You're Not the Boss of Me!

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Now with animation.So here's a cool thing - I drew and animated all of my bosses about a year and a half ago, but I hadn't implemented a hierarchical animation system to be able to play back the larger ones in game.  So I've had all these animation files sitting in my computer, presumably finished, but untested.

But this past week it was finally time to get cracking on it, and now I've got my first multi-piece boss animated in the game. He still has some work to do, but he can attack and take damage.   Hell, I'm impressed that he even moves!

Interestingly, Gamespot had asked me for some screenshots a while back, and, not having this part completed, I'd offered up some mocks made by screen-capping what I'd done in Anime Studio.  Here's how he looked in the mock:

The mockup.You can see what's changed between now and then . . . backgrounds are updated, bullets are shooting, and since I'm a sucker for bloom, there's that.  Of course you can't tell in the still but the pink growths now animate as well.  I'm probably going to do a bit of a consistency overhaul on the boss textures themselves at some point, too.

 

 

 

 

And The Secret Feature Is . . .

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A Glitch Ray!

At least partially.  Obtained early in the game, this item allows you to "glitch" enemies and tiles, applying slowdown, flicker, corruption, and other effects to your advantage.  In the image above you can see a bunch of tiles that were glitched so that you can drill through them, and some enemies that have been glitched to slow them down.

There's more, though.  The ray is just the beginning - the first of several abilities related to game breakage. Think of all the things you did in NES games that the designers didn't want you to?  Yeah, those things.

You'll have to play to find out how many of them made their way into Axiom Verge.

Although I'd had these features planned long before I made this site (like, over a year), I didn't want to mention it until I had some proof to back it up with.  So I let on that this was a game about collecting weapons.  Oops.

What do you guys think?

... And I'm Back Online.

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I've been back for about a week now.  I'd say it's harder to return than it was to go away; technology in particular feels really bizarre and kind of alienating, particularly when you've been traveling where there is no electricity and people grow their own food.
Neverthleess I'm back on AV.  For the next month or so I'll be preparing my IGF submission.  I'm not going to go too crazy, but the Secret Feature is in.  Still kind of debating on whether I should include some way for the IGF judges to skip to that part or if they should have to play until they get to it.  It's a bit like the Half Life 2 Gravity Gun in that I don't introduce it immediately, but about an hour into the game.

Another Screenshot!

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It's been a while since I've posted anything.  As usual I'm nose deep developing the game; lately it's been doing level design.  Here's one of the rooms I did recently.  The critters you see are re-used from another area as I haven't coded the AI for this area's monsters yet.  The the background and the mushroom caps are animated.

Oh yeah, I left the ridiculously high frame rate showing.  Retro graphics are great for high frame rates!