Gameplay:
Find your way through multiple levels, collecting prisms along the way.
You need a certain amount of prisms to open the portal at the end of the level.
You will have to acquire different colours to pass certain challenges.
This is not the big update I had planned a few months ago. The planned update involved unveiling a polished, playable product, screenshots of the game, and the new name of the project.
Please download the demo and give it a try. Any feedback given on what's available will be taken into consideration should I dust this project off and work on it in the future.
• I've added some new stuff to the engine. It'll make some levels object intensive, but it shouldn't cause any slow down.
• Part of adding new objects and how they work to the game means having to do a lot more graphics work. I think the last count of objects needing graphics was 160 or so.
• Along with 160 new objects, most of the old objects need or needed graphics updates, too.
• Player animations are complete. Woot.
• Still need level backgrounds. Solid colours are so... dull.
• I've fixed my printer problem, so I can now design mostly functional levels.
That's all I have to say about the progress of the game. No new screenshots this time, considering how much of the content that would be shown is going to change over the next few days.
Here's a question from the questions thread:
Are the puzzles going to be "push block and jump"-ish?
No. I'm too lazy to code block pushing, and it wouldn't fit with the flow of the game.
The game is coming along fine, but I'm taking a break from working on it for a much bigger, better project. So big and important, there's no time to show off screenshots!
Few things to note:
· The engine is coming along fine. Most of the movement kinks have been ironed out. Only thing presenting a problem at the moment involves landing while moving forward (but not holding a key down); The intended slide mechanism isn't working at all, though it should be a simple fix.
· Some of the features aren't working 100% on their own, but they do work when forcefully set via my uber secret debug commands.
· Artwork is coming along much better. Hopefully by next update I'll be able to show off the test level with more than a bunch of white boundary lines, and the new character sprite.
· I've reverse engineered quite a bit of my engine. Level designs will be able to be made with precision followed by minor tweaks, instead of roughed out and honed through trial and error.
· I haven't been able to fix my printer problem. I don't want to waste the resources to make it work like I it to, so I'll probably have to make some compromises in order to get the result I want.
· Music and sound is sounding good. I've grown too attached to the placeholder music, but it needs to be replaced. Sounds are likely to stay.
- - -
And of course, if you have any questions about Alpha Zero that you'd like answered in the next update, then you can:
Alternatively, swing by the new DC chat: http://www.create-games.com/chat2.asp
I'm there during my waking hours, as "aphant". Just ask your question either prefaced by my nickname or as part of it, or just say "alpha zero". I may not respond immediately, but I will see it.
First up, that's how high the player will be able to jump. It's just over 3 blocks; Not high at all. How will our hero escape?
The second shot shows that. They step onto an anti-gravity pad. They can jump higher and fall slower while in it's area. They also turn green, to show that they're under the influence of reduced gravity; There will be particles floating around with you, so you have a definitive field of operation.
Trouble lurks in the third shot; The last update suggests that's where the level ends! Worry not, as I've simply done away with the floating beachball, in favour of a force field. The red indicates that the next level either doesn't exist (game couldn't load it) or you don't have enough doritos to finish the level. In this case, I don't have enough doritos. If I did, the field would be white and dissipate as I got closer.
"Doritos?" you may be asking. Those floating orange triangles. I call them doritos because that's what they look like right now. They're actually supposed to be fragments of computer chips, but I got lazy when making the graphic and just let it be placeholder. You have to collect a certain number of fragments in order to make a chip to unlock the force field. You don't have to collect all of them, just a few of them. You'll know how many you need.
Another thing you should notice about these screenshots are the numbers in the top-right corner. Before, the top one was used to track the number of fragments you picked up, and the bottom one did nothing. Now, the top one tracks how long you've been on the level, in seconds. The bottom one has taken up fragment duty.
You could assume that there are 9 fragments on this stage. 2 is not enough, but 6 should be (according to the last batch).
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