MegaMare X — Dev Update – Nov. 2017

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Dev Update – Nov. 2017

Late in the Fall season, we’re back with an update! We’ve had 3 internal alpha builds since the last, and were spinning our wheels on stages without much progress for a short while. However, progress has picked-up with a focus on process and mechanics.

Through the development of our latest alpha builds, the remaining details for the LXU Armor are complete with the all the palette changes for weapons, new teleport and death animations, and capsule upgrade cutscenes. And several issues were resolved that caused overlay and transparency issues with the sprites.

Lightning Bit palette of the LXU Armor

Lightning Bit palette of the LXU Armor

LXU Buster Upgrade animation

LXU Buster Upgrade animation

In the most recent alpha, we took a hard look at enemy behaviours and boss moves and rewrote some really troublesome ones. Chrysalis has always been a solid boss, but one of her attacks was in need of improvements to really shine. On the other side of the spectrum, Sombra’s been sitting sadly broken for quite some time, so we’re rewriting his broken attacks and making him more powerful to boot.

Sombra

Sombra’s Crystal Shards attack in-progress.

One of the more crucial things lately has been polishing the core mechanics around dashing, wall-jumping, buster shots, and Lyra’s controls. An example of one of these is the dashing hit-box, which was previously fixed to Lyra’s full height. It’s now shorter when dashing, allowing Lyra to deftly dash under projectiles. To be satisfied in making enemies interact with Lyra in fun ways, the enemy encounters we’re designing have to be well-tuned to those mechanical specifics, so we have to get them just right. We also have to fine-tune the mechanics around movement, like how slopes and the slippery ice work in our snowy crystal stage.

Tileset floor perspective tile examples

Tileset floor perspective tile examples

In-progress for the stages are some test tilesets which we’ve begun painting into our Lake stage overtop the associated art sketches that outline the detailed elements. There’s nothing else that makes a stage feel alive than adding the art, so even the roughest tiles can start to make the stage seem lively. For the next steps to give the stage some depth, we’ll be adding more tiles and some background layers behind them.

Regular posts continue to be our weak point as development goes on. But there’s some questions in our ask box we’ll get around to answering. And we are still working out some boss designs to show in the future.

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Anonymous asked:

I've been casually following this project for about a year now. Megaman X being one of my favorite games of all time, I am quite anticipating this project. Is there somewhere I can support it or is there crowdfunding planned?

Crowdfunding was considered at one point. However, being a fan game we’re kind of in a grey area, so going after any funding or selling the game wouldn’t be in our best interests. It’s definitely an option for a future project, and when we go on to other things we’d love your support then!

Dev Update – Jun. 2017

We’re long overdue for another update, and while they’ve been lacking, our work has been continuing through into the start of the hot summer. Since the last update, we’ve been working steadily at revising some of our stages and improving the general game design mechanics.

 Most recently, much of this work has been done, in part, by our newest game design team member, puphop. He’s been going over the Everfree stage, and his keen eye for game mechanics helps us address some of the finer points of getting them right. We’re glad to have welcomed him onto our team and expect some great work from him!

 There have also been two new internal alpha versions completed and more work queued up. The recent changes have featured several enemy changes and additions, boss difficulty balancing, wall-jumping mechanics improvements, and various other fixes. Through these updates and what’s upcoming, we also have several LXU changes.

 The LXU armor hit a snag or two as had several more animations and details that came up as needed as we used it in testing. As of last update, we had all the base pieces in place. Since then we’ve added animations for them Lyra receives them from the upgrade capsules. We’ve got more to do with the palette mappings and implementing teleport animation changes, along with other cutscene-related sprite-work.

 Back onto the work for stages, besides the Everfree stage there are two other stages simultaneously in the works: a familiar Snowy Crystal stage and, what we plan to be the most difficult stage, the Canterlot stage. The former, although previously started and shown, has been left unfinished and neglected, while the latter is entirely new.

 Morale-wise, we’ve had some slowdown in the artwork side of things with some of our spriters being on a long hiatus and some personal issues and illnesses that have preoccupied folks for a good while. But we continue to work week-after-week on the game design in order to keep things moving on the many tasks ahead.

 Don’t disengage your power-suit just yet, as we have a new boss concept to show off that will be posted in the next week or two. We’ll have another update mid-summer or so, at least following our next alpha, and have other post ideas in mind for the interim.

MegaMare X Starlight Studios game development

asklyra asked:

This is a request to, on subsequent playthroughs, be able to take off or play without the main armor. Or at the very least be able to take off the helmet beCAUSE ON MY GOD FLOWING MANE!

That’s actually one of the modes we have considered unlocking with a special code. However, it makes for a difficult challenge of designing the levels without some of the LX suit’s abilities.

Leaving the helmet off however, might just be doable.

Lyra in her LX suit is pretty tough, but she doesn’t start the game with it. As in the video above, the game starts out with Lyra outfitted in a more rudimentary outfit called the proto-suit.

In this way, the game starts out with just the basics. Jumping, shooting, and good old lime pellets. The video below shows later just before Lyra finally gets the LX suit she needs, and that’s when she runs into a hologram that reconnects her to the world she know.

Keep reading

Lyra MegaMare X in-game cutscenes Starlight Studios

Dev Update – Feb. 2017

January came and went and along with it several flu strains and other illnesses affected various members of the team, including your friendly update poster @toastyjustice. Having taken the time to recover, we’re back with a quick development update prior to showing off the stuff we had hoped to last month.

Alpha 109 is scheduled to be done soon, as late as middle of next week. Bug fixes, platform frame rate improvements, enemy changes and timers, and some boss tweaks are some of the various work we’ve got in the queue. There’s also more visuals to be added: upgrade capsule animations, Sombra sprites, lighting behaviour, and some additions to the title screen. It’s a mixed set of alpha changes that is not really focused on anything in particular, but rather follows our constant iterations and attention for building things into the game and improving upon them.

The next few posts to come will show off the armor, some animations, and excerpts from some of the cutscenes. These are all parts of the milestone we hit, which we referred to in the prior update. Since we’re not sure when the game is done, where exactly does this put us currently?

The milestone we hit was to have the set of content that makes for a ‘playable’ alpha. But 'playable’ does not mean publicly releasable, as we’re still some distance from that. Rather, it means that any member of our team should be able to pick up and play the game through to the end, as rough as some of those may be. They can save and load their game, acquire all the items, and get a sense of the unfolding storyline. So far, the things we have are the following:

  • Opening cutscene.
  • Intro stage, with containing smaller cutscenes to ramp up the story and the first boss.
  • 4 'primary’ stages, each with a unique boss that will give Lyra an associated weapon.
  • All the suit upgrades and heart/sub tank pickups available to try out.
  • Final stage placeholders for progressing to the end game credits.

These aren’t all finished, but having all the parts in the game puts us in the best position to work from. It lets us build out the rest of the stages and game, tune the gameplay mechanics, and keep a standard of play through the alphas. We’ll be able to add sprites, mechanical polish, and fill in the holes as we keep things in a playable state. Meanwhile, the list of what we have done and in-progress is telling of the remaining work towards the game. The end of the game is developed in writing, but is being worked out stage-wise as well as conceptually. This includes bosses, which need some solid design and artwork, and the cutscenes that play into the climax and finale of the game.

TLDR: The team’s bouncing back from some recent ailments. Our 109 alpha is in the works and will feed into a series of posts showing off some of the current in-game features.

MegaMare X Starlight Studios game development
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