Recently, we began planning for what our final projects would be in the upcoming months. Everyone had to create a game proposal that would be able to be completed by 4-6 students and within a time period of 4 months. Only a few of the submissions will be selected to move forward the remaining students will help make our game idea into something great. I choose to build a Mega Man variant for my project. The idea was instead of shooting your way through the levels, you use your magnetic hands to attract, repel and transverse through the levels.  The player will solve puzzles using this mechanic as well as climb up walls and walk on ceilings and explore previously unused space in level designs for game of this time.

I am excited to find out the results of whether or not my game idea gets chosen for one of the projects.

 

 

Update:

My project was picked as one of the 8 finalists we got to choose from to create  our capstone with. My group in the end picked it and we have gotten to work since then.

Here is our GDD we turned in.

the_cronies_gdd

some things I made  for evaluation by the group for general concept

 

Upcoming:

we will be building a Test Level and tutorial more than likely this month. I will post more when I have something to show.

Update 1/29/17

We finished our first real month of Prototyping and building out systems for the game. Next month we are supposed to start working on the fun factor while building out the levels per our documentation. Below are some snips from the test level we were demonstrating our game’s concepts in.

Here we have our blocked out player to the left of him is a Pink flag this is our checkpoint system. On the other side of that we have a button puzzle that is triggered by magnetic force. You must use the correct polarity or it will not trigger and drop the bridge so you can make it to safety.

In order to do that normally the player is on the other side of the expense and it is too far to jumps across and trigger it on his own. He must fire his fist at the object and then trigger the polarity change remotely.

As indicated above the Player has the ability to first his fist either close or across the screen depending on the length of the button press.

In our game we have destructible blocks (Orange),  moving platforms (blue), Player lives (Brown), and weapon energy (yellow). These are just place holders for the future art once it has been completed.

Some of the abilities the player has at their disposal are:  Magnetic repulsion fields of both positive and negative. These can only be used when the hand is attached to the body.

The Player has the ability to walk on ceilings but, only for a short amount of time. This is determined by energy consumption of the green bar.

With ceiling walking also comes wall climbing. The Player can move up and down a wall once attached to it. In this picture you also see green platforms, these are crumble platforms and have a very short lifespan before they fade and then reappear.

We have also given the player the ability to affect some blocks in the game by magnetizing them to positive or negative to suit their needs. You can then control these block with your own personal magnetic field, if done correctly you can even do what we call a box jump and fly for a period of time based on energy consumption.

Here we have two of our basic enemy models. The light blue one is a range based attacker and the purple one is a flying type. We have 4-5variants of each one of our enemies that we have plans for. They both fire a rocket projectile which if not deflected will explode and cause damage to the player and the enemy if they are close.

To kill them you reflect the shot back at them with the correct polarity

This is our melee enemy variant.  If he sees you within his rang he begins to charge at you until he hits you causing instant death. In the future it will only do damage to the player. This player is not killable at this time.

Finally, we  have blocks that have come pre-charged and you need to knock them down in order to create a safe place for you to pass through. This is done with the fist shot and either pushing or pulling the object into position so the player can use it to move forward.

That is it for update this month. I will post more as the team and I finish building out the scene’s.

As Expected things got really busy during the last month. We turned in a finished game but, it needs more polish and art assets before we want to release it to the gaming community.  Here was our Postmortem video we created when we presented our project on Twitch and to the On-Campus community  for a Q&A session just before graduation.

 

Post Graduation Update:

We took a month off to get caught back up with everything that fell to the wayside while we were pushing towards graduation.  We have started having meetings once again and are figuring out the new things we will be adding into the game to get it ready for release. I am really excited to show the world what we have created for them. They will have to wait a little bit longer while we make it look good. Rest assured we will be releasing it if I have to finish it myself.

11/14/17

So much has happened since the last update..

We have successfully converted from straight 2D to 2.5 D and it’s starting to look really good. As I continue to go back and re-design and re-iterate the levels to look better the team is continuing to bring in new enemies, animations, boss’s particles, and sounds to add in more depth and polish to the game.  I continue to have meetings  twice a week with the  design team and once a week with the art team to refine the game and choose items for the games general direction.  We still have a lot of block out in the levels but, that is mainly due to not having enough time to fit in some of the new textures the art team has put together.  At the rate we are going I think it’s possible we could  be moving into a beta  stage in the next couple month’s once some of the current tasks have been completed. I am excited to see where this game is going to go.  We have a tentative name for our studio as well! It’s called Dark Edge Studios we are waiting for the paperwork to go through but, the time for a response is getting closer and closer.

here are some screen shots of  the refinery in the mean time:

Here is  the  new Positive Magnetic Field for the player

Negative Magnetic Field,  You can also get an idea of what the current player look like  although he is going through a makeover as well.

Here is an early part of the refinery where you have to push blocks around in order to make a path to safety while dodging  slag buckets trying to dump molten hot material on top of you. The red and blue boxes in the scene can be affected by magnetism  you can push, pull, and even  jump with them if you are skilled enough.

Here we have one of the sections that use the hover board. Like many objects in the game it’s direction is effect by the magnetic field you provide to make it move.

There are lots of crumbling platforms and fields that move around inside of the game. This provides a unique challenge to even veteran players of side scrolling platformers.

Finally we have some generators and more buckets trying to make a cast of you in molten hot slag.

 

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