Jumpjutsu music theme!

I need to sit down and write the great experience the Global Game Jam 2016 was, but I don't have much time now, so instead I want to show you the music theme for Jumpjutsu!

There is some chance I could make some changes to it, but I must say that considering I'm not a musician I'm very satisfied with the result. I tried to transmit some sense of action and fun, obviously with a Japanese-like style.

It loops nicely at about second 6, but you will need to wait to hear that in the game ;)

Selecting a name for my game!

I had been thinking A LOT about how should I call this little ninja game, it should be a catchy name, easy to pronounce, related to the game, that transmits multiplayer fun and the kind of cartoon style the game has.

One rule I decided to follow is that it must be short, one or two syllables, if it has more then it must be rhythmic or rhyme. The basic test I'm using is thinking in me asking some friend: "wanna play some <<name>>?" or "have you ever played <<name>>>?"

So I came up with some names, and applied a poll with some friends. I asked to vote for two in favor and for two against. These are the results I got:

1. One Lap Attack [+1][-3] = -2
2. Lap 'n Attack [0][0] = 0
3. Lap and Attack [+2][-1] = 1
4. Leap a Lap [+2][-3] = -1
5. Wall Jumpers [0][-1] = -1
6. Jumpaloop [+1][-2] = -1
7. Jumpjutsu [+7][0] = 7
8. Runnup [+5][0] = 5
9. Ninja Climbers [+2][-2] = 0
10. Round Around [0][-3] = -3

Proposed by voters:

1. Leap 'n Lap
2. Leap Attack

Some people just voted negatively for "all the others" but obviously I can't count that.
Advice: if you wanna know if your game's name sucks, just go ask people, at least my friends were incredibly fast to detect those names they hated :).

I must admit I was considering "Lap 'n Attack" seriously, but I cannot ignore that it was the one everyone was totally indifferent!

So obviously Jumpjutsu and Runnup won the poll. Jumpjutsu is good because it relates easily with ninjas, and I would say the game itself is about mastering the art of jumping. I think it's easy to remember as well. Even though, I must admit some times I struggled a little to pronounce it.

Runnup is good because is short and simple, but I'm not so sure how much it reflects the game style, and also it is used by native English speakers as per my Google searches, so it may sound very generic.

So, I won't spend more time going back and forth with this, so my little ninja game from now on will be called: Jumpjutsu!

Yay! :D

Ninja Game progress: Sword up / Gravity change / Temp graphics

OK, to after a good trip through Japan I'm back full of energy to keep up with this still untitled Ninja Game :D.

I created this gif to summarize the game progress so far:

Here you can see the gravity change between corridors, it was a little tricky to achieve but I hope to don't need to touch that code again for a while ;). Also I added a new technique to avoid losing speed when moving between corridors, basically the player can raise up the katana and redirect the ninja's speed to the next corridor.

You can see as well some new graphics, I reused a background I created once in Xololitos, I'm still trying to figure out what I should put as the corridors' backgrounds, but for now this should be enough.

What's next? Well in the gif above you can see how the ninja runs practically the whole upper wall, that's not supposed to be like that, I want the player to keep jumping constantly, so I need to make the phases of the wall-run dependent of the ninja's speed... maybe it's not clear now, so I will just make it and post it once done :)


Bonus picture, check out this cool fountain we saw in Fushimi-Inari!

I'm still alive

Hey, it has been a long time since my last update. I have been working a lot in a project I can't share at this time, it is related with 3D stuff but it is not a game. I think I can write a lot of programming topics about that once I have a little time, maybe about multi-threading, network sockets, Android, or maybe about Unity shaders. In fact, I just understood I don't know anything about shaders and I need to learn lot, so I could share some things while I'm learning.

I won't have any updates for like another month because I'm traveling to Japan :D, they say traveling broadens one's mind so I hope to come back full of energy and new perspectives to continue working on my projects.

This is just a small update so you don't think I'm dead or something. Aaand... maybe it's too soon but, merry Christmas and happy new year!

Game progress: Ninja climbing and jumping

I shared this in Twitter but I forgot to put it here as well :)

I improved a little the animations since I uploaded this, and I also had some good progress in programming the missing parts.

I will share later more progress, now I need to tweak some actions to help the player don't lose much speed when moving from a corridor to the next one. I have some ideas but better to go back to work and test them!

Ninja Game progress and Twitter account

I have been working on this -still unnamed- small game, let's call it Ninja Game for now.
I created this simple minimalist red ninja in 3D, its animations, and worked on the wall-jump programming. Everything going good so far.

Now I need to program some of the most difficult (and bug prone) parts of this game. Based on the section of the level you are, the gravity will change and controllers will change with it. Let's say the gravity is going from right to left (instead of going down), the controllers must now change so the player needs to use up and down directions for wall jumping (instead of left and right). If it was not clear don't worry, I will upload a video as soon as I get it working :).

Going to other breaking news, now I have Twitter account @ForestGameDev!
I know what you are thinking, but let me clarify that I had a personal Twitter account I never used (I just didn't find it interesting). But now that I'm being a little more "social" about my games and projects, this account has a little more purpose and it's interesting to follow some other indie game developers and projects as well.

Also I'm working on some changes for this site, but there's no point in talk about that, better continue working on them and eventually you will see ;).

I will share soon a little more of Ninja Game!

New (mini) game in process

First, I'm not abandoning Ascendam, I've been programming a little of its main mechanics and I thought I will need a lot of feedback to make them feel as good as I want, so I decided to make a small game based entirely in Ascendam's wall-jump mechanic.

Besides I think it is kind of simple game I have had a though time explaining it to a couple friends, that sounds kind of a warning signal so I'll make sure my prototype is very clear about what the game is about. All what I'm going to say for now is that it will be local multiplayer game based on wall-jump mechanics.

I'm really exited about start prototyping it, I already have some code from Ascendam and I decided to use very simplistic art style... I haven't had very much time for game dev lately, however will do my best.

I drew this characters in Pixly... then I noticed I could make them directly with Unity basic objects haha, so probably I will use this only as a guide to make the 3D ones:

Pixly did something weird with the original colors (eyes should be black, and the sword doesn't change), but it's fine, it looks kind of cool anyway haha.