18th August 2015

Developments

Yesterday's task was to get basically collectables, items, that kind of thing to work properly.
I haven't yet added the whole lot, but thought that one useful "collectable" might be a checkpoint.

A simple looking flag, which lights up and animates when touched, and is your respawn point should you die.
.. Of course, in the previous NeonPlat you didn't actually die and respawn, and instead simply lost a life. So, whether having a checkpoint is even necessary is something I'll have to deal with as I build the rest of the game.
.. But it seems like it could be useful, so it's good to have it in at such an early stage.

*shrugs*

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Daily Doodle : Additional Training

Platdude is definitely not losing the next "Run Go!".
Today's fitness regime is a good old fashioned mountain climb.

Mailbag

Today's mail comes from Baconman

Thicken up the lines for the platforms? It could be that simple. Also, I like the prospect of vertical levels, in both directions. It's an interesting change of pace from NPA; and with togglable screen wrapping and interestingly placed spikes and such... this is gonna be great.

Baconman

The vertical screen flickering is slowly disappearing. I've done a lot of math-tweaking to ensure the engine doesn't try to draw tiles at sub-pixel co-ordinates, and have indeed thickened the lines a little, or at least padded them with darker lines. I'll have to keep these things in mind when designing different themes, but it's good that they've cropped up at this early stage, so I can fix them now rather than later when there's an entire game to contend with!

Baconman also says..

Nothing wrong with a finite soundtrack, long as it's nice and catchy. It worked for Blockman Worlds, didn't it? I know the sequencer trick in NPA was neat, but ultimately it just made lots of arrangements of the same 2-3 songs, mostly. *shrug*

Baconman

I've already had complaints about SpikeDislike3 falling silent, so am trying to avoid that.
Additionally, if I'd like to have lots of world themes, and have each one hold it's own musical style, then I'm going to need a LOT of music, and that all adds up in terms of filesize. Having the music be auto-generated will safe a TON on the end result.

The folder, zipped, is currently at a whopping 7.5Mb, and when you consider that that's pretty much 5% of the game, I've got an awful lot of space-saving to do!
NeonPlat Adventures only contained 7 different tunes and a Boss Battle theme. Over the past couple of years, I've created about 80-odd melodies, so I have a LOT of stuff I can work into the engine. Worry not about repetition!! .. I hope!

I just need to get it all working, again. Hmm...

If you'd like to stuff my mailbag, (Please do!) you can do so right here, at https://bit.ly/AGAW_Mail. Send comments, questions, game ideas, thoughts and more, and they'll probably turn up here, eventually.

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