The Art of Dying - Platformer (GAME RELEASED!)

[dactylopus]

That's really cool.  Quite interesting from a design perspective, and fun to play from the looks of things.  Looking forward to more videos.

Also, level editors are always fantastic.  I'm definitely behind that idea.

I am curious about one thing, though.  I'm interested in the story of this game.  So far, we know that the character is a sword wielding police officer.  Will there be more exploration of story in further videos?

Keep up the good work!

[arj0n]

Also, please do make a platformer - we need MORE AGS platformers!!

+1

[DoorKnobHandle]

That's really cool.  Quite interesting from a design perspective, and fun to play from the looks of things.  Looking forward to more videos.

Also, level editors are always fantastic.  I'm definitely behind that idea.

I am curious about one thing, though.  I'm interested in the story of this game.  So far, we know that the character is a sword wielding police officer.  Will there be more exploration of story in further videos?

Thanks! Right now the plan is to go very, very story light. But maybe I'll get a good idea and put that in? I was thinking more along the lines of Spelunky; you're a guy in a cave, there's treasure to loot and enemies to kill. That's it. But maybe I should get more creative. I'm not sure how I would implement story telling though. Intercom at the lower third of the screen? Log files you can access and read? Not sure.

[selmiak]

I wouldn't mind having 2 screens at the beginning explaining the little bit of story you need for an action game, something like: Are you a bad enough dude to rescue the president will do already. Or you got betrayed by your best friend (who happens to be a cyborg, as that makes a cool final boss...) and he sent his personal ninja army after you and one of the ninjas was about to throw you into the hole and you grabbed onto him and dragged him down with you. You managed to land on him and thus survived the fall and got the sword from him. Now it's revenge time! Voila.

[DoorKnobHandle]

I wouldn't mind having 2 screens at the beginning explaining the little bit of story you need for an action game, something like: Are you a bad enough dude to rescue the president will do already. Or you got betrayed by your best friend (who happens to be a cyborg, as that makes a cool final boss...) and he sent his personal ninja army after you and one of the ninjas was about to throw you into the hole and you grabbed onto him and dragged him down with you. You managed to land on him and thus survived the fall and got the sword from him. Now it's revenge time! Voila.

Good ideas. Man, I need to think about whether or not to go for boss battles at all. I'm undecided. On the one hand I like the idea, on the other, it's tricky haha. Opinions?

[selmiak]

it's probably very tricky to allow people to create their own bosses via the editor, but if you have them precoded and just add them in it will be relatively easier, like people using the editor can place the bosses from the normal game in their levels or not. But of course it would be super cool to be able to add a custom boss. Also a good coding challenge to come up with a way to script the motion pathes of bosses and import their sprites and the trickest thing, their attacks and damages within the leveleditor.

[DoorKnobHandle]

Yeah if the game is going to have bosses at all, they will be pre-coded. I definitely won't be able to support people making their own bosses. Would be interesting but it's just way too complex.

[Chicky]

Oh wow, this is my kind of platformer! The developer videos are a lovely insight again, you have a really engaging voice (and should totally do tuition videos!).

Cute animations too The double jump/attack mechanic looks really fun, can we expect destructible platforms? It might be nice to have the odd 'trick' platform to make players cautious of attacking on every landing.

[DoorKnobHandle]

Thanks Chicky! Destructible platforms are absolutely possible, I just hadn't thought of them for some reason. Consider that a yes!

New video is on the way! It'll talk about enemy variety and show you the enemies that I've already implemented!

[Wyz]

Well that looks excellent, consider me hyped!
I like the looks and feel of this; it makes me think of a few platform games on the NES I use to love watching other people play.

Also nice to have game controller support; it's always good to have somthing to throw at my screen!

[Vince Twelve]

Wow, looking great DKH! Woo AGS platformers!

[DoorKnobHandle]

Thanks Wyz and VinceXII! Wyz, I'm using your joystick plugin of course, completely forgot to mention that so far. You'll be credited of course! :p

New video is almost done, now, if only I didn't have to make the show off level in it so freaking hard, haha! Drives me crazy when I need 50 takes to get the level done flawlessly.

[selmiak]

Do you have a release date you aim for? It looks pretty stable already. You know, talking about games is a lot like masturbating. But somehow your videos really make me hot...
It's probabaly all about small bugfixes and the leveldesign and implementing the mentioned difficulty curve atm?
But then again I'm glad you have to release it this year to compete in the Best non Adventure game category or wait another year

[DoorKnobHandle]

selmiak: Haha err... That's cool! I have no fixed date but I want the game to be done very soon, and I am definitely not going to put a bazillion features in it or delay it in any other way. I want this to be a simple small game!

Here's the third video, this time I'm talking about enemy design and show you a couple of enemies in detail:

[embed=640,390]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8kD2iZJ7qs4[/embed]

Take a look, let me know what you think! I'm planning to make the next video about the editor!

[arj0n]

Awesome vid again DKH.
Those hellbots reminds me a bit of the enemies in the original Thexder game (1987)

[DoorKnobHandle]

Thanks Arj0n. Never played that game, Thexder. I will take a look at it.

[DoorKnobHandle]

And here's another one. As promised, it introduces the level editor. Take a look, I really, really hope this inspires one or two of you to use it make some really cool levels with it:

[embed=640,390]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b_5ryKGxWkM[/embed]

As always, let me know what you think and if you could see yourself using this editor. Also, ask any questions you might have, I'm sure there's plenty of stuff I forgot to explain how it works in the video. If you have improvements on user friendliness (that are reasonable, AGS doesn't exactly make user-friendly tool development easy haha), please share them with me!

[Stupot]

Nice one. Can't wait to have a play around with the editor.

I was going to ask why draw the extra lines on all the walls and floors; why not make the collision detect automatically when you lay the tiles. But then I realised it's actually better to keep them separate, because now you can have walk-through walls and secret areas

[selmiak]

but then why have secret areas when there are no power ups and 1ups? But yeah, I also want to play tAoD and play around with the leveleditor.

[Stupot]

Ahh true, but I've noticed in previous vids a little '100' floating up when you smash crates and stuff, so I assume theres a scoring system. Maybe secret rooms full of crates will be good for players who want to get maximum points :-)

also, DKH, I meant to ask this after vid #3.  At 2:01 you do a weird, awesome backflippy-wall-roll type move to get onto the floor above.  Are there more special moves like that?