Blight - Out Now!

<font size="5">Blight</font>

Creator: Adam Prack

IRC Name: C7

Genre: Platformer

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Alpha Release on Desura! Blight is available now as an alpha release. Early supporters get the rest of the game free as it is completed!

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[TUBE]sZFBn10qy7E?hd=1[/TUBE]

Story

A young elf drew the short stick and was left on guard duty during the yearly Forest Guardian celebration. He was charged with watching over the Forest Kingdom's Guardian Stone, an ancient relic said to protect the purity and focus of the Forest's Guardian. He grew jealous and neglected his duties to watch some of the festivities from afar and fell asleep at his post. The Guardian Stone was taken and the young elf was imprisoned for his negligence and possible conspiracy (or trickery).

While in his cell, a water nymph appears to him begging for his help saving the four Grand Kingdoms from an evil race spreading their influence like a plague and taking control of each kingdom's Guardians. The kings would not believe her cries for help, but she's found a young elf who just might. She aids in your escape in exchange for your help.

The journey spans the four Grand Kingdoms (Forest, Desert, Peaks, and Lakes) to restore the Guardians to their noble posts and stop the threat to all life around.

Screenshots

<img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v625/CubedOCR/Blight/trees.png" border="0">

<img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v625/CubedOCR/Blight/shot.png" border="0">

<img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v625/CubedOCR/Blight/leap.png" border="0">

<img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v625/CubedOCR/Blight/rain.png" border="0">

<img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v625/CubedOCR/Blight/bowls.png" border="0">

<img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v625/CubedOCR/Blight/boom.png" border="0">

<img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v625/CubedOCR/Blight/block.png" border="0">

Form

The game world is made up of four worlds with four stages each (broken into two segments). Currently the game supports Keyboard and Xbox 360 controller. General gamepads will be added. The game is single player.

Preorder it now on Desura!

Looks nice, original graphics style. Will you make a playable demo before the release? I'm bit afraid if I could run it on stable 60fps. Core2Duo 2GHz, 9300M 256MB

Looks nice, original graphics style. Will you make a playable demo before the release? I'm bit afraid if I could run it on stable 60fps. Core2Duo 2GHz, 9300M 256MB

I wouldn't worry too much. You have a better computer than I do! But yes, I'll make a playable demo before release!

So I got through testing this on my old laptop to see performance on lesser machines. Running it in low-res (480p), it's playable but not silky by any means.

So for:

Intel T2400 (1.83 GHz)

2 GB of RAM

Mobile Intel 945 Express (integrated crappy video card)

It runs decently at 480.

And for:

Intel Penitum D (3.2 GHz)

4 GB RAM

Geforce 7900 GS

It runs close to constant 60 fps at 720.

I don't have a stellar rig by any means and it's about 5 years old. Even with that, I'm glad performance is about where it needs to be for a pretty graphics-heavy 2D game. On tests I've run on computers with any sort of a better GPU, the whole game runs flawlessly. I'm toying with getting lower-res textures working (via a menu switch), but I'm going to keep building the game with the current detail level as the focus.

So I cut a trailer showing some of the current locales. It is sans enemies, proper ui, etc but is a simple demonstration of some aspects of the levels. It is using music of my own as well as graphics entirely my own. Check it out!

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It has has been added to the first post. I'll be uploading an HD version in the near future, too.

Character mechanics - 4/26 Update

So I've gone through a lot of different ideas for what the player would be able to do. One idea in particular seemed like a great idea and would lead to some neat level stuff and enemy uses. And then in-game it wasn't much fun. I did not want to just give the player double-jumping or something. That seems done very often and, to me, I wanted the single jump to be the big focus for the platforming. I also like having objects visible, but not immediately reachable. A double jump would allow the player to traverse the majority of the screen with the current physics I'm using, so that would ruin stuff to me. I wanted there to be a fun aspect of the jumping, perhaps a bit of forgiveness, and I didn't want to give the character fireball equivalents. Weapons wouldn't have been the right way to go to me (partially because I want the game a little more peaceful, partially to cut back on my own animating time). So at the start of the game, a water nymph (Maila) helps you out and gives you a pendant from her kingdom which allows you wield a bit of magic

-The player can semi-float.

-The player can cast a 'shield' barrier in front with light offensive abilities (close-range).

While in the air, you cast the magic ability below you to keep you in the air, but on-ground you cast it in front to repel projectiles, block stuff from hitting you, and destroy lower-class enemies. It's all pretty and blueish and floats all around everywhere, so I'll have a video of it up some time.

Naming - 4/26 Update

So I currently plan on not naming the main character. I'm not really pulling anything rpg-styled with a name input. I'm just simply writing the dialogue to omit sentences that would use his name. I think that without a name to call the character--including fallback default names, players will end up saying "I did this" and "it happened to me." And they'll believe it more, probably. Putting in names in RPGs always seems artificial because everbody knows that's Link, that's Tifa, that's whoever. And then seeing my own name in dialogue seems sorta funky, too. But no name at all and no reference to one would make, to me at least, someone substitute themselves subconsciously.

Or I'm crazy. I'm okay with either, but I believe the former at the moment.

Pretty Picture - Of an area you've seen

<img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v625/CubedOCR/Project%20C7/float.jpg">

Enemies, Desert - Just a quick 5/15 update

So I have one enemy fully working (so check one off of my list), and I have some good progress in the desert world. I hope to post a shot or two next week, but in the meantime, here's a single frame from one of the enemies:

<img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v625/CubedOCR/Project%20C7/gshot.png">

The enemy is well made ! How have you done this ?

Good ol' mouse-drawing in photoshop.

Looks nice. It's a little hard to see, but I think your dude is running wrong. When people run, they move with opposite legs\arms. On your animation, it looks like the left leg goes forward with the left arm. The right arm should move forward instead.

So yes, UberLou, you're correct. Thanks for pointing that out! I didn't even notice (bad me). But that isn't too bad of a fix.

I'm glad to say I had a first go around of previewing a demo. There was a talent show at my church, so I set up my game running on a computer in the corner with a PS3 controller hooked up to it. It captivated every 5-15 year old boy in the room and most of the older males. There were a couple of freezes in the few hours it was being pummeled, but it was an otherwise successful run. So I'll fix up a couple of things and push that demo out for people to try.

Enemies are in, the floating ability is working, and I'll be getting the forward shield/upwards thrust thing done this week. Hopefully. I'm quite happy with how it's going and am going to try to get a kickstarter campaign going so I can work on this full-time. I still would love to get this out by the end of the year.

I've got a Kickstarter going for this project, and I hope you might be able to help out! I really want to see this game through to completion, and I want people to play it. Anything helps, and it helps get another Construct-made game out into the public eye! This is a fantastic tool (as will be Construct 2), and I'm quite glad for the dedicated developers.

Give it a look, and check out some new screenshots on the website for the game:

Blight - Official Site

My project is over 15% funded thus far, so thank you for anyone who gave it a look! I've implemented all of the abilities, overhauled the player animations (some tweaking to do, as always), added a new enemy type, better optimized things, and I have a 3-level demo available. <font size="4">Check it out here: <font color="red">Sorry, the demo period has expired</font>

Keyboard:

A/D or Left/Right for movement

W or Up for jump

Down for special

Enter for menu selections and pause

(mirrors a controller a bit)

Xbox 360 pad:

D-pad for movement

A for jump (should also be menu selections)

Right Shoulder for special

D-pad

• Supports Keyboard and Xbox 360 controller currently.
• This is a 3-level demo (each level has two longer segments). These are the first 3 levels of the game, excluding brief tutorial stage and story elements.
• The floating enemies will be mobile (vertically) and will have fire particles, but for now they just exist. They are also unaffected by the forward shield yet, but otherwise functioning.
• You can hold down the right trigger on a 360 pad to spam the forward shield--that'll get fixed in future builds.
• You might run into a camera glitch on loads occasionally that just leaves the screen one color. Sorry, just restart it.
• This demo is windowed so sites and blogs would have an easier time with screenshotting, but the final version will be fullscreen.
• This demo is locked at 1280x720. There is a lower resolution version working, but it has a higher volume of bugs so the option isn't included. You'll need a moderate PC to run the game, but it does quite well on my 7900GS, Pentium D machine.
• The sign text will be better.
• The falling/jumping animations are not complete.

Let me know what you think, what you like, what you don't like.

<font color="red">Sorry, the demo period has expired</font></font>

It looks awesome, but there is one thing which bothered me. The fact that in some cases, the blocks you can walk on seem like part of the back/fore-ground being the same tint/color/contrast. They might need something to stand out a bit more, perhaps darkening them just a tad bit might do the trick. Or maybe outline the parts you can walk on a bit more (lights N shadows). There were a few areas where I thought I could jump on a block, while it was part of the background <img src="smileys/smiley36.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

The footstep sounds might need a random picker instead of the constant pattern. And when you jump on an enemy and bounce back up, you also make the jump sound (not sure if this is working as intended). Other then that the demo ran at a constant 60FPS, when running the game:

Level 1: ~17-20% CPU (320Mb Mem Usage)

Level 2: Starting out at 20% CPU going down to around 5% the further I got towards the end (420Mb Mem Usage)

Level 3: After level 2 was completed, I got send back to the main screen.

Also I found two collision bugs in level 2, there's an enemy you can bypass while walking trough it down a slope. Apparently it doesn't detect the hit when going down this particular slope. It's the fourth walking knight guy in level 2.

The second collision trouble is when you walk back up the hill, towards the start in level 2. You get stuck when moving left and have to jump to get over this invisible snag point

Here are my specs:

Intel C2D E6420 2,4Ghz 1200FSB

2Gb OCZ PC-6400 900Mhz

HD4850 512Mb PCI-E

Asus P5B Motherboard

Creative Audigy 2 & Asus HD Audio

Windows XP Pro Sp3

Good stuff, keep it up and you've got yourself a winner! Oh and the grass is looking damn good <img src="smileys/smiley3.gif" border="0" align="middle" />

Thank you so much for playing and commenting! The sounds are all just kind of there for now--more attention will go into that at a later time. I'll check out the collision stuff for sure. I also do agree about background differentiation problems. All things to get to, thanks.

You may've been confused on the levels... Each level has two parts (two layouts). There will be checkpoint flags there, etc. Maybe that ends up being too long for a level, but I wanted them more journey-like. So there might be much more to the game than you got to see! Unless I missed a bug. Regardless, thank you so very much for playing and commenting!

Ah I see, I assumed the W and S buttons or the mouse had to be used to select those main menu level buttons. And as a result I thought they were locked, only unlockable by playing trough the levels.

That and I might have it mixed up with how Mario does it, as they do things as follows:

World 1 (level 1, level 2, level 3, level 4)

I shall have a look at the other two levels (worlds :P), now that I can select the buttons (arrow keys)