Updog creation GIFs

Here's a fun post containing a timeline of gifs I recorded during Updog's development. I'm thinking of writing a full post-mortem once the jam ratings period is over, so this will mostly just be a series of images, in chronological order. Here we go!

#1 - Boz's first steps!

#2 - Jumping added, time to go UP

#3 - Here's the first test level I built with placeholder sprites. Boz can jump inifinitely at this point, and there's actually no collision, I just jumped right near the platforms.

#4 - NOW there's some collision, but ramps currently act like solid tiles.

#5 - This is after a very long battle with collision detection on ramps, you can see my pink dot markers for Boz's corners.

#6 - Boz has the ball! (The ball does not like ramps right now)

#7 - After another long programming journey, the ball now bounces off ramps correctly, but does not roll down them! You can also see some debug text related to Coyote time, which exists in Updog to improve the feel of jumping off ledges.

#8 - I love this part of the project, where my properly drawn tiles and new retro palette come in. Completely changes the feel and quality of the game and boosted my motivation to continue. Balls also roll down ramps now!

#9 - The indicator arrow is in! I was concerned players might lose the ball or not realise its importance, so it gets a big honking arrow to point at it when you've dropped it. It also sticks to the edges of the screen in case the ball is off-screen.

#10 - Boz's first words. Aww. "Bork lines" added to indicate very loud borking.

#11 - Camera movement is in. Was never 100% happy with this, I'd like to revisit the problem properly after the jam.

#12 - Walljumps! The most tricky gameplay feature of the game. I tweaked this a lot to feel nice and still didn't quite crack it. It became frustrating for some players to try to wall jump effectively. I'll detail this more in the post-mortem.

#13 - Switches! I needed a way to force players to bring the ball up the tower with them. They also provided a nice "checkpoint" style feeling after a difficult section. Originally the switch activated when the ball went in, but a good friend and playtester pointed out you could stand outside the room and bark the ball in, locking yourself out.

#14 - The first piece of level design, just 2 days before the deadline.

#15 - CHICKEN!!! You can see they originally ran a lot further, but I liked barking so I made them a bit slower so you could bark more!

#16 - The first dialogue system with some placeholder text.

#17 - Event triggers. I could now display dialogue or do other things when the player hits a certain invisible tile.

#18 - The final GIF! Here you can see the first difficult level of the game. A few players have gotten stuck here as it requires some precise platforming.

If you've read this far, thank you for reliving the short but intense Updog origin story. If you haven't played yet, I'd love if you gave it a try! Here's a link to the jam submission page, or you can download the standalone exe below.