An update so soon?! Whaaaa?!

Hey guys yet again,
Yesterday I have launched LOI demo to the universal sound of booing and dodging some rotten tomatoes.
Some people have complained of the game being unplayably slow - well, I think I have found the solution. Give it another try here:
http://www.sendspace.com/file/bjvevu
or here:
http://www.mediafire.com/download/tr7ag41h2o146bl/Legend_of_Iya_DEMO_1.1.zip
or here:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/24279321/Legend%20of%20Iya%20DEMO%201.1.zip

Other things have been updated as well.

• Added an option to turn the controller support on and off from the options menu (possibly slowdown-related)
• Added Xbox360 D-Pad support.
• Remapped menu buttons to better reflect the Xbox360 proper button layout - A select, B cancel (this translates to keyboard input of X select, C cancel)
• Fixed a few kernel_obj errors caused by improper game reset.
• Added some wicked speedhack to allow the game to run on even the slowest of computers (well, slowest of MODERN computers, I should've said - I'm sure there is a 486DX66 you'd love to run this on: )
• Fixed a few collision and control issues, but no radical changes yet. (don't worry though, I'm listening, and will try to find compromises where I can).

Anyway! Gotta run.

Cheers guys!.

DEMO GET!

Hey guys!
Crazy stuff - I've made a LOI demo!

Go here and download it:

Mediafire
Sendspace
..or my personal dropbox

I warn you though, the demo is rough. It contains some art unfinished or placeholders, all-placeholder sound, missing effects and objects and code.

WINDOWS 8 WARNING!: DUE TO A CONFIRMED BUG IN W8 GAME MAKER GAMES HAVE ALL SORTS OF SOUND ISSUES - INCLUDING CRASHING. TO FIX THIS - DISABLE SOUND EFFECTS FROM THE OPTIONS MENU.

General notes:

• The game is written in GM8.1, so Windows8 people have to turn the sound effects all the way down in order not to anger the cruel gods of Microsoft. 
• You MUST unzip the entire game including the external files and folders.
• The demo can be controlled with either the cursor keys+ZXC, or the WASD+123, which can be switched in the options menu.
• The game also supports controllers - the button layouts for 360 controller and a sidewinder can be swapped in the options as well.
• There is an unfinished "8-bit" version of the game in the EXTRAS menu.
• Powerup items can be collected by standing over them and pressing up.
• Iya can climb ledges when you jump to them and hold up.
• Iya has two attack types - quick and strong. Tap attack button for quick, hold - for strong.
• While in the air Iya can either slam enemies down with down+attack, or kick them up higher with up+attack.
• Explore the area. There is one hidden powerup object and one health upgrade.
• Save rooms are activated by standing in the middle and pressing up.
• The sound and music are a placeholder. I have an awesome musician lined up for the project, but first I need some sweet, sweet Kickstarter money to pay him.
• Badgers WILL mess you up... as will the bear... as will the bosses.

Hopefully - have fun: )

Legend of Iya Kickstarter is LIVE!

Hey guys - some exciting shit! I was finally been able to put LOI up on Kickstarter!

Pretty-pretty please support the project HERE!

Not dead yet!

Nope - unlike what most of you probably think Legend of Iya is not dead. It IS in suspended animation for the time being, but work on it will resume in due time. I know my practice of neglecting this blog for nearly years at a time is ridiculous to say the least - but such is life. Unfortunately.
In the meantime - I've started another side-project, which will hopefully be easier to finish than the monstrous thing that is LOI - a remake of the old ZX Spectrum game Phantis. I will post info regarding it shortly. I hope: )

Out of nowhere - an update!

Well, it has sure been a while - during which time I have switched jobs and moved to an ass-end of nowhere, blowing all my savings in process. I wish life came with an undo button, but without it - I'm stuck here for a year, and I might as well make the best of it.

Oh - and then the flash cart with the latest version of LOI got destroyed, costing me several months of very sporadic work - sad and annoying, but fairly inconsequential.

On the plus side - I've since been working on LOI fairly consistently, probably for the first time in almost a year. The destruction of my recent progress has also finally pushed me to implement real-time backup of my project flash drive to Dropbox and then to a folder on my lappy.

I will post visual updates later - they are currently minor, and include additions all across the board - tileset fixes, new rooms, new decor objects, puzzle implementations (still sort of broken), new enemies/obstacles and new Phaeton creatures. I've also been writing the game's script, and it seems I'll actually have to do a bit of restructuring in the early portion of the game map - nothing major, hopefully.

HA! Rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated!

First and foremost, to the few people who still follow this page - the project is NOT dead, but is continued at a comatose pace due to my kid being almost 3 and requiring all the attention in the world that I can spare outside of working full-time, having a 4-hour (2-hr one way) daily commute, and also doing a bunch of on-the-side freelancing.
Also, this "little" slump in development has originally resulted from a fairly sizable misstep in the coding process. As I have previously written here - I was working on a custom world editor for the game. A flexible little thing that could be activated on the fly and could move objects, edit the tileset, and add all sorts of cool flags and functionality to the rooms. The sub-project started beautifully - the tile-editing engine, the old-format level importer, and partially the object editor all worked well enough, but when it came time to implement it into the game - all sorts of horrible ripple effects started happening. You see - the room transition in LOI is a delicate affair, as it is executed without any reliance on triggers or teleports, with room simply being switched from underneath Iya as she continues the same action she was doing all along. Slide out of one room, and you will come out sliding in the next room. Jump-kick while the rooms are transitioning - and the move will carry over at the exactly the same frame it left off. Needless to say this process is fairly timing-sensitive. Unfortunately - the new level loader refused to play nice with this system. Not only was the pause between room-loads too excessive, but it threw off the timing of the character and a bunch of other internal processes. I struggled with this purely code issue for about a month, but decided to abandon the new level editor altogether, as for it to work a large chunk of the game would have to be rewritten: (
Oh - and for those expecting to see some new art, here are some random things:


<<---WIP modular enemy - not a boss, regular enemy ala Castlevania's Golem and Knight-things.

Alright - I hope the coming of autumn spurs my creativity once more, and I will finally get to a place where I can show the game off to you as at least a demo: )

Cheers guys, and thank you for continuing to care. I will NOT abandon this thing, I promise!
Andrew.

It's been a while!

If in your most cynical hour you thought that LOI project has come to a standstill, you weren't far from the truth. It has been a tough few month trying to make headway in development, and to be honest I have been in a bit of despair about it. Most of my problems at this point stem from the inexcusable awfulness that is GameMaker's built in level editor, which I have bitched about on many previous occasions. Therefore, I have ended up building my own level editor, but with such a large tool having to be written from scratch I have encountered many issues. It works now, but still has many problems and lacks many of the features the final editor has to have. Several times during its development I almost quit, but every time I opened the default editor my resolve has returned. Hopefully once I iron out a couple more kinks in my program and start cranking out rooms things will get back on track.