End of 2013!

I hope y'all are enjoying your breaks and stuff.

Here's a few updates:
-If you didn't notice, the game has newer, cleaner sound effects. I've been aiming to replace all reused sound effects and I am almost done. For those of you that found the wave beam's sound annoying, I've changed that too.
-The game's first major boss has been finished, coding wise. Once he undergoes a graphical revision, I will work on mapping his hideout.
-Several new, much more intelligent, more interesting enemies have been coded. Graphically, they're blobs and bricks. I hope to get them looking better soon.
-SPACE PIRATES ARE INTELLIGENT! Prior to now they would just patrol and occasionally fire at random. I know this seems minor, but its a landmark for me in developing AI. Once they notice you, they actually bother to stalk you, shoot at you, jump, and face you when they shoot. Long story short, the brainless pirates in the demo are no more.
-I'm currently redoing the HUD to be much more accessible and less intrusive. It was pointed out the me in the demo that the egg meter (the charge coil icon in the final game) obscures doors that go upwards. That's my main focus in redoing the HUD. I'm also trying to get a minimap in there, though my main focus is just the necessities, so this may be pushed for later.

With those said, I also want to say that I'm also starting a little Metroid related side project. I've been trying to stop myself from doing this, as I thought it would slow the development of this game. Truth is, the time I spent wishing I could have a side project is time I spend not working on this. Don't worry, however, this game is still my main priority.

Happy Holidays!

NEW DEMO

Check out the new and updated demo at NCFC!

A Change of Pace

As established somewhat before, I need to face the fact that free time is extremely limited in my current situation. To not go insane I can't spend all that time game developing. So I wait and rely on the short bursts of creativity I have to work on the game. I've been trying to get as many small ideas working in the game as possible, so the outcome isn't super cliche or boring...

I've began working on areas in chunks so that way I can jump around the world map. Creating the game in chronological order gets boring, especially since you have to focus on one area for awhile. By working ahead I also get an excuse to make a kickass ultra powerful debug menu that future testers will get to use.

Of course, temporary graphics (Ugh, that background) are still EVERYWHERE. I'll be leaving those as a last priority, so expect future gamedev screenshots to be ugly, depending on the area and point of the game they take place.
NCFC!
Last year at NCFC, you guys got a demo. That demo is a mess and doesn't have certain IMPORTANT changes in the game's engine and design. I wonder what I'll be showing this year... Check out their website once the convention begins to find out! Also, I've put the new trailer at the top of this post.

Stalled

I'm going on vacation till July 5th who knows whats a vacation I'm just gonna be busy as hell till whenever, in which I will make little to no progress. I'm sorry about so much progress being stalled, but I really need a break from everything. Thank you for your understanding.


EDIT (10/2)
I know it's been a long time. Sickness, large workloads, personal life, and other such useless excuses have stalled me. But the project's not dead, just slow paced. Just always keep in mind it's one guy doing a whole game, regardless of how simple it seems. I'm not going to BS or fake updates for you either. I'm sorry to test your patience... I wish I had more control on how time was going by.

Back! With a Teaser!

First thing's first: I'm sorry that I haven't updated in nearly 2 months. State testing and finals really got the most of me, I didn't have any time to spare. However, in the last few days, I've made some quite significant changes to the game engine, but sadly, not much to the actual level design.

Consistent Tiling
I redid all of the tilesets in the game. Why is that significant? Because I've always had trouble with the concept of consistent graphics. Everything looked mixed together. So I've put a lot of effort into making sure that everything matches the same basic sprite style.


No more Fusion-looking tiles.

New Sound Engine
This applies to the music. The game now runs on the Caster sound engine. With this, I have more control over the music and sound formats I can use. This way, I can use OGG Vorbis files. With that, I can provide a version of the game with less bulky sound files, making the download and load times shorter. Now this really sacrifices sound quality, so high quality will still be an option.

Redone Enemies
Aside from weak points, enemies now do more themselves! Some breath fire in addition to their climbing, some self destruct to prevent you from reaching certain areas. It's all part of making things more challenging, but in a fair way. Also, most of the reused enemies (Geemers, sidehoppers, desgeegas, gullugs, etc.) are being redesigned or have already been.


What are those things?

Well, that's really all I've been able to get done. I promise more in the coming months. Until then, enjoy the new trailer!


Have You Read This Far?
If you do, I appreciate it. I am not the best pixel artist. I'm looking for someone who would be willing to assist me in spriting enemies and bosses for the game, and making everything look more put together and nicer overall. If you think you can help, please let me know. You can contact me at iamnotalizard(@)aim.com

Area Development/New Things

I'm trying to spend a good amount of time developing each room... Every room should have a purpose, but they should all come together in a non-linear way.

I totally redid the title screen, and added customizable controls. However, at the moment they're very unstable. I might have a separate executable available for editing them. It shouldn't hurt anything, as long as they work. I've also finalized the save system, it works a lot like that of Metroid II, however, it restores your health. One might say this makes things too easy, but considering how few save rooms there are, the difficulty stays at a good level.

As long as you could spam enemies with your beam they weren't a problem. I've found a better way of doing things. While some enemies can be damaged all over, some have weakspots, weaknesses and resistances. For example, you can only use concussive weapons on the space pirate (bombs, missiles) but you can use anything on the jumping slime enemy.

I totally neglected 2 things I had programmed before: Acid and Elevator Shafts. I've found places to put acid so that one is more aware of their environment and doesn't just breeze through. I've also added scrolling elevator shafts to keep in touch with some of the special things Metroid has always done.

This is just to show that the second area, Anfine, is now the main focus of development. I'm still working on new enemies for it however. I've recently started redesigning enemies to look and behave differently from classic Metroid enemies. Also added a little particle trail to the power beam, and other types of trails for the other beams.

That's all for now, please comment & share!

The Small Things

Recently, when I've sat down to work on the game, I haven't hard very large amounts of time. With these little segments of time, I've worked on some small issues that I needed to get out of the way.

Missile Doors
Someone brought up that players new to Metroid might not get the concept of the blast shield on the door. Before I go further, I'll explain how the blast shield works. Once you get the Missiles, red blast shields take 5 missiles to open. This is a given to players who are familiar with Metroid. However, I know there are a good amount of followers who have never played the classic Metroid games. Because of this, one might dismiss the door not opening with one as the wrong weapon. So I had to find a way around this without a pop-up dialogue telling you so, because that is cheap and I think it's intrusive. Thanks to Chris2Balls of TSR, a way around this was found: The door glows when you activate your missiles (like in the original Metroid) and gradually shatters as you shoot it.


Sprite Misalignment and Graphical Impurities

Several tiny aesthetic changes have been made. The backgrounds now follow the limited color rule of the sprites for visual consistency and to avoid a mess of different graphics. I redid the power suit to looks like its Metroid Prime appearance, as opposed to the unappealing yellow Varia Suit I had earlier. Samus is also drawn 1px lower, to avoid a double outline between her and the floor.

Map System

I've had an odd relationship with the map system. It used to simply have the whole map available from the start. Because of this, I couldn't continue the Metroid tradition of putting dots where item expansions were, as you already had the WHOLE world map. However, after a lot of experimenting, I got it to work so that you can only see what you've explored. This way, the maps can be more informative and label powerup locations, and it will be easier to complete the game 100%.

It's not much, but I think these little changes will make the overall game experience better. Please comment & share!