Name that game

With about 3 months until its release, my game is in search of a name. My favorite so far is "Chris: Zero to Hero", but "Zero to Hero" has heaps of Google hits and is probably trademarked. As of today, the working title is "Chris: Unarmed", which is a play on the fact that the character has no arms.

Can you do better?

Conveyor belts

In case you were wondering what the amplifier-looking things were in my previous post, they are conveyor belts. Check it out:

You can even use them to scale walls, which opens up some interesting puzzle situations. Anyway, here is a sample room from level 3 of my game. As usual, ignore the red and yellow borders and the palm trees in the background:

Slowly but surely, things are coming together.

Faker

Most people who know me well will know that I'm a huge Masters Of The Universe fan from way back. I collected the action figures as a boy, and more recently as an adult when the new series came out in 2002. The 2002 release even marked the only time I've ever bought a comic book. Not to mention the time I turned up to a Lord Of The Rings themed birthday party as He-Man because... well... He-Man is better than Aragorn.


Which brings me to the newest enemy in my game. Since my game's inception, I wanted to incorporate some puzzle elements, and I've had an idea of an enemy who responds to the player's movements and mimics their every action. Introducing... Faker!

His name and his blue skin are a tribute to the Faker character from Masters Of The Universe, a robotic replica of He-Man. In this game, he is a replica of Chris, except for his spiky hair and pointed chin (and a couple of subtle touches, like removing his eyebrows to make him appear more evil). He makes for some interesting puzzles too!


Here is just one example:

Avoiding a Faker is no small feat. For instance, jump a little too high and the Faker beneath you will land on the same platform as you and you will die. Try to wall jump with a Faker beside you, and you'll find yourself colliding with them as they too jump towards the wall. Time to get your thinking cap on.

Level 2

The last month has mainly been creating new levels, so there hasn't been a heap of new things to talk about. However, Liz kindly reminded me that I'm doing an injustice to the 1 or 2 people still reading this by posting nothing. In fact, I just checked my Google Analytics, and my Minnesota hits are as strong as ever. I promise to do better!


Anyway, you've seen screenshots from the outdoors area. The next level is full of ice, snow and water. Actually, the tiles are just a different color, but that doesn't sound as good. Check it out:


The tall guy makes his first appearance:

The easiest move in the game. Just hold right, and let the wind do the rest. Looks cool, though:

The Super Mario fireball thingy. Grab the key as it spins, then head for the bonus room:

One of many bonus rooms:

Underwater! All it really does is slow everything down, but it adds a little variety:

Another bonus room:

The command console in action. I blogged about this in January, but I only started using it recently:

Other things shown in these screenshots include:

• Status bar now includes a timer. When a player completes a level, they will get a score based on the number of chroins they collected, their time, and maybe the number of times they died.


• Red and yellow overlay to highlight overscan issues. The guidelines for making Xbox 360 Indie Games is that all important information must be within the main 80% of the screen, because some TVs have overscan problems that means the borders can get cut off. The red and yellow on the border of these screenshots is to help me see these issues, and won't appear on the final version.


• Status bar transparency. The downside of the overscan guidelines is that, when there is no overscan, things like my status bar are stuck in the middle of the screen for no good reason. Because of this, I've given the status bar lots of transparency, to the point where you can hardly see it so it doesn't get in the way. However, anytime you collect a chroin or a key, the transparency disappears and it can be easily read, then after a couple of seconds it fades back into the background. It works pretty well.


• I said earlier that the only difference between the levels is that the tiles are a different color. That was a bit of an exaggeration. Ice has very little friction, so the player skids almost endlessly if they are not careful.

You might wonder why an icy, cold area has palm trees in the background. Not to worry. I haven't gotten around to creating proper backgrounds. I'll do that once I've finished the game.


Next update coming soon.