Post by Bartek Szczeciński in Rifter comments

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Disclaimer: Even though there is only a Windows and Mac version available, I played it on Linux trough Wine and it worked perfectly :D

I absolutely love the main gameplay mechanic. Nothing changed there.

During the last levels of Region 2 the whole gameplay started to be a bit repetitive. But then enemies were introduced :D There is nothing as satisfying as a triple kill without touching the ground.
In further sections the challenge was enough to keep me playing :)

There is just one problem. After beating the boss (dashing trough his head) the main character just runs to the right and blocks on the nearest rock. Input doesn't work. It looks like there is a bug somewhere :)

I have a few technical questions though:

How did you make the trail behind the main hero. Is it a particle effect?
I love the "shaking font" effect at the end of the level (The letter indicating achieved rank) Is it a custom shader effect using fonts? :O
What software are you using to design levels? I'm asking because I couldn't find a decent LibGDX editor myself.
And what's the name of that sleek font, which is used everywhere? Is it a free one?

I really can't wait for the full release. I'm probably gonna be the first one to buy it :D
Damn, I played the demo for 1.5 hours and I'm still hungry for more :D. That sums it up I believe :)

IMake-Games7 years ago(+1)

Alright! A big thanks for playing (again). :)

Good job on defeating the giant, I don't think that's easy! And that at the end is indeed a bug. But that was basically the end of the demo anyway, so you could say you beat it. :D

As to your technical questions:

The trail behind the player character (and enemy projectiles and other stuff) is a dynamic triangle mesh that is constantly updated. I use a VBO and write to its float buffer on each render, updating position and color of each vertex. It's probably not the most efficient technique, but it works. :) I can share my (very crude) code if you're interested.
Yes, that's a fragment shader effect that separates the color channels into red, green and blue and shifts them a bit based on some randomness and time. It also shifts every second pixel line to get that scanline effect. I use these effects very often in the game, for example when you get hit or things explode. Heck, the whole screen gets shifted more the faster you get :D
I wrote my own level editor (which I already initially developed for my last game "Nubs Adventure" and upgraded for Rifter). I've already developed a few platformers and realized that it is crucial to have a quick iteration workflow between play-testing the game and changing stuff within the level as well as building it. That's why the level editor is right in the game, just hidden away with a config flag. If you're interested in the level file format, its plain text JSON files you can find in the game folder/archive (assets/maps/). The editor just parses these files, modifies them and writes them back to disk (I cache them in-game though).
I'm using a few, some of which I bought. I think the one you mean is this one: http://signalnoise.bigcartel.com/product/neo-noire...

I'm happy to answer further question if you have any! :)

Bartek Szczeciński7 years ago

I never thought about using a mesh for the trail effect. Thanks for inspiration! :)
Is there any chance to share the source code of this shader? It's probably trivial for you, but I don't have much experience with OpenGL programming and that would be a great resource to learn from (surely not only for me) :D
Does that mean that there will be a usable level editor in the final release? Would be great to see levels made by community :)
This font is absolutely AMAZING :D Also after looking through the game files I found a font called Orbitron. A quick search told me that it has a free license. I will surely use that one in my games then. Thanks :)

IMake-Games7 years ago (1 edit) (+1)

Here's the shader for the glitched font:

Vertex shader: https://gist.github.com/maximi...

Fragment shader: https://gist.github.com/maximi...

Its not particularly optimized (I should replace the "if" in the fragment shader) or documented but you probably get the gist. :)

Not sure about the level editor. It would take a lot of time to polish it to a state where its usable by anybody but me :D I have basically no GUI and rely almost solely on keyboard shortcuts. Not exactly intuitive ;)

itch.io

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