Animation

As I have mentioned earlier today in a previous post, I was testing some animation programing today and the testing was a success!  Hoorah! I have tried replacing a particle sprite with an animated particle sprite, because I believe that this was the hardest one to replace and since I managed to replace this one, I guess I will be able to replace just about any other one later, if I so desire. I've recoreded a little video of the test, so you can see for yourself.

...very christmasy

Basic structure complete!

Today I have finally finished the basic structure of the game. The game now has all 30 (contentless) levels and menus that the player can maneuver through. Also, the game is able to save the players game for all 30 levels. Now that this is finished I can dedicate my time to making more interesting stuff. For example, today I have decided to play around with sprite sheets for a bit and see to it that I will know how to implement animation into my game when I get my hands on some art. I'm planing to have an animated background and perhaps animated particles (the ones that fly out of the centre). After this I will probably start implementing game features and when that is done I can start designing the levels. I'm very excited but I also realise that there is a long way to go before I'm able to finish this project. Stay tuned!

Back to work

After a very long period of doing exclusively school work, I'm back to developing Blue Core. I will begin adding new features and improving the game structure right after I finish writing this, so you can expect new updates to follow soon!

New Planet enhanced

As I have said in the "second soundtrack" post, what you listened to, was an early version of the soundtrack New Planet. Brian enhanced it a lot since then and if you visit the link again you can hear the new version. If you're too lazy to move your mouse 3 inches down the screen, here is the link again: New Planet

Tweety tweets

First of all! Happy new year to you all and congrats on surviving the Apocalypse (again)! I hope you also survived that excessive alcohol consumption.
The newest news:
I've set up a new twitter account for the purpose of more frequent and up to date progress announcements.

Follow @SvargaForge

Second soundtrack

Brian just sent in the second soundtrack for Blue Core. This one will be playing during the gameplay on the medium difficulty. This is an early look at the song as it might recieve a few changes still. Have a listen! For more great works visit Brian's homepage (BonsteelAudio). Otherwise, this week has been a bit slow due to the holidays and everything that comes with them. I did manage to implement a pause. The player can now pause the game and if he does, music starts playig, which Brian is already working on. Happy holidays to everyone (at least what's left of them).

New gameplay feature and saving system

This week I've tried hard to make a lot of progress since last week was a bit slow, because we had midterms all week at the university. And progress I have made. So let's take a look at what's new. During the week I took some time away from my studies to give Blue Core a new gameplay feature. Some, or most levels will have some special occurrences happening, from time to time, that spice up the gameplay a little bit, and the first such occurrence that I've managed to include is a speed boost. The game basically shoots out a particle of a different colour, indicating that a change is about to take place, as you pick it up, (and you must pick it up or else you lose) the new game mode, whatever it may be, executes. I have made a little video demonstrating how the speed boost works:

That Is not all. During the weekend, I had lots of free time and free food at my disposal, so I was ready to make a big change to the game. So that is why, I decided to implement a game saving system. What this means is, that all the levels are now locked until you have beaten them. When you unlock levels, the information is saved into a file in your game folder, so the next time you run the game it's all still there, just the way you left it. Implementing this whole new system made me change the whole menu mechanics somewhat also. So after giving it a little thought, I realised that the main menu only really needs two options. Play and Quit. Trying to keep it simple here. Pressing the 'play' button will pop you straight into the 'level selection' screen. And for all you brain dead people who can somehow read, pressing the 'quit' button quits the game. And because I had a lot of time on my hands I decided to make a new, prettier main menu:

Ain't she gorgeous? My artistic style has advanced from the early 90's to a bit later into the 90's. Everything else is still the same though, so it looks like the level selection screen and gameplay area are from a completely different game. Doesn't matter though, it's all only temporary. Here is what the level selection screen looks like with 4 levels being unlocked:

The buttons are all bunched up into one corner like that, because after moving to a bigger resolution it made no sense to change the level selection screen layouts. That would be a major waste of time, since it's all going to be replaced sooner or later. But judging by the speed with which the art team is producing new sprites, I'm leaning towards later. The point in this screen shot is functionality. The player can easily see which levels are unlocked, and if he attempts to begin a level that is not unlocked nothing happens. Maybe it would be a good idea to prevent the player from even selecting the greyed out squares. I might implement this later, although it could be quite a challenge.
That is all for now, stay tuned and happy holidays!

Contact me at svargaforge@gmail.com