The Dregs of War

Ok, Dreg can have conversations now!

And For Xenelement - he won't always be in a suit, he can be in all sorts of outfits. Now I've made him look like somebody who might be out to steal a baguette.

Enjoy!

Right, I've made some changes to the collision detection which have really freed me up when it comes to level design. You can read all about it in the latest post.

If you find any bugs, please tell me!

oh and redjag, I'm glad you like the game now, and feel free to criticise if there's something you don't like - it's always helpful!

Looks like youre almost ready to get freaky and start designing levels. So what's next... boss / setpiece battles? ;)

I noticed that if you go up way way way to the top, (approaching from the right), and go near the cliff edge (move very slowly over the little hill right before the drop), it sort of messes up, and puts the character within the walls, but then spits him out again after.

P.

Hello!

Did you miss me?

Anyway, Dreg is back with lots of things to do. I took a small break from the blog, but not from the game! Now I'm sure there are lots of bugs and issues for you to tell me about, so go check it out!

Also, thanks Todorus for your comment on the blog- I only saw it today! I've been meaning to ask about how Dawn of the hulker has been going - I saw on your blog that it's up and running now. I'm off to rate it highly right now.

As for the rest of you, all criticism welcome!

You should really activate some kind of e-mail notification for your blog ;)

I got until the gravity disrupter thingy (or whatever you called your double jumpt) and I must say: "Awesome!". The whip and double jump are a little bit rougher 'round the edges than the rest of the gameplay, but that is to be expected. The whip is a bit hard to time and the double jump looks a bit weird. I'd like him to go into a summersault or some acrobatics, to know I'm double jumping and not just... well I understand that double jumping defies gravity but still... Also I think that you the fact that you can climb walls with the double jump really breaks the game. Part of the game is that Prince of Persia like platforming with insane acrobatics. And something more trivial: I think you should map your keys close together, as much as you can, so I suggest using E for interaction. Oh, at your welcome screen you may want to add that you can press space to continue, to avoid buttonmashing maniacs like me trying everything, only to see it vanish without a clue which key did the trick.

I tried it twice as I ran into a bug when switching areas. I got the whip in the 2nd area, went back to the 1st and then went back to the 2nd again through the entrance you can now reach with the whip. Somehow Dreg didn't appear. I think I was holding the right key, but I'm not really sure.

Once again: looking awesome!

Thanks a lot Todorus! Once again I learn the value of sharing my work so far!

Anyway, that weird bug with Dreg disappearing was caused by the bit in the levelLoad() function that detects if you've already killed any thugs in that zone, in which case it'll remove them. Because of a silly syntax error, Dreg was being added to the array of thugs that should potentially be deleted, and that's what was happening. All fixed now!

Also, I thought I'd sorted out the wall-climbing thing, but obviously not. Now it's absolutely impossible to wall climb with the double jump.

I haven't changed Dreg's animation, but changed the starting frame when he double jumps, I think it looks better.

E will now interact with objects. You're absolutely right - it's important to have the key close to the others, especially when you need to use the key often (such as when trying to squish Thugs with the door).

As for the message - any key will do, but only after a certain amount of time. Later I'll have a little "press any key" message appear after that time is up. I just wanted to get a bug-free version up before I left for my horrific Christmas stress-fest of a shopping day.

Thanks again for the input!

Hello everybody!

Well, Christmas put the whole project on pause for a while, as well as my attempt to understand Sound.extract() - I learned lots of cool things, but ultimately it was all useless (I write about it in the blog).

In any case, the game now has some crappy music and sound effects!

Enjoy!

Hooray! Nice job Awooga! I like how the different sound effects annunciate different actions, like the gravity shifts, etc. Very nice.

The background music is PERFECT. You may want to tweak it to your liking, but it has the main thing that I always look at in a game. It's entertaining, it goes with the theme, and it is not overwhelming. Seriously, the worst thing you can do is have background music that distracts people. Good job making/stealing that loop!

Now that you're back, something that's been killing me... How the HECK did you code your platforming part? I'm guessing that you have a movieclip for the axis and duplicate it, but I couldn't come close to replicating it. It's that stupid free form axis thing. I get get it to work flat but... Think you could link me to a tutorial of PM me a hint? I'm banging my head on the keyboard trying to figure it out!

Anyway, you don't have to divulge your secrets, but seriously, great job. Two fixes that I'd recomend. Add a prompt to ALL messages, that says "Space bar to continue". Also, There's a little setting that I like to change that tells flash whether or not text is selectable. In a game, I don't really like seeing that silly text cursor, so I usually set it as not selectable. Unless of course you have some top secret reason to leave it like that >:)

Cheers, Still playing it =D

XenElement

Hello!

Long time no post, I guess - I was working on a different project for a while.

Anyway, there's been a bit more work on Dreg - work on the map and on indicating Dreg's and the enemies' health. Check it out here.

Enjoy! And tell me what you think.

He Xenelement - to get platforms at any angle you really need a good understanding of vector mathematics and an airtight collision detection system. To be honest, if I could, I would re-write the whole collision detection system of this game, because I did some things pretty stupidly. But now it works, so I'll stick to it. Maybe when I finish I'll write a tutorial on it.

There are collision detection tutorials out there, but nothing that really explains everything you need to know... you can start out here:

http://www.heroicvirtuecreations.com/2DCollisions.html

but it's pretty math-heavy.

About it taking too long, just finish your tools and make a little list or diagram of all the levels you want to incorporate. By every level you write what is going to be introduced (enemies, skills, applications/puzzles) so you have an overview of the learning curve and how interesting your game will stay. With that you can just spit out levels like crazy.

I like the small things you've introduced in this update Awoogamuffin, they all add to the game. One thing has been bothering me for a while, but it only became apparent to me when I really was punished for bieng bad at the fighting part. When I kick or punch Dreg kicks/punches in the direction he's facing. I'm used to fighting games where you can pretty quickly switch facing, by pressing a direction and a attack. May be a convention worth accustoming to.

Keep 'em coming!

I agree with TOdorus, I think the direction needs a bit of rection tweaking, unless I just suck at it as well =P. I like how the coloring of the thing changes as you loose health, reminds me of some other game that just doesn't want to come to mind. As for the collision thing, thanks! I'll get working on that, and yes as you said it appears to be pretty math crazy. Ah well, I'll have to get to work on it then.

Only thing I'd say, is what's happening to you, (getting bored) happens to me a lot. I find the best way to go is to give yourself a deadline, and say, I am ONLY going to tweak and add levels, I will not add more stuff. Etc. Don't limit yourself though, you just don't want to make 50 million powerups, and then never finish the game.

I think that's a good Idea, but hey, don't listen to me. I've still never finished one.

Hellooo!

Thanks for the advice guys! Dreg now faces the way you're pressing the arrow key when you attack!

He also throws grenades. It is truly awesome.

Anyway, don't you worry, I'm not getting bored with Dreg - the thing is, over the first few months of the year I was working on some Flex stuff (actual paid work!) which meant Dreg had to take a back seat. By now he's priority number one once again!

Be sure to tell me what you think!

Nice mate, good to see you haven't given up. Some good gameplay mechanics are being developed can't wait to see what it ends up being in the end.

Great job Awooga! I love those explosions, it's pretty perfectly how I see a cartoon-ish grenade.

Why did it keep distorting when you just put it in dreg? huh. ah well.

Great job with it, the only thing I would tweak now is the grenade tossing itself. You know how you made jumping related to how the spacebar was held down?

I'd go the same way for grenades, as having to back up and go forward to aim is annoying. I did find one thing though. The fact that it counts down in your hand is VERY useful. I love it. I can count to about 4, then throw and have it hit the thugs perfectly.

In awe, great skills m8.

Cheers

Great work, I like the exploding effect and as mentioned before its cool that it counts down in the hand.

What I would like is that when you hold down the throw key you would be able to decide how long it will go, if you hold down the key for 1 sec it will throw it long and if you just tap it he just drops it.

Hahaha, look at them run. And it sounds and looks nice too, the grenade that is. Fighting is really fluid now too. The destructable wall is also a neat idea. For some reason my mind instantly played the "You found a secret area" sound of the 2D Zelda's :) Goodness all around this update.

Are you going to add more features? I think you've got quite a complete gameplay system here already and would love to see the crazy leveldesign. Always watch out for feature creep ;)

offtopic:
Zompo I'm a bit busy but I'll try Bombwar this week. I've been looking forward to that one.

Hello!

Thanks for the feedback! But both Zompo and Xenelement have brought up an issue that has bothered me, but believe me, the throwing is the way it is due to a lot of thought. I wanted to give the player control over how hard he throws the grenade as well as being able to hold onto the grenade until the opportune moment, but here we have a contradiction.

I can't have the length of time the player holds onto the grenade dictate both the distance he throws it and the fuse remaining - one or the other. I chose the latter, but obviously this sacrifices control. But try holding down some arrow keys as you throw the grenade, and try throwing the grenade while crouching, and you'll see there's a bit more control than is apparent (I'll have to make this clear to the player when he gets the grenades).

Thanks for the encouragement todorus - in any case, don't worry about feature creep - in the blog post I make it clear that this is it as far as quest-centric items go. The few more features I want to add are an interface for buying new stuff (and by extension, money needs to be introduced), armor, the mini-map and finally an easy way to edit cut scenes.

One of the reasons why a lot of the progress is slow is that I'm being really careful about making my level-designing tools as quick and easy as possible - that often means a lot of hassle while setting it all up, but when it comes to making levels I'll have a much easier time of it.

In any case, at this rate I should be ready to start making levels by the end of the month (don't quote me on that!)

Um, huh? Why would the grenade be a one option thing? I'm assuming that it's set on a timer. Am I correct when I assume that it's also global, and if 3 of 5 seconds have elapsed in the players hand, then it will retain that time when thrown/released?

If so, all you have to do is add a timer to the key s, or a counter.

I can elaborate more if needed, but I get the sense you know this and I'm just rambling.

I think what he means is that if you hold the grenade in hand, letting the timer tick, by holding S then your timer will be ticking while you are aiming it too. Perhaps you could do both by having the user press S to ready the grenade and then go in to an aiming mode where the arrows change the trajectory and then press and hold S to start the timer.

This seems awkward to me and I truly like the controls Awooga came up with now that I know they exist but perhaps you had something else in mind or just disagree with the awkwardness.

I find that it's difficult to have to run back and forth to aim. I mean, to throw it farther you can take a running start, etc.

If you had 2 timers instead say, or a counter, like this it might work:

var grenadeTime:Timer = new Timer(5000) // 5 second timer on grenade
var aimCounter:int;

// If S is pressed
function launchGrenade() {
aimCounter = 0;
var grenade = new Grenade();
Dreg.addChild(grenade)
//etc etc, whatever you'd put here
addEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME, checkGrenade);

}

function checkGrenade(e:Event):void {
if (sKeyDown) {
aimCounter++;
}
else
{
grenadeSpeed = grenadeSpeed*counter.
throwGrende() // Whatever the actual trajectory calculator is
removeEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME, checkGrenade);

}

}

Etc Etc, then you clean all you vars up, and whatever. I guess I'm not sure what you mean awooga when you say you can't do both.

Are you proposing that the grenadeTime starts after the throw? Then you can't let seconds tick off the fuse before tossing it and having it explode at just the right moment. Or are you saying they start at the same time? Then you lose fuse time while adjusting your aim.

The Awooga's mechanics let you throw it short (by crouching), medium (by holding up), and long (a normal throw).

Ah... Huh. I hadn't noticed the crouch/up thing. Hmm.

Well, that is an interesting note. I see now. Huh. It still seems like there should be a better way to do this, but hey.

Nevermind, it seems Awooga is one step ahead. Thanks for pointing that out redjag.

<<< Slow :P

I didn't think much of it, because I had the same internal discussion when working on Marshmellow, so I understood Awoogamuffins argument beforehand. The thing is that both systems are timebased. The time you "cook" the grenade before you throw it and the time you hold the key to influence the force. So you've got to choose in the end.

Hum, yeah... I dealy you could have some sort of aiming system, but that might get too complicated for an average player.

You could do something like this:

O \
|o )
^ /

and Have a red square/ target where that line is that you can move up and down with the arrows. I dunno, looks like Awooga has it covered already ^_^

Wahey! That was fun - nice to see I wasn't the only one left scratching his head over the whole grenade control issue. Who'd have thought these sorts of things could be so complicated?

Anyway, now there's a mini-map, armour, and a window to climb through. W00t!

Check it out!

Nice! I like the commando feel that the armor gets, and I love how you implemented the mario like wall disapearing thing. Whatever you'd call the secret zone.

A few things I'd say need tweaking, and then you could pretty much start on the levels! I see da makings of a great game here!

Tweax:

When Jumping, I've noticed that to reach the height of the first peg, you must jump straight up. That kind of bothers me, I've jumped back and forth past it a few times before having to resort to jumping straight up.

As for the grenade thing, I'd make the up arrow throw the grenade farther instead of up since otherwise to get it to go farther you need a running start. Which I guess is not a bad thing, just a matter of preference. If you decide to leave it as is, I'd tweak the upward throw animation because Dreg's arm goes farther than the grenade is released. Know what I mean? The angle's just not quite right.

Very sorry to create more potential work for ya, but hey.

Good job! I'm lovin' it! (Not a McD's fan, but W/e)

Cheers!

I kind of agree with Xen on the "up" throw, but when I thought about it more the fact that it goes up opens more tactical throws depending on the level design. I really like the minimap, good work on that.

Yeah, the minimap is great. Kinda reminds me of a way better version of the metroid one.

Well I just feel that the up throw doesn't go far enough to be of much use by itself.

What I mean is, what about that throw makes it better than just jumping and throwing? You can jump and throw higher. If you jump and throw, it also goes farther.

I guess there could be an enemy right on the ledge that you don't want to give the chance to hit you, but in order for the up throw to work, the ledge would have to be pretty low.

I dunno, whatever your preference is at the moment awooga, go with it. I think it's at the point where everything that you can fix will make some people happy, and some people annoyed. The question is, which choice makes more people happy :)

As for jumping, I think it's the sequencing. Your physics engine has actually some of the most realistic platforming jumps that i've seen, but that might be the problem.

If you want to go for realistic you're fine, but the part I talked about in the other post where I couldn't reach the peg? That occurs if I press left or right before jumping. If I press it after, dreg reaches his full height.

I guess what I'd compare it to is mario, where you reach the full jump height whether you take a running start or not.

huh. I dunno. Just go with what you think :P

Helloooo!

Thanks for all the attention!

So Xenelement - I agree, I might need to tweak the up throw a little to make it more useful, but that depends on level design, so I'll wait till I figure out exactly how best to use it.

As for the jumps, Dreg is kinda inbetween Mario and the original prince of persia - in the latter game there's a clear difference between high jump and long jump. Hopefully people will figure it out wiht Dreg...

Anyway, now we have shops and money and a cooler map and stuff!

Check it out and tell me what you think!

Hmmm... I thought I'd posted my latest update on here earlier, but obviously not!

In any case, thanks Todorus for the comments on the blog - I've made pretty much all of the changes, apart from the whole left hand controls thing (surely left handed people are used to using the arrow keys in games, no?)

I've also added a health dispenser - press Q to use it (but you have to buy it in the shop first, of course!)

Tell me what you think!

Hullo!

Look! A new Enemy!

Ooooooooooooooh!

Very nice, I like how he is still able to interact with something shorter than him, with out cheesy looking hit errors.

One thought: I was busy killing myself with grenades and I came upon an interesting note:
(By the way I enjoy fake killing myself. It's funny.)

Shouldn't Grenades blow up other grenades? And make the espwoshin bigger in the process?

Huh. I just think, other than killing yourself faster, that might actually be useful later in the game. High level enemy, need 3 grenades at once to kill or something.

XenElement, that idea becomes really cool when you have something like mines,exploding barrels or exploding whatevers.

Chain explosions rule!

About the new enemy. Excellent stuff, although I wouldn't like to have them in a small space. They'd do their tackle all the time and I'd be helpless :(

I really didn't notice the running animation bieng so wonky in the actual gameplay, really :) I'm not that much of an animator, but one advice I can give you is to keep the head more still. "Where the head goes, the body will follow", is something my sensei once said and they're words to live by (pretty weird when you experience that for the first time (around 1:50)). If you would wobble your head like that you would lose balance quite quickly. I have no idea how to fix that spine popping in and out, though. Allthough you don't seem to be to far off.

Hello! Long time no speak

I've been working on various aspects of the game, mainly just trying to figure out how much I can squeeze in before my computer fails and can't keep up.

Sorry this is taking so bloody long - I won't blame any of you if you're just too sick of the damn thing to follow anymore! I promise I'll finish it eventually!

There's lots of background stuff and a new enemy. Be sure to tell me what you think!

Check it out

Huh! Very nice job! I'm starting to see those sick animator skills of yours come out in the game now!

Couple things that are a bit on the annoying side:

The gravity zones need to be tweaked, I hadn't noticed this as much in the earlier versions, but I'm assuming that since they were less amazing, they weren't as obvious.

Dreg when jumping up into a gravity zone that reverses, actually ends up getting stuck, and falling back the way he just jumped. It's a bit frustrating, since it can take about 5 tries to get up onto the ledge or whatever. Maybe make the gravity switch a bit slower?

I dunno, I'm not 100% sure how you work this thing.

Fighting:

Dreg feels a bit slow with his punches etc. It almost feels like it's lagging, or something. It's not that bad, maybe that's the style, but it feels too slow for me. Lower the time for not being able to punch again maybe?

Ugh. anyway, don't take my criticism as an insult, this is really an awe inspiring game. I'm looking forward to seeing this on all the top portals.

Also, it's not just a game. It's a work of art!

Cheers m8.

I agree on the gravityzone in the beginning. That may be a bit too hard as a first level ;) Players need to get used to it, but I assume you have this planned out.

I like how the city is bristling from an art point of view. From a gameplay point of view, it's annoying as heck. As a gamer I split the game into actual gameplay elements I can interact with and filler. As it is now, this split isn't obvious, as there is no visual clue to what is what. May I suggest using thick lines for actual geometry/enemies, maybe another palette?

Didn't know if you already picked up on this one, but it seems that it may serve for inspiration: Shank

Hello everybody! I'm back! Muaahahahahaa!

I can imagine some of you thought I'd given up on the game, but far from it! Though it's true I had a bit of a Dregless month as I dealt with moving and some job-related stuff, I got back into it, but didn't want to update until I had quite a lot of stuff done.

Anyway, I've started work on the game proper, as well as adding a few new features. The map is a bit more useful now...

So yeah, is it too easy? too hard? too boring? how is the flow? I thought the beginning of the game should be light on combat, and maybe in the next level a few more enemies will start popping their heads round the corner. The idea is that I want to give the player time to find the health powerups, and maybe buy a couple of armour upgrades before getting into some serious fist fights.

Be sure to tell me what you think!

Play it here

Absolutely Love the gravity shifts still. Great job on this new version too, the art is beautiful!

Still have two complaints; The jumping is kinda annoying, you almost have to stop moving and then jump in order to jump high enough. Maybe make the jump height:distance ratio vary on dreg's velocity instead of whether or not the arrow is presed before jumping?

Also, I had some problems with wall jumping, in that I couldn't jump. also there's an angled wall where if you slide down it dreg glitches. It's one of those 45 degree angles early on.

Anyway, still playing through it atm, i can't wait to see it on kongregate or wherever you decide to release it.

By the way, welcome back!

Hey Xenelement - yeah, the jumping is pretty much taken from Prince of Persia, and I can understand that a Mario fan would find it tricky. I liked the methodical PoP thing of stop, and jump to go high, or run and jump to go long... But not I'm wondering if I should reconsider... Anybody else got an opinion on this?

Also, you get the wall jump later if you talk to Dr Fwibbles, so it's normal if it's not happening now.

Some people on other sites have mentioned falling through the world into a white void. Has this happened to anybody else?