Windows Turbo Pug Park: has a greater variety of platforms

Turbo Pug Park was once Foxland . After releasing it for a week to see how people enjoyed it, many hated it enough for me to redo the mechanics and the jump, which lead to each level needing to be remade. Instead of keeping it Foxland, I took a lot of the art from that game, found a publisher Back 2 Basics who then gave me the Turbo Pug license and started making Turbo Pug Park.

Music track in the videos from @Yal (its in the credits too)

DEMO LEVEL 1: WALK IN THE PARK:
updated: Jan 5, 2018:


DEMO LEVEL 2: WINTER WONDERLAND:


SCREENSHOTS:

Hover Pack Pug:
Hover for 3 seconds, before dropping, but has less health.



Turbo Pug doing Turbo Pug things and Breaking Boxes:
Run for X amount of seconds and turbo is activated, letting you run through enemies and destroy boxes.



Remember when old games let you go through one side and appear out the other?



Pick a Pug (8 placeholders)
All 8 have their own stats even if they're all just clones for the moment. More health, less health, slower, faster, increased turbo, slow falling, hover jumping... you know typical pug life.



Date Night
For no other reason than to test the idle animations. ... oh and waterfalls.

 
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Looking good homie. I see some influences from SMB2 in some of the level's designs :) Cool special effects too, but I think the music could be improved.
The music is from a @Yal music pack. I enjoy the songs I've selected, but the publisher is has someone doing the final music, so it will be added when it arrives. Music might be last though. As for SMB2, yes its a giant influence with the demo level for the sake of diversity.
 
M

milch

Guest
ohh super exciting! cool to see it's going so well! this looks really great, love the heart animation, it's a nice detail :D
 
M

Matt Hawkins

Guest
The music is from a @Yal music pack. I enjoy the songs I've selected, but the publisher is has someone doing the final music, so it will be added when it arrives. Music might be last though. As for SMB2, yes its a giant influence with the demo level for the sake of diversity.
I think it's a good idea to emulate things from games that people like. And people love Mario games.
Sorry @Yal, I hope I didn't offend you bro. I do think the track in the demo is pretty good, I like the retro sound you've made and I know creating music is pretty difficult.
Music can make a huge difference to a game so I think it's important to have tracks that are fitting to the game and that can be listened to repeatedly without getting too sick of them. Anyway that's just my opinion.
 
I think it's a good idea to emulate things from games that people like. And people love Mario games.
Sorry @Yal, I hope I didn't offend you bro. I do think the track in the demo is pretty good, I like the retro sound you've made and I know creating music is pretty difficult.
Music can make a huge difference to a game so I think it's important to have tracks that are fitting to the game and that can be listened to repeatedly without getting too sick of them. Anyway that's just my opinion.
That comment coming from the developer of Rufio Bros.

I made the jump more of a Mario jump. With Foxland, people seemed to hate the standing jump was higher and they disliked how low the jump itself was. So... Mario ahoy. Its best to emulate the best.

PURPLE SKY vs PINK SKY
WHO SHOULD WIN?

Winter wonderland fake screenshot throw down!



 
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Felipe Rybakovas

Guest
Hey, this looks very good! I think even more appealing than foxland! (You know, is a PUG! Pugs have many followers! lol)

But the general feeling on this feels really better! Keep going! =)

And congrats for the publisher, hopes it help you to get there!
 
Hey, this looks very good! I think even more appealing than foxland! (You know, is a PUG! Pugs have many followers! lol)

But the general feeling on this feels really better! Keep going! =)

And congrats for the publisher, hopes it help you to get there!
Thanks for the kind words. I think it should be more appealing. More variety, more moves, different pugs. The Turbo Pug games have done well, there are 4 of them, but mine Turbo Pug Park is different since its more than a one button control. That could be a seen as a detriment to that existing audience. Time will tell.
 
The votes I've collected from friends and elsewhere on the skies, its still neck and neck.

Here are more screenshots.

What do you think of the white HUD?

New trail effect.



New chocolate pug + Selectable hats... just the 1 bow at the moment.



Original pugachute.



New trail + new pugachute

 

Bingdom

Googledom
I noticed a weird issue with your font. If you're using font_add_sprite, for the third argument, set it to true.

I'm not much of a fan of the screen filter. Maybe have an option to disable it?

Graphics are looking pretty good though!
 
I noticed a weird issue with your font. If you're using font_add_sprite, for the third argument, set it to true.

I'm not much of a fan of the screen filter. Maybe have an option to disable it?

Graphics are looking pretty good though!
The sprite font is indeed set to true. Its always been an issue that I've never solved. Its been about a year since I last tried, but I remember messing with precise vs imprecise and even true vs false along with adjusting the separation and even _ext. I've built and used several of my own sprites and it always turns out this way. Perhaps I'm building the sprites incorrectly.

There is a screen filter.... there is a way to turn it off, but here's the mind blowing part, its not enabled for these animations. The "filter" is the .gif compression.

Here are some shots without .gif compression.

Unfiltered:



Filter:

 
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RangerX

Member
Wins:
- white hud
- Mario bros 2 influence

Loose:
- the shadow trail is intense in my opinion, probably could be made more beautifuller
- filter
 

RangerX

Member
I think the filter evokes some kind of banding in the screen, which as far as I am concerned, correspond to none old TV behaviors some users might have nostalgia for.
If you had scanlines + noise or even just scanline, now that would mean something (old tube TVs). I think filters are there for a purpose and reason, I suppose you had one there but just making sure.
 
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I think the filter evokes some kind of banding in the screen, which as far as I am concerned, correspond to none old TV behaviors some users might have nostalgia for.
If you had scanlines + noise or even just scanline, now that would mean something (old tube TVs). I think filters are there for a purpose and reason, I suppose you had one there but just making sure.
Its the same filter people enjoyed with OctorSpace, I just changed black to white.

Here is the same filter with black lines and changed from 2 width to 1:

Static .png version



Animated .gif version (you can barely tell due to the compression)



There are other filters to use at a later time. These filters and scanlines seem to increase the file size of the .gifs as my scanlines move and radiate different light.

At this point the filter is in there as other people have enjoyed it. For me, I like the look diversity. When I get tired of the perfect look, I switch it.
 

RangerX

Member
Well, don't worry too much about it anyways. I am very picky with those filters.
I only found one ever that was good enough so I could implement it in my game and it ended up that it wasn't well made enough to not bug... so The Life Ruby doesn't have filter options afterall. :p
 

Bingdom

Googledom
What should be improved with the filter?
By it being removed :p

Entire screen filters are a bit of a grey area for me, as I tend to avoid them. It's odd to have one because it creates a static overlay on the screen, potentially impairing the vision for the viewer. I guess it can be used to help express the style of the game, but I'm sure there are better ways of doing it.

Anyways, if the publisher is cool with it, It's best to listen to them and not listen to me :p.
 
Well, don't worry too much about it anyways. I am very picky with those filters.
I only found one ever that was good enough so I could implement it in my game and it ended up that it wasn't well made enough to not bug... so The Life Ruby doesn't have filter options afterall. :p
Even perfect shader examples can turn difficult when putting them into real projects. Most don't account for full screen or even changing from windowed to full screen, then leaving a room will make a game crash and I haven't fixed those issues at the moment. I try to avoid shaders, given the problematic history I have with them. I used a GameBoy shader for a GameBoy game jam and a Youtuber apparently couldn't view shaders so everything showed up as it would without a shader.

By it being removed :p

Entire screen filters are a bit of a grey area for me, as I tend to avoid them. It's odd to have one because it creates a static overlay on the screen, potentially impairing the vision for the viewer. I guess it can be used to help express the style of the game, but I'm sure there are better ways of doing it.

Anyways, if the publisher is cool with it, It's best to listen to them and not listen to me :p.
Its amazing people could like the same filter on a different game so much more. That's why it can be disabled. My filters aren't static though and they have a transparency to them so they don't obscure. They move and have a sense of life to them that can't be shown in simple .gif form. Even the video you can't really see the lines:


So I guess I'll go back to the non filter for the videos which I didn't have enabled before you mentioned it. :)
 
WINTER WONDERLAND UPDATES:

With a new Winter Wonderland, I have it so the game will equip the pug with a scarf and earmuffs automatically. You can still wear your choice of headgear.

The process has been slow as I've been making more art for the next climate. Levels are easy enough, but the art... takes time.

Its still a bit imperfect.

Snow covered evergreens:



I'm uncertain about keeping so much snow under ground as its easy to tell where the tiles are.



Ice crystals:

 
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F

FROGANUS

Guest
this looks really nice- love the cute graphics. i would def chose tamara to suit my sassy and cute lifestyle ;).
the turbo effect seems like a simple, yet unique game mechanic.
 
I spent a lot of time yesterday hand drawing a background that looked great... until I put it in the game. Then its just a bit of a mess that clashes with everything on screen in the foreground. So I started simplifying it. While that's not ready to show off... the new background wall tiles are good enough to be shown, although I can tell they need work for the sake of alignment and more color depth.



Oh yeah... new snowman:



* edit * Updated the back wall tiles and dulled the tree colors:

 
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I keep reading the title as "Turbo Tug Park."
Turbo Pug Bark?

Turbo Tug Boat...

While I'm here... Someone said I should rework the pine trees, so I remade them:



To squeeze out longer .gifs in a 15 MB range still, I used my own compression and it seems to have made a better quality and longer image.

 
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A WEEK OF WINTER WONDERLAND

The second theme is almost wrapped up. I think all I need now is a better background. Which could take a while. Once that's finished I'll make a second demo level for the Winter Wonderland.

Yesterday larger vines were added coming from the walls, more stalactite and tile variety. There is more tree variety and now there are large ice crystals for the interiors. The game now has a way to differentiate interiors from exteriors. Also the wall holes look better as I added a beam to the top of the tile. I toned down the snow shards in the ground as an excessive amount of them was driving me crazy.

This 13 second .gif should summarize the entire week:



For anyone interested in a 7 step process to creating a new theme, I made a little article:

https://drinkingnails.com/2017/11/18/turbo-pug-park-update-2-making-a-new-theme/
 
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TITLE SCREEN

Yesterday was a day to experiment with larger art to become more efficient. Although its big, its smaller than some of my other big art, so it was quicker to make and prepare it for the game. With the new art in game, I modified the title screen. I like how the .gif compression messes with the tongue's line color. The tongue could be a steak.


 
BIG LEVELS

Its time again for me to kill your 56Kbps modems!

What is it today? I made something to export the map in game to a giant .png file! Here is the demo level using the Winter Wonderland tileset. To get a better view, you can click on it to zoom in:

 
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TUBES (ARE NOT PIPES)

To diversify the gameplay I added tubes. These are different from doors and exits, because you see what's inside them once you enter and you have control of movement. If there is something in the way, you can go back, if there is a bend, you will turn and if there is an intersection, you can chose which path. There's just one catch... you are always moving. It is still a bit imperfect, but its already nice and fun.



Here is a video that shows off more control:

 
Would be awesome if the dog would rotate in the pipes. I mean, following the direction the pipe is going.
Yeah I think that might be next. That and enemies. Cat enemies.

Panning through the giant map turned out to be by far my second biggest Twitter reaction. My first biggest reaction is me panning through another map. Apparently Twitter likes me panning through maps.

https://twitter.com/DrinkingNails/status/932639254093684739
 
M

milch

Guest
soooo beautiful <3 <3 nice style and color schemes!

hummm but that title screen :/ it looks pretty bad in comparison tbh... it doesnt have a nice harmonous color scheme like the in game graphics, it looks more like you just picked a random green for the grass and blue for the sky... some more layers and atmospheric fog would be nice and some interesting shapes. the style of the dog isnt that convincing either, much has to do with the colors here as well and you could try to exaggarate the shapes more to get it more stylised
you could try around with some gradients in the background.. maybe on the character as well, depending on what style you go for

I'm bad at explaining so here's a quick overpaint, i hope you dont mind!
i know you want this in a pixel style, but it was just faster for me like this :D of course you can apply this in pixel graphics as well

edit: also: neeever use pure white for the eyeballs D:

turbopug overpaint.jpg
 
soooo beautiful <3 <3 nice style and color schemes!

hummm but that title screen :/ it looks pretty bad in comparison tbh... it doesnt have a nice harmonous color scheme like the in game graphics, it looks more like you just picked a random green for the grass and blue for the sky... some more layers and atmospheric fog would be nice and some interesting shapes. the style of the dog isnt that convincing either, much has to do with the colors here as well and you could try to exaggarate the shapes more to get it more stylised
you could try around with some gradients in the background.. maybe on the character as well, depending on what style you go for

I'm bad at explaining so here's a quick overpaint, i hope you dont mind!
i know you want this in a pixel style, but it was just faster for me like this :D of course you can apply this in pixel graphics as well

edit: also: neeever use pure white for the eyeballs D:

View attachment 14469
The green was a choice. In hindsight I should have selected the same 2 greens that appear in the game, just as the pug's colors are exactly as they are in game. I hear to never use white and or black in general.

Thanks for the tips and modifications.
 
I have been constructing the Witner Wonderland demonstration level.

Here is phase 2, the details phase:


The level has pipes which make for an interesting diversion, plenty of secrets and alternate routes. Its missing enemies, which really should have been phase 2, but I will start animating enemies again this week.
 
oh snap, that looks like a scary boss coming soon ;)
Boss version will be larger once I get to that point. This version isn't that much larger from the player pug.

I needed a crusher. So I made the paw. Well a paw without being attached to something made little sense. So I made the cat head. After making the cat head I kept thinking... rat or cat? A tail was then added.

I kept getting feedback from friends and now it looks like:

 
Looks good. You pixel art generally looks good.
Do you still make your environement by modifying premade assets?
Technically it wasn't modified. I remade everything using the same color palette and then changed it when I was done. I even recorded videos in case it ever came up. That was only for the grasslands.

The Winter Wonderland tileset is all me, even the colors. This fresh batch of enemies are all me while the others that are being replaced were my own version of assets.

I have a hidden game out there that I can't admit to making. I bring it up because I did 15+ environments, but those were all Mega Man - ish so they were far easier to churn out than things that are organic.

I hand drew the new trees, title screen, Winter Wonderland background and the crystals.

Looks like the publisher is about to make a Steam page for the game. I would have preferred to have the new enemies animated before that, but its just the start of the page and not like its live yet. It does make sense to have a page for it before the Winter sale because that will draw in a lot of people to view fresh games released or unreleased depending on their preferences.
 
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Before I animate things, before I truly put them into the game, I stickered them in screenshots. In hindsight they should probably be pink or purple for this environment. Here are several screenshots:









Not the best placement in this next photo:

 
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ENEMY CAT AI

I put too much effort into the lazy cat AI and animations. Now the game has become Crazy Cat Lady Simulator:



To explain this monstrosity of programming, it may look like they're doing nothing, but they're doing a lot. They finish one thing and decide to do another based on what they're doing.
 
I'd consider the second demo level is done and its time to keep pushing forward to enemies and modifying their colors:


Yesterday I integrated the checkpoints into the game in the way of fire hydrants. The checkpoints replenish health up to the maximum for that pug. The sprite for the fire hydrants are a bit large, so they'll probably change. I already had a checkpoint system, but the checkpoints you had to stand on top of them, they could also be destroyed. Since this is a game with speed, they are now standard checkpoints where you can breeze bast them.
 
I'm back to spam the thread again with more 12 MB .gifs

MORE ENEMIES COMPLETE:

The game is now getting populated with new enemies. Some are too simple to show off outside of the previous mock up screenshots. Well the ones that I'm going to show you are too simple as well, but I loaded the .gifs full of enemies to appear more impressive.

Jumpers:

Four different types: lazies, aggressives, hoppers, hop ats. Lazies will only attack if you attack them. You can see what the other three do.



Yarners:

It seemed a bit dull having hovering enemies that did nothing. So I have them a ball of yarn to drop. The ball bounces twice before it falls off screen. It bounces higher on the second bounce. If they leave the screen view, the yarn respawns. There are 3 types: stills, verticals and horizontals. Stomping them makes them move faster and drop their ball of yarn.

 
Enemy creation has been slow. I got stuck in improving one way platform collision detection for enemies.

CATANKS:


A variety of 3 catanks. Movers, pacers and standers. They shoot in 3s then don't shoot for the 4th.



YARN THROWERS:

I liked the yarn. I had to do more with the yarn. So here it is. Chances are these will get modified. They bounce the yarn high 3x and then once low.

 
With some lesser enemies done, I started making a new theme... in a wild color:



Made some trees.



Twitter doesn't seem to retweet this wild color.
 
Publisher requested more bush variety. So now there are 4 bushes along with trunks to make them trees, but I think they look ugly with trunks:



While I was doing trees, I made 3 trees for the vanilla theme to replace the 1 tree that was a clone of a different tree:



In other news the Twitter bots seem to have stopped retweeting me, yet I continue to get high likes despite low retweets.
 
Twitter has lead me to Christmas things up...

Step 1: adding hats:



Step 2: Make a sleigh:



Its a fake screenshot...

Step 3: Make it happen in game because I'm too lazy to animate it in an image:


When you collect a coin... a gift drops out of the sleigh. The gift bounces once, if you miss it then it falls off screen. If you collect it, then it explodes into 10 coins.... and the coins get drawn in to you. Its a nice effect.

For the demonstration the sleigh stays 96 pixels ahead of the player.... always.

To make things more interesting, I made an auto scroller. The auto scroller goes forward, but doesn't constrain the player into a specific area. However, if the player runs out of the area, the player can never return... as if its Super Mario 1. This should be good to add diversity to levels... well that an an auto scroller that constrains the player to a screen.

The sleigh shifts Y axis, the pugs shift Y axis as well every 1 second. Sparkles fall from the sleigh and the pugs.

All this because I'm too lazy to animate something for Twitter.
 
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