AXLE: a sidescroller (4/14/12)


Hello fellow BlenderArtists!

Overview
AXLE is a sidescroller based on a sci-fi island. It is partly action-based and partly puzzle-based.

Story
You fade into awareness as you crash land on a bizarre island. You are an android, but you know neither of your creator nor of your purpose. Intriguing devices and strange life forms surround you. Your only option is to explore while trying to stay alive.

AXLE is the name of the operating system the android is running. It’s an acronym for All-purpose eXtensible Learning Engine.

Features
The gameplay will feature battles, puzzles, and cut scenes.

Software Used

  • Blender: game engine
  • GIMP: textures
  • GarageBand: music, sound effects
  • cfxr: sound effects
  • Audacity: sound effects
  • Mac OS Lion

First update

As of now, you can do several actions, such as somersaults, climbing ledges, climbing ladders, hanging, balancing, swimming, and grappling.

Since we all love movies ;), here is a video featuring a test level with some of the gameplay I’ve created so far:

Any comments/crits are good :stuck_out_tongue:

Looks quite good so far, the grappling hook looks well implemented.

The only things I can think of is that there could be an oxygen meter that drains when going underwater (unless you get a source like an air bubble), and tighter integration of some of the near-background elements with the plane the gameplay is on.

Looks very nice! Well scripted and thought out, but I would personally like to see some more detailed texturing! :smiley: Also, like Ace said, a meter for oxygen sounds good :slight_smile:

Yeah, it’s not bad. The graphical style seems consistent, and the gameplay looks pretty tight (not loose, like he slips around a lot). Good job.

nice nice nice

Thanks for the comments! :smiley: I will definitely consider these suggestions

More updates soon…

So that wasn’t exactly soon, but… I’ve been hard at work making new actions, props, textures, etc., and writing more background music.

Axle can now use a flamethrower and throw bombs as well, to defend himself. I plan on making it so you acquire these special actions at different points in the game.

Also, I liked the oxygen tank idea; I just haven’t gotten around to making it yet :yes:

Here are some videos. They lag, but the actual game runs at 60fps.

This one has a menu, the new weapons, a new snake enemy you can kill, and some “playground” stuff.

Here’s the new jungle sector of the island (not much gameplay yet, mostly graphics).

As always, any crits & ideas on how to improve anything would be great :stuck_out_tongue:

Its very well done, I kind of dont like the rolling animation, but its all, and I loved the music of your last video!!! congratulations, the game is great!

Thanks! It’s hard to see the rolling because of the bad video framerate. Still, I may end up fixing some of the animations so they look more natural.

reaally kool man,the physics look perfect to me,it must have a lot of work on it and it reallly impressed me and the graphics looks great too!
Grats bro :smiley:

This looks very playable already!Lots of Animations and they are mostly fluent (nothing against rolling around! It’s just what Rayman would do! :3 ) and the Interaction between Player and Environment seems to work very well already.
Though when you use the same Elements for Fore- & Background (Bamboo-Sticks) you rather should find a Way to make it more obvious what is Background and what is not – for Example, in the very first Video, there is a Wall that starts under Water that includes Bamboo Sticks (vertical) and when I looked at it, I was pretty sure that the Bamboo-Sticks would function as Walls with which the Player would collide – though they were not at all! :open_mouth: (Imagine: Ô, there is a Plane where I can jump onto! jump Ô, it actually is just part of the Background and now I am falling down the Abyss of Gameoverness! graaah!)

@GackToActivity thank you, your kind words are uplifting :D:D:D

@C.A.ligári Thanks, haha, you’re right about the background. I’ll keep that in mind when I design the levels—either I will put the background objects further back, or use more mist, or different colors, etc.

It’s kind of like the game made by haidme, Orbito? But this one is very updated.

@fullgrown I liked that game. Looks like ndee has new plans now though…

All right, I’ve had very little time to work on this lately, but here are some screenies of the Factory Sector so far. I still have some work to do on the modeling. Videos later :yes:


Attachments



Looks pretty interesting, particularly the blue area in the second picture. Nice job on it!

It looks like you have gotten better at the design part of the game compared to the first level you showed the news ones look 10 times better, sry if that came out wrong i think the whole game looks really good.

Great looking game :slight_smile:

@SolarLune, @mrn, @RossBlenderArt: Thank you for your support! I think I’m getting better at this.

New update :yes: Here’s a video of the Factory sector, featuring electric switches, a climbable fence, and a fusion-powered cannon thing.

I’m experimenting a lot, so I’d appreciate any suggestions on what to add, change, etc. :smiley:

That Ladder at the Beginning (where those Switches were switched) does not look like a Ladder, it looks like a Wall of Spikes that anyone should stay away from – it looks like a Hazard Object. Maybe make it not so spikey.

But I love how you achieve a truly oldschool Feelin’ while givin’ original Ideas like that… Fusion-Spring-Ball. And the Camera Change on the Climbable was unexpected, I like.

The presentation so far is quite impressive, and I like how you did the effects with the switches.

There’s some impressive games being worked on with the BGE as of recent, which is good if we want to show just what it can do.