Petal to the Metal Demo (Legacy ver)
Comment Dev archive
When I started logging the production of this game, I initially had no idea how to navigate the site, so I would just post Dev logs in the comments section. Now that I actually know how to work around the site, the comments look very out of place, so I've decided to delete all of them.. for historical purposes (or whatever you call it) I'm putting a direct copy and paste of them in this post.
i found the development log. not gonna use the comments anymore! but since i've been updating here, i should correct some things from the last post. first of all there are no pink orbs. the blue orbs do all the magic.
the music I talked about, while I'm still using it, won't be in this demo. (wrote an entirely new song for the stage that I thought fit better)
The V-Shock power up will not be in the demo.
lastly the swimming mechanic has been completely changed. Lilly can now walk under water. when she's under water, an "O2" meter will appear. if it runs out she will drown. Also swimming uses stamina. The stamina gauge won't regenerate when swimming.
another update:
Ok so I don't know if this website has some kind of forum or whatever specifically for this kind of stuff, but if it does then whatever. until I care enough to find out, I'm just going to keep posting in the comments section.
since the last post I've made several other changes. First of all I added a new power up. This power up is what I'm calling the V-shock. It stands for "vertical shock". Basically, it's a powerful beam of light that reaches from the top to the bottom of the screen. this means it has amazing vertical range, however its horizontal range is almost nonexistent and would only be effective if the enemy were standing right in front of you. The initial V shock will take about half of your power meter. afterwards you can hold the button down to make it last a little longer until the power meter is drained. The V shock has the ability to phase through walls so it should be very useful for taking out enemies who may be somewhere above that you want to get to, but don't feel like dealing with the enemy. it might also be useful for obtaining items in hard to reach places.
Next I've added a new type of block. I don't really have a name for it so I'm just gonna call it Power Block. the Power Blocks will contain several goodies that you can obtain when they are attacked. Think of the ? blocks from Super Mario or the boxes from Crash Bandicoot. There are 2 types of power blocks. The first type contains orbs similar to the ones scattered through out the stage. However these blocks will sometimes contain a special "pink orb". the pink orbs are a bit harder to find, but they are extremely useful. I will explain their use a little later in this post.
The second block type will contain seeds. if you reveal a seed, it will blossom into a certain type of flower. collect these flowers to obtain a new power up.
now lets talk about some of the changes I've made to the a the meters. I don't know if I mentioned this last time, but at some point but I'll talk about it here now just in case.
So the original concept of the charge meter (which is the 3 pink dots above the life bar) was to refill life. As the player collected orbs the meter would increase. when the meter was full, it would increase your health a tiny bit and reset. This felt vary mundane to me and kind of over complicated the health bar which in my opinion should be straight forward, it also made things a bit too easy since orbs will probably be everywhere throughout the game, on top of other planned features I have.
So now I've stripped its relation to the life bar and replaced it with the power meter. Now the charge meter controls the speed in which the power meter recharges. the more dots you have, the faster it recharges and vice versa. if the charge meter is completely empty then the power meter will turn red and only refill about half way, this will strip your abilities quite a bit. you will only be able to shoot 2 bullets at a time, and most power ups wont work. it's not all bad though, as blue orbs can refill the power meter when you're in this condition.
So when your charge meter is empty, how are you supposed to refill it you ask? Well, remember those special "pink orbs" I mentioned earlier? That's their purpose. If you're running low on the charge meter, then try to avoid getting hurt and open power blocks until you find one.
ok so those were the main changes I wanted to talk about. the rest of this stuff should be a lot more simple.
i made a couple of new enemies. one is a floating object that slowly approaches you until it's destroyed. another one is a fish-like enemy that jumps out of the water (similar to the fish enemies from sonic the hedgehog)
I've added a few new graphical assets as well as some other neat little environmental things to interact with.
I've made a main menu and an options room (only has full screen switch at the moment)
I've made a logo for the game
added a title screen
new sound effects
Finally the music. Behind all of these things I've been working on the music for the game. I've finished the 4 songs that I plan to use in the demo. the first song is on the YouTube channel right now. but I won't be uploading the others until after the demo is released.
there are some other minor changes I'm sure i've made, but these are all the major ones I can remember.
Plisken10 months ago(edited)
UPDATE
Since the last version here are a few changes I've made:
I've finished a small fully completable stage. it's similar to the original stage, but much longer.
I got an artist to make some new tiles for the stage.
I've made a few new enemies
water now splashes when entered
made some changes to how the POWER meter works. it now refills slower. however, the amount used from shooting has been reduced so you can shoot a lot more bullets now. This should hopefully prevent overpowered spamming on special attacks
speaking of special attacks, I've added power ups as well. The only one I currently have programmed is an arc throw for explosives. but I have several other power ups I want to add to the game. things like flame bullets, reflect barriers, etc...
several bug fixes
I don't think I'll be updating this again until the game is a lot more fleshed out. I may upload some videos of my progress on youtube though is anyone wants to see it.
Plisken11 months ago(edited)
This update includes quite a few new things. first of all, I now have several meters displayed on the top left of the screen. There's the "LIFE" meter, which should be obvious as to what it is, then there's the "POWER" meter which is the thin meter right below the LIFE meter. This meter will control your means of attacking. when you shoot bullets or perform other special moves, it will go down a certain amount until it reaches. 0. when it's not full it will automatically gain power as long as you're not using it. I have plans to have a few upgrades in this game, both of these will be part of that.
Next there's the CHARGE meter. this is the 3 dots above the LIFE meter. when you collect gems, it will increase this meter by 1. when it reaches 3, you gain 1 health point.
finally there's the charge shot. the charge shot can only be shot if your POWER meter stays full for a certain amount of time. when the charge shot is ready, you'll see a flash next to the POWER meter. The charge shot is extremely powerful compared to regular bullets. It can rip through several enemies and objects all at once, and is twice as big as a regular bullet.
other smaller changes:
added a transition animation for crawling
added glass blocks that can be broken if shot
added some backgrounds and tiles (most of which arent visible because I don't want to spoil the art stuff quite yet)
several other small changes
Plisken11 months ago(edited)
Today I added a health bar and gave the gems some purpose. when you collect a gem, it increases a small meter by 1 notch. when all 3 notches are full, it increases your health by 1 point. I also added a health pack object to the game. I don't think I'll update the file yet though. since this doesn't really affect the gameplay and is just aesthetic stuff for the most part.
Added the ability to wall jump and crawl. Also made several other minor changes.
unfortunately my computer got shutoff from a random power outage, and it somehow corrupted the room I had previously made for it. So the new room is very basic, but should be good enough to test the new mechanics.
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