I've been somewhat burned out as of late.

Even my commute has become slightly less productive lately, as I've just been so damn tired. However, this didn't stop me from adding more room data and beginning to code puzzle elements in.
In addition to large set-piece puzzles every now and then I decided to pepper the game with less complex, but somewhat interesting tasks throughout. First such task I planned to implement was the balancing platforms - two platforms suspended on chains, and a crank to turn left or right to move one platform up while the other moves down and vice versa... Implementing this took me surprisingly little time, so I decided to kick it up a notch - remove the crank, replacing it with a giant rusty wheel connected to the platform chain. Grabbing and hanging off of knobs along the the circumference of the wheel turns it in that direction, lowering and raising platforms. Not only does this make the whole system more realistic, but it provides for a possibility of very cool set-piece graphics (of ancient rusty machinery)
On the graphical front I have continued rehashing one of my existing tilesets adding more elements to it. A new parallax background for another area of Sanctuary Woods has been preliminary pixeled, but needs to be detailed out. It currently looks like this.
^^^

I have been slowly adding more flashy effects for things getting hit. Now when a hit connects with certain enemies, not only there is a fountain of animated sparks, but also a cloud of dust - this adds a lot to the robustness of the game's look... or something: ) Began drawing other hit-connection effects drawing inspiration from Street Fighter 3.

As I mentioned in my previous post - I began working on the game's starting area - a modern city, but honestly haven't made it far enough into drawing it to even show it here. Maybe the next time I update.

Fixed a few annoying glitches in the ledge-grab routine, which apparently I originally hacked in. Also - floating enemies no longer become invincible when uppercutted.
There is still an annoying glitch in moving along with horizontally-moving platforms - I need to fix that pronto, as this will be key to some puzzles.

Anyway - so many things to work on... so little time - and even less energy to do it.

The work goes on...

And the work on Legend of Iya continues at a leisurely pace…Ever since I bought myself a netbook computer I have been using my daily commute to keep adding stuff to the game. The shaky, unpleasantly brightly lit, uncomfortable environment of the train isn’t great for pixeling, the work I do is mostly map, code and Phaeton animation-related.

Speaking of maps – I guess it’s too late now, but I realized that Game Maker’s built-in map editor is total crap, and for my next project I’m building my own: )

On the animation front I have added one fluff cycle - a wobbling-on-the-edge animation if you send Iya sliding off a platform - it's pretty, but will rarely be seen. I have also started to expand the aerial pummel animation, which was previously nothing but a single lightning-fast punch repeated endlessly. It is now more along the lines of an all out Naruto-esque string of fist, knee and leg attacks - hopefully this will make the aerial juggling look more fun. Oh, and I began to correct the wall-pushing animation, as previously Iya lost about 25% of her size when pushing against things.

I finally added the third tileset - the first Catacomb location. It is currently rather rudimentary and is lacking ladders or any kind of ornamental flare or creepy necropolis parts (that I have planned for it), but with its cold gray walls and slightly iridescent background it adds a cool contrast to the game's other overly green areas. So far I only have one area-specific enemy for the catacombs - an indestructible floating eyeball that serves to impede vertical progress. The parallax layers for this set aren't finished yet.

The first Phaeton monster in my game - GunGanesh - a mid-boss is beatable, but as of right now lacks a clear boss pattern and the emphasis of his boss-ness. I am yet to add some more animation for him as well as come up with a clear pattern for the fight - something I need to play a lot of Noitu Love 2 and Legend of Princess for... although - his "home" screen isn't done yet, and I want to do something really cool with him.

My next logical step in development should probably be doing the opening area of the game - a modern city, so I can finally release a demo of LOI... let's see how that turns out.

Phaeton! Now with 100% more ZOOM!

And so.. without actually explaining anything about my game I'm making an entry about the tools I am developing along with it... How totally moronic of me, but it's 2 AM and I have a crunch-filled work-day tomorrow - so, suck it up, all things will be explained in time.

Have you ever played a 2D Konami or Treasure game, like Contra Hard Corps or Gunstar Heroes and gawked in awe at those huge bosses that visibly consist of independently moving modules? I know I did, and still do whenever one of those modular monstrosities shows up in any game (except maybe for recent Castlevanias, where the modular bosses looked mighty cheep and sloppy). Phaeton is an editor I wrote to allow me to insert such creatures into my own game. It ended up being a rather complex animation program consisting of three stages - a module import stage, where you load a bitmap with all of your creature's body parts on it, a frame generation stage, where you arrange the imported modules into animation frames, and lastly - an animation stage, where you order the pre-created frames into animations. The editor then saves a file that describes the animation in an easy-to-parse text format, that combined with a module bitmap comprises all the ingredients needed for the creation of in-game modular beasties.

Tonight I have finally added a zoom in/out feature to all three stages of the editor. This addition was prompted by the fact that I am working on my netbook with a 10" screen for about 4 hours a day...

Oh, hell - since I have nobody to tell this...

I hate the idea of blogging - I really do, especially when it serves no real purpose other than attention-whoring. News-blogging - I can understand and relate to, but putting up what equates to your personal diary for all the world to see - it's douchy and pretentious... All that said - it's exactly what I'm doing now, despicable as it might be.

For a while now I have been making a game. "A while" in this case means almost a decade, and even longer if you count the 8-bit incarnations from my childhood. Now, before you say anything - it wasn't the same game all along, and the game has gone through at least 4 complete resets since its initial PC build back in 2001, but one element remains unchanged at its core - the protagonist, or more precisely the protagonist's name -Iya. Her age has changed over the years, currently hovering at about 12 years old. Her appearance went from a rather simplistic, poorly animated "chibi" figure, to what now is an almost properly proportioned and well-animated human child. Her personality and attitude also went all across the board from insipidly heroic, to sad, to bratty, to the current mix of determination and wonder, leaving any outside observer to conclude that I have absolutely no freaking idea of where the hell am I going with this. And that observer would've been right, or at least he would be up until the last reset of the project which happened three years ago - in 2006.

Now the game is finally shaping up, and though it is still far from completion, I want to keep a log of what is happening on the project - a log that can be read by anyone out there.

So, whatever: )

This is what at the moment passes for the title screen