I just hit a major milestone: All levels and bosses are now completed! The total is now as follows:
-30 main levels
-6 main bosses
-2 hidden bosses
-6 secret retro levels
-5 bike levels
-1 giant bonus level
-18000 atoms and 190 crystals to collect
While playing through the game regularly, it took me approximately 5 hours just to get to the end of the final boss with about 90 or so crystals. I have yet to play out the game for 100% completion, but it’s definitely the type of game that will keep completionists occupied. (My current estimate is somewhere between 15 - 18 hours since getting the blue crystals is the most time consuming.)
However, a lot of work still remains to be done. Some areas are still missing models, graphics could be improved and some new enemies could be added. If I’m lucky, within the next few months, I should be able to start handing out Steam keys. In the meantime, feel free to join the Discord.
In order to balance the game’s difficulty, I needed to add 2 additional main levels: Haunted Shipyard which is a pirate-themed level with sulfur ghosts, and Frozen Fortress which is an icy maze with underwater segments. These replaced two other levels: Levee Lagoon is a wide open exploration type level easy to get lost in and Lucky Cyberpunk which has devious disappearing platforms similar to what you’d find in Megaman. In playtesting, I deemed them too difficult for the points of the game they took place, so they were moved to the very end of the game as optional areas. Not only that, the addition of the new levels helped to round out the crystal count to 200. There are now 20000 atoms to collect plus 10000 more atoms to find a single bonus level you can play if you get all the other crystals.
I’ve also been hard at work adding new models such as the bosses. I don’t foresee the addition of any more gameplay content besides intro and ending cutscenes so now I must continue polishing what I have.
Thanks! I’m glad you’re looking forward to it! You could definitely say I took inspiration from games of the late 1990’s and early 2000s - that era was home to some of my favorite games of all time. Thankfully, this style is pretty easy to do and I’m hoping to make the rest of the game reminiscent of it.
I animated the lip syncing by hand using Blender. I rigged some bones to the mouth and eyebrows, overlayed the recorded voice line file in the timeline editor, and keyframed every single movement. It’s a lengthy process and it’s a bit of a primitive way to do it, but I think it achieves the result I’m going for.
As for the lab, I’m envisioning it to be like a cartoon type lab with vials, Rube Goldberg machines and retro monochrome monitors. The level entrances would be clustered together in a manner similar to the warp rooms from Crash Bandicoot Warped. The spaces in between will have a bit of openness comparable to Peach’s Castle - it’s a large area, but it’s all within a single interior space. I should get to making it look like its proper layout soon. I just currently have it the way it is so that I can quickly reach any level in the game while I’m still fine tuning the difficulty.
Hey It’s cool to see your dev progress here. Nice acting for the green alien! Have you changed the plasmaform from totally yellow to SSJ-like? I like most that your game improved already pretty good, and the death animation is so cool! Maybe the overall graphics are not super professional but the gameplay mechanis are tottally solid! I will keep an eye on this. Keep up the work!
Thanks! Glad you’re liking it! Yeah, I’m planning to make each state of matter use a unique model just to make the silhouette stand out better. Plasma especially is a bit comparable to a super form of sorts.
hello
i just rewatched the videos, out of boredom
and this question came to my mind : how many Triangles are you rendering at the final boss fight
you can check this by tryping “stat rhi” in the console
just a random question, dunno why it came to my mind
At the moment, the current amount of triangles isn’t a wholly accurate number given that I’m planning to replace the BSP brushes and add more details. The final boss fight with Ruby Dium is about 25,000 triangles. I’m guess that’s comparatively small for most UE4 games, but I’m going for a low poly style for both ease of making the models and to speed up load times.
I’ve been working a little slower than usual as of late due to classes as well as a recent case of carpal tunnel. However, I have managed to get a few things done.
I’ve completely redesigned the hub area that you traverse to get to different levels. It is now split into seven main areas - the provinces of Helium, Argon, Neon, Xenon, Radon, Krypton and Oganesson each of which are ruled by the noble gas lords. They are fairly open areas with their own atoms to find as well as a pink crystal. The location where you buy abilities is now called the “Gizmo Shop” which is accessible from any of the provinces. As for the professor’s lab, it’s been relegated entirely to being an intro stage that hosts the opening cutscene as well as a short tutorial. After completing it you are sent to the Helium province.
I’ve also been experimenting with techniques of updating the BSP with their final meshes. I want to reduce the number of polygons as well as the strain on the texture streaming pool, so for the most part, I’ve just been tracing over them with a brand new mesh. I don’t quite too much to show off as these new meshes have no proper texturing yet, but so far, the environment is comparable to something you’d find straight out of Super Mario 64. Smaller zones are just a single giant mesh, while others will be a bit more modular.
The lagoon level I mentioned a while back was retrofitted into one of these hub areas (it’s been renamed to Xenon Lagoon) as I realized it was way too non-linear to be a proper level. With that, I’m also going to fill out enough content to round out the crystal count to 230 - just patching in stuff that feels like loose ends.
Given the amount of work that still needs to be done, while I think I can still get the game done in 2019, releasing it during May is likely not going to happen. (I only chose that month at first since it’s the tenth anniversary of the first game.) I just want to continue polishing the game further and ironing out the bugs and other flaws.
no problem, take your time, do as many changes ad you think necessary
i’ve also been taking along time to get anything done so i know how it feels, to have so many ideas and hardly even working on it
but i’m having a 2 week break from school (new year in iran) and in that 2 weeks i hope to get a update out
the game you’ve made is looking cool and with some polishing it will be looking awesome, can’t wait
To address feedback regarding the difficulty of aiming and shooting, I added a new toggleable first person mode where you are capable of pointing and shooting anywhere. The transition is completely seamless - all you have to do is press a button to toggle on the fly and you’ll change between modes. A few things still need to be ironed out, but this new mode suddenly opens up a lot more options. For example, better verticality when it comes to the location of enemies, switches and other objects. While the platforming segments are still easier in third person mode, in playtesting I’ve found combat to be way more enjoyable in the first person mode. This duality should encourage players to use both modes when it comes to both exploring and fighting enemies.
Next on the to-do list is to make a few bonus levels themed around the new FPS mode. These will be in similar scope to the other bonus levels, most likely taking little more than 1 -2 minutes to complete. Like the other bonus levels, you’ll be able to find the entrances to these levels hidden within the larger main levels.
I’ll just be having first person mode enabled in the free roaming areas only. Sidescroller segments will just have it disabled since some of these levels use special effects (i.e. an endless scrolling that repeats chunks of terrain) that would not look all that great from certain angles. In the Sill E. Con boss fight for example, the tunnel ends just a little bit behind the camera, so you’d just see open sky if you were to turn your head.
hey! hows the game going? i was looking through my history and i had forgotten about this game!
i hope progress is going great and that your still motivated, i’ve lost my motivation for a little and need a tiny bit of help, so i’m helping others
what stage of polishing is the game on?
Progress has still be going great! I was just working a little slower than usual due to classes and exams, but I’ve otherwise remained motivated. I’ve added five new first person shooter stages where the goal is to simply defeat all the enemies in one area at a time. Even though they are smaller than the regular stages, they turned out to actually take around the same amount of time to play through (3 - 5 minutes). I’m glad how they turned out though since it feels like a brand new perspective.
You could say I’m in the beta phase. I’m just working on bonus areas. There’s only two levels in the game that I still need to add - a bonus bike stage where you race against an opponent, and a final bonus stage for 100% completion. I also plan to go back to existing levels, change around the atom locations to make things flow a little better. And then of course, there’s a few instances of the default UE4 mannequin that I need to replace.
Since I just started summer break, I should have a bit more time to work on the game now. I can’t say when I’ll actually publish the final release, but with the first person shooter stages out of the way, I can more comfortably say that I can put out a closed beta in the near future. If I’m lucky, I can start handing out beta keys sometime next month.
Anyway, thanks for the response! Let me know if there’s anything I can help with in your games.
Keep up the work!