We apologise for the delay...

Thanks to a change I made right before submitting the Apple Jack 2, a bug was found in the game and I had to pull it from peer review early. Since the rules state that you have to wait a week before resubmitting a game, it'll be saturday before I can put it back up. It'll then take several days or longer to (hopefully) pass.

Sigh.

Oh well, at least I've used this extra time to make a few improvements to the game, namely:

-The daytime sky is now a slightly nicer blue.
-The shadow on Jack's head moves a bit when he runs.
-Songs 2 and 3 are swapped around.
-A barely noticable graphical glitch when Jack runs off of a moving block has been fixed.

Exciting stuff, I'm sure you'll agree.


In other news, the Dream Build Play contest will soon be ready for entrants to upload their games. This is the first one that's come around at the right time for me to take part, and I'm looking forward to seeing how well AJ2 does. Hopefully the time I've spent polishing it will count in its favour.

Trailer

I FINALLY managed to get my arse in gear and make a trailer for the game:

Music: 'una spiaggia a mezzogiorno' by Ennio Morricone, from the film 'Vergogna schifosi' (me neither).


It's in the final stages of testing now so it should be out in a couple of weeks max.

Imagine my suprise, when, completely unsolicited and out of the blue, Kate from www.katewillaert.com sent me this brilliant Apple Jack 2 box cover:

Apparently Kate read my comment in the last post about trying to do a cover loosly based on the Mario 2 box art, and with her advanced drawing skills did it herself, properly.

Now, clearly it's a lot better than the mouldy old cover from my last post and I'd love to use it. What concerns me is the legal / moral issue of using something SO similar to the original:

...especially when the game already 'borrows' the pick-up-and-throw game mechanic from SMB2. Even if there isn't a legal problem in using it, I don't want the game to be seen as some sort of Mario tribute, since it's very much its own thing. That said, there's no doubt many more people would click on the game if it had Kate's box art. Hmm.

Anyone have any opinions on this?

My first attempt at 'box art' for the game, adapted from one of the intro frames (drawn by Neilw). Honest opinions and improvment advice welcome, since I can't decide whether it's any good or not.

Big List

There's just a bit of bug fixing left now until the game is finished, although the closer you look for problems in a game the more you see, so it might take a little while still.

Happily, the game will certainly be finished by May 15, the submission date for this year's Dream Build Play contest, so AJ2 will be a part of that. My first one!

Lastly, I've finished naming all the levels bar a couple. For what it's worth, here they are (subject to change and with potential small spoilers):

Apple Jack's Great Escape
Dead Aim
The High Walled Garden
Fatal Frame
Sunset
The Polychromatic Threat
Plug the Gap
The Pain Engine
The Bacon Exchange
Fern Hill
The Flattening
The Panda Factory
The Shadow-kin
There and Back Again
Escort Mission
The Ring of Stone
The Great British Summer
Ammo Shortage
Low Flying Washing Machines
The Giant Panda
The Cyber Tree
Four Crannies
Fruit Fall
The Tiny Little Shed
Ex Marks the Spot
Aftershocks
A Church of Trees
The Watchful Face
Stacking
The Plummeting Swineherd
Test Chamber One
Jumpy Pumpy
Another Escort Mission
Spiral Death Chase
Shifting the Monolith
The Bunkers
The Statue
Peanut Dispenser
Dawn of the Naked Eye
Beside the Seaside
Beach Huts
Cloud Splitter
The Floating Gods
Time to get Pushy
A Cage of Sand
The Enormous Space
Apple Crumble
The Grindery
Upstairs, Downstairs
Tribute
The Magic Coves
Deep End
Describing the Parabola
The Bee Box
The Spotted Castle
Zones of Calm
The Coastal Shelf
Vertical Slice
William Tell the Panda
Apple Jack's Great Escape

I think I can see the finishing line...

All features are now in place and the game is finally running on my Xbox. I was pleased with how it looked on a 1080p TV - more detailed and with less jaggy edges than the first game, which I played directly afterwards for comparison. The framerate seems rock solid 60fps too.

Now It's just a case of removing a load of bugs and finishing off any little details. I'll probably play through it a couple of times with a notebook, jotting down any issues or crashes, and them ticking them off.

I'll have to get a trailer ready before long, too.

Short update

The game is now in a state where the title screen, main menu, intro, levels and between-level transitions all flow together properly, although currently if you play it up to the end it runs out of levels and crashes.

I now need to add all the audio stuff that I stripped out at the start of the project, and find new sound effects for the things that weren't in the first game. I also need to find new ambient background atmosphere for the new environments. Shouldn't take too long.

After that I'll buy a new XNA membership and try uploading the game to an actual Xbox for the first time since I started making it over a year ago.