Shoot me I'm a bad blogger.

I've not posted in ages even though there has been a tonne done.

-Joypad support and control reconfiguring is now fully functional.
- New start up sequence.
- Almost sorted reasonably efficient A.I.
- Mountain levels 1 and 2 done.
- New character called Snicks. Hes a red, black horned cat thing that will act as your guide.
- Checkpoints now completly in place.

So whislt that's rather a lot, shall we do a list of things still to do? I think so!

- Mountain 3, Crash Site 1-3, Boss battle and Village 1 (redesign) to be made.
- Woodland levels need sorted, its all ridiculously slow considering these levels are smaller than things like Mountain 2. They also need tweaked a little because of improved jump heights and whatnot.
- Finalize sound effects.
- Music.
- Cutscenes, I'm going with a comic book style for this but they might still have sound effects and stuff!.
- Knitting everything together.
- Testing.

Hey, that's not so bad! I'm really enjoying playing Nysho. Haha I'd probably get more work done if it wasnt so fun.

CAUTION: PANT WETTING NEWS FOLLOWS THIS ANNOUNCEMENT

I intend on releasing a public demo within the next week or so! It's aim is to attract possible publishers as well as quench a little of the curiosity around Nysho.

Right then, back to work! I'll post with the demo soon!

Some new piccytures!!

If you check out the gallery, theres 4 new shots from the village levels. The first level isn't in there because I got to the 2nd one and went a different route so it either need redone or restyled. In the village levels your helping the villagers rebuild by finding the materials crates. Don't get me wrong though, it's platforming all the way just with a few more "goal points" if you like than the straight out "get-to-here" levels.

I've started work on the mountain levels. They are all snowy and what not BUT I WILL NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES put stupid slippy ice bits in ANY of the levels. They suck, you know it, I know it, let's not go there. After getting the mountain levels done, there is 3 or 6 more to do depending on how long I feel the game should be at this point. There is a plot twist at the end of the mountain levels, so having 6 more levels to do may or may not make the player get bored. We shall see!

Little has been done with code. I'm thinking of implementing a lives system but I'm not sure if there is any point. The reality is you would get a "GAME OVER" screen and just reload your last save or start the level again. Not sure if there is any point to this. So collecting coins may go towards a High Score table for that level rather than just extra lives. Again, we shall see!

Development will slow down a little over the next few weeks. I'm moving house so there will be a few days where nothing gets done. After the levels are "done" i.e. alpha I'm going back through them all, tweaking and changing what I don't like, optomising for performance and so on. I read an article on gamespot about the last hours of development of Black and White. For each of the games challenges they gave a fun rating out of 10. Anything below an 8 had to be improved. I think I might do something similar with Nysho, after all you want challenged not frustrating.

In general all is good. I'm learning, creating and so forth. Nysho and the Attack of the Boons will probably be available for Christmas, however I distribute it. Check out the screens internet biscuits!

Second post....I'm getting adventurous huh?

So after lots of tinkering and shite I got the new death behaviour working. You go back to the last checkpoint, which I also got working, or back to the start depending. So that's good!

Not done a whole lot today in terms of code. I'm avoiding the nasty subject of A.I at the moment, we will continue to live in the land of flowers and simple code for now!

However, I'm busying myself away with the last of the 3 village type levels, the first one needs overhauled but I'll get back to that. It's pretty cool actually, each level type has a very distinct colour scheme because I get sick fed up of seeing the same colour in a game over and over. I wasn't going to post any screens of the village levels because I want some areas to be suprises but my ego might drive me to posting a load of screens. We'll see if I hold out!

Other than that I played a little Pitfall: The Lost Expidition this morning as "research". It's a good game but it's open-endedness means theres a fair bit of backtracking. Worth picking up though. I'm playing "American McGees Alice", so much better than Scrapland and a bargain for £5

First Post!

Ok so from now on every day I can be bothered I'm going to post the massive technological and gameplay leaps I take with Nysho and the Attack of the Boons. Most likely screenshots and videos and whatnot will be linked too because when I do something cool I like to show off.

So today I got up about 12 and thought "crap I was going to do a whole level today". So instead I decided to do some of the little things that make everything sparkle. Time for a start menu!

It took me 10-15 minutes to get my head round buttons but after that I photoshoped a "New" button and did a little coding to get it to go to the first level. I had to tinker around a bit because certain panels needed to show and others needed to disappear but I got that working. I did a little scene with nysho standing in it as a backdrop for the menu and it all looks pretty good.

Ah but then there was a problem! When you die, which you do a good bit, the game now zapped you back to the start screen! ARGH! So its time to write a new restart code. This was also a good opportunity to shove in the checkpoints I've been telling all who play the game I will. There's only a few problems with them at the moment i.e. they don't work at all. The new restart code does kinda, the only problem is you go back to the start and you get more health and you score remains BUT your still lowing like the dead orange dog/sheep looking dude you are.

More later maybe, this Blogging thing isn't so bad, shouldn't have knocked it!

Edit number one - It occured to me I should probably put in a list of what is already in the game!

- 7 out of 18 levels, theres 2 others I'm working on this week but they are in a state unfit to hold a holy name.
- Joypad support, essential because I prefer using a joypad.
- Coins, spikes and all the stuff that comes along with 3DGS template scripts.
- Well balanced controls.
- Boons but by god does the A.I slow everything down, something to work on.
- HUD
- Other stuff.