Prometheus demo released!

The first demo version of Prometheus - The Fire Thief has been released! The music took a while to get done, but here it is finally:

http://www.mediafire.com/download/1w7sgzn2trb787k/Prometheus_Demo_v0.1_alpha.zip

There are still a few bugs, for example the stairs you can fall down from if you get hit. But for a first demo it works perfectly fine. Below are also a few screenshots from the game, and a link to a video I've recorded and uploaded to Youtube, this time WITH SOUND!!1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciCjGl9qkVM


I'll let the stuff speak for itself and make this a short post. I want to talk about the music in Mega Man 42 though. This is my plan now: Once I'm done with P:TFT which will be in about four-to-five months time, I will sit down and really study how to make Mega Man-sounding music (I will have a little more experience with chiptunes then from making the OST for P:TFT), get the songs done, and release the game. Which means my plan of realeasing MM42 around August this year really won't be a reality and I'm sorry for that but I've exhaused all possibilities at this point. Now three songs out of 14 are done, and at that rate the game won't be out for another year and at least this solution will be faster than that.

I hope you enjoy the demo. Now work begins on the next area - Erymanthos - which will be much larger, and also playable in the final version of the demo.

First boss done!

The boss of the first intro stage in Prometheus has been finished today after a couple days of hard work, made possible with inspiration returning to me after a bit of a draught (unfortunately I have not yet been able to get into the mode were you just work whether you feel inspired or not). All in all, I'm very pleased with the result so far with the game; it has turned out very close to how I imagined it and wanted it to. Visually and game mechanics-wise, the first stage is now complete, all that remains is creating the sound effects and music. Unless my new found inspiration suddenly vanishes I should be able to do that in a few days work. Sound effects are going to be intentionally sparse even compared to MM42, and the music is much less of a problem when it doesn't have to sound like Mega Man music.

Of course there are some bugs, as always, but it will be great to be able to put a first demo out there and record a video to put up on Youtube. Like I've mentioned, the second real demo once it's done will include one more area. Because when push to comes to shove, this type of game is not much about the platforming, but more about exploring, combat, and using the right items at the right place (which just one stage could not possibly show off properly). But the first mount Olympus stage will show off the graphics and the physics engine etc just fine.

Progress and Mighty No. 9

In case you have missed it, Keiji Inafune - the man behind Mega Man - has announced a new project he has started working on since leaving Capcom. It's called Mighty No. 9 and is a spiritual successor to the Mega Man games. It's on Kickstarter right now and at the time of writing it's very close to acheiving its goal of becoming reality.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mightyno9/mighty-no-9

Personally I'm really excited about this. Like I've mentioned before Capcom really have given up on Mega Man, but something like this is more than any Mega Man fan could've hoped for. I've been very sceptical towards Kickstarter since first hearing about it, and as such I've never backed anything on there. But this project I didn't hesitate to back and if you like Mega Man I think you should do the same. One thing I especially like is that the composer for the original Mega Man soundtrack - Manami Matsuae - is going to make the music for the game! Mega Man 1 is my favorite game of all time, and the game I've modelled Mega Man 42 after, time so this is more than awesome for me. The theme song for Mighty No. 9 is available on the Mighty No. 9 website: http://www.mightyno9.com.

Progress is coming along somewhat nicely on Prometheus - The Fire Thief. I had some trouble with the stair mechanic, but it works acceptably now after struggling with it a bit for a few days last week. I've drawn all the sprites for the enemies now so I need to code them and then start working on the boss. Once that's done, some sound effects and music is all that is left to be done on the first short introduction stage where you steal the fire from the gods of mount Olympus. Once all that is finished I can make a video of it for sure as a demonstration, and just maybe release a demo. That's definitely not more than a maybe though, because I want the official demo once it's done to include the second area as well, to flesh it out and show off the action adventure gameplay and its mechanics properly.

Prometheus - The Fire Thief

Work has begun on my next game entitled Prometheus - The Fire Thief. After two days of work I have a working engine, a HUD and a weapons and item selection screen complete with graphics that are both fully functional as well. For some reason I did not think it would be this easy to gain progress on the game but apparently it is. I suppose the explanation is that I actually have learned a great deal from coding Mega Man 42, which makes the work on Prometheus much easier. It took a week or something for me to get this far on MM42, and just getting a half decent game engine took me three long hard days of struggling and having no idea what to do.

It certainly was the right decision to code this one 100 percent from scratch. I was thinking about building on the Mega Man 42 engine, but thank heavens I didn't do that. There is so much unneccesary code in that game, pages and pages of it coming from inexperience in GML coding, and P:TFT is another kind of game as well, much simpler in most respects like I've mentioned before, which of course also is a factor in that progress has been so smooth. That being said though, I dare boldly claim that my Mega Man engine is very accurate and precise compared to most other fan games out there. And I can say that with confidence because I've played a fair share of fan games lately and some of them are really wonky when it comes to the engine, even though most are still enjoyable despite that.

My sprite work so far for this game I'm very pleased with, more so than most of the stuff in MM42, and this is where I should post pictures. However I don't really like posting straight up screenshots for various reasons, the main being that I'm afraid someone is going to steal my sprites. Posting the MM42 screenshots was really painful for me. I'm thinking once I'm done with the intro stage I'll record a playthrough of it (with sound this time) and upload it to Youtube. This might not be that far away into the future. Tomorrow the plan is to make a test enemy and after that work shall begin on the first stage.

As far as the music in MM42 is concerned: Don't mention the war.

Musics

Things are starting to move when it comes to the music for the game. I can now treat you to this piece from Phunk Master Flex. I think he really nailed it with this one:

https://soundcloud.com/phunkmasteflex/brain-man-stage

IndieDB

Mega Man 42 now has an entry in the IndieDB!



Help me get it to the top 100!

Music

Well, good news is I have couple of people working on music for the game. Bad news is I thought it was going to be much easier to recruit composers for the project. This has lead me to the conclusion that I'm going to make a serious attempt at composing music myself. Which means the release of the game will be set back a while, how long I don't know but I'm determined to release the game come hell or high water.

Most of the bugs are done but like always when you solve a bug it feels like three more pop out like heads on a Hydra. The bugs are mostly cosmetic stuff now anyways.