Demo ZOE - A Drawn On Film Shmup - Now With Playable Demo! (Ver 0.14.2)

Hi everyone!

It's been a while since I last updated here, although progress has been fairly up and down recently so there's not that much to report. I have moved on to development of the level 2 tho, which brings an all new black background! The boss will be a knife for this level, so I've been working on enemies that have a cut out style to them, made up of simple shapes...

This worm thing comes in various lengths and splits up when you destroy it's parts. If it's long enough it'll come with bullets...



These bats are pretty simple, but I had a play about with it's spawning animation to get the knife coming in...



And I just finished this simple fish enemy and it's formation - I might try and make them scatter once they've been disturbed by the player.



Cheers for now!
Graeme
 
I got a couple more enemies done recently - there's nearly enough to start designing level two now, but I might just keep the momentum going and try to come up with some level three stuff...

I made the fish scatter, like what I mentioned above. They self destruct after a couple of seconds if you dash or pound through them, but they don't give you any points this way - taking out large groups like this is much quicker tho, so you're more likely to get a good time bonus multiplier at the end of the level.



These Thwomp style enemies can be used to take out other enemies as well if you time it right. I've added a better visual cue to indicate it's about to fall since I made this gif...



I also took some time to beef up some of the visuals - bullets are much chunkier now, the death ink splats hang around a bit longer before fading away, and there's a bit more impact to the dash move which hopefully makes it feel a bit more satisfying.



Cheers!
Graeme
 
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Hello, another enemy pretty much done - this one's invincible when it's spinning and spitting out bullets, and more sturdy if you try to attack it's spiky metal shields. If you take out the soft centre tho', it'll send the shields flying and taking out any enemies they collide with. I should be able to set up some potential chain reactions with these if they're taken out like that...

 
I made some decent progress this week - got this mid-boss-points-bonus sequence for the Knife level designed and implemented pretty much from scratch. These popcorn enemies will come flying at you and you need to take them all out for the points bonus, but if you get hit by one of them the chain will be broken.

The knife start and end points are randomised and the cut sprite stretched to fit for a bit of visual variety. I'll probably mix up the number of enemies it spawns and their speeds for some variation in difficulty...

 
A couple of weeks of working on annoying problems was getting to me (although I did get keyboard rebinding sorted!), so I thought I'd spend some time on spicing this previously sedate enemy up a bit, with some speedy circular formations and a generous helping of bullets. Things are getting a bit silly with all those knives, but I kinda like it.

 
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Started working on the next level this week. This thing shoots a laser if you're in range, but it can't shoot down so you might be better off taking it down from below while keeping an eye out for it's babies. Needs some work, but I'm pretty happy with this weeks work...

 
I thought I'd revisit this worm enemy this week, cos that seems to be what I'm doing these days, and see if I could make it a bit more interesting (the old version is at the top of this page). I started by giving it a visual overhaul, making parts of it metal, which in turn meant brining it in line with the other metal enemies, so you can't dash through them (unless you pound the soft centre of the body segments).

I also made it so that taking out the head will destroy any connected body parts, so that's the most efficient way to kill it, but I'm hoping that I'll be able to make getting into that position a bit more challenging by using the walls of bullets and positioning of the worm to force the player around the play area a bit more. Still need to test that out when I put the level together tho', hopefully soon.

 
I'm getting there with this level. This enemy has been kicking around for quite a while but wasn't really functioning properly - they used to sort of enter the screen near the player and then go offscreen if you moved away and then start following you before stopping again, which was rubbish. Now they attach themselves to the player's x pos until they've charged up their shot and fired it, and then they're set free on their recoil trajectory.



The worm has reached it's final form - more HP, homing missiles, and BLING! (I may have gone a bit over the top with the bling). I kinda like how the visuals for this level have developed, with all these metal / foil elements coming in and tying in to the gameplay (you can't dash or pound through the metal stuff).

 
Hello, just thought I'd post a little update on my progress with ZOE. It's been so-so lately, I've been focusing a lot on game structure, achievement systems, checkpointing for restarting waves etc - all stuff that needs to be done at some point I guess, but there's not much to show for it visually.

I did manage to get a rough version of the Knife level together tho', and have recently started working on the boss fight for it. Here are a couple of the enemy formations and one of the boss attacks.







I also started working on more enemies for the next level which will be based around the marker pen boss. These are a few quick prototypes I put together with rough visuals. Some of these enemies will have basic physics so they bounce around a bit when they're shot, and the enemy laser shot is becoming a bit of a theme for the level...



This is a prototype of the mid boss points bonus attack for this level - the camera pulls out and you have to take all the balls out before the time counts down, to get the points bonus. It's sort of a mini game of Asteroids in the middle of the level...



These are a couple of the above prototypes with more finished visuals.



And here are some of the menus and options and stuff I've been working on, if you're interested in menus and options and stuff.



Cheers for lookin'!
 
Hey, it's been a good few months of progress on ZOE, here's some new gifs!

The Knife boss fight is done, although it'll need some difficulty balancing as it's a bit easy at the moment.



The camera moves in this one are just in the gif, it doesn't actually do that in-game as it'd be a bit confusing.



Zoe now has a proper death animation, it actually feels quite satisfying to die now :D, and I updated the Brush death a bit so it's a bit more impactful.



I recently finished all of the Pen level enemies, apart from the boss fight. This is the mid boss attack with finished visuals.



These laser ball things spew out bullets when they're damaged.



Here's a before and after of this enemy - it's invulnerable when it's in the 'up' position, as if it's sort of jumping off the film surface.



This swinging spider dude will only start swinging and shooting if the player is on the ground, and if the player is on the ground the BIG enemy won't fire it's laser so there's hopefully going to be a bit of strategy involved in the order in which the player takes these enemies out.



These were just going to be simple bouncing enemies until I noticed they formed a face shape sometimes, so I leaned into that and made their eyes follow the player and shoot at the top of their bounce.



And just for fun, here they all are in one handy gif! The one that slams into Zoe starts homing in when it's in range but will slow down when you shoot it, it's not quite as brutal as it is here, I just had to squeeze it in to this 2 second loop.



Cheers!
 
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Repix

Member
How have I not seen this?! 2018?! Damn bro! Well done!

You're the sort of developer I look up to.. Stays with your baby till the end.

Absolutely fascinating graphics, creative.. smooth.. Just the whole package.
 
How have I not seen this?! 2018?! Damn bro! Well done!

You're the sort of developer I look up to.. Stays with your baby till the end.

Absolutely fascinating graphics, creative.. smooth.. Just the whole package.
Thanks very much! Yeah I've come too far on this now, it will get done one of these days.
 
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