I've found all the bugs/glitches that I can at the moment, so it is time to get some fresh eyes involved! Take the demo for a one and a half room test drive and let me know if my game received a double helping of suck at birth, or if I'm on the right track!

Download

This was made in MMF2.

MANUAL -

Arrow Keys - Run, crouch
Z - Jump (press to jump, hold to increase height)
Down + Right/Left + Jump (While running) - Slide
Down + Jump (On platform) - Drop down
X - Attack
X + Up Arrow - Sub Weapon
Shift - Whip Spin (a projectile guard that can also damage enemies)
` - Restart from the beginning (in case you die)
Esc - Exit the demo

The skeletons give 10 xp per kill, with the player earning a level up at 80. Leveling up increases and re-fills the health gauge.


I've also added in some developer keys -

1 - Spawn a skeleton in the middle(ish) of the room. (Collision detection falls off at about 150+ onscreen, so be aware)
Spacebar - Unlock double jump ability
Q - Select sub-weapon axe (initially equipped)
W - Select sub-weapon dagger
E - Select sub-weapon cross


Known issues-
The music doesn't come in for about three and a half seconds after the game starts. It isn't a glitch, there is dead time on the track's lead in. I did a quick search and grabbed the first thing I found.

I know the throwing animation can get out of synch with the sub-weapons, this is because I'm just using the whip animation, sans the whip layer. I'm planning on timing out the different throwing speeds eventually. Also, and for the same reason, the character will still play the throwing animation even when there aren't enough hearts to fire the projectile. This will also be addressed.

One of the computers I tried this on was pretty laggy at first. Using the dev-key to force an application restart resolved the issue. I've only had it happen on one computer out of three, so I don't know how common of a problem it will be.

666 kbytes... interesting

I'll try it

The movement is good enough

The background is just temporary, as it is sized to fit with the other project I was working on.

The skeletons in this release are basically pre-alpha. They're using the built in "path movement" type. When I stopped them during the toss and then re-started them after, it re-set the path so they moved all over the place (through walls, etc). What I'm working on for the actual game uses some basic pathfinding. If the player is within general range, the enemy (if their pattern works like that) moves towards them, throws a bone when in range, and then retreats back a bit. I didn't include this because it is still a work in progress and not quite flawless yet when there are more than one or two enemies onscreen at a time.

Thanks for pointing out the thing about the momentum dying off during a jumping attack! It was part of the action group that keeps the player from sliding around during a regular attack animation. I have it mostly edited out now, although a new side effect is what I call "flamingo stance" where the girl will stay in the jumping attack animation for an extra frame after making contact with a surface if you're moving forward when she lands.

Fixing it correctly is going to involve some variable operations to test for the actual frame of the animation so I can shunt it off to the corresponding frame of the standing attack animation on ground contact. I knew I was going to have to get to it sooner or later, sooner it is.

I fired up SOTN and studied the whip on a Richter save file. I am indeed missing that extra 50% frame between the overhead curve and the straight line snap.

Also, in my game, the whip spin has two different collision detect sets. The whole thing is checked against projectiles, but only the end is checked against enemies. I did that to try and balance it a bit, because I was able to maul everything with a constant whip spin, and that isn't exactly the gameplay experience I'm shooting for.

The filesize was a complete accident. It was 761kb before I zipped it.

I uploaded a new build featuring slightly smarter skeletons (they only throw TOWARD the player now - but they are still on the built in path movement for the time being). I also worked on the whip animation some. I removed the clunky slacken/fall frames I had and in their place, added some of collision detection frames to give the whip a little more reach diagonally above in front of the player. I sped the whole sequence up so the attack button feels a little more responsive now. I also fixed a couple of bugs where the player could double jump while swinging the whip, and could also change direction during the attack (the player facing one way, the whip another).



It looks less dopey in motion than it does static, and it is timed correctly against the enemy's after damage delay to still do multiple hits at the correct range.