[ Oddinary Pixels ] @xushaw - Tumblr Blog

Hello! I’m back with new monthly post. It’s a first post in 2017 and first post since November 2016. Sorry guys, it was busy winter!

First of all, we finally came up with new name for the game! Please welcome, Oddinary Highway!

Since November 2016, we’ve made large amount of updates, so I would like to cover following main things in this post:

Elite enemies behavior has been completely changed.

New location has been added to the game – City. It’s very important location, I will cover it below.

Changes in Elite enemy

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, Elite enemy is crumble stone of the game. Player should encounter this type of enemies to get new weapon.

Before change, we were making special waves that includes one Elite enemy surrounded by different infinite waves of enemies. Such waves could occur only one per level. When elite enemy is spawned, it was flying around the screen and following some patterns of shooting and moving. One of the downsides of this approach was that duration of wave was unpredictable and player could be stuck facing Elite for a while.

Other thing that was bothering us is that we were creating unqiue behaviors for each level. And everything started to look like we are overdoing things and elite looks'n'feels like mini-boss.

After discussion, we decided to make following changes on how Elite should work:

Elite still appears only one per level.

Elite doesn’t shoot to player, until it receives some amount of damage

Elite is surrounded by some guards at first, but later on following enemies waves start to spawn. So, you will encounter Elite together with ordinary enemies waves.

Overall Elite behavior is simplified.

New location – The City

During the winter season we wanted to move forward and apply to Greenlight somewhere during the spring (it was before Steam Direct news). One of the things that the game is still missing it’s a complete game loop. In Oddinary Highway level is “looped”: once player completes first loop, he will proceed to beginning of the game. And new loop has an increased difficulty. The end point of each loop will be the same location is the gorgeous City.

Like other locations in Oddinary Highway, the City has its own mechanics that is used in enemies design. One of selected game mechanics is based on summoning other types of enemies. Main advantage of this mechanics is that it allows us to reuse already created enemies from previous locations (Sand and Ocean worlds). And it means we can create gameplay slice pretty fast for new location.

To make level more engaging, Arseniy proposed to use additional mechanics. It came from game lore:

the City was once a capital of Universe. But when father of main protogonist lost it to head of the Debt Syndicate, everything is changed. Now, the City is threatened by robots mafia gangs.

So, some waves of enemies will consist of mafia gangs on hover cars.

Other thing to mention is a light system. During the work on concept art for the City, Ksenia asked if we can “colorize” background objects more interestingly. After short research, we decided to use lighting together with normal maps. There are some other doubts regarding usage of normal maps for other game objects, e.g. player’s ship or weapons, because it will require extra art-related work.

Besides of these main updates, we were polishing, improving, creating new content during last months.

xushaw

Here are the latest news from our team! ٩(◕‿◕｡)۶

BTW, we have a devlog at TIGsource forum:

https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=60078.0

Heyho!

Here’s a fragment of background for Oddinary Highway - crazy pixelart shmup I’m working on with Dash & Dot team.

(づ◡﹏◡)づ Follow our twitter, tumblr and devlog at TIG source forum for updates!

Stay tuned! ☆⌒(≧▽° )

indiecade

There are 150+ entries for #ResistJam that look amazing. We hope you continue to invest activism in your work!

Pirates-cyborgs from upcoming game ☆Ordinary Highway☆ by Dash & Dot!

(･ω<)☆

It’s been a while since I’ve posted here... Now it’s time to fix that! (¬‿¬)

Currently I’m working on retrofuturistic pixelart shmup Ordinary Highway with Dash & Dot team. We’ve started a devlog here (っ◕‿◕)っ https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=60078

Any comments, suggestions and critics would be very appreciated!

(ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧ ✧ﾟ･: *ヽ(◕ヮ◕ヽ)

#pixelart #pixel art #nightcity #sunset city #retrofuturisme #retrofuturistic #lights #neon #neon lights #cityscape #gamdev #indedev #shmups #shmup #shootemup #shoot em up

radiumsoftware

a fractal structure

https://github.com/keijiro/sketches2016/blob/master/Structure3/Structure3.pde

dash-and-dot

August/September 2016

Hey there! Slightly late September reveiew post has arrived! :)

In this post, I would like to share how development of our upcoming retrofuturistic shoot'em up was going for last two months (because everyone was lazy and we skipped Augusut post).

During these two months we’ve made HUUUUGE changes in game mechanics. These changes should make game more fun and player-friendly. We completely changed weapons paradigm in game, which includes Primary, Secondary and Ultimate weapons.

First of all, we completely changed what Secondary weapon is and how player gets and controls it. Before these changes, player got new random Secondary weapon each time, when current weapon is out of ammo. Secondary weapon was also controlled by player and you had to use fire button constantly. This was hard to do on gamepad, because Primary and Secondary weapons usually have different firerates and firemods.

From now, player will received random single use Items instead of Secondary weapon. It could be active Items (e.g. drone with auto-turret) or passive Items, e.g. special force field that changes enemy bullets and rockets trajectory.

Also, we merged existing Ultimate weapon with new Items. Previously, player had to gain required amount of damage-scores to receive new Ultimate weapon. Each Primary has its own Ultimate weapon. Each time player gets Ultimate weapon, he can activate it only once (sounds familiar, right?). It was obvious to make this change and to include Ultimate weapon into list of Items. We’ve added one meta-Ultimate Item and game picks proper Ultimate at activation time.

Because new Items system couldn’t use “out of ammo” rule, we adopted damage-scores system. Once player gains required amount of damage-scores, he get new random Item from pool.

So, new weapon system is following: • Primary weapon, player collects it from drop on stage (one drop per stage). • Single use Items, active and passive items including Ultimate. Player gets randomly picked new Item when he gains required amount of damage-scores.

Next important changes are related to “glitches”, that were introduced in previous months. We added more glitches during September and it became clear, that we should make changes. Everything started to be too random in game. New rules, how glitches work: • New glitch is replaces active glitch, when player gets to next stage • All glitches are separated to “positive” and “negative”. • There could be special event during stage. After event, player gets extra glitches – one positive or negative and one special “event” glitch

Talking about changes. We’ve been working on graphics, too. Major updates include new skins for enemies (Elite enemy) and new iteration on updating Sand World.

We have several types of enemies, who appears on all game locations. Some of them were already updated in the beginning of summer (all bullet enemies). But we skipped for a while one type of enemies with very special role. It’s Elite enemy, who drops new Primary weapon on death. We decided to make Elite enemy visuals independent from location, Because it should appear on all locations, but remain familiar to player. Still, there are several skins for this enemy, but we pick skin at runtime. So, Elite will look different each time.

From early days, background objects were randomly spawned from pool of objects. This lead to issue with feel of progress. To resolve this, we decided to make each stage unique. But still stage is filled with random objects plus unique objects. All stages will have similar generic pyramids, but each stage will have its own decor for them.

Over the last two months we’ve been working with A.Fruit on first batch of sounds for weapons and tracks for game worlds. Tracks turned out great, so I hope we will be able to share sneak peak in following month.

Overall, team has completed more then 100 tasks code, graphics and other content, including: • Pixel perfect rotation – required for all weapons that can follow target • Elite enemy skins and weapons • Started work on first boss in Sand World • New Elite enemy waves and new bosses for Ocean world • Tuning and polishing of glitches • Tons of bug fixes and improvements.

Granny by Monika Daunyte is nice! 😀 #LDJAM #LD36

#LDJAM #LD36

"Robot Flight" or "when something goes wrong" 😭 #LDJAM #LD36

#LDJAM #LD36

dash-and-dot

July 2016 Review

Heyho! July has ended and here is a review of progress we’ve made on Glitch Jam: Bill & Caddy Luck during this month.

As I mentioned in June post, we started to add “glitch” mechanics to the game. These “glitches” are affecting gameplay and making it fun. To trigger any of them, you need to win boss fight and complete stage. Arseniy has written down approx. 50 “glitches” in our design doc. Of course we couldn’t put in place all of them and we’ve added 4 “glitches” to the game for today. Game still has lack of visuals for these mechanics. But it’s already fun when “glitch” occurs and gameplay changes the way you don’t expect.

Also, Arseniy spent a lot of time creating and polishing new bosses for Sand World. For today we have completed mechanics for all bosses and elite enemies in Sand World.

Returning to visuals, Ksenia created first animated explosions and we had added them to thegame. Currently we are using scaled down animation, but we are going to update all explosions to be drawn for proper size in future updates. Also, drawn by hand smoke will be replaced with paricles system.

Explosion should have flying around parts of exploded thing, right? Here you go, we’ve added flying parts of exploded enemies (only one type of enemies), too! :)

A lot of work have been done on weapons visuals. Several weapons gained proper animations, including Shotgun, Revolver, Missiles and Torpedo Launchers. Also, several drones were updated with new graphics. Togehter with animations, Kirill and I have updated how animations are triggered from code for different types of fire.

And major news! We have started to work with A.Fruit to deliver amazing music and perfect sounds within game. First sounds for weapon animation are already in game and they are wonderful! We are looking forward to add more sounds.

Overall, team made great job during July and we are looking forward to do more in August. Stay tuned!

xushaw

Check out our team progress and follow us to stay tuned!

^_____________^