Many behind-the-scene fixes.
Posted by EchoJerichoX on July 09 2011 06:44:03
News 1
I figure it is about time for a new update. Also, I'll be using that neat little red Samus pixel art for my news avatar now. It seems to fit the site theme a lot better.

A lot of progress has been made as far as the new demo in the past few weeks, which is a relief since the project has come back alive. However, most of the changes are less visual than you are all hoping for. That is NOT a bad thing! As a matter of fact, most of the changes that have been made thus far were ones that will help speed up the development process. Those changes include merging a lot of redundant objects, redoing some old ones to make them easier to configure on the fly, adding scripts to check global variable arguments more efficiently and merging a few tilesets. The bulk of these changes sped up the level design a LOT. Not to mention, it made everything a lot easier to keep track of.

As far as some other changes, the Jet Boost has been finally implemented - the last item that needed to be added to the game. In the process, I was able to clean up more code that dealt with the player. Since the Jet Boost is in the game, I can work on adding the new sprites for dashing and dodging. Veni Mortem - a very talented spriter and animator - has been helping me with that.

A long-standing bug that made light radiuses show above the HideMap layer (The layer that fades when walked under) has finally been fixed. Now there are two types of lights, decided in their create event: 1 is a simple light that illuminates the area. 2 is a light in a hidden area. It will help reveal the HideMap layer as long as the player is also in the HideMap.

Alright, as always, I like to leave you with something visual. So here are a few new screenshots (Click to enlarge)...






As you can see, the lights look a bit sloppy indoors right now. I am working on them right now, though. I also need them to fade in and out as the player enters and leaves, just like the player's own HideMap revealer.

I am currently working on rounding off the features and fixes I described above. After that, I need to revise the way the objective tracker works, rewrite the scans throughout the level, await a fix for the string_char_at() function, fix a few HUD bugs, fix the map feature, finish redoing generators and a few more things. After that, it will just come down to level designing.

Thanks for following, as always.
 - Echo