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posts tagged with: gamedev

Dev Log: Enemy Shields

Dev Log: Enemy Shields
I keep mentioning ways to keep both players involved in the gameplay of Super Sky Sisters in my recent posts. Here's yet another way I've tried to address this issue!

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I've introduced the ability for enemies to spawn with shields that can be either red or blue. These shields operate in the same way that the Orb shield does just placed on enemies instead of the Orb. It's a pretty straight forward challenge: red shields can be destroyed by player 1 and blue shields by player 2. This means that situations will develop in the game where you are forced to switch who is doing the shooting at times.

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Another scenario that can arise as the game goes on is stacked enemy shields. Enemies can have more than one shield on them! So this makes switching who is doing the shooting even more important as now players will have to trade off multiple times in order to take down a single enemy.

So far I'm pretty happy how this change has effected the game, but I've yet to see it in an actual two player situation. I'm looking forward to my next play test opportunity as there's now a load of new things to test!
gamedev dev log sky sisters
Posted September 29th 2016 7:13 PM (General)
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Dev Log: Demon Animations

Dev Log: Demon Animations
Things are progressing! I've just been forgetting to document it on my blogosphere. I have some catching up to do!

Last week I finally tackled the animations for the demon sisters.

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Luckily I made a base template for all the sky sister animations, so this process ended up being a lot less painful than I thought it would be. All together it only took me a solid day of work to get together all the animations for the demons, and the demons actually have less frames than the angels so that made it all the more easier.

The task list continues to shrink!
dev log gamedev art
Posted August 9th 2016 11:04 AM (General)
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Dev Log: Secret Power Ups

Dev Log: Secret Power Ups
I finally got back to my development stream after what feels like a super long hiatus. Today I worked on some effects for one the end of Super Sky Sisters.

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After defeating the demon sisters the players will receive the ultimate orb power up that basically transforms them into gods. The next step is work on the ending sequence that happens when you've activated this power up, and this will be the second of the two endings in the game.
sky sisters dev log art gamedev
Posted July 28th 2016 7:23 PM (General)
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Travel Pillow Mock Up

Travel Pillow Mock Up
As I work on finishing up Sky Sisters I'm dreaming of what games I want to work on next. The first game that I've talked about here is my dice based RPG type game, but another one is a new platformer exploration kind of game.

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See the full version here.

After Sky Sisters is done I'm going to work on two projects at the same time if I can manage it. The main reason I want to do this is because I want to have some sort of platformer game spun up along side my weird dice RPG game. The dice RPG game is a cool idea, I think, but the design of it is largely a mystery. There's a lot of unanswered questions, and a lot of issues that need to be solved. I'm guessing this is going to be a little bit frustrating, so I want to also have a project that seems more straightforward. Usually when I'm making a platformer there's way less "mystery" in the design. Having something more grounded to work on when I'm not feeling the tougher design seems like a good idea, but only time will tell!
gamedev art
Posted July 20th 2016 9:07 AM (General)
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Dev Log: Background Stuff

Dev Log: Background Stuff
Going to be honest and say July has been kind of a crap month for game development. I think it's been a good month overall so far, but it's been full of crazy distractions. I'm on another break this weekend as I hang out with a bunch of people watching EVO, so I'm still not surrounded by a lot of time to work on stuff... and there's another slight distraction known as Pokemon Go which I've given into since it motivates me to walk around the city a lot more.

Anyhow here's some new stuff for Super Sky Sisters. I'm working on new backgrounds to change things up as players progress through the game.

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Hopefully I can get back on track pretty soon after EVO wraps up, and then I have a pretty long stretch of undisturbed time until PAX!
dev log gamedev sky sisters
Posted July 16th 2016 10:33 AM (General)
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Dev Log: Sky Sister Portals

Dev Log: Sky Sister Portals
As I gather more feedback and suggestions my task list for Sky Sisters unfortunately is exploding with tasks and bug fixes! I'm having a lot of fun working on the game but by now I'm getting itchy to finish it. Remember when like, last year, I was going to finish it and put it out there? Well, so much for that.

One of the pieces of feedback that has been lingering for awhile is addressing what happens after a boss fight. The original idea was that after a boss fight far enough into the game an exit portal would open up and you'd have the option to take it and end the game. By doing this you double your score and officially "survive" the game. If you waited long enough then the exit portal would disappear and your next chance to take one would be after the next boss fight.

The whole "waiting around until the exit portal disappears" wasn't really working out that well. It was tough for players to understand it, and a lot of times they would accidentally miss their chance to take the portal because they didn't know how to use it right away. So now I've taken out the single exit portal and I've replaced it with two portals.

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The portal with the skull on it takes you further into the game and you will face tougher challenges and more bosses, and the portal with the heart is the path to salvation. I've also made some overall changes to the game's timer system that lets the players wait as long as they want to make their choice. The game now only counts "survival time" which means the game timer only ticks when you're facing a threat. Otherwise it will wait around for you to move on.

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I've also made a change to the way that the sky backgrounds work. Before it would slowly fade through a number of color palettes, but now I change the palette of the sky after taking the skull portal. The sudden change in the sky color after taking a portal feels like some form of progress, I think. There is some demand for more background art, but we'll see if I can get that far.
sky sisters dev log gamedev
Posted June 29th 2016 8:41 PM (General)
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