EPTPart One - It begins
Part Two - Technical Foundation
Part Three - Game Design
Part Four - Input and Physics
Part Five - More Physics Things
Part Six - Even More Physics
Part Seven - User Interface
Part Eight - UI and the Editor
Part Nine - Editor Progress
Part Ten - Progress, and videos
Part Eleven - Fixing the Physics
Part Twelve - Unproductive
Part Thirteen - Context menu + enemies
Part Fourteen - Enemies and Problems
Part Fifteen - Play testing
Part Sixteen - Editor and Art
Part Seventeen - Video!
Part Two - Technical Foundation
Part Three - Game Design
Part Four - Input and Physics
Part Five - More Physics Things
Part Six - Even More Physics
Part Seven - User Interface
Part Eight - UI and the Editor
Part Nine - Editor Progress
Part Ten - Progress, and videos
Part Eleven - Fixing the Physics
Part Twelve - Unproductive
Part Thirteen - Context menu + enemies
Part Fourteen - Enemies and Problems
Part Fifteen - Play testing
Part Sixteen - Editor and Art
Part Seventeen - Video!
This Week
Hello again TeamLiquid! Welcome back to my blog about the development of The Adventures of Sam the Pirate, the 2D platformer I'm creating as the final game project for my Bachelor of Software Engineering degree. Last week</a> I talked about getting moving platforms to work properly, and had a new video. This week I'll be talking about getting some parallax scrolling working, and talking a bit about music for the game.
Background layers
Got a base for background layers, behind the level, working this week. Should help to make levels a bit more visually interesting, I just need some actual art pieces to populate the backgrounds, instead of my terrible programmer art. These background objects can be a static image, or an animated sprite, completely stationary independently moving left or right. So for example there could be a layer consisting of distant clouds, a layer in front of that with some hills, and then another layer in front of that consisting of more closer clouds.
The background items are positioned in an area the same size as the level, so at the moment they scroll past at the same speed as objects in the level. This means that anything which is meant to be in the distance and so scroll past slower, don't do that, so it's not correct parallax scrolling just yet. This would definitely throw off the illusion for anything meant to be in the distance, as they won't be moving at the same speed, but I'm not too sure I have time to try and fix this just yet.
To fix it, and implement proper parallax scrolling, I need to make background layers scroll past at different speeds, rather than at the same speed. One method I've been thinking of, is to change the scale of the layer. At the moment, the scale is the same as the size of the level, so if the level is 10,000 x 2,000 pixels, the layer is the same. I could shrink that size for layers that are further away, and then scroll appropriately. Maybe I could achieve this effect by doing some hacky maths with the positions of objects and the camera position.
Not really sure, but I'm leaving it as is for now, as I only have 7 weeks left so I'm moving on to other elements that still need implementing. Might have a little look at it today, and otherwise come back to it later if I have time.
Music
Had someone offer to create music and sound via the games Facebook page during the week as well, which is great! He's already created a couple of sample tracks, and you can listen to a potential theme for the ship/beach levels below:
It definitely has the catchiness that I'm looking for in game music to have, so we'll have to see what else he comes up with. If you're interested, he has a website over at Eternal Vibration that you can check out.
What's next?
Next week I'll be adding water to the editor, and get it functioning in game, so that the player dies if they fall into it, as Sam is a terrible pirate who can't swim. I'll potentially be looking at adding coins, along with score tracking and display. Depending on how things go over the next few weeks, I'm thinking of putting a 10 level demo version up for download too. No promises on that though!
Keep up to date!
Be sure to follow me on Twitter, and like the Facebook page to stay up to date on future content and blog posts when they happen. If you have any questions don't hesitate to ask, either through Twitter or Facebook! You can also check out the blog, previous posts, screenshots and videos over at my site.
