welcome to the bikiniverse

Hi everyone my name is Josh.

I first started playing around with a programme called game maker in the early 00's (the icon on windows was a red ball, and I downloaded it from c-net. Anybody else remember it?).

I then spent a lot of my creative-time making music. But now I'm back with game making. I got stencyl in April last year, paid for the studio license basically straight away. It's been worth it so far, even as a kind of "expensive toy".

I had an idea whilst playing around with the software which I realised was actually pretty fun (basically, it's a grid-based top-down game with two characters on the screen at the same time, which the player controls both at the same time), and 6 months later I'm still working on it. It's been a learning process, obviously, which is why it's taken me so long for a very simple idea (I should also say that the controls and stuff are all pretty well polished and the mechanics are all pretty efficient now), and hopefully I'll be launching in September.

Next week I'm meeting a graphic designer friend of mine to get some images in there (I'm going for that monument valley kind of vibe).

It's touchscreen controlled but maybe i'll get an arrow-key version up here once I'm closer to launch date.

shout outs to CEOSOL who's played an early version of the game and gave me some really useful feedback (and, embarrassingly, showed me a VERY similar project he'd done in the past...) and to  robinschaafsma for the virtual joystick extension. And to the stencyl creators for their hard work.

Here's a link to the last project i worked on as a musician. It won a prize at a short film festival yo.  https://vimeo.com/74700300

Cool. I just started playing Brothers today, which has a similar "control two characters at once" mechanic.

Good luck and have fun in the continued development.

That looks cool and it's great to see inspiration; although i literally live in fear of finding a game the same as mine. I'm really proud of the fact that it's an original thing (once i get a keyboard controlled version up I'll post something here).

Good luck with your project Josh, look forward to seeing it in September!

As this is a bit by bit process I'd like to start by sharing the music which will be in the game. All of the sounds will be taken from this song.

<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69xUfEi9WR8?hl=en_US&amp;amp;version=3" target="_blank" class="new_win">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69xUfEi9WR8?hl=en_US&amp;amp;version=3</a>
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69xUfEi9WR8

The video (made with open office) was shown as part of a talk by a guardian journalist, whose name i can never remember, as an example of mash up culture in the London short film festival 2013. 

gameplay demo coming soon!

One of the biggest challenges has been simply implementing the control system that I would like, which includes various complicated factors. Here I want to talk about the in-built on-screen joystick.

The in-built joystick is nice, but I don't like it because it had a bug (dead area at the bottom of the screen where you couldn't create a dynamic joystick), and it's not very well suited to four-way movement (i mean, it's weird to have the player see a circular joystick when you can only really move in four directions). A traditional four-way D pad would be better for four way movement, of course, but i always find my finger slip and i don't like how much space a Dpad would take up on a tiny screen.

After thinking about it for a while, I decided I wanted:

1. Player touches screen and dynamic D pad appears
2. Player swipes in desired movement direction
3. Characters move until touch is released

This is very similar to what a 4-way Dynamic Joystick does, but I decided to make it myself to avoid the bug mentioned earlier, and to allow for some more intuitive animation: when the player touches the screen, four direction arrows slide from under the touch location. The player then slides his finger in the desired direction. Once a direction is selected (e.g left) the other arrows fade out. When touch is released, the left arrow fades out and movement is stopped.

I'd just like to add that CaptainComic's mathematical advice was invaluable in the creation of the dynamic four-way onscreen d-pad. You da real MVP.

Uploading to the stencyl arcade (work in progress!)

http://www.stencyl.com/game/play/33464

Here we go! Use the arrow keys to get isabel OR alex to the stairs, without touching the horrible green chemicals. Swipe to move also available. 

The levels are out of order which means it's way harder to solve the first puzzle. But you have ten levels in the first world which you can try.

To be done:
1. No graphics yet. I'm working with a graphic designer to get that sorted.
2
3. Levels out of order. (start with world 1 level 2)
4. No tutorial.
5. No ads and no payments.
6. not enough levels yet. I want 120 (60 free, 60 paid in the mobile version)
7. level timers are not set properly yet (each one goes for 100 seconds)

...and that's all i have left to make the game!

World 1 Level 1 was a little tough, but fun. I got through a few levels and the game seemed pretty easy to pick up once I figured out what the "Icon" did. Looks pretty good so far--just needs some graphics

Cool Game! Indeed : important: switch worlds 2 and 1 to start simple
Like merrak I needed to find out that the icon was save to be pushed and the bushes where not!!

Thanks for playing guys!! Once the graphics are in it's going to look different of course. And the cactuses/blocks will be clearly defined to make it more obvious. I'll keep this thread updated. Anybody else?

ideas for the main characters from the graphic designer.

which number do you prefer?