Galaxy Bear! Our first indie game

[DatamancerStudios]

We are working on a megaman-esque platformer coded in c++ using SFML. It's been in development for about a week, and we just wanted to show off some of the basics before we got farther in.

First Engine video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bpkvd0tET4E

Cavern Tileset Art Spotlight - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZHWBRbKEfdE

Engine Video 2(Most Recent) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyyAPlgClSE

Would love to hear feedback!

Old version screen shots!

[Tom_leonardsson]

awesome!

[k1net1k]

hey guys, that is looking pretty sweet

and a map editor ++ kudos for that

have you implemented moving platforms yet (for your elevators) ?

do you think you need any tiles/objects on that foreground layer that arent collidable ?
(eg do you think you should add another layer for things like doors/switches etc)

You should make a slightly bigger map and show the side-scrolling of the level (assuming you have that)

oh yeah and can we get a close up of galaxy bear, he looked like he has some nice animations from the view you showed.

otherwise, pretty good all around. I like watching projects as they grow.

[Light-Dark]

wow, really nice job good work dude!

[DatamancerStudios]

hey guys, that is looking pretty sweet

and a map editor ++ kudos for that

have you implemented moving platforms yet (for your elevators) ?

do you think you need any tiles/objects on that foreground layer that arent collidable ?
(eg do you think you should add another layer for things like doors/switches etc)

You should make a slightly bigger map and show the side-scrolling of the level (assuming you have that)

oh yeah and can we get a close up of galaxy bear, he looked like he has some nice animations from the view you showed.

otherwise, pretty good all around. I like watching projects as they grow.

Hey, we appreciate your interest!
I haven't implemented the moving platforms yet, but I already have them programmed in my head
So they'll probably be in the next release.

Yes we will have objects on the foreground that aren't! Spikes and ladders ( As you saw on the tileset I had in the video ) weren't in the second version of that tileset that I zoomed in for art, if you noticed.
There is going to be a 3rd layer soon, called the entity layer and it's where all enemies and stage elements go!

There is a camera system implemented into the engine, and a way to scroll in the map editor that I don't think I showed in the video. The only thing is by the time of this video I hadn't gotten around to making a custom size button in the map editor ( next release will have it! ) that way a room can be more than 1 screen big. In the engine, the screen won't scroll past x0 x y0 or mapwidth x mapheight so that's why it wouldn't scroll in the video. Bigger maps scroll automatically.

Yes, i'll show a close up of him in our next video ( we will try to go for weekly vids ), His animations are all still basic, he has a 16 frame stand ( which is the only completed one ), a 10 or so frame run animation, but only his feet animate so far,
1 frame for jump,
1 frame for fall,
and a single faceplant animation for death.

On a sidenote we have a lot of the game preplanned, and some art made for various levels and enemies.
I hope to have a moving enemy in by next release!

Thanks for the reply, anymore questions feel free to ask :D

[DatamancerStudios]

Just to keep this updated, the next video of the game will be sometime this week, and will feature a TON of new updates.
We are trying to push the game up to the point where we only have to worry about content, and not engine details, as soon as possible.
Most of the underlying code for the general systems and physics are in place, and after I add the particle system, and projectile/attacks system, I think we'll be in a really good place.
As a side note here, we use c++ and SFML is our only library, ( besides std of course! ), all code is original besides these libraries.
Check out our Youtube Channel and subscribe if you'd like to be updated when we post our next video!
Questions and support welcome :D

[ibly31]

Very impressive for just SFML and C++. Great looking interface too, I wish I had layout skills that didn't require a GUI library !

Looks highly polished and I'm excited to see further development.

[DatamancerStudios]

For the GUI I just drew Rects and Text with SFML lol. The rest is hard coded screen coordinates for mouse clicks. The main thing that I'm happy about is that the Tilesets are loaded from a textfile, so it's really easy to change for different games. Or Galaxy Bear 2 :D


Also, added images of the latest version to the first post, new video will be up sometime this week!

[short]

Looks awesome man!

[dandymcgee]

LOVE the character sprite.

[DatamancerStudios]

Thanks! There were many revisions of the main character before deciding on this one!

[DatamancerStudios]

We just made an Art Spotlight video for our cavern level! We'll have another video up shortly, but I'll add the link to this one into the first post!


EDIT: Second engine and editor video is up as well as the Art Spotlight, so check them both out! Would love to hear feedback on both!

[k1net1k]

Nice. Its good to watch the tiles being made, and your discussions are informative !

[THe Floating Brain]

Very Nice work and very fast progress

[DatamancerStudios]

Thanks guys, we will be posting the next update by mondayish probably. Hoping to get at least one more enemy into the station level and polish some of the features we showed off in the last video.