DINOMELT

#Throwback Thursday! The first month for the web version of Dinomelt’s has come and gone, with over 50.000 plays on Newgrounds! Now let’s take a look at the very first demo of Dinomelt! (January 2015).

This build of the game was made as a test in one of the chilean locations of Global Game Jam 2015, just as a way to see if I could make an animated character that could run and jump on a platormer...

The web version of Dinomelt is finally UP on Newgrounds! 

Only 10 days left until Dinomelt’s web launch!!

In the meantime, here’s another look at Fregg, the first of a few friendly creatures you’ll find in the depths of the clay-infested cavern and one that will help you along the way with a few ‘clay-improvements’ in your quest (also one of the most fun characters to draw!).

At last!, Time for a SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT... My Dinomelt web demo will finally see a release date on Newgrounds on Friday, June 2 (and other sites after that). The game has been 'complete' for some time (like 3 months!?), but testing bugs and balancing difficulty has been a priority to avoid some of the post-launch potential meltdowns (or reduce them, at least...).

Note that the version you'll be playing on NG, while not a 'DEMO' in its most common definition -it will feature the playable game from beginning to end- is still a 'compact' version of the bigger and more fleshed out game I envision it to be if development continues (something I'll be considering depending of the interest and overall response). From now on I'll be refering to this build as the 'web version' or 'Newgrounds version'.

Now this may seem like an unusual decision for a web release -I'll go into more detail on the motivations behind it in another post- but the main reason behind going through the work of making a 'beatable' build online as a short version of the story, was more related to the personal challenge of going through the whole learning process of developing a game and connecting all of its elements.

While the Web edition leaves out a good bag of potential features, I'm pretty glad with how the finished version is playing and the testers response has been coolibert.

That said, STAY TUNED!, on June 2, a condensed subterranean clay adventure will invade your browser and brain-cells!

More than once (and specially on a looong project), as one grows and develops better and more efficient ways to make things (an evolving artstyle, a cleaner way to program, new approaches to world and level design…), it becomes reaallly tempting to just go back and re-do the whole thing.

During the 2+ year development cycle of Dinomelt, this has happened more than once: The protagonist, Gwrep, had a complete sprite-re-drawing halfway through the project. Also, recently, plenty of the main background assets and platfoms got a color, line and overal polish update, so that most aspects of the game had a more consistant line. As an example, take a look at this gif from version 0.4 (late 2015!)

It was looking and working fine, but the animations on the protagonist, Grwep, weren’t the most convincing, they were stiff, and the ‘run’ was a bit off... Months later I went over its whole group of animations to make them smoother with stronger poses, and a better sense of weight (specially on the runcycle).

World III - Fruwz Assets! Going with the latest bits of background and assets design!

World II - Hworb Assets! And we have a little update on these, I’ve been redesigning plenty of assets lately to get a stronger color palette for each of the main 3 worlds, and enrich their environments.

WHERE is the game? The latest ‘release date’ was “late January”, which is kind of gone, so it may be good to stop estimates for a while. Turns out, starting February, I can announce that, after heavily focused weeks, the game at last is on a 'COMPLETELY PLAYABLE' (/beatable) state! 

The game is done in most aspects of production, the whole world map, dialogs, sound effects, credits, secondary animations, enemies, debugging, typography... even a set of working “achievements”! (prepared to work as ‘Medals’ on Newgrounds), most of those details, which compose the elusive and rarely accurate 'LAST 10%’ of work (this last stage has taken around 2-3 busy months so it may aswell be as big as a 25% of the whole work-time). (picture related)

The only aspect which is still on production phase is the music, which will take a bit longer considering the final volume of music needed for the game. While it’s reeeeally tempting to release it at last, as the music gets done it will be a good time to test and polish the latest details hoping for a good web release, looking for a good week when I’ll finally announce a real release date. In the meantime, here’s a little peek at Fruwz, one of the most heavily clay-morphed areas of the cavern.

Boss time!

This is one aspect I’ve been hoping not to give away that much before release, but being such a relevant and expected aspect the ‘Metroid-vania’ genre, it was as good time as any to show a sneak peek of the game’s boss fights.  Each world will have its own main boss fight; One big native creature heavily altered by the alien clay invasion. Now featuring Plowrp, the subterranean clay-morphed amphibian(frog)!

Sidequests!

I took a little ‘sidequest' from the development of the main path of the game to make... well, some sidequests!

After some local testing of the first areas of the game,I kept finding out that people had pretty varied expectations while exploring the game world (as expected from the “Metroid(vania)” genre), and checking the more obscure areas of the maps for hidden secrets, along with the question; Are there other survivors from the clay meteor, or just other "friendly" creatures inhabiting this cave?

So, considering I already had a (rough but functional) dialogue system for the main 'NPC' Fregg, it appeared as a fun opportunity to enrich the ambience of this twisted cavern introducing more characters you could interact with.

Time for a general update on the state of the game! 

BUT first of all, thanks to all for following and joining in this little and slowly growing gamedev-blog!... NOW...

The game will go through 3 main worlds/areas of the clay infested cavern, which are now finished on structure, each with its own enemies, hazards and a boss! which leaves the game with a 15% left which covers mostly polish and details regarding the final segments of the game.

So far, while the current Trailer announced that the browser (Newgrounds!) version of Dinomelt would be out on late 2016, (for a while it seemed like a cool thing to release it by christmas, OH WELL) I decided to postpone it to avoid rushing the last segments and have an incomplete result, specially in an unpredictable month like December. SO, as for now, the closest tentative date is by the end of January.  which seems like a good date to leave the game's development time on 2 years.

I’ll get back to blog more of the advanced elements in the upcoming weeks, details on boss, worlds and other characters! In the meantime, here’s a segment in progress of Hworb, the clay-infested volcanic area, featuring a tricky segment with one though Potato-Spit,  and also a version of Wrep’s clay-roll.