蝴蝶 / Inner99

[rrTea]

I've been working on this project for a few years and, while the main concept remained mostly the same, it slowly grew by one bitmap here, one tune there, another bitmap here until it ended up at its current 13 mb. Since this was happening incrementally over the course of mainly last two years I forgot how the project behaved in the beginning while it was still small.

Previous month I converted an old project to a 64k version and really enjoyed the return to instant compiling, saving & launching and not caring whether I'm breaking the xml viewer. So I decided to try and convert this too into a 64k. It was quite tricky to fit it all in (at least the part I attempted to convert) but in the end I managed!

Sadly all the bitmaps and music had to go, even the font ended up "adapted". But it all works and is self contained! I even managed to keep the pause menu during the confrontation and I still have 1kb left! Maybe I can cram in one more enemy

Anyway I made a new page for this here: https://q64.itch.io/gs64k (gs = guardian shooter) (I still haven't retired the old page of the main project)
Here is a video of the thing in action: https://streamable.com/wr5xa

I'm planning to try and make one more 64k project using the "arena" parts from the main game. I already tried but didn't manage (not even close), will try again

[VilleK]

It is very nice indeed when everything fits in 64kb and project build/test phase cycle is instant. It can also be nice to have a limit (such as 64kb) to work with because then the project cannot grow out of control. What do you think is the main issue when projects get larger? You mention breaking the xml viewer, do you mean it gets very slow to work with or does it actually fail to function?

[rrTea]

What do you think is the main issue when projects get larger?

In my case, the main issue isn't one big thing but many smaller issues, if I singled out any one of these it'd probably be something that one could rightly say "Is that really a problem? Come on!".

A non-disputable issue I can report is that the editor often refuses to work after longer sessions with bigger projects. It just starts showing the "Access violation" if I try to do anything, after which I found it best to simply restart (luckily Save still works in this case). But it can also happen that this one pops up, and keeps reappearing whenever anything's clicked on (anything in the Project Tree, a menu entry or anything else, so I couldn't even save).

Restart solves it. (I don't have this folder btw.) The message window uses a theme I'm actually not using.

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You mention breaking the xml viewer, do you mean it gets very slow to work with or does it actually fail to function?

The XML viewer would just start glitching out, for example if I wanted to find something it would just pop out an error if i tried to find something / Ctrl+F (same for Replace / Ctrl+H) (can't remember but either "Invalid Typecast" or "Access violation"). On other occasions it'd just slow down (probably because of all the bitmaps).

Similarly, Code Editor sometimes randomly just refuses to Find things (after CTRL+f, input string, confirm… the requester disappears and nothing happens). Not a huge deal if a ZExpression is simple, but if it's something of a few hundred lines it can get impractical.

[VilleK]

I see. I've seen some of those errors but not sure when they happen. The search dialog not finding things is very annoying and happens quite often. I should upgrade to later version of the SynEdit component that the editor uses and maybe it will help. The assert error is something else, please let me know if you find a way to reproduce it.

[rrTea]

I just tried to add more enemies but it quickly shoots over 64k. I mean it's probably doable but I don't know how yet. So here is some stuff that didn't make it in! It's mostly just sketches but I think it's pretty indicative of what I had in mind.

An angry (but ultimately good natured) penguin! The graphics are very rough (and only for one phase, the rest is just recycled) and some of the attacks don't match with the sprite (for example attack phase 3: it's moving way too much for its size) but the majority of the technical challenges were solved at this point. But even as unfinished as it is, just one phase of the penguin's animation fills up a texture of 1008*720 pixels (he is scaled down ingame, one frame is 100+pixels both wide and high). Anyway here is what it looks like in action! Check out the glistening of the ice cubes from the first attack pattern!
https://streamable.com/4n2qm

There was also a policeman! This one is mostly finished (the graphics were meant to look like a kids's scribbling). The background image doesn't fully tile with itself and some sounds are a bit off but everything else is fully functional if not balanced:
https://streamable.com/ebmqn

This one is very tricky, it took me 5 tries to record it! It has no graphics at all for the main sprite so just imagine something's there instead of a white rectangle Also some of the attack patterns are not implemented at all. This is what it looks like (the background is the same sketch used on the penguin):
https://streamable.com/3fcyj

So now I'll try to think of some other way of adding at least one more enemy, maybe I can cut out some of the special effects or something like that.

[VilleK]

Anyway I made a new page for this here: https://q64.itch.io/gs64k (gs = guardian shooter)

Very nice comic strip on that page

Also really like the alternate bosses!

[RageZ]

Hi rrTea,
Was looking through my itch.io purchases and didn't find Inner99 listed anymore
which freaked me out tbh also the links
https://nekomuragames.itch.io/inner99
https://nekomuragames.itch.io/inner99/d ... 2018-07-09
just 404 now but you know that.
Is that a itch.io thing where you delete the product page and all purchases disappear for those who bought it?
Could you have just hidden the page keeping the product purchases intact?

Do you plan to continue with the original I was looking forward to it tbh loved the art etc
have been following development here as i am normally lurking checking out the
awesome things here.
Sorry for all the questions.
RageZ (not a zombie film).

[rrTea]

I'm looking into it!…

[VilleK]

Indeed, I also hope you finish this project some day. It has been very interesting to follow!

[rrTea]

I'm planning to finish it, but it'll take forever and will look very differently. So I hid the page (wasn't that representative anymore), unaware that itchio deletes it from purchases! (My mistake!)

These changes are necessary from both technical (I set up some stuff wrongly and started breaking ZGE) and design perspective. I contacted itchio to see how to offer a refund. Sorry for the trouble

[RageZ]

Hi rrTea,

I'm planning to finish it, but it'll take forever and will look very differently.

I paid to support development no refund necessary.

So I hid the page (wasn't that representative anymore), unaware that itchio deletes it from purchases! (My mistake!)

That would be itch.io's functionality then I would expect purchases deleted if page was deleted but not if page was hidden.

Looking forward to more news on inner99 or whatever it ends up being called :0)

[rrTea]

Hi RageZ,

…Looking forward to more news on inner99 or whatever it ends up being called :0)

Thank you, too kind of you! Sorry it's taking this long. I am working on (very slowly, sadly) sorting out the technical difficulties.

[rrTea]

Lately my time is very fragmented so I am not able to work on a project like this (that requires lots of time in one piece). So I just try to get some stuff ready for an eventual future opportunity when I have a chance. This mostly means making smaller prototypes for sorting out technical problems I bumped into (some were of my own making) through various ex-64k mini project series (which I had to drop sadly because it's triggering false positives like crazy) and drawing…

So this week I filled out another sketchbook and thought I should finally scan at least some of it and post it – the majority of it is not directly useful but maybe it's interesting to see. These are all very different from the current version – if I showed some more advanced sketches then there'd be no surprise once the "real" version is revealed

Random pages, the little blotches in the bottom left were used as basis for "ships" in another project.

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Edit: I also tested some rendering styles for environments and similar, using Illustrator styles I created a long time ago. These are all vectors so I'm slightly slower at this, but it's quite practical in some aspects. I'd probably get much faster after a few pieces like this.

Vector 1 (More a test of rendering style than actual ready to use asset.)

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Vector 2 (Slightly closer to an usable environment but still just a rendering piece.)

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I also designed some actual backgrounds for in-game use, will post those some other time.

[rrTea]

I slowly started testing some stage designs in game, mostly sketches like these (some sketches are glued together, I didn't add separate frames for those):

Please try to imagine it in color :)

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For various reasons I went with strictly one note / element per sketch for now – it's probably a bit monotonous like that (the style contributes to that too I guess ), but it should give an idea (a concept artist should never do this btw!).
I also made some designs for the boss fights and even implemented some of it, but sadly it's still not working. Will try to post it in the next update! (or try to merge the last two posts into one first)

[VilleK]

Very nice. I'm so impressed with the effort you put into this.