Beginnings of a WG / Inflation-Themed Side Scroller (updated 3/5/2017)

Projects
21

I like it so far. The differences between the two states are quite noticeable, and I like how you made it so being both inflated and fat takes only the downsides from each when they’re even. Could make for some interesting challenges somewhere down the line, like having to purposefully inflate yourself and then avoid getting fattened as you travel down a road of food so you can jump up to a particular spot. The walk speed seems to be the same between the two, though.

Also, I found a glitch. If you approach the food from the right, it’ll bounce you into the wall, where you start ascending to the ceiling. You can also moonwalk during this; holding left moves you right, holding right moves you left. Leaving through the top of the screen makes the wall inescapable, and eventually makes the screen ratchet all the way to the left, with you being unable to do anything.

22

So far, so good. Now, as for the pre-bursting shape, Ellie’s body should be spherical with her hands, feet, and head sticking out and her cheeks puffed up. In this state, she’ll only be capable of either rolling (Weight Gain) or multi-directional floating (Inflation)

23

Evening everyone,

Thought I’d use the last bit of the long weekend to push out a new build. The biggest change is the first of hopefully many enemy characters, a cake-throwing mummy. Because of the temple’s curse, Ellie won’t be able to refuse food no matter how full she is. That means that given enough food, she will eat until she’s too fat to move.

Game over animations have also been added for being inflated beyond capacity, though the bursting animations aren’t there yet. There’s also a new Pause function (press P) and a restart button if Ellie becomes immobile (press R).

Expanding out the level and adding more enemies will be the next part in all this. Let me know what you think.

V

24

A couple of simple additions, but pretty good regardless. I like how you made it so Ellie actually eats the cake instead of getting knocked back by it. Though, the way you animated her eating and gaining extra fat seems like she gets larger than she actually does. And now that the game overs are in place, I notice that there’s potential for one more level of inflation/weight gain before you lose. The mechanics even adjust to this unused level. Any plans on adding this missing stage?

I couldn’t test the wall clip glitch due to the cake mechanics being changed, so no idea if that’s still a thing. I did notice that the cakes disappear before they hit the right side of the screen, and don’t even come out if the mummy is partially off screen. He even sometimes throws it away from you if you shoot him from behind. Doesn’t work all the time.

I also noticed that you can just stay crouched and your healing will outpace the cakes. This seems a little cheap, given you’re not trying to keep yourself inflated as well, as you can just crouch the whole time, with the occasional shot mixed in as well. The mummy also doesn’t seem to notice you if you’re not on level with him, even though the cakes arc downward. Maybe you could change a couple of things to make this less exploitable, like slowing down your rate of healing? I realize there’s probably not much you can do about the mummy not seeing you on a lower level without there being a couple more issues, but I’m sure other enemies could fix this weakness.

25

I would love to see these changes, but unfortunately my computer can’t seem to extract the file. “Unsupported compression method” is the error I’m getting if anyone can help out with that.

26

Extracting problems here as well with the latest version.

27

I think I know what happened. I edited the .zip files using two different programs at one point. I made some quick fixes and re-zipped the files using 7zip. Do these work better?

MyAirBridge

Mega.co.nz

While I was in there I fixed some of the items that JoeRandom brought up. I changed the Mummy’s field of vision from a triangular shape to a rectangle so you can’t hide in his blind spot. He also throws cakes faster to make it harder to exploit the healing mechanic but left it slow enough so that you have the option to run, fight or heal.

I did take out the “missing stage” right before pre-bursting. As much as I’d like to add tons and tons of stages I think 5 stages might be enough for now. If there’s a good reason to go back up to 6 stages before immobility, I’ll add that back in.

28

Can’t really say the fov change does all that much, honestly. I didn’t really notice a difference. But the increased throwing rate definitely helps. It’s still exploitable to an extent due to a new bug I found (which I describe later), but you need to have super precise timing if you want to shoot while constantly losing the weight you pack on.

Fair enough. Five is good for now, and I noticed you adjusted our “health” to five as well, instead of six. A little thing, but it’s pretty nice.

As for the bug, being fed or hitting the spikes on the final stage before immobility and bursting respectively just tops off the bar if you’ve already healed half a stage’s worth of damage. Makes hitting the spike while fully inflated a lot less dangerous, and at the mummy’s current attack rate, you can just sit in front of him and constantly crouch. You’ll almost always heal half a stage before he can throw another cake, at which point the bar is topped off instead of sending you straight to immobility.

Another little detail I just now thought might be nice to add in, as well. If you’re inflated and fat at the same time, healing both might take twice as long. It makes sense from a mechanics standpoint, at least. And, maybe if it’s not too taxing, perhaps adding in sprites for the various stages of being fat and inflated at the same time, instead of defaulting to whichever’s higher or fat if they’re the same?

29

I’ll tell you, it’s really easy working on this game when I have such enthusiastic fans giving me such great feedback. Thank you!

New build is just a few bugfixes, which pretty much involved taking JoeRandom’s suggestions again. I’m actually planning to have a set of sprites that shows Ellie plumped up and inflated. I just can’t figure out what it would look like just yet.

Oh well. If nothing really breaking comes of it, I’ll be trying my hand at some level design next. Maybe a new enemy too if it makes sense.

30

Sounds good. Can’t wait to see what else you can come up with.

Also, found another glitch involving the new fix. The half-stage buffer removal works perfectly with inflation, but when I tried it with the cake, it didn’t go to the game over right away. It played the normal eating animation and took away all control instead. I could do nothing but stand there and wait for the mummy to throw another cake. Being inflated as well did nothing to remedy this.

31

I really like this concept so far, this game has a lot of potential

32

Sorry for the lack of updates in the past week. I’ve been struggling with some object association problems in ClickTeam Fusion. So events like the mummy’s cake-throwing attack or its reviving animation would trigger random actions to occur with other mummies, even if they were on the other side of the level. There’s still some odd stuff happening here and there but I think I got most of it worked out.

Level design is the main focus of this upcoming update and it’s quite a bit of fun, if a bit tough. I’m trying to make things feel a bit less linear than your traditional Mario-style platformer and that is posing a bit of a challenge. I have some ideas though, and as soon as I have something reasonably playable, I’ll have it up for you guys to try.

V

33

Keep up the good work! I’ve really been enjoying what I see so far in the demos.

34

Sorry about the late bug testing report. Didn’t even realize you’d updated the game. Everything’s working well now, aside from the platforms and the game overs. Ellie starts to float upwards as soon as you get the bursting animation, though I’m unsure if this is a bug or a design choice. Probably the latter, given the same doesn’t happen for the immobile animation. I’ve noticed that both animations freeze Ellie in place, however, which looks awkward when you eat one cake too many in mid-air and suddenly Ellie’s floating in place, yet too big to move.

As for the platforms…they’re solid enough, but a couple things bug me. The sprites show a flat platform, yet the very edges are treated like slopes and extend a couple pixels further than where I believe the edges should be. This results in me standing in the air directly next to the platform. It seems like only the topmost part of the platforms are solid, too. Jumping into them from the bottom results in me bonking my head on the upper lip of the platform instead of the bottom of it. Also, crouching and then jumping results in clipping into the platform, slowly rising through it, and the return of the moonwalker glitch. Jumping into the bottom of a platform while standing does not trigger this glitch, thankfully.

35

Sorry again for double posting, but bugs wait for no man. I like what you’ve done so far, though a couple of new bugs really irked me. For instance, the long line of spikes near the end of the stage. One spike alone is perfectly fine, but when you add multiple spikes, they tend to throw you in seemingly random directions, usually right into more spikes. I noticed you added a sort of invincibility period in which you can’t get inflated after you touch spikes, but it doesn’t really matter given how they simply bounce you between them like the volleyball you’re becoming. Not to mention you don’t seem to have this grace period after the third and fourth stages of inflation. Maybe making a single large spike object would help fix this?

It was a pain to test, but eating two cakes before the eating animation finished counts as one cake only (except for when you’re at stage 2, in which case it DOES count as two cakes, might be related to the spike glitch earlier). It makes sense, helps keep you from being overwhelmed, though I think you should add a grace period between cakes as well, just so you don’t get caught in a loop should a couple of near perfectly timed throws make food hit you after the animations done and you have no time to dodge, forcing you to go up two, three, maybe even four or five stages before you can get away.

This was also a pain to set up, but you CAN eat a cake and fall into spikes immediately after. This cancels the eating animation and knocks you back to the platform in between spikes, yet it only counts the cake. You gain one stage of weight and nothing else. Other combinations of inflation and weight I’ve successfully pulled this off with yielded the same results.

And now, the elephant in the room; moving platforms. I’m sure these are all known, but I feel a need to point them out regardless. Eating a cake on a moving platform results in you being unable to move at all, unless you fall through and touch the ground below it (more on that later). Jumping on spikes and having the knockback send you onto a moving platform yields similar results, with the exception that you slide backwards off the platform afterwards. You don’t even need to crouch to jump through moving platforms; jumping into one while it’s coming down clips you through it no matter what. Crouch jumping while it’s going up allows you to clip into it for a moment, but its ascent is faster than yours, so you just fall through anyways. And lastly, standing on the edge, due to the weird nature of Ellie’s hitbox making it act like a slope, makes you clip through again while it’s going up, and once you start clipping, there’s nothing you can do to save yourself from falling.

Lastly, a couple minor miscellaneous glitches that most likely have been in earlier versions as well. Walking into a wall and crouching results in Ellie rapidly switching between walking and crouching; turbo teabagging. Holding left and right halts Ellie’s movement, but makes her walk in place, facing to the left. Eating and jumping switch her back to the expected idle animation when you finish eating and land respectively, though pressing and releasing down results in Ellie being locked into her crouching animation until you jump, eat, or let go of left or right. I word it this way because Ellie isn’t actually crouching; she’s standing during this, as you can fire bullets no matter what stage of fat/inflation you’re in, and the bullet travels at standing height. The treasure counter doesn’t reset when you restart, though the chests you opened do, which could lead to some ridiculously high scores at minimal effort should it go unfixed.

I have a few suggestions with how to fix these, though you don’t have to use them if you don’t want to. The spike juggling and cake chains might be able to be remedied by making an actual invincibility period in which you can walk on spikes/through food without hindrance, though it might take away some of the challenge. If you do implement this, either make it very brief, half a second or so, or make it so you can’t heal during it. Possibly both. As for moving platforms, maybe make it so control is returned to you once you hit any solid surface, instead of just stationary solid surfaces like you have now. And Ellie’s hitbox…maybe making it rectangular would help, if it isn’t like that already? Her body seems to be perfect for such a hitbox, aside from her gun arm and her belly in fat stages 3 and 4, as well as inflation stage 4, but I don’t think many people would mind all that much if they clip through walls a little.

36

Thanks for the comprehensive bug reports JoeRandom. It’s going to take me a bit to sort out everything on your list but I believe that these are all important things to fix if this little project is ever going result in a real, playable game.

I suspect that a lot of the wall clipping issues will be addressed by fixing Ellie’s hitbox (which is currently shaped more like her sprite than a rectangular box like it should be). That and the addition a longer invincibility period should fix the annoying bugs that occur when you get hit with multiple items. Surprisingly, the moving platforms should be the easiest thing to fix. I just realized I forgot to add it to some of the events that detect collisions with background objects. That explains all the weird stuff that’s happening now when you come in contact with it.

All good though. Thanks again for the really thorough feedback. Back to bug bashing for me.

V

37

I know ideas and suggestions are a dime a dozen on the internet, but I was kinda thinking, what about a single bar inflation system? Like instead of having two bars and neither interact with each other, the game has one for overall capacity? Right now, you can be stuffed to the limit with food, then take another handful of hits from air inflation and be no closer to popping.

-Weight/food is the first part of the bar, it takes more food to fill than it does right now, but holding down doesn’t really help heal it much, if at all.

Emptying the bar would primarily be done by time (maybe just movement? Exercise? Maybe level checkpoints are treadmills or something?)
-Air is the second part of the bar, it can be healed by holding down like it does now. It can be used for fighting off the negatives of weight, but puts you closer to popping. On top of this, the game could have an easy mode where gaining weight when full of air would just push out the excess?
-Taking this all further, maybe some levels have you inflated with water as dead weight (maybe to solve a puzzle or just for challenge) and the water cannot be healed at all until later.

I don’t know your engine at all, but I’d imagine you could have a system in place where:
-No matter what you’re inflated with, the overall size and shape of Ellie is the same, just tied to the volume of the contents.
-If water + food > air, her hands will hold up her belly, just like they currently do with the food.

38

@SRP - Having one overall bar to cover both weight and air is something I am still considering and would ultimately like to have in the game. It would add an extra element of difficulty, since I do plan to have situations where you need to be a certain weight to access certain areas of the map or jumps that would be made easier by having Ellie ballooned up.

If and when that happens, the water inflation mechanic that you describe would be a nice to have. I do ultimately want to have different sprites for weight, air and weight + air though. It just seems more fun to have a wide variety of sprites in play.

Maybe once I get a little further with the level building I’ll go back and work on that next.

V

39

Also, a variety of wide sprites as the case may be :wink:

40

I was hoping to see the main character getting visibly fat in more than just the belly and her limbs becoming cone-shaped and eventually sinking into her body as she inflates. You know, like in the cartoons.