Torso Ninja II Released!

Hello everyone! I'm super excited to announce the release of my sixth #1GAM game, Torso Ninja II! That's right, its out! Hooray! Just in the nick of time too ;)

The logo, which I still like :)

Torso Ninja II is the sequel to my December 2015 #1GAM game, Torso Ninja. In this game, like its predecessor, you play as the brave (and armless) Torso Ninja, who is beset from all directions by his enemies, the Red Ninjas. You, the player, must use your mouse pointer to guide Torso Ninja safely through his enemies' barrages of bullets (err, shuriken), all the while collecting power-ups and and trying to get the highest score possible! You must also beware, for the Red Ninjas' evil leader, Goemon, might just make an appearance to try and destroy our heroic shinobi himself...

Play the game on Game Jolt: http://gamejolt.com/games/torso-ninja-ii/153329
Or play it on Itch.io: https://hellamagellan.itch.io/torso-ninja-2

This is the biggest game I've made since Cargo, and I would probably consider Torso Ninja II to be the best game I've ever made. I think I've come a long way since starting #1GAM, and I hope this game exemplifies that somewhat :)

Most importantly, though, I hope you, the audience, like this game and find it fun! I certainly had a great time making it, and I would love to hear from any and all of you who read this, and/or play my games :) Leave a shoutout below here on my blog, or comment on my Game Jolt and Itch.io game pages! You can even find me on twitter @HellaMagellan!

See you next time! Hope you enjoy this new game! :D 

P.S. As a side note, remember that you can edit the levels yourself using the level config files in the data\lvl\ directory of the Torso Ninja II folder. There's a short help file in there, so check it out! :)

Dev Blog #14: Almost Done!

Hi! How's everyone's week been? I've had a pretty good one, not the least because I made a ton of progress on my next #1GAM game, Torso Ninja II! It's very nearly done at this point, and I'm aiming to release it this coming Tuesday (the last day of the month, in fact). Here's a sampling of what I've gotten done this week!

First and foremost, the main menu has been improved significantly. It now looks halfway presentable :)
 

Yay! Main menu!

Next, I also completed the backgrounds for all three of the levels, and got all the music, level transitions, and game over screens working.
 

Level 1: The Forest

Level 2: The Plains

Level 3: The Castle

 
Many, many other, more minor things were completed this week, as well. This has been a very productive week. Good thing too! I'm running out of time! :)

That about does it for now, ladies and germs. As I said, I fully expect to release this game on Tuesday, so you'll be hearing from me pretty soon!

See you then!   

Dev Blog #13: Getting There!

Hi, everybody! Believe it or not, I'm on time for a dev blog this week! Woo! I've gotten a good bit done on TN2 this past week, and I've even begun finalizing the bullet patterns that will appear in the actual game. Check it out!

The main thing I've completed this week is the HUD and the ability to drop smoke bombs. This is an integral new feature that allows you to become invincible for a few seconds and escape a dangerous situation. Take a look!

The HUD, complete with score, bombs, and lives.

A smoke bomb is used. You can't tell in this image, but Torso Ninja is blinking.

I've also completed a skeletal version of the main menu (allowing you to start the game, and not much else) and put in some of the first patterns. Here's the second set of screenshots:

Bare-bones title screen. I promise this is definitely not final!

Early pattern. I'm thinking the bullets might be a bit too small...

So there you have it! One on-time dev blog, for your consumption! I'm running out of time on Torso Ninja 2 at this point, but even if it doesn't look like I'm nearing completion (because I've saved the graphics for last), its coming along nicely. I'll continue to be on time for this month's #1GAM, I'm almost certain :)

See you later!

Late Again!

Yikes! Two weeks in a row! So sorry everyone, time has just been getting away from me lately :/

Wait wait wait... What time is it?!?!

This is mostly just going to be a check-in post, since there hasn't been any visible progress on Torso Ninja II (though I've accomplished a lot with the music and some behind-the-scenes code, so its not been a completely unproductive week). I'm still in finals-mode, for whatever reason, so its been a challenge for me to devote a lot of time to the game. That excuse is getting old for me, though, so I've dedicated myself to making some real progress this week! Expect a good dev blog! (hopefully definitely on time this time!)

In other news, I've also been fiddling with the idea of doing some tutorials on here. I'm no expert on game design/development (or on much of anything, really) but I have some scattered knowledge that might help out fledgling devs in some specific situations :) I've dabbled in a bit of everything, game-programming-wise, but most of my in-depth knowledge
is centered around python and pygame. I think pygame is still pretty popular, though, so maybe somebody out there can get some use out of what I have to teach :)

That pretty much does it for now. Again, I'll do better about being on time next time. That's a promise!

So long!

Dev Blog #12: Busy Weekend!

Woah! Hey everyone, how's it going? You may realize that I'm a day late with my blog post. Aaaaahhh! D:

It has been a very busy weekend for me, but to be honest, I just forgot, so it's completely my fault! But, I'm posting this as an update right quick, so nothing lost! (I hope!)

Development on Torso Ninja II has been progressing decently. I spent most of this week creating a method that will allow me to script enemy spawns and bullet patterns for levels, independent of the source code. What does that mean for you? It means a certain level of client-side customization! If you're willing to learn a simple markup language (and calling it a "language" is a real stretch), you can modify the levels yourself!

I made this scripting method to speed up development on TN2 ("Hey, Erik, cool acronym!" they said. "Hey, Internet, thanks!" I replied). I have big dreams for it, and hope to maybe expand it into a sort of development method for making simple scrolling shooters. I used to mess around with the M.U.G.E.N. fighting game engine, so I was thinking of doing something like that (on a much smaller scale, of course) with shmups. Who knows if I'll be able to actually get around to it, but if so, hooray! :)

On another note, I've also been working on the music to I'm going to be using for TN2 a lot this week. I make my music in the Linux Multimedia Studio (LMMS, Windows version in my case). Following is a picture of LMMS as I use it, since this article needs some visuals ;)

My DAW of choice, the wonderfully free LMMS.

I feel like I've generally been improving with my music-making skills as time has went on, and I hope for Torso Ninja II to be my most musically-accomplished work yet. I'm making the music early (unusual for me) and I've already got a couple of songs that sound okay, or so I think. At the very least, the soundtrack should be better than the original Torso Ninja (not that it's much of a horse race).

So there ya go, my day-late update :) See you next week, hopefully on-time!

Dev Blog #11: Scrolling and Shooting

Hello again! I'm back this week with a little bit of a status update on my work-in-progress game, Torso Ninja II. I've also got a couple of small screenshots to share, more to give a rough idea of the way the game will work than to provide any concrete details. So, let's get to it!

My goals for this past week were a bit subdued, as my Spring finals are going on (only one more week to go... ;_;) but I got the visuals up and running. As I mentioned previously, I'm making this game in Pygame, so I'm very familiar with what needs to be done at this point.

Here are the screens:

 

The screen scrolls and Torso Ninja follows your pointer, like in the original.

That cryptic blue dot is a bullet. No hard patterns up and running so far.

 

I should also mention that the bullets are going to have much more complex behaviors in this game than in the previous Torso Ninja. I'm drawing inspiration from my favorite curtain fire games, and I've got simple trigonometric movement working for the bullets already, so stay tuned for crazy spirals of death ;)

So, there's a taste of my past week of work. I hope to eventually include 3 total levels, and maaaaayyyyybe, just maybe, a boss at the end of the final one (that one's on the 'dreams' list for now though).

See you in a week or so :) Peace!