Highwire4

Welp as of typing this I've finished up the build for ESTATE that I need for my school finals so that's one milestone passed. I'm going to be taking a few days off of working on it to just have fun and relax after the hell of finals has passed but then its right back to work. Here's a shot of the game as it currently is, with super hasty redesign of Beta that I'll give more time too soon. I'm sending this build out to testers as well so if you've ever tested the game in the past, please make sure your pm boxes aren't full please. ESTATE isn't the only game making progress however: Notice some changes?

When it comes to programs like these the interface is actually one of the most important things to get done before releasing a public build so I doubt he'd release it in it's current state if its not finished.

Sounds good. As long as you put thought into what mechanics you picked and leave out the stuff that barely works well in 2D like quickstep areas, sky diving areas, and dash rings. And please god no more QTEs, do something better than that.

This does look pretty cute. I've played one of Marvin's games before and it wasn't too good. He didn't seem to take criticism well either, so hopefully he's better to work with than my past interactions were with him. So I assume there's a classic and modern style of play right? Please tell me you guys are doing the modern gameplay after the Sonic Rush style rather than the 2D "modern" style that everyone seems to think is a good idea of game design?

aww fuck. I really didn't mean to rip him a new one, and I guess I'm over reacting at this a little bit, so my bad on that. I dunno, something about still bugs me but I guess its really just me who is bugged by it. I dunno, coming in out of no where with a literal list of stuff you think should be in some guy's game and leaving it at that without any actual reason other than "because it should" just rubs me the wrong way. Like if you pulled that shit to me in real life I'd be a little miffed about it. Anyway, I really don't want this discussion to get off topic from this so I'm taking this to PMs if it goes any further. My bad man. Carry on.

This just occured to me, and this is just a suggestion, and is something that you would do near the end of development, but a Help/FAQ button of some kind that either had tutorials or guides of some kind written into the program or a link to a website with that kind of info would be rather cool and bring in a lot more potential users who don't have a lot of experience with this sort of thing. I'm only suggesting it cause MMF2 had one and I remember it helping me out a few times as a kid which helped me keep experimenting with it. Hot damn both of those logos look nice.

EDIT: Basically I overreacted accidentally to something I thought wasn't okay but apparently was so whoops. Sorry man. Ignore and move on.

Indeed. Unifying the visual assets is something that should be pretty high on your priority list due to the absurd amount of clashing between styles that's going on.

I'd say you've got it. Looks great!

Basically yeah. I sometimes will darken the pallet and subtract 1 shade from it and use the dakest shade of the new pallet to replace where the 2 darkest shades were on the old one, with some adjusting of course, but that should work fine for now. I personally use two programs for spriting. The first is the image editor in MMF2 and the 2nd is a mac only program called Pixen which is like paint but with layers and animation capabilities.

yeah thats moving in the right direction. It could use possibly a little less detail or slightly darker colors to give it that extra push backwards into space, but that's already better than what was there before.

Good to see the performance issue fixed. What I meant by 'accommodating lesser shades' I meant reducing the number of shades in the pallet. Sorry about that, I'm usually clearer with my suggestions. It would have to be done by hand, but I'm talking about something like this: These are graphics from my indie game. The one on the left is how the door looks when the lights are off. The graphic on the right is how the door looks when the lights are on. Notice how different the shades and shading is between the two. I went about making these by first creating the sprite on the right, which uses 3 shades for each color along with an outline color. I then downgraded the color pallet to two shades per color and altered the shading to make it have as dark of shadows as I could. I took the colors from the pallet and made them more like highlights for the object and used the outline color as the dominant color for the shadows. The outline color replaced many of the darker shades that were present in the sprite on the right and exaggerated the shadows more as well. You can get away with this kind of effect with changing the color pallet to 1 shade per color as well, but these sprites have 2 because they needed to stand out more. Does this help convey sufficient information? If you still don't understand, go ahead and do the separate pattern option. Can't go wrong with that.

I remember it before it even got on spriters resource back when Mystical Forest Zone actually had a community. I used to be part of said community and remember seeing skylight's sheet slowly come together and eventually get submitted to the MFZ site. I think he had a game too that used those sprites, was actually pretty good. Can't remember what it was called though. So yeah Neo_Fire I hope you're properly crediting everyone for the pixel art cause I haven't seen a single original sprite in your game yet.

I think what Stardust is attempting to say is that the foreground and background tiles look too similar and should have a little variation between them. It honestly just looks like a darken filter was slapped over the background tiles to make them fall back into space rather than manually adjusting the color pallet and shading to achieve this instead. There are a few ways to go about making the background fall back more into space and making the foreground more pronounced. You could change the pattern of the background tile completely to something less visually busy and change the color pallet to make it darker. You could also change the color pallet to accommodate a lesser number of shades than the foreground and adjust the shading accordingly which might actually be the quicker and easier option since its kind of like down grading a sprite. Every graphic in my indie game has to have a drastic lighting change and I've found that method to be the most effective and visually pleasing. Its up to you though. As for the performance issue...Maybe change the snow fall tile to a larger size so the engine doesn't have to manage so many at once? Like from 32x32 to 128x128?

I'm sad about the hazmat suit too, I like her previous design way more than this but it just doesn't fit in with the setting of the game anymore and had to be changed. Her suit design is rushed right now just to meet deadlines for school (I have to have a very short but quality demo done in like 2 weeks sooooo decisions had to be made) but I will go back and make it more visually appealing and unique and cool looking when I have the time so she actually has character and charm rather than a faceless suit. I've entertained the idea of having her suitless as an unlockable for beating the game, but that's a decision I'll make near the end of development. Thanks though on the text boxes, I made them on the fly in like 15 seconds lol

Uhm yeah wow that water distortion is beyond disorienting. Something like that should be subtle rather than mind exploding. This is looking fantastically put together though.

So scripted events are now a thing. Most of the first introductory sequence works the way its supposed to. It just needs proper dialog and it'll be done. The neat thing about it is that it only progresses when you want and doesn't take control away from you while an event is happening. Also behold Beta's new hazmat suit. There will be moments where she has it off but she'll be wearing it for most of the game. Geez this game has changed so much I should really just make a whole new thread for it or something shouldn't I....yeeeah probably.

Another neat feature to go along with the jump height marker would be a jump length marker that would show how far sonic could jump at a given speed before hitting the ground. Not sure if you can do something like that but it'd be cool. This is sounding rather sweet and I'll be watching the progress of this as it goes on.

That HUD is looking pretty sweet though for a placeholder. Information is nicely distributed but is still compact.

Depending on development of my game goes, I might actually have time available for something like this and it'd be pretty nice to work on something else for a little bit, even if its just for one level or so. I won't know for sure about this for another 2-3 weeks though. How traditional is the level design going be? It sounds like its following S3&K's level formula with a little bit of co-op thrown in.

yup. I still think you should change the color of the tiles to something with a bit more character than MS Paint cyan. Maybe slightly purple-blue for the tiles and have a slightly red-purple sky? I dunno, its just too generic of a color in my eyes but thats up to you.

Those colors are pretty flat and don't create a lot of depth in the scene. Your background tiles should be a different color than your foreground tiles so that players can tell the difference between the two. They should also be a different color than the character so they don't blend in with the background. What is the character even supposed to be like what a puff ball? With a santa hat?

Welp I've been messing around with the HUD while I get the game levels built and this is something I've kinda settled on. I've made the hearts bigger and gave them shading to make them stand out and I've changed the way the weapon selection is shown. Every time you get a new gun a new icon will appear up top. If it requires ammo it'll have a percentage next to it (which isn't shown in this screen shot) that displays how much each weapon has. The symbol for the weapon will light up and shine when selected, like how the green one is now. I've also taken out the pick up/carry icon out of the mix and instead assigned it to a seperate button entirely for the sake of simplicity. Does this look better compared to last time? Also just as a side note, Lost Adventure is finally up on IndieDB and GameJolt so if you missed out on it you can get it there.

So that's how you do it. Yeah there's gotta be a simpler way of doing it that doesn't require 30 plus layers, especially if the game already has 5-10 layers to begin with. Do be kind and let us know if it works please.

Thats pretty impressive from a technical stand point. Very polished and visually appealing in terms of the boss's movements and particle effects, looks professional. Is there more to the game or this all that's been made?