I was unhappy about not being able to finish Sunday Balloon Trip in the two hours I had so I am going to expand on it until it is finished. Yes, this will be a game I will actually finish making! Or not, let's not jinx it now.

Here is a screenshot of what I did over the past hour. As you can see a lot has changed with the graphics, the old house has been changed into a Balloon Research Facility for instance. What's not in there are the features I have planned like clouds, wind currents that blow you along and little things in the background that fly past you on your peaceful ballooning trip. Oh damn, I am making it more ambitious when I told myself I wouldn't.

This version features zombies that have health states and magically disappearing torsos because I haven't added the objects for those yet. That's not even half the stuff I had in my list but I really had to release something to make it look like I am actually working on it. There's a fullscreen mode in it though, which makes the game look hella 8-bit, almost like an Atari game. You'd think that was what I was aiming for, what with the stick figure characters and all.

I've been beavering away at this for the past few days which explains the week or so between updates.

If cabinets and snapman can impress us with their groundbreaking engine manipulation then I guess I will have to impress through animation.

Beholden to my combo animation concept (which looks funny as she's walking on the spot and there's nothing in the background);

The next thing I will have to do is implement it in a way that positions the player at the coordinates of the final frame of each individual sword swipe so that it won't look like it's instantaneously jumping back to where the animation started. It wouldn't be too bad for the first swipe since the sprite only steps forward a few pixels but for subsequent swipes it's going to look damn amateurish and I'd like to have an air of above-amateurish around this game. Also have to adjust the speed of the animations depending on the frames since there's a bit of that in the gif. Not forgetting fixing inputs so you won't be constantly attacking whilst you hold down the attack key, I'd like some modicum of timing in there.

I've decided to compile a list of stuff for the next release, for shits and giggles. Feel free to print it off and tape it to the side of your monitor so you can add exclamation marks next to the features that I neglect to add.

- Sexy combo animations
- Zombies that change attacks/animations based on how much of their
shit gets messed up
- Use hitboxes for attacks instead of that separate sword-trail object
- Hidden meaning that compares the relationship of the zombies and
the claustrophobic urban setting as some sort of reference to the
mental struggle of humanity and their modern day environments
- Puddles of gore that hang around due to the low amount of on-
screen dead people (so no huge swarms like in Dethbus and
Zombie Invasion: the Body Explosion).
More blood+less zombies=more violence!
- Trash and chaossss!!!!

Test release.

Use the arrers to catwalk strut around, Z to give it all some bladed wrist action and C to magically appear more zombies.

In my continued efforts to avoid working on Monster Mashers (and due to a bolt of inspiration) I am now working on what is basically Oneechanbara with a dinky visual style and more exploitive animations. I've laid down the basic groundwork here which I will obviously elaborate on further. Zombies will wander around aimlessly until they approach a 64 pixel radius to you where they will then home in. Slashing them with your sword will cut them in half when they will shortly disappear. Only a maximum of 32 zombies can hang around at once if you ignore the few that are hanging around at the start, slightly more than 32 if you leave those cats be. I intend to enlarge all the sprites but only after I have all the animations done so you'll have to bear with the titchy bird and her dead friends for the time being.

Next version will probably have more attack animations (combos!), blood, zombie dismemberment and my version of the 'tired' animation which is totally different as it involves more ass shaking and breast swaying. Achievement Unlocked: Objectivism Get!

I haven't done anything regarding the engine since the last entry, instead I've been animating a golem character. Until I pixel wolfman and vampire sprites this will be what players will control during most of the developmental stages. It's not really placeholder art, I intend to keep him in as a third character when the other two are done then I can work on a fourth character as this game will have support for four players.

All the animations aren't finished yet, I have to add two more throwing animations (and fix up the leg on the last sprite in the 'throw left and right' animation), a hurt animation, one for falling over and a victory animation. Then do everything over again thrice more.

Give the racing game the run-around and put Freestyle Box Wasteland back on the shelf, it's monster time!

Attached is a test version of the fourth idea I had that I am going to be working into an actual game, the third one was going to be a Chu Chu Rocket clone only it was going to be Cock Cock Rocker where you had to guide the rockers into the limos and turn away the screaming fans away but I only could go far as having a single rocker turn ninety degrees when hitting a wall (by, cleverly, changing the angle, which is a device that I should use in more games) as I don't think it's possible to take it further than that or at least my skill level.

See, I want to make a game that could be fun in both single and multiplayer (single player in Cock Cock Rocker would just be a puzzle mode as there is no way I would be able to do multiple AIs using such a basic Klikteam product. Maybe in Multimedia Fusion but not this) and the whole players managing a group of NPCs seemed like a good idea for fast action and laffery so I took the 'herding' mechanism of Chu Chu Rocket and changed it to something that was more direct and that evolved into what we have here. The next step will be either be making the game about herding small objects or eating the most small objects before the timer runs out.

Or maybe just giant Dracula versus giant Wolfman battling whilst small objects run away only to be crushed underfoot whilst you toss buildings and cars at each other until there's only one monster left. That's pretty rhinoceros innit.

That will be the plan for Monster Mash - Gigantic Creature Feature Throwdown.

I intend to start working on another game this week. It's looking like it will be a sequel to Freestyle Box 2007 but if I change my mind it will most likely be a two player racing game like Dashin' Desperados if anyone remembers that. And you can pretty much count on it using the neo 8-bit visual style I've adopted for all my games. I'll blog it this time since I am pretty much through disguising blog posts as regular topics.