Hey, there. Gearend is a 2D Metroidvania title about a small robot who you have to control as he explores the ruins of his old home on his search for his family.
You can use the mouse and keyboard or the gamepad. I’m using my BGInput module for easy key binding setup.
Here’s a devlog video about the game so far (just one devlog).
Looking very cool, I’m not normally a fan of pixel art games but this is definitely an exception to that rule.
Only critique so far is the viewing angle shift you have, it’s a cool idea but I didn’t even notice it until after you mentioned it, even then I still had difficulty actually seeing the tilt.
Good luck with this though, it looks promising!
wait isn’t that…
ㅋㅋㅋ Anyway, looking good. I’ll be interested to see what kind of enemies you put in. 2d side scrollers are a genre of their own and it’s not easy to refresh the genre. When ever you see a bad guy you start to compare their movement and attacks with enemies from existing games (like gombas or whatever). I wonder if having more freedom to work with code as well as art will allow you to make something new and intriguing. I liked what you were doing with the enemies in valchion, so I’m sure you’ll come up with something cool.
Love the style in that last screen shot. I think the background elements just need to be blacked out a bit to create depth (or interactive items should be brighter). The bullet particle effects look almost too “friendly” like fireworks. Maybe they should have some sort of fierceness to them.
I’ve never used a controller with this type of sidescroller. I’ll be very interested to see how difficult it is to aim on an analogue stick. Only game I’ve played vaguely similar is Black Ops: Arcade.
Looks good. Can’t wait for more!
Thanks, everyone.
@mattline1 - It’s cool, the shift is just something for the stairs mainly, haha. I might take it out or something.
@Smoking - Hah, it does look like that logo.
@MrPutuLips - You might be right on that. The tree and flower stem are really bright (which is good), but that ain’t helping a game where nothing has outlines.
Anyway, I’ve been working on art some. I like the way things are turning out so far, apart from that brightness thing.
Currently I’m trying to stick to my palette, so I don’t want to just tweak the colors indiscriminately. Maybe I need to add some desaturated colors to the mix. I’ve gotta strike a balance.
Anyway, I also got breakable blocks running and some dialogue up.
You can find parts in these lockers for now. I need to actually make it give the part to you, but the basic implementation of dialogue’s done.
As a final act for today I got the transition up and running for when you go from doorway to doorway. Works alright. I wanted to do a more complex Pokemon-esque “squares fill the screen gradually” thing, but the GUI’s being drawn through BGUI, which uses pure OpenGL and is kind of a slow bottleneck that can’t be alleviated (to my knowledge). A straight gradient’s fine.
It’s looking good! I wish you luck with this and your previous project, btw I’m also using your BGInput library for my game, it’s been really useful, thanks 
gameplay looks classic, art looks wonderful. can’t wait to play. :eyebrowlift:
Thanks, you guys.
@Aryok - I’m glad you’re finding my input library useful. I recently pushed an addition to allow you to check to see if an input is active, which I’m using to detect if you’re using the joystick or the mouse. It can be kinda handy.
Dual-wielding + melee weapons implemented today. Left click and right click use the two weapons; RB and RT on the gamepad. I expanded the core weapon class to add melee weapon functionality, including a variable that controls if the weapon can be aimed, or if it simply faces straight ahead. The upside of the weapon facing straight ahead is that it’s more likely you’ll be able to see both parts that you have equipped at any given time. The down-side is less control on the part of the player, which isn’t good. But maybe it’s a good trade-off. I don’t know.
I want to find a good pose for the melee weapons, since they can easily obscure a lot of the character’s body. Backwards like an ninja from an anime ain’t great, but neither’s straight forward. I think I might just make the character larger / wider to allow for him not to be completely dwarfed by his weapons. (I guess I could make the weapons smaller as well, though…)
Here’s a devlog video showing different things, like waving grass and dual-wielding, as well as a melee weapon. I think I got the idea for waving grass from a game called Path To The Sky, which is looking really awesome!
Anyway, thanks for watching!
Just watched the new video. Love it.
One suggestion I have for the grass is to make it sway slightly more when walking in it.
Are you using more sprites or sprite armatures (planes with textures used like bones) for this game? The arm looks like it’s an armature since it rotates freely, but the character looks like a static sprite. The combination looks nice.
The transition from scene to scene is horrible in my opinion. It doesn’t match it at all. A simple fade in would look better; I think it’s just that the gradient reminds me of like a cheesy windows 95 transition. Maybe another transition would work.
Dialogue system looks nice, and is easy to read.
I’m glad you enjoy the new art style (larger scale), because I sure love how it looks.
The light ray shadows would look better if there were visible god rays.
SolarLune wonderful game, looking very polished. will buy this soon as you release it, is/will you have a playable demo soon?
@MrPutuLips - Thanks for the input. I’m using pure sprites, though I am rotating weapons to aim. Maybe I’ll implement that effect, though I’m not sure if it’ll work out with a 2D game (I’ll have to try it and see, I suppose).
@BluePrintRandom - Yes, the boxes are 3D.
@hanzo - Yeah, I hope to have a playable demo soon, just to make sure other peoples’ computers can handle it alright.
Anyway, thanks, you guys. Got some preliminary sounds in (that prolly don’t work too well, but whatevs for now). Also got the GUI working.
Scrap, health, and energy. Got the bars working alright; need to tie health and energy. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to get it to look okay in such a small space, but I’ll try anyway, I think.
Energy serves as kind of a hindrance in this game, as using weapons and skills will use up energy. That will push you to use your Scrap on upgrades to cut energy consumption for parts that support it, since it can be annoying that you have to use your weapons and skills infrequently if you don’t want to be caught with your energy at 0. I kind of want the player to not just go in guns blazing, since you can easily run out of energy and be stuck without any effective recourse. The more energy you use, the slower the bar refills in kind of a “stair-stepped” manner. Currently, the blade consumes no energy, which makes it useful for backing up your main weapon, which eats a lot of energy in the beginning of the game.
The plan is for scrap to serve as a form of currency. Defeating enemies nets you scrap that you can use to upgrade your equipment and purchase new parts (that may or may not be optional). That should help to make the game flow interesting and varied, rather than it just being “hey, go here. Okay, now go somewhere else”.
Kind of unrelated, but I was playing the Metroid Prime Trilogy, and probably the worst part of Metroid-like games is that feeling of “I don’t know where to go next, and I’ve already gone everywhere I could have”. That can really halt the player’s progress and frustrate them, though it can also turn a 6 or 7 hour game into a 40 hour game by sheer exploration and backtracking.
One of the things that Metroid does right is that even though you might be frustrated and lost, there’s still optional places to explore for you to pick up that extra missile pack or life capsule, which helped to drive your exploration. Even when you’re lost, you still “progress”, in a way, which keeps you playing and exploring. I want to be sure to hide cool stuff around in places to encourage the player to run around and explore.
I’m not sure how linear I want this game to be, as I don’t think I can really get the magnitude of a Metroid Prime-level game, though I could make it a pretty solid game, I think. Backtracking can be interesting, though it can lead to situations like I outlined above if I don’t point the player to the next area or make it obvious.
Working on enemies, and I almost have the first one up and finished - just have to get him to shoot correctly and animate at the same time.
I also have scrap implemented as little spinning nuts.
it almost looks as though your character is swinging underneath those props it finally blasts, are that effect dynamic effect fired from the gun (gravity shot) or was that a trick of the capture, heh nice work anyways…
This is very inspirational! I love the graphics, and the controls look very tight. Keep up the great work SolarLune, Cant wait to see more!
Yo, thanks!
@hanzo - That was just a trick - there’s no gravity shot, thought that makes me think of an interesting weapon… Thanks!
Here’s another devlog video showing a couple of enemies, the GUI in action, some sounds, and new particles and screen shake.
Man I love Metriodvanias, and this is looking awesome. Great work!
any plans for a grapple beam? like super metroid?
Plasma whip?