Well I finally did it and am totally pleased. Though it is bittersweet!
I spent A GREAT DEAL OF TIME, making a really full-featured editor only to wish that it was easier, simpler and faster.
Thus this weekend I’ve been working on that. Though it wasn’t a total waste as I learned a bunch and a lot of those features still exist, but beneath the surface.
One reason I wanted it simpler was so that the editor could be consumer friendly and players could share levels online.
So overall it’s a lot simpler/slightly less pretty(no more parallax), but a lot of the advanced graphical stuff can be skipped while a fun level can still be constructed.
Over and over again, I re-invent the wheel with lots of whistles, only to realize the wheel everyone else has been using is better.
STAY TUNED!

A quickie post just so I keep this a habit!

The enemy corral is what I call basic enemy grouping. It involves a lot more however. The basics of it are enemy approach distance and attack distance. More advanced things include variations in enemy placement that look natural–like an enemy flanking you while another one rushes you. It also involves a lot of value adjusting for knockback and range on attacks.

Yesterday I got lucky with a some numbers. I set the basic enemy approach 100 pixels back farther than normal and it did wonders. It made the battles feel more controlled, but still manic and threatening. It also set up the enemies to be struck more frequently when other enemies are rebounded off of walls. VERY SWEET!

Just chugging away at developing enemy AI and interactive environments.

Just busted in to making more interactive environments. Specifically breakable, smashable, projectile-able environment objects. Along with this I have to update the map editor and I’m probably going to simplify the maps a bit. Maybe get rid of the parallax, maybe not…
But hopefully I won’t get caught up in that and just move right into prototyping the first level after I get the enemy AI where I want it.

It’s a new year and a new layout! There’s some new and old stuff here so look around! I’ve been working steadily on Aces Wild. I moved during the holidays, so that made me pretty busy.

Anyways! The game is super fun even without any levels! Finally figured out how to balance some moves easily and keep it fun. Your wild meter goes anywhere from 0% to 300%. The default is 100% and performing well in combat will raise it. Certain actions, like dodging and dashing, will lower it and even have a minimum amount of Wild required. You can think of it as a damage modifier. So if you build it up, you’ll start doing crazy damage. Abuse certain moves and you’ll do less and also receive more. It’s more fun in action!

I’m gonna try REALLY hard to update a few times a week and report on what I get done.
Still pushing for Sept 2010 Beta.
Laters!

Hey! It’s Tyler here.
Development has been pretty slow since the second 2beegames comp. Just been struggling with the combat and enemy AI. It’s going lots better now and once I get that combat where I want, I’m going to focus a lot on the editor. I’m probably going to tone down the graphics a bit so designing levels is easier, hopefully it will still look nice. Once the editors are where I want them, I will prototype and playtest a bunch of levels and hopefully I can get the first two levels to a beta state.
Stay tuned!

So I’m winding down my internship with Legendary Fighter Studios this week… it’s a sad day.  I’ve had a great time working here and have learned so much about writing for the Internet and writing for technology and video games.  The Internet is changing the way people advertise, changing the way people view and interact with video games, and it’s changing the way we consume information and goods.  It’s been a pleasure learning about this and learning to use the Internet in a new way for advertising and getting the word out about Aces Wild and Legendary Fighter Studios.  Advertising is no longer limited to major corporations with massive amounts of money, with know how and determination the underground world of blogs and forums is making it easier for the smaller companies to get more recognition.  It’s an exciting time for video games, advertisers, and journalists as the online world grows and consumers become more accustomed to it and it further becomes a way of life no longer will major corporations be the sole provider of media.

So thanks so much to Legendary Fighter Studios and in particular Tyler Doak.  I had a blast and I know Aces Wild and all your other games will be a success!

Legendary Fighter Studios is setting the deadline for Aces Wild for September of 2010 to be complete.  The studio will have been working on Aces Wild for 2 years at that deadline, after that they will begin to focus more heavily on other games.  Once Aces Wild is polished and ready for show they will be persuing all avenues of distribution through all publishers.  It’s likely the game will be put on xbox live community games, which is a xbox live service that allows nearly anyone to upload their game online and anyone with xbox live can download the game for play.  The game isn’t quite at beta stages yet, but the studio will be focusing all it’s energy on Aces Wild until September 2010.  They will be working more on the combat before any further assets are added. Alongside that they will design destructable environments and then balance that with character switching.  Once thats complete they will be cranking out the assets and designing more levels.  It’s an exciting future for Legendary Fighter Studios.

Tyler has haulted all other projects to work enitely on Aces Wild and has much professional support from interested gaming companies and lots of personal support from friends and family.

Tyler recently realized he is making way too many moves for each character.  He was really worried about making sure players had enough tools to be creative and got too caught up in their creativity.  Recently trying to consolidate all the move sets into something more elegant.  Putting that on top of having switchable characters and characters were starting to loose originality and individuality, so by having a tighter move set then the characters are more original and you can appreciate the diversity more.  It also means a lot less assets which mean the game can come out quicker.  A lot of it had to do with an old design idea and he hadn’t planned on having that many playable characters, he had a pipe dream of having basically the same move done in different directions having unique animations.  He doesn’t really need to do that though, he can get a lot of variety out of one animation if you design it right and use other simple rendering stuff.

Tyler has been working on the Input Buffer for Aces Wild. An Input Buffer creates a buffer for the users input, technically, it records all of your inputs for a certain amount of time and gives you leeway for making combos and performing all your actions quickly and smoothly.  Unless you had perfect timing without an input buffer their would gaps between your actions.  So the input buffer allows you to mash out what you want with some leeway and makes the game play feel a lot better.  Heres an interesting video that sort of explains it with the help of Guilty Gear.

It took a long time for Tyler to get it to work properly in his games, and he had to reprogram how all the characters were controlled.  In the end it “works and feels tons better,” according to tyler.

You can see the recorded inputs on the left. The oldest input is dropped every frame and each other one comes to the front. Each input in the buffer is read each frame and removed if that input is used.

Heres a hilarious tutorial on how to make your make up look like you have “anime” eyes.  Which I assume just means make your eyes look big and child-like.  This girl is really good at make-up instruction and it’s interesting how she has made a living of doing this on YouTube.