[FINISHED] Akiro the squid <3

Space bar. (I should probably write that). The only button you use is space.

 

Oh man... a bit of a learning curve, but I like it! Managed to one shrimp, but died a dozen times lol

 

Yeah, everybody says it's really hard. I think I want to keep it really hard, but there are certain things that should be fixed, haha.
I will work on the player movement a bit, since I got some valuable feedback from the feedback part of the Game Design topic.

 

Overall, once you get into the groove, it's quite fun and very, very challenging hahahaha. This is an outstanding project, and really enjoying watching it evolve.

 

Grey, orange and blue out on a swim!
I found the perfect setup for the art, so those two colors alone took me maximum 5 minutes to draw and upload.

I'm just leaning more and more towards drawing tons of colors, and everytime the player dies, it's a randomed color.
... Wouldn't that be fun? Oh, and also - the speed is higher since I made a bigger radius. Will slow it down, because now it's insane.

 

Waiting to play it at home with my son so I can give some unbiased feedback to you.

Feature/Scope creep inbound.

An interesting thought - Octopuses can change color instantly. "Wouldn't it be cool" to incorporate that into the design - make his color either give him a different subtle ability, or change the behavior of certain enemies by drawing attention to him the player or repelling near enemies by scaring them away by color changing....
Something could be done with color that is probably very cool - and also extend development for probably several months.
Just an initial thought I wanted to share based on the gif above.

 

That sounds really fun! But yeah, I think I should keep my scope to the 'minimal'. There's so much stuff I want to do, but I think I should keep to the core idea: dodge and eat. No hard learning curve, just pick up and play. Loved the idea though.

 

Save for
Akiro 2.0: The Assent

 

Two people asked me why I didn't just color them in the engine, having a transparent Akiro instead. I went ahead and tried that, and forgot one tiny detail - to place the eyes on a separate layer. The result is slightly frightening.

 

Working on the parallaxing. Think I'm going to have tiles in all directions.

 

I've been thinking about maybe not having a set background that tiles, but rather "ocean objects" that spawn much like the enemies, only static and parallax in the background. This way it will probably look very "cave-like" since I picture having some rocks, algae and seaweed floating around... I like it, gotta try.

 

Random value on colors - improved. I think it's quite nice, but it might just be me being blinded cause I love drawing tons of sprites, but... I think it looks better hand-drawn. It has a better feel, and fits with the style of the rest of the game. What do you guys think?

 

I managed to score... 2! ... yeesh this is hard

 

It's actually starting to get a bit easier, now that I am adjusting the colliders and increasing his swim radius by a fairly large amount. I'm struggling a bit with randomly generated background, so I think that will be my main concern in the following days.

 

Agree - the quality of the hand drawn sprites far exceeds the quality of the color coded sprites.

 

Fixing the movement:
Increased radius from .16 to .25.
Reduced speed from 250 to 210.
Comparison (orange is the new movement):

 

Quick wallpaper sketch, where several Akiros swim in a circle to form a color wheel.
I don't have Photoshop, so I have to borrow my girlfriends computer to line up and shape it correctly. I could use GIMP but it's just so frustrating to use.

 

New playable build:

http://mothil.itch.io/akiro?secret=ni8mz3YkdyUMFyYtTRiVsraNY

 

Trying out different designs, here's a blooper (mario) inspired one:



I kind of like the idea that the player can unlock "skins" as he gets points. Let's say that if the player manages to get 10 shrimp, he unlocks new color variations. That would be very fun.

 

I like the idea of unlocking as one gets points. I think that would be a lot more fun for players, seeing as they could have "favorites". What if like the light blue is the first akiro, and if the player gets one shrimp before he dies, he unlocks a new one. Three shrimp is next, 5, 10 and so on. And these can be chosen in pause menu or start menu? There's so many possibilities, I have no idea what to do.

 

It may be even a little engaging at first to allow the player to select there starting color from a sub set of 3 colors.
If any other color is choosen besides the light blue - the light blue color becomes the first unlockable color.
In the "you are dead" screen you could tell the player they were 2 shrimps away from unlocking the next "enhanced" color.

 

Updated Puffer art. It's still not what I want, but it's in the right direction. I wanted stronger colors, but these might have been a bit too strong. Here is the art, and a gif in-game:

 

Did a quick-fix on all the other enemies as well. I'm starting to wonder if I'm going to skip the swordfish. While it works, I can't say it feels like it belongs in the game. Not in its current state, however. I might keep his mechanic, but do a complete design-overhaul. Maybe an electric eel?



EDIT: Also, I'm having problems programming in a random texture spawner. I think I will get a major productivity boost once that's implemented.

 

OK - High score 5!! wohoo!
Oddly I felt most comfortable traveling in a left upward direction.

I like the re-color on the swordfish.
Regarding your thought of removing or replacing him, have you considered a barracuda? The swordfish just reminds me of a barracuda the way he currently moves.

Nice progress.

 

It tiles semi-correctly, but only on the x-axis. I've yet to understand how to do it on the y-axis, let alone pool them instead of spawning. One step further, though.

 

Tiling works, and I'm now looking at redesigning the swordfish. At first I tried making a barracuda, as theANMATOR suggested, but I couldn't draw one for the life of me. So I tried creating a piranha instead, which turned out at least... At least slightly believable.

Here is tiling and piranha in action:

 

Oh crap - watch out it's the newly discovered saltwater piranha!
Hey Mothil - I think his color looks a little muddy. May want to add some subtle gold/yellow flecks to his body. and maybe a tip fin. OR - making the red belly a little more orange may help.

The tiling looks good. Looking forward to the random floaty particles also.

Nice update.

 

After having the tiling fixed, I've been thinking about the background a lot. I think the best would be a very subtle background, so it won't disturb the gameplay. One thing I also think would be cool is some sort of "magical world" kind of background, much like the great barrier reef. You can sort of see that there's tons of life there, just by looking at it.

Expect a lot of art changes in the coming days.

 

First 'real try' at a background, using this palette: (or parts of it, seeing as this is merely a test to check it in-game).



Here's an in-game gif. I'm currently reading about pixel art and color theory, so I'm hoping it will be a more pleasing background the following weeks.

 

Working on the shrimp movement now. The moment it started working, the game felt a lot better. It's buggy and moves slightly on the z axis as well, so I will fix that before I upload a gif.

 

I'm loving the look of this game, simple yet enjoyable, and the art style is lovely
Where will you be releasing it? Any plans or paid or free?

 

What are plans for sound? I think fitting music and sounds could really make this game feel complete, and if you do it right, the whole experience would feel awesome

 

Thank you for the reply, it means a lot!

Where will you be releasing it?
Google Play Store is first priority, with apple store a close second. I don't mind paying that one year fee, cause I love doing this, so I'm pretty sure those two.
- Maybe - several other sites, such as Newgrounds, itch.io etcetera.

Any plans of paid or free?
Yes, free. I don't feel comfortable taking money for the first game I ever make. When I started this I told myself I have one goal: To make people smile. If I can get just a handful of people to enjoy the game, that's payment enough for me. And if it does end up paying for a coffee through ads, I'm going to ponder about the next game idea while sipping that cup.

Plans for sounds?
Currently I have a 'vision' of how the music will be. Slightly upbeat, not-so-normal underwater ocean music, more like Super Mario Bros 2 I think. I have a friend from back in elementary school maybe doing the music for me. It's not set in stone, but the possibility might be there that I do it as well. And one thing to mention, I haven't told this anywhere:
One thing I really want to achieve with the music is the sort of old-school Mario feel, whereas the environment dances to the music. But in my game, the mobs do it instead. The most effective one at that will be the shrimp.

 

I may download the Android version when you release it, I like the game, I just have very little space left on my phone
If you get it on IOS then I'll get it if my iPod supports it (unlikely, my 4th gen doesn't support much)
Do you know about Kongregate? Anyone can put their game on, it supports dual builds of WebGL and WebPlayer so it seems like a good idea, also very minimal effort, up pretty instantly, the only problem is because of the ease of it it's very easy for it get lost in the masses, but if you put it up, gimme a shout cos I'd definitely play it, give it a rating and comment too
Any plans on standalone build os PC Mac and Linux?

Thats great! I love your source of motivation. Haha yeah I can connect with it being able to pay for a coffee, I've been making a game for some while now and some friends are insisting that I put it on the play store and release it, I probably will when its more finished and ad adds, if it even gets 2p I'll probably collapse from happiness, just the feeling of actually making something is great isn't it?

I like your vision, it seems awesome. That combined with the lovely art and the simplistic gameplay would make it a hit for me

Keep at it

 

I haven't thought about standalones, no. Maybe, but it's not my main launch goal. Regarding your second question - yes. It's an awesome feeling to finally create one of my ideas. And it's an even better feeling seeing people react positively to it.

 

Fixing the shrimp movement was a lot harder than I initially thought. I'm not sure if I'm embarrassed or proud that it's finally semi-working, haha. I also experimented some more with the background, here's a gif:



What do you guys think?
My thoughts: I don't feel like this works at all. My mind wants to create this beautiful background, but the truth is (I think) the game needs simplicity. Feel free to share your thoughts. What if the background is just a clear blue, following the color scheme, with some patterns, and some floating particles? I will have to experiment more when it comes to this.

 

Made the background more blue, added music and tweaked the spawners a bit. Here is the latest build for those interested in trying the game (big change, the screen is smaller to emulate how it is to play on the phone).

Latest build. Also added in the first post.

EDIT: The music is made by myself, by the way. It's an old chip track I made a couple years ago. Keep in mind I'm no musician, I just wanted to try the game with some track on it.

 

Hey Mothil - Just a thought about BG, maybe adding an overlay gradient to the background would be interesting. I can't say how to do this efficiently, but I really think it's interesting the further down you go in water the darker and menacing the feeling gets.

About the shrimp - they don't seem to move. The animations look fine, but they don't propel themselves like I'd expect a cartoony shimp would. I know shrimp are pretty fast movers, and I think making them move realistic wouldn't fit in your game, but maybe have them move in a ramped slight arching movement, starting a little quick for like 0.2 meters then slow fade into motionless. Maybe randomizing the direction of this movement would be interesting also. Moving in the opposite of the direction there tail is pointing of course. That probably doesn't make sense.

Keep up the progress!

 

Wow, love the music, really does it for me
I actually like the background, I understand that you might have a different idea that you want to have, but what you have now is definitely good
And be proud, if you have the simple choice of a negative or positive emotion, choose the positive

 

That sounds very interesting, theANMATOR! Maybe just have an overlay in the game that gradually darkens the longer down on the Y coordinates the player ventures, and the opposite for up. I think it would make a really nice effect. Maybe there could even be some sun rays when he has ventured far enough up, but then again it would be strange if he never really gets to the surface. Same goes for down.

And regarding the shrimp, I agree. You're almost describing my next goal for the shrimp - having them move in short bursts. This ties quite nicely in with what I wrote was the vision for the game, whereas I wanted the shrimp to "dance" to the music. I'm not sure how I will do it, but I will. Somehow.
The background has a blue layer at the moment, but on the actual art, not the game.

Thank you for the kind words QFSW. I was a little bit harsh on the background earlier, it's not -as- hideous as I think. It's just me knowing that it doesn't fit what I want it to be. Thank you both for the replies, I'll be sure to try your feedback later theANMATOR.

 

Well on my way to have functioning shrimp.

Fixed from last update:
- Shrimp has a responsive spawn-position relative to player.
- Moves in small bursts (Will work on this more).
- higher animation speed / movement (needs fine-tuning).

What should be done:
- fine-tune movement and animations.
- spawn animation? Right now they just appear "out of the blue".
- eaten animation (haven't thought about this much, but I think a small orange bubble flying to the top-left side of the screen to add points would be a nice visual).
- SFX (Needs to be subtly, don't want it to be distracting).

Spoiler: 10 FPS (butchered my shrimp)

 

Hey Mothil - I think the shrimp animations (not the locomotion) are playing a little too fast.
I actually pulled up some reference and was surprised at how actual shrimp swim. I wrongly thought they swam similar to lobster or crawfish.
But I think they would look better if they swam in a similar but muted fashion similar to mosquito larvae.
Just my opinion.

 

Yeah, but the gif shows them faster. Check Akiro swim animation as well. Much better in game.
Will check the links later!

 

Yes, mosquito larvae is just the thing! I never knew those things were mosquito larvaes, haha. I was just about to start googling to show a link of where I took my inspiration, but seeing as I've only seen them in real life I had no idea what to google for.

We have mosquito larvaes in our pond at the cabin, and that's very much where I took my inspiration from. They swim so cool, I gotta try copying more of those funny little creatures movement.

 

Hi, great to see that you are making progress
I have a bit of a niggle with the hitboxes, they seem to be a bit large, making it harder, I'll attach a screenshot

 

I've noticed this as well, and it's a lingering hitfox from the swordfsh. Fixed it this morning.

 

Great to hear! so I presume all the other hitboxes are fine?

 

The other colliders are decent. Some are a bit forgiving, though. But I guess that's all right. I will perfect them later on, maybe tomorrow.

 

Working on the main menu now. I've had the basic functionality for a while now, and only just now start trying to do the art. Later on I will finish the whole thing.

 

Throwbackthursday!
Here's Akiro, back when he was a bug and had no name.

I'm happy I've gotten this far. It feels very good, and if you guys want I can post more of the initial ideas, and how it developed into what it is now.