Animated Screen Shots

So I think it's time for an update, it's been awhile so I'll have to dig through everything we did since last time.

I made my own built in screenshot taker for the game which outputs ordered bitmaps to a file. And along with this, I was able to make it record each frame so that I can compile them into an animated gif of the actual gameplay of the game.

So we've been adding in different gameplay elements for the grasslands area. I can't believe we are still working on this same area, we are itching to get into the more interesting areas, but we want to make each part of the game as good as we possibly can. Anyway here are some of the new things:

A pretty basic new element is the bouncing blant, which isn't anything too new to platformers but a basic part of platforming.

A turtle-like creature who walks around and blows wind out through a hole in his back.



A new enemy.

And a funny glitch that I decided to record. When I was adding in the ability for the bird to shoot pellots out of his mouth, I accidently made him shoot out other birds! That's just crazy! Birds don't shoot other birds out of their mouths! Believe me, I know, I watch Animal Planet.

The other thing that has taken up a lot of time recently, has been rewriting the entire companion system. Because the original game idea has changed so much and the companions were one of the first things I put in, they were long overdue for a reworking. I managed to get most of it finished and back up to the state that it was in before, but this time a lot better. So now the dog follows you a lot better and hardly ever misses a jump, making 'teleporting' back to you less common. Flying companions following you now looks a lot more naturual and not as jumpy as before. I'm still going to work on some tweaking of the companion AI but for the most part I am done with that.

So I moved back to working on the cutscenes and the actual game content. I started building the next section of levels a little bit, I plan to do the whole rest of the grasslands next week. I also added in the next couple of cutscenes, which are very time consuming to create, and realized that we needed a better way to organize the story and map out the game. For the most part right now we are remembering it all up in our brains. So we decided to write out a document that has an outline for all the characters, every cutscene, and every area in the game we need to create. I started working on it today and got a solid 4 and a half pages done so far. Unfortunatley it only leads up to about five minutes in gamplay (though a lot of it was history of the story before the game even starts.) So this document is probably going to take a while, but it will be worth it.

Hmmm what else did we do since last post? Oh yeah this!


Another awesome piece of work by Gutter.

Ok well I think I'm going to leave it at that for now. There will be more updates soon.

Grand Feather

Finally we have a name for our game...


With awesome new art by our good pal, Gutter. We have been working a very long time on coming up with a good story for the world the game is set in, and we finally made one that we are both really happy with. The name Grand Feather has to do with the main story line, and the history of the game world. It refers to the majestic birds who live on and protect the island that Jack, Roger, and the 3 peg-appendage Captain land on at the begining of the game. They originally are forced to land there when Roger (Jack's dog) jumps out of the airship after a bird that flies by. They eventually get mixed up in the middle of events that are taking place on the island and eventually do enough things to make a game about. Don't worry there is way more story and a lot less generic events, but I do not want to explain all of it before we have more of the game completed.

We also have a new video.



Yeah, it is still the same grasslands area, that we have been working on, but almost all the graphics have changed since the last video and I thought that there should be a video of what the game currently looks like. We pretty much have all the graphical components of this area done and are moving on to the next ones, which are way more interesting.

So the game is really coming together, and now that we have a complete story in our minds for this thing, it no longer feels like the development of this game is going to come with us to our retirement homes. We have been working a lot on it recently and have been making a ton of progress so keep checking back for more updates! (And don't forget to drop us a comment!)

Another Grasslands Tileset Change and Background Update

Well, this is about the 4th time we've changed up the looks of the Grasslands tilesets, this time the ground fades to black. We are pretty happy with the looks of it and will probably keep this one, at least for awhile. The background layers have also been updated with more detail, but they are not 100% finished yet. Here's a shot:



All of our screenshots for a while now have all been relatively the same with the same tiles, but hopefully we are about finished with this zone and will move back to some fresh new interesting locations that we haven't worked on for a while.

The new tiles make the tiling system a bit more complicated when making the levels with the editor. We have to select the correct tile so that each ground tile transitions smoothly now instead of just having one ground tile that we can just paint over everywhere. There are also a lot of different situations that a different tile is needed and it is difficult to create every single tile needed. I'm debating whether it would be worth the time to edit the level editor so it will auto-tile the ground, select the correct tile for each situation based on the tile types around it, or just continue to do it manually each time.


Another big thing we are working on right now, still, is the main story. We are coming up with different backstories for the locations and different characters and trying to put together a complete, well thought out, story for the game. We've been brainstorming and pushing around different ideas for awhile now and I think its starting to finally come together nicely. Who knows, we may even come up with a name for the game soon!