Note (1/14/16): For all prior progress, check out my devlog over at the Scirra forums here.

I recently released the demo for my first game, A Small Robot Story. It's a platformer with a focus on story and a retro aesthetic. Currently I'm working on the 2nd level tileset and enemies. There will be a total of 5 levels and I *hope* to have it finished this year. I plan to update this dev log as well as the one on the Scirra forums moving forward.

• Engine: Construct 2
• Art: Pyxel Edit, Photoshop
• Music: LSDJ, Ableton Live, Famitracker
• SFX: BFXR

Media

Opening sequence for the demo

Beginning of tileset for the 2nd level

Here is a video of the tileset along with parallax background layers.

Thanks for checking everything out! I typically work on this project over the weekend, so expect updates then.

<3 bc <3

Worked on the cave art, which is the 2nd part of Level 2 (Maynard Forest). It's getting there but the parallax layers need a bit of work. Overall I'm on track!

Decided to make the cave color palette purple. Definitely feels more like what I want. Also made the background animated which is a first so far in this game. This about wraps up tile art for Level 2 - "Maynard Falls". Get to start programming new enemies this week!

INCOMING TECH RAMBLE. One thing I need to think about moving forward is the animated background. All of my tile art and background art is either done using a tilemap (the purple tiles) or tiled backgrounds (the "middle" parallax layer). These methods are great because they are a low memory demand. However, Construct 2 doesn't allow animated tilemaps or tiled backgrounds. So to achieve the animated background, I made a 256x256 animated sprite and just copy and pasted it. This isn't preferable because whereas a tilemap or tiled background is just one object repeated, the animated sprite will count as a new object every time I paste it.

I may be able to get away with it since my resolution is super low (256x144), I'm using small images, and I'm using parallax so I may only need to use 3-4 animated sprites per layout. Only an export will truly tell and I'm not doing that until I get to the level design point ;)

This is awesome progress dude!! : D !!!

Still coding new enemies. Here is how I group my code. <3 Organization <3

Bats 2.0

SLIME BOSS. Dude is gross. Got some stuff floatin' around in there.

Not much flashy stuff to show off from my work over the weekend. Mostly went through my new enemies and made sure all states and animations worked and transitioned well. Cleaned up some animations, added a few new ones.

Ran in to a small bug where, while multiple small slimes are onscreen, they will stop jumping when one collides with a wall. Shouldn't be a huge issues to sort out.

After that, time to add the dialogue plugin I bought! Really excited to get that up and running as my current dialogue setup is pretty patchy.

I love reading dev logs but what I love even more is getting to know other developers. It's nice to have a bit of insight in to their lives and find common ground, especially as hobbyists. With that said, here is an "About Me" so you get a better understanding of who is making this game about a tiny, confused robot.

Hi, I'm BC!

That is not my puppy. I wish it was.

I'm a 30-something who lives in western New York. I've spent a lot of time playing in bands, making a lot of designs, and generally trying to fill up my time as much as possible. My current full-time gig is working as a graphic designer, so much of my game dev work happens during free time (nights and weekends). I also go to a parkour gym twice a week, run a local game dev meetup, and do a bit of running. On top of this, I'm currently writing more music for Halloween Forever and my wife and I are in the process of buying a house. I'm a busy dude who likes being busy!

I got in to game dev about a year ago and have been working steadily on ASRS since July '15. Being from the art side of life, I dove in to Construct 2 and found it an easy engine to pick up and learn with. With future projects, I'd like to explore using Unity. I do pixel art in Pyxel Edit (which is an excellent program for the price tag) and Photoshop CC. For music I use LSDJ on a Game Boy Advance SP (chiptunes) and Ableton Live plus a bunch of instruments and synths for other genres of music. I do all my progress tracking and to-do's using Trello. I schedule my life using a Passion Planner and Sunrise for iOS.

I've made quite a few things that take time and dedication, but for some reason I've found working on a game to be way more fulfilling. I'm really enjoying the process and the community that revolves around making these tiny worlds.

Thanks if you've read this far and I'll return to game progress updates moving forward :D

More coding this past weekend. Still nothing exciting to show yet.

However a youtuber did do a Let's Play of my demo. Check it out!

A huge "behind-the-scenes" issue with my demo was the dialogue system. It worked but it was a mess. 7-8 lines of dialogue would take around 15-20 minutes to implement with around 30 events (Construct 2's "lines" of code). This increased the possibility of errors and it was just an unwieldy beast. The dialogue and the story is the main driving force in my game, so it needs to be easy to use, able to handle a lot of dialogue, and quickly editable.

I purchased a dialogue template via the Scirra store and spent most of last week and Saturday struggling to get it to work. After a lot of hair-pulling and help from the creator, I got it working last night!

I made this gif and directed it at the creator. A quick-to-respond and helpful person!

It is a super slick system that references an external file, so I'm not writing all of my dialogue in the engine. I need to edit the dialog box, add portraits, and tweak the "continue" button, but it already looks much better than my previous dialogue system!