Hey look! It’s just like I promised last time. Tons of tiny improvements and fixes! (and a new enemy type, and some new environment art stuff)

Environment art stuff

Considering the environment, the style of it wasn’t quite where I wanted it to be. I tried taking it in a more cleaner, geometric / minimalist look, but that didn’t work out. I also tried to make the loot and enemies pop out more by making the floor darker, but that just didn’t work out either. Now I’m testing out a more gritty, dirtier look for the environment, and I think it’s working out a lot better. The goal is to make the loot look clean, modern and inviting, while making the everything else look uninviting, old and rundown.

Here’s a couple pictures of the style I was experimenting with:

The style I’m going to go with is going to be similar to the current one, but with more detailed floors and backgrounds. The goal is to make the environment look more like a drawing or a black and white watercolor painting.

Here’s the current progress:

It’s still in its early stages, so it doesn’t look that different yet, but it will improve during the following weeks.

New enemy

It’s a really simple little enemy that just charges at the player and can be destroyed with just one hit. It doesn’t offer as large of a challenge as the other enemy types, but can still hit the player if they aren’t paying attention.

Small changes

Here’s the change log of most of the smaller changes that were made during the last couple weeks:

PolyMap / Map editor:

Fixed PolyMap item loading and saving.

Fixed PolyMap ShapeManager Reset method.

Replaced the PolyMap 2-state active system, with a 3-state active system.

Fixed and refactored PolyMap shape and point moving and selecting.

Fixed item editor rotation loading to UI always going to 1 instead of the actual value.

Fixed all shapes becoming active when switching from item editing mode to shape editing mode in the map editor.

Fixed PolyMap points not updating location on startup.

Fixed the editor error and warning message popups.

New layout for the shape selectors.

Updated map editor shape icons.

New map editor icons for loot container, floor spike and all enemies.

Fixed map editor room loading buttons sometimes having buttons from the previous map.

Fixed map editor item editing panel not opening.

Fixed the map editor UI.

Other smaller PolyMap improvements.

Powerups:

Added the Ice Square powerup.

Added distortion effects and the ability to spawn gameobjects on hit to the Projectile class.

Added hit distortions to all powerups that should have it.

Added impact particles and slightly adjusted the look of the spit powerups.

Misc:

Fixed enemies lunging and shooting at the player when frozen of confused.

Added the ability for enemies to spawn loot on hit, and fixed the loot grouping up bug.

Fixed enemy AI stopping when the room the enemy is in gets unloaded.

Reorganized some scripts to correct folders.

New smoke particle material.

Fixed Spear hit sounds.

Added possibility of using a Rigidbody2D to the Spinner class.

Fixed powerup discard button not working.

Updated the look of the floor spikes.

Added a slight wiggle to the snake movement.

Improved the pause screen.

Whew.

What do you mean this post is a day late? I’ve always posted these on Sundays. Please don’t fact check that.

Anyways, the topic of this post is the current progress on the art overhaul / refresh.

Let’s look at the progress that was made, step by step. (I posted all of these on the @lastquarterdev Twitter account, which all the cool kids follow. And since you’re cool as well, you should totally follow it.)

And here’s what the game currently looks like:

There’s still a lot to be done. The powerups, the icons for the powerups, the icons in the map editor, lava, water and all that stuff. But I think this is off to a good start.

There might not be a bi-weekly update on week 52. So the next progress update you see might be on the second week of next year. I’ll be posting (almost)daily updates to the @lastquarterdev Twitter account though.

Hi.

This is just a quick announcement that the development of Loot Snake will slow down while I work on the next Cats are Liquid game (for which you can read the plans for here).

You can get the new version here.

Yes, I know, an in-game tutorial would be a lot nicer. That’s coming in the next update. But for now, this will have to do.

This tutorial will run you through the steps that you need to take to create your very first (very basic) map.

Setup

Click the “Map Editor“ button on the title screen, and select “Create New” in the bottom right corner of the window that just popped up. After entering a name for your new amazing map, press enter, or click the arrow in the input field.

UI

Let’s go through the UI. All the important controls are on the left of the screen.

Selectors

You can use these selectors to select what types of items and shapes you want to add to the current room.

Dock

Here are all the dock icons, from left to right.

Open - Open existing rooms.

Save - Save the current room.

Clear - Clears the room of all shapes and items. Doesn’t delete any saved rooms.

Switch - Switches between shape and item mode.

Wrench - Opens the room preferences.

Plus - Adds a new shape in shape editing mode.

At the top left, you can see the name of the map, and below that you can enter a name for the current room. You can edit the map preferences by pressing the cog icon next to the map name.

Creating and manipulating shapes

Move your mouse over to the selectors, click “Floor and Walls”, and then click the plus button in the dock. This creates a new shape that has a floor and walls surrounding it. Click the shape in the editor to activate editing on it.

You can manipulate the shape by dragging the points around. Holding down control while dragging a point locks the movement of the point to a grid. You can add new points by right clicking between two points. You can delete points by shift-right clicking a point. (All shapes must have at least 3 points.)

Try making the shape you just created a square.

You can also move the entire shape. Make sure the shape is selected, and move it with your mouse, just like you would a point. Control + drag locks to grid. Pressing backspace when the shape is selected (the points are visible) deletes the shape.

Creating and editing items

Press Tab or the switch icon in the dock to toggle between the shape and item modes.

When in item mode, use the selectors to select the spawnpoint. It looks like the letter S.

Click anywhere on the map to create the spawnpoint. You can move it just like a point.

Put the spawnpoint inside the room you created. Then, while holding down the mouse button over it, press E. This opens the item editor on the left.

You can edit the settings of the spawnpoint here. You can rotate it, and set the name of it.

Let’s set the name to “spawn“.

After setting the name, click outside the spawn point name text box (to make sure that you won’t keep writing to it) and press E again to close the editor.

Some other items also have special data that you can edit:

Doors

You can set the room it should load, the name of the spawnpoint it should go in the next room. Or should the door just end the map.

The key amount slider does not work yet, as the game does not have any keys implemented yet.

Loot Chests

What loot should the chest spawn when opened and how many.

Powerups

What powerup should be given to the player when they pick it up.

Text

What text should the text box display?

All items can be rotated. You can delete an item by right clicking it.

Room preferences (optional)

To edit the preferences of the room that you can currently in, just press the wrench icon in the dock.

Here you can control the camera mode, zoom, and position lock coordinates.

For your first room, I’d suggest leaving these settings untouched.

Finishing up

Click the room name input field and enter “start“ in it.

Save the room by clicking the save button in the dock.

All maps that you make should have a starting room and a starting spawnpoint set in the map preferences. Otherwise it fails to load. Let’s set those.

Click the cog icon next to the map name.

Put “start“ in the “Starting room name“ field, and “spawn” in the “Starting spawnpoint name” field.

Press X on the top right corner to close the preference editor, and save the room again using the save button in the dock.

Playing your new map

Close the map editor by clicking the X in the top right corner, and then close the Select map view. Click Start Game and choose the map you just created.

If you followed the instructions correctly, the game should load the map you just created.

This is the unnecessarily long map making tutorial for the new PolyMap map system introduced in the pre-alpha 0.2.0 version of Loot Snake. Don’t worry, I’ll make a in-editor tutorial for it “soon” (read: in the distant future). For now, this will have to do.

Let’s get started!

Map structure

Maps in Loot Snake are made of rooms. The player can go between these rooms using doors. These rooms also have spawnpoints, which are used by the doors to make the player spawn at the correct position in the room they are entering.

The map should have a starting room and a starting spawnpoint set in the map preferences. Otherwise it fails to load. Don’t worry, I’ll go through that stuff in the tutorial below.

Creating a map

Click “Map Editor“ on the title screen, and then click “Create New Map“. Put your incredible idea for a map name in the text box and click the arrow next to it. Ta-da! You’ve made a map. To open it, click the map name in the map list.

Creating a room

THE BASICS

Placing and editing items.

Every room in the game should have a spawnpoint.

To make a spawnpoint, press [TAB] or click the double arrow icon in the map editor dock to switch the editor to item mode. You can check the mode the editor is in by looking at the text below the item / shape palette.

In the Other subsection of the item palette, there’s a button that looks like the letter S.

Click on it, and then click somewhere in the level.

Magical! You’ve placed a spawnpoint. Now hold down [LEFT MOUSE BUTTON] on it and press [E] at the same time. This should open up the item editor.

Here, you can edit all the different properties of the item.

What we’re interested in right now, is the text field labeled: “spawnpoint name”. Click on it, and type “start“ as the name. After that, click outside the text field to deselect it, and then press [E].

You’ve now set that spawnpoints name. Neat!

You can edit all of the items in the game this way. You can also move the items by dragging them. Holding down [CTRL] while dragging restricts the movement to a grid. Very useful if you want to space items equal distance apart.

You can remove items by right clicking them.

Oh, and you can also move around the map by holding down [MIDDLE MOUSE BUTTON] and dragging.

Placing and editing shapes.

Playing on top of the void is possible, but you might want to add a floor to the room.

Switch over to the shape editor by pressing [TAB] or clicking the double arrow icon. The editor displays the current mode right under the palette.

Now, to select the floor shape type, click the light blue / gray colored square in the palette view. When you’ve clicked it, it should appear in the “Currently selected“ section.

To place the shape, click the plus icon on the dock. This should spawn a triangle right in front of the camera.

Every shape consist of points. Editing the points of any shape is simple.

Moving the points: You can click and hold down the [LEFT MOUSE BUTTON] on the white points at the corners to move them around. Just like with the items, if you hold down [CTRL] at the same time, it locks the movement to a grid.

Adding points: To add a point, click using your [RIGHT MOUSE BUTTON] when it’s between two connected points. This adds a new point between those two points.

Removing points: To remove a point, hold down [SHIFT] and click with the [RIGHT MOUSE BUTTON] on the point you want to delete. Note that the minimum number of points you need to have on a shape is three.

Curved points: You can make a curved point by pressing [SPACEBAR] while holding down [LEFT MOUSE BUTTON] on the point you want to make curved. (Please note, that at this time two curved points can’t be next to each other.)

If you have multiple shapes in the room, you can switch between them by clicking with the [LEFT MOUSE BUTTON]. You can also drag the shapes around. You can remove shapes by right clicking them.

Saving the room.

When you’re done editing the room, you can name it by typing the desired name to the “room name“ text field and then pressing the save button in the dock. If something goes wrong, the editor will let you know. Remember to save often!

Map preferences

As I mentioned before, each map needs to have a starting room and a starting spawnpoint. So let’s set those now.

Click the cog icon next to the map name. This will open up the map preferences editor.

There’s two text boxes. “Starting room name” and “Starting spawnpoint name“. Type the name of the room you just made as into the starting room name box, and type the name of the spawnpoint you made in that room into the starting spawnpoint name box. After that’s done, click the X button in the top right corner of the map preferences window. Then click the save button to save the map.

You’re done!

That’s the basics all done and dusted! You can test out your amazing new map by clicking “Start game“ on the title screen, and then selecting the map you just made.