Grappling

Realized I haven't posted in a few, so thought I'd talk a bit about the new grapple system. I liked the old one okay, but there wasn't much too it. Once a grab started, there's not much to do other than wait for it to end. Those of you playing one handed probably appreciated that, so whatever I chose to do needs to keep that in mind as well.

In the old system, there were basically two looping animations, one for if you started the grab, and one for if the monster started it. In the new system I've combined both of those, and depending on who is in 'control' of the grapple, the animation will change. At the moment, the grapple control is divided into four phases - player dominant, player advantage, monster advantage, and monster dominant. I just made those terms up, but I think that gets the jist. Anyway, there's a unique animation for each of the four phases, and damage dealt/received will change based on which of the four phases you are in.

So how do you change phases you ask? Well, the starting phase is determined by who starts the grapple & adjusted a bit by health (a character at low health has a penalty). After that, control will shift a bit on it's own, based on the relative strength scores (Body Stat) between them. Those of you playing one handed will probably stop there, it's 'enough' of a game as is. For those of you playing to play however, there's an additional arrow system, where you match the arrows to further shift the bar to your advantage.

I think that about covers it, so here's some pictures of the four phases vs. a zombie crewman. Oh, as long as you have armor on, the monster can't shift advantage to the 4th phase (Monster dominant). I call it Armor Save. He will of course try to take your armor off to solve that problem.

Oh, & there's still a buncha testing numbers on the screen for me.  No worries, I promise I'll clean all that up before the final game.  hahah

-DirtyC101

Around the interwebs

So, neat thing about the internet is what you find once you actually start looking. Found this site the other day:

kyrieru.blogspot.com

It's another amateur who's making a porn game. Yeah, I know wierd right? You'd think I'd be the only one. har har. Anyway, looks like this dude has some really big plans, and I like his art style. So, if you happen to be into porn games (AKA: if you're reading this), I'd suggest checking him out in a few months.

I guess I should note that there's actually quite a few amateurs or semi-pro's out there making porn games. At some point I'll either make a link dump or perhaps make a sidebar to point to... geez, not sure a sidebar would be big enough. hehe. Well, maybe just my favorites.

Anyway, short post. I was working on the character select screen today, so here's a picture for the curious. :)

-DirtyC101

February Update

So where's that game at anyway? ;P

It always boggles my mind how much progress I have made, and yet how much more there is to go. I'm really just tickled at some of the programming tricks I'm teaching myself as I go. I'm using functions & subroutines, moving to local variables instead of global ones, nesting statements to minimize lag... I even cut the main body of code down from over 1000 lines to just over 600. Really, all sorts of fun tricks that I 'should' be thinking about as a programmer.

And then I look at my to-do list for the game. It's down to 3 pages long, and I haven't even added in stuff for the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th stage yet. There's just so much to get done. I may release a beta at some point, not so much to drum up interest, but rather so I can have a 'break'. I'm having a blast making this, but I don't want to burn out either.

Anyway, some screen shots below to give y'all an idea of how it's coming together. There's a lot of extra garbage on the screen which I'm using to help me decode bugs & whatnot. The green circles, or pretty much anything in pink is just testing stuff, so don't pay it too much attention. And looking at these pictures reminds me that I still haven't settled on a... HUD? Not sure what you call all the interface / display stuff, but one menu is a plain white bar, while another is a poorly drawn paper scroll, & the grapple menu is just floating bars. Okay, I kinda like that one. Heheh. Ah well, one more thing for the to-do list. =)

-DirtyC101