Birds That Fly

I'm a big fan of "time trialing" in platformers. This much is obvious if you look at my previous games: FLaiL's scoring system was based on time, with your total score from all stages determining your progress through the game. Jumper Three had time trial goals for each stage, and the medals you earned by beating them unlocked secret stages.

The structure of my current project is again new: each stage contains 25 coins and a door. Your goal is to grab as many coins as possible and then exit through the door. The coins you've collected are saved, and you can return to the stage later to collect any you missed. Your total coin count unlocks new worlds for you as it surpasses certain thresholds.

Now, this is not a friendly format for traditional platformer time-trialing. Usually, a time trial consists of the player making their way through the stage as quickly and efficiently as possible, and upon completion they receive a bonus if they went fast enough. This is trouble because the door in these stages is sometimes right next to the entrance of the level. Even if it is a bit further away, the door usually isn't all that interesting to reach - the real meat of the stages is in grabbing the coins.

My solution is the golden bird above. I can place the bird anywhere in a stage, and it flies away after a certain amount of time has elapsed. If you jump on it before time is up, it drops precious coins for you to pick up. Not all stages have a golden bird, letting me save time trials for the stages that can really make them interesting.

I loved the idea of incorporating time trials into the environment of the levels so much, I ran with it and ended up including other color birds with different fly-away conditions. For example, a pink bird flies away if you kill any enemies on the stage, making for some interesting situations where the player must go out of their way to preserve the wildlife.

Game Maker For Toolset Development

I spent yesterday and part of today developing this editor for myself, to help me design the stages for my Flash platformer project.

The editor allows me to place game objects and resize/move them. I can also edit arbitrary amounts of "attributes" for placed objects (for example, I can place a treasure chest then specify the amount of coins in it, but other objects might have different attributes such as speed or direction that I can tweak).

I used Game Maker to build the editor, and it worked out perfectly. I even have it automatically spitting out XML files (which the game translates into levels) and backup files (which the editor can load to edit the stages) right into the project's assets folder. Now I can really start producing content.

The editor probably won't ever be released publicly, except maybe as an example. It is pretty rough around the edges and allows the user to do things that wouldn't work well in the game, such as setting moving platforms or enemies to travel through solid blocks. As a developer tool, though, it works great.

Overall, I'm really pleased with how easily I could hack together an editor in Game Maker. I'm aiming for the entire development cycle of this project to be shorter than a month, so I don't have much time to muck around building tools for myself. As a bonus, I was able to code the editor in a way that it can potentially be very reusable for me (it is very easy to add or remove objects or change the output format).

J3D

If you want to track Chevy's progress on the Jumper 3D engine (and editor), you should check out his blog.

PSR (Project Status Report)

Whoa, it's been five days since my last post already? Well, I've been hard at work on several projects the whole time. I'm dedicating around 6-9 hours a day to game development lately! (Woo unemployment!)

To someone following my projects, it may seem like I have a lot going on right now, but I'm actually very focused on two things at the moment. My first Flash platformer is my primary concern, and RunMan: Race Around the World is coming in at second place. This might be confusing to some, seeing as I just teased Jumper 3D in my last post. It gets even more bewildering when I reveal that my first Flash platformer is not, in fact, Islands.

Here's the skinny on Jumper 3D: It does exist, but it is in a very early stage of development and I am not working on it yet. It is a collaboration with my friend Chevy Ray, and he is handling the early programming while I will be jumping in to do design work later. We're just experimenting with the third dimension and exploring the possibilities for Jumper-style gameplay right now. Hopefully it will turn into a full-size game (and hopefully one that is quite fun to play as well)!

Meanwhile, Islands is on hold for various reasons. Mostly because I need to finish a game soon. Islands is a bit too ambitious to finish quickly and I must release a Flash game this month to pay the bills. So Islands is completely off my plate for now - sorry I jumped the gun with teasing it only to take it away, but these things happen.

Also meanwhile, Runman: Race Around the World is slowly nearing the finish line. I don't have much else to say here except that yes, we are still working on it and yes, it rocks.

And finally, that brings us to my mystery Flash platformer. I don't want to reveal much, because a lot of it may change. All I will say is that it isn't a Jumper game and that I hope to have it done by the end of May.

Whew. The tangled webs we weave...

More Teasing

Ogmo's lookin' good in three dimensions.

In the Night, a Bear!

Another teaser image from the ongoing development of Islands.

Here's some further details for those who are following along:

• It's a platformer made in Flash.


• It takes place on a series of floating islands in the sky.


• It is my first platformer to use scrolling stages and checkpoints.


• It involves a bear.

Also: I'm sorry I haven't been keeping Grandma fed and watered lately. I promise an update soon... Islands and spring cleaning have proven very distracting for the last few days.