BloodEdge V0.001 - An action runner game

[Serephim]

---> V0.001 <---

-- [***] Keyboard controls have changed a bit:

QWE --- Slashes

R --- Launcher

Space --- Vortex Slash *All damage is contained in the landing slash, which is multiplied by your current combo meter.*

L/R Arrow --- Move Left/Right

Up Arrow --- Jump

-- [***] The game sprites are about 60% smaller.

-- [***] The game no longer autocorrects your X-position.

- [**] Enemies now collide with the level.

- [*] The enemies attack you, but damaging the player is still unscripted so they're still harmless.

- [*] The amount of stun enemies receive on each hit is now affected by Proration as well. (But seeing as the attacks are still all able to be canceled and are sort of wonky, this doesn't mean much)

- [*] Every kill extends the combo meter by a set amount, with follow up cuts adding a little more.

**In the rare case you were testing from a phone, the controls are not updated at all. Will add on-screen controls later.

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~~~original post

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I decided to develop a quick runner game that incorporates some new gimmicks instead of just item collection and jumping over stuff.

I was originally planning to port this to the Android app store, but working around limitations is giving me second thoughts. But I figure either way it goes, i might as well let someone play around with it.

Concept

BloodEdge is all about a Half-Demon, spiky haired guy named Garrus with a big ass sword. because why not.

(this is Garrus, he kills things and he doesn't even care)

BloodEdge is all about using your giant sword to hack enemies into pieces. Literally. With this game I wanted to add some layered combat elements into the typical endless runner / temple run formula in order to switch stuff up.

(I'm gonna handdraw all the animations instead of using vector. Mainly because I suck at vector. But i'm also no huge fan of procedural animation.)

You can kill them the regular way....

...Then hack them to pieces with a finishing move!! Specific attacks have different properties (Horizontal/Vertical), which allow you to sever enemies in different directions after depleting their HP.

You can then slice the other pieces. By combining attacks, you can maximize the fatality and earn a bigger score.

And then you make everyone nearby slant-eye you with an uneasy concern

Gameplay

The fashion in which you destroy enemies will net you higher score than simply finishing the stage. This, combined with avoiding enemy attacks and speed of completion, will be the determining factor of your score. Score will be used to directly upgrade Garrus' moveset. You'll be able to add power / sharpness to existing moves, and gain new ones through a skill tree.

Instead of gameflow being focused around an increasing difficulty based on distance (time you've stayed alive), this game will switch between distance progression and forcing you to clear enemies in order for the stage to progress. Certain enemy types will stay on the screen until they are defeated.

The game is in HTML 5, so performance relies heavily on your browser. If you guys don't mind, could you please tell me your FPS along with the browser you're using?

The game updates automatically. Just click the old link and wait for it to restart itself : D

[OverbounD]

I got 60 in Chrome. You did a great job on that character art, and the sword game play seems like a good idea. Major Props.

[Clouder]

7-8 in Chrome. I like it though.

[TailsSena]

59fps, Chrome 26.

[Daniel]

59 FPS in Chrome 26, 40 when there are a lot of enemies on screen. It's a really good idea! I love the art style too!

[Chaos-Fusion]

60 fps on Firefox. I also mashed the spawn button and the game kept a consistent 60fps. Also, love the art style.

[Rawr]

Haven't had a chance to try it yet but the art looks snazzy dude.

[Serephim]

7-8 in Chrome. I like it though.

Just curious, how old is your computer?

Thanks for the feedback everyone. I'll try to get an updated version up later, with aerial attacks and HP for the enemies. Possibly some basic AI as well.

[Clouder]

Just curious, how old is your computer?

2005 I think?

[Serephim]

I see. Well, I guess i'll look into its ability to create .exe's.

[Serephim]

Small update today

"Blast off!"

Clicking the original link should start the game. It should say "Update detected! Restarting..." and automatically refresh the page once it's finished.

Update v0.0002

R key - Launch attack

P key - Jump

The enemies now have HP

Enemies now move around a little

Next I want to add one or two unique aerial attacks, along with more enemy types and some actual enemy attacks and hazards.

[Highwire4]

I found that if I just mashed the attack keys I could glitch him to go completely off-screen and fall off the world. I think he either moves too much while attacking or you need to put up some kinda collision for the screen edges.

[ChaosLord]

I found that if I just mashed the attack keys I could glitch him to go completely off-screen and fall off the world. I think he either moves too much while attacking or you need to put up some kinda collision for the screen edges.

This... but considering you've called it the alpha test for attacking and such, I'm assuming you're aware of this stuff.

OHMAN IF THIS WAS FINAL, YOU'D BE GETTING AAAAALL OF MY RIDICULE!

But hey, at least you can keep a consistent frame rate. Chrome, 60fps, even with 234823098437395820394 enemies on screen.

I had to demo my Computing Graphics project at Uni the other day. Turns out, I had forgot to switch out the frame rate control system right at the start. I'd left it as my temporary frame LIMIT of 60fps using the horror that is Thread.Sleep(). It was meant to be temporary while I tested the physics but... it was working fine and all so I didn't notice... then I had to try it on the Lab computers...

Did not go well.

Point is: Delta Time for Frame/Logic Rate control master race. (unless you know of a better method... in which case, HOOK ME UP)

[toaster1]

60fps with Internet Explorer 10. Nice game, thanks for sharing

[Serephim]

I found that if I just mashed the attack keys I could glitch him to go completely off-screen and fall off the world. I think he either moves too much while attacking or you need to put up some kinda collision for the screen edges.

Yeah i've been meaning to do that. I haven't really decided if i'm going to allow manual movement or leave it to the attacks like it currently is. It's mostly just an issue of limited input.

But hey, at least you can keep a consistent frame rate. Chrome, 60fps, even with 234823098437395820394 enemies on screen.

Point is: Delta Time for Frame/Logic Rate control master race. (unless you know of a better method... in which case, HOOK ME UP)

The performance really is heavily dependent on the browser, especially on phones.

I usually have a few manual frame counters, and force physics, logic and animation events to have synchronization with the master game timer to activate. This forces the game logic to correctly work with the framerate regardless of slowdown. It also allows you to manually desync specific timers to deactivate certain events, which allows for easy pausing and time manipulation. For instance, slowing down enemy/projectile logic while leaving player movement (and framerate) uninhibited.

Using it for time manipulation can produce some odd looking results if objects are displacing too much. Im sure this can be fixed with some kind of integral (?dontknowmath?) application, but i've never looked into it.

I haven't had a reason to do this for this project, but i'll probably do it anyway just as a precaution.

[P3DR0]

60, Firefox (Tested with lots of enemies on the screen for a few minutes, didn't got any slowdowns whatsoever). Intel Core 2 Quad, 4GB DDR2 RAM and Geforce 9800GT 512mb DDR3.

Nice game. Guess there are lots to do yet, but still, pretty amazing. :3

The art looks great, the attacks are fast, everything is very decent. I hope to see that turn into something bigger.

Brotips:

- Add some invisible walls on the sides of the screen. It's pretty annoying how some attacks launch you waaay foward or backwards.

- Don't allow an attack to cancel another, at least not until the "damage" part of the attack is done. The fun part of those sorts of fast-action games, at least in my opinion is to stack attacks or do creative combos and it's really a pain to do so when your attack is being interupted by another one (it would be like stoping Sonic in the middle of a jump to do a spin-dash), also it's pretty unlogic if you ask me.

- Add some extra screen space, both vertical and horizontal. Both the enemies' and the player's sprites are very large and they take up a lot of the screen.

Keep going, nice stuff.

[Clouder]

I broke the game.

[Serephim]

Brotips:

- Add some invisible walls on the sides of the screen. It's pretty annoying how some attacks launch you waaay foward or backwards.

This was a really simple issue, but people keep bringing it up, so I've recently fixed it. Dont know why I let it persist this long.

- Don't allow an attack to cancel another, at least not until the "damage" part of the attack is done. The fun part of those sorts of fast-action games, at least in my opinion is to stack attacks or do creative combos and it's really a pain to do so when your attack is being interupted by another one (it would be like stoping Sonic in the middle of a jump to do a spin-dash), also it's pretty unlogic if you ask me.

This is actually something i've been playing with. I originally was planning to only cancel specific attacks into other predetermined attacks. I decided that would be a bit too much to force on a casual player, who would rather just murder the screen by mashing what they feel. Also, since I'm the only artist, I wont have nearly enough attack animations to justify this right now. Stronger attacks will have frame limits on cancels, but currently i'm just going to allow it to happen. The air attacks have considerably less startup though.

I'm still adding small attacks and mechanics, and there's alot of things to consider when it comes to balancing frame cancels, so it'll probably see a few changes through updates. I'll let you guys tell me how it feels.

- Add some extra screen space, both vertical and horizontal. Both the enemies' and the player's sprites are very large and they take up a lot of the screen.

The 1:1 sprites are actually far more massive than they appear in-game. I'm going to permanently scale them down, I just haven't decided on which size I like yet. The current native sprite resolution does terrible things to filesize and performance on weaker machines (like phones). Especially with the VFX because of the amount of transparent pixels. So i'll definitely work on clearing up some screen space.

As for an update...

V0.0003

I've added aerial versions of the ground attacks + 1 small special move. The combo meter works a bit differently than in other games. It's a mix between a SHUMP multiplier and a Fighting Game combo counter.

Every attack has it's own Hitstun value. Hitstun stuns enemies and makes them helpless, and extends the duration of the Combo Reset meter, which increases with each successive hit landed. When the Combo Reset meter hits 0, the combo ends and your score is multiplied.

Attacks can be freely spammed, and I didn't want this to intrude on the skill depth. I also added a Proration Counter. Every attack also has a proration value which is added to the combo counter. Hitstun is multiplied by this rate before it's applied, so the higher this number is, the longer you'll be able to extend your combo.

Generally speaking, the slower/harder to land the attack is, the better its proration; the more easily spammable, the worse. This should add alot of room for experimentation in terms of the most score-effective way to clear a wave of enemies -- attack spam, or stylish combinations that allow for a greater combo meter payout.

So along with increasing enemy difficulty, skill will always be rewarded.

I'd have a playable version of this, but I recently (further) broke the stage generation routine...so i'll have it up soon i hope. And hopefully with auto-spawning enemies.

[Serephim]

Allergies. Or maybe a cold? I really don't know whats wrong with me.

V0.0003

It should update the game next time you click the link.

- Added Air versions of the ground attacks.

- O key = Vortex Slash, deals damage based on your combo length. Spam awayyyy

- Stage now proceeds on its own, spawns enemies (cannon fodder, still don't do anything)

- Get high combos to maximize your score before the level drops you into the void

[Serephim]

Naturally, i haven't been working on this as much as I've wanted to be. I planned to be done by the end of April, but that's pretty much shot to hell by now.

I need a versatile enemy type, so these Demon knights will probably fill that void. I'm doing their animations now. They'll come in varied flavors, and all possess a different range of attacks and defenses, including shields and projectiles.

--->V0.001<---

-- [***] Keyboard controls have changed a bit:

QWE --- Slashes

R --- Launcher

Space --- Vortex Slash *All damage is contained in the landing slash, which is multiplied by your current combo meter.*

L/R Arrow --- Move Left/Right

Up Arrow --- Jump

-- [***] The game no longer autocorrects your X-position.

-- [***] The game sprites are about 60% smaller.

- [**] Enemies now collide with the level.

- [*] The enemies attack you, but damaging the player is still unscripted so they're still harmless.

- [*] The amount of stun enemies receive on each hit is now affected by Proration as well. (But seeing as the attacks are still all able to be canceled and are sort of wonky, this doesn't mean much)

- [*] Every kill extends the combo meter by a set amount, with follow up cuts adding a little more.

Along with the first variation of the Demon Knights, the next version will add player mortality and probably different backgrounds. I'm trying make a move into actual "gameplay" territory now.