Trial by Viking - WIP

Dustin Hendricks · 2016-03-29T22:39:15

Hello gamedevnet. This is Trial by Viking, a side-scrolling platformer where you are a viking working as an agent of Odin. In unfamiliar lands, you will meet friends and foes, solve a few puzzles, and gain the powers needed to stop the trickster god, Loki. If you are able to survive tricky gauntlets of magic and steel, you will find yourself face to face with some of the worst terrors that the nine worlds have to offer. Good luck! Features: - morph into a polar bear - control a flying Valkyrie through mazes of hazards - ride on the claws of a great owl like a zip line - fight a Kraken in a swimming pool - bombs, double jump, dash, grappling hook - an ice axe for freezing enemies and turning them in to stepping stones - ride on a viking ship while having axe battles with Kobolds - keys, switches, gears, ropes, hidden areas, and other tricky elements - multi-platform - 130 levels - 27 intense boss/miniboss battles - 20 permanent upgrades - over 75 unique ai/enemies - power ups like mini viking, metal viking, and time slow Web: http://lastlifegames.com/trialbyviking Twitter: @0xlastlifegames Mailing List: click here Update #1: Development of Trial by Viking started at the end of 2013. Honestly this game started out with an idea of mixing Ghosts and Goblins with Cut the Rope, because I thought that would be weird and cool, but it has grown into something so far from that. I really wanted to give the game a great feel, and some of the earlier concepts just weren't right. I still make use of ropes and being able to cut them to solve puzzles, but I have changed it so that you use an axe to cut ropes instead of some sort of mouse/touch system.

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Started by dqhendricks August 11, 2014 06:29 PM

50 comments, last by dqhendricks 8 years, 1 month ago

dqhendricks

258

Author

May 30, 2015 05:35 PM

Update #33:

I think I finally got the shield belt how I wanted it. What do you think?

I'm using Sin and Cos to find the position at distance and angle, so that I can rotate the balls. Then I use another Sin to modify the distance for that formula, making the shield balls pulse in and out.

dqhendricks

258

Author

June 02, 2015 05:00 PM

Update #34:

Kara has always had this owl friend that follows her around named Bregoa. Sometimes during the cutscenes, and in game dialog, she will grab onto Bregoa's claws and fly away with him (or is it a her? i don't know). I made Kara a playable character for a few of the levels recently. She moves similarly to the main character, but instead of throwing axes, she has some very powerful double sword melee attacks. I had to give her a secondary action as well since you can't access your normal inventory during these Kara levels. I thought it would make sense to go ahead and make Bregoa her second action. An attack owl basically.

There is a level where you as the main character get to ride Bregoa like a zipline, but they are on predetermined paths. I think it would be cool to someday give the player full control over using the owl like a hang glider. Perhaps you hold down jump, and the owl will swoop you and let you glide for a moment, similar to how the princess in Super Mario Brothers 2 works. I may never be able to get that into this game depending on time, but if the game does well, maybe there will be a sequel.

dqhendricks

258

Author

July 11, 2015 10:43 PM

Update #35:

i think i found the mathematical sweet spot for these black hole mechanics. somehow both annoying and fun xD

this is basically just a depreciating velocity that gets stronger near the middle. you get your double jump back if you hit the center of the holes so you don't get trapped. science!

dqhendricks

258

Author

July 16, 2015 06:48 PM

Update #36:

i've been experimenting with bouncy fire balls. the green ones bounce off walls, and are also baseball compatible. I need to add more of these to other parts of the game because they are so fun xD

by the way, you can also follow on facebook or twitter. I tend to post extra stuff in those places if you are interested.

dqhendricks

258

Author

July 29, 2015 11:40 PM

Update #37:

i've been working on making the wall sliding and wall jumping more fun lately. I've added a few new animations, particles, and tweaks to the code. what do you think so far?

dqhendricks

258

Author

August 18, 2015 06:24 PM

Update #38:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/lastlifegames/trial-by-viking

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=499233468

I have a few big announcements to make. First, the Trial by Viking KickStarter and Steam Greenlight Campaigns just went live today. If you'd like to reserve a copy of the game today, backing the KickStarter might be the best way. Second, I have release the first major video of the game. There is also a link to the Vimeo HD version on the top of the KickStarter. Thank you all for all of your support so far. I have been working very hard on this, so any help in spreading the word is hugely appreciated!

Cheers,

Dustin

dqhendricks

258

Author

August 25, 2015 05:53 PM

Update #39:

A new enemy I have been working on. This guy is real fun. Wait for it...

By the way, Trial by Viking is currently running KickStarter and Steam Greenlight campaigns. Any help you can lend is hugely appreciated!

Thank you!

Dustin

dqhendricks

258

Author

September 02, 2015 05:12 PM

Update #38:

Recently I had sent out some video of the game to a few youtubers. One replied saying he liked the look of the game, but that the death animations looked a bit "jankey". He suggested that maybe a ragdoll death would be in order. I hadn't planned to do this because of some technical limitations, but after thinking about it some more, I found a way to get past that and add them. Let me know what you think!

By the way, Trial by Viking is currently running a KickStarter campaign. There's some new video of the game there too. Any help you can lend is hugely appreciated!

Thank you!

Dustin

dqhendricks

258

Author

September 09, 2015 09:34 PM

Update #37:

After some reflection, I thought it would be a good time to show the zoomout feature. Since the levels in TBV are not super huge, there is no official map, but if you hold up for 1 second, the entire view will zoom out, showing a larger portion of the level. Players who learn to use this to their advantage will have a much easier time figuring out the lay of the land, especially in the harder levels towards the end of the game.

By the way, Trial by Viking is currently running a KickStarter campaign. There's some new video of the game there too. Any help you can lend is hugely appreciated!

Thank you!

Dustin

dqhendricks

258

Author

March 04, 2016 07:11 PM

Update #38:

It's been a while since my last post, so I have a lot to update here. After getting greenlit on Steam, and a successful Kickstarter campaign, I put my head down and got to work. It seems to have paid off. Trial by Viking recently became one of 20 winners of the 2015 Taco Bell Indie Game Garage contest, and has been nominated for Best Desktop/Downloadable in the 2016 Games Connection Development Awards taking place in two weeks! I will be at Games Connection demoing the game in the Awards Pavilion if anyone wants to stop by and say hello. There is a shuttle there from GDC.

I have recently completed a demo that I'm pretty proud of as well! You can try out a copy for Windows or Mac right now by clicking here.

So the game is releasing on Steam in less than a month. March 29th, just after Easter. I'm pretty nervous. I haven't gotten a lot of coverage on games sites, but that's to be mostly expected as an unknown indie dev I suppose. Hopefully things go well

Here's a new gif for you all! Troll boss. Don't worry there are 27 bosses, so I don't feel like I'm spoiling too much.

I also wanted to talk a little bit about AI. I was recently having trouble with my simpleton flyer AI getting snagged on walls. I had talked previously about how I use the last *seen* position of the player as a target for this particular AI, but I never implemented any path finding. This AI isn't supposed to be *that* smart. What I've done however seems to work really well, so I will try to explain it a bit here.

So this flyer AI flies toward a target. It's pretty simple in that respect. When it hit a wall however, it got snagged and stopped or slowed down a lot (and also looked silly doing it). So I started using a little linecasting to help. I cast a line from the AI towards the target at a distance of about one unit. If I get a hit against a platform, I figure out what the reflection vector is. From the target vector and the reflection vector, I can find the halfway vector between the two, which should be a vector that is parallel to the surface that my linecast hit. Using this as the new direction instead of just trying to keep going towards the target, means the AI will slide along the wall at full speed instead. This usually means it will end up finding it's target again, and head towards it once there is no wall in between. It's not perfect, but as I said, this is one of the first AIs you encounter, and it's not supposed to be *too* smart. Here's a small scribble to illustrate what I am talking about.