Axe Cop

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Spoonweaver
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Post by Spoonweaver »

dude..
battle text colors.
very nice.
TMC
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Post by TMC »

Yes, Wobbler take note :)
Hmm, but the dark red +29 is a bit hard to read (at least at 1x zoom) - I suggest sticking to brighter higher contrast colours.
For the last couple weeks I've been working on the balance of the enemies in the dungeon and I'm almost at a place where I'm happy with it. It's a time consuming task to try to make the level both consistent to the previous one, but also marginally tougher.
So is this level is a whole new dungeon, not the ice area, and those enemy graphics are just placeholders? Since I notice the enemy is a "Grunt" according to the caption. Though the previous update was still set on the ice planet.
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RMZ
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Post by RMZ »

TMC wrote:Yes, Wobbler take note :)
Hmm, but the dark red +29 is a bit hard to read (at least at 1x zoom) - I suggest sticking to brighter higher contrast colours.
For the last couple weeks I've been working on the balance of the enemies in the dungeon and I'm almost at a place where I'm happy with it. It's a time consuming task to try to make the level both consistent to the previous one, but also marginally tougher.
So is this level is a whole new dungeon, not the ice area, and those enemy graphics are just placeholders? Since I notice the enemy is a "Grunt" according to the caption. Though the previous update was still set on the ice planet.
Yeah, Soda Piggy is playing catch up with the art. We're nearly done with the new hero sprites now. The new mission takes place in an evil lab. The comic bad guy is Dr. Stinkyhead. I've definitely learned the pros and cons of using a giant map versus breaking it all up. I've run out of NPCs twice, had issues with my escalator scripts, etc. The easy missions are the ones that wind up taking the longest to do, go figure.

Fun thing about Dr. Stinkyhead though... He actually has a pretty in depth backstory, as far as Axe Cop comics are concerned. Most stories are quick and chaotic, which makes them awesome, but Dr. Stinkyhead is actually in quite a few stories. He went to Fighting School with Axe Cop and an alien super group (who are a side quest in the game), he had his own main story where he fought with the Vampire Man Baby Kid, and then he had another story where he fought Axe Cop and Dr. McNinja in their team up comic. So what the lab does is allows me to kinda weave those into a narrative giving Stinkyhead some childhood trauma, being rejected by Axe Cop, and thus lead to a life of evil because of personal insecurities. All of this felt organic to pull from the comic books, so it's been a lot of fun. Bad Santa in the Snow Planet was kind of a loud goon, but Stinkyhead is a bit smarter, maybe less of a jerk and more of a calculated villain with a more personal reasoning for wanting to hurt Axe Cop.
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Post by RMZ »

<img src="https://www.redtrianglegames.com/img/de ... rriors.png">

Soda's been doing a good job catching up. This week we've seen the completion of all hero art for the new mission! In the comic book, Axe Cop mistakes the Moon Warriors for bad guys, so that's a moment we've captured here. Vampire Wolfer (purple) is a vampire with a lot of dark elemented moves. Fire Slicer (red) is a swordsman with a lot of powerful attacks but they have additional costs besides just MP. Like, one attack I love of his is called "Red Lotus" and it's a super powerful crimson fire move, but it lowers your attack power to do it which makes it a really great finisher. Because Megaman X4 was such a huge game for me, for obvious reasons probably, I was able to give Fire Slicer some moves to pay homage to Zero's skillset.
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Post by RMZ »

<img src="https://www.redtrianglegames.com/img/ma ... 00x500.png">

Well, we didn't wind up doing any of the video work, at all. Not to say we won't make an OHR commercial or anything, but we just wound up hanging out.

I've been working on team games for a long time, but one of the coolest things of my wife and mine's trip to Texas (from Florida) was actually working on Axe Cop together in the same room. He'd write a song or draw a sprite, we'd put it in the game, and test it out live. It was probably as close as I'll ever get to working in a legitimate studio, but it was fun.
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Post by TMC »

That's great; pretty much sounds like you spent the time optimally! I'm sure it's a lot of fun to work like that. Which one of these bearded gentlemen are you? (I'd definitely guess the left; although I can't remember seeing a photo of you before, that face seems familiar...)

Ah, and those hero sprites look great. So do the Moon Warrior join your team after that one misunderstanding, or do you have a longer wait?
And for that matter, is Dr. Stinkyhead a single-mission villian, or does he have a bigger role in a game, as it sounds like he does in the comic?


Oh and good that you note that people do actually seriously run into the NPC limit, it doesn't get mentioned often but removing it is something that we shouldn't keep putting off forever. It's a sizable but not major project to do so.
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Post by RMZ »

TMC wrote:That's great; pretty much sounds like you spent the time optimally! I'm sure it's a lot of fun to work like that. Which one of these bearded gentlemen are you? (I'd definitely guess the left; although I can't remember seeing a photo of you before, that face seems familiar...)

Ah, and those hero sprites look great. So do the Moon Warrior join your team after that one misunderstanding, or do you have a longer wait?
And for that matter, is Dr. Stinkyhead a single-mission villian, or does he have a bigger role in a game, as it sounds like he does in the comic?


Oh and good that you note that people do actually seriously run into the NPC limit, it doesn't get mentioned often but removing it is something that we shouldn't keep putting off forever. It's a sizable but not major project to do so.
Yeah I'm the dude on the left.

I'm really proud of how the Moon Warriors turned out. I think Soda Piggy did an awesome job with them. After that single misunderstanding they join the team. It's easy to think good guys are bad when you've lost your list of all bad guys!

Regarding Dr. Stinkyhead, there's going to be a certain amount of Mac Guffins that the player has to get to advance the story and one of them will be in the basement floors of Stinkyhead's lab. In the comic book, Stinkyhead gets an insane amount of unicorn horns and turns into this weird alien blob. Once we cracked the idea for the special objects I made the decision to break the lab up into two parts. Some other levels will get two parts too to get to those items. This is the 3rd mission, and the fights are a little tame because you're losing those heroes from the beginning of the game temporarily, so I couldn't just make a 2 form end-mission boss like the comic would do. This helps keep the game sincere to the comics and also paced for a game better.
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Post by RMZ »

<img src="https://www.redtrianglegames.com/img/de ... ngzoo1.png">
So this past weekend I started on a huge optional segment of the game, known as the Fighting Zoo. In the comics, Axe Cop went to a special zoo to fight all the animals, which he thought was actually the Fighting Zoo, but by the end of the comic, you realize it was the normal zoo which made it super depressing that he basically beat up a bunch of regular animals. In the game, the Fighting Zoo will act as a battle colosseum, a standard in all RPGs. Special fights against new characters, old characters, etc. I got the entire entrance area done over the weekend and will be populating it with NPCs very soon.

<img src="https://www.redtrianglegames.com/img/de ... oomenu.gif">
I wanted the menu to be unique for this and decided to go custom. I learned a few new tricks I'm kind of proud of. For anybody interested, I do a lot of stuff with slice collections. I built the regular cup menu as a slice, and then I have a container slice in another. Reason being, I want to allow the player to unlock cups and not just show them all at once, also this was the fastest way to do it I think. I sent the cups into a container, set that container as a parent, then set the scroll container as the parent to that, which made it insanely easy to slide it up and down like you see. Obviously all of the data in the cup slices is for set-up, but you can see where I'm going with it.

Each cup will be named after a unique zoo animal and instead of getting a trophy, you'll get a medal in the shape of that animal's head, similar to how Pokemon did gym badges.

The Fighting Zoo battles will likely not be playable in the next build of the game to speed up the release by 2-3 weeks, but all of the code and set-up should be done.
Last edited by RMZ on Tue Jun 05, 2018 11:45 am, edited 2 times in total.
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CarbonatedSlime
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Post by CarbonatedSlime »

I am very excited for this to be a game.
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Post by RMZ »

Been a little while since I posted an update, like a month. So we're still chipping away at the content for the demo. I've got my standard wipe out feeling from finishing my portion. I might do some work on MTA for a couple weeks as a palate cleanser before diving into doo doo. Dr. Doo Doo in London. All the planning is done, just gotta actually build it. I always think missions will be quick and easy and I find awesome ways to make things bigger and better and take 2 months longer than expected. The 3rd mission is seriously awesome. Soda Piggy just has to finish the shop graphics, like the one below, chiptune the music and create a few sound effects and it's good to go.

<img src="https://www.redtrianglegames.com/img/de ... axeham.png">

It's come at a good time cause of the end of level fatigue, but I've been working with James Paige a lot on prepping a build of the game for the Orlando iX in August. If anybody is in Florida and near there, we'll be presenting a demo of the game on Saturday, August 18th. I think entry is like $25, not too bad I don't think. We've got a giant retractable banner ordered and our business cards and rack cards were finished today. We're toying with the OUYA or PC but either way, we should be good to go for the convention well before then. Lots and lots and lots of testing to make sure it's perfect, and then double perfect.

<img src="https://www.redtrianglegames.com/img/de ... _promo.png">

Running a timer during the demo that lets people play the beginning of stages for about 15 minutes. That should get people through the beginning of the Snow Planet, through Spoonweaver's bitching snowboarding mini-game, and into the forest floor to fight some battles. The lab will be the other stage for people to try and will basically be just battles with some exploration and such as well. The lab has the most comic accurate dialog despite it being something I pieced together from various Axe Cop stories and pages of concept art.
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Post by Bob the Hamster »

Exciting!

Those brochures look great!

I wish I was going to be anywhere near Florida that week!
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Spoonweaver
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Post by Spoonweaver »

What?! That looks down right professional!

Sadly I can't make it, as I may have already mentioned.
If it was at all sooner I could swing it, as I'm currently off work for parental bonding. (My wife gave birth to my second son on the 1st of this month.) However, I go back to work that week and I normally work Saturdays and since I'm currently on a more than month long vacation, I can't really ask for days off any time soon after that.

Anyways, I'm looking forward to plenty of pictures and video coverage.
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RMZ
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Post by RMZ »

Thanks for the support dudes! If either of you want I can mail you a rack card. I've only got like... 1000!
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RMZ
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Post by RMZ »

<img src="https://www.redtrianglegames.com/img/de ... rallax.gif">

Worked with James, TMC and Pheonix on this. In the next area Axe Cop will pursue Dr. Doo Doo to London where he will have taken over it. I studied up on this a little bit and on the one end of the Westminster Bridge is the side with the Ferris Wheel and the other side is the House of Parliament and Big Ben. I really wanted a dynamic skyline and damn did Pheonix knock this out of the park. I have more details to add to the bridge but the hard technical stuff is done. Just gotta fill it out.

James, your troll parallax script worked really well. Changed the width to the exact length of the artwork Pheonix did and it snapped like a glove, like you can see.

In other news, two weeks from Saturday Red Triangle Games will be demo-ing out Axe Cop in Orlando! I'm probably 90% prepared. Got a build that works, just have to make the custom save data to make it all work perfectly. Soda is hard at work trying to get the music and sounds ready. It's a really tight demo, which I feel proud as hell over. It'll run for about 15 minutes before it resets.
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Pepsi Ranger
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Post by Pepsi Ranger »

Yep, that looks super smooth and super nice. It's super cool.

All right, time for supper.
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