Back in Arcade Mode it's time to make a set of decorations for the different rooms that can be mixed and matched to create a lot of different room graphics. Our strategy for this is that I'll make 3 different sets of decorations for each corner of every room size, which can then be mixed and match with the other corners, creating a ton of different combinations for each room. 

As always, I use the editor to do these things, so that Teddy can easily add each of them into the engine: 

Now, because it's Easter time, the blog will take a short break while we celebrate Easter and eat tons of eggs! Next post will be up on Tuesday, so stay tuned for that :)

Continue reading

Now, for that new boss prototype I mentioned earlier! Teddy has put together something quickly with the help of some very basic placeholder art from Fred:

So one of the things with this eye boss is that it automatically forces you into the ghost world, where you'll have to deal with all sorts of obstacles. After a while you'll be able to swap back into the regular world - but only for a short while, so you better time it well!

The next thing it does is that it will spawn other eyes with different eye colors, which you have to eliminate in a certain order. Fail to do so (or do it too slowly) and you'll get punished and take some damage:

Right now the eye simply tells you the order, but in the finished version you'll get a different sort of hint, probably through the eye changing color or something like that:

Continue reading

Continuing with the Arcade Mode intermission, it's time to make some more of those rooms! To spice things up a bit in the desert floor(s), we'll be having some cave rooms as well as those outdoor ones. They will not be as frequent as the others though, so I'm only making two different sizes for these!

For the foundation of the rooms, I'll be using one of the math caves as a base:

And then, since these rooms will almost always lead back outside, I made a special exit that show the outside rather than darkness:

And here we have the two room sizes:

Continue reading

Today has been a very interesting day in terms of game design discussions. Our original idea for the ghost ship was for you to battle the Captain two times, where the second encounter would be harder and more bullet hell-y as he'd be using some high tech equipment found on the ship. However, after a lot of discussions back and forth we've decided to try out new ideas for the second boss battle. The reason behind this is that we simply didn't feel too excited about the attacks and patterns we'd come up with for the boss, and we kind of felt like something completely different might fit better gameplay wise.

So, because of this, we'll start looking into a different type of boss, something that has more of a pattern since there will be enough bullet hell-y elements as is in this dungeon. Our most recent idea is to go with the theme of eyes that has been quite prominent in the ghost world so far, and use some sort of giant eye as a boss - more on that later after we got some prototypes up and running!

Because Teddy has been having some bonus time while he's waiting for graphics, he's been starting work on some Arcade Mode stuff; specifically a new type of challenge (or mode if you will) where everything is more randomized!

Specifically, this means when doing this challenge thing, you won't level up normally, but you'll get your skills and upgrades through chests and as drops from enemies:

Upon completing a floor you'll get to choose from three upgrades as well, giving you some options on how to proceed with your build (keep in mind the graphics are still placeholder, we'll come up with some fancier way of illustrating this):

We're not yet sure when this mode/challenge will unlock, or when we'll get to finish it, but the foundation is there now anyway! How do you guys feel about it? Excited for some more randomized factor in Arcadia, or do you think you'll stick to the regular mode?

Continue reading

In Fred and Teddy's departments, we've been mostly seeing battle improvements this week! Fred has been polishing and finishing up a bunch of animations, while Teddy has been improving some of the mechanics.

Below we can see how the skeletons spawn another enemy by literally losing their heads, which will turn into a jumping-like enemy you'll have to deal with on the battlefield. The first gif shows what it looks like in the normal world, while the second shows what it'll look like in the ghost world: 

Continue reading

And now, due to Teddy having to wait for some animations from Fred's department, I've been asked to start working on the Arcade Mode floors, so Teddy can start putting those together in the meanwhile. First thing I need to do is throw together a bunch of basic rooms for the desert floors in various sizes.

We'll start off with just the basic room, and then make some mix-and-match decorations for the rooms to give each of them a bit more character. There will be two types of rooms for these floors as well, regular desert rooms and cave rooms, to spice it up a bit and give the backgrounds some variation. This time we'll be taking a look at the regular desert rooms though, using the size of the Temple of Seasons rooms as a guideline for the room sizes:

And here we have a bunch of examples of these rooms (without the decorations added yet):

Continue reading

We're drawing ever closer to working on the creepy surreal version of Startington you'll be visiting as part of your journey through the ghost ship as well, and one of the things we want to happen here is that once you leave each building, they'll turn from clean and regular looking to run down and abandoned. As such, I needed to go back and make that version of each of the houses:

Continue reading