction of sorts. [this was actually featured in the old engine before I quit on it]
 - lizard block: You can only get past these tiles by performing a crouching slide. They will vanish temporarily and then reappear when the player sprite isn't overlapping it.
- anvil block: Performing a ground pound on these blocks would have the same affect as a crouching slide would have on the lizard blocks.

Of course, getting past these blocks would require having certain items in your inventory. Bombs for the bomb blocks, the lizard charm for the lizard block, the anvil charm for the anvil block and so on...

Last (but probably not least) of the block types are the boxes.

There are two types of boxes and both of them take the visual appearance of wooden crates. there's the small box and the large box.

the small box, you can pick up and carry around in the current map [this also introduces the new mechanic of being able to carry certain items/baby ponies/etc]. You will also be able to push it when not carrying it and then when need be, you can use it as a platform.

the large box would obviously be too heavy to carry around and therefor could only be pushed. And like the small box, it can be used as a platform.

Both box types can be destroyed and in a few different ways:
 - if they fall in lava
 - if they fall on spikes
 - if they fall from a long distance
 - exploding a bomb in their vicinity 
 - they cant however be destroyed by your fire breath (yeah, I know, screw logic. this is a vidyagame!)

Destroying boxes can also result in them dropping certain items. So its not all a total loss.

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Other News:

Ive recently been in contact with someone who wants to help me get my game featured in an upcoming convention [I wont go into full details without their permission]. Because of this recent achievement I've been set with an actual deadline for Demo #5.

The demo will need to be finished by the first of November (giving me plenty of time to get things done) and will be released on the same day as the convention.

Because of how important this event will be for the project I would like to make the engine as bug free as humanly possible. This would of course require some help.

For those of you who recently volunteered to bug test on the mini-games. I'd like to enlist you into the testing team for Demo 5 [with your permission of course]

I would also like to enlist new help for testing. So if your interested please e-mail me: bullockarts@gmail.com with the header: "Demo 5 tester"

I will be releasing bug test demos periodically to everyone on the testers list right up to the final release of Demo #5

Also, for everyone not involved with the testing: I will launch a production stream sometimes around my birthday [October 8th] to showcase most of the accomplishments so far and give you a preview of what to expect from Demo #5

More news to come. Stay tuned!

2 comments:

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