My name is João Vasconcelos and I'm a hobbyist pixel artist/game designer.
I love fantasy and sci-fi and my current project is an isometric space game.
Don't be afraid to say hi!
“The Palace” from Rage of the Dragons
Practicing some portraits a bit to refresh myself after all the animations
Resuming work on the tileset after spending the day adding new stuff to the combat system.
(spoiler alert: you can heal now)
I’m tempted to release a first playable build on itch.io in the next couple of days, although you can’t actually do much right now…
Anyways, if you enjoy my work, consider buying me a coffee.
Also, feel free to ask me anything!
What came first, the larvas or the larva eggs? o.O
(Bonus content: Find the rebel wall sprite.)
27/06
- Changelog
- Misc
- Fixed a rare bug with the cursor not switching states after finishing a battle
- Fixed cursor’s collision box
- Removed an old line of code that made bullets be destroyed when they hit pipes
- Fixed a rare bug that allowed the player to be in the same tile as an enemy (dooh!)
- Fixed a bug with the enemy “bullet” sprite where it wouldn’t face the right direction
- Added Mission Cost counter (so you know how much you’re spending on each mission - it’ll be needed for later…)
- Graphics
- Tweaked and finished walking animation (hopefuly)
- Added shooting animation (yay!)
- Aadded an outline and reduced player’s sprite opacity to 50% when hiding
- Changed wall sprite’s colors
- Changed room background color from black to dark gray (so that you actually see those black vignettes coming down)
- Added new wall types (will be revisiting these soon)
- Added new “larva infected” tile
- Added and animated larva eggs
- Gameplay
- Added new enemy type: larva eggs (they spawn larvas on adjacent tiles)
- Combat
- Added mechanics between larvas and their eggs: larvas drop eggs when their health is below 66% and they’re close to another larva… while eggs spawn new larvas
- Made battle indicator icons brighter (aka those red rectangles below the enemies - not sure what to call them…)
Changed the way the character moves. Added path finding so you are not confined to the adjacente tiles anymore.
Here’s a gif to show that:
(it seems i messed up the gif and it only plays once -.-)
Also, debug mode Off/On
Today’s update:
I’m gamedevin’ pixelin’ & tumblin’ again!
Hooray!!
But more importantly: I’m done stressing over finishing stuff. I have never finished and will probably never finish anything. But you know what? I don’t really care anymore. I need to be allways either creating something or learning something new, and that’s why I do pixel art and game dev.
So from now on I’ll just work on whatever i feel like, when i feel like it.
Right now i’m resuming work on my isometric cave game. Have already reworked some systems and things are actually working better now.
I’m also reworking all the art. Here’s an ingame shot:
started creating a worldmap… will try to create a game out of this.. or not. we’ll see.
On the last few days I’ve been addicted to this game called Quest Run. Ever heard of it?
Bought it on steam and was surprised by it’s really simple concept. But it’s HARD as hell… I’ve only won 2 dungeons so far and have 3 others unlocked but I find them really difficult… You need a bit of luck to win but it’s mostly about strategy, switching the characters at the right time and knowing what traits to level up, etc…
It’s a really nice indie game.
You can check it out on steam: http://store.steampowered.com/app/286120/
That’s it for today - 6 cars done with 4 views each.
Started making the car… 2 views done already.
With the basic tiles finished, just made a simple track to test the isometric view. This is how it looks in the Game Maker room editor.
The green rectangles are the car spawns and the little green & red dots define the car paths.
Haven’t made the cars yet though.
Oh and yeah, the corners are not round anymore - I realized that square tiles will make it easier to add details along the track.
Trying to revamp the graphics so I started to make these isometric tiles for my game KERS…
Not sure if this will work out… but we’ll see.
I’m guessing the f1 car will be a pain to make.
The new buttons and the new mentality menu.
Hey there!
So I’ve been very busy this week implementing some new ideas and making major design changes.
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01 - Mentality System:
In the first Dev Diary I’ve talked about speed limit and how this would basically be the main focus of the player, but that has changed with the addition of mentalities.
With the mentality system, the player will have 3 mentalities to choose from before he throws the dices. These are Agressive, Passive and Defensive and each one has advantages and disadvantages, along with a different speed range.
For instance: while the agressive mentality will allow a speed range of 6 to 12 (wich means the player won’t get less than 6 from the dice roll) and also give 50% chance of a +1 movement boost, the chances of drifting in tight corners will also be much higher!
On the other hand, the defensive mentality will allow the player to defend his position from overtakings but at a great speed cost (2 to 8 speed range) and also disallowing the use of KERS and preventing the player from overtaking.
02 - Speed Limit & Speed Range:
So now we have 2 systems affecting the speed of the player:
- the speed range defines both the max and min numbers your mentality allows you to get from the dice roll (for example: a min of 6 and a max of 12 while on the agressive mentality);
- the speed limit also defines the maximum number you get from the dice roll BUT if it is inferior to the max from the speed range, then the speed limit will prevail.
That means that if the player is using the agressive mentality (with a speed range of 6 to 12) but his car is damaged (reducing his speed limit to 11) then the player will be able to get between 6 and 11 from the dice roll.
NOTE: Keep in mind that the use of KERS and mentality/tyre boosts occur/are given AFTER the dice roll, so these are not capped by either the speed limit or the speed range. This means that even if the player’s speed limit is 11, the player might get a +2 speed boost from the OPTION tyres and so he’ll be able to move a total of 13 tiles.
03 - Platforms :
My initial idea was to release the game for PC first and then adapt it to other platforms like Android tablets and Ipads. But this week I had the chance of testing KERS in a tablet and that made me change my mind.
It just seems perfect for it.
So on to my next point:
04 - Design Changes:
With that change of platform target, it made no sense to have the xbox buttons on the interface, so I spent almost all week replacing the old rectangle buttons for new round ones and removing the xbox buttons.
I already posted some images of these changes but I will upload more recent ones, along with the new Mentality menu.
———————-
And that’s it for now. Really excited to be able to play KERS on a tablet and also really happy with the new design so long.
Hope you liked this update and be sure to check the images on the next post!
Working on the circuit console. (in-game shot)
It basically displays all the information about what’s happening.