Sonic Blast

The end is near and now it seems like the only thing I do is to try and fix, clean up or rework the different crazy and broken programing solutions in our game. It’s early pre-alpha code, dressed up for alpha, repainted for beta and now we are having the great task of deciding how much to fix with just duct tape and a paint job and how much we need to fix “for real”.
One of the many things that […]

”Wanted Animation”

The beta-crunch is on and this week our group have been totally focused on adding the last, important features to our game. But also cutting the features that we won’t be able to add in time for beta or final.
In our game the players avatar, the bat, has many different states that are all represented by a change of animation to the bat. Examples of these is: “flying” -the normal animation cycle of the bat flying without any powerup, “greenP” […]

New swarm enemy

This week we have continued our journey towards the beta-version of “Dash Bat” (originally “Heartbeat Bat”). My main objective for this week has been to include the mosquito swarm -enemy into the code. These are tightly packed clouds of super aggressive mosquitoes that will slow down the bat.
These enemies will be very useful in our levels since without them we only have obstacles originating from the ceiling or the floor. These swarms will give us the ability to place extra […]

Dynamic level creation and pooling

This week my main objective has been focusing of managing how our game handles entities (basically objects of the game like: obstacles, powerups and background objects). The way our game works now is that in the beginning the entire level structure is imported from a couple of text files and straight after that we create new instances (copies) of the objects and places those instances at the spots specified in the text file.
This might sound all good and great but […]

Making the bat fly (and dash)

The deadline for alpha is closing in on us and our little bat game. Still the stress to get the features needed into the game isn’t really that bad. We have the situation under control, I think.
This week my main focus has been on the controls of the bat, our game’s avatar. After the playtesting session we got a lot of feedback that our controls felt sluggish, slow and that the bat was to difficult to maneuver through the level. […]

Master of prototyping

Picture of the prototypes (1. & 2. Bat with sonar, 3. final prototype version, 4. bat in wheelchair, 5. multiplayer, 6. QWOP-bat, 7. Bat & Pig)
During the first phase of this project my main assignment was to prototype different features for our bat game. I don’t think I will have a more enjoyable task throughout the development cycle. Prototyping, or rather experimenting with different features and mechanics is definitely my preferred method to game development and design.
We had a lot […]