Long time no see.

Gameplay: Combination beat-em-up/puzzle platformer. You'll have to beat up enemies throughout each level, with a few bosses here and there. To progress through each level, you'll have to utilize your Shadow (working name), a species of monster normally hidden from human eyes. Every human has a Shadow linked to them, but for the most part they're dormant and do nothing, simply living within the physical shadow that their human projects. Obviously, that's not the case with our protagonist. In strictly gameplay terms, your Shadow mimics your actions, allowing you to attack and do other stuff from a safe distance, though he doesn't have infinite stamina and he is still limited to the area in which you project a shadow. This opens up the opportunity for light-related puzzles and a more complex beat-em-up experience.


Story: You play as Luna Waning, a teenage girl going through some troubled times in a very conservative town. Luna and her older sister (who I definitely had a name for but lost the note) both have active Shadows, meaning they can interact with the physical world and have a consciousness and will of their own. Active Shadows enjoy picking on their humans and grow stronger in the physical world based on the strength of their human's emotions, both positive and negative. And if a human's emotions grow strong enough, their Shadow can actually take control over them at the first sign of vulnerability, allowing the Shadow a permanent physical form (though they still aren't fond of extremely bright lights or completely dark areas).
At the start of the game, Luna's sister -struggling with crippling depression and societal pressure- takes her own life and seems to disappear without a trace. Soon afterwards, a series of strange incidents start occurring all over town, with reports of shadowy creatures attacking civilians and city government officials before vanishing into the night. It seems that Luna is the only one who can put a stop to them, but only if her Shadow actually decides to cooperate with her.

Programming: GameMaker Studio: Professional.

Team Members: Me! Not planning to look for additional help because I can't make any guarantees on my work ethic or motivation, considering that I came up with the concept and story for this game over two years ago, made some basic sprites over a year ago, and am just now starting to work on the most basic parts of the game. Maybe one day I'll look around for musicians because I got jack squat when it comes to music composition.

Things to show (newest videos at the top):

Messing around with having a lamp you can carry around to provide a more controlled light source. Debating whether to have it be a decently strong area light or a super strong angled light, or possibly a way to toggle between the two. You will also be able to use it as a battering weapon.
I'll probably make other light sources like flashlights at some point.
This is also the first video preview with music I made myself! Right now the music is being made in pxtone with some 3rd party instruments (this track uses a music box). This track is a short looped tune I randomly found myself humming and managed to record and reproduce.


Whipped up a test room to figure out the daytime and sunlight mechanics while in the “overworld” (basically, outside in the city). The length of the shadow is pretty much hard-coded instead of calculated in real-time while outside because the effective lightsource is the sun, so your position doesn’t really affect the length of your shadow.
3 times of day are shown, which are roughly morning, noon, and evening/sunset. Different puzzles in town can be solved at different times of day because you’ll need your shadow to be able to reach certain areas.
Night levels function as a sort of time attack, where you have to reach a puzzle quickly to make sure the moon casts your shadow in the right place to solve it. Currently it lasts approximately two minutes, and the moon's position (and therefore, the length of your shadow) are updated about every 8.5 seconds. This might vary depending on the level, and I might make the transition more smooth; for the proof of concept, I focused on having one value for each of the frames in the moon-phase themed timer.


Worked on punching for both Luna and her shadow, and made it possible for her shadow to interact with objects like light switches.


Here's a video showing the shadow system I have implemented currently, which I think is about 2/3 where I need it to be.
Basically it's a bunch of trigonometry mashed together to move and scale a one-pixel-wide image in relation to Luna and the nearest light. I'll eventually generate a shadow for each major light source, but I'm not sure if the Shadow itself will be able to manifest in more than one shadow at once.

Might return to my spriting thread again if I want feedback on sprites I work on, it'll be a lot more scenery stuff than character stuff like it used to be though.

working on a bedroom. fully functional lightswitch! the lamp will also turn on and off with a different light effect. later i'm going to have a few different room shadings for when the light is on/off and the lamp is on/off.

i also undid the water physics.

edit:
lightswitch demo, some objects you can interact with and shadow's stamina.

even though nobody here cares about this game yet, here i am, still working on it

http://doaloop.net/uncategorized/same-o ... ew-engine/

tl;dr remade the game in gm studio and added a couple things, OP updated

I remember the first time I saw this sprite in your topic. Pretty cool to see it in action.

neato

everyone probably forgot about this thing

but i didnt

luna and shadow can now punch, and shadow can interact with objects

I didn't forget. I actually frequent this post for updates tbh. Cool s***.

Meet Clementine, the last of the three "main" characters.



I'll probably get some more coding progress done with video preview later this week, ended up doing a lot of idea work the past week, mostly rounding out a few character designs.

Looking great

Whipped up a test room to figure out the daytime and sunlight mechanics while in the “overworld” (basically, outside in the city). The length of the shadow is pretty much hard-coded instead of calculated in real-time while outside because the effective lightsource is the sun, so your position doesn’t really affect the length of your shadow.
3 times of day are shown, which are roughly morning, noon, and evening/sunset. Different puzzles in town can be solved at different times of day because you’ll need your shadow to be able to reach certain areas.

There will also be nighttime levels which are like a time attack mode, where you have to get to a puzzle before the moon gets to a certain point in the sky so your shadow is at the right place at the right time to solve a puzzle.

You can also now slide out of a crouch.

Similar to the last update, but sunset has a color filter now, and night time is unique.

Night levels function as a sort of time attack, where you have to reach a puzzle quickly to make sure the moon casts your shadow in the right place to solve it. Currently it lasts approximately two minutes, and the moon's position (and therefore, the length of your shadow) are updated about every 8.5 seconds. This might vary depending on the level, and I might make the transition more smooth; for the proof of concept, I focused on having one value for each of the frames in the moon-phase themed timer.

Man, the soundtrack sounds beautiful. I really dig the lighting effects for time and day. Keep it up!

The music is just a random audio swap i did through youtube lol, I dont really have any music yet aside from a short music box loop in one test room.

Oh.
Nevermind lol

speaking of music


Messing around with having a lamp you can carry around to provide a more controlled light source. Debating whether to have it be a decently strong area light or a super strong angled light, or possibly a way to toggle between the two.

You will also be able to use it as a battering weapon.

I'll probably make other light sources like flashlights at some point.

This is also the first video preview with music I made myself! Right now the music is being made in pxtone with some 3rd party instruments (this track uses a music box). This track is a short looped tune I randomly found myself humming and managed to record and reproduce.