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Socoder -> In-Development -> Sheep Goes Right - DevDiary |
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| Fri, 27 Sep 2013, 08:15 | |
Jayenkai
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Over the past few weeks, whilst taking time off from AGameAWeek, my head's been stirring with the idea of redoing Sheep Goes Left. I know I'd like to do something fun and new, but equally it should be silly and daft! The last one kinda fell flat on its arse, and that's sort of out me off tackling it again, but.. I dunno.. I still love it as a game! I'm not 100% sure where the next little piece of the puzzle slotted into place, but late last night I started thinking about my little "men on sticks" puppet-styled gameplay that I did for my adventure game. The idea of having little puppets, and enacting silly little scenes with them. The concept of taking Sheep Goes Left, and similarly puppetising the whole game, seemed to flow quite well in my head. And then came the realisation that, if AL is doing the music... He might as well draw the little puppets, too!! So, I opened up Adobe Ideas on the iPad and started doodling silly little (quite high resolution!) sprites. Then, this morning, I opened those sprites up in PaintshopPro and bulked them up a bit with some nice cardboard textures.  Given how simplistic the bits and pieces are, I honestly think I've come up with a really nice looking style, but... ... I dunno.. What do you think? Can you imagine an entire game looking like this? Do you think it could work? Am I heading down yet another dead end?!!? Opinions??! -=-=- ''Load, Next List!'' 
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| Fri, 27 Sep 2013, 08:26 | |
spinal
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I like the look  although I didn't play sheep goes left very much, I think the style would suit the game quite well.
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| Fri, 27 Sep 2013, 13:06 | |
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Jayenkai
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Twitter Linkage  Hard work coming up with such ludicrously large art assets!!! I now need to come up with some sort of gameplay method that doesn't overwhelm the screen, whilst leaving space for the important "Right" and "Jump" buttons towards the bottom. Tricky to fit everything in when the sprites are so fucking huge!! (I'm using 512x512 pixel sprites when on iPadRetina!! Mental!!!) -=-=- ''Load, Next List!''
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| Fri, 27 Sep 2013, 13:20 | |
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Erebel55 |
Looks great Jay, love seeing the progress
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| Fri, 27 Sep 2013, 13:20 | |
spinal
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scrolling? --- scrolling?
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| Fri, 27 Sep 2013, 13:56 | |
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Jayenkai
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Yep, scrolling, but also trying to cram as much as possible in at once so you have enough of a look-ahead as you need. I'll fiddle with sizes, scales and gameplay physics until something nice emerges. -=-=- ''Load, Next List!''
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| Fri, 27 Sep 2013, 14:50 | |
rockford
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I can't play the Vine clip (FireFox has fucked Vine since an update or so ago), but I've loved that style for a long time and planned to do something similar myself. So yeah, this gets a big thumbs up from me  BTW art assets don't have to be too big. You can have the "puppets" and sticks as separate entities. |
| Fri, 27 Sep 2013, 15:17 | |
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Jayenkai
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The sticks are simple rects, the puppets are huge!!!!!
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| Sat, 28 Sep 2013, 02:19 | |
rockford
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OK. They just don't look huge in the screenies.
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| Sat, 28 Sep 2013, 03:35 | |
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Jayenkai
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Well, ok, maybe not HUGE by modern standards, but definitely a hell of a lot bigger than I'm used to! For comparison, here's the new sprites overlayed onto the original.  The comparison should be much more obvious in that pic!! -=-=- ''Load, Next List!''
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| Sat, 28 Sep 2013, 07:57 | |
HoboBen
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Looks really good!!
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| Sat, 28 Sep 2013, 09:40 | |
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Jayenkai
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Currently battling between wanting to come up with plenty of nice "world theme" styles, and having the ability to keep the filesizes down, as well as managing to portray the different level styles whilst using the same childlike cardboard-cutout style throughout.. This is going to be harder than I had hoped!! This is an ingame screenshot.  Sheep goes right, jump works, spikes float up and down, level scrolls.. But not much else. Will be adding background scenery next, and trying to come up with a neat way to reuse the same background code for lots of different graphical styles.. Hmmm.... -=-=- ''Load, Next List!''
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| Sun, 29 Sep 2013, 04:43 | |
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Jayenkai
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 Added some clouds and a sun, as well as a nice simple shadow-thing over the top of the floor. yeay! -=-=- ''Load, Next List!''
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| Sun, 29 Sep 2013, 12:02 | |
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Jayenkai
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Bloody 'ell, it's 8Mb already, and I've barely added any smegging gameplay, yet!!!
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| Fri, 04 Oct 2013, 02:42 | |
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Krakatomato |
I really quite like how this is progressing - keep it up
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| Tue, 08 Oct 2013, 08:42 | |
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Jayenkai
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Spent the past few days working on a level editor for this thing, and it's finally starting to actually work properly!! Next step is to setup some sort of quick and easy online script that can accept a string of garbled levels, so I can sit making levels on my iPad, then grab them to plop into the complete game.. After that, start organising the levels a bit,and design a few other themes so it's not just clouds and rainbows.. Then adding extra obstacles, and other tweaks into the mix.. But.. Yeah.. Have to figure out a menu system for it all, too... Fuck, this game's getting a bit out of hand!! Good job I didn't last to do AGameAWeek this month ... Hmmm.. Guess I did. D'oh!! -=-=- ''Load, Next List!''
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| Mon, 14 Oct 2013, 11:43 | |
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Jayenkai
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Damn, it's taken me SO long to get the editor stuff working! Anyway, I got it going last night, and lay in bed making levels on my iPad! which I then popped into a quick test edition of the game, and made a pisspoor menu for it. You can play "First 10" here. Playable!! Next up, I need to figure out what sort of menu system I'm going to use, how I'm going to layout the levels, and all of that crap. Nnngh... -=-=- ''Load, Next List!''
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| Mon, 14 Oct 2013, 13:16 | |
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spinal
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is it my browser at fault or does it not load? I click the screen, and your animated dots thingy doesnt animate  got it. Two suggestions..... 1. make the curtain dead high quality like the rest of the gfx, it doesn't look right. 2. See #1. -=-=- Check out my excellent homepage!
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| Mon, 14 Oct 2013, 14:17 | |
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Erebel55 |
I agree with Spinal on the curtain. Also, collisions seem a bit off; is this intentional? For example this doesn't kill me.. 
-=-=- Lava Monkey https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lvm.lavamonkey
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| Mon, 14 Oct 2013, 14:27 | |
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spinal
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one more suggestion, it would be nice if the stick were to waggle with the sheep.
-=-=- Check out my excellent homepage!
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| Mon, 14 Oct 2013, 14:40 | |
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Jayenkai
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Curtains are lower quality because of their size. With all that grain over the top, the filesize jumps immensely!! Instead, I ingame-scaled them to 2x their size. I might play about and try to make them a bit higher quality, but ... Not sure how good I can manage to do it, without the filesize getting ludicrous!! Fwiw, the game's already up to 11mb, and that's barely even 3 themes!! High-res assets sucks!!! Wiggling the stick is possible, but I felt that having the sheep wiggle itself looked a little more reasonable. If you imagine the hand under the "theatre",and the exact movement that would be required to hold the sheep in a perfect line, whilst wiggling it back and forth....!! That's some skill!!! It's much easier, in my mind, if the sheep wiggles about at the top of the stick. ... Or am I overthinking the logic on this one?! And, as for collisions, as with all my games, I'm going for "fairness" over exactness. If you think I've overdone it, feel free to argue. -=-=- ''Load, Next List!''
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| Mon, 14 Oct 2013, 14:51 | |
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Erebel55 |
Well let's just say that I had to go back and make sure that collisions were actually implemented. Meaning I had to purposely play a level to die by a direct hit. I think it should be a little less "fair". Just my opinion though, I would wait for at least a second or third person to complain before changing anything. -=-=- Lava Monkey https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lvm.lavamonkey
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| Mon, 14 Oct 2013, 14:54 | |
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Jayenkai
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You want me to make my game harder!? Nobody EVER wants that!!!! I'll fiddle.. Part of the reason I minimised it, though, was so that randomly misshapen scrawls didn't effect gameplay. The collision area is typically around the "always the same shape" area of the spikes. I'll tweak it, though. Try to come up with something a bit more deadly! -=-=- ''Load, Next List!''
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| Tue, 15 Oct 2013, 10:51 | |
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rockford
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I thought it was great, but a bit too samey even after just a few levels (I know you'll add new stuff later, so it's nothing to worry about). Love the sheep, clouds and spiky things (well all the graphics, really). I thought the curtain was alright tbh. The sun movement is odd though. I can see what it's doing and why it's doing it, but the sun shouldn't really move at all. So yeah, it's good
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| Tue, 15 Oct 2013, 11:18 | |
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Jayenkai
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Yeah, I was in two minds about that sun thing. On the one hand, it's dangling on a piece of string, and being tugged along with the camera, so I wanted to add that sway in, but on the other hand, it kinda makes me think about why everything else isn't also similarly swaying.. Then I started considering adding actual accelerometer based movement to the clouds, and.. *sigh* Yeah, I might just take out the sun thing, or at the very least tone it down a bit. Not that it matters much... .. There are bigger quirks in the game than that... The moon/stars parallax oddity is a much larger logic issue
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| Tue, 15 Oct 2013, 13:47 | |
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Erebel55 |
Yeah I found myself starring at the sun as well wondering why it was moving like that 
-=-=- Lava Monkey https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lvm.lavamonkey
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