Panjoust - A New Simple Platformer

[Tensuke]

I like it! I agree with PokeParadox, having that little break is nice and it encourages you to collect/kill a lot of stuff!
Also while watching that video I had the idea of homing characters that kind of follow you rather than a set pattern, which might make it even more difficult when you have a limited amount of flight but you need to get rid of them.

 

[gruso]

What those guys said. Seeing stats at the end encourages replay. And everyone loves stats just because they're stats.

 

[bzar]

Not polished, but love the concept. Kinda Ice Climber-y

 

[Jourdy288]

Nothing major, but for contributors and followers: The new scoring system in a youtube vid

Well? thoughts anyone???

I'm not interested in the looks or layout of the scorescreen yet, things will be repositioned, a nice background will be added, and an appropriate tune selected.

An appropriate tune? I'm wondering, when you lose is there a song? I'm willing to do a special version of Don't Decorate Your Dream (Cantonese folk song) on the piano as the Game Over music.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2A4pQrgFb0&textp=fool


I'd slow it down a bit, make it sadder, etc.

 

[gruso]

^ I wonder if Nick May would consider sampling some of your piano work, it definitely seems like it could fit the style. I don't know if that's how he likes to work though.

 

[MarkoeZ]

Ah sweet! as said, it will be (a lot) more polished, but everyone so far seems to think it's sufficient stats-wise, which is good

Also while watching that video I had the idea of homing characters that kind of follow you rather than a set pattern, which might make it even more difficult when you have a limited amount of flight but you need to get rid of them.

Basically, that is allready happening in some way. Birds adjust their vertical position to yours, so if you stay at the same height, you will see all birds appear right in front of you. I like your idea though and i will extend the current following to include horizontal chasing when more enemies are made. Should not be hard to implement.

On that note, i think im going to have to change the colors of the enemies a bit and make flying enemies with different attributes from them. I have not yet encountered another artist that can draw flying creatures in the style of the game and as far as i know, Dragons_Slayer is still busy.

Edit: so (extra) CHARACTER ARTIST WANTED!

@Jourdy: I like the mood of the song for a losing screen! But as Gruso said, it's best to contact Nick May about it, he knows far more about the subject than me. And although at this point i still reserve the final decision to include things (music/graphics/anything) for myself, i honestly trust Nick's opinion, so if he thinks it's good enough, it allmost certainly is. Anyway, it's hard to tell by a youtube video, a .wav .mp3 or preferrably .ogg would be better. Edit: Or midi perhaps? not sure
Edit2: some piano mistakes in the vid, which does not have to be a problem. Do you have the hardware/software to record and edit various tracks? or correct notes with midi?
Keep the enthousiasm up!!

Cheers!

MarkoeZ

 

[nickmaymusic]

Just a quick reply about the music. I like Jourdy's piano tune, but it wouldn't work as a losing tune, mainly because the losing music will have to be something similar to the music from that level or similar to all the rest of the music in the game.
However, an oriental style will be cool for a certain level, but I think it would be better if I adapted themes and ideas from previous work I've done for the game into an oriental style.
I've carefully written themes and ideas which progress and develop throughout the game, hopefully giving a fluency as you play through the levels. So suddenly switching to a solo piano piece for some losing music would not work.

 

[MarkoeZ]

small update, technical again: level files are encrypted now.

Currently implementing the clouds (new graphics, new engine), video should be coming soon.

Cheers!

 

[Jourdy288]

Have you heard of Glypha? It's a Joust clone, and I think we should do an Egyptian level... just saying:

It's quite old, but it's open source, so perhaps we could get permission to use some of the resources?

 

[Masterfurbix]

Sorry, I know I've been practically dead to the world, but I'm working on a little project of my own and I've KINDA been avoiding working on panjoust.

I have however, in about 15 minutes, thrown together a tentative color theme and background set for the oriental level

it doesn't look like much without the sky, and the waterfall still stands out like a whore in a convent, but it's a work in progress.

Expect a full level set over this weekend.

EDIT: and of course, of COURSE we will have an Egyptian level. pyramids and obelisks are too easy to pass up, and flat sandy levels with small mountains in the background will also be pretty easy to do.

AAAAND I could make a scarab beetle enemy, or skeletons, and use the graphics in both this game and my own. (I'm already co-opting a lot of the porq animations, haha)

 

[Jourdy288]

Awesome, so did my song actually help inspire that level 0_o? Wow. That'd be pretty awesome...

 

[nickmaymusic]

The oriental background is looking great already, and I think my theme will suit it really well as I went for a quite tribal, yet still oriental sound, this should work well with the jungle look of the background.
And you don't know how glad I am about there being an Egyptian level, because I wrote a theme which ended up sounding really Egyptian, which I think is one of the best tunes I've done for the game, and now it will have it's place (for those of you who have heard my music, the egyptian theme features in the level editor track at 2:08).
I'm looking forward to expanding the theme into a whole level piece

 

[fusion_power]

Have you heard of Glypha? It's a Joust clone, and I think we should do an Egyptian level... just saying:

Nice but this graphic doesn't look egyptian enough for my taste. grey BG looks more middle age. We can do better than this I'm sure.

Sorry, I know I've been practically dead to the world, but I'm working on a little project of my own and I've KINDA been avoiding working on panjoust.

Very nice!
I wouldn't call it "oriental" but more "African Jungle". Well, I hope it is possible to do some Animations in the BG, like the Waterfall for Example. I can imagine, that there are also some tree tops in the foreground layers like I did in my Jungle sketch.
I've found a page with some interesting BGs from various Games. Very good for inspiration.
http://edit1754.co.cc/bgripper.php?act=viewsubmitted

 

[Jourdy288]

The oriental background is looking great already, and I think my theme will suit it really well as I went for a quite tribal, yet still oriental sound, this should work well with the jungle look of the background.
And you don't know how glad I am about there being an Egyptian level, because I wrote a theme which ended up sounding really Egyptian, which I think is one of the best tunes I've done for the game, and now it will have it's place (for those of you who have heard my music, the egyptian theme features in the level editor track at 2:08).
I'm looking forward to expanding the theme into a whole level piece

Might I recommend using a calliope? It's very good for Eqyptian sounding music.

 

[Masterfurbix]

I wouldn't call it "oriental" but more "African Jungle". Well, I hope it is possible to do some Animations in the BG, like the Waterfall for Example...


...with some interesting BGs from various Games. Very good for inspiration.
http://edit1754.co.cc/bgripper.php?act=viewsubmitted

Every time you post something, I want to get into pixel art more and more.

Still, 800x480 backgrounds in pixel art only would be physically painful, I can already imagine the writer's cramp


As for the background, believe me, it will look VERY oriental when I'm done. All the foreground elements, or at least a lot of them, will have a very red/yellow/obsidian-purple palette that will look very very oriental.

As for animated backgrounds, that was my intention from the beginning, I don't think it will be too terribly hard on Marko.

 

[fusion_power]

Every time you post something, I want to get into pixel art more and more.

Still, 800x480 backgrounds in pixel art only would be physically painful, I can already imagine the writer's cramp


As for the background, believe me, it will look VERY oriental when I'm done. All the foreground elements, or at least a lot of them, will have a very red/yellow/obsidian-purple palette that will look very very oriental.

As for animated backgrounds, that was my intention from the beginning, I don't think it will be too terribly hard on Marko.

No worries. I just wanted to show some other BGs. I know they are plain Pixel Art (good old times) and I know this wouldn't fit for Panjoust. I just wanted to show some possible "themes" and settings, for example look at the Sonic BGs there is also the "Sandopolis" BG.
You hit the point, painting "straight" Pixel Art is nothing for high res above 320x240 or you pixel-paint to death. :lol: Maybe if you scale up a small res to fullscreen with pixel doubling but thats another story. Impressive thing for me is, the new "Sonic 4" uses modern 2D graphics with high res that still look retro somehow. But I can't imagine to draw something like this complex, would drive me crazy.
http://www.sonicthehedgehog4.com

I'm sure, you will make a great oriental BG. I already like this one Mountain. As always, your choice of colour fits very well together.

 

[Masterfurbix]

Coming along nicely, the purple in the rocky alcove looks much better than I had hoped.

EDIT: okay, I've got this thing.

I just need to replace the placeholders and we'll have another level set.

 

[MarkoeZ]

Great, i'm away for a day and everybody starts posting...

Aaaanyway: Amigo, i really like the oriental mountain design and level mockup. I'll look into animated backgrounds, but should be trivial. Just another object. Don't go completely wild though, it takes more processing power than stills ofcourse. PNG spritesheet preferred as usual.

Also recieved more music files from Nick May, including an oriental themed one, sounding great already!

Egyptian: bring it on! The more, the merrier!

This got me thinking. Since we have all these themes, we could use some kind of home base for the hero bird. A big mountain city like environment with backgrounds (only has to fill the left or right side of the screen as a starting or finishing point). But this way a basic storyline could be added.

We are one of many birdriding nations in the distant world, and were attacked by enemies. Valuable eggs from our war birds have been stolen, as well as some women ofcourse (no hero without rescuing a girl) Now you, among others, have been sent out to reclaim stolen eggs from hostile nations, rescue the girls, and kill and steal ofcourse

Disclaimer: Storyline is totally thought up as i wrote it so in no means even nearly definitive.

Cheers!

MarkoeZ

 

[foxblock]

The backgrounds looks really nice.

On animations: You could overlay the still background image with smaller animated sprites for the moving parts. That way you don't have to load the huge (probably much bigger than 800x480) image every time, but only smaller parts of it, which saves a lot performance. Just might be a bit trickier on the coding part, but probably not too hard.

foxblock out

On second thought: In Penjin you actually have to redraw everything on every frame anyway, so you won't get any performance boosts by splitting the image (as you will load the whole animation beforehand with either method), but by splitting you would still save some memory...

 

[MarkoeZ]

On animations: You could overlay the still background image with smaller animated sprites for the moving parts. That way you don't have to load the huge (probably much bigger than 800x480) image every time, but only smaller parts of it, which saves a lot performance. Just might be a bit trickier on the coding part, but probably not too hard.

Ah yes, that was the thought. Sorry if i did not make myself clear. Most backgrounds are huge, not even thinking about animating them completely.

Cheers!