Hey everybody! It's a bit late in the day, so hopefully some of you will see this before tomorrow, but as promised I come with a gif of what I worked on the other day, as well as the date for the next stream. First off, the stream - me and Orexius will once again be hosting a stream tomorrow at 2pm EDT, just like last time. This time may become a new norm, given the recent changes in both of our schedules, but hopefully I'll be able to stay online longer this time.
Second, I bring you this gif: http://i.imgur.com/TLZOwuT.gif
This one is showing off the new parallax scrolling that will be visible in the caves, which is the first area in the game. I've been wanting to revisit them and give them some more visual flair for a while now, so hopefully this will spice up the area a bit! Considering the amount of time it'll take to cover every single cave room that's in the game so far, they probably won't all be done in time for v.16 - but I'll get as many as I can in.
That's all for tonight. I'll make a post tomorrow when the stream begins, as always! Hope you can make it!
-A42
Are you coding this from scratch? I'm pretty sure editors like Unity's setup has functions to specifically tackle these things with ease. Either way, since you've already got the physical mechanics for the parallax done, why not just make it a prototype and then reference in those tiles for each room? It should be much easier to implement that way.
ReplyDeleteYes, I code everything from scratch. All the code I need for parallax is done now, what will take a long time is just re-tiling every cave room with the new cut-out background tiles. It's not a hard process by any means, just time consuming, so it'll depend on how long finishing everything else takes me.
ReplyDelete(This is the Unknown that commented up top)
DeleteAt first I questioned why it would be time consuming but then I realized it's not just one layer displaying the parallax. Not sure if discussing it strikes any inspiration, but what if the function you use for parallax just takes a single numeric input when you make it a prototype, then when it's called in each instance you feed it whatever number appropriate. That way, shouldn't it just be a matter of adding the parallax function to all pertinent layers, rather than retiling those layers?
The parallax isn't the problem. It was done before the stream ended. Right now, all the cave areas in the game have only one background piece - a flat, looping background layer of the cave wall. This looping background is only 64x64 pixels big, and it just repeats that background to fill up the whole room. However, for the parallax stalactites/stalagmites to show through, I need to tile each room specifically with breaks in the walls, where the player can 'see through' to the parallax in the far background. If I don't do that, they won't be able to see the parallax at all, even if it still exists behind the cave wall.
DeleteAh gotcha. So if the player is on layer 0, that wall would be layer 1, stalactites/gmites seem to be 2-3 layers as well, and then black canvas. Yeah I can see how that'd be time consuming. The breaks look unique enough where I wouldn't think it's just an absence of tile, but I'll stop prying :P. I've just started learning to code and the class is pretty much shotgunning us into about 5 different languages. But I really try and keep it in the context of games to maintain interest. Looking forward to future updates!
DeleteEh, slight edit: layer order goes negative. I'm backwards today.
DeleteWhen you will do the next stream?
ReplyDeleteHey, sorry I didn't respond to this - been a rough week, and I didn't know when I'd be streaming. I'm going to be starting one soon though, if you happen to be available, feel free to drop by - I'm making a post here soon about it with the link.
Delete