I taught Soccer for a city-wide fitness program yesterday and today! It was way fun, but I haven’t been working on Aces Wild directly.
I’ve been trying to get a shader to work instead of just duplicating all the character assets. Unfortunately, I didn’t know what I was doing back in the day, so I have to use photoshop to get different color palettes. This is really easy, but it makes the file and run-time size huge. If I can get a shader to work, I can have way more color palette options, way less loading and way less memory at run-time. It still wouldn’t be as idea if I new what I was doing in the beginning, though. OH WELLS!

The deadline for the indieCade competition just arrived yesterday. I actually submitted way back when it first opened. There haven’t been many changes to the main game, so I’m still feeling good about it.
A pretty much final build will be ready for the Dream Build Play competition which deadlines on June 12th.
This one might not be public! Super sorry about that, but it’s getting to be the final game and I need to make preparations for getting this bad boy to market.
Don’t worry though! It’s gonna be very affordable!
We’ll see you in a bit, Wilders!

So I was invited to represent the Games Industry at our school district’s career fair tomorrow!
This means I’ve been working on that and not as much Aces Wild. I have been trying to get netplay to work and am making slow strides in that department. And when I think about it, I actually got several new areas done and am really proud of them!
At work a week or so ago, I was inspired to make two new bosses as well. I feel like arcade mode is getting a bit too long, but these bosses are too good to ignore (hopefully!).
Having netplay and custom levels with a end-user editor are my big final things that are sort of… dark visions. Meaning I don’t know how they’ll turn out or if they will. Everything else–extra modes, extra playable characters, full voice–is in sight and I know how to complete it.
Stay tuned, Wilders! It’s the final stretch!

Not much to report. Just trying to finish up this bad boy. FINALLY fixed two REALLY annoying bugs. Both having to do with collision detection and response. For some INSANE reason, I had some weird position and velocity changes so sometimes characters wouldn’t bounce correctly and just slide along the ground. It was a fix that took literally a couple of minutes. It just worked!! (too lucky)
The other thing had to do with wall slides. If you started a wall slide, then immediately left and passed over any wall, you’d go into wall slide animation. Similarly I had some strange things going on. I also specified the wrong side of the character when collision happened, so when I did the wall slide call, weird things were happening. I honestly don’t even know how it worked at all considering that.
Other than that, I’ve just been working on some menu things. Nicer looking. Menus for the other modes. Character select. Etc.
Gotta work on some netplay stuff. I really want people to be able to coop over the net. It’s my next big thing to finish.
After that, I have some ideas for a few new bosses. Normally, I wouldn’t even consider it, but… I REALLY like their concept, so it’s gonna happen!
Stay Tuned, Wilders!

Aces Wild just earned an honorable mention in the indiePub Independent Propeller awards!

Check it out!

No cash or anything but still awesome! Also the first post in the comments, not posted by me, is about Aces Wild. NICE!

To update, I’ve been working on a couple new enemies, areas and gameplay modes as well as making more playable characters. Trying to get netplay to work is mad hard! We’re getting down to it so STAY TUNED!!

Well Coop came together pretty easily. Now balancing 2p versions of everything will be the hard part. Another the hard part will be how to deal with the hit pause. Normally when you hit an enemy or get hit, the game pauses, but that will f* up the other player and feel weird. In smash bros, they make it so only those engaged in the attack are affected. I might have to do something like that.
Oh, new menus too!
Stay Tuned!!

Soo!! It’s been a while. I’ve just been taking a break. Doing sketches for other games. I’m not sure what I want to do next yet!
There’s another contest in May and hopefully that will be the final build for Aces Wild.
Just gotta keep polishing mostly.
Get the extra modes in.
Get Coop in.
Some of the levels are really bad and some are awesome. The later levels are grossly more fun that the earlier ones, so those early stages need work!

Just finished the recent build of Aces Wild!

We’re almost done!!
I have lots of replay type combat in mind, but the first pass of arcade mode is basically complete!
Tons of great new tracks by the musician KgZ, faster action, more moves, 1000% less grind!
Get Hype on Aces Wild!!

I submit to the indiePub competition tomorrow so…
Check it out! (December 14, 2011)
Leave me feedback here, on facebook or my twitter!
Also give it a couple hours from when I publish this as it’s uploading.
Later, Wilders!

There’s less than 2 weeks left for the next indiePub competition. I’m pretty much on track, but I wanted to have a full pass done by the end of the week which probably won’t happen.

I’m finishing up Rex, the final boss today, but then all the bosses, including Rex, need another pass before they’re totally finished. Most of them are pretty much there and are really fun. Barkley needs some work. Joan, needs better movement and patterns. Gene still has a gimmick missing and I need to get that going. Fancybeast still needs a good pattern and something fresh. Rex I’m working on right now! I really wanted to have coop done by this competition, but it will be a last minute thing only if I have the time, but will likely be the next big thing to add.
Regarding combat, I had a bit of inspiration, but I’m not positive it’s the best thing yet. In one of those RSA animate vids, they say great ideas are a slow hunch. I feel like I’m still riding that hunch, but every pass with the combat becomes better. Grind has been GREATLY reduced and that’s awesome. It still needs to be brought down more however. You don’t want everything to die in one hit, but grind is a big deal a lot of great games suffer from, especially beat ‘em ups. I really want to eliminate as much of it as possible.
Another design goal for this build is to have an easy mode that I can beat without taking a hit (or at least clear each room without taking a hit). I’ve been playing this game for 3 years and I tend to keep making it harder and harder. I’m beginning to appreciate the skill involved creating a well-designed easy mode. I think bridging those ideas will also help me realize fully what the skills developed while playing the game are and how to foster them, cut the fat and improve interest curves. /jargon

That’s pretty much it for now. Gotta get back to work. Next build is December 15th!

Later Wilders!

One of the first things I learned about programming is that the more work you put in ahead of time, the faster and easier things will be down the line. There are cutoff points or ‘too much implementation’ but, generally, it’s a great rule to follow.
So, of course, I put something off for a long time. My ‘reasoning’ was that it seemed too daunting. I’d say knowledge was a part of it, but laziness was a bigger part.

Last night I spent but a couple hours to add in some more functionality to the map editor. Knowing I absolutely hated adding enemies to the maps was the spark to change things. I knew I wanted quick access to all enemy types and starting behaviors. So I just laid out a bunch of rectangles at the bottom of the editor. I was hoping to drag and drop them so that I could specify the starting position that way. One of my big fears was how to implement groups of enemies and timings and such. Without knowing a solution ahead of time, one hit me clear as day as I worked. I simply made the clicking write to the scripts I had already been using. In the end it was set up to highlight a certain enemy type and clicking into the map area writes a spawn script to the current script line and advances the cursor to the next line. I also added a delete line button as it took forever to backspace everything.



With only a couple hours of work, I eliminated a lot of my fears and frustrations of enemy placement. I’ll probably add a couple more things to the editor this morning, then I’ll get started on Stage 1~!

I also hope to have the enemy layout done by the end of November. That way I can just playtest for two weeks. BUT THAT RARELY WORKS OUT! Plus I have to finish up the last boss and a couple of enemies.

Stay Tuned, Wilders.

Finished up laying out the main areas. There’s likely to be some changes, but it’s basically the final one!
Messed a bit with the mechanics. First, I changed armor regeneration on enemies. The old way basically forced you to build up wild. It was fun if you were good, but made more difficult encounters impossible unless you played expertly. This will also force me to change some other aspects on armor and how Wild works, but that’s a good thing.
Additionally, when you get hit, your wild goes up a bit instead of it all draining away. This means you won’t lose Wild all the time. And while the threat of that loss created great tension, the fun from blasting enemies with Wild attacks is a lot more fun. Further, the increased damage received from how much Wild you have still exists, so the tension is still very real.
I adjusted the properties on a few more things as well, but I won’t go into details as it pertains to some battle mechanics stuff I’m not finished with yet.

Also I updated my site a bit, but there’s not much to show. Just a twitter feed. HOW COOL!

EDIT
I also got some new backgrounds about done. I’ve only had like one since the game went to a city from the wilderness.