Public Demo, bitches.

Time for that demo I promised! 13 screens of playable demo world await, along with a completed UI, game system, and several catchable, changeable things. My first proper demo release, rather than just a tech demo with all the features crammed in one room.
There's stuff to achieve, things to do, places to see.
So play it, won't you?

Thanks for keeping up with me so far, and here's to even more.

GET THE DEMO HERE!

See if you can catalog all the Things in the demo!

Chugga chugga chugga

As of last night, the foundational engine for The Little Things is complete. This means a lot of things, but most importantly, it means the bulk of coding is finished. What remains is content production. Now don't get me wrong, there's still lots
left to do before this is a complete game, and it will be many more weeks, but the important thing is that now that I have laid this modular foundation, adding this content is as easy as drawing up a sprite and plugging in a few numbers to make a creature, or throwing down a bunch of tiles to make a map. The way everything interacts is already calculated.

So while there's still a lot more work to be done, this work will be, by and large, easy work. No more slogging through code and pulling my hair out wondering why the hell things aren't working.
Sure, drawing sprites and making maps will take time, but it doesn't ever make mo go ARGH HOW DO I DO THIS or FFFFF WHY ISN'T THIS WORKING.
So the frustrating, right-brained, mathematics-'n'-syntax part is essentially finished. What's left is largely left-brained creative "you know what would be neat" stuff. And knowing this makes my exceedingly happy.

Also, I was going to release another demo, but I figure now that I've got the engine all settled and content production can begin, I might as well take the time to make some new rooms and critters and actually lay out a proper demo for once, rather than what we've had so far, which is basically test rooms crammed with all the gameplay features I could showcase in a nonsensical manner. So I figure if I take one or two days to put together something nice I can make something really worth showing. I'll post as soon as that's ready.

Hard to believe I've come this far in just one week.

UI Continued: Inventory, Guide Book, Coinpouch and Container Belt

What a day it's been.
Got a lot done today. Added in the remaining UI elements, or at least the majority of them. Here's what we're looking at:
At the top, you'll be able to toggle between either the world mini-map or the Little Thing field guide our plucky protagonist is processing and penning.

The minimap is straightforward enough, showing all rooms you've been to and all exits from those rooms, making it easy to find your way around and keep track of places you've yet to explore. The minimap display can be switched out for the field guide display at any time by simply clicking the map or the book in the cluster of key items at the bottom center of the screen.

The Field Guide has two sections: on the right, the checklist, a grid of icons representing all the Things you've already caught. Click on one to jump to its page. On the left, the book lists important information about that particular Thing, including picture, name, where to find more, what it eats, if you'll need any special equipment to catch one, what containers it can be safely placed into, and finally a brief description of the critter and information on how to encourage a metamorphosis. When you catch one, all this information is automatically filled in by the protagonist, except for metamorphosis info, which is only unlocked when you successfully provoke the change. However, it is possible to fill in information in the guide without having caught the creature: books, gossip, common knowledge, and even at-a-cost info can dole out vital stats on uncaught creatures, including useful stuff like where to find one and what you'll need to catch it. Sometimes you might even get tips on how to make the creatures change as well.

The Inventory is simple enough: common, non-container items you collect will show up here. This includes food you can feed to your captured Little Things, tools, traps, pebbles, consumables, and so on. The quantity carried will be listed with it. Right-click any inventory item for a list of actions you can take -- generally examining, using, equipping, selling, or giving the item to a creature. Actions you can take on an item appear as icons in a dynamic radial menu, whose function is displayed when you mouse over them. Item names are also displayed on mouseover. This way, the inventory remains compact and orderly, without denying any necessary functions to the player.
Besides the radial menu, there are a number of neat features to the inventory. For example, each item has a designated space. If you've never found that item, the space will be blank. If you are carrying the item, it will be displayed in its space. If you had the item at one point but ran out and are no longer carrying any, the space will retain a silhouette of the item, and will still tell you its name when you mouse over it.

The Coinpouch simply displays the number of coins you are carrying in various denominations. You start out with gold coins, and the other lists will appear when you collect your first coin of that type.
Certain societies may only accept one type of coin, and some coins may have special, specific functions. Generally though, gold is the most common form of currency.

The Container Belt displays all your carried Little Thing Containers. The number of containers you can carry at one time is increased as the game progresses.
Containers are what you need to catch and store Little Things. Catching one with no free container is pointless -- you can't keep it! Containers come in 12 major types and are divided into 4 categories. You can find containers but generally they are purchased at merchants. Different merchants will sell not only different kinds of containers, but different colors! You may find one merchant selling blueglass and one selling greenglass. The difference is mostly an aesthetic one, whichever you prefer to keep your specific Things in. Things also come in slight color variations, with occasional rarities marking wildly different hues. It all depends on the type of creature, but no two are exactly alike!
When carrying an occupied container, you can give items to the occupying creature, switch the creature out into another container, set it free, examine it closely, or do a number of other things. But because space is limited, any Little Things you don't immediately need should be brought back home to your Collector's Hut and dropped off in storage, freeing up room to carry new, empty containers into the field.
Things can be sold and sometimes people will request a specific Thing in exchange for some kind of reward, so remember that there's no harm in catching multiples of the same species. A collector has to afford new gear somehow!

I feel like I've got a lot done yesterday. Many things mentioned above are still in the planning stages, but the bulk of the UI has been finished, and the task now is to work on integrating it all directly into the main gameplay. I'd say this is coming along quite nicely.

The new demo is HERE as before.
Note that the controls have changed. Hit F1 for a full list of commands.
You may want to notice in particular that the field guide and minimap can be swapped out with the digits 1 and 2.

The Little Things

After going over a lot of the code from Herodom, I realized just how much I'd have to totally rehaul, and eventually it occurred to me I was probably better off starting from scratch. It's an old project I started a long time ago and my grasp of coding was flimsy at best, and as a result the code is clunky, hard to work with, and completely ineffectual. This got me pretty down for a while, but I've worked out a way to get myself back into the groove, in terms of both technical workings and motivation: A small game which is simple, fun to create, will eventually serve as a springboard back into my other games, and will help me learn numerous things along the way so I don't make the same mistakes again.

Thus was born The Little Things.
The Little Things is a puzzle-platformer with a focus on exploration and collection. There aren't very many places you can die and the generally twitch controls are downplayed. The point of the game is to explore your world both above and below ground and collect the titular Little Things -- small living beings that can survive in tiny glass flasks and cages, which range from small insects and tiny creatures to worldly spirits and magical wisps. As a Lomite Collector, your primary task is to explore the fantastic world and collect these tiny things in their natural and unnatural environments, but along this path you'll also find yourself selling and trading them to interested buyers for specific equipment and tools, visiting strange people and places, and encouraging metamorphosis of your Little Things through animistic and alchemical means.
In short, it's Knytt meets Pokémon, without the combat.

You can play the demo (which is little more at this point than a proof of concept) HERE.
Controls are simple: Arrow keys move, look up, climb, drop through platforms, and crouch. CTRL jumps.
Nothing much to do in the demo, but as I said it's just a proof of concept.
I've spent about 6 hours on this so far.

Dominance

This isn't actually going to be a real project like the others. Rather, it's just a concept I sketched on the spot when asked for "a game concept proposal in five minutes". Later I drew the above mock-up. So again, this won't actually be made, it's just an idea I had some fun with.

"In a pre-medieval fantasy setting, you play as a Tribal Spirit who has been given physical form by his worshippers. Your task is to wipe out the major tribes of the small, bizarre world and assert your dominance by eliminating their guardian spirits and ascending from simple spirit to true Godhood.

The game revolves around the village as a central hub, and a large altar which, over the course of the game, will display trophies taken Predator-style from your demigod victims. Between missions, you can perform a select few side tasks to provide for your tribe, which result in small side bonuses. For example, you could hunt to provide more food for your followers or help in their construction. The bottom line is still the missions, however, so all upgrades will affect this in one way or another (higher max HP, greater speed, new attacks and powers, etc).

The missions, each one designed to take out a specific spirit, are unlocked in tiers, and each target within a tier can be fought in any order. Most levels involve you rampaging through a mostly-helpless village and tearing the shit out of things until you finally invoke the full wrath and manifestation of the tribal guardian, and then it's a big boss fight.
Aesthetic is somewhere between Knytt and Shadow of the Colossus, involving bizarre and stylized locales and wildly-varying tribal guardians."

I'd propose it as something like a melee-combat sidescroller. You fight tiers of bosses, unlock new powers and abilities as well as basic stat increases. Each level is a "FUCK SHIT UP" exercise in pure mayhem that ends with a bizarre and atmospheric boss fight. Side missions would basically just be levels with a slightly different goal and no endboss. Gameplay is simple but fast-paced and full of things getting torn up and broken to bits. Boss fights key.

In the end, I envision sort of a... a close-combat Megaman with the setting variety of Knytt and the boss variety of Shadow of the Colossus.

Doing this mockup gave me some insight to the game's actual interface: First of all, the tribal spirits should be smaller in relation to the game screen, or there's not much room for the player to maneuver. They're drawn large here for detail, but in reality the game should zoom out more to allow better versatility, or the player's commands will be limited to "walk, stomp". Obviously this will leave little detail to the people, but since you're a ravaging spirit, they won't matter much to you anyway, especially once you've got some serious powers to deal with them.

Every village could have tribal elders, too, and shaman, who will eventually summon, empower, and otherwise aid the rival spirit.
Lastly, perhaps if you build up a militia you could bring some warriors with you, but they'd be almost useless against the enemy guardian.
It would be little more than a bunch of guys charging left to right and attacking everything they see. Two little pixelly warriors slashing at each other as a massive tribal god rampages violently through their city.