As I'm useless and forgot to upload gifs other than on Twitter ( on
@stuckieGAMEZ my personal account ) I've been forgetting about posting what I've been up to here..
So, here's all the gifs so far, plus a new one of what I got done last night and finished quickly over lunch time.
First off, I scribbled in GIMP to make a little title mockup.
I had the idea of doing a game similar to the old Spectrum game Scuba Dive - where you tootled around some cave like systems and found treasure, avoiding the nasties, and slowly running out of air. I had thought it a bit difficult, so instead of three lives and instant death on hitting anything, I decided that your oxygen got lowered instead, so you could at least continue on. Couple of hours in GameMaker:Studio and I had this:
Some weeds, an eel, and a happy crab!
Life gets in the way as it usually does, so took me a few days before I could get back to it.. and added some things to collect:
A snappy clam!
A treasure chest, a big pearl, a bubbly thing for more oxygen, a raft, and a bugged eel floating backwards...
At this point I was relatively happy with how things were going, but not quite sure where else to diverge from the original Scuba Dive and make it more my own.. then I had the idea of using the boat - or raft in my case - as the timer. It'll drift from right to left across the top of the screen, and once it reaches the left you best be on it! I liked the idea of your treasure not counting unless it's back up on the boat as well, so I've kept that in.. but instead of losing it when you touch something, I've made it weigh you down.. so get too greedy, and you're going to have a bad time trying to get back up!
A test run of the game from starting to err.. drowning from being too greedy and caught by an eel... so close to the surface too!
So that's where I am just now.. it's somewhat playable.. there's quite a large level to swim about in ( though I need to add a few more bubblers I think - as there's only one in there just now ) with lots of things to collect. Still got audio, particles, and a proper start/end sequence to deal with.. and perhaps fix the "hurt" image as it looks a tad out of place. The swimming is rotational ( like in Scuba Dive ) and takes a bit of getting used to, but works well I think. I think a standard 8-way would make it a bit too easy anyway.
Now have the fun of whether to finish this off as best I can tonight, and do Ludum Dare this weekend, or just continue with this.. suppose I'll see how much I get done.