Tech Wing Daily Blog Thing

Inspired by the glorious weekday Smash Bros Dojo blog, I am going to try and do something simular. I'm not as good a writer as Masahiro Sakurai and his team of translators, though. Expect both information on new things, canned games, and explanations as to why I did what in things.

Techokami once made a large sheet of outlined Mario arcade series sprites. I had really wanted to make something with them, even tried and failed to make a minigame comp entry, eventually though I started a working small game idea.

And thus was born, "Mario Gumshoe!"
Based on the NES Lightgun Platformer "Gumshoe", in which the main character moved forward on his own, jumping if you shot the lightgun at him, and shooting enemies at your command. I changed things up a bit for this mouse driven version.

Since the player would use the mouse, he could aim without shooting, and thus tell Mario to halt.
Mario, obviously, doesn't have a built in gun, so your main defense would be to jump on enemies. You could jump by clicking with the left mouse button, then jump two more times mid-air. Unlike Gumshoe, players did not need to aim at the small Mario sprite to tell him to jump.

Like the protagonist in Gumshoe, Mario would also jump over any ledges or cliffs...

You couldn't really rely on this too much, though!
The fate of Mario Gumshoe is unknown. The basic engine was done, as could be seen by these two example stages. I might return to the idea some day, or add it as a subgame for a larger game...

Whoa. That's all I can say.

This post has been edited by Firestar on Jun 26 2007, 11:05 AM

Daily updates eh?

Anyway interesting stuff. Reminds me of Trasher's similar canned game, although from the sounds of things, a little easier.

Hey, why doesn't mario have a cap in that game?

Hmm... are our topics in relation to fangames kinda like "developer blogs" in a way? The only difference is that we're only supposed to post something that's worthy of bringing the topic back to the forefront.

I believe I remember Trasher telling me that his game was somewhat inspired by this, which I may or may not have shown him... or I may be thinking of something else.

Yes, essentially.



The title is just worded differently, 'tis all.

It's close to 12:00 here, so I'll post an update before I go to bed.

As you all know, I often get sidetracked, distracted, bored with things. At one point, I was into Kirby games much more then usual. I even attempted to create a fangame! Of course, Kirby, with all his powers and moves, makes for a complex fellow to program, so I went for the next best thing!

The sword wielding Meta Knight!
Dreamland's anti-hero, with a resume that includes failing to both conquer and save his homeland, was a prime target, I thought! He has popularity, a good amount of attacks, yet does not have as large a move pool as Kirby, so I would not have to put in fifteen characters worth of attacks in every level I would of made with this.

Meta Knight's debut, Kirby's Adventure!
I made sure to cover my bases, too. I had planned on having a game with segments from all his appearances, so I created multiple engine variations.

The more things change, the more they stay the same...

I also planned a few other surprises...

Like Mario Gumshoe, this never went far beyond a concept and engine before I tried to go back to other projects. Will our metrosexual anti-hero ever soar over the dozens of other game ideas and engines?

This post has been edited by Someguy on Jun 26 2007, 10:51 PM

Ah, okay; thanks for clearing it up for me. Only that on my end, I'll keep my "developer news" in relation to the topics themselves on fangames I make.

And to the TC, looking forward to seeing more of this.

The fact that Metaknight is swinging his sword on all the pics made me LOL.

You ever get lonely when playing a game? You're deep in the ruins of an ancient temple, with nobody to guard your back? Or maybe you just like seeing someone on the screen who doesn't want to take you out. That's where Thingio Side B's friend system comes in!

These guys are friends with benefits!
Almost every level in Thingio Side B will have at least one friend, a helper character who will follow you around and keep you company. If you stray too far from them, they will teleport to you, so you don't lose them by mistake. They are for more then decoration, though.

This is where the benefit comes in! Don't think dirty, now.
Depending on the friend or friends, they can be pretty helpful. When they're under computer control, they aren't too smart.

It's not hard to guide them into an enemy, though!
Even though they get confused easily, they can really add a needed punch to get through a level. Besides, if they are not working to your liking...

Just put them under control of a real friend of yours... or two.

I'm still not sure if they should be unlockable, though. I don't want to restrict multiplayer, but they can be pretty cheap at times.

This post has been edited by Someguy on Jun 29 2007, 10:14 AM

OH HELL YES.

But don't make it unlockable, just make it so that if they take damage while being controlled by a player it negativley affects you.

Remember when Thingio Side B was canned, and we were going to skip directly to Thingio 2? The canning of Side B was undone, and with the old Thingio 2 went the engine.

We've tried to name our engines after kinds of jewels.
The Alexandrite engine featured a basic platforming base with character attribute applied over top of it. This allowed many characters who all had some basic shared mechanics. One unique idea was for them to walk when indoors, rather then hoping and boping wherever.

We planned on having lots of unlockable ones.
Some characters would be done in NO Body's style, some would be from their origin game, but Mario was special, he had two sets of sprites, both from the same spriter, Icegoom, the creator of Super Mario World Redrawn!

This is from said graphics hack. I added some Paper Mario style conversational poses.
We also had some ideas for an alternate costume, the second sprite mentioned. This sprite was from another hack of his in the making, which I had gotten permission to borrow sprites from. Mario would don this at some point in the game to get into the underbelly of a mafia group! We tried him with and without glasses. Either way, I gave him a slightly different coat of paint.

A variation of this will appear in a future Tech Wing minigame.

This post has been edited by Someguy on Jun 29 2007, 10:15 AM

:O Shaded Mario Clash Mario looks awesome.
And so does the engine, too. Shweet job.

I just realized it looked like I said Thingio 2 was uncanned, rather then Side B being uncanned and the old Thingio 2 being 'canned', even if I reuse the engine when Side B is refinished. I'll see if I can find that unfinished Clash Advance sheet...

Hope my double posting isn't gonna cause problems!

What's the best way to try and lengthen replay value? Make the player play the stage again to collect what he missed!

This is a Glory Emblem. Kinda like Hero Coins or Soleana Medals.
In Thingio Side B, there is at least one of these in each stage. You may also get them if you accomplish certain tasks, such as beating a record, or defeating all the enemies in the stage. What exactly are they for? Well, eventually you'll be able to find a shop in the game, and that's where you'll be able to purchase many of the game's extras!

Here's a fun fact for you: The original design for the Glory Emblem animation was for it to cycle through a rainbow of colors.

There's many colors in the.... never mind.
When I saw Raccoon Sam asking for requests for 3D animations, I thought I'd ask him to animate it for me. Makes it more like the many collectibles from the Donkey Kong Country series.

I'm debating on whether or not I should put these in other games, and have them globally available. If you are bad at one game, you could just get many in another, then purchase a power-up... Does that sound any good?

Yes, very.

Perhaps you should stick a lot of hidden ones in there too. Ones that can only be accessed by say, entering a code you can only find in another game. Also by sticking them in later games as well you could have bigger and better secrets after these games are released, since there's more to collect. A bit like forward compatibility, and would definately increase the replay value of all these games.

If you all looked closely in the first update, you'll of noticed two things in the first two screenshots. Can you name them?

The Fire Flower and the aiming reticle.
As I said, Mario isn't really a gunning game, so normally he wouldn't have any use for a gun like set-up. Indeed, the reticle could be used simply to show where the mouse cursor is in-game. However, Mario does have one famed projectile weapon. Pick up the Fire Flower, and...

Mario transforms into Fire Mario!
With this power-up, Mario is able to shoot up to two fireballs wherever you aim, using the right mouse button. Mario can still hop on enemies normally, but if he hits one with a Fireball, coins appear, like Super Mario World!

Burn, baby, burn!
Of course, in traditional fashion, this would of been gone in one hit. It also would be bad if you toasted enemies you needed to continue on, Mario can only jump so far, you know. Lastly, some enemies would be immune to fire, as to be expected.

I have to go unexpectedly, so here's a cutscene from an old game.
This was a precursor to Thingio!