8-bit Knock Out! Post-mortem

Hello everyone! 😃

If you're just interested in the game, click here.

Day 1

48 hours remain)

I woke up and somehow completely forgot about LD until I was checking my accounts at about 11AM (the jam started 3AM). "Your life is currency". I didn't vote for that theme.

Idea

After recently finding out about and playing Brawlhalla extensively, I decided I wanted to make a fighting game, escpecially since I already had half a name idea in my head. I decided to use a loose interpretation of the theme, and have the characters knock back more the less life they have. This was the opposite of many fighting games, where the more damage you took, the further you got knocked back. I figured that this new type of brawler would have you considering every punch and if it was worth the later trouble or not.

So I started with the code.

Code

This went pretty straightforward. A few bugs here and there fixed in a few minutes. I first wanted to only use the direction keys, but I figured that another key would be nessecary. I decided to use a dash system, similar to a game called BANDIT that I made a few years ago.

I actually followed PixelatedPope's advice and made the pixel-art game using a small resolution with the window scaled up. This worked nicely. In addition, I used a slightly modified version of Shaun Spalding's Tile Collision system.

In addition, I focused on making an AI, which, surprisingly, I've never done before. Previous enemies were always just moving back and forth. This game was multiplayer, but presuming that most devs are lonely little buggars, I needed to add a Solo mode as well so they didn't feel left out.

Day 2

(wait, it's already day 2???)

Music

Buska Kyoal. The menu theme was invented quickly at the end of day 1, and was now being turned into a short loop. The gameplay theme was borrowed from POLAR, where it was used for the boss theme. I used it because it was catchy and really pumpin'.

Art

Most of the art was made either in Paint.NET or the GMS2 image editor. I didn't bother that much with it.

Sound

BFXR. I also wanted to include a deep, manly voice saying "3, 2, 1, Go!" and "8-bit Knock Out!" Since my voice isn't so manly yet, I used a text-to-speech called NaturalReaders. It required premium to download an MP3, but luckily Audacity is capable of recording sounds from the computer (the Stereo Mix). So I did that. The result was a bit quieter, but that could quickly be resolved with a bit of amplifying.

I spent, like, half an hour trying to make it sound 8-bit, but all the results sounded bad, so I just stuck with the voice I had.

Menus

Not really much to say here. A pause menu, sound and music buttons, the 3 modes.

Polish

It's 9PM. Whoops. 😨

Luckily, I made the particle effects, screenshake and dynamic arms and legs by 11:30 PM. Yay!

Afterthoughts

I'm much more proud of this one! The particles look great, and screenshake adds to the juicy feeling on punching a pitiful human in its vertebral column. Besides, I wanted to make a fighting game anyway. Maybe I'll expand from this one? Who knows. I know that this was a valuable learning experience. Basically the entire second day was under pressure, and I found that I did more work that way. Before, particles were a bunch of small dust instances. Now, I actually tapped into animation and found that it came out really well.

If you read until here, you're officially a Snickerdoodle. Congrats! 🎉