As the work load increases, the falling-behind-on-updates increases haha Progress has been good, but we’ve been putting in a lot of hours and updating the blog is way lower priority than a lot of other stuff (making sure files are ready for Derek, or fixing animation bugs, changing how we do stuff, etc.). So I’ve decided to compact a bunch of days together instead of attempting to fill in all the missing days.

Choosing a title was a pain in the butt… everything short is taken already haha So I decided to go the opposite route and pick something overly elaborate. And so Elusive Ninja: The Shadowy Thief was born! I wanted to put a subtitle in because if I do a sequel, or a different type of game that uses the character, I can use the same Elusive Ninja title and just have a different subtitle.

The first rough idea for a title screen:

The final title screen:

The HUD has been solidified, and looks like so:

I went with blood and fire, and it stands out nicely on the dark blues/purples of the game’s background. I took the large blood splat and flipped and shrunk it to create a second smaller blood splat...I’m thinking it’d be cool to have announcements (“NEW RECORD!” for when you top the high score, “+1 LIFE” when you catch a Riceball, etc.). But I don’t know if this will make it in, I was just playing around.

I had to make a font sheet for the fire numbers, so on Derek’s recommendation I bought Glyph Designer for $29.99. It outputs stuff that can be used in Cocos2d, and was a huge time-saver and very easy to use.

This is just the HUD solo:

I wanted to make sure the game is polished and animated outside of just the main gameplay, so I whipped up this quick test of an idea for an intro transition animation:

I remember watching Capcom VS SNK in the arcades and the levels had these cool intros…it’d show a pixely Rad Racer looking game where the car explodes and flips and then cut to the actual level you fight in and there’s a blown-up flaming car in the background. I love that kind of thing so I’ve always wanted to do something along those lines.

Here’s a later version:

I’m really happy with how it came out, and with sound effects it’s even better. Originally the ninja just materialized in because I didn’t want to take time to draw a jumping silhouette frame, but Derek from Halfbot convinced me it would be cooler to have the ninja jump in from the distance so I went for it, and it definitely looks way cooler.

I can’t fully remember because it was a while ago, but I think a friend and former co-worker, Wes, and I were up late blabbing about gamedev stuff and he said it’d be cool to make a game where everything is seamless…So when the user is done on the main menu, it unfolds and reveals the gameplay stage and everything jumps onto it and the gameplay begins. I dig that so I tried to orchestrate the menu design in this game to involve that. The background of the main menu is actually the gameplay stage’s roof zoomed in 300%…so when the scrolls on the menu fold up, the camera pans up the roof and zooms out and the ninja jumps onto the stage and the game begins. This was a really fun effect to do, but it was a pretty elaborate undertaking and I don’t know if I’d be quick to try it again without some serious planning ahead of time.

Here’s some gameplay footage:

When your Deflect Meter is full, you can swipe upward to deflect objects (though in this version you can do it whenever you want). The meter fills whenever you dodge an object and it takes 10 dodges to fill. This gives you a last-second desperation move. We went with an upward swipe because we figured that’d be cool on a touch-screen, but as I was testing it I found it wasn’t as good for the gameplay…swiping up means you’re no longer moving left/right, which is okay at the start when everything’s slow-paced…but when it speeds up a lot, it can get your ninja killed. So I’m thinking of changing it to a button you can tap with your hand that holds the iPhone.

This was the demo animation of the menus:

I like the idea of having the options light up as you drag over them, and then get swiped out with a blood streak when you let go on one. I think it works well with the scroll, and I like having stuff zoom in/out so I was happy to get a chance to have the scroll drop in from the foreground.

And here’s the menus working in-game:

It worked out pretty good so I’m happy! Everything’s coming together the way I pictured it in my head…it’s a pretty big relief because when you imagine it you never know for sure how it’s going to look when everything comes together toward the end. Epic props to Derek from Ravenous Games (go buy League of Evil for your iPhone if you haven’t yet, it’s easily the best platformer on the device) for putting up with my over-the-top artsy polish!

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And so after that last huge catching up update, where are we at today? This week I’ve finished up the Sound Effects, which were a blast to do. I had to search for hours through sites like soundsnap, and for most of the sound effects I’d mush various sounds together (like for a death stab sound effect I’d combine a sword slash sound with a juicy squishing fruit sound and a grunt, etc.). I tried using Adobe Soundbooth, but it doesn’t seem too user-friendly for mixing tracks together quickly (but admittedly I have zero experience with the program), so I grabbed Audacity because it’s free, and that turned out to be a great little program.