Insanity's Blade Green Lit! Final Release Dec 1st on Steam

procrastinator: Thanks! We've actually gone back and completely rebuilt the entire second stage. Since I had made wall jumping an addition after the first 3 stages had been built I felt it wasn't being used enough. So the second stage, which was long and kinda boring has been made into this ninja bouncing forest full of wild animals.

Fixed the store up so money works. Mostly clean up left to do before a public demo release. Removed enemy knock back when enemies are hit by the projectile weapon, only punching them knocks them back now.

Nice one! Can't wait to play! ;)

I am digging the living hell out of the art style, mate!

RandomFellow - Thanks! A mix of too many Capcom arcade games growing up and my comic book art :) It's fun to bring it all to life in it's own little world so to speak!

Looks great. Can't wait to play.

damainman Looks great! What resolution are you using (layout size, viewport size?) and what type of frame rate are you getting on different devices? I have some plans for a Wanderer's from Y's type Action/RPG/Platformer as well. But skilling the 8/16bit era graphics and going with a bit smoother vector graphics. I am always curious on the performance others get with large layouts...

BluePhaze Thanks! I am using a few different tricks to get the look. Window size is 320x240. Layout Scale is 1.25. I have a pixelation mask on a top level to make rotated sprites and warp effects appear at the right res.

I haven't tried handheld devices extensively yet. In mobile browsers it runs like crap. Nexus 7 might get 30fps tops. IOS isn't even worth looking at in a browser and that's with an iPhone5 and an iPad mini. I tried a few different exporters and none of them ran very well. I've tried many tricks to get speed but it's just not there to be had. I used tiled backgrounds for everything and to save cpu, gravity is shut off on any sprite using them until they are on the screen. It hits cpu performance pretty bad.

I've also completely rebuilt the 2nd stage to be much smaller and wall jump focused. Doesn't make a difference how big the layout is, it still performs the same so far.

damainman Have you looked at how many layers of images you have? Most mobiles get overdraw if you have enough overlapping objects and layers with graphics. It can blow the memory out on them pretty quick. Having multiple layers with images overlapping still draws the sprites from each overlapping layer from what I understand on mobile.

I am pretty sure I am going to have to end up going with separate forks of my build to support mobile, etc...

damainman What logic are you using for the layout scaling? Are you doing it on a layer by layer basis or directly adjusting the layouts scale through properties?

I always wonder how did you make these awesome retro graphics...

BluePhaze I have 9 layers set up per level as a rule. I don't use them all, I just have them there in case I decide to do any strange effects. For the most part I only use 3-4 layers.

As a rule of thumb, my top layer usually contains full screen effects. In this case my 320x240 pixel effect is on this layer. Next one down is typically text/hud. In this games case I dont use 6 at all as far as I remember, in go!go!Maddi! I use it for full screen effects like rain or fog. Layer 5 is the sprite play field. Layer 4 is the map. Layer 3 is multi layered scroll back drop if used. Layer 2 and 1 aren't used here and 0 would be a static background of 320x240 if I need it.

At the start of every layout I have always>system>start of layout>set layer scale 1.25.

Joannesalfa I do most of the graphics right in constuct 2's sprite editor. I'm used to working in that sort of environment from the c64 days of Gary Kitchen's Game Maker and Shoot Em Up Construction kit... That puts a nice age on me ;)

The bigger graphics I partially hand draw and then scan. In the case of the big bosses in this game they are entirely drawn in black and white, scanned taken into photoshop and resized then I go to web export and save as a 4 colour png. Any edits I do in the sprite/graphic editor in construct 2/ classic.

I actually use the sprite editor in CC to adjust the colour and then save and reload in C2. CC has the change color to option in the editor and I really need that feature. So I always have CC and C2 open at the same time when doing gfx. I have a gif of the NES palette loaded in every level layout so I can grab colors quick. And also in CC so I can correct anything I've scanned in quickly.

But yeah for the most part everything I do is pixel by pixel in the sprite editor.

I use that pixel effect because the warp effect for example works at the screen resolution and not the window res. So on my screen everything will look correct until I get to the water section and the water is warping at a way higher res and looks pretty bad against the pixel art.

You can also follow the progress of IB on Facebook! https://www.facebook.com/InsanitysBlade <img src="smileys/smiley4.gif" border="0" align="middle">

I have a pixelation mask on a top level to make rotated sprites and warp effects appear at the right res.

damainman - This looks pretty incredible! If you don't mind, can you elaborate on the above statement a bit? I've been wondering how to make rotated sprites look better in low-res games...

rogueNoodle - Thanks! The PixellateMask effect is what I use. The sprite is set to 320x240, the same size as my window. Placed on the top most layer and the effect parameter is set to 1. I don't think the color of the sprite or anything matters as it's a mask. Everything below that layer will have the same pixel size. That's it :)

I think the only hitch is that it has to be in full screen in a browser to look correct. But everything looks off to me when the browser window isn't set to full screen anyway.

damainman - Thanks, I'll definitely check that out. Good luck with your game!