Mudtato
Push, Pickup, Projectile
Got “pushable” doodads in there now. Combined with picking up and throwing at enemies it’s proving to be pretty fun :)
Pick Me Up
I spent a bit of time getting “grabbable” items in the game. I’m calling these doodads, which will cover any object the player can interact with, but that isn’t a collectible.
I tweaked the action button to work for a tap (melee), and a hold (grab). A doodad can be picked up with a hold, dropped with a tap and thrown if dropped with momentum.
Onion can’t hold things (no arms), so the object is dropped when switching characters.
There’s a fun, unintentional effect where the doodad can be thrown at an enemy, pushing the enemy through the map if it lands on top. The doodads also work with moving and disappearing platforms. I’m pretty happy with my collision system!
Although, I had a “game development is painful” moment tonight. There were some collision issues that took longer to resolve than they should have. Fortunately they were legitimate bugs that would’ve broken things down the track, so it’s good to iron them out now.
As you can see from the gif it’s not pretty at all, but it’s a good start!
Just do it
As much as I didn’t really plan on or want to do any work on the game this evening, I ended up doing so and it turned out to be productive.
- Added Onion’s double jump (anim todo)
- Added some distance to Sausage’s punch, which involved fixing a bug in the animation system that wasn’t getting the points right if facing left
- Added a completion callback to animations, e.g. to call another animation
- Make Onion only able to burrow under enemies while moving (stopping under an enemy is a hit)
Next up I’ll probably work on picking up and throwing items for Sausage, and maybe pushing items too. Oh, and breaking things with melee. Got to revisit climbable things (ropes, ladders etc) as well.
I’ve also got to keep balancing the two characters in mind with everything I design. They’re quite different, but the player needs to be able to get through the game with either character.
At every peak there’s another mountain to climb :)
Burrowed Time
I got a rough burrow animation playing by tweaking my animation system to allow specified animations to play to completion, without being replaced with idle or run etc. Can’t believe it took me this long to run into the need for it.
I’ve also got a punch animation in there for the Sausage, so he can melee the baddies now. I couldn’t be bothered to use the wacom for that one and did with my laptop trackpad…
Doing this is making me wish I’d kept up animation since studying it over 10 years ago… Better late than never!
Technically with the way he flips the eyes should be at the back… it’s a magic onion.
On a roll
I seem to be making good progress, as you can see in the gif below.
As I mentioned a couple of posts back, the Onion is defence focused, so his special move is a burrow. Unlike Mario, DK etc, he can’t jump on enemies to take them out, so he must avoid them. He can do this by burrowing into most surfaces, and from any angle. Onion’s also got a double jump.
Sausage, on the other hand, is the tough one of the team and can melee and jump on enemies as well as pick up things to throw.
I did an animation for burrowing, but I haven’t got it playing yet, and the fall animation is the same as the idle animation, which itself isn’t quite right - too front on. Not to mention Onion being a bit squashed. Sausage also doesn’t know what animation to play when Onion is moving while burrowed (edit: fixed). Lots of things to fix!
Animation
In the last post I said I wanted to get some basic animations in the game. My usual tool of choice is Photoshop, which I’ve been using almost daily for over 10 years. However, I haven’t been using the Timeline for animation much, and my plans for creating some quick and easy animations kind of didn’t work out.
So I went off to find an alternative, hopefully something very simple, and ideally free. I ended up getting Sketchbook Pro, as it has a “Flipbook” feature that does exactly what I need!
I tried it out and managed to knock up some really rough animations, which you can see below. They’re a bit janky, and final colours and details are yet to be decided, but it’s fun to see my creations in the game.
Yes, one of the characters is a sausage.
The other is an onion, of course.
There’s a phenomenal amount of work ahead…
Below is my first attempt, but it wasn’t quite the style I was looking for.
Oh, and I’ve just been checking out some amazing artists on Twitter and now have a theory that cat ownership is correlated with artistic talent.
I have a dog.