Okay, today I can finally show of the new art for Flipper! It’s done by Paul Veer, and it’s amazing! The world have a lot more detail now. And the sprites are just fucking awesome. He animated all characters from 8 sides, they have many different animations. And the same goes for other objects!



A little more in depth view of the art. We recreated the boy because nobody (including us – me and Paul) seemed to love the nerd-character. The boy is just easier to bond with.



We had a discussion about keeping the fish as the exit-point versus something else (i.e. a tele-portal). But I really wanted to keep the fish, since it’s just an awesome character and it’s such a big part of the story. Next to that I like the Donkey Kong nostalgia aspect of keeping the goldfish as exit.



Most of the time Paul and me were on the exact same page. We both adore pixel art and as such we are fans of old games that use cool pixel art. And the art he creates is exactly what I had in mind.

I’m very glad with his work on Flipper!

you can check out all the new art at : http://www.goodbyegalaxygames.com

Menu madness

Last week I threw out all the menu code and completely rewrote and redesigned it. One would be surprised to see how something as simple as menu code can quickly become a huge mess.

Basically I made a brilliant *ahem* design for the menu. Later one of course, I needed to insert a few menus that didn’t have the same setup/structure. I hacked those in. After that I decided to add and pass a few parameters from menu to menu, needless to say I didn’t thought of it before, and they were also hacked in. So all in all it got messy.

So I started to re-write everything. In my defense, the second time coding something is always easier. Because now I knew all them menus and functionality I would need. So I could all incorporate them into my design from the start one.

I’m pretty pleased with the results. The code is clean (and a lot shorter) and very readable. The menu is more clear and faster. So it was a good week.

Next week (starting tomorrow) I will do the last few gameplay-coding thingies. And then the code is done. Meaning that next week I will clean all the code up, and finish it. After that It’s all about the content (which is done for probably 60%).

pathfinding in action!

One of the key features of Flipper is the fact that all interaction is done through the touch-screen. Using the powerups, but also walking. I tried to make the computer as smart as possible, so it knows what you want to do. This was one of the hardest things to do for me, but the results are pretty cool.

This video shows how the player moves around. The black-dot represents the stylus. Watch how you can touch anywhere on the ground, and the player automatically moves there. Taking the shortest route possible. Watch how the computer finds his way all to the top!

second trailer released!

Hooray, the second trailer is out, go watch it!

twitter!

Okay, I’ve been pretty silent in may. This is mainly because I didn’t have anything to really talk about. Just some small bits which I didn’t put online. Because I don’t like reading such blogs and I thought neither would you.

I decided to only post when I really have something cool to say about the game (like the most recent 2 posts) and not post every Monday and Friday. However, if you would like to know the current state of the game I suggest you follow my twitter :

http://www.twitter.com/HugoSmits

The twitter will basically become the place were I will put the small bits on (that don’t deserve a blog post). But it will give you a good insight in the development of Flipper!

It’s Friday night;time for a cold beer! Cheers!