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Saturday, October 29, 2011

8-Bit Agent Update: New level and more

I just released the latest update to 8-Bit Agent, and the biggest change is that it contains a new level. This new level is also part of a new area, titles Sky High Building. My current plans for this game call for three more levels and a boss in the Sky High Building area, and a final boss to beat the game. However, you will still be able to go back, even after you beat the final boss (when it is finished and added into the game), and play earlier levels. Your score isn't finalized until you lose all your lives. For now, just play through to the first level in the Sky High Building area, as that is where the game currently ends. The new update also features a number of other enhancements, such as the ability to view the leaderboards from in the game, and the fact that the game now remembers the name you use for online highscores, and uses that as the default for the "Enter
name" prompt. If you use a different name in that prompt, the default changes as well. Enjoy the update. Grab it now at http://randomanimations27.webs.com/game_8bit_agent.htm.

Sunday, October 23, 2011

8-Bit Agent: Online leaderboards

I am in the process of uploading the latest release of 8-Bit Agent, and, though it has no new levels, it has a number of new features. The biggest new change is the inclusion of lives. Previously, if you died during a level, you would just restart the level. You could do this as many times as you wanted to. Now, you still restart the level when you die, but you lose a life too. When you lose all your lives, you go to a game over screen, where you can submit your score, which now accumulates between levels, to the all new online leaderboard. This screen also has a button to just go back to the title screen without submitting your score. When you get a game over, all of your progress, along with your score and lives, is reset. If you dig through the ZIP file, you may notice that there is a new audio file labeled "level7_bgm.wav" There is a new level in the game, but it is incomplete, and I really wanted to get the leaderboard running ASAP, so I removed all methods of accessing this incomplete level. I had to leave the audio file in there, though, because the game will throw an error otherwise. So, what are you waiting for? Download the new version of 8-Bit Agent at http://randomanimations27.webs.com/game_8bit_agent.htm now.

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

8-Bit Agent: Monochrome Hills Boss

The boss of Monochrome Hills has been added to 8-Bit Agent. Here are some screenshots:



Sunday, October 16, 2011

8-Bit Agent: What happens next?

As regular visitors of my website may know, I have been developing a platform game called 8-Bit Agent (yes, I stole the title from the iPhone game 1-Bit Ninja, but the rest of the game is completely different). The most recent update of 8-Bit Agent added a pause feature (finally) and restructured the way 8-Bit Agent is packaged. Previously, I added a sound resource in Game Maker for each new sound, and everything was included in one executable file. This made for a very large executable, and long loading times. Now, the sounds are stored as separate files, and the executable file loads them as needed. The whole thing is stored in a ZIP file, which must be extracted before use. When the game is finished, I will probably use NSIS to create an installer, but for now, you must extract the ZIP file yourself. Also, I am considering releasing 8-Bit Agent as a commercial game on IndieCity, and having the free version have only the first three levels. If it were to be released commercially, it would be cheap, probably less than $5 USD. If so, then all subsequent betas will expire after a certain amount of time.

8-Bit Agent Website: