Character Customization and Some Code Reworking

Hello hello, back again for another update on our work on Ultimate Chicken Horse! Things are still moving along nicely, though we're aware that there's still a ton to do to get the game where we want it to be.

The first new thing we've got this week is some implemented character customization outfits! What that means is a horse in a bow-tie and a top hat:

Rich has been stepping out of his business duties and venturing into the art world to work on the character outfits, and has been coming up with some potential designs to make our characters even more awesome.

Above are just a couple of outfit ideas for our characters, we've got a ton more! The issue with the character outfits though is that our characters are hand animated frame by frame, which means that the outfit needs to be redrawn on each frame. As Rich found out when doing the bow-tie, that means over 90 frames of redrawing for each outfit piece, followed by testing and fixing.

Next up, and probably even more importantly, we're doing some refactoring in our code to make life muuuch simpler for development for online play. What we're doing is changing our current code to an event-based system.

No, we don't actually have babies coding for us. Just Alex. And he's not a baby. We think.

What this means is that the code is based around events, and different objects listen in to certain events. For example, the scorecard will be "listening" to hear when the event "round ends" happens. Once the event happens, the scorecard will be notified and will pop up.

This refactoring (restructuring) of code will help us to be better organized when implementing network code and will allow us to troubleshoot more easily because we will be better able to pinpoint the source of the problem.

That's about all the news we have for today, check in again next week and keep following on social media! :)

New Hockey Puck Shooter Block!

As promised, we've been working on new content including blocks, levels and characters. Last week we showed you our newest character, and this week we have a blocky surprise!

Today's block is a hockey puck shooter, and we know what that means. No one is safe.

Alright enough with the fancy gifs, what does this actually do? How does it work? Why is it in the game? So many questions, so few answers.

The Hockey Puck Shooter (not final name) is a block that shoots a projectile out at laser speed. If you get hit by the puck, your fate will become that of the unfortunate raccoon in the gif above. A red light goes on above the block to warn that it's about to shoot, and that you have to get out of the way. If you're caught anywhere in the line of fire, you're toast! Rubbery, hockey-flavoured toast. You can also stand on the platform... currently you can stand on top of it, but that might change to standing on the platform on which the puck rests... we'll test it and see!

You might think this is an extremely Canadian block, but in fact it was designed by one of our Kickstarter backers from the U.S., who is an avid Caps fan. We made sure to use the red white and blue of the Caps (although it's conveniently the colours of our hometown team, the Habs, as well...). The design isn't final, but the idea is pretty solid, and it adds variety by being a projectile that you don't have time to run away from (like the crossbow).

The block isn't finalized yet as we still need to get more feedback from the Kickstarter backer / designer, but it should be close to this! Yay development!