Bless You, Rip

She is?? NO WAY!!!

Way.

Oh, and that reminds me, are you going to charge people for the final product?

I would totally buy it.

That's currently undecided.

I'd probably buy the soundtrack, but not the game itself.

I'd probably buy the game itself, but not the soundtrack.
Although i'd most likely wait for it to be featured in an humble bundle

But there seems to be interest in it at least, so that's good/nice.

Wow, this is interesting! Could you give us more information about this? Like, are there going to be any tag team specials or something like that, etc?

Probably no tag-team special attacks or anything. We're still figuring out how they'll play and/or differ or whatnot.

The game is still fairly early on in it's making and I think Gir has time to polish. Though after this session I would think it wise to prioritize making the mechanics feel nice and smooth. That's definitely a thing you need testers for too.

The game is definitely still in its early stages, and I really wish I could tell you about where it's going. But that would be too spoiler-y.

 

Being able to select from more than one character is cool, even if Risa isn't my favourite. It would be neat to get into the perspectives of different characters and delve into their stories more. I'm a real sucker for stories in games though, and the exposition set by the demo leaves enough anticipation to wait for the next major update/release. Personally I think it's better to give the characters different behaviours gameplay wise so that there's a real reason to choose between them besides just the aesthetics. I don't know how you're planning on character changes and if they're a player's decision, however, so I guess that'll just have to wait.

To add on to the hype, I'd definitely buy the full soundtrack; you had some really fine tunes in the demo. But I think I already said that before. Make sure to keep it up!

 

Incoming art dump!

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Rip looks really bored in that second to last pic; I suppose he's used to hearing Risa yell at him over and over. Makes sense; evil scientists are so cliche.

Also the night city piece is lovely. "Iron Works" would fit well with it.

 

Epic win.


Anyways, This game is VERY promising! Just like usual :3

 

Okay, I'm kinda late on the scene...

But I've got one main suggestion that I haven't seen in this thread yet (not that I've looked through the whole thing...)
The camera seems really really zoomed in, and I don't feel like I can really see what's around me enough. Sure, this is fine for the game devs, since they probably know the levels inside out. However, there are certain parts where you drop down to then be greeted by an enemy that you simply couldn't have known it was there, or where you can't be sure if there is a platform beneath you. I'm assuming it wouldn't be easy to just 'zoom out the camera', and that you'd have to redesign some of the levels to account for this, but it was something that really annoyed me, because the rest of the game is so awesome, but navigating around seems difficult because of the camera being too zoomed in.

 

I finally finished the demo.

All I can say is excellent all the way around.

I took some notes in notepad and here's what I have:

Spoiler

Hmm, 27 MB?
must be all the good music.

oops, I hit x twice and exited the game,

title screen music sounds good.

selects normal difficulty then runs toturial

wow, this music for the tutorial is AWESOME!!

well, this music for the forest is so dreamy.

again, great music, the music in my house sounds kind of odd, but intriguing.

oh, so apparently a run jump is lower then a normal jump.

I gave up after dieing (again) in the park. I need to get better at combat.

I would stare at the sky to if I was in such a dreamy world

excellent ending to the demo there, I loved the final cutscene.

The last cutscene really got to me, you captured the emotions well.

Thanks for making such an awesome game and I pray for your victory in completing it.

 

Also the night city piece is lovely. "Iron Works" would fit well with it.

That area was actually made to go with this song.

Epic win.


Anyways, This game is VERY promising! Just like usual :3

Thanks!

Okay, I'm kinda late on the scene...

But I've got one main suggestion that I haven't seen in this thread yet (not that I've looked through the whole thing...)
The camera seems really really zoomed in, and I don't feel like I can really see what's around me enough. Sure, this is fine for the game devs, since they probably know the levels inside out. However, there are certain parts where you drop down to then be greeted by an enemy that you simply couldn't have known it was there, or where you can't be sure if there is a platform beneath you. I'm assuming it wouldn't be easy to just 'zoom out the camera', and that you'd have to redesign some of the levels to account for this, but it was something that really annoyed me, because the rest of the game is so awesome, but navigating around seems difficult because of the camera being too zoomed in.

We're kind of stuck with the current screen size right now design wise (and since changing it might require the redoing of a lot of assets currently being used), so this probably isn't something that's going to change. I don't think it's all that difficult to navigate with the current screen size though, unless you're recklessly running and jumping places offscreen.

I finally finished the demo.

All I can say is excellent all the way around.

I took some notes in notepad and here's what I have:

Spoiler

Hmm, 27 MB?
must be all the good music.
oops, I hit x twice and exited the game,
title screen music sounds good.

selects normal difficulty then runs toturial

wow, this music for the tutorial is AWESOME!!

well, this music for the forest is so dreamy.

again, great music, the music in my house sounds kind of odd, but intriguing.

oh, so apparently a run jump is lower then a normal jump.

I gave up after dieing (again) in the park. I need to get better at combat.

I would stare at the sky to if I was in such a dreamy world

excellent ending to the demo there, I loved the final cutscene.

The last cutscene really got to me, you captured the emotions well.

Thanks for making such an awesome game and I pray for your victory in completing it.

Thanks for the feedback, I'm glad you enjoyed the demo.

Risa has her weapon now in-game. I still have to fix up some collision stuff with the knives, but that shouldn’t be too hard.

Gonna get started on the new maps for chapter 2 soon.

 

If she has projectiles then why would I play as rip?

 

If she has projectiles then why would I play as rip?

Damage vs. Range.

Also the knives barely knockback enemies.

 

Good choice.

Personally, I'd play as Risa just because her knife throwing animation looks epic. Also the last picture with Risa defending makes her look a bit unnatural, like she has no arms, but I'm sure that'll take care of itself when the next update happens.

Will Rip and Risa be sharing the same health? (eg. switching to Rip after Risa loses 5 HP will cause Rip to have that same lost HP)

 

I would make the knives not even knock back, or even stun the enemies.

Also on an unrelated side note: unlucky rabbit is the best song ever. :3

 

I agree with Bombchu, also the axe needs to deal at least like, 8 times more damage than the knives. Ranged weapons are op in games for the same reason they are in real life. You don't gotta get near someone to hit em.

 

Kinda of a bump but not really....?


Do you plan to add gamepad/controller support?


Okay, IPboard, stop double posting please.

 

Kinda of a bump but not really....?


Do you plan to add gamepad/controller support?

It's something that may be looked into eventually. However it's not something Java natively supports, so no promises there.

 

http://www.hardcode.de/jxinput/ ?

 

It's been awhile since we've posted an update here, so here's some things that are currently happening with development in regards to Rip.

The first, and most significant, is that the game's resolution is being changed from 640x480 to 800x600 (320x240 to 400x300 for sprites and the ingame world). Rip's character sprites have always been a bit too large for the screen at 640x480, so this was a natural decision to make that we've been thinging about for some time now, or at least I have anyways.

Chapter 1 is also getting a bit of a rehaul/redesign, since currently the game doesn't flow very well in the first chapter. The overall plot won't change, but a few maps and cutscenes will be changed to produce an overall better experience for the player.

A minor changes to the controls is also being made, that being that we're removing the guard button, since it doesn't seem like it'll be very useful throughout the game. Also Rip will no longer have his jump height nerfed when running, since that mechanic was sort of unexplained to the player and it seems to cause unnecessary confusion for some. That and it's just more fun un-nerfed.

The graphics engine has also been reworked a bit to be faster and more optimized for performance. These optimizations will benefit those with slower computers or laptops and those who want to record/stream footage of the game.

Graphics performance is a bit hard to test I find, so I had the game generate some statistics for testing, those being a "busy rate" (how often the drawing thread is busy when a game-repaint request is issued) and a "success rate" (how many frames are actually drawn out of those requested). Testing was performed on my laptop with the battery setting set to "Power saver", since it's the easiest way I can induce slow-down in the game. With the new changes to the graphics engine, the busy rate dropped from 60-80% to 30-40%, and the success rate went up from around 80% to 95%. And even though I'm just throwing around numbers here, you could definitely feel the difference too as you played. On other power settings besides power saver, the busy rate stays close to 0% and the success rate close to 100% most of the time, so differences in performance on these power settings was negligible.

We're planning on pushing out another demo once the changes to chapter 1 are finished for feedback and testing.

 

The art style is amazing, and the resolution change makes since. Glad you addressed the performance issues.

 

This game is still being worked on. Also, I updated the download link for the windows version of the alpha demo to use an exe instead of a jar (the link is in the OP, as usual).

 

Reminds me a little of underwater in Labyrinth Zone from Sonic 1.

(also, the fence isn't in sync with the gate, but that's prolly cause it's an object instead of bk tiles)