Level Boss Behavior.

I was having a hard time determining how I wanted the boss for this level to behave. It had been bothering me for quite a while actually, even before I put him into the game. I knew how I wanted him to take damage, but I didn't know how I would implement it in a way that made sense and would be a challenge without being impossible. This is a fine line that I have been walking on throughout the whole process of making this game.

SO .. This morning I think I finally figured out how the boss fight will go. I immediately made a detailed sketch, which I think, speaks for itself ..

WARNING !! SPOILER ALERT !!

Here it is:

Click on the image to see the full thing if you can't already.

Sorry if it's a bit fuzzy, I took the picture with my cell phone.

So, I think it's pretty obvious from the picture how this battle will go. And I hope you will enjoy this epic battle!

The next step is to actually PROGRAM this guy, to behave in such a way. Shouldn't be too hard, but still I'm sure it be a quite a headache. Also have several sprites to animate for this as well.

Epic Battle! Also bats.

In addition to the crabs, I have also added bats! There are a few of them flying around. They are very quick but don't do TOO much damage. They're more of an annoyance than a genuine threat.

This is what they look like:

I still intend on adding a few more hazards, I just have not yet decided what they should be yet.

Now, the main event! Mini Boss battle !!

The mini boss is ALMOST done, I just need to make a few more sprites for him.

His attacks on the other hand are finished and they are quite spectacular.

He is based on a spear bandit. The differences are that he is faster, stronger and has significantly more health. Also, his attacks behave very differently.

This character is a hired mercenary with a mysterious past!

If you remember, I actually started making him quite a while back. I have since totally redesigned his behavior and changed his attacks.

When he gets within attack range, he will begin to spin his Naginata in the air, creating a vortex that will not only deal damage, but it will suck you towards it. Running will allow you to escape to a safe distance.

When he gets to low health, he will unleash an even more devastating attack! But I'll let that one be a surprise ..

This battle will also take place on a platform with no walls, so you will have to be careful not to fall off while fighting him!

CRAB BATTLE !!

So, I have been adding some new "obstacles" in the levels, including some angry animals who live in the cave.

The first of these obstacles is the deadly orange cave crab !!

Here is what he looks like:

The orange crab will shuffle back and forth, snipping his claws. He will deal some damage if he runs into you but he is very easy to kill. One quick strike of the sword will finish him.

I did however add .. a special type of crab ..

This crab is known as the legendary, "Kenyan Mangrove Crab":

I've added this crab as an homage to the legendary "crab battle" internet meme.

These special crabs do significantly more damage and are totally impervious to pain. Daisuke's sword will simply bounce off his hard shell!

Look forward to more creature additions in future updates!

Buffed up Bandits.

I've moved on to making the 2nd half of the demo level. It will include buffed up versions of the baddies from the 1st half.

The buff versions of the enemies will have double health and wear purple shirts. They'll also have gold accented weapons. I might make them deal more damage also .. but well see.

I plan on also adding a few perils like falling rocks, attacking bats and killer jumping fish or something. Maybe some spiders and/or crabs.

Anywho, here is a pic of the buffed up spear bandit:

More Little Things & Daisuke's Face.

So, I really REALLY love making my game. I love the little things especially, they're the most entertaining to create.

My latest additions are some "just-for-fun" animations I added to the UI/HUD.

Now, when Daisuke picks up an Onigiri, his status face next to his life bar can seen consuming it. This means he exposes his face !! GASP !!

So, I guess I wont really keep Daisuke's face a secret .. but it still isn't very revealing, because in my cartoony style of animation, everyone's face looks pretty much the same anyways.

His HAIR on the other hand, remains hidden .. and well .. don't count on seeing that quite yet.

Anywho .. I decided that ONE eating animation wasn't enough, so I added a SECOND food item with it's own eating animation as well.

The new food item is ..

鰻丼 ！！

(Unagi-Donburi !!)

Unagi-don is basically worth ５x points as onigiri, and will fill up your health, energy and defense all the way up to 100%!

Look for a hidden or hard to get Unagi-don in every stage!

Anywho .. I decided also that I will make a "training" stage with easier/less enemies to get players used to the game before jumping into the main story.

Also, I am going to stretch out the demo level to 4 stages, plus the mini boss and boss battle. SO, including the training stages, that will be a total of 7 stages !! WOAHHHHHH .. thats kindof a lot .. but so far I have 2 done .. and the mini boss is under construction. And considering the next 2 stages will be more fun-time in the cave, they should be considerably easy to make (wont need to do a lot of new drawing, basically just rearrange stuff and make a couple new baddies).

ANYWHOO .. training stage will be in the ninja village, and since I've already made ninja badguys, all I need to do is rearrange some stuff and make some new backgrounds (or recycle some old ones).

So the things I need to worry about MOST .. are the mini boss .. who's a real pain in the ass to make, and the FINAL boss, who I have not yet even begun to program .. BUT I HAVE DRAWN HIM (her?)

.. so ..

It doesn't seem like there is TOO much stuff left, after all, I've written almost all of the code I need (thousands of lines .. should be considerably less, but I'm a very sloppy/inefficient programmer(but hey, "if it ain't broke", am I right?)) so there isn't too much brain-racking to do .. just a bit of drawing, arranging and creative thinking.

Anywho, here are some still shots of Daisuke eating.

Onigiri:

Unagi Don:

The Little Things.

I somehow managed to totally finish parts 1 and 2 of the level I am building for my game. I just kept on fixing bugs and adding the things I wanted to add, and then I realized that I ran out of things I needed to do!

So I am now done with those sections of the game, and now I need to move on and finish building the mini boss and final elements of the level.

Yesterday however, I decided that it was a good time to deal with an issue that I had put off for quite some time

THE DREADED PAUSE BUTTON.

Since flash has no pause function, and I coded this game so incredibly sloppily, I had to get creative with how I was going to tackle this issue.

Long story short, I made kindof a half-assed, ugly, slop of code that happened to work perfectly.

So now I have a fully functional pause button!

And here is what the pause screen CURRENTLY looks like:

(subject to change)

If you look closely you can see I put in a little speech bubble next to Daisuke's head with the kanji "Retsu" in it. This is a simple stereotypical pop culture ninja reference. I just wanted to make the pause function to be an extension of Daisuke's talents, so when you hit "p" he will shout out "Retsu" (I plan on adding a sound effect) which is the Kuji-in for "control of time and space" and he does the matching hand gesture. I thought it seemed appropriate.

I also added a speech bubble for when he preformed is "Rin" healing technique, which is another of his Kuji-in talents. So now the kanji for "Rin" appears when he uses that skill:

I plan on adding a sound effect/voice clip for that one too.

Finally, fat guys will now sweat when they run:

経過計時機構.

OK !! I have been in this mood, where I want to make Daisuke a fast paced hack-and-slash game.

So, my latest additions are ..

Adding LOTS more baddies.

.. and ..

Adding a 経過計時機構 !!

What is a 経過計時機構 ?? You ask.

It's an elapsed timer.

So now the time elapsed (in seconds) will be displayed in the top right corner above the BGM on/off button.

Here is what it looks like:

I could have just labeled it as "timer" or "stopwatch" or something, but the big huge kanji looked so much more awesome. I'm pretty sure I'm using it properly.

Anywho, the elapsed time will be SUBTRACTED from your score at the end of the level !!

This means that if you want to get a good score you'd better hurry your ass up!

Hopefully this will make the game more competitive when I add a leaderboard.

I guess I could have just made it so that your score is subtracted by 1 every second, instead of making them two separate entities .. but I like my way better. Besides, it might come in handy for future levels where you have a time limit or something.

Parry Expanded.

So I've significantly changed several factors in the game, which made it very difficult to fight enemies without retaining SOME damage. So, I decided that Daisuke should be able to parry sword bandits as well as spear bandits.

The parry itself does minimal damage, but it is immediately followed up by "chain slash 2" which does significant damage and will prove to be a killing blow in most cases.

Parrying CAN be done without taking any damage, however this takes good timing.

I'm pleased with the outcome, but there are still bugs to be fixed.

I also think I might add some hit-sparks and slashes soon.

Introducing: Fat Bandit.

So I want the game to have more of a hack-and-slash feel to it, so I decided recently to add more enemies. I ran into a slight problem though, because I started running out of space to put particular types of enemies. I couldn't put spear bandits in certain areas because they take up a lot of space and can be overwhelming if they're too close to one another. And I didn't want to put too many regular sword bandits near each other, because they all run at the same speed and would start overlapping one another.

SO I CAME UP WITH A SOLUTION.

All I had to do was make a new type of enemy!

And that enemy is: FAT BANDIT !!

"Fat Bandit" is basically a regular sword bandit, except he's fat. As a result of his being so fat, he will be significantly slower than a regular sword bandit. He will also sweat when he runs. Other than that he will remain pretty much the same. I might make him wave his arms higher in the air, resulting in moved hitboxes, but he won't be any tougher than a regular bandit.

So here is the first image of Fat Bandit

Complete with double-chins, beer-belly, man-boobs, fat-ass, love-handles and arm-flab.

Notice how his gut almost completely hides his belt.

I hope this doesn't offend anyone.

Happy April Fools day !! (But this isn't a joke, I'm dead serious, this guy is going in the game.)