Full Cast of Villains

In the past, I have mentioned several of the planned villains for my game. These include Invisi-Bill, a stealthy crook with the power to avoid detection by the naked eye , The Jawbreaker, a candy themed baddie with gumball blasters, The Treble-Maker, a music lover turned bad with sound wave cannons, and Night Knight, the armored fiend who is somewhat of a night owl. I have done at least some work on all of these villains, but I wanted to take the time to introduce the other four villains who are still in the idea phase. There is FrostBite, a man with the power to control snow or ice. He often uses this ability to create a large snow golem he controls from the inside. Then, there is Polter-Guy, a man with all the powers of a ghost. Vam-Pyre is a horror fanatic with the ability to control and shoot fire. Finally, Hive Mind is a bee-themed villain with the ability to control the minds of others. It is very likely that the majority of these villains will not work their way into my demo, but I thought it would be fun to share them with you all.

Invisi-Bill talking.

An updated version of Invisi-Bill teleporting.

Invisi-Bill's attacking animations.

Invisi-Bill's Jumping and aerial attacking animations.

Level Map

So the images below are my plan for my level. As this is a candy factory, I wanted to include a lot of industrial motifs, like conveyor belts, storage crates, and huge crushers (I nicknamed them Candy Crushers). I tried to incorporate elements of good level design like I explained in one of my other posts. I definitely applied the concept of teaching the player mechanics in a controlled environment before testing them in a dangerous one, which can be seen with the placement of the conveyor belts, crushers, and mini bosses. I also tried to keep the level varied by consistently adding what I thought were new or interesting elements or by presenting a player with a decent challenge using previously introduced elements in a different way. I apologize if it is a little hard to follow, as I made it more to keep myself on track than to show others, but I really just wanted to share it.

Part one of the map. Starts in lower left corner.

Part two of the map. Starts in upper left corner.

No More Music

I decided to leave out music from the final demo of my game because the deadline is fast approaching and I feel that I would rather focus on other aspects of the game. In addition I still cannot figure out how to incorporate music or sound effects properly. I feel that music and sound effects are just the icing on top of the cake. You cannot put icing on an incomplete cake, it needs to be baked first. I have researched music and have the information that I have written on previous blogs, so if I get everything else done, I can add some sound effects or music. I would prefer to focus on the game itself for the time being. Next week, I hope to show off my whole plan for my level. I have been planning out a schematic so that I know everything that I want to incorporate.

Here is an explosion.

More Music Research

Like in my last post, I will be sharing several music creation or download websites that I have found that I may be able to use for my game. The first for this week is http://famitracker.com. This application allows you to create music on the hardware used for Nintendo's first console, the NES/Famicom. It even allows you to export the music to actual NES/Famicom. This is handy for people who want to make Homebrew games, or fanmade games on actual cartridges. The next music maker is called http://www.beepbox.co. This application is similar to the format of Pulse Boy from the last post, but unfortunately I am not sure if I can export the music to my game because it seems to be made to be used for fun and it only talks about sharing by using the URL. I will try to decide which of these programs I should use.

Here's a music note enemy!

Music Research

Recently, I have looked into multiple possible websites that I could either get music from or make my own on. The first I looked into is indiegamemusic.com. It was created by Roald Strauss, who has worked on video games and music for them since the 80's. He created the website to allow game developers with low budgets to get music for their games from himself or other musicians who can upload their songs to the website. Another website I looked into was premiumbeat.com. This is not really a video game music website, but it has tons of stock tracks and sound effects to choose from. This next website is called http://www.pulseboy.com. This application allows one to create 8-bit tracks from scratch and it is honestly very cool. The only problem is it looks very complex and it might take some time to learn how to operate it. I will look into more websites and share what I learn about them soon.

Here's a bouncing music note!