Sub-Terraria Zero

PLAY IT NOW

Are you ready for a game that features a girl in a parka, amazing treasure, and a very hungry arctic anglerfish?

STZ is about a girl who travels underground to recover treasured crystals, but in the process ends up falling right into the lair of a terrifying monster who lurks in the snow beneath. Equipped with your special crystal-powered gun, try to escape. You may even find more treasure on the way or more crystals for your gun. But the strange fish-thing is waiting for you to slip up and fall into its clutches, and other small monsters can make your life more difficult; of course, those other monsters might make nice distractions for the anglerfish, but you don't want your fishy friend feasting on a buffet of energy and strength either.

I may be biting off more than I can chew, but I think if I can stay motivated (that's a big if!), I can handle it even as a solo guy. I'm keeping the graphics 8-bit style, and besides making that a bit easier on me I think it'll contribute to the atmosphere I want to have quite nicely. Music... that'll probably be last on the to-do list, but even if I have to go with a single simple tune with creepy ambience, it's better than nothing.

Right now, the big hurdle I think is going to be the main monster's AI, so that's where I'm starting. If I can have 80% of that done my mid-late afternoon, I think I'll be pleased.

And now, some (lame) teaser pictures for you. Back to work!

Well... I managed to complicate things for myself.

After spending quite a bit of time trying to write an AI handler for my big monster in Haxe, I may just end up tackling most of it in Stencyl... which kind of surprises me. But after two or so hours of trying to handle it otherwise, I just established what looks like a pretty no-nonsense targeting behavior in about 10 minutes. BAH. Well, better now than later. I'm feeling better about finishing this again.

Mang, I wish I can do pixel art and be happy with the results.

Mang, I wish I can do pixel art and be happy with the results.

That's why I'm trying to keep it so ridiculously simple. I'm really not the best at pixel art either.

Do you have a streamlink ?

-Maarten

Do you have a streamlink ?

-Maarten

No, I don't.

Even if I did, I'd eat up what little allowance our internet allows.

Besides, its not very exciting... my momentum is kind of haphazard right now coming off of the busy week I've had.

Well, good luck on the development!

-Maarten

Who wants to feed the monster? Try this tech demo out if you wants. Click on the screen to drop glitchy anti-gravity turkeys for the monster to eat (I was having issues with a very weird Stencyl engine bug).

http://www.stencyl.com/game/play/26060

After a slow start, I've gained some traction and made some significant progress.

Nearly all the planned weapons for the game are in. I may still have a few nuances to put in but otherwise it was relatively painless. The girl has almost all of her animations (the last couple are pretty simple too,) and the monster is behaving pretty much like I want it to at this point. Again, still some tweaks, but it is looking GOOD. I think I might try to blast through a good part of the HUD before calling it a night. Then tomorrow, the big push to make the 48h deadline really starts! ROOOOOAR.

OK, enough for one night (or early morning). SLEEP.

Just about a half hour ago I sat down for the first time today to work on this. I'm not sure the five and a half hours remaining will suffice... I haven't even started punching in level design yet.

Unless something changes and/or I get on a serious roll, this is probably getting pushed back to the jam. I wanted to make the compo this time around, but I really think I've hit a great idea here and I think the extra time can more than suffice for getting me through what's left and polishing it up. I feel like I've already learned from this experience and I may have not made it anyhow based on how my schedule had panned out. So in theory, the two things may have coincided nicely and now hopefully I can be better equipped and prepared next time when I want to hit up the compo.

So stay tuned! Sub Terraria Zero is still in the works!

Are you afraid of the dark?

The first cavern scene of the game. Slowly but surely its coming together. Oh how I hope I can make it!

Well, it's been a productive night, but I'm starting to lose my edge a bit here. Time for some sleep and then back at it for one more day.

Some major feature(s) (though not necessarily complex) that were planned are still not in though. We'll see how tomorrow pans out I guess.

Putting Stencyl and its Image API through its paces.

I was concerned at first because Stencyl was folding rather easily under the pressure of 4-5 lighted objects, let alone more than that. Turns out I was able to solve performance issues pretty easily be delegating the darkness drawing to a "do every .05 seconds" loop as opposed to "when updating." The result is a slightly choppy update that somehow kind of meshes well with the pixelated look.