After years of searching, Captain Plokey has finally traced his nemesis to a seemingly barren planet. He discovers a mysterious alien compound and must descend into the treacherous depths in search of answers... and revenge!
Captain Plokey is a retro platform shooter in the same vein as the ID/Epic/Apogee shareware games of the early nineties. The design of these games fascinates me, and I have always wanted to create one myself. I find their most intriguing aspect to be their large, complex levels and how they are built from fairly simple 16 x 16 pixel tiles.
The three games that inspired me the most to make this one were:
- Thex.der (1987)*
- Duke Nukem (1991)
- Halloween Harry (1993)
- Jess Bowers * Artwork & Design
- Assault Andy * Code & Design
- Rob Rodriguez * Music
Once this game is finished, the complete open source MFA will be made available. I just hope its worth the download.
* period purposefully included in name to avoid creating an emoticon
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I've been working on the animation for the caterpillar mech this past week. I'm having some trouble drawing the upper thighs so I'm shelving it for a few days so that I can come back to it with "fresh eyes".
Here is what the mech looks like right now:
This is what the caterpillar looks like before the "metamorphosis":
Final Note: Who can name the game which "influenced" my design? Hint: Big red ball.
There's been some good progress on Captain Plokey lately. In no particular order, the progress is:
1. Controller Support - I don't know about you guys, but I love playing shooters with a game controller (especially with rumble). I can't tell you how satisfying it is to shoot the machine gun and feel the rumble of the controller in your hands!
2. Weapon Attack Animation - I've been working on the animation for two of the weapons: Plasma Rifle and Machine Gun. Both are nearly complete and I think they "feel" right. The Plasma Rifle recoils straight back while the Machine Gun has an upward kick. The animations for the Laser and Plokinator will probably be completed after some of the levels.
3. Level Design - I've started working on the design for level 2 (which, btw, does not mean that level 1 is complete). The first level takes place on the alien planet surface. I had some artwork for that level completed a LOOOOONG time ago (2004) but haven't done much with it lately. The first screenshot shows the current Captain Plokey sprite with that older tileset. The level 1 tileset will need to be changed a bit to meet the needs of the story but I think it does a good job of showing what I'm shooting for.
4. No More Colors - I've gone grey! Literally. I've been working on the level design and found I was spending too much time working with the palette and nitpicking the colors. So, I've removed the colors (at least for the time being) and have made the backgrounds all shades of grey. Once I get a better feel for the level designs, I'll add the colors back and ramp up the graphic detail. The last two screenshots show the grey backgrounds with a low level of detail.
We've made a little bit of progress on the HUD (Heads Up Display) for the game. It's pretty rough right now and still has a lot of "placeholder" artwork (namely the weapon artwork). But, it's getting there. It'll probably look quite different in the final game, but, I thought it might be fun to show what it looks like right now.
In this screenshot, Captain Plokey is fighting the terror-instilling robot caterpillars. "Run, fool!"
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