Go!Go!Maddi! Dev Log and Beta Test Thread :D

New video link for week 10 here:

http://youtu.be/CjgOg7e3yI4

DMM

Wolf is now a regular enemy with 6 hit points - new boss should be done by the weekend! Thanks to Jayjay for the code sample!

<img src="http://designchris.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/catchingcrabs.jpg" border="0" />

Yeah - like I could resist making the entire boss today...May animate the mouth and remove right eye - I kinda want it to dangle from the socket and he bobs back and forth.

So here he is - Zomb-Crab ;)

<img src="http://designchris.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/lookout.jpg" border="0" />

DMM

Here's a sneak peek at the crab boss - he's fully programed but missing eye movement and mouth movement... if he even really needs it. He's not programmed to attack yet but he will be by the time I post a full boss battle sunday night :D

Happy Splashing Zom-crab!!!

I think I'll give him a bubble spitting attack that goes up and brings big water drops down on the player or something...

DMM

Here is the boss fight. Not 100% yet but he's getting there. Lots of bugs, no cinematic timing etc. If anyone has coded a boss like thing with multiple timed attacks, I could use a little imput! Thanks!!

Boss fight

DMM

Very nice game! I like the concept very much and I think it can appeal to a lot of people, especially Nintendads. XD

I design a few boss fights and damn they are the most complicated feature of any games I worked on, eating up months of developpement. If I can give a few advices; boss fight is in great part the art of good attack anticipation, the longer the anticipation the stroger the attack, etc, and so the player can learn patterns. THe crabs claws could brust out of the water after a small splash signal, or the big balls could fall directly on the player's last position after a short "drop shadow" signal, etc...

Try to avoid exploits and force the player to almost constantly move. Nothing sucks more that seeing all your beautiful attack patterns totally useless when the player hangs in a particular corner of the map and keeps shooting till the boss dies.

Your crab is big and impressive, I think it should be somehow occupying the center of the screen more often.

KUTGW!

Thanks for the input, Gropwel! The boss fight is indeed tricky. I have it working bug free for the most part now but it still feels a bit sloppy. I did have one sort of exploit which you could stand off on one side and shoot at one of the eyes but it takes forever and I made it so the claws attack in your direction practically ruining it. Right now you need to dodge the bubbles and and claw attacks. 3 sets of 3 bubbles then a claw attack then repeat.

I actually got that finished, the 5th weapon is finished and a bunch of bugs fixed and other junk on top of that (oh yeah - the two comapny logos with animation). I will post a new video with another update hopefully by the weekend (I skipped this week because i didn't feel it was significant enough). I'm working on the cut scenes. Actually had it started and Construct crashed as usual (@#$@#$$#$#^!!!!) so I stopped working on it for the rest of the day as I forgot to save and lost 30-45 minutes of work. I'll plug away at the cut scenes tonight. Managed to record my daughter saying "Dis! Dis!!" which is this! this! when she's pointing and wanting something - part of the cutscene. Got a good laugh from her for the cut scene as well.

I will take your suggestions into consideration. The boss fight doesn't feel clean enough or something... Completely playable though... argh :)

DMM

oops sorry about that XD well if you need feedback on anything else just let me know. I like your game!

I think I've been blessed so far, biggest project I've ever created and construct doesn't let me down, knock on wood. I should post content (finally!) this month.

Funny anecdote, sounds like you're working closely with your muse. :)

So yeah, if it ain't broke don't worry about these details.

CHeers!

Nothing to be sorry about there!! I'm still pondering that pre splash before the claw comes out - its actually there as particles but it looks like garbage. It's also up about 10-20px too high too. I have a hidden object that the claws hit before they come out of the water that causes a bunch of particles at the x pos of the claw and the y pos of the hidden object. I think I actually drew out a splash animation too... I just never used it.

The boss ended up still being broken so I once again re-built a section of the boss event sheet. He kept going by the platforms if he was being hit instead of bouncing off of them - it's because of the effect (rotate) I'm using on the sprite. It ends up overlapping instead of colliding when the effect is activated, over riding the collision detection. So I changed all of the detection over to the hidden sprite that controls the crab and altered the bounce boxes for the movement. All is well again!

For me Construct crashes basically ever 15-30 minutes. Especially if I'm editing sprites. Sometimes it's completely random. But most of the time it seems to have something to do with resizing the windows and the windows gfx used to create the construct window. Also if I run full screen it takes like 5 minutes for the construct window to work again :( The last version didn't have this problem but I constantly got another error with it and it crashed 100x more.

Anyhow - all is well The crab boss works and I may still add in the splash effect a little more before the claws leave the water as a warning although they're pretty damn fast so it's just easier to count to 3 with the bubbles and get the heck out of the way LOL!

I'm finished 1/3 of the first cut scene now I should be done the last 2/3 by Sunday night for another video update finally!

I'm looking forward to seeing your content!! Sounds like you know what you're doing when it comes to this stuff!

And yeah my daughter/muse is constantly with me during the day. I have a bad habit of not putting her down, LOL!

Thanks again for the input too!!!

DMM

Yes I know what you mean about those crashes, I don't know how exactely but for me by a mixture of doing editing steps in a different particular order and letting construct the time to process (not clicking around too much, which is hard) it seems to digest sprite edition a little better. it's still ctrl+s land tho.

For the full screen issue I found a great work around is to play in windowed mode without caption and by sizing the window 1920 x 1080 in the event sheet. WHen I really need to test full screen I export a little build and exit construct, then run the build. Much faster! Construct boots quickly.

Glory and success friend!

Edit: just to say you need to create a "window" ogject in the layout to have access to the window resizing actions. Took me a while to figure that out.

Oh I was talking about the actual Construct window itself - not my game at that point. It's a bug in construct and I assume is an issue with the window frame or grabbing the windows font or something. I did notice that when running construct itself my laptop will switch over to the high powered video card and not stay on the intel video chipset. I'm sure that has nothing to do with it though.

Game crashes all seem to be spritefont related unforunately. And I think I used "clear text" a few times around the title screen. All of the sprite font handled things like score text etc are handled in seperate event sheets so I can pinpoint those kind of problems.

My first cut scene is coming along nicely. I opted to use the player sprite for the 2nd image - Maddi and Daddy jump through a portal, hang in the air for a second and then fall. The third image will be a scaled sprite of them falling 'into' the portal. I think Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time will have used a similar effect on a cut scene.

I've decided to use a similar music style to Konami's early 90's arcade machines. I miss that orchestra hit sound! Whenever I start the music that is. I was playing Simpsons' Arcade and TMNT today... The TMNT was the new ps3/x360 3d version of Turtles in Time. How they managed to make it not fun is beyond me. I just cant play it past the first level. The music really sucks...

DMM

Not bad. New powers looks cool. Keep it up!

Thanks ViralHaze, I will keep it up :D

So here is a week delayed Front to back video demo of the level. Around 95% bug free and only little bits and pieces to clean up and add. Dying has no animation and is bugged but it's just global variables that need to be reset at the start of a level/title. The wolf animations still aren't done... not looking forward to it LOL! And timing is a bit off in the cinematics - might add paper ripping fx and a cloud when they fall...

Here it is :)

The new Vid :D

DMM

First to watch ;D Boss fight looks good!

Thanks Rory, I'm glad you liked it! I've just started an indiedb page for the game here:

Go!Go!Maddi IndieDB game page.

I'll do more detailed updates and post my videos there from now on instead of youtube. Not a fan of the youtube quality.

DMM