Hello to you all again, I return once more about even more progression of the Platformer, some good, some.. less than.
Starting with the bad, the main lingering bugs with enemy rotation and on-hit knockback sucks and I hate it. It doesn't seem like I'm getting the right option but the right answer should be there somewhere, eventually found, just not now it seems. So I'm still working on that.
Alongside doing that, in advance for later use in a universal sense, multiple levels or worlds, I wanted to potentially add in something to give a further sense of depth of the world and beauty. Which made me think of games like Sonic's original Genesis trilogy, specifically some of their first zones like Green Hill, Emerald Hill, or even Aquatic Ruin, all of which share 1 common thing, Waterfalls.
In each game, even 3D Blast on the right, they're depicted in different ways,
and I wanted to know how they worked to see about implementing them visually, thankfully with games like Sonic Origins, or the Genesis/MegaDrive Collection on Steam, PS4, etc. I was able to open them up, go to the respective levels, and look closely into their animations.
They each work in their own ways game to game, or even with Sonic 2's Emerald Hill and Aquatic Ruin, level to level. Different colors, sprites, or even how visible/transparent in effect they're made to look like.
This is an example for Aquatic Ruin Zone, no back water layer to see the background behind it like the trees and such, foreground sprites made in such a way to see relatively well through it when standing behind it, and adding splashing effects when it reaches the bottom to feel more real and/or visually pleasing.
Alongside how it's set up, looking at it closely I also noticed just how they actually got it animated in a clever but effective way, the water itself is made with 1 sprite, however each frame of the animation is the colors used on this sprite cycling to simulate motion.
I looked through the Genesis line of games of the series and wanted to see what I could do for the Moof project, and with a few attempts I think I made something work out.
This is my test run of a Waterfall in use in a few places.
What I did was not only add the waterfalls in, I adjusted the layers of the stages themselves to not only add ease of level editing for this level overall, but shifted items around to make the land and the waterfalls natural.
This is what not only lets Moof keep his ability to easily touch not only coins but needed stuff like the ground, but also let him walk behind the waterfalls if he's around them, ease of edit, mixed with results of looking good.
Best part, the Waterfalls don't even need any special coding, so outside of just placing them somewhere, they're already done outside of optionally touching up the sprites themselves, AND they can work in any stage I could want them to be in, so it's a universal asset.
The downside is still the bugs, I don't know what is going on with either of the "Big Two" issues, but I'm still trying to make it work SOMEHOW.
Visuals are my strongest suit in the process of game making, so it's not much of a surprise that the prop making like Waterfalls and likewise feel a lot easier to do, but I still want to be able to hopefully hold my own when it comes to technical stuff like this.. though the results I guess will come in due time there.
So for now, that'll be all from me for today.
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