Told you.

See, this is the zombie - walking his way over to your face, ready for a chomp on a chump.

Today saw him getting prepped for the game properly (all in a nice sprite sheet now) and then work continuing on with the Hot Dog guy you may have sneaked a peek at on our Twitpic updates.

The thing with zombies is that we're aware they're cliched, yet a game like ours doesn't seem whole without them in it. Them's the breaks. Deal with it.

But in gameplay, he proves an interesting variation. Essentially a 'grabber', this guy will wander over (slowly) and try to grab you, then bite you. So far so normal. He also takes a hell of a beating on the way. Again pretty standard stuff.

Oh, were you waiting for me to give you some amazing insight into how our zombie is different from all the others? Well there isn't one really.

He fits the 'bruiser, gets close' mould perfectly, and you'll know exactly how to deal with him and what to worry about when you see him in the game. That's something I think is sorely underestimated these days - the value of simply seeing a screenful of game and being able to tell exactly what you're up against, and what kind of fun you're going to have dealing with it.

Cliches work for a reason, and their powers are misused too often in games.

So we have ninjas, zombies, robots, spacemen... what else is missing?

Revamp your tramp...

...or your Ninja!

Because the first two sprites I did for Knuckle Sandwich were my first two for a game EVER (the Player Character and the Ninja) they left a lot to be desired.

And that's an understatement. There's a reason you've only seen them in screenshots, and I'm grateful to Jon for being so encouraging as I fumbled my way into pixel art. Anyway, the main problem was continuity, and a consistent level of polish. the next load I did (Hotdog Man, Astronaut, Zombie et al) were way better. Still not amazing, but better - more than good enough to make people smile.

So I've spent the day re-doing the Ninja - at least to the point where his new look can be pixel-pushed all over his frames of animation - and this is how he looked before (left, being smacked in the face for being such a bad attempt) and now (right). A tiny bit better don't you think?

So the rest of the day was spent - after finally settling on the Ninja's hot new look worrying about grabbing poses, and bringing the Zombie to (after)life. Or maybe that should be drawing the zombies frames of (re)animation.

Tee hee!

Either way he'll be the next bad guy in the game. We've actually got a lot to talk about now that we haven't yet - especially regarding the awesome front end we're getting in. If you've played Run Away, you'll know roughly what to expect.

Come back tomorrow for the last update of the week!

Daily update 2 of 2, as promised.

So second update then!

A sneak peek at the nearly finished (the font is going to change) Title Screen.

Bask in the dithered glory of the gradient sunset :)

Update 1 of 2 - to make it up to ya'll!

So we failed to update yesterday, and as penance we're going to do two today.

First up, here's the image we're talking about:

So what we've got here is the first implementation of the between-wave transition panel, which simply announce to the player what wave they're about to fight, and a rough guide to hard the game thinks it'll be is hinted at through the background graphic - cunning, no?

We're also planning to have the player repeat the waves but against tougher enemies, until they get too hungry to continue (or until they die with a MASSIVE score). That's where the 'round' comes in. How many rounds of waves of fiendish enemies can you survive?

The big thing with this is making it polished enough that it looks nice, but without interrupting the play flow too much. We've got the transition taking up about 5 seconds at the moment, with a bit of bounce and sound effects to come. The panel flies on from a random direction, shows the player what they need to know, then flies off again, all without interrupting the feeling of playing the game - levels without loading screens. Neato!

Come back later today for another update! Because we feel bad! :)

Daily update... lite

In this world of dieting fads and that sort of malarkey, we bring you a 'lite' update.

We've been working all day, the two of us in the conservatory. It has been hot, thirsty work but we got shit done. That shit being the following:

Emailed upwards of 40 people. Crazy. Catching up after Develop, following up on various opportunities, applying Knuckle Sandwich for the Indie Arcade competition, and other things that are admittedly less interesting or relevant to the project.

Jon also demanded we sit down and do some real work - I agreed, he has a point - so we've planned out (and he has been implementing) a nice inter-wave system of prompts, rewards and whoosh-y transitions to compel you to beat your way further through the hordes of bad guys... or if you should fail it might offer you some kind words and encourage you to get back into the fight. For now it functions with my hastily prepared placeholder art, which shall be made all cool and shiny tomorrow, or later this evening.

We might pop a photo up later too, maybe not of the game, but of our working environment for those who are curious...

All the best, and see you all tomorrow for another exciting installment!