Go Nuts contest entry: Tommy Gunn

[Xerra]

Gameplay.  To see you've been working (and not just Blinkok lol).   

Ok, if you insist. I was going to put up a video showing this in motion but there's some stuff I don't want seen yet and also I've only just overlaid the collision tiles with temporary land tiles so there's a lot of work needed still before I can count level 1 as complete. I've also just rewritten how the enemies move around the map and still not happy with it, so just some screenshots for now. Mr BlinkOk will confirm there's a game coming together here as he's also testing for me :-)

I have four levels I'm currently planning - hopefully the fourth one will be a boss fight with the evil mastermind, Qube. Not got too far design-wise on that part yet but BlinkOk has done some nice industrial scenery for Syntax Bomb HQ.

Rock face is the first one - and some elements are shown here. I've got my collision tiles the wrong size compared to the graphics, which I stupidly didn't notice, so I'll have to redo it all, but this is better than seeing red blocks everywhere for now.

Level 2 is jungle.
Level 3 will be a hybrid of the first two graphics.

Tanks are already in, as can be seen. They don't fire yet and you can't kill them at present.

Enemies are taking up a lot of my time trying to get them right with how the levels will be set out. This is the main reason I haven't got a proper completed level to demo.

Poison traps, pits, water holes, quicksand are also possibilities for each level.

Quite a bit more I'm not mentioning because it's all on a list and some of it will inevitably need to be shelved when I start running out of time.

I've got all the front end stuff and game flow around 90% done, though. That too can get improved depending on time but I didn't want to be panicking trying to get it all shoved together at the end. Now I can just add bits right up to deadline and just stop when I have to.

[Derron]

_is there a reason for the tank having these pixelated jaggy outlines while the palm trees in the background are ultra smooth?
Wrong mask for the sprite?




the "portal/door" ... it needs to fade into sandstone on the red border -- as if "painted on it": create a sprite of the background without the red border, then a sprite only consisting of the red border. Then "multiply" render it on top of the background/sand background. This will create a "painted on the surface" look.
You can drawyour "without border" door then normal on top.
If you want, you can even have the red border of the door still on the "without border door"-sprite but gradually fade it out short after start - so stuff blends over nicely.

Another way to "fix" it is to add some kind of "3d shadow" behind the door - so it is clearly visible that the door is standing a meter in front of the background (similar to the shadows of the ground blocks the green soldier stands on - except that the shadow needs to be smaller, as not "as far reaching into the front").

bye
Ron

[Steve Elliott]

Enemies are taking up a lot of my time trying to get them right with how the levels will be set out. This is the main reason I haven't got a proper completed level to demo.

Fair enough.

[Xerra]

Still maybe a bit too early to put a video up but, as I've mostly laid out the first level, why not. Lot of work still to do with this, and the video plays slower than the game does due to Snagit, but here it is.

[STEVIE G]

Good work.

I'm gonna do a mini-Derron ... its slower paced than I expected but probably the recording like you say.  Bullets need to be bigger to suit the cartoony look and move faster as it seems like you could outrun them.  Do the tanks shoot at you? According to the headstone you were born 4 years after you died 

[Xerra]

I'm gonna do a mini-Derron ... its slower paced than I expected but probably the recording like you say.  Bullets need to be bigger to suit the cartoony look and move faster as it seems like you could outrun them.  Do the tanks shoot at you? According to the headstone you were born 4 years after you died 

Bullets will be bigger and more pronounced. The other backgrounds (Underground station, HQ and Jungle) are all different graphically so they will need to stand out against them. I'll be fine-tuning that part when I have the other levels laid out. Still trying to work out how to do the third level with the underground station, thinking I might do it as right scrolling only with enemy swarms to shake it up a bit from the platform-side. Time is my biggest worry on doing stuff like that.

Slower is because of video - it's quicker in play.

I'm planning on tanks shooting at you and you also being able to take them out - hence grenades number on the hud.

The headstone is deliberate. You forget that Tommy Gunn is going back in time to rescue the Scientists. He's gone back to 4 years before he was born as that's where the evil Qube sent the scientists in various different locations. So, if you fail the mission and get killed then you did die before you were born

[STEVIE G]

Ah, time-travel 

[Steve Elliott]

Very nice.  You and Stevie sorted what were my observations too.

[Xerra]

Hard at work creating the second level - here's how it looks in the editor.

I bought GMLive a couple of weeks ago and it's helped me no end with getting the levels underway as before I was adding an area, manually positioning the player in code and recompiling to test that bit, then going back and doing a bit more before recompiling to test again. With GMLive I have the server running in the background monitoring for updates in the room I'm working on and also the code for key objects such as the player and enemies. Now I can just compile the game, make it jump to the correct level I'm working on and then add/remove stuff in the room at will, or adjust the code for the objects I'm watching. As soon as I save in the editor the code is intercepted and the interpreter runs the modified code instead of what was there at compile time. It's all saved out afterwards so you don't lose any changes afterwards.

Probably the best use of £30 I've spent in a looooong time, even if it was a bit fiddly to set up initially.

Oh, I should add that the platform graphics aren't the ones shown in this image. I modify them in-game based on level and this is the default image for level 1.


In the screenshot, if you look closely, then you can see the crates for grenades, extra health and score are now in. I've got water and lava pits for this level as well which need a bit of work still but should make for some careful jumping in certain areas.

[Xerra]

So it actually looks like this when playing level 2...

[Xerra]

Finally, for this evening, I'm doing an Adam and posting a sneak peek.

Is Tommy going to catch a train?

[Steve Elliott]

Coming along very nicely, I've lost about a week in development but picking up the slack now.

[Xerra]

That dastardly Qube has finally shown his face. Tommy sneaks up to take him out with a stealth kill.

Laying out the final level at the moment - not sure what I'm going to do with old copper-top at present. All the levels are in and mostly built now - they just need some tuning up and a bit more testing. Luckily I've got a few friends helping me out with that this time.

It looks like I'm about to lose the whole of next weekend including Friday as I'm probably going away for a few days, which means I'm going to have to get this done by Thursday or I'm out of the competition.

Getting my head down for the last few days now <panic>

[Steve Elliott]

Ah, I'm sure you and the team will get it done in plenty of time, looks good.

[Xerra]

Here's hoping. Trip cancelled. Now I have a fighting chance