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.

So 2beegames.com had their second independent game competition recently and Aces Wild was entered in the competition.  This was the second independent game competition on 2beegames.com that Aces Wild was entered in. Aces Wild was in the first independent game competition that 2BeeGames held and was one of the final contestants.  Unfortunately Aces Wild was not a finalist in this competition.

After sitting down with Tyler, the game creator, and discussing why he thinks Aces Wild wasn’t as successful in this competition it sounds ultimately like the game wasn’t polished enough, the level-design made it feel incomplete, and there wasn’t much context for players to use all the abilities and actions of the characters.  Tyler didn’t feel the other games were in much better shape than his, though.  He agrees his game does need improvement, and he continues to work daily on it.

I also think Aces Wild should have been a finalist in the 2beegames competition.  Of course, I’m not nearly as knowledgable about games or independent game development as the judges at 2BeeGames but I have been playing video games since I could walk and Aces Wild has some of the most amazing art I’ve seen in a video game and the fact that it was developed and designed entirely by one person is amazing.  We’ll see what the future holds for Aces Wild and Tyler!

Tyler and I had a conversation about complaints people had about the first build of Aces Wild when it was originally submitted to 2BeeGames.com.

The first, and Tyler feels, most valid complaint is adventuring and puzzle solving.  Basically adventuring means exploring and interacting with a world or a level, and puzzle solving is solving problems within that world. Which is a good point because the first one is basically just fighting.  However, he thinks that while adding elements to a game can always seem appealing given the scope of his team, studio, time frames and what he wants the game to be its just not something of primary concern for him.  The real problem isn’t that the game lacks these things its that it lacks pacing in what the game wants to be.  Basically too much repetitive combat which is Tyler’s main concern and what he’s been working the hardest on recently.

One of the main things to work on to get the pacing he wants is the enemy A.I. It’s difficult to talk about precisely what needs to be done, but a friend told him once a lot of action games could be improved by just adding more enemy types.  He admits he focused a lot on giving the player character actions and not having enemy variety.  So he’s going to focus hard on better enemy A.I. and variety.

Another complaint is blocking while he did add it to the enemies which adds more variety for the combat and has been pretty fun so far and a good addition, he reluctantly gave it to the player too because so many people complained about it.  One of his influences for the game is God Hand  and you can’t block in that game you can only dodge, which was his original intent, we’ll have to see if it truly is an improvement or not after it’s been played.  Dodging generally typically keeps action going and blocking stalls it and makes it  boring.

Infinites were another glaring problem in the last build.  He redesigned all the moves for that to not even be possible and as a safe guard he wants to implement a system that is a combination of move decay from Smash Bros and style from Devil May Cry so it wont limit the player too much.  However, if they don’t want to be boring, according to Tyler, they’ll be rewarded for it.  Finally, if certain actions are abused too much the players score will suffer and enemies will get really mad and punish you for it and make it really difficult for the player to keep using that play style.

Voice was another issue brought up.  He’s going to work on Ace’s voice and get other people to do other voices and touch it up more.  He felt some of the voice complaints were silly, it was still helpful.  He also got positive feedback on the voices.  It was interesting how much people complained about voices, he found out the hard way how important voices can be to a video game.