#starlight studios

Can you handle the power?  Watch COINS, starring Ciara Hanna, right here: http://bit.ly/2QaswRA

Late in the Fall season, we're back with an update! We've had 3 internal alpha builds since the last, and were spinning our wheels on stages without much progress for a short while. However, progress has picked-up with a focus on process and mechanics.

Through the development of our latest alpha builds, the remaining details for the LXU Armor are complete with the all the palette changes for weapons, new teleport and death animations, and capsule upgrade cutscenes. And several issues were resolved that caused overlay and transparency issues with the sprites.

Lightning Bit palette of the LXU Armor

LXU Buster Upgrade animation

In the most recent alpha, we took a hard look at enemy behaviours and boss moves and rewrote some really troublesome ones. Chrysalis has always been a solid boss, but one of her attacks was in need of improvements to really shine. On the other side of the spectrum, Sombra's been sitting sadly broken for quite some time, so we're rewriting his broken attacks and making him more powerful to boot.

Sombra’s Crystal Shards attack in-progress.

One of the more crucial things lately has been polishing the core mechanics around dashing, wall-jumping, buster shots, and Lyra's controls. An example of one of these is the dashing hit-box, which was previously fixed to Lyra's full height. It's now shorter when dashing, allowing Lyra to deftly dash under projectiles. To be satisfied in making enemies interact with Lyra in fun ways, the enemy encounters we're designing have to be well-tuned to those mechanical specifics, so we have to get them just right. We also have to fine-tune the mechanics around movement, like how slopes and the slippery ice work in our snowy crystal stage.

Tileset floor perspective tile examples

In-progress for the stages are some test tilesets which we've begun painting into our Lake stage overtop the associated art sketches that outline the detailed elements. There's nothing else that makes a stage feel alive than adding the art, so even the roughest tiles can start to make the stage seem lively. For the next steps to give the stage some depth, we'll be adding more tiles and some background layers behind them.

I wanna talk about this pendant I commissioned from Starlight Studios, because it is SUPER pretty. Like unbelievably nice. The whole thing is a solid resin piece, with a very neat paint job for the details. The gem in the center is clear with a cool glitter effect that gives it a ton of depth.

It’s too big to be worn casually, which is it’s only downside, but it photographs really well.

We’re long overdue for another update, and while they’ve been lacking, our work has been continuing through into the start of the hot summer. Since the last update, we’ve been working steadily at revising some of our stages and improving the general game design mechanics.

 Most recently, much of this work has been done, in part, by our newest game design team member, puphop. He’s been going over the Everfree stage, and his keen eye for game mechanics helps us address some of the finer points of getting them right. We’re glad to have welcomed him onto our team and expect some great work from him!

 There have also been two new internal alpha versions completed and more work queued up. The recent changes have featured several enemy changes and additions, boss difficulty balancing, wall-jumping mechanics improvements, and various other fixes. Through these updates and what’s upcoming, we also have several LXU changes.

 The LXU armor hit a snag or two as had several more animations and details that came up as needed as we used it in testing. As of last update, we had all the base pieces in place. Since then we’ve added animations for them Lyra receives them from the upgrade capsules. We’ve got more to do with the palette mappings and implementing teleport animation changes, along with other cutscene-related sprite-work.

 Back onto the work for stages, besides the Everfree stage there are two other stages simultaneously in the works: a familiar Snowy Crystal stage and, what we plan to be the most difficult stage, the Canterlot stage. The former, although previously started and shown, has been left unfinished and neglected, while the latter is entirely new.

 Morale-wise, we’ve had some slowdown in the artwork side of things with some of our spriters being on a long hiatus and some personal issues and illnesses that have preoccupied folks for a good while. But we continue to work week-after-week on the game design in order to keep things moving on the many tasks ahead.

Lyra in her LX suit is pretty tough, but she doesn’t start the game with it. As in the video above, the game starts out with Lyra outfitted in a more rudimentary outfit called the proto-suit.

In this way, the game starts out with just the basics. Jumping, shooting, and good old lime pellets. The video below shows later just before Lyra finally gets the LX suit she needs, and that’s when she runs into a hologram that reconnects her to the world she know.

From our latest Alpha, we now have the full LXU suit usable in-game for our alphas, built from individual parts to be layered as they are acquired. This ultimate-upgraded power suit provides a variety of abilities, which we’ll detail and show off in upcoming posts. In the meantime, don’t forget to read over this month’s developer update, and keep blasting those robots!