Game
Hensen Hopper
1 year ago

I'm going to set myself a goal to release the first beta/demo of Hensen Hopper by the end of this year. I'm going to try to use static backdrop images rather than tiles for the backgrounds in this game, which presents a bit of a challenge in one aspect...


Tile-based design worked really well for Deathly Descent because the levels themselves are large and varied. In that case, I needed the kind of modularity that comes with a tile-based workflow.

This is unnecessary for Hensen Hopper because the player moves in a very limited space, the camera focuses at one point in the scene, and I don't plan for there to be many unique maps. For this reason, it's probably optimal to use a backdrop image for the level, this will also allow me greater control over what is placed where in the scene.

The only hiccup I can foresee will be the fact I can't simply slap this backdrop into the GUI as a panel, I'll need to place it below Hensen and the enemies in the scene which means I'll ALSO need to figure out a way to scale the image according to the display resolution so, no matter what resolution and aspect ratio the player is using, the backdrop is placed optimally.

Figuring out how I'll do this might actually be worth the time I have left before I need to get ready for work. I DO have a backdrop script already that handles the backdrop change between the profile selection menu and other menus in the main menu scene. I suppose re-analyzing that script and seeing whether I could adapt that to handle backdrop scaling iff the backdrop isn't under the GUI canvas would be a good start.

To Do Before The Demo/Beta:

  • Figure out how I'll handle backdrop scaling (on it!)

  • Draw a backdrop for the main scene

  • Create button art for the main menu buttons

  • Search for a good font for the main menu buttons and in-game text

  • Add collision animation and sound effects for enemy bullets

  • Enemy and player defeat animation

  • Build interactive pause and death screen menus

Game Dev
Game Dev General
3D-2D games 2dgames
Indie Game general
2


0 comments

Loading...

Next up

The beetle shell is now fully VISUALLY implemented! Next thing on my list is a unique sound for Hensen equipping it.

I wrote a modular language system! I can now add new entries with definitions in as many languages as I please and all from the inspector window in the Unity editor! This allows me to potentially have Hensen Hopper translated to other languages easily!

Okay, so I've gotten the functionality for the beetle shell render over the player working! (using the first 3 frames from the beetle shell collect animation as placeholder sprites, these ARE NOT the final sprites)

Doki Doki Literature Club is celebrating Monika's birthday and the 8th anniversary of DDLC with exclusive stickers, avatar frames and backgrounds on Game Jolt! 

Head over to the shop to collect yours 👉 https://gamejolt.com/#shop

I made some updates to the hints system! Now it reads from the message hub to determine when to show hints and the hint texts now come from the lang system I wrote yesterday. This simplified my the hints handling algorithm A LOT from what it used to be!

Mae Borowski is the main character of Night in the Woods! It's an adventure game that tells the story of her return to her hometown of Possum Springs. She was confirmed as canonically pan in a social media post by the game's creator Scott Benson.

I've been working on some proper visual art for the beetle shell when it's equipped! I've also gone ahead and drawn a break animation for it. All I need to do now is actually set all of this up in Unity which I'll probably do on Tuesday.

Merry Christmas everyone!!!

Oh yeah, this is all I have properly added in the latest build haha.

The Knightling launches on August 28! Wishlist it now so you don't miss out: https://bit.ly/KnightlingSteam

To celebrate the game's impending release, we've added The Knightling Pack and The Knightling Community Pack back to the Shop!

This is a much larger (in terms of resolution) video than I've shared here before!!!

This is a full round of Hensen Hopper in it's current state! I mainly recorded this to showcase the new wave difficulty curve algorithm I've been working on!