UPDATE 2 : Practice, Patience, and Persistence.
It’s kind of surreal seeing an idea, that existed entirely in your mind, spawn into reality before your eyes. The project is starting to look like a “game”. And started to seem that I might actually do this. Got to say, this week’s tasks were much more satisfying than the last one probably because of the programming heavy nature of them. Will keep that in mind for this time’s tasks.
Anyway, let’s see the progress so far…
- Oxygen Bar (Top Left) continuously decreasing.
- Health Bar (Top Right) decreases when O2 bar is less than 50%.
- Turning off generator stops O2 decreasing. (Will be at the end of every level and the main objective)
- Killing an enemy (Still no AI) will bring back small amount of O2.
- Hitting a vase with a knife will restore some O2.
- Once O2 is above 50%, health restores.
- Ammo can be picked up on the floor.
- O2 and Health Bars decrease is sped up to show effect.
- You can enter new rooms.
I think the exact numbers such as the speed of the O2 Bar effect will better adjusted in the testing phase, where the enemies and levels are almost complete. I further deepened the main gameplay mechanic by adding generators, which must be found and turned off to stop the gameplay effect, and Vases, which can be shattered for a small O2 restoration.
I think the generators are necessary as they provide a “slightly-long-term goal” for the player. If the short-term goal is “staying alive by killing monster”, the medium-term goal is “Find the generator to stop the effect” and the long-term is “story investment.” I think this provides a satisfying gameplay loop. Basically, what I want the game to be is:
Stay alive by killing monsters (but be careful as fighting monsters may risk your health) while solving puzzles and exploring environment to find and turn off the generator to stop the effect in order to progress in the story. And then repeat for every new level.
Pretty simple, yet satisfying, I hope.
Lastly, the cupid’s animation turned out better than I expected:
And here’s the attack animation:
It turns out that with enough practice, patience, and persistence (that alliteration wasn’t planned) you get better at most things. I got a lot faster and more comfortable working with pixels and animations and the biggest thing I learned was simply: keep practicing. As I said in the last update, this task specifically scared me the most. But I am really glad I got a little bit better at least. And it gave be some confidence with the next tasks. Speaking of.
So, this time’s task. I think this will be the hardest week yet. I will try and finish all monsters in the game. Their AI and their design/animation. Not to spoil too much but there’s at least 4 different monsters I am thinking about. I hope to finish them all. I tried to add a healthy balance of programming and animations/design as I think it would help me not kill myself. I’ve been thinking of adding boss fights as well but no promises. We will see.
So basically, I should show you for next time:
- 4 monster designs for next time.
- And their AI being functional.
See you at 24/7…