Problems and Progress

Veins here.

Apologies for the lack of posts the past few months. Me and Titan had it hard for several reasons... Covid-19 struck a bit too close to home and the lockdown damaged us mentally. There were other problems like over 200 wasps occupying my room, back problems, hard drive failures and even bridge shuttering floods and ear problems (during the making of sound effects of all times) to name a few. So we weren't in the best frame of mind to focus on the game as much as we wanted.

Problems aside, we managed to pull ourselves together and do a lot of progress. All the normal MoGi are pretty much finished. Sometimes however, if you try to fix something, something else breaks, so we had many unexpected glitches:

 

SlimeGirl Blue: her projectile reverses trajectory when we press pause.

SlimeGirl Black: she vanishes with Voms during her grab.

We try to finalize everything we can and release a new demo with two Extra Modes, as originally promised. These Modes (Time Attack and Survival) are almost completed, as you can briefly see in the video above. They need a little more work before we are satisfied regarding the mechanics and pace. Both modes will include new MoGi to fight against.

These new MoGi would be Troll and Vampire. Working on them, gave us the opportunity to go back and improve many other enemies, regarding their behavior and sounds effects. A lot of the MoGi have updated audio and they sound a lot more unique and memorable. The image below shows some of the things that had to be improved.

various corrections

 

There was a lot back and forth to make all this happen and we had to test each change several times over and reevaluate every decision we make. What works, what doesn't, what we can keep working on or discard. Many "luxuries" were left out so that we can focus on what is most important. For example, I wanted the NPC Soldiers to be able to kill MoGi but that would be a week of programing work, and although it would make the game more realistic, it's not really that important and it only may have been used on a couple of screens max. 

That said, we tried to add details whenever possible. Most MoGi have a little tell before they attack. Naiad and Turquoise hold their projectiles a bit longer and Squirrel looks back if she is about to turn without finding a wall :)

An important thing we added, is Voms' kicking and grabbing in the same jump. Up to now, he couldn't grab on a ledge if he had kicked on the air. Titan had to play around with the core mechanics, which is always dangerous. This small addition however, improves the gameplay and it can create a few satisfying combos. The following images also show some decisions we had to make.

This is a problem that occurs in many 2D platform games
and we couldn't work a way around it because it would cause conflicts
with the other mechanics of the game.

Trying to make Vampire's jumping attack animation feel good, visually.

Having an enemy that jumps was a huge challenge to program, because the base of the platforming engine still used some of GM's built in physics systems which are a complete black box.

We hope we can release a satisfying new demo soon, as we feel we are getting closer to finishing the game with each new installment. Releasing the Extra Modes is our way of saying that progress is made and that the game looks and feels good. We don't want to spoil the actual game as it's really close to finish, so the Extra Modes were the best next thing we could prepare for release at this point.