Alpha Release: Inviting the world! news

Yes, I know, maybe I should have said something a bit earlier than this, but you know, it is summer, right?

Anyway, alpha 1.2.0 of The World of C'wbiau is finally ready for release (thanks doppler for reminding me of what an alpha really is), and with it comes, as always, a lot of new content. For example, with this version comes fans, fireballs, a pause screen, and much more!

Unlike my earlier updates, I will not go into detail of what you find on these screenshots, and leave that for you to discover for yourself.

Excuses:
And now, let's go on with the excuses... Why this update took so long before completion has a few reasons behind it. First off, it is summer holiday which means much time is spent with family and friends, travelling and just relaxing. But that, however, was not the prime reason for the delay. In order for me to make the levels present in the Alpha I had to pass several steps:
- The first was planning the levels, something which I don't find to be an easy task.
- Secondly I created the basic layout using Paint.NET (since it provides one with a lot of options for navigation, zoom, etc).
- Then I added all the floor and walls in my old Level Editor.
- Since the old editor only supports a few tiles, I had to use "search and replace" in NotePad to get the proper tiles for my walls.
- And finally I had to add all signs, teleporters, texts, fans, etc. by writing it straight into the Level-files...

As I believe you can imagine, this was not something that was done in a matter of hours, especially since I had to repeat it about 4-5 times to create all the levels.

So, here is the complete (I think) changelog for this version:

Features:
• Added wood tiles.
• Added metal wall tiles.
• Added more background-tiles.
• Added fall damage for the player.
• Added fans.
• Added an air current animation for the fans.
• Added support for projectiles.
• Added "Ballistic Shells".
• Added Dispensers (which shoot projectiles, e.g. fireballs, when activated).
• Added the possibility to switch between windowed mode and fullscreen in-game.
• Updated the loading screen to make it more reliable.
• Added a pause screen.
• Changed the teleporters animation to slowly fade the higher it comes.
• Explosion splinter now have a more trustworthy collision handling
(which is also much simpler to work with for me).
• Projectiles and explosion splinter now have collision with objects such as buttons,
fans, etc.
• Teleporters, fans, etc, will now affect some projectiles and some explosion splinter.
(Meaning that fires can spread through teleporters and fans can alter the trajectory of shells, etc).

Bugs and Performance:
• Fixed a bug which, on one of three tested levels, caused the game to crash when
a Blob killed the Player, if the Player stood still (a very interesting bug which I might come back to later on).
• Fireballs and projectiles will now have collision with the Player/Enemies.
• Jumping up into a teleporter (that is, entering it from beneath) caused the player to
get full jump speed upwards after teleportation.
• Fixed two horrible bugs with collisions between the player/enemies and static objects. (These bugs took about 4 days to solve)
• Sorted out some data into a separate file, causing it to be accessible in the same manner from everywhere in the code, and hence making my life easier.

Other Work:
In other news, I'm happy to say that I've been working a bit on the new Level Editor, which is another reason for the delay of the release. So far, most of the menu-system of the editor is ready, as well as tile-placement, loading levels, and creating new ones. Saving, however, is not added at all, :D.

So, I just happened to sneak in a shot of the new editor among the other images...

Notable Information:
And as a final note, I've opened a bug-section on the forums where any bugs you find can be reported.
Please note the fact that as the forum is integrated with IndieDB, no registration is required as long as you have an IndieDB/ModDB/Desura account.

/ Komposten

(NOTE: This Alpha has only been tested on Windows, so it would be nice to hear if it worked elsewhere.)