Posted by Ross
Thu, 17th Jul 2014
I tried, I really did. Despite my best efforts I was unable to drag Al away from Flame Over to write a blog for you all. When asked he said something about having to prepare a build of Flame Over for Gamescom before burying himself in documents. I don’t expect him to emerge from them until next month.
Don’t despair though as when Al does reappear in August he should be bringing with him the next Laughing Jackal blog post. Until then you can keep up to date with any news from Laughing Jackal by checking out our Twitter page here.
Posted by Ross
Fri, 4th Jul 2014
Hi everyone,
Wow, it’s been a super busy week here at Laughing Jackal as we continue to beaver away on our forthcoming action Roguelike for Vita, Flame Over. Also, coincidentally we just had a fire alarm test a few moments ago, to really get us in the firefighting mood! ;)
As discussed last week, we’ve been working on Blaze’s animations for everything he does in the game, from idling with each of his various tools and throwing water bombs, to using interactive stuff like switches, dying and celebrating. The animations are going in as I write this and hopefully it’ll be a relatively hassle free process (famous last words!)
Flame Over star Blaze performs his victory, run and death animations
While that’s been going on we’ve been able to begin tweaking core gameplay and make some cool new additions. We finally have enough ‘stuff’ in the game to begin looking at each of the elements in isolation and think about what’s needed in order to make it more fun and not too easy or too hard, etc.
We’ve also been getting some of our fire based enemies behaving correctly and that involves tying each one to a specific material type in the game world. For example, fabric objects such as carpets, rugs, chairs, etc, can spawn a fire-based enemy type. This launches a low-level fireball that creeps swiftly along the ground, setting fire to anything it makes contact with. You can sometimes see a trail of fire make its way across a room and even go through a door behind you and carry on setting a trail of fire in the next room! VERY cool to see in action and something I am personally super happy with.
We have a few other ‘fire enemy’ types we’re working on as well and soon we’ll be at a stage where we can show you all of this stuff in action via a nice video. I REALLY can’t wait to get to that point, which should be in the next few weeks with a bit of luck!
Next week we’ll continue to look at our fire enemies, and also work on a really nice GUI that tells you exactly what’s going on, gives you plenty of warning of danger and, vitally in a Roguelike action game, gives you plenty of warning when you’re near death!
Until next week, have a good one. ^_^
Al
Posted by Ross
Fri, 27th Jun 2014
Hello all,
Apologies for the missed Blog post last week, but things have been “heating up” in Flame Over’s development.
Since last we spoke quite a lot has happened, including:
- Finished coding of our mini missions for each theme (excluding any bug fixes, naturally!)
- Added all remaining Hazard rooms to the Executive theme for testing.
- Created our remaining hazard items, including gas bottles, movement-triggered explosives, giant crushers and other evil devices!
- Reworked soaking visuals to provide better looking soaks for extinguisher and hose.
With all that going on its been a great couple of weeks in the game’s life cycle. Now those things are done, we can move onto the juicier stuff, in particular getting the game’s remaining features in, adding some more menus and UI into the game and – most exciting of all!! – animating Blaze, the game’s hero.
Above: An example of an environment that’s been covered in extinguisher foam
For a long time now we’ve been working on the key features of the game and poor old Blaze has had to wait an age before he can truly feel alive. Our trusty fireman has an awful lot of actions to create, most of which function correctly right now, but are yet to be represented visually in-game. So, in the very near future we’ll be adding proper hose and extinguisher firing animations, wielding the fire axe to smash down fire doors, dying (various causes!), getting injured, taking heat damage from fires, and TONS of other stuff!
The process of making Blaze look as good as the rest of the game has finally begun, and I can’t wait to share all those developments with you over the coming weeks. Hopefully this means we can begin sharing video footage with you soon! :D
Above: Water from the hose clears away the foam and soaks the environment
So, for now, I hope you like our foam and water soaking visuals and I’ll talk to you again next week – promise! ;)
Cheers until then,
Al
