Vasari

[Release] World of Blanks

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World of Blanks is released! https://vasari.itch.io/world-of-blanks

 

 

 

 

World of Blanks is a 2D sidescrolling shooter where bullets are incapable of killing people. Shooting people makes them bounce around the room, so to progress through the level you need to physics enemies out of your way so that they don't knock you out of a window or something.

 

Currently, the player can move and shoot, the enemies will shoot back, and everyone bounces around appropriately.

 

post-34045-0-26861400-1462639633_thumb.gif

 

I'm starting to look at AI pathfinding right now. It's a complicated job that I could get stuck into for days, but I'd rather not take too long on it and get some other features implemented. I'm planning on adding multiple weapon types which push enemies in different ways, multiple enemy types which push you in different ways, and possibly a multiplayer mode where you push each other.

 

Forums user Knight is creating the audio, but we have no artist! If you want to create art for this project please let me know here or in Slack! I have no artistic ability and without help the game will always be made of coloured blocks.

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Already looking like there's basic fun baked in there just in hopping about and shooting, nice!

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Thanks!

 

Latest progress:

 

- If an enemy spots the player it moves towards them, and will ignore them if they get too far away or lose line of sight. Pathfinding looks like way too big to deal with for this project, so as long as enemies are in closed off areas they should always be able to find the player just by moving sideways.

- The player's weapons are working much better now. It's easy to add multiple weapons with different attributes, and weapon ammo and reloading are implemented. And now the player has an assault rifle!

- Did some work to make different types of platforms so that enemies can track you through some of them (but still won't try to shoot you through them).

 

I'm going to link these GIFs since they'll make this page take ages to load. Here's day 2: http://i.imgur.com/417Oc4I.gif

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Work got pretty busy and I haven't gotten as much done since the last update as I'd have liked to, but today showed some good progress!

 

The most exciting change is that stevenf has graciously come on board to create the art! We've got a player character now who aims his arm to shoot and knows how to face in two directions. Unfortunately I replaced the gun sprite with the arm sprite, so the enemies also shoot their bullets from a horrifying fleshy appendage.

 

I found out how to make physics objects bouncier, which makes the game harder to play but is also really funny. I might tweak it to make it more playable.

 

Also, there's a shotgun now.

 

 

Day3.gif

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The idea of firing scatter shot from your hand while being attacked by red boxes with human arms fills me with so much glee.

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That episode conveys the gameplay so perfectly! An idea that I had is the enemy sprite's arm is always locked to the player's direction and their body will respond to physics as if that everyone has been told to respond to impacts with John Woo like dives. Man world of blanks, so good!

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World of Blanks was one of the projects mentioned on the podcast this week, so no backing out now!

 

I got Steven's enemy sprites implemented! http://i.imgur.com/I8oBD4T.gif

 

Putting a character's arm in the right place and having them shoot at the right angle took alot more work than I thought it would, especially since I stupidly made the shooting code work differently for the player and enemies. I've also been thinking about the actual level structure of the game. Originally I talked about enemies being able to push you out of windows, but that means the player could just as easily push all the enemies out of a window. Now each section of a level is structured like an arena where you have to push all the enemies over walls so they can't reach you, then open a door to leave (If someone shoots you, you get pushed away from the door button). I'm not entirely confident about the level design so I hope that's actually fun and not tedious.

 

I've also started working on hostages that you have to rescue by shooting them to bounce them to a safe place. I'm not entirely sure where that safe place is, maybe outside each arena? I'm also not sure what the reward is for saving a hostage. Right now their reason to exist is that when they're bouncing around the room with you and six enemies, it's kind of funny.

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Man, this is definitely not something you could do now but that last gif makes me think this could be a really good 2D style Superhot.

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Hi, I know I'm a little late to the party but I'm a sound designer/composer and I'd love to help out with the audio portion of this. I heard I believe it was Nick talking about this on the podcast and it sounded really fun. Let me know if you're interested! 

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Finally satisfied with how the music came out; hoping to make another track or two before the deadline hits. Also, sound effects! Much easier to make, not really as shareable.

 

Here's the track; levels aren't final and it'll loop in-game. Once it's final final, I'll put a nicer version on SoundCloud. :)

https://soundcloud.com/zero_tekno/wob-track1

 

Excited to see it all come together!

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I've been very bad at updating this because I keep staying up too late to work on it and am too tired to post my progress.

 

The past few days I've been very thankful for assigning inputs to variables, because it's been surprisingly easy to duplicate my player object into two players and add a competitive multiplayer mode!

 

Considering how easy this was I'm tempted to engage in feature creep and make the whole game playable in co-op. And this is when I still haven't made any environment art!

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World of Blanks is released! https://vasari.itch.io/world-of-blanks

 

I have some mixed feelings on how it turned out. Obviously the biggest issue was that I underestimated how much artwork was required, because there isn't any environment art in the game! I didn't want to keep bugging Steven so close to the deadline since he was working on other games and already did so much awesome work, and I ended up not getting around to creating any art myself. I also didn't get very far beyond the initial design concept, so the gameplay isn't as interesting as it could've been. And the ending is a little abrupt (but hopefully still pretty fun, I'm proud of it).

 

On the plus side, I learned a ton about GameMaker, to the point where I actually felt somewhat competent using it! And Steven and Knight did really amazing work, their contributions are fantastic. So this was incredibly stressful but still really fun!

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I was ready for some random fun bouncing but I soon noticed that the game was actually pretty tactical/puzzly in a way that felt novel to me.
The typical action movie/game imagery on top of the silly and bouncy gameplay created a nice humorous atmosphere!

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Yes, I started off just clicking as much as possible, but especially because of the need to reload, I had to start playing more tactically like atte said. This is a really cool game!

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This is a super cool mechanic! At first I thought it was a little bit lame because I figured you could just avoid the dudes and hit the buttons, but then the fact that you have to wait around at the button makes it into a really neat puzzle shooter.

 

I'm seriously blown away by how cool the mechanics that people have put together are. Love the 'okay have fun with a machine gun' bit at the end too. :D Great work!

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Thanks! That's something I agonised over, I didn't want people to be able to avoid enemies entirely, so it became more of a puzzle shooter. If I'd had more time to work on levels I could've tried some different things with it (like a room where you have to get bounced high up by enemies to reach the exit). I'm really glad people are enjoying it though!

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I really like this game. The mechanic is really fun and interesting. The music is great, I especially liked the ending. I do feel like the jump is a bit too floaty, but I also like how everything moves pretty slowly so you can react to stuff and shoot people out of the air. Has a definite SUPERHOT feel to it. 5/6.5

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Excellent action/puzzle mechanic and the mix of music and sprites works really well to balance the feel of action vs silliness too. It's great seeing so many really solid games in this jam!

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​Great game, such an interesting mechanic. Really liked all the different weapons. Great tunes.

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Haha, wow this was super. It reminded me of that game Soldat kind of because of the floaty jumping. I enjoyed that the main mechanic was shooting, but not to kill, more to heard. Clever use of guns, and the music was great too. The ending was also great. :)

 

Also sort of felt like this:

 

nYBWJsS.gif

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