[Val]

Originally I was just going to start a new journal, but I may as well make one to encompass all of my projects. Let's get the this stuff out of the way:

emo maggot FREAK! 3
man, when am I going to finish this? who knows!!

Genission Bromide
I work on Genission Bromide when I feel like doing puzzles and cinemas. It's not as dead as emF 3! Not even close!



Okay now here's why this journal exists:
BAND! 4

The title screen!

Dreg Fields!!

Nice Butte!!!

Gnat Caverns!!!!

Okay the game plays similarly to BAND! 3, but everything has been redone to be 10 times better. The game is in speed 2, and the jumping engine and movement have changed to accommodate that. You press Z to jump, X to fire your gun, and A to interact with nearby objects. Later in the game there is also a dash function you can use to move quickly and leap great distances, which you activate by pressing left or right twice in a row quickly.

But you must then be wondering what up and down are used for? When you hold up, you face upwards, and when you hold down, you face downwards. You can then fire your gun up or down!! It's pretty great, let me tell you

Also, there are no lives in this game. You only have one. But that's because of how saving works: At the start of every level, the game is saved. Whenever you walk over a save point (that greenish portal looking thing in the second screenshot), your game is saved. When you die, you instantly reload from the last place your game was saved! It saves the game to BAND4SAVE.SAV, so you can manually reload when you want, but you can't save the game yourself.

Is CJA working on this with me? Sort of! He made a bit of Nice Butte, but then we quit working on the game for a while and when I picked it up again he resisted joining in because he has other (really great) projects to work on.

This post has been edited by Guy: 18 July 2007 - 02:44 AM

[Micah]

Christ almighty that is beautiful.

[Goshi]

The title screen looks great, hope you do well =)

[Val]

It's freaking 2 AM why the hell am I still up update: Finished Gnat Caverns today. Moving on to the 4th level!

[CJA]

[CHEZZY]

Holy wow this looks awesome! I hope your bromine never falls victim to chromium oxide.

[djtiesto]

Bitchin' title screen, although I can't say I'm much of a fan of sidescrollers in MZX...

[Lachesis]

Looks really good, except for the waterfalls. They don't really fit in with the other graphics... oh well.

[Val]

Level 4 is about 3/4ths of the way done. By the end of the level you will probably have collected a machine gun and a dash ability, and will definitely have collected a wall jump ability.

This post has been edited by Guy: 18 July 2007 - 10:17 PM

[KKairos]

Guy, this all does look pretty much awesome. Wall jumps for the win, by the way.

[Val]

The wall jumping engine is complete, as is the 4th level. Every level introduces something new! In fact, most of them introduce multiple new elements!

[Val]

Finished level 5. The wall jump rocks. Moving onto level 6!

[KKairos]

Don't forget to BETA TEST EVERYTHING.

[Val]

I beta test as I go, i.e. I play through the game, doing things a person who didn't make the game would try to do, etc.. Then, I have CJA beta test it.

This post has been edited by Guy: 20 July 2007 - 05:39 PM

[Kom]

My eyes have melted due to the amazing graphical quality of those screenshots!

[CHEZZY]

It should be very smooth due to the speed 2. Rubberroom is in speed 3.

[Val]

Made a flame thrower. It rocks a lot.

[Val]

Still working on level 6. The lag in progress is because of reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Here's a screen shot, though:

This is a shot of the flame thrower in action. It looks better when the particles are moving. It's really ridiculously powerful, the only downside being it can't travel as far as your regular gun. The enemies naturally just get that much harder after you get your chance to buy it, though.

Note that it's actually not possible to use the flame thrower before level 6. I'm cheating!


As much as I'd love to give out more screen shots, I like to keep things secret...

EDIT: also, i'm aware that the player is standing in a pool of water while firing the flame thrower. don't read too much into things

This post has been edited by Guy: 23 July 2007 - 09:10 AM

[CHEZZY]

Looks good, you have a nice ground texture style going there too.

[Goshi]

[Koji]

The ground looks a little noisy... was it just randomly generated or something?

[CJA]

Yes, but, its very distracting. Mzx Ground should all be one char Guy.!

[Frobozz]

I don't find it distracting at all. Now maybe if I was viewing the picture at fullscreen I'd find it distracting. But right now, no. Any idea if/when this game is doing to be released?

[Val]

Yes, it's randomly generated, and no, it's not distracting. Somehow nobody realized CJA was being sarcastic.

As for a release date, I'm not sure. It's not too far off, though.

[Val]

Level 6 is done, moving on to 7. I've really, really been looking forward to this one...

[Val]

Finished level 7! Only 3 more to go! I also made a new, extremely powerful weapon.

[Koji]

the ground isn't distracting so long as the the player doesn't have to move through noisy looking background if you have noise it should be A BOUNDARY if anything.

The current look is fine. The High contrast of things you can walk through and things you can't is great. It gives a sense of solidity and stability. Bright contrasting environments give a sense of safety stability and sometimes innocents. Where as dark blurry low contrast environments where it's hard to see what is solid and what might not be betrays ominous intentions of the environment, and makes you less confident in the boundaries that you percieve.

Hint: A nice suprize would be if in a later level a portion of highly contrasting ground would dissapear to reveal a hidden area that was there all along. Loco Roco did this, and the feeling wasn't "Oh shit I'm falling" because of the high contrasting colors and such even though you are suprized by the change in the seemingly safe and stable environment you still have a positive outlook because of the residule effects of the level design. In contrast if this were to happen in a dark low contrast environment the effect would be much... scarier (remember we're talking about a video game so... yeah)

This post has been edited by Koji: 24 July 2007 - 10:59 AM

[CHEZZY]

Koji that was an exquisite read.

[Val]

Koji you actually pretty much described word-for-word what I'm doing here, except for the ground disappearing part. You just fall through the ground, but secret passages are always marked, you'll see.

Actually, something like you described (the ground disappearing) isn't really possible without the use of sprites because the player's gun and the particle systems use the overlay, and using sprites is a bit too much of a hassle.

[Frobozz]

Guy said:

secret passages are always marke

Then why do you call them secret?