fallingfoxdev-blog

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The first build is up!

The first proper build of the game is finally on Itch and able to be downloaded. it’s still missing a few things and I sadly had to remove the nice water shader I had put in so that it would work but regardless it’s there!

https://fallingfox.itch.io/little-lizard

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Adding in the enemies

I’m finally putting the enemies into the level and properly testing out the stealth system. It’s already taken a fair bit of tweaking and I’m sure I’ll have to keep working on it but it seems to be fairly reliable at the moment.

I’ve also got the little bodies of the lizard spawning where the player has died in the level and you can even hide in them to avoid enemies.

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This lizard will be the death of me!

After a lot of fighting with trying to get this lizard’s walk looking nice through 2D rigging I’ve finally given up and animated him by hand. It might not look as clean and polished as it would have but I’m just happy he’s finally walking around.

I’ve also added a few more little effects to the environment like the ‘fireflies’ floating around and a little animation of the grass shaking when you walk through it.

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Updated level look!

After a lot of tweaking and messing around with various different fog implementations I’m now really pleased with how the level is coming together. It has much more of the moody feel I was hoping for and sticking with the simple greyscale look works a bit better overall at setting the scene.

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Fun Times With Animation

Using a bit of Anima2D and a lot of custom pivot points I’ve added some life to the characters through simple animations. Shown above is the idle state for one of the enemies.

The enemies themselves haven’t proven too stressful but I’m still having major issues with the lizard main character. I didn’t expect it to be so difficult to get a nice walk cycle through the use of Anima2D but even breaking the limbs into smaller segments hasn’t helped a lot. I’ll keep experimenting otherwise I might need to fall back on frame-by-frame animation which I’m far more comfortable with.

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Putting the world together!

I’m currently working on piecing the level together, utilising post-processing to give the game the moody feel we want it to have. I’ve also added in some subtle moving fog to both give the level some life and to help tie the background layers together.

As an update on the animation front I’ve been having a few issues getting a walk cycle working for our lizard with Anima2D. I’ve since learnt that spring bones won’t work the way I had hoped they would for the tail so it’s back to the drawing board on how to get the tail moving naturally.

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Rigging characters

To get the groundwork for the game underway I’ve been using Anima2D to give our protagonist lizard and some of the awesome enemies our artist has made bones and flexible meshes. This will allow us to animate them and add some flexibility to important parts of the mesh such as the lizard’s tail.

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New mini game project!

We’ve started work on a new 4 week game project, our idea is for a moody 2D style game where you play a tiny lizard in a giant swamp world. You’ll need to use stealth and cunning to get around and take down these giant creatures!

Shown above is some of the incredible concept art done by Liam the artist I’ll be working with.

During our first round of brainstorming I actually did some research into what lizards can do. Turns out they have some pretty cool skills that we’re thinking of using as possible game mechanics. Our ideas so far include dropping your tail as a kind of save system, scaring enemies with your neck frills, camouflaging yourself with the background and using your heightened vision to keep out of danger.

Our goal is to try and make an interesting side-scroller type of game without the use of any kind of traditional platforming. It should be a challenge but I’m really excited to get stuck in.

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Level 2 Added!

We’ve implemented our second level ready for testing. It has larger pits this time and a bit more room for the NPC’s to roam around.

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Carry Mechanic!

This week has mostly been about improving the NPC’s AI and giving the player more control over their interactions with the NPC’s.

Along with pushing an NPC you can now pick them up, carry them around and then throw them away.

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Convert Your Friends!

Our current four week long game jam project about feeding your ‘friends’ to your lord and master Cthulhu.

The first big challenge of this project was setting up our active ragdoll character. Now I have the fun task of setting up AI for the NPC’s that involves them running about on a navmesh whilst still abiding by physics. 

They’re moving between waypoints at the moment but with some interesting rotation and pathing as you can see above!