After getting that new calculator, I've finally started another project. This one's called Blastlabs, and it's an action platformer centered around killing people ^^. The levels are going to be "bite-sized," which means that they should each theoretically take less than 15 seconds to beat, but they'll be as difficult as I can make them and will probably take new players multiple tries I might also put in a plot if I have extra space, but don't count on it.

The first thing I've been working on is getting the tilemapper working, and I've also introduced something new in this project - a camera. As you can see in this screenshot, it doesn't snap directly to the player, but has a kind of "inertia" that makes it ease to the player position. Runer has forbade me from using Full, so what you see here is a really slow Normal program. Please guys, help me convince him to let me use Full



I'm also working on a title screen. I kinda like this one I made:



but at the same time, I would have preferred the Blastlabs logo to be centered.

So the way I'm going to deal with this project is to post frequent updates (or as frequent as my progress is) so you guys can see exactly what I'm working on at any point xD Hopefully, that should stop me from giving up so easily.

I initially thought you had implemented wall-jumping, a la N-Game and M-Game, but I see it's actually just wall friction with the ability to change direction in mid-air. Very cool regardless, of course. That BlastLabs logo looks awfully familiar to me; did you once mock that up for some general project, or am I imagining things?

I indeed made a mockup of that logo a while back for this very project; I just didn't start the project until now.

As for walljumping, I will eventually implement it in a fashion similar to N-Game. This screenshot was just of a movement/tilemapping demo, so much of it is incomplete.

Great, we need a walljumping game. I'm still sad that I never got to complete my MGame game (yet, anyway).

I've made a bit of progress and added this awesome sprite made by Deep Thought



From here on out, I'm going to spend most of my efforts fixing the player movement and getting some tiles sprited.

Ah, sorry, I should have offered some of my sprites. That looks great though, nice job so far. Are you going to remove the ability to wall-jump in mid-air, or is that part of the final mechanic. I don't think that I'd hate if that was in the final game.

The jumping in midair is actually planned; you can jump at max two times (double jump), then you have to touch a wall or ground to jump again. It's a pretty common mechanic in platformers.

Yeah, like in the Super Smash Bros games

Great demo for now, I'll keep an eye on it

Finally, a physics-based platformer in Axe that doesn't look like a Portal-X or Graviter clone! (Not of course saying that you're making a slew of those types of games lately, more like, people are making games that seem identical to your old ones.) This is looking superb, the camera and smoothness of the jumping and climbing mechanisms is mouth-watering; I already can't wait to see what you're going to add on top of that. Nice work.

One of my complaints about Axe has been that many of the games have indeed looked and felt very similar, of course with some notable exceptions. I too herald and salute Leafiness's attempts to go beyond the usual formula for an Axe game.

That is not Axe's fault, it is just that for some reason, most coders copied Leafy's games. That could also have happened with ASM or Basic
Anyway, I agree that this game's graphics look awesome
I just hope people won't copy it again

Alright, magic it is. I'll see what I can do. I've spent a lot of time fine-tuning the player movement engine so that it feel natural. This involved adding a slight "stickiness" to the wallsliding, fixing walljumping, adding player inertia, making gravity a bit floatier, and just all-around tweaking of values. I've also done quite a bit of optimization and taken out greyscale so that it'll run on all devices. Here's a quick screenie (everything's running at 6MHz):



(I haven't put in the new sprites yet, I'll do that eventually )

One or two moments in that screenshot feel "inconsistent" to my brain, physics-wise, but for the most part it looks great! The particle effects look particularly nice to me.

Do you mind elaborating on which bits feel "inconsistent?"

I wasn't sure what it was until I re-watched the screenshot a few time. I can buy double-jumping in mid-air, but there's a moment where the player goes from jumping from the left side, stops in mid-air, and falls.

That's when I stop pressing a key in midair. To make the player more responsive the controls, that's how I've coded it; the game feels sluggish and unresponsive when the player needs to decelerate. I'm sure I could add a small deceleration time to make it look more natural, but I'll have to balance it out with responsiveness.

I think the particle effects look great, but halving the amount of particles might be both more realistic and less distracting. That's an awfully large amount of debris falling from the wall, makes one wonder if they're made out of wet sand

Haha, I don't disagree with that.

Leafiness: OK, I understand your logic on that one. I wouldn't mind a small bit of deceleration, but it is of course up to you, as the game designer.

@Kerm I've since added a bit of deceleration while not touching the ground - nothing too major, but it does indeed make it feel smoother. Thanks for the input!

Runer's helped me to optimize the hell out of my particle engine, and I've also implemented dynamic tilemapping! That means each tile is affected by the ones around it, which can both save space in the tilemap and also make the game feel a lot more connected as a whole.

Ah yes, otherwise known as Rounded Corners Syndrome. Looking better and better, I must say, and I'm happy with the physics tweaks now. Keep up the great updates.