"Eroico" and the May Update

Labcoax - Texturing MAY-hem

I tried to stop myself at the heading. Believe me.

Okay I've been slacking. Well not really. After drawing tilesets in the past weeks, I thought I've drawn enough to start putting together a whole zone/area(there will be multiple colour-denoted zones to traverse) in the game. I did draw alot, but they all lack texture.

So basically I've been putting together some very uninteresting looking area. Didn't like it so I went back to the tilesets and fiddled  some more. Refer below picture:

I had no clue how to texture, initially.

Of course I SHOULD know (texturing) this before I start making a game right? I knew, but I didn't know it would be taking so much time (I may be inefficient). Being frustrated at my slow texturing progress, I decided to play ..

Eroico - a mini-H-platformer game by Kyrieru

Before I start, I just want to point out something first:

Learn this 'move' and learn it well for it is your friend.

And don't forget to use the shield.

Eroico, a 2D-ero-platformer was released by Kyrieru a few days ago, so I'm actually late to playing the game. I'm sure many have already played the game to oblivion but in case you haven't played it yet, go to his blogspot and try the demo (then buy the game via PayPal, or wait a little more for it to be released on DLsite).

So I've played Eroico and I think Kyrieru managed to capture the atmosphere of an 'Adventure that promises the player many a great ride'. The animations were fluid & had transitions, and the background music fits very nicely with the drawn background, giving some feeling of 'immersion'.

Combat controls are responsive, but Eroico's combat was designed such that there's a start-up delay to all the protagonist's attacking moves so players will often find their attacks coming out slower than the quick-footed catgirl.

Upgrades are always fun. You use the sparkly bits that come off the enemy girls to obtain sword and ranged-magic upgrades. The upgrade pedestals are placed around the levels (if you miss them, you can still beat the game, but why would you not want a burning sword?):-

 Step on the pedestal and be bestowed the burning sword of Ero.

I prefer to use 'burning' because.

The upgrade gives extended attack range but not attack power.

I have to say that the platforming part of the game is actually really challenging and fun. You'd think you would be doing a lot of jumping around, but what you're really doing in Eroico is a lot of jumping around, dodging, attacking and messing up, all at the same time.
There is a sense of achievement for  Playing on normal, you'll have very few chances to make mistakes as a few can mean starting the level over if you haven't gotten to the checkpoints. There are only 2 checkpoints in each level and the first checkpoint can only be found at about halfway through the level.

Lastly, not forgetting the hentai, there's a total of 15 enemies in the game. Each enemy girl in-game has its own sprited H-animation and a respective quality CG. I have to say Kyrieru definitely improved his drawings of CGs.

Back to progress report

I don't always write reviews. The reason I brought Eroico up is because I wanted to point out that a nicely put together background and tileset can really go the mile in bringing out the 'life' in a game. From the screenshots above, one can immediately feel the 'colour' of the game.

What I'm really saying is that that's what I'm trying to do in Labcoax. I haven't achieved a satisfactory level with the texturing yet but I think I'm getting close to it (that satisfactory level). I want to do at least this before I release anything because first impressions are important afterall!
...

And before I forget, I was actually doing the "intro story" to Labcoax before my attention got diverted to adding tileset textures. Here's the sketch:-

Labcoax intro - concept and sketch

I'll just leave that here for now and the rest of the story to your imagination (let me hear/read it in the comments!). I apologize for not having a new release for Labcoax this time around. I couldn't get as much work done as I thought I could.

Q: If you've played Eroico, what were the few plus points you think it has?

April Fool's Update

...
I bet you were totally expecting a release didn't you?
Nope, just dropping a post to highlight the recent additions to Labcoax, but first a screenshot:

Truth be told I haven't done much in the past few weeks. The only things I've managed are:-

• Forward dash
• Back-hop
• Ammo-change system

I plan to have both the forward dash and back-hop to be as obtainable upgrades from beating mini-bosses. Additional ammo types for the ammo-change system would have to be obtained from beating the main bosses, very much like Megaman stealing the powers of the main enemies he defeated. Each ammo type will behave differently. The only concern I have is making all of them useful.

Back-hop (ignore the red lines)

When is the next release? I can't really say, but maybe 3 weeks to a month from now? Note that I have not started on any bosses or enemies just yet. I'm really just trying to get the new game intro set up for now.

Character portrait

I thought I'd post something up in case people start to think that I forgot about Labcoax. I'm still working on it, but no longer on a full-time basis (other job in the morning, Labcoax in the late evening), which should explain the slow progress.

Fired up photoshop once again to try and sketch character portraits for possible use in-game. Here's one.

I'm still not certain about how the heroine should look like, reason because I can't seem to find a consistent style I could stick with. For now, I want to try to stick to this style.

Anyway over the past 2 weeks I've been trying to think of how the new game intro should be like (probably some simple still pictures and in-game cutscenes), prepping up the starting room and testing out some text function. I think I might add NPCs and text interaction too, afterall those cutscenes would need some sort of  text. Eng-jap translation would be a pain.

In any case, I hope to finish the starting/new game room and set up the different ammo-type system before I release the next update.

Mediafire woes, thus v0.3

EDIT#2: My Mediafire link has been disabled. It's Mega for me now.
EDIT#1: Added Mediafire link alongside Mega in downloads page. Grab it while it's still up!

You know you're in for a fun day when you get an e-mail from Mediafire (MF). Well, make it 2 e-mails. Sigh ...

If you've noticed, the MF links to both the v0.2 and v0.2 re-up have been removed due to violation of MF's terms of use. I only wished they tell me exactly what the violation was. So there's that, I don't see a better time to try out Mega Beta.

Unfortunately I didn't keep a copy of v0.2, so I'd have to release v0.3, which is unplanned for. What you would see in v0.3:-

1. Tileset testing (Ignore the red dots, they're there to serve as reference for me).
2. Just 2 extra sprite frames for 'getting-up' animation.
3. Drop-through jump-through platforms by pressing 'Down + Jump'.

At the same time, I'll also be having a separate .exe "v0.3 Debug". This version is for those who had previously failed to run v0.2 re-up. What is different in "v0.3 Debug" is that there will be no dynamic memory allocation, because I think that's where the problem lies. What that means is, Debug won't have:

1. The pause menu.
2. Leveling-up menu. (You'd still level-up, just that you can't allocate the stats)

The results of the poll showed that 16 out of 278 people encountered issue(s) with v0.2. Try the debug version. If it still doesn't work, it could be that GM:Studio exports just isn't working for you. GM:Studio is still getting bug patches and is recently able to export stand-alone .exe. Trying out this export for v0.3.
Notify me in the comments if you are getting the same error.

I apologize about the lack of updates but things are going really slowly at my side.

Here's the Mega link to both versions of v0.3: Labcoax - Alpha v0.3 + Debug
Password is dtny.
Also posted to downloads page.

Notify me in the comments if Mega links doesn't work for you.

Month-end Update - January

Development is progressing but the process has slowed a whole lot since the last month, as you might expect. In the past few weeks I've:

1. Prepared the main menu template where you can navigate between new game, load game and exit game (but of course, the functionality have not been implemented).
2. Boss-room, the background and a boss, no H-animation yet.
3. Heroine now able to drop-through jump-through platforms by pressing 'down' and 'jump'.

And problems! These are the few known issues regarding Labcoax v0.2 that affect some people:-

1. Game errors out and requires closing when game is launched.
2. Game launches but resources could not be loaded, giving only the background on screen and nothing else.
3. Pressing 'enter' key to bring up the pause menu crashes the game.

I need more feedback to estimate the extend of these problems so I've added a poll to the right, where you can vote and tell me if v0.2 worked just fine or is experiencing one of the problems above. I hope it's not extensive but hey, surprise me.

EDIT#1: Feel free to list down any other issues that I might have missed in the comments.

Update v0.2 -Re-uploaded

RE-UPLOAD: Exporting in GM:Studio is a little different as compared to GM8.1. I'm still figuring out why the few of you couldn't get the game to load all resources. Hopefully after meddling the export options a little, the 'never loading resources' issue gets fixed with this re-upload of v0.2.
If anyone wants to know, this export is for Windows only.

We have in v0.2 re-upload is:

• Recovery bar now appears over slope foreground (slope obscuring the bar before this).
• "Slimehead" now navigates down ledges better.
• Slight change to pause menu UI. Its background now dark coloured, and indicates the character level now.
• Game starts in full-screen. Window now re-sizeable but IT IS TERRIBAD.

If in any case this re-upload failed to execute, try to extract/move v0.2 anywhere onto C:/ drive and run as 'Administrator'. If that still doesn't work ... well I'll have to consult them developers.

Download re-upload (3MB from MF): Labcoax - Alpha v0.2 re-up (Windows)
Password is same as before: dtny

EDIT #3: Apparently the heroine to can get stuck only on right-facing walls (or wall boundary on left of map), which occurs when you jump into the wall with the back of the heroine, then looking left into the wall.
---re-upload end---

I was testing some projectile trajectory calculation, so the new enemy only has a kinda arcing ranged attack. I was suppose to put a link up yesterday but then I realized I completely forgotten about the death animation for the new enemy. Now that I have got that done, I was finally able to put it up.

So what we have in v0.2 is:

• A new ranged enemy "Slimehead".
• Tileset and slopes.
• Crouching.
• Pause menu.
• Level-up & character attributes template.
• Bug fixes.

Download (3MB from MF):  --please use link at top of post--

Link can also be found in download(s) page.

I haven't done extensive testing on this new update so if there are bugs or anything amiss, let me know in the comment section. There's this white flashing that is suppose to occur when enemies or the heroine gets hit; to indicate invulnerability but it only appears after going into full-screen. Will fix that in the next update.

Because I am terrible at estimating workload, I couldn't make it before Christmas, but I have to at least get something out before the year ends. As for the next update, it wouldn't be until a good long while. I (hopefully) intend to have a main menu up, a couple more tilesets with matching backgrounds, maybe a mini-boss to test pathing in GameMaker, which would possibly be a move from Alpha onto Beta.

The heroine keeps the ponytail. I keep thinking I'm forgetting something though ...

EDIT #1: I forgot to wish the new year. So have yourselves a Happy New Year!

EDIT #2: The DEF attribute is just part of the template for the time being. It doesn't do anything yet.

Did someone say 'update'?

I think it's been 3 weeks since the last post, so I suppose it is about time I do a little post on the current progress of Labcoax.

In the past week I was making the pause menu interface and functionality, and the week before that I moved from GM 8.1 onto GM: Studio Standard. The move wasn't as smooth, there were a few things requiring change as they worked a little differently in Studio than 8.1. Just before the move I was working on a tileset, which I think turned out rather decently. I still have not done any backgrounds though.

If you think the slimes were annoyingly hard to shoot at, you shouldn't have anymore problems with that because our heroine can now crouch and shoot. The slimes can now be killed, complete with their very own death animation.

I haven't gotten to work on new enemies just yet as I was concentrating mostly on the game skeleton or game structure ready (the level-up and experience system, character attributes and menu controls). I do however, plan to get at least 1 new enemy done in the next alpha of the game, planned to be uploaded before Christmas or earlier.

I should probably give my avatar a Santa hat, then go unwind for a bit. Also, I suppose pony-tail for the heroine should stick?