Combo

I worked mainly on platformer mechanics these last weeks: grip on ledges, zipline, ladders, etc. Everything works fine so far, and the game begins to be enjoyable on this side.

However, all the fight mechanics and scripts haven't changed for a long time (in this post I showed my process to make the main character's attack animation), and they need a lot of work.That's what I'm on these days.

I started to make new attack animations. These first 3 animations below are meant to be a combo. 

Crouch attack

This attack is triggered when the player attacks while blocking. It pushes enemies and can break their guard, or pushes objects violently... In my dreams. For now it's  coded like a normal attack, with more bugs.

The animation I used before this update. I plan to use it if UP is pressed when attack is triggered.

Jumping attack

Animating is hard! These are far from perfect but they are usable while programming. 

I still have a lot of work on this (mostly on the way the character will move on X axis while attacking, and better timings on enemies' stun so it really has the effect of a combo), but I'm happy to be already able to show in-game karate action:

(click for full size)

Twitter

I have a Twitter account: https://twitter.com/MKD_games.

I'm currently working on new attack animations for player. I plan to add a 3 hits combo and a air attack. That's hard but I hope I'll finish soon & show it here.

Voxel! making pixel art in 3D

I continued my work on Voxels. I'm still not sure if it'll be useful in Cape Bleue, but I like this process, and I thought I could show it here.

So I start with a small pixel art truck I draw a few weeks ago.

original size (x1)

size x3

I import it in Qubicle (I don't use MagicaVoxel anymore, it was a nice little soft but it lacks necessary functions like copy/paste or move) and extrude the form to the depth. I won't explain the process again as it's quite simple (it's just doing pixel art in three dimensions) and I already did a quick explanation in a recent post.

Work was 75 % done when this screenshot was taken : extrude is done, headlights are OK, but the wheels are not "cut", and there's no license plate yet

After some time sculpting it, I'm happy with the result.

Now I can view the truck on various views, and start dreaming about all the games that could be done with nice 3D assets like these :)

I can also generate variations around the first image in this post, with slightly new angles (but still in side view so it can be used in projects like Cape Bleue), like shown below :

I think this render, for example, is a far better drawing than the one I did in pixelart.

And finally, a good ol' gif showing the truck on every (side view) angle :

Hope you liked it, thanks for reading!

Zipline

This week end I coded two important things for level design : ladder climbing and ziplines.

Here is a video showing a quick fight and how zipline is used. You can see it below as a gif, or here on http://gfycat.com (5 times lighter)

Birds & early concept art

In order to add life in the game's world, I plan to make a lot of non-gameplay stuff like the birds you can seen below. They do their bird's stuff, and when the player is detected, they escape. Speed and other variables may change, but the idea already works great. (click for full size)
 

Unrelated: my friend Mathias just began to work on concept arts and designs. Here is the very first official concept art for Cape Bleue. It's far from being finished so I shouldn't show it here... But I love it and couldn't wait.

New tileset & voxel tests

Very quick update this time.

I'm rebuilding the levels in Unity, with a new rocks & dirt tileset. The dirt is a slight rework of the old dirt tileset, and rocks are all new, made by me with the help of Mathias.   

A few days ago, I tried to transform some pixel graphics I made for Cape Bleue in voxels. It was only very quick tests on newly discovered software (MagicaVoxel), but the result is interesting. I plan to do more of this.

The two next pictures can help to figure how it's done, and why voxel is different from classic 3D modelling : I upload an image (here, a red car) and extrude it to the depth.

And from this point, I can sculpt the form very easily by adding or erasing little squares. The yellow car is half-done (only the front is sculpted).

New screenshots & work on interface

A lot of work have been done since the last screenshots I put on MKD games. So here are a few screenshots of the current version of the game and, after that, new interface stuff.
Click on images for full size.

The hero's village with new parallax background and sky. It's a rework (not finished yet) of level one's background, that you can see below, with a sight of the climb mechanic I made recently.

After hours of hard work, I'm happy to have a working interface now ! Here are some pics of the interface for inventory and quest management. All the graphics are still a work in progress (and objects are not made by me & will be replaced), but programming is 95% done.

The player can equip 3 objects : a weapon, a protection and a "special" (which allows a special ability, like shooting or double jump). There are consumable objects too, and quest objects.

On this screen the player can see all the quests, categorized as "in progress" or "finished".

And I wanted a solution to hide a technical problem when a scene is started (we were able to see the camera positioning itself on player's sprite, sprite positioning etc.), so I did an animated screen to show level's name at start. See below.

That's all, thanks for reading!