New artwork and a Note system | Devlog #1

Hey folks!

Time for another Johnny Split devlog! If your new here, this https://tyrannosaurus-games.itch.io/johnny-split-jam-version is the Mix and Game Jam game that started the whole idea of mixing two perspectives.

 Let's get down to business! First of all, I upgraded the feel of the jumping a bit. Now you can vary your jump height and jump for a fraction of a second after leaving a platform. It definitely made the jump feel a lot more responsive.

 Next, I added some physics driven chains and platforms and I have to say, they made the game feel so much more alive. All of that was pretty easy to do with unity's hinge joints if anyone wants to achieve a similar effect.

 Speaking of unity's built in features, I also added a pixel perfect camera to get rid off some weird pixel distortion.

Before:       With pixel perfect camera:     

 The next big thing that I worked on is the art. I still think that I'm more of a coder/designer guy, not an artist, but I'm trying to do my best as graphics are super important. It's the first thing people see in your game - not the cool mechanics, good gameplay but the artwork. Also, it's hard to explain the gameplay through a screenshot or even a gif - a good looking game with poor gamefeel and boring mechanics is far more marketable than a super fun game with terrible graphics. 

This is what I came up with:

• a whole new brick "biome"
• some trash laying around
• lamps
• spikes for top down perspective

Feel free to comment what you think about it.

 Also, I started thinking about a story for the game. From the start I wanted it to take place in an old, abandoned industrial age factory with a big secret from the past. I think the art resembles it pretty nicely but I'd love to hear your opinion. But there needs to be a way to tell the story. I thought about some notes for the player to read and uncover the mystery this way. I think it will add a nice "detective" vibe to the game. As I will probably need a lots of these notes, I made a handy-dandy note manager that lets me create as many notes as I want pretty fast and easy.

This is how it looks in action:

 Now that I have a general idea for the story title "Johnny Split" doesn't really fit there that great. But I haven't made up my mind yet. If you have any suggestions I'm open for them.

 Other small things that I've done:

• better particle effects
• landing animation
• different note types images

I would really like to make bigger progress on the game and post more frequently, but I'm still tackling school so I don't have that much time left for game dev. I'm not complaining in any way, you know just putting it out there :) 

 And...yeah! Thanks for reading! Comment what you think, like the post and most importantly - follow me so you won't miss the launch in August!

Cheers,

me