thx for the helpful input - both issues (edge jump with gamepad and shooting angle after load) have been fixed.

ultrafop i consider the ability to grab lower platforms as lazy design & corrected this (at least in the starting room) by adjusting the height

anty21ro

regarding the background-image size:

they vary from 1920x1080 ~300-400kb-.jpgs , when static (no parallax scrolling) to tiled ones with much lower widths.

Other bg-objects (e.g. those organic "pipes") range from 50 to 200kb (per frame) pngs ranging from 300 - 700 px.

I hope that helps.

Hey there,

after some flu-related health issues i updated the demo and fixed some stuff:

the ledge-grab-thing should now work as intended,

the hud/health-bar is bigger,

the shooting marine is behind a defensive wall, which makes it less easier to hit him.

i added another walking marine-type (which was actually intended to appear later in game).

...some other minor fixes/tweaks.

Sadly, i'm afraid i won't be able to post a full walkthrough myself, since this seems above my laptop's capacity (really bad fps when doing screencapture) :/

Maybe i find someone willing to do this for me.

PS: Finally enough reputation to post a real download url

anty21ro changing the gamepad-layout is on my list:)

same for the bug with the edge when pressing in the same direction - that came up during the last bugfix.

thx for the walking-animation hint - have to check that.

regarding the marines/soldiers:

in the present state they are rather boring, unchallenging and ... static;)

it has been mentioned before, and i came to conclusion that they need further tweaking/more attack-patterns/overall changing to make them some kind of basic enemy - i think they need at least a walking behaviour & maybe two different types of attack. i am already working on this.

those are all things i intend to update within the demo during this week or so....

oh, and there IS a shield upgrade actually - it is not available in the demo though)

— can you give me some examples for the paper-cut-effect? Like in the screenshot below? Do you have some certain scenes in mind or is it a rather general effect throughout the whole game? maye some screenshots or room-coordinates (you can see them when pressing tilde, bottom left) would be really helpful.

One thing thats important for me to note though: Its not all pre-rendered 3D, actually i would say that 70% are drawn, especially most platforms, bg-elements. Clearly, the main-protagonist, some enemies and all the particles (fire) are done using Blender - normally i spend many hours afterwards with drawing and refining in 2D. But as you rightly noted, some elements still need tweaking (regarding colors, shadow-levels, contrast, etc...) to blend in more. Again, some specific examples would be really helpful

Regarding the (choppy) animations: I'm not really good at doing them, actually i would say i suck;) And honestly, doing them in a rendering program is even more beyond my skills and would consume too much time overall - i'm sure i would not even be able to finish a demo when trying to go that way. So resource-wise, thats one flaw you unfortunately have to live with, if i ever get to finish "Tornaby".

On the other hand: I do them each manually frame by frame, which somehow still connects to the intended 90ies feeling. Making HD-graphics was good for me, but i still wanted to keep certain aspects (mechanics, feel) true to those games back then - im not sure if doing it all 100% percent using pre-rendered 3D would not stretch the thing too far (originally, i did not want to use any 3D-tools at all - it is sometimes just a help making certain aspects looking not too crappy)

The dust is surely one thing i will change soon;)

The menu is a quick design for the demo - which will look better in the finished version.

As always, thank you all for your really helpful input!

This looks absolutely great! Has some "Abe's Oddyssey meets Metroid" feeling if you ask me

I loved Abe's Oddyssey - though i never managed to play through the whole game

At one point of the design process i was thinking about adding some cuteness/comedic-factor to "Tornaby" -

which i am still not sure of, is the amount that would be suitable for such a rather dark scenery...

thats definitely a question thats still left unanswered.

The gameplay-video is great , such things help me a lot to see what needs further improvement.

Since you seem to know where to go, it looks like that take was not your first try?

Actually the plan is to post the demo on those platforms in april (with more detailled info about what's next)

• i just wanted to post it first here to get some advice before i release this into the wider public.

Hey, thanks for the feedback. I did some quick bugfixing on some major issues:

The jump strength (resulting in the incorrect ledge grabbing behaviour) while playing with the gamepad has been fixed.

Animations when changing the room should now be correct.

When jumping and shooting up, the Animation is now properly shown.

Screensize (during scene transitions) should now be corrected.

Those are now corrected in the uploaded link above.

I got some mails with very useful input too (also, huge thanks for that) & will try to fix the biggest issues in the following days.

Best regards,

Chris

Hey Eric,

I really appreciate your work & used some of your tracks/sounds in my project, which are the perfect mood for my setting.

Promised, i will show you the deserved respect with an appropriate donation as soon as possible (as of now, there is no monetary income ).

If you want, i can send you a link to the game (its "Tornaby" in this forum under "works in progress") or a screenshot to display proper credits (which i hopefully did the right way) of your work?

Again,many thanks for your effort.

I was thinking about posting a walkthrough-video on my own maybe later this day - since im used to play it, that might be a good comparison, especially on how "certain things are ment to be" (e.g. sudden wrong animations, like the transition in your gameplay to another room,...) and what is actually just a bug:)

On one point during development i was indeed thinking about alternative controls:

The thing is, it might be hard to implement a 360°-shooting-range without fully breaking the players animation-style (running forward while shooting back might look rather strange here). While making the game, i mostly played those old games from "Turrican 1+2" to "Super Metroid" and - more current - "Axiom Verge" - and it was one of my main targets, to keep the experience true to that era, tho using relatively modern visuals (despite the obvious fact that pixel-art would make much more sense)

On the other hand, a limited range (~90-120°) into the "looking"-direction with the ability to finetune with the right analog-stick might be an idea that could work.

Maybe i will start a poll regarding certain design-desicions:)

Again, thanks for the input!

Thanks for the quick reply and that vid you took!

I will look into the ledge-bug as soon as possible (i only have playstation ds3 tested which seemed to work fine) and keep you informed - do you have the same problem when using the keyboard?

I noticed some other minor issues (wrong animations) in your vid too.. so that is really helpful.

Also glad that the performance is good - its a thing that is hard to judge when working on my old laptop:D

And yeah, there are (and will be) many more or less obvious references to my childhood-favs in this game ( turrican, motu, ...robocop )

Best regards,

Chris

It seems like my original thread vanished after editing :/ Sorry to start this new....

UPDATE 03.11.2018:

SADLY, THE ORIGINAL THREAD GOT SOMEHOW DELETED DURING MY LAST UPDATE

So, this is Part 2 with all the updated information ,but without your comments already posted though.

I'm sorry if i did not answer them properly back then...

All right, then. Finally the upload of a playable Demo of "Tornaby":

http://tornaby.cjurek.at/demo/Tornaby_Alpha_Demo_2018.zip

Some Screenshots

http://www.cjurek.at/web/uploads/pics/1.jpg

[/img]

Some older Screenshots

http://www.cjurek.at/tornaby/3.png

[/img]

(Sorry for the formatting, i just dont have enough rep-points to post real links)

It's mostly about game mechanics and handling, please dont expect any storyrelevant cutscenes/features in there right now.

Included are one mini-boss, 2 extra-weapons, a few power ups - the gamepart is taken quite from the beginning of "Tornaby".

There is rudimentary Gamepad-Support, most important things are described under "Settings".

For "debug", press <tilde>, to see fps, objects in the current layout,...- if you can give me information about your avg fps, that would be really helpful, since i have to develop the whole thing on a laptop with Geforce M650 graphics

To clearify things about the chosen character design once more: The whole game should sort of represent one full life-cycle, beginning with "birth" of the character (which is actually the start of the game)... which is why i chose the childlike appearence for this part.

The demo contains one setting (alien structures indoor), 2 others are already finished right now. I plan to make at least 3 more - my aim is to post screenshots of different surroundings in the upcoming weeks as well as infos about content of the whole game (already done and in preparation).

And: plz dont mind the rather conventional enemy design - i plan to finally go into a much darker scenery after the first third of the game:)

I would be glad if you could spare 30 minutes to test the demo and give me feedback i can work with:)

Questions (beside possible bugs) that i have in mind are:

Your oppinion on the graphic style (also performancewise)?

the game mechanics/character behaviour?

the time needed to complete the demo?

and anything else;)

Since i still dont have enough rights in this forum to answer directly via pm, feel free to mail me:)

Hey there

it's been a while since my last post in here

• i have been working on this game literally for ages now in my spare time.

originally i wanted to post a demo here in early september, but things turn never out as expected

• so there still seems to be some work to do beforce i can present something more substantial:)

anyway, i finally decided to make some screenshots instead.

tornaby is inspired by, as you might guess, games like metroid and turrican (my first c64 game, i always wanted to pay tribute to this one). many things need more time because i want to draw animations by hand (such as explosions) and give this world proper detail.

i will try to post more details in the upcoming weeks but would be really glad to get some constructive response till then:)