Hempuli's blog

I’ll be streaming ESA again tomorrow 1.7. at 11 PM (GMT/UTC)! The channel is the same, www.twitch.tv/hempuli :) I’m going to show off the water area and just in general play through the game. Spoilers! Excitement! Embarrassing bugs I’ve forgotten to fix! Be there!

In other news (still ESA-related, though), I finished the final phase of the final boss! There’s still stuff to be done on that bossfight (mainly cutscene-related), but at least the biggest hurdle is behind now.

EDIT: And we’re done! Watch the stream here: http://www.twitch.tv/hempuli/b/543617522

I’ll be trying to stream ESA today 26.6. at 11 PM (GMT). The stream wont be recorded so be there in time! The channel will be www.twitch.tv/hempuli .

The final boss is slowly getting there but the pace of my game development has been horribly slow. Sorry about that! :(

EDIT: Turns out one can just turn recording on at will. Watch the stream here: http://www.twitch.tv/hempuli/b/542106169

So I was asked to consider submitting ESA to the IndieCade event (http://www.indiecade.com/), and after some confusion about the entry fee and the nature of the thing I did send the game to the judges. Hopefully they’ll find it enjoyable, although I have hard time imagining a retro metroidvania doing very well at larger-scale competitions these days.

In other news, I have been having some ~~real-life obstacles~~ lately which have reduced my will to work on games for the time being a lot. I’m pretty sure this is temporary (and I have plenty of ideas), but for now working on existing projects will be somewhat slowish until I get things sorted out. I think I have a pretty nice plan for ESA’s final boss’ final form, and to be honest I kind of look forward to spriting it!

I’ll be away for a bit over a week due to holiday-ish reasons. Sorry about that!

Alright, so ESA has been very close to being completed for a while now. However, these last things have taken quite a bit more time than I assumed, mostly due to not feeling inspired to go that extra mile. Since I’m have a bit more patience than I did some years ago, this lack of inspiration doesn’t mean that I’d abandon the game now, but it means things might take a bit longer still. Another reason the game wont be finished as soon as I’d like is that the soundwork isn’t finished; the composer has had an extremely busy Spring and thus has been able to get cracking on the audio only fairly recently. This is totally understandable and I don’t mind it, but it means that the game will probably be finished content-wise before the audio is ready.

So, what’s left to be done? Let’s list:

• Two phases for the final boss. The second phase has been giving me a lot of trouble because the concept I originally had wasn’t really very fun to play against. I’m still not quite sure where to go with the second phase, but fortunately the rest of the fight I have pretty much designed already.
• A mini-miniboss in the final area. I had a really cool idea for a small miniboss-ish battle right before the final one, to increase the difficulty of the final area but also to give the ending more weight, as it were. I have the fight planned but figuring out an interesting design for the boss took some time.
• The station bestiary. I’m regretting adding this somewhat, because implementing it will be really boring, but then again the concept is way too great not to use! I always loved that enemy list thing in the end of Super Mario World and want to make something slightly similar here. This’ll be the very last thing I’ll work on.
• As mentioned, the audio. I’ve implemented the sound system in terms of game code already, so I’ll just have to add in sound effects and music as they’re finished.
• A larger secret thing. The secret game area is done for good, but there’s a part of it that requires some hardcoded cutscenery and such. This shouldn’t be too hard, I’m just lazy.

I’m going to announce a release date as soon as I feel confident enough to decide on one! Sorry about making empty promises in the past (the official trailer still says I might finish the game in 2012, sigh). I’m not really used to hyping up a game-in-development so stuff like deadlines are my bane!

This has taken way too long (and I’m unsure if it even works), but I quickly created a tool for hosting Masjin servers. My computer can’t host things so I’ve been unable to properly test it but please report me any experiences! :)

GET IT HERE!

 
 
Edit: I also updated the Masjin client so that the server hosting tool can be downloaded directly from the client. I really hope this works!

Also a GIF of ESA:

Just to show that I have some other stuff under development, have a couple pics:


I really like smooth snake-like movement so I felt the need to try to make one myself. Maybe this’ll become something? Who knows!

Despite the long silence, I’ve lately also implemented new stuff to Officer Alfred! The box functionality has been very hard to get working properly but I’m very happy about it right now! :) Note also the super-cool independently moving box platform; I think that’ll allow for some pretty neat puzzles.

As for ESA I finished the first phase of the final boss; also I decided that I want to fill up all the existing holes in the game map; I’ll add them to the “big secret” of the game so that visiting them gives hints on how to find other stuff. Hopefully that’ll be fun! At least it’s not a huge job. To be honest, most of the stuff left to do is related to either the secrets in the game or the in-game dialogue, the latter of which I’m kind of afraid to start working on because I’m really not confident in my ability to convey the things I want to in English!

Oh, and Ludum Dare #29 will be held this weekend! I haven’t participated in a long, long time due to general lack of motivation and/or inspiration. However, the theme voting is open so I’m on the lookout for an inspiring one; maybe it’s time to make another 48-hour game? We’ll see!

(Whoa, suddenly my whole life is about game development again. This has been a weird Spring!)

More work done on ESA, things are looking extremely nice right now, I think. I just finished the pause menu and its submenus, and I’ve started working on the ~~FINAL BOSS~~!

Also I love completion percents; it’s great fun to complete a game and then see a rough approximation of the things left to found (Kirby’s Adventure for NES, Super Metroid and Treasure Adventure Game (by Robit studios) are great examples of this!)

Guess what ESA is going to have???