The Daily Click

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Project Started:	19th January, 2009	Last Update:	11th February, 2011
Project Owner:	Jess Bowers	Project Members:	Assault Andy
Project Type:	Platform Shooter	Project Progress:

Project Overview

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

* period purposefully included in name to avoid creating an emoticon

Project Forums	Topics	Posts	Last Post
Public Forum Public forum for open project discussion	3	23	Exciting By: Disthron On: 13th Oct 10, 04:58:33
Private Forum Private forum for project members only	2	4	No Access

Not Dead

Posted 11th Feb 11, by Jess Bowers

5 Comments

Last year, I had an unfortunate accident and lost nearly all of my pixel art. I thought I was being diligent about my backups but apparently I wasn't copying everything. So, while I still have all of my MMF2 game files, all of the original GraphicsGale artwork was lost (including all of the stuff I had yet to port over to MMF2).

Losing the original artwork sort of took the wind out of my sails and I haven't worked on the project since. But, I think I'm ready to start back on it. I've been doodling a bit in my sketchbook and feel the need to start pushing pixels again. Things will probably start out a bit slowly - but rest assured the project is not dead.

Here are a couple of doodle's I started doing to get me going.

Caterpiller Mech

Posted 27th Jan 10, by Jess Bowers

8 Comments

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.

Progress

Posted 9th Jan 10, by Jess Bowers

7 Comments

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.

Weapons

Posted 30th Dec 09, by Jess Bowers

4 Comments

I've been playing around with the graphics for Captain Plokey's various weapons. Here's what they look like right now: