Replicator - Dev Journal

Welcome to my WIP game Replicator!

In my grand scheme of things I anticipate this game being a combination of Star Wars, Aliens, and lots of Quentin Tarantino graphical violence thrown in.  In the game you will explore, shoot baddies, and solve puzzles.

Some background about myself… I consider my self a sound designer / composer 1st, an artist 2nd, and a coder 3rd.  I have some experience building websites but that's as far as my coding skills go.  I've always wanted to build game and learning to code always hurt my head, now with my discovery of Stencyl everything has changed and I'm loving it.  The community has been fantastic.  Linked below will be two google documents that I'll update as I progress, they will detail bugs, things to implement, things I've learned, things to do, etc..

Things to Fix, Things I've Learned, etc.: http://tinyurl.com/kbxuybp
Sound Assets and Art Assets: http://tinyurl.com/k9cw5mu

Please play the demo and let me know what you think so far… I'm not sold on the art direction yet.  Demo link has been removed.  The current plan is to build more art assets so I can build some test levels and go from there.

I'll be updating this as I go along.

Thanks for reading!

New artwork added 10/10/14 - ground tiles, smoke, hanging wires, electronic console glow, new main actor design

[new artwork updated 9/28/14] - definitely a WIP but better!
[new artwork updated 5/25/14 - now deprecated and deleted, lol, because it sucks]

I really like the idea of turning gravity on/off.
It feels cool and i would focus on it...rather do a puzzle game with it and not a "shooter".
Focus a lot on the gravity idea.

The turning and shooting does not feel right at the current state.

The turning and shooting does not feel right at the current state.

Thanks so much for the feedback! 

I'm curious could you elaborate a bit more on why you don't feel the turning and shooting feels right? 

I should mention that if gravity is off and you're turning the actor if you turn too far in one direction and don't want to face the opposite direction, you can hold down the shift button while turning to go back if you overshot something or need to line up a shot better.  I could also fidget with the speed of the actor rotating if you feel it's too slow/fast, etc..

Working on more art assets and deciding what direction I want to take things… this version (posted above in first post) is a cross between pixel art and almost a painterly feel, the pixel art purists would string me up by my toenails but I'm not concerned about it.

The graphics are really nice.  the coding needs some work though.  The weapon switching sound isn't great.  The ennemies are pretty cool since they aren't too mindless, (when you are on the ground, in anti-grav they shoot forward even if you aren't there) but they can end up offscreen which is problematic. (since they can shoot you, but you can't!)
 
The turning would be somewhat better if instead of going at a constant angular speed, the cosmonaut accelerated/decelerated angularly.(If necessary with some way to completely "brake" the spinning so that you don't end up overcompensating when trying to stop spinning)  However, you don't want the accel tobe too slow either.

Maybe you could use box2d for when gravity is off and desactivate it and use simpler physics when on the ground.  Also, when in anti-grav, the "flipping" of the player from left or right is annoying and unnecessary anyway since you can always shoot in the opposite direction by turning head down.

Also, a couple more tiny animations (on the spaceman and projectiles) could add much more fluidity and visual polish.

The projectiles could have more spectacular sprites (especially with the new image api), and the option for wasd key movement.  The crouching doesn't lower you enoug hfor my personnal taste, It makes it a bit pointless.

The jet pack push you up when your head is down, which is pretty counter-intuitive.

If all the enemies are low health the current shooting is ok but if some aren't, the player is going to mash the fire button as fast as he can to destroy them with its rifle like with a gatling gun.

ps I understand several of my critcisms are due to the fact this is a work of progress and you haven't had the time to work on these things yet.

@z26 - thank you so much for your detailed response!  Glad you mentioned the weapon switching sound because I wasn't sure about it.  Do you think it should be toned down or what do you think would work better?

The enemies going off screen and shooting will be fixed, eventually when I have a proper level designed they won't be able to do this.

The health will definitely be balanced later on, right now it's just thrown together to get something working but the enemies will have more hit points or I'll put a cool down feature on the laser gun (there's a cool down feature on the anti-grav gun).  The main hero will also be able to acquire more health bars or will be able to regenerate.

I'm aware about the jet pack pushing the hero up instead of down when the hero's head is pointed down.

Agree 100% that the projectiles could be more spectacular…. definitely want to add some muzzle flash and snazzier projectiles.

How important is WASD key movement?  I'm just curious on this one because to be honest I rarely play games on the computer (besides Civ 5) and am more used to game controllers so this is something that I'd like to implement well.  Is WASD key movement more for left-handed players or some other reason?

And to clarify on the turning part you think it'd be better if left/right was pressed and then the hero just rotates a certain speed/certain amount of time when the key is released?  At this point I don't agree with not switching the hero facing right/left because the hero would be upside down when always facing left (or vice versa if only facing one direction).  I'll definitely think about this more though…

Agree 100% about needing more little animations to spruce things up.

For the crouching how low should the  character be able to crouch to feel more useful to the person playing the game?

Thanks again for chiming in and taking the time to play and comment!

In the end you are the one who have the final word to say, it's your game after all.

Some kind of clicking sound would do the trick for weapon switching.

I'd say as a very crude estimate that maybe 60% of games have wasd instead of/with  arrow keys.  The reason I THINK (don't take my word for it) isn't leftiness, but that since your mouse is at your right, it feels better using the mouse at your right and wasd at your left than having your two hands at the right of your body.  Ironically, arrows would be better for lefties.

Often, crouching lower your character to about 50% of its height (convenient for tile size reasons) but size your character is less cartoonish maybe a value of 60%-65% (crouch a bit less) would do (but the value can differ greatly depending of the game, this is a subjective thing not an objective one)

Thats not exactly what I meant about "turning", but it doesn't matter THAT much.  As for the tile flipping left/right, having the down button flipping you instead of flipping automatically could be a compromise, since it isn't in use in antigrav anyway.  Being able to switch gravity midair would be cool.

Oh and you are welcome

Thanks again!  It currently is possible to switch gravity on/off midair but the main actor drops like a rock and if it's activated again towards the bottom of the fall, it's not enough of a gravity pull in the opposite direction to keep the actor from smacking the ground (usually).
 
I don't think I'll implement any mouse controls but will probably implement WASD movement if people are used to that.

Using down to flip the actor could very well work as a comprise, thanks for the idea and I will think on it.

Maybe your game doesn't use the mouse, but people may want to play your game and multitask at the same time :p  it doesn't have to be activated by default, you can always change it in a menu.

Maybe your game doesn't use the mouse, but people may want to play your game and multitask at the same time :p  it doesn't have to be activated by default, you can always change it in a menu.

Changing it in the menu is a good idea.  Shouldn't be too hard to code.  I'll put this on my todo-list!

1920x1080 is too large.  Too much lag and I get the 90% memory warning… a lot!  Time to scale back… and redo a bunch of art assets. : /

After updating to 3.1 several things in my game broke, the radians got updated to a radians/degrees block, my animations were broken (Stencyl decided cram them onto one sprite sheet so multiple images were trying to play at once), and I was bummed out about trying to make a large game with slow performance.

The past month I've been working on new artwork (posted up above) and have got things fixed to where things were when I left off.  Also thanks to forum member liberado have solved the annoying issue of parent -> child actors from jittering around when attached to each other.

In other news the game art wise is going from a space station kinda vibe into a steampunk vibe.  I think I'll keep my main space marine actor and for the story he will be sent to investigate an outpost that he'll have to explore and learn about.  Maybe the outpost he's visiting is set back in time, hence the steampunk vibe, or not, that's TBD.  Also going to redo the way he looks, the legs are all messed up.  I will post more artwork as it becomes available.  The demo above won't really reflect actual gameplay but switching weapons is still relevant and turning gravity on and off, using the jetpack, etc..

As always comments and suggestions are welcome.

After updating to 3.1 several things in my game broke, the radians got updated to a radians/degrees block, my animations were broken (Stencyl decided cram them onto one sprite sheet so multiple images were trying to play at once), and I was bummed out about trying to make a large game with slow performance.

I had the same issues when  i switched with Space Pirate. I took me a week of work to fix several issues but it was worth it. Not because of performance (its still Flash if you compile a browser version) but because of extensions and new APIs that i could use.

It was because of those issues that I almost abandoned the game altogether.  Glad I didn't!

New enemy dude.  This enemy I'm envisioning will be like the main 'foot soldier' in the game.  As the game progresses I'll give the enemy different weapons with maybe different colored uniforms to distinguish them, etc..  Feedback is welcome/appreciated.