Level Up (4/25)

So uh...
It's been a little while since the last post, and I'm sorry about that. Right now there's still so much set up work to do, and that whole smear visual thing ended up taking a lot longer to finish than I had originally planned. But I've spent more than enough time in the game dev trenches, now it's time to talk about what I've been working on:

It took a stupid amount of math, but I made yet another custom shader for high-speed smear effects when Maya throws objects. The mechanic itself isn't quite finished yet (throwing is currently broken in a few ways and I gotta tweak a bunch of other stuff before I'd be satisfied with how it works), but as far as visuals go I'm really happy with this. And while I'm talking about it, I guess now's as good a time as any to cover how it works

The way these smears are created boils down to the use of a special texture I made for this effect. In this clip you can see that texture in the top right, by using it in a custom shader I'm able to take specific pixels on a sprite and essentially stretch them out in any direction I want, just like you'd see in a cartoon smear frame. I'm also able to control the amount that they're stretched by and the size of the smear texture itself, and alongside that I have a separate effect that stretches and squishes the sprite along the same axis as the smears to allow for motion to feel that much more fluid and elastic. and all of this is done while also keeping the final output in-line with the pixel grid, even if the object itself is rotated at some arbitrary angle.

...So yeah, this is the main reason I didn't have an update last week, lol. I'm going to try not to get sidetracked by stuff like this in the future, since as cool as it is, it's not really necessary for the game itself to work (just makes it look and feel really cool). Though I dunno, maybe absurd shit like this is what people actually wanna see from me lol. In any case, I'm now shifting gears to focus on the things needed to release an actual proper game for people to play. And to that end, I've also started working on the first level for the next build:

It's pretty much complete with this being the final layout, only thing I have left is to create a proper winning sequence to play out once you reach the end. With the original game I had levels that were more of an open sandbox for me to play around with the mechanics, but here I'll be making levels much more linear, with the goal of teaching players the mechanics of the game in a way that's intuitive and fun to pick up on naturally. This one covers Maya's base movement, meaning her ability to jump and wall jump, as well as how slopes can interact with platforming. The next level I make will be focused on her fat form, and those will likely be the only two levels included in the next build I put out. I'm aiming to have that done and playable in 1-2 weeks, and after working on it further and adding more levels I'm aiming to eventually put out a public build of the game that anyone can play, not just patrons.

Speaking of patrons though, I've been thinking a bit. And I feel like I haven't done as much for the people who have supported me as I should have. So I'm thinking, when I do finally put out that first public build, I want to include all of my supporters in the credits, even the ones that have already canceled their subscription. As far as meaningful exclusive content I haven't really had anything to offer, so I really appreciate those of you who have supported me anyway.

Also been thinking, I really should give this game a proper name sooner or later. All the names I have currently are pretty lame ("Maya Platformer", "Maya Maker"), so if you guys can think of anything better I'm all ears. But with that, that'll be all for today. See you guys next time when I will (hopefully) have some actual game for y'all to play. Later!