Habemus Demo!

I've been polishing some details so I could upload the demo already.
There's a ReadMe file which explains everything you should know to play the game.

Enjoy.

DEMO

Next step: create enemies.

Important changes

I didn't work too much since last post, but in the last 2 weeks I made some important advances.

First of all, I created working teleports! They keep your initial speed and direction at the exit. Those teleports work with rocks and the main character.

I also changed the rocks thanks to a sprite made by Miguel Herrero.

This week I made a main menu, pause menu and a working GUI. I have to fix some details, but I'd be able to upload a beta soon.

Some changes

Since the last update, I've been working in internal changes (classes' organization, etc..) but I also achieved important things:

- Basic HUD (a little bit ugly...)
- Screen messages
- Remove double-jumping
- Added provisional footsteps sound
- Changed the balls style. Now they are fire balls and you won't be able to touch them.
- Sprites for starting and ending doors.

I think that's all for now.

Fixing the movement

Untill today the main character bassed it's movement on an invisible wheel made using the physics engine. When you pressed left or right keys, the wheel accelerates and the movement of the character looked very weird (he was too fast, it wasn't normal for a person to accelerate more and more while moving, you couldn't stand on slopes (the wheel just sliped down)...)

I've been all afternoon trying to change this "playing" with the wheel options: angular velocity, speed, mass, elasticity, friction... but I only got an even weirder movement.

I tried changing the wheel for a circle. When you press left or right keys, it moves 3 pixels. Gravity and bouncy blocks work right and now you can go uphill and stay on the slopes. I didn't think I'd fix so many things with just a small change.

I've also decided to let the player change the direction of the character mid-air, like in a lot of other platform games.

Graphical changes

Thanks to Aelxan now I have a better sprite for the main character. I've also made a new wall texture for the blocks and the result is better than the previous version. The next step is adding a simple background. Here you can see 2 comparative images:

I've also tried adding background music (Cave) made by Miguel Herrero.

As for the last post's list, I've finished the coding for the starting and ending doors, I just need to made a sprite for them.

File Loading(2)

I finished map loading today. Next step is to make the map-saving part and then create the game editor.

I also fixed the bouncy blocks. They made you bounce higher and higher, but increasing the jump a lot in each bounce, so in the end the character was too fast and there were glitches like wall-tresspasing and so.

- Short Term Tasks:

• Create structures and fuctions to make the code cleaner and lighter. (Class "block", with "bouncy", "triangle"... etc using hierarchy)
• Finish all the coding required to make a simple playable level (Starting door, exit door and level end messange)

- Long Term Tasks:

• Game Menus
• Level Editor
  
• Enemies

File loading

Today I investigated how to save and load maps using text files. In class we just used File I/O to load a text file and display it in the screen, so I don't really know anything about this.

I got the game to read the player's initial position and the level exit position.

My idea is to have each map text file structured like this:
[Begin]
2 3
[End]
4 5
[Blocks] //normal blocks coords
3 4 3 5 3 6 ..........
[Small_Right_Triangles] //
..........
etc etc