Heather The Beheader

[PewkoGames]

The latest WIP from PewKo.

Heather The Beheader by generalgruntin

Need an execution? Axe Heather!

generalgruntin.itch.io

Let me know what you think!

Here's a demo video.

And some art:

 

[cramske]

looking cool !! Can I play it yet ?!

 

[PewkoGames]

Thanks!!! I have a FEW more things to add before I can release a demo.

First off HUGE thanks to CluckFox for helping me get something like this running.

I'm trying to figure out how to get your High scores to update as you play and displayed on the start screen like in the arcade (and certain NES games)

I know a few here have done it. Right now My "most heads" is a High score and "Head Count" is the current score. The high score only updates after you lose a life. Ideally I'd like it to update in realtime (which would only update the first time you play and if you get past the high score the next time you play) but I'm told 2 HUD assets can't update at the same time. If there is a way around that let me know!

Anyone who knows how this could be done let us know. Thanks!

 

[PewkoGames]

Big Update! The demo/Prototype/Draft is available to download! Please let us know what you think!

 

[Jonny]

I enjoyed the gameplay and the graphics are great (especially like that font!).
Found a couple of bugs and 1 thing I think could be improved...

Bugs

1. After door trigger game breaking crash when jumping.
2. After door trigger player drops through solid (same place on all levels)

Possible Tweeks... ?

The ladder mechanic feels a bit sloppy.
When player gets to the top part, the solid next to the ladder doesn't stop the player.
Feels like the player should not be able to fall though the solid at that point.

Apart from that the game play is tight. Jump difficulty seems spot on.

Out of interest are ALL your platforms 'jump thoughs'?
On the later levels they're low enough to jump though but there's not much distinction (in graphics) between what is a normal solid and what can be jumped though.

Hopefully the video below explains a bit better...
(drop though solid bug is at the very end)

View: https://youtu.be/VOuXN0pDDaQ

 

[PewkoGames]

Thank you for pointing this out! I'm not sure how to fix the crashing glitch. Any ideas as to what could be causing it? I did notice after the door is triggered the solids RIGHT under the monster barrier tiles turn to nulls. No idea why. Any help as to fixing this would be great, Also the ladder mechanics are default NESmaker code so masybe theres a way to tighten it up?

The platforms are indeed jump through as an extra clearence for jumping.

 

[Jonny]

You could try changing the jump-thru tiles to solid and giving the extra clearance by altering the players bounding box to be shorter. I know what you mean though; if player hits head on solid they just kinda stop abruptly insead of carrying on in that jump direction.

Regarding the ladder, theres a topic on the forum about that but I can't find it again sorry. It was something about snapping the player to the ladder. You could try solids ONLY at the sides of the ladder to see if that makes any difference.

Not sure about the crashing. It doesn't seem to happen until all the heads have been chopped, so whatever script you have for triggering the door I'd guess.

 

[PewkoGames]

Heather The Beheader by generalgruntin

Need an execution? Axe Heather!

generalgruntin.itch.io

UPDATE:

The bugs have been fixed with HUGE thanks to CluckFox! Including the tiles that make the player fall through.

Have a play now and let me know what you think!

 

[PewkoGames]

Plan Now:

Add a powerup that can stun all enemies on the screen for a short time like the POW block in Mario Bros

No idea how or if its even doable. any help would be great

 

[dale_coop]

really cool

 

[PewkoGames]

Thanks Dale!

Update 3:

Heather The Beheader by generalgruntin

Need an execution? Axe Heather!

generalgruntin.itch.io

temporarily removed the music since I'm not entirely happy with the music I did so far.


I added new SFX


one for the door opening and one for the secret item.

 

[Jonny]

Plan Now:

Add a powerup that can stun all enemies on the screen for a short time like the POW block in Mario Bros

No idea how or if its even doable. any help would be great

Glad you guys sorted those issues.

I'm not a very good coder but from what you're saying you might want to look at some of the pausing stuff Dale Coop and CutterCross have shared. Basically finding a way to skip object handling for the monsters only, alowing player to still move. However, I don't know if this would effect colissions or other things.

So, maybe a better solution would be to have a 'stunned' action state. When your player collides with the POW tile, that tile would run a small script which would change all the monster objects action states to the stunned state which would be timed to go back to the monsters original state after. I think there's something similar to this in the tutorials. The tile script would use the ChangeActionStep macro after checking object is the player but it would also need to ChangeTileAtCollision so the player couldn't just keep activating it over and over.

If you look in Scripts/Defined Scripts you can find the arguments those macros use. This could be a good simple'ish project to start getting in to asm and using macros if you haven't already started getting into that stuff.

 

[PewkoGames]

Glad you guys sorted those issues.

I'm not a very good coder but from what you're saying you might want to look at some of the pausing stuff Dale Coop and CutterCross have shared. Basically finding a way to skip object handling for the monsters only, alowing player to still move. However, I don't know if this would effect colissions or other things.

So, maybe a better solution would be to have a 'stunned' action state. When your player collides with the POW tile, that tile would run a small script which would change all the monster objects action states to the stunned state which would be timed to go back to the monsters original state after. I think there's something similar to this in the tutorials. The tile script would use the ChangeActionStep macro after checking object is the player but it would also need to ChangeTileAtCollision so the player couldn't just keep activating it over and over.

If you look in Scripts/Defined Scripts you can find the arguments those macros use. This could be a good simple'ish project to start getting in to asm and using macros if you haven't already started getting into that stuff.

Would it HAVE to be a tile or could I use a gameobject for the power up?

 

[CluckFox]

Would it HAVE to be a tile or could I use a gameobject for the power up?

I think it could be either, especially if you use the "stunned" action state technique. Since you're counting the number of prize tiles collected in order to advance play, it might be simpler to use a game object pickup.

 

[Razzie.P]

Plan Now:

Add a powerup that can stun all enemies on the screen for a short time like the POW block in Mario Bros

No idea how or if its even doable. any help would be great

It was doable on Mario Bros on NES, so should be doable here. Check out the Advanced Maze Tutorial at about 24 mins or so. Pretty sure the "make monsters spin" info could be used to do what you're wanting.

 

[Jonny]

It was doable on Mario Bros on NES, so should be doable here. Check out the Advanced Maze Tutorial at about 24 mins or so. Pretty sure the "make monsters spin" info could be used to do what you're wanting.

I think this is the tutorial I was thinking of. Maybe something in the adventure tutorials too.