It's finally out after 2 months of painful development

Now i get to finally launch this sucker for all you to see.

Come and get it!!!

That's right! The game is finally wrapping up after 2 months in development.

It's coming to HTML, and probably executable soon after.

Hopefully it would've been worth the wait.

If there's anything I would like to say is that I had fun developing this game and I cannot wait until I can release this to the world for all to see. Sure it's been difficult at times, but I tried my best to make this as stable as I can get. So, yea, see you next week!

It's another week, another 2 weeks actually. Inn & Out progress is doing good, slower than usual but eventually I'm gonna make it, I believe I will,

Anyway, let's discuss what I've added since the last few weeks.

First of all, right now I've just posted more progress on my Twitter,

https://twitter.com/ItsNotakin/status/1770895989211124180

Shows a lot of stuff from the last time so I can just break it down a bit.

First, I got a title screen, very very basic, but it comes in handy to prepare my recording software to fetch footage.

Next, I got an intro sequence working, as to mimic the old arcade games it was based off of.

I also included the entity loading, the first intro is pretty long, has a jingle and loads the rest of the world.

The 2nd intro is shorter and silent.

I also included the flashing 1UP HUD element.

Next up the enemies have smarter AI, they don't just walk around until they hit a wall, they do more than that.

They can jump, and use the elevators.

Next up, the coins, these bounce around the stage, collect them for 10 points each.

Collect enough coins and you can activate the Bonus Door

If you can get to the door before it disappears and open it you can claim your prize, a bonus prize that is, level dependent.

Don't worry about it not being valuable, these get better the more you play.

I'm not gonna gut it's technical stuff this time, I just thought i can showcase more progress for this game.

As for when it's gonna be done, I don't do release dates, as I never seem to nail it.

But I am hoping for a mid to late spring release.

That's gonna be all for now, see you later!!!

It's been quite a while since my last dev log. And I've been hard at work making the game itself.

Let's see what we got since the last log...

There's a new name for the game, "Inn & OUT!"

Logo looks nice.

Oh I'Ive programmed basic enemy behavior, lives, a death state and a game over screen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQyKJsFhs8M

This footage didn't have the proper GUI made.

It took me a few days just to get that working just right, figuring out how to pause the game and such.

The music was made in Furnace Tracker with the Namco WSG chip.

I also programed stairs for people who don't feel like jumping to another floor

I got the HUD mostly working, along with working score and a CRT filter

It's toggled with a debug key for now, but I'll find something to give players an option to turn it on and off.

I wish I can get a semi-fisheye lens filter too, but this is the best I can do.

and that's not the last of it, I made a screen border for the web versions for the game, for now. Me and Kokorohatsaru made it, I did most of it however, for portable versions I may find a way to toggle that too.

I have just about 28 things left to do for the game, I can't wait to release this to the public, see you soon!

Hey, it's me again

Yesterday I showcased the Sticky Landing mechanic for my game, now I should discuss how the doors work.

For reference purposes here's the footage again:

https://twitter.com/PROJECT_NG1/status/1760764361680073085

Here I am going to demonstrate how these doors work.

Prepare for some nerdy stuff.

Here's a gif of the doors systems:

With the regular doors you can close them, open them, knock them and even enter and exit the doors, just like in Hotel Mario for the CD-i.

You can also use the elevators and move on to the next floor.

Usually from Point A - Point B, these are a vital movent mechanic as there are going to be more than just 1 floor to clean.

But how do they work?

Doors have hinges of course.

Anyway, here's a more in depth analysis of the door systems, elevators count as it uses the same code as the doors but only entering them.

Each door can be interacted separately, and each every one of them have 4 states, open, closing, closed and opening.

And the player also has 4 states with the doors, exposed, entering, hidden and exiting.

The point of hiding in the doors is that you cannot attack the enemies, but you can dodge them by hiding in the doors, which is why you can open the doors again, in case you're in a tight situation.

You can enter the doors by pressing Up, and exit by pressing Down.

Now, how do the doors open and close?

The player only has 2 buttons, A and B, A is to jump of course and B is to interact with the doors.

The door detects whenever the player presses B, when the door is in the open or closed state, and the player is in the door's hitbox, when they check all these boxes it changes states from 1 - 2 and 3 - 4.

Here's what the hitbox looks like:

If the doors are in state 2 (which is for the closing animation), it starts a timer to switch between states, when that timer hits 0 and the doors are in either states 2 or 4, it moves on to the next state as it resets the clock.

The player hiding in the doors have a similar timer function, which determines if the player is truly hiding or not, not just that but it plays the animation.

As for the elevators it's also the same case for the doors, press up on its hitbox and you enter it.

It also has a timer just like the doors, but just for the animations, after the first animation plays it calls the other elevator to play its exit animation, and teleports the player there, vice versa for the first elevator.

You may have also noticed how the player has different sprites depending on which direction they face, and they store the same direction they last faced. That was just a simple method for flipping the sprites, the player has a sprite for every direction they face, as I couldn't automatically flip the sprites myself. But it does give me the opportunity to make the player store the last angle they faced, for a more dynamic approach.

That's pretty much everything the game has to offer so far, I haven't made any more assets than these, make sure to wait here as I develop the game even further than just a Hotel Mario clone, see you soon!

It's 2's day!

(Actually it's a Thursday and it's 2024 but you know what I mean.)

And not too long ago I announced development of my side project, Room Service, and shown its prototype footage from my YouTube. Today I got something pretty neat to show you, Here's more footage on the Project: NG Twitter:

https://twitter.com/PROJECT_NG1/status/1760764361680073085

And as you see the game looks more polished than the last few days ago, let me show you a small little trick on how I made the ground collisions seem pixel perfect.

"Sticky Landing"

As you can see from this gif here, the character is always sticking to the pixel of the ground after landing on the ground, In GameMaker this doesn't do that by default, and pixel perfect collision is hard to code, That I have an easier solution to that, not as tedious as coding it all in,

Here's how it works

The red line you see on the ground is known as the "Character Y Snapper", it snaps the character right back to its bottom y position, since it's a 1x1 game upscaled 3x each 6x6 pixel is considered a 1x1 pixel to them, thus sending the player back down on the very pixel where they're neither away or in the ground. Only after they land, or is close to landing.

Here's a better look on how it works.

You can see from the y position string that it's an even number every time they land.

And the jump_land_timer prevents the player from landing as soon as they leave the ground, making it too sticky.

Why am I doing this method exactly besides this being hard to code otherwise?

Here's what it looks like without the y snapper:

If you squint you can see that they sink below or float above the ground a bit each time they land, which causes an inconsistency,

Here's a better look:

You can notice how the y position is inconsistent.

With the y snapper placed on the ground it makes the landing seem more polished and pixel perfect without having to code the pixel perfect collision detection.

That's pretty much it for today, tomorrow I shall discuss the door mechanics.

Ciao!

Not too long ago I've stated that I will be making smaller projects before I make Project:NG as it's very ambitious for my first project, so I thought maybe I can fill the void of my lack of experience with a smaller, newer game, I call it "Room Service (Working Title)".

Basically this game is a mix between Hotel Mario and Mappy, stylized after the 3rd gen namco games. You're a hotel employee, and you've been ordered for room service, but then the whole complex is infested with giant rats and other baddies, and their big bad plan is to open every door in the complex, probably also steal their food, such rudeness! It's up to you to close all of the doors while you avoid the enemy, and save the hotel.

Here's a few things about it so far.

Prototype Footage:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8-M4MouQu8

The game's engine is gonna be GameMaker, as I needed to use it anyway since I bought it years ago.

I plan on releasing the base game online in here, if the numbers serve me kindly then I might improve on this and release it in portable form.

Since last year I've gave out my goals for Project: NG, hoping to reach these expectations by the end of it, but sadly I couldn't make it this far, at least got 1 character almost done. But this just came to mind, how can I make a game without primary experience for it? My experience came from animating sprites and making chiptune covers. Plus Project: NG has a lengthy scope that is set in stone, even so it's ambitious for my first project. So I need a plan to justify it, how can I even label myself as a gamedev if I didn't release a game yet? I mean I had gamemaker studio in my library for a long time and I haven't found the time to use it. Well here's my plan...

I'm planning on making small side projects, games I mean, but not the special kind something more so arcade like, it's cheesy, chiche'd and bare bones but just bare with me here, I need experience, I need to justify myself being a gamedev without a game to label myself with. I still got my character Selena, she probably needed a proper debut anyway besides art.

Don't take this as me going on hiatus from P:NG, I just need to stretch the muscles that's all. I'm still gonna make the main game, but I think it would be more ideal if I can make something fun and playable before I start calling myself a gamedev.

As for art, I can still do that alongside the games, even music too, I still plan on making my music more original, as the market demands diversity and creativity. Euphoria was a hit, not as big as the other covers but you know what I mean, I believe that kind of music, especially euphoric music, is easy to make and I love listening to them, it's a win win.

I found my old pc lying around and it was working like shit, so I installed Linux Mint on it, and now it works like new again! too bad it costed the hard drive, at least i archived my stuff beforehand hehe

here's a shot of it btw

looking neat, huh.

Now i can officially say that I can port Project NG to Linux! As for Mac ports i have no plans for those until I find someone with a Mac.