First, the exciting stuff! Graphics!
A while ago I picked up the Multi Platformer Tileset by Shackhal when itch.io was doing their Bundle for Racial Justice back in 2020. It’s likely going to be the final tileset that I use and I think it really fits the aesthetic that I’m shooting for in the game. I’m still stumbling around a little bit as I learn more about tilemaplayers but I’m learning a lot as I go.
Speaking of the aesthetic, I’ve renamed the project “Looking for Spring” because it matches the story of the game a lot better. I don’t love the name, but it fits better and I’m open to suggestions. In-house, I’m still calling it JJ for short, but I guess that’s the purpose of working titles.
Next, mechanics.
I completely reworked the rocks. They’re no longer physics objects, they’re actually Area2Ds with some rudimentary “physics” attached to them. It’s all an illusion and it isn’t a very convincing one. At least it works. I’m a baby programmer so I’m going to cut myself some slack here and there.
If you’d like to see some of my rock-related failures, check them out just below. They’re pretty funny.
I’ve also got the first level of the game completed. It was equal parts proof-of-concept, testing-ground and a way for me to cut my teeth on level design and I’m very happy with it. The level even features these little one-way platforms.
I’m very proud of the “jumping down” feature I made for that, too.
Oh, and I got parallax backgrounds now. Yay!
Next, the behind-the-scenes stuff.
I know, it’s extremely exciting.
You can guess from the screenshot that you can now save and load the game and now the game will load and unload game levels into the level controller as needed.
The level controller makes it much easier for me to handle screen transitions and it’ll also prevent the screen from resizing whenever the player moves on from one level to another. This was a problem I noticed in other games that don’t use a system like this.
I, foolishly, decided to add the save/load system after I made some decent progress in the game, but I’m very happy with how it works and I’ll be using it in future games.
I’ve still got a ways to go before I’m truly finished with the game. I still need to make the save/load system something that the player can actually use in-game. I still need to add a status bar of some kind (even if it only shows the amount of health JJ has left). I still need to add a main menu… And of course I still need to design the levels, make sprites, all of it. It’s going to be a lot of work.
To keep from over scoping, I’ve decided to go ahead and get rid of a few mechanics I’d orignally had planned for this game. I got pretty burnt out trying to figure out the rocks in particular, but I think this will ultimately be a great thing for the game. I can narrow my focus and work on just making a good puzzle platformer game. It’ll still have enemies and hazards, of course, but those will also be kept pretty simple.
Anyway, I hope you liked this update! It’s been a couple weeks, but I promise I’ve been steadily working on the game this whole time.
If you’d like to catch a stream of my afternoon game dev time, you can find me here on twitch:
If you’d like to catch my VODs after the fact, you can find them on my Game Dev channel here:
www.youtube.com/@KezuneTwitchDevs
I have neither a regular streaming or publishing schedule because of work, kids and life, but if you do happen to see my streams or videos, I hope you enjoy them.
Anyway, that’s everything I have for you today. Thank you for reading!
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