Devlog 1 : Starting work on the full game.

Its been a while since I've updated the Devlog's and the first time posting them directly here. For a while I was doing them on facebook just as a weekly review for myself, but fell out of the habit with the crunch time needed for Slaypril Fools Day. So I figured this was not only a great place to restart them, but it made more sense to post them here first, directly to our audience. 

THE STORY SO FAR...
I started work on CLEAVER : SIDESHOW CIRCUS after completed our first game PANDAMONIUM : CORPORATE CARNAGE.  Pandamonium was a hell of game to take on when I had never done anything like that before, it was full of complex functionalities and too many sprites and characters and animations and although it taught me a lot, it was not a great game to start my game development journey on. It did, however, get me thinking about what kind of game SHOULD I have started with and that led me to come up with CLEAVER : SIDESHOW CIRCUS. 

I had been a fan of 'single screen' platformers, since my introduction to video games. Stuff like Bubble Bobble, Flicky, Joe & Mac always had a fun 'arcade' quality that drew me to those games and games like them. It wasn't hard for me to see that this approach would have been simpler for a first game. I wanted this game to be a step up from the last one, in terms of sprite design and animation, but I was also looking to improve my programming and make it more streamlined. 

After putting the demo together over 2 days, which consisted of 4 stages and the First Boss, I thought I had done just that. If nothing else the game ran smoother and I had my head wrapped around the functionality of programming it a little more and felt like I had a better idea of what I was doing and how to reduce the sheer amount of clutter that Pandamonium was rife with. In January I released the demo and then... nothing. 

Well, ok, not 'nothing', I had planned to start work on SLAYPRIL FOOLS DAY : THE VIDEO GAME in time to release the full game in April and so, for the next few months, that took up most of my time. I learned a HUGE amount of stuff during that process though and when I came back to CLEAVER : SIDESHOW CIRCUS I realised just how much I'd had to learn back then. The demo functioned fine, but so many of scripts I'd written, were just bloated and didn't need to be there and for a full game I would have to clean it up. \

NOW...
This week, after finding some motivation, I started up work again on the game. Beginning with cleaning up some of the code for the bosses and giving the first level a fresh coat of paint to match its Boss Battle with Mister Magic. 

Building the games second boss was also challenging. With SLAYPRIL FOOLS DAY I build a base boss attack that I could then just adapt for each boss and add their own unique projectiles and movements, but with CLEAVER : SIDESHOW CIRCUS I wanted each of the bosses to be more unique and have their own special attacks that relates to their design. That means building each boss attack from scratch. 

The second boss 'Brutus Bully' is now functional and working and left to do this week is continued to build out the rest of Level 2's stages, with the first one already being complete. I also created new tile sets for each Stage so that they have a distinctive feel each time. 

Next, is the plan to add some more functionality to the levels themselves, with unique obstacles as the levels go on, but more about that in another Devlog. 

The first demo is Currently available here to play. 

Until next time. 
MJ 
Signing off.