The first batch of level art is in! Many pixel art games have characters standing 24 pixels tall, max, which looks great, but because my screen size needed to accommodate good character movement speed without making them too small to see (characters are 32 pixels tall), I scaled up from the base size and resolution of world art that is usually made by this same ratio (1.5) in an attempt to find a good character-to-world balance. And as I wanted to clamp the visual fidelity to a slightly cartoonish look with more visible contour lines, this required making the world assets as small as possible without making them too small compared to the characters.

I always knew I wanted to use a “cabinet” projection for the art style as not many well-known games have used it outside of Earthbound and Paperboy and I think it looks perfect for describing an outdoor setting. But I wanted the architecture to be perspective-accurate without cheating or fudging stuff, so at times I even had to partially remake a segment of a building in a 3D package to double check my line angles.

This update also changes the names of some of the sockets. I felt the previous names weren’t intuitive enough to understand what they do. Now the base socket that affects how a weapon fires with parameters like projectile speed, rate of fire, number of projectiles, charge up effect, etc is called the “Mode Socket.” (Think shotgun mode, machine gun mode, etc). The two sockets that affect the behavior of the projectiles are called the Action Sockets; “Action-1” and “Action-2.” The Effect Socket name remains unchanged.

The final major change was the addition of a “weapon-jacking” system whence you can steal an opponent’s weapon by pressing ‘A’ if you’re character is touching the weapon and you don’t have one already equipped. Hopefully this mechanic will really help get the rage flowing. ;)

In the next update, I plan on addressing the main game’s core loop and how you go about attaining weapons and ingredients, as well as adding a new short-ranged weapon category for more powerful melee attacks. And if there’s time I would like to get a tutorial mode going as well!

Changelog:

——————–0.0.2———————-

General code optimization
Optimized entire inventory system
Optimized Forge system
Changed socket names to be more easily understood
Optimized texture and draw pipeline
Added artwork to the main level
Implemented “Weapon-jacking” system
More stylized KO animation and sfx.
Player’s bodies now go flying when they are KO’d
and they can injure other players if they are
going fast enough. If a player gets KO’d from being
hit by another KO’d body, the player who originally
knocked out the first body gets the point. You
can jump over flying bodies like any other projectile.
Graphic is now displayed overhead when “Slow”ed
Jump physics now more realistic
Added Pause menu
Decreased Ingredient spawn time by 2 seconds

Fixed:

Sudden Death Mode with more than 2 players is now an elimination mode where last one standing wins.
“Split” Actions now originate just behind where the collision took place and fan out backwards from there
resulting in fewer instant double collisions.
“Through” actions now deal damage once ever 7 steps.
Fixed fatal error following a KO by damage-over-time attack.