Superhero Game WIP

CLICK TO PLAY MOST CURRENT TEST OF GAME!!!

7-30-13: Added in a civilian. Pick him up and fly around. Drop him from the sky and swoop down and catch him. Its pretty satisfying.

6-10-13: Added a couple more flying animations. Temporarily attached the carrying sprite closer to where it will be on the finished art. Also, started using tiles instead of duplicate sprites to help it run better.

2-12-13: Added more animations to flying, jumping, and idle. Updated background Silhouettes.

11-30-12: Added Lift Mechanic and placeholder art for flying

11-19-12: Added Screen Shot

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A few years ago, I made an attempt at creating the superhero game that I'd always wanted. While my mind and pencil were overflowing with ideas, my attempts were repeatedly stalled by my lack of programming knowledge. I tried my hardest to learn C# and XNA and just couldn't get it to stick. Because of my failure, I placed my Superhero Game concept on the shelf and walked away.

Well, I've been lurking in the shadows of these forums and am continually impressed with the community and everything the people here are creating. And on top of that, the more I look at the projects and study the event system, the more I think that Construct 2 can do everything I ever wanted to do with my game.

So here's a little image dump. I'll post more in this thread as I finish, but also feel free to subscribe to my blog at NeedYourDisease

Here's a quick test importing the run cycle into the platform behavior: Construct 2 Test

[TUBE]pQps0k93fQw[/TUBE]Construct 2 TestConstruct2Testsman1182013-07-30 12:33:46

Just to Say Something !

Your Arkworks are Beautiful , Do not Transform them into low quality pixel arts !

—, Thanks! Its really just a concern about file sizes combined with a love of retro gaming (mainly the look of old Lucasarts games) that made me go that way. But I'll take the compliment either way.

Very interesting! The art style reminds me of the old Bruce Timm shows :)

I'll definitely be keeping an eye on this one.

— E Bear, Thank you so much. Those shows had a huge influence on me and I've been a die hard Timm fan for years.

I loved the pixelarts, I'm fan number one when talking about pixelising something, like you, I'm lover of Lucas Arts games and played all of them. I remember the first game launched for CP500 decades ago, after that game, all my passion made this hobby a real thing, and you can blame Lucas Arts and much other games made for DOS and OS2.

Pixels, We .<3? you! xD

I agree, — Long live the pixel art!

But if I could explain my other reasoning for going that route: I am a huge fan of well animated games such as Earthworm Jim, Another World, and Aladdin on the Genesis. More recently, I've been inspired by the games of Wayforward Studio (Namely The Brave and the Bold (DS), Alien: Infestation (DS), and Mighty Switchforce (3DS). Those games are beautiful to look at and have a very fluid look.

Since I'm only one person, I have to come up with techniques to produce a lot of animation quickly. Most of these are using Flash or After Effects to bend and rotate things to give the illusion of movement with very little effort. When you shrink that down in Photoshop, it seems less obvious that I'm using tricks. Here's an example of using the puppet tool to bend and deform the limbs in an idle animation.

[TUBE]S6a6MmpVuD4[/TUBE]

Lemmings, and much more xD

Do you know this address?

<img src="http://www.abandonia.com/images/links/reloaded.gif" border="0" />

<img src="http://www.abandonia.com/files/games/956/Commander%20Keen%206%20-%20Aliens%20Ate%20My%20Baby%20Sitter_thumb.png" border="0" />

abandonia.com

That site's great and what I wouldn't give to be able to play Lemmings on my iPad (that and rollercoaster tycoon).

You might look into AnimeStudio as well. From what I have heard, it's great for animating. You add bones to the different limbs and you can animate them based on that.

You might look into AnimeStudio as well. From what I have heard, it's great for animating. You add bones to the different limbs and you can animate them based on that.   

Flash also have a bone system :).

^Any Flash past CS4 does.

Spriter looks to be the best bet.

So what's the gameplay angle?

I was looking to do a cross between a beatemup and Choplifter with a golden age comic aesthetic. The goal is to create situations where the hero would have to save a civilian and get them to safety. Similar game play would include capturing criminals and dropping them off with police officers. I'd also like to pepper in other situations for the player to handle: stop runaway train, put out fires, etc.

In a perfect world, I would create a whole city where the random events could happen. For example: Your character hears a window washer yell for help while dangling from his platform. You fly to that point of the level but as you get there he falls. You catch the civilian in mid air and deliver him safely to the ground/nearby-ambulance.

Stuff like that.

As far as Flash's bone tool, I've definitely looked into it and think it could be a huge benefit.

<img src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_6-0onMqTMGM/TEZOd_iwIYI/AAAAAAAAADk/FRmHIZdiXC8/s400/010.jpg" border="0" />

Nice ideas, using flash you can use all the power of Adobe Flash and export it in frames after the job, separated or the whole animations.

I learned very much decompiling Castle and Crashers from XBOX, they did the game in flash with inputs in C++, like you're doing.

yeah, good stuff. My next project will definitely need some animation and I'm also a fan of fluid animation in 2D games. I have an ActRaiser-esque prototype I'm working on that is definitely going to require this, was going to wait for Spriter to be CS2 ready before I jump into that.