A.D.O.N. project (Alpha) - Gameplay Demo 03 (Free-zing Waters Zone 1) - Indie Game - 2011

[leftij]

Sonic style:D

[Hanagigi]

Looks awesome!

[jaidek]

Okay, I have to ask...the water. Oh the WATER! Is it a 3D mesh or a large prerendered sprite? Keep up the kickin' job!

[NeatWolf]

@jaidek None of them! :P

It's fake3D, it's a grid drawn with primitives, with appropriate animated UV/XY coordinates, took a while to get the intended result ;)

[CoderRach]

Still really freaking awesome! You're doing an amazing job on this. :D

[NeatWolf]

@CoderRach Thank you! I'm glad I'm still working on it on a daily basis, seems that I'm really going to finish it! :P

[saijeehiguchi]

Now this looks like an indie game that I will be looking forward to beat, and it takes one heck of a game to get me to say that. You said you didn't use DLLs. If I may ask, what exactly did you do to get the bloom effects and the volumetric shadows when your underwater?

[NeatWolf]

@saijeehiguchi Hehehe, thanks!

The bloom is a simple rescale of the original image, with a few blending operation on it, while the volumetric effect is obtained almost in the same way, but repeating the texture with appropriate scaling and positioning ;)

Almost every object in the game has a custom Draw event! ;)

[saijeehiguchi]

@NeatWolf Sounds like a resourceful approach to getting a nice effect! By the way I think your music tracks were actually quite catchy.

[sWhillance]

This looks really great! Although I think you need a new choice of music, rather than some song with generic chord-progressions.

[NeatWolf]

@sWhillance Thank you! :) ...I know, unfortunately it's an (almost) 0 budget project and still haven't found any volunteers to compose the tracks :P So, well, a few of them were composed by me, and the other ones are cheap non-exclusive license tracks.

Thanks for your feedback, I'll try to improve this aspect!

[sWhillance]

@NeatWolf No problem :D I compose, you can use any of my tracks in your video for free if you want. I'm not sure if there's anything that would suit it perfectly, but perhaps something better than what you used here.

Facebook search Sam Whillance Music

Maybe try Warcry, or anything older than that. I don't think the 8-bit-ish music I'm leaning towards recently would suit it.

[NeatWolf]

@sWhillance Whoops, sorry, I think Iost track of the chronological order of the comments here in youtube, I'll check your work in a few mins, and thank you ;)

[NeatWolf]

@sWhillance Thanks! :)

...I know, but is really difficult to find some -not so expensive- good&fitting tracks, and I'm very... difficult to please to ask someone to make it for free :P

Until I release it, I'm still in time, at least, hehehe :)

[RKProductions98]

There's no doubt this game will be featured.

[NeatWolf]

@RKProductions98 Hehehe, I really hope so, would really love to get some attention, doin' this for a living would be great for me!

[iRofoe]

Wait, this is a Game Maker game? Z-OH-MY-HELL THIS GAME IS EVEN MORE AWESOME IN THAT CASE.

And yes, those are pre-rendered graphics.

[NeatWolf]

@iRofoe Thank you! :)

Yup, it's definitely GameMaker 8.1, with the use of no external DLLs exception made for the OGG support. Yes, most of the graphic is prerendered, with big exceptions for the early zones, which have been drawn by hand, or are hybrids :) (the Hundred Railways Zone 2 video also here on this channel is a good example of that)

Thanks for your feedback! :)

[Froodjakle]

Holy hell, this is amazing. I can honestly say I've never seen a Game Maker game that looks this professional before, although I must say the walljumping looks like it would feel kind of awkward. Aside from that though, nothing really seems off, it seems to mesh so many different kinds of gameplay near flawlessly. I can't wait to see what you do with this project.

By the way, just out of curiosity, are you using pre-rendered 3D graphics? The animations and characters look fantastic.

[NeatWolf]

@Froodjakle Thank you, I'm doing my best, have really spent a lot of time on this project :)

About the walljump, in this video I had a problem with the recording, so somehow the game didn't catch all the input. In the Hundreds Railways video (gameplay video 02, also here on my channel) there's some cleaner walljumping. What do you mean by "awkward"? Are you talking about the animation, or the controls?

Yup, it's *almost* all prerendered graphics, and some have been drawn by hand :)

[Froodjakle]

@NeatWolf Initially, it looked like it would feel awkward because of the minimal vertical height you seem to gain, but after watching the other two videos I'm not sure that's the case. Was it just variable jumping causing it to jump so low in this video? Other than that, I do have to admit the animation for wall jumping looks slightly odd at times, particularly during higher jumps, but it's far from being game breaking, especially if the jump itself functions well.

[NeatWolf]

@Froodjakle Yup, I wanted the walljump to behave like that, it's more like an horizontal push than a vertical one, and it's easy to do: just jump against a wall while keeping the directional key, and bash "jump" while still pressing the other key. All the levels have been drawn with this specific, so even changing the jump height of a single pixel is potentially game-breaking :D

I'm still working on the animations, so I'd be glad to know what do you exactly feel it's odd, so I can work on it! :)

[Froodjakle]

@NeatWolf I think, primarily, it's how stiff the jumping animation looks. The pose itself is fine, but with how smooth and fluid the rest of the movement animations are, it's just somewhat jarring to have such a stationary pose. Perhaps make him ease into a falling pose similar to the normal jumping animation? Other than that, it seems just fine.

[NeatWolf]

@Froodjakle Hehehe, you're definitely right, it's just 1 frame :P

It doesn't really cost me much since the model is completely rigged ;)

I'll make a tweening animation, I just have to figure out the starting and the finishing pose.

Thanks for your feedback, it's been greatly appreciated! ;)

[Froodjakle]

@NeatWolf No problem, man. I tend to be the guy to give constructive criticism where it's needed, I usually pay closer attention to all the smaller things in games I make or play, which is probably why it stood out to me so much, especially among the other stellar animations.

Keep up the good work, I can't wait to see (and eventually play!) this game as it progresses.

[NeatWolf]

@Froodjakle Added 7-8 frames right last night, you were totally right, now the walljump animation smoothly tweens fluidly to the default falling animation, totally a new feel, thanks for the tip!

I'll be showing it for sure in the next video! :)

[Froodjakle]

@NeatWolf Glad I could help! :D Can't wait to see it in action.