Background Parallax, Target Dummy and Items!

Colorful items and shooting flowers

The background now has some nice parallax scrolling, both horizontal and vertical. It really does change the feel of the game compared to static backgrounds. But since the video is of potato quality and only 30 fps the effect is less noticeable.

I added a couple of target dummies to test damage values and special skills when I create them. Also created a shooting plant because why not? This was basically to see if my enemy framework was ready to receive new enemy types, and it seems like it's working fine as I can easily add new enemy behaviors.

Now the barrels are breakable and I've finished the container framework. That basically means that I can now put chests/barrels/whatever in the game and configure what items they will hold/spawn. Which also means that some early items are also implemented. Quartz will be the "money" of the game and for now there are 2 types of potions.

Lastly there is now a camera "look up" and "look down". It kinda feels like some recent indie 2D platformers are forgetting to include this simple mechanic. Not good when you're on a very vertical level and need to check out what's bellow you.

Moar platforms!

Pass through platforms and moving platforms

A good amount of progress was made this past week on the base framework of the game. I made the player state machine more robust in order to implement platforms that the player can jump trough from bellow, and fall down from above if they wish.

Another staple of platform games, moving platforms were also implemented. It can't really be seen in the video, but the physics interactions of the platforms and other objects turned out quite well, and will help me design some nice puzzles and challenges once I start creating the proper levels.

Also I updated the sprites of the basic enemy, and worked more on it's basic AI. I can now set their life and defense values, and they can now have different types of behaviors such as just wandering about or chasing the player. It even does a simple trick now where when it sees the player coming towards it, it turns into a ball to hurt the player.

Overall, lot's of "backstage" progress being made, and I'll keep up the pace!

Damage System and Enemy Interaction

"Buffered" damage system

In the video you can see the new basic attack animations (3 combo standing, 1 jumping, 1 crouching), some damage counters, health bar, enemy physics interaction (pushing the player).

As for the damage system, on the huge majority of 2D platformers the system is quite simple:

1. The player object collides with enemy object
2. The player receives a certain amount of damage
3. Checks if the damage was enough to kill the player 
4. If it was, play the death animation on the character, remove control from the player, game over
5. If the player still has health remaining, play a short "staggered" animation on the character
6. Make the character invincible for a couple of seconds and rapidly flash the character sprite
7. the player continues playing the game

Coding player damage

Visual Studio C#

Hello!

New year, new game! After a little holidaying, it's time to start going full speed ahead! I want to release a demo/prototype ASAP, and I'm aiming to release this game complete this year, the earlier the better.

I'm now developing the basic framework and systems such as the player object interaction with enemies, hazards, items, etc. Pictured you can see an ugly alpha spaghetti code of one the functions that will handle the logic when the player gets damaged and other behaviors.