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Hello all,

Did some changes to the order of the maps… map4 is now the starting map… and also slowly looking into the concept of being able to add secrets and unlockables to the game and to the maps themselves 🙂

As you will also see, now when you grab a finance object (one of the gemstones) you will recieve a visual feedback in the form of a floating +50, +250 or +500, depending on the colour and value of the object you grabbed 🙂

Also threw around some ideas in my head about how to add more interactivity for the player. Alot of you have mentioned that you thought it would be a good idea if the player was able to pick up a crate. And that idea is good, but not exactly what I wanted with the game, as I feel that dragging and carrying boxes around is tedious…

But I thought of something more twinkly and magic…ish 😉 Since the lead character is going to be some kind of creature of nature… be it an elf or a fairy, or some kind of cute little fuzzy animal… I wanted to introduce the 4 elements of nature (Earth, Air, Water, Fire … for those of you who have no idea what im talking about 😛 )

So for example… Imagine seeing part of the floor bluish and icy… next to it is an Ice Crate… So you shoot (will be explained :p ) at the Ice Crate and it turns into a Fire Crate that you can then push onto the Icy Floor and melt the Floor.

But wait… Shooting? I thought you said there was going to be no shooting in your game TastyGraph?!

Yeah… I call it shooting, but its really more like Elemental Magic… your character can have some mild form of control over the four elements but will need to pick up special Elemental Orbs in order to shoot her powers.

So i am thinking these orbs are going to be located on the maps and will be multi-functional… meaning you pick up 1 orb, and it functions as Ammo for your Elemental Power Shot… your shot is Multi-Elemental… and will react differently depending on what it hit.

Shoot a fire crate and you turn it into an Ice Crate… and the other way around of course…

This of course will lead to Air Crates and Earth Crates… and eventually the Crates would/should be replaced with little Elemental Spirits… rather than being Crates 🙂

but yeah… to sum things up… Good things coming to the game in the near future 🙂

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Hello all…

Slackiest weekend ever… But at least its over and a more productive week can begin 🙂 (Who would have thought I would ever complain that I didnt work enough during the weekend ? 😛 )

In this latest update I have added a work in progress 4th level (who am i kidding… all the levels are work in progress… the whole GAME is work in progress ;D )

I’ve remodelled the Yellow Gemstone in Blender, making it a more coin-ish appearance… And while I was in blender, I decided to have some fun with a Cube and the Extrusion Tool combined with a bit of scaling and rotating (yes, I am a total newbie at 3d modelling… So if you’re an expert and reading this… and suffering from an abundance of generosity, then dont hesitate to throw your leet skillz in my general direction 😀 ) I havent added an actual Texturemap to the Firetrap model, as I have still yet to learn how to apply those kinds of things and I couldnt be arsed to learn it since I figured the actual coding at present time was more important 😛

Most of the levels also recieved tweaks here and there… I played through the maps alot, and also looked over the shoulders of various playtesters to try and figure out exactly where the maps are not making sense, and where you end up not knowing where to go.

I’ve also played around with the PlayerPrefs system in Unity3d, which is basically a way of storing information on the user’s computer. Thereby allowing the game to remember specific things. In this case, the Highscore (Its not an Internet Highscore, it is simply YOUR personal highscore on YOUR computer… )

Its not perfect, but its a start. 🙂 You’ll find the highscore meter at the start menu in the game, its not finished or polished, but it remembers the best score you did on that computer 🙂

Oh, and finally, before I wrap up this blogpost, as you can probably see, I’ve also played around a little bit with the text formatting on the blogpost, let me know what you think… be it good, bad or in between. Any feedback is appreciated 🙂

Thanks,

Eli (TastyGraph)

 

ps. I am aware of the horrible english in the subject of my blogpost… it seemed like a funny idea at the time 😛

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Hi All, just wanted to let you know that the lack of updates in the past few days has mainly been because what I have been doing, hasnt really warranted a blogpost or a completely new game-update.

 

I’ve basically been working with my code and watching alot of tutorials on making proper code, better reusable programmy…stuff…  And the result has been that I have managed to re-write a lot of my code, making a better menu system (not perfect, but somewhat better than the old one)…

Minor tweaks such as being able to go back to the main menu when dead, rather than bouncing straight back to map 1. The purpose of this, is of course to allow you to access the main menu and change options, if need be.

This will be expanded even further as later on I will make it so that you can access the menu from ingame with the ESC key, allowing you to tweak options or quit/restart your game.

 

Did a bit of extra writing for the TODO-List…

 

and the last thing, that I would say is what qualifies the next update as being: a big update… Is that I am working on the 4th level now.

This level be more in the spirit of how my vision of the game is. It will be a horizontal level, a bit longer than the other levels, and it wont have the same feeling of ‘Oh Snap!’ everytime you miss a ledge, since you wont be falling down past 5 ledges and starting at the bottom…

 

And speaking of starting at the bottom… In the near future, a Waypoint/Flag system will be implemented (Once I have figured out a proper code for it) So what this means is that everytime you reach reach a Waypoint, your Respawn Position will be stored there and instead of starting back at the beginning of the map, you will now start at the waypoint where you had reached.

 

Hope this post shed a bit of light as to where TastyGraph has been the past few days and why there really havent been much in terms of updating 🙂

And as always, please dont hesitate to post comments here and let me know what you think. 🙂

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Yep, today is the 24th of November… so just 1 month left until Christmas… But I say lets celebrate Christmas in November!!! So in the spirit of christmas, the firetraps will now reward you with small and big gems, depending on which sort of Crate you toss at them 😉

No… not really 😛

Actually, it wasnt really in the spirit of christmas, but hey ho 😛 It was my plan all along that the crates would eventually give rewards of some sort 🙂 And today seemed a good day to finally figure out how to do it, and add it in the game 🙂

But you guys had no way of knowing what was coming in the future, or what was being developed.

So to remedy that, as well as to motivate myself. I have now added a Suggestions/To-Do page. You can find the page at the top of the blog, or in the right side of the blog at the Pages section.

 

Dont hesitate to let me know what you think. (And yes, I am aware that the rotation on the gems are a bit … woogy 😛 I am working on that)

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Another day with a decent amount of tweaks and updates..

Extra Lives now display a little text when you pick them up, making it immediately known to you that you picked up an extra life.

Timer mode now resets to 300 seconds everytime you switch a level or you die (effectively giving you 300 seconds for every attempt you do at completing a level…)

Ended up spending most of the morning trying to figure out why the bloody Timer mode refused to reset on level 3 but worked fine on lvl 1 and 2… made absolutely no sense… and ultimately I didnt find out why.. But I did get it fixed… go figure 😉

Here is a video for the lazy folks 🙂

And once again, please dont hesitate to post a comment or let me know what you think of the game or the latest updates… It is really the only way for me to figure out whats good and whats not so good 🙂

Or what you would like to see changed or added to the game 🙂

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Hi All…

 

Just a quickie 🙂 Have been out all day, went on a train trip to visit my dad, and I brought my laptop and my usual drawing gear 🙂

Ended up with my laptop in my dad’s livingroom, working on the game, doing some programming and concept art on my own laptop, while Mette, my dad’s wife, sat next to me on her laptop playing the very game I was working on 😀

21-11-2009

 

Quite a different experience, but a very entertaining one, as my programming would occasionally be interrupted by outbursts from Mette, complaining about the little guy’s ability to follow her commands! or cursing at herself for running into firetraps ;D

 

Oh, and in the train I was fiddling with a different little idea for something I might make another day. no screenshots yet, but its basically a physics/gravity type game with a playfield, a ball, and you in control of the playfield, and your goal is to manipulate the playfield by tilting it horizontally and vertically to make the ball roll in a desired direction towards whatever the goal is for the map.

 

yes, its been seen tons and tons before… 🙂 But its a learning experience for me none the less 🙂

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I had the pleasure of getting to go home 2 hours earlier from work today… Which I of course immediately put to good use by rushing home and doing a bunch of coding… codey…stuff 😛

Added a Timer to the game, so now you will earn a score at the end of each level, based on how many seconds you have remaining of the 300 seconds that I’ve give the player to complete each level. (You wont die by running out of time yet… and yes, i am a CRAPPY tester… so I have no idea what will happen to your score if you let the timer run out and then finish the map at negative time… im guessing it wrecks you score 😛 Feel free to let me know 😉 )

Anyways, more to come… but for now, Enjoy the timed mode and keep the suggestions and encouragement coming.
Thanks all! 🙂

oooh, I almost forgot… Welcome to the Credits section! 😉 You know who you are, and Thank you for your help!

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Actually… not really 🙂 I’ll do it in 1 post 🙂

I’ve added a Continue function when you run out of lives you will be able to continue from the map you reached, rather than having to restart (unless you chose to, since that is an option as well)

Not a whole lot of stuff got done today, other than… call me Mr.Slack…

Oh, except maybe for a little secret that I might be ready to reveal in the near future 🙂 (give me a few days 😉 )

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Hello All 😉

Its getting a bit late here, but there’s an update none the less.. based on a suggestion from Ravn, which I thought was quite a good idea, I have now added Ice Crates to the game… They are like the normal crates, except when they touch a firetrap, both ice-cube and firetrap disappears (yes, its very unpolished at the moment, but i will add fancy effects later 😛 )

This adds a whole new option for the player, as they can now search for ice-cubes and use these to clear out fire traps and gain access to bonuses… So I have of course added a bunch of bonuses near some of the fire-trap clusters 🙂 (on level 1 and 2)

Hope you enjoy! 🙂

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As you can probably guess from the post title… yep, this evenings update brings Unstable Platforms to the game…

You know, the kind of platforms that you stand on, and then they give you some kind of indication that standing on them is not a good idea, since they are about to fall… They’re not exactly a new invention, as you have undoubtedly seen them many times in the Super Mario games 🙂

You’ll see the first one on the 2nd level, have fun with it 🙂

I’ve also done a little bit of tweaking on the 2nd and 3rd map to make them a little bit more interesting and generally feel less empty.

And as you finish the game (wether its by death… or by entering the End of Level Portal on the 3rd level) you will undoubtedly notice that I have changed the way scoring works, and you will now receive a bonus of 500 points for every Life you have by the time you finish the game 🙂

Yeah, that means no bonus for those with 0 lives, due to dying… 😉

Let me know what you think of these changes, and feel free to post your highscores 🙂 (yes, I will eventually make it store the highscores and let the players compete against eachother… when I figure out how to do it 😛 )