Multiplexity: Crashblock

[Huehnerschaender]

Great!

Keep it on! I like the idea that your wife is within the game... I once made a game where my children spent the voices And another one where me and my girlfriend spent the voices... this was real fun. And I guess you had your fun recording the animations, too

I am looking forward to see more!

Greetings,
Dirk

[Traveler]

Ohhhhh :shock:

[jasonf]

Cheer guys,

Yeah, we had a lot of fun recording. I kept getting my Wife to do multiple takes for some of them hehehe, I felt like a movie director.

Will, one of those windows at the bottom will be removed. One is supposed to be Current block and the other is Next Block. Next block doesn't work so I have to fix it. I'll remove the Current block one and put the Lives, Stars and Bombs & Timers icons there. I'll all work out :-)

I worked until 1:30am last night sorting out my state animations.. Looks like a few more late nights yet too.

The animation is quite smooth too, you can't see from the screen shots. I've got a couple of niggles left to kill, then I'll release a Demo before the deadline.

[jasonf]

Damn, It's 2:30am...

I've been working like a dawgy, here's a link to the latest test build.
Animation is almost there although there are still a couple of annoying bugs with the state machine... I'll get them, don't worry

The game now plays pretty much as it's meant to, so just tightening stuff up.
The old bugs to do with the crane are still there, I'll look at that next. I'm goint to overhaul the crane targeting system as per my previous post.

There's now an In-Game menu, so pressing Escape isn't as drastic as before, I'll add some simple options in there later.

The crane now will drop its block after a period of time, this time is denoted by a change of colour with the ghosted preview. I'm probably going to change how this looks 'cos I don't like the cracked block effect (I thought I'd see how it looked, yep, Clootie, you were right, it looks bad)

At the moment, the amount of time is fixed, but as the player progresses, this time will decrease.

There is still no sound though and I want to get a general feedback of the music. I like it, my brother doesn't. Seems like a marmite thing.

Anyway, the link http://www.cerebral-bicycle.co.uk/cr...e_20070426.zip

Let me know what you think.

Good night, I'm off to bed.

[jasonf]

After posting my submission last night, I went to the pub.. then when I came back, I was too drunk to post an update . But, I've sobered up now so here you are.

Here's the Stage4 submission http://www.cerebral-bicycle.co.uk/cr..._4_release.zip

It still has some things missing and a couple of bugs, but it's basically a playable game now.

Now I've got to polish it up and include the remaining features.

[Huehnerschaender]

looks like a funny game

The animations look good! I just don't like the running animation which seems to flicker somehow (does it flicker on your PC too? It looks more like a bug than like a graphical issue).

One quick bug I found:

You can climb up the whole sidewalls... I dont think its intended to be like that.

Keep on! This will be a good game when its finished! Looks really polished already!

Greetings,
Dirk

[WILL]

Hey Jason,

I tried out you game for this stage. I can tell the improvements from last time. Animation isn't too bad this time around, only the walking sequence needs a bit of touching up on.

The only thing that I have major issues with for the player movement is the glitches with climbing and there is a block one over from the stack you just finished climbing and you pop out the other side of it.

There does lay one minor bug with the crane movement and thats when you are able to drop a block partly outside of the walls.

That was really all I noticed as issues this time around. Very much improved over last time as I said. Nice job! :thumbup:

[Traveler]

I've tried your game as well.
I have to agree with WILL and Huehnerschaender about the animations still needing some work. Especially the walk cycle is very strange. I'm not entirely sure whats happening there, but it seems as if the frames aren't in te right order or something.
I also noticed an unnessecary extra jump after climbing onto a wall.

Something else I found confusing is the 'call crane' function. Before I press the enter button I'm able to move the blocks using a and d. However, after using the enter button, I nolonger can't. I'm unsure if that is right.

In all though it looks like a good game. I wish you good luck finishing it!

[jasonf]

Thanks for your feedback guys,

I'll take a look at the walk animation, I think I must have gotten used to it 'cos it doesn't look too bad to me. But I'm not 100% happy with it, I'll probably record a new walk cycle animation, not I've got the workflow sorted out. I've got to record a victory animation anyway.

The jumping through blocks problem is a known issue. The state system is missing a state under those circumstances so it's defaulting to a different/incompatible state and jumping through blocks as a result.
There is also a jump after climbing over a block, this I believe is the same problem manifesting itself in a different way. But it needs serious investigation and resolving as bugs in the state/control system will put a player off. Nothing worse than not being in control or fighting the game.

The issues with the crane are the next on my list to quash. The keys to move the crane are debug only, they won't form part of the final game. The player has to call the crane to the location they want. However, this is made more difficult than it should be because of the bugs with the crane.
I didn't want to tackle the bugs in the crane just before the submission as it would mean ripping out the current code and replacing it with something a bit more intelligent.. ripping out the old code would have left the game in an unplayable state if I couldn't get the crane code working in time.

I'm going to remove the ability to climb the side walls as it serves no useful purpose. Originally, I was going to provide a way to leap from a climbing position but it's going to be much too hard to get working and make it look realistic. If my sprite was Mario, then it wouldn't be a problem, but because I've used real animation for the rest of it, any forced animations show up like a sore thumb. A good example of this is the jump and fall animation. I use the normal jump animation for the start of the jump - which is quite smooth, then if there is nothing below the player, the sprite changes to a static falling jump. This needs to change to be more fluid.

On Saturday, My Brother and I went outside and recorded a load of sounds for the game, these should be in a version very soon.

There also needs to be more visual feedback when things happen, collecting bonusses, coins, bombs etc.. at the moment, things just dissappear. There needs to be more of a visual cue that something important has happened. Also, the scoring is a mystery to the player. I'm going to put score numbers up when the player collects something.

When bombs blow up blocks, there needs to be some schrapnel, they just vanish at the moment, not good.

Bombs also don't damage the player at the moment. They will though.


Does anyone know of any way to prevent Windows from using the Sticky keys feature? It's really annoying (apart from not using Shift and CTRL as controls).

[jasonf]

Damn, was it me or did Stage5 leap out of the woodwork shouting "SURPRISE!!"

I've posted my entry for stage5, it's got a lot of bug fixes so I'd be chuffed as punch if you guys could give it a whirl and let me know what you think.

I've simplified the control system. Now, Left and Right control all movement apart from Jumping and Calling, they remain the same.

http://www.cerebral-bicycle.co.uk/cr..._5_release.zip

there's now also sound.. most of it is placeholder stuff, so it will change.

it's late, I'm off to bed. Enjoy