蝴蝶 / Inner99

[rrTea]

Edit: the page doesn't work anymore, I'll look into fixing it when I make a new build.

Commands:
gamepad or keyboard (A,S, cursor keys, space to pause)
Esc to exit.
To skip the opening (the story that launches when starting the game), just hit the Fire button to advance the text. To skip the cutscenes, press and hold the fire button (a notification will appear on the screen). The intro that plays if "NEW" game is selected cannot be skipped.

Of course many things are not finished, but it should give an idea of where is it heading. To get the proper idea of how is it supposed to work, select "NEW" on the main selection screen (you can also select "CONTINUE" - I left all the levels unlocked for easier testing). btw even if you select "NEW" the levels will remain unlocked (again, for easier testing).

Edit: Everything is quite different from the last time I showed it - some changes are major (menus, pausing! it works!) some minor (cutscene elements are tweaked, deleted or added, new music, explosions now have proper color, various effects etc etc) - too numerous to list, best to see for yourself

[VilleK]

Thanks!

You know already I'm a fan of this game. The story (what I can understand of it ) and art of the cutscenes is fantastic. The shooting action is excellent too.

I noticed it starts by default in fullscreen now. I wonder if it's not better to default in windowed mode? It makes the art look better. Or use some kind of filtering option to scale the graphics to make it look less pixalated.

[rrTea]

Thanks for checking it - I'm super happy if you like it! Maybe I managed to somewhat put my storyboarding experience to good use finally (I used to occasionally work as a storyboarder for tv ads among other things).

Ah yes, the topic of windowed mode and pixellation often pops up in #ZGameEditor (nobody likes it) - I could activate the "ShowOptionsDialog" to begin with... There are numerous reasons why I did it in this particular way (some are subjective, but others are more objective - like keeping the framerate stable for example)... but it doesn't look convincing to anybody I will make a HD project next time so this won't be an issue.

[VilleK]

Ah yes, the topic of windowed mode and pixellation often pops up in #ZGameEditor

To me, it seem that if you run the game full screen on a big monitor (20" or higher) then the cutscene graphics does not do themselves justice, because the pixels become so large that it is hard to appreciate the image. I would include the option dialog and recommend players to try windowed mode first.

[rrTea]

So to mark the 2nd year of the project (I don't count the "tech demo" that this was based on), I set up a small public page presenting what has been done so far! This is just for test really / to see if anybody has any comments or something etc.
https://www.behance.net/gallery/62755391/hu-di

The videos are a bit too blurry / compressed - I just used Behance's default embedding. I should have cropped the window border, but aside from these obvious problems it's pretty representative of what it should look like as far as content goes.

Any comments? Whatever really, whether it's about length, or text... Obviously I already see tons of mistakes but there surely are quite a few I'm completely oblivious to (might as well be something like "The thing is totally boring / confusing / irritating").

[VilleK]

Nice.

The info text is good.

Do you intend to market it by its Chinese name or will you call it "Butterfly"?

The caption text under the videos do not center below the video if I maximize the window in Firefox.

The videos do seem far too heavily compressed.

It could use some wow-factor but I'm not good at these things myself .

[rrTea]

Thanks for taking a look I'll keep the Chinese name for now, not sure about any "marketing" (unless "uploading it somewhere without even a proper trailer" counts) Is it a bit bizarre / off putting?

I fixed the captions one more time, but they just get reset. Yes the compression of the videos is too heavy. Some of the recordings didn't even want to upload, seems Adobe doesn't support videos as well as I'd like right now (or maybe it's because they recently redesigned the whole Behance editor so there are a few unbaked parts here and there).

I tried uploading the video to YouTube too, but it's even worse - maybe the size of the original video (512*288, which is the game running in 2X size window actually) triggers harsh treatment. For example it's really hard to see the flock of birds in the background here: https://youtu.be/rOSy9ZO8dFs?t=7m26s

I understand about the problem of overall impression, will try to bring out those elements a bit more for the next version of the site!

[VilleK]

I think it is cool with a Chinese name but it makes it a bit harder to find with google for non-Chinese users. Well, any webpage etc counts as "marketing" in my book, maybe I've worked in commercial industries too many years

Indeed it might be the low resolutions that cause the poor compressions, and it would look better if you recorded it at 4x or 8x resolution. Worth a try I think.

[rrTea]

I added a subtitle "Inner99" so it's easier to enter using ASCII. Next time I'll try to record it in higher resolution - I suspect my machine won't be able to keep the FPS up but I'll try. In the mean time I'll be uploading videos to "Streamable" since it handles low resolutions extremely well.

New build
Since the last time I added / fixed etc many things. For example, now the bullets reflect the attack power numbers (they get bigger as the ATT power is increased), the enemy bullets rotate while travelling etc.

There are other minor additions / changes elsewhere too, but the biggest is the implementation of Guardians at the end of each room. As is, each guardian is not too tough but they can get very tricky when combined. A long time ago Kjell played an old (and really frustrating - sorry!) version of those but now they're hopefully not irritating anymore.

So let's see some of these! Here is what one of them looks like:

https://streamable.com/2xk4o
Not sure how obvious it is in the video (should have played it a bit differently, like somebody who plays it for the first time), but this one requires a bit of planning (just shooting at him isn't very efficient, so you have to extract some powerups from his bullets first) and it shoots more and more as his body parts get deleted (the atmosphere really gets thicker and thicker as the stage progresses, which you can't see in video because all the bullets are harvested too fast).

I'm also setting up internet pages for the project, will post those in a future update (should have been done a month ago...). Meanwhile why don't you try the newest build

[VilleK]

Very nice guardian video . I like the inner99 name too.

It makes me glad to see someone has the perseverance to build something this cool using ZGE.

Thanks for the update.

[rrTea]

...and just for fun here are some WiP videos of various things I implemented at some points but are not in the current build for one reason or another.

I liked how in Gamecube version of Super Smash menus react to the yellow controller, so I implemented something similar (but much, much simpler) on the title screen, nothing special but fun. Here is what it looked like:
https://archive.org/details/SnapshotUpd ... Effect.avi

This one is my favorite If you have time to take a look at only one of these this is the one to open! Evil doggie is oppressively following the player with his gaze... but I didn't implement his ears correctly so his head looks quite rectangular. Also the rendering of explosions and other things doesn't work properly but it was just a sketch so try to imagine it all works
https://archive.org/details/SnapshotUpd ... Doggie.avi
https://streamable.com/i05p7 (same video, for those who prefer Streamable to Archive)
...but the way the project's set up I'd have to change too many things if I wanted to implement this properly.

At one other point the whole background was following the player. Maybe I should reimplement this:
https://archive.org/details/SnapshotUpd ... 01_19_.avi

The "noise" tiles were supposed to release some "pollution" when destroyed, this was the first very rough sketch:
https://archive.org/details/SnapshotUpd ... utTest.avi

[VilleK]

Real nice stuff . The doggie and the moving background in particular. It is an impressive indicator on how much time you have invested in this project when you have all this "extra material" that is currently not even in the game.

[VilleK]

Are you sure the doggie can't be used somehow? It would look great in a trailer for the game . If it messes up the camera projection maybe it can be rendered separately to a rendertarget without changing the main game camera.

[rrTea]

Don't tempt me I'd really have to rewrite the way how I render the backgrounds of each room if I wanted to implement it properly. And then of course I'd have to animate it (and give him laser eyes etc ) ... and then do it for all the other Guardian fights. The game will be one year late even as is...

btw the doggie is from this game: https://youtu.be/RBjIi7ETRNk?t=1h21m51s (I still have the assets from when the game was made)(I'm not related to the video)

[rrTea]

I finally managed to scan some sketches, might as well post them.

Just some sketches / ideas, mostly not meant to be implemented directly.

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Some characters, usually in before / after edition. It's a bit hard to see but the thing in the middle right is a failed cake! You can probably guess what happens in that part of the story. (There are more characters but I didn't scan them yet.) I'll start coloring it all next.

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