Poppytail Series

Hi everyone,

This is an update on Poppytail 5, which I haven’t done for a while since starting Pixeltail. Mainly due to lack of motivation. The reason why I haven’t been motivated to make PT5 was because I was not seeing a lot of progress and I made a mistake and I’m completely reworking the mini map feature.

To me the game looks quite crappy to be honest. It’s not properly playable, the placeholder art mixed with 3D sprites is just ugly, and this is just making me think that this looks like a terrible game. I would even say the first four games looked much better than this even when some people are still coming up to me and telling me it looks like the graphics from the first game were made in MS Paint.

Due to all of this placeholder crap, I’ve decided to not release PT5 in chapters like I was going to before, but I’m going to make the full game and release that. Same with Pixeltail. I’ve now got another person making some of the 3D graphics on Blender (the other characters were made on Autodesk Fusion 360), and I’m going to be mostly making pixel graphics and PT5’s soundtrack.

This isn’t the first time I’ve had lack of motivation for the series. I doubt any of you had a go at the third game, but tile collisions don’t exist. They are set, and they’re the same tiles used anywhere else, but they don’t work. Luckily, characters still work and you cannot exit the scene, but for a while I just couldn’t figure out what to do until I realised the Poppytail story had a valid excuse from Poppytail 2 (thank god for Simulation Rooms).

Anyway, I’m still working on Pixeltail, but hopefully I’ll be motivated enough to do Poppytail 5 soon. After that, I’ve got Pixeltail (expect this to take a little longer, each save is meant to be about 4-6 hours of gameplay, compared to at the minimum 20 minutes for each main game). After that, I’ll work on The Poppytales. I know this isn’t the right forum thread to talk about this, but I was going to make the game in “parts”, but it depends if I feel like continuing the game once I’ve finished if there’ll be a part two, three, etc. I may not because what I’ve made so far for the series is only a fraction of the story I want to tell.

I hope that PT5 and PXT won’t be as bad as the previous games.

NickamonPoppytail

Some more art for Pixeltail:

1) Lizard Hunter*
2) Enderguy
3) Pink Poppy
4) Wicked Poppytail

*Liz-Liz is missing due to being a separate enemy in the game. He was able to be in both PT1 and PT3 by going through the middle door of the Pathway Room off-screen during the events of PT2.

Poppytail 1’s Chapter 6 could’ve looked good in Pixeltail, but now the hidden chapters of the first four games are going to be additional rooms in pre-existing nightmares, like so:

PT1’s Chapter 6- Room 2 of Poppytail Challenge
PT2’s Chapter 6- Room 2 of Easter Bunny Challenge
PT2’s Chapter 7- Room 2 of Gremlin Girl Challenge
PT3’s Chapter of No Escape- Room 2 of Snarly Dog Challenge
PT4’s Chapter 6- Room 2 of Lizard Hunter Challenge
PT4’s Chapter 7- Room 2 of Enderguy Challenge

Couple with some disorientating shaders, I think this could be a nice way to somehow include the first four games’ hidden chapters which won’t be main chapters.

I was just messing around with PT3 and I found a bug. To get this bug you must get an Overachiever Ending (easy way to do this is press “6” in the game’s menu, press enter, wait for a while until the minigame ends and then keep pressing the up key in the final minigame). After the scene transition to the ending screen, press enter to begin the slow scene transition to the menu. Keep pressing the = button while the scene is transitioning and the game will let you set the number on the bottom right corner of the screen above the normal maximum limit (100). I got up to 603, but after a while the game realises and sets it back to a lower number. This may also be possible by pressing the - button to get the number lower than 1, but I haven’t tried it.

The purpose of this number is to check of Auto or Abe or neither should appear. If anyone still cares about this (I doubt it), Abe will spawn if the number is 15 and Auto will appear if the number is 70.

Poppytail 5 News:

I have scrapped most of my work so far because it didn't work so well and then it came to the point where it would be easier to start over making the code behind it, but then I decided to duplicate my game and start fresh because how I had programmed it before was slow, inefficient and has never even worked properly.

I have kept the one minigame I had finished (Jawlock's)  and I've decided to make the minigames before anything else. I need to get some of the main game's final art done though, because my friend is working on the characters and I need to get some images of my current characters that aren't so large (they're large enough to cause some storage issues with Stencyl which I still have to figure out).

Also, some of the characters my friend is working on for the game's Chapter 2 are Shyyon and Vehicle Dummy.

Shyyon is another papillon character. He is meant to be quite small compared to other characters (like Liz-Liz is meant to be)  and works in a similar way to Jawlock, Nursina and Exister. However, when you run into him, he won't kill you on the spot unless you're in your starting room. However, when he is in your starting room you cannot see him, so you'll either have to keep an eye on him or make a habit of moving outside your current room fast enough to avoid his attack.

Vehicle Dummy is a crash test dummy-like character in a giant car. She waits in her own room, called the Simulation Room, until she decides to attack. Vehicle Dummy will make a noise and then charge down a hallway into your starting room. However, like characters from Poppytail 4 or Pixeltail, she'll have more motivation to attack if you die to her more often, otherwise she'll attack less.

VD is also important story-wise. Poppytail 1-4 and about half of Pixeltail focus on what happens after the Quake of '86 between the monsters and the Creators, but Poppytail 5 focuses on this part of the story a little less and focuses more on the pre-Quake parts of the timeline (which has as much relevance as the post-Quake monster-Creator rivalry period and afterwards in the period in which the main games take place, mostly focusing on one particular family which is a major part of the story). Pixetail also focuses on some pre-Quake story, but more of another family who is important to the story.

Anyway, hope you all have a great day!

NickamonPoppytail

Hello, everyone!

I’ve made some progress on Pixeltail and I’ve re-made the art for some of the game’s environments and Poppytail 5’s minigames are also starting to see progress.

I also wanted to give a brief summary of the story from the first four games (the literal facts that are told before some nightmares as well as a basic summary of what happens to Alex, since it seems most of you didn’t beat all the games).

Alex, a former programmer from Rosemary Games, receives a message from a guy called Walter Turnbull (a good friend of Alex’s, actually) telling him he’s made a new game and Alice suggested he should stop by. He gets in his car and drives there, and survives the first five chapters of the game, finding Alice (trapped in GamePrint Suit) after beating the third. He then enters a room with three doors, each with a flower sign above it (one pink for Pink Poppy, one red for Poppy and one grey for Wicked Poppytail). He chooses the left door and gets to the end only to be led back to the Pathway Room again. He goes through the middle door, now nearly dying of dehydration, and survives Poppy and co.’s attacks before stealing from their personal water supply so he can survive, and is once again led back to the Pathway Room, he chooses the final door, and makes it to the end. Off screen, there are two doors in the room they go into. One is an exit and one continues on. Alice forces Alex to go through the exit, and they return after a year and then Pixeltail will take place.

In the first four of the first game’s nightmares, there are small pieces of plot explained:

Quake of ‘86- Here, two screens are shown. One is with a blocky character called Mary screaming for help and a character called Walter calling out her name. The next shows that a massive pile of debris has fallen on top of them. To keep it short, in 1986 there was an earthquake that damaged the Rosemary Games building, and after this incident the company seems to just stop existing altogether, however the building still remains.

Survivors- This is one screen with a blocky character with no name grunting in pain with a hand on his forehead. This is just meant to show that the Quake of ‘86 did not kill everyone. In fact, quite a lot of people survived this.

Dark Felt- In this series of screens, five earthquake survivors come together, overjoyed by the fact they survived the earthquake. One of them finds a broken wall with a bunch of costumes inside. The five put on the costumes, scream, and then a close up is shown of one of their faces. This is pretty much the origin story of the Creators, a massive group of people who wear grey costumes (changed from black due to aging and to avoid confusion with Enderguy) and are the ones responsible for creating all of these enemies seen throughout the games. If you see what they do throughout the series’ minigames, you might think a little differently about some of the games’ characters.

GamePrint- This explains about a machine owned by Rosemary Games called the GamePrint, which manufactures packets and discs for console games made by the company (and there is a reason in the story why they have gaming consoles). However one day it malfunctioned, so the “brilliant minds” behind the company hollow out the mechanical parts, cut armholes and legholes and used it as a mascot suit, since the GamePrint was made out of a lightweight and durable metal. This machine also had electromagnets on the back that allowed the machine to open and close for maintenance purposes. These were not removed when turning the GamePrint into a mascot suit. Somehow, the suit survives the Quake and Enderguy locks Alice into it via the electromagnets on the suit’s back (in the first game, the Enderguy is grey, but it’s not a Creator and is this colour because the scene’s background was black, and also PT2’s Lock It In minigames confirms this was Enderguy).

Hopefully this explanation was not too confusing to follow, and this is here because probably a lot of you have no idea what I’m talking about half of the time (or more).

Just so you know, all of this is far from the full story the games are trying to tell. This is a very small fraction of what goes on.

Thank you to everyone who stills reads all of this,
NickamonPoppytail

Random Character Art for Pixeltail!

1) Hoppy Tail. He was never meant to be just a character for The Poppytales. Perhaps he has a bigger role to play...

2) Joey Turnbull. Because he's Joey Turnbull.

3) Adrena Block. This does not mean Century Game 2 (which someone actually asked me to make today), but she'll have a minor role in the game.

And Character Art for Poppytail 5!

I really need to do more work on this (this is a smaller project, but for some reason I have a lot more motivation to work on Pixeltail than this game.

Anyway, since I'm not releasing this game in chapters anymore, I might as well reveal a new character. This is Shyyon (his art for the minigame; not in main gameplay).

Shyyon works similar to the other characters, taking the same route as Jawlock to kill you, however when he reaches your starting location, he is invisible, so you either have to track his progress or make a habit of immediately moving from your starting location when you are forced to return to it for whatever reason.

The other character for the game's second chapter is called Vehicle Dummy. To sum it up, it's a haunted crash test dummy in a car. What she does in she waits in her own room, the Simulation Room, and will occasionally speed down a hallway to try and find you, and will kill you if you are in the Simulation Room, Right Hallway, East Room or your starting location. She's also getting a minigame after Shyyon's.

Since the idea of larger projects seems to be motivating me more for some strange reason, I'm increasing the character roster from 12 to 24 for PT5 and from 38 to 52 for Pixeltail, and making the total playable character count for The Poppytales 78 (including Hoppy Tail and Red Guy). Both PT5 and PXT will receive an additional five chapters, because I feel like I can do that and I'm sure it'll make the game more interesting.

More Poppytail 5 Character Art:

1) "Blue Girl"- A new character.
2) Vehicle Dummy in a slouched position.
3) Vehicle Dummy mid-driving animation

"Go that way..."
- Jawlock

Update: Don't have to take screenshots any more and cut out the backgrounds to make the images look... like they used to with random bits of white anywhere. My models are made in Autodesk Fusion 360 (which I think I may have said about one hundred times), and I found out that you can just get PNGs of the model from going to Render > In-Canvas Render > Capture Image. I found this with no prior research, just by looking for this, and I think it's working well. I'll make the images smaller because the Jawlock image is just a bit smaller than my previous sprites, so I'm going to have to make the captured images smaller so that 20+ frame animations don't ruin Stencyl's memory limit.

Poppytail 5 News

I’m scrapping the mini map. It caused too many issues, with random pieces overlapping, not working, not appearing on screen at all or messing with the camera’s ability to move around the area. I’m scrapping this and instead adding a feature in which you click on doors to move from room to room. When the mouse is over a door, it’ll be green if the player can enter or red if they cannot. I also wanted to make the player be able to turn around and look at different sides of each room, so that if the door is behind them, they can turn around and use it. I was going to have multiple scenes for this, but I think the one scene would work better so that the enemies and other features of the game work properly. The reason why I was going to have more than one scene was for the turning around mechanic, so there’s be four scenes; one for each direction the player can face, and then use the Slide Left/Right scene transition. However, since I require one scene for the whole thing, scene transitions aren’t going to work for me.

I could use Image API, but I don’t know how to use that. For those who know what I’m trying to do, do you have any advice?

I’ll post the question in “Ask a Question” as well because I’m not sure anyone still reads this thread.

Here's a little teaser for Pixeltail. I just wanted to give those who're interested an extremely vague hint at what could be in the story for PXT.

For Pixeltail, I think I want to start working on the enemies soon. PT5 still has a lot to go (which is fine, Pixeltail's going to be a much bigger game than that. I will put some information about enemies on here when I finish them, because I don't want each one to be like they were in previous games with their counterparts.

What I mean is that, for example, Smiler is just Snarly Dog but at 2x or 3x speed (I think). So, I'm not just going to have all 52 enemies simply just moving in your direction. Of course, characters who had their own unique mechanics such as GamePrint (shooting at the player), Doughy Duck (decreasing speed the more the player dies), Beachtime Poppytail and Orangu Tan (randomly moving) and Mr Battery (speeding up the decrease of oxygen or increase of electricity). But I don't want every enemy to simply be a re-skin of another (which has happened once with Enderguy and Cheesestick, but I mean I don't want everyone doing the exact same thing).

I'm going to create a large test scene (as there are 52 characters), and then I will just edit this post with the character because I think this thread is still being treated like spam and hence, I don't think anyone is still bothered reading all of this.

PIXELTAIL FINISHED CHARACTERS

Poppytail- Will move in the same direction as the player vertically and the opposite horizontally whether the player is holding down a key or has released it.

Easter Bunny- Will walk when the player runs as well as vice-versa. He will move in the same direction horizontally as the player but the opposite vertically when the player is holding down a key or has released it.

Gremlin Girl- Will move one direction anticlockwise to the one the player is moving in when the player is holding down a key or has released it.. Like her appearance from the first game, she has no collisions when she walks upwards.

3/52 (5.769%)

Still to go:
Abe
Auto
Batwingz
Beachtime Poppytail
Bun-Bun
Cheesestick
Doughy Duck
Eclipse
Enderguy
GamePrint
Gremma
??????? ?????
??????? ???????
??????? ??????
??????? ?????
??????? ??????
???? ?? ?????????
Liz-Liz
Lizard Hunter
Lizard's Friend
Lulu
Mama Tyranno
?????? ??????
Mousetrap
Mr Battery
????????????
Nykolas
Orangu Tan
Papa Tyranno
???????
Pink Poppy
Poppy
Pork Chop
Smiler
Snarly Dog
Towelwich
Vulcangoat
?????? ????????
Wicked Easter Bunny
Wicked Gremlin Girl
Wicked Lizard Hunter
?????? ???????
?????? ???? ?????
Wicked Poppytail
Wicked Snarly Dog
?????? ?????????
?????? ??????????

I will just edit this post with the character because I think this thread is still being treated like spam and hence, I don't think anyone is still bothered reading all of this.

Hi Poppytail,
We are interested in your games.
But one suggestion, you should create another topic for pixeltail series.
Because updates of different games (like PT5 and PixelTail) gets mixed up.

Hi Poppytail,
We are interested in your games.
But one suggestion, you should create another topic for pixeltail series.
Because updates of different games (like PT5 and PixelTail) gets mixed up.

Thank you, Vaibhav. The reason why the two sequels are being updated in the same topic is because the individual games used to have their own topics. Because other forum users considered this to be spam, I asked the moderators to merge the topics, which seemed to stop everyone from getting annoyed at the countless forum topics. In fact, I’m pretty sure you can still Google “poppytail stencyl” and see this for yourself (although clicking on these threads will not take you back here).

Here are some of the things other users said around Pages 12 and 13 of this topic:

I think this game series got to be treated like a spam, what if newcomers will see that whole page of the games made with stencyl is poppytail 1, poppytail 2, poppytail 3, poppytail 4 .... 25, what they will think about stencyl....
To the author, you got to be more serious to your creation, if you make some new doodle and create a new topic in the forum it is not a journal about game creation it is 100% spam. I hope moderators will agree with me
Of cause I'm not against the art of NickamonPoppytail but I think he need to be more critical to himself.
And he can make even 100 series of his game, but they all got to be in 1 topic.

Thank you mods for cleaning up these threads.  They were getting very spammy.

I’m sorry if the updates are a bit confusing. This is why I usually state which game I’m talking about at the top of the post.

Thanks,
NickamonPoppytail