My goodness, it's been a long while since I updated anything on here, hasn't it?
Nova the Squirrel is
still being developed. I think I have about 7 levels and 4 bosses to make before I think I'm satisfied with the gameplay aspect of things (for a total of 33 regular levels and 7 boss ones), which I expect to be able to finish this year? Though I continually said that the other years too. Really the hardest part throughout the whole game's development has just been level design which pretty much requires me to solve a puzzle in reverse. The remaining levels are mostly action-oriented so that should help a lot. Aspects that don't require a lot of creativity should also be quick.
I
am most likely going to push past 128KB into needing a 256KB cart, but not by much and that'll give me space to play around with just freely adding stuff without caring about size. I have ideas for stuff I'd put in that wouldn't take long, like a level editor, a copy of DABG, concept art, maybe two music banks, etc.
After the gameplay I'm going to want to add a lot more polish and I need to put in a soundtrack and everything. Some of the polish I've been focusing on has been making the game just look better (especially on the first world) so I can convince people to keep playing and get to world 2, where the real fun starts.
I should also think about the eventual cartridge release; I'm gonna have to commission a cartridge label or something at the very least, find a publisher willing to manufacture SNROM carts (and people are insisting on green shells), write a manual...
Level screenshots
I'm adding more tilesets to make the game more visually appealing and I'm trying to add a lot of graphics if I can. These giant trees reuse already existing metatiles which works nicely because I'm not running up against the engine's 256 metatile limit. Though, I have ~50 left anyway, and the game's getting close to done so it won't matter.
A cloud theme for levels that are set up high in the sky.
Animated water. I guess I need to learn how to
draw animated water now, preferably with more than two frames of animation. Maybe other things would make sense to animate?
There's
fake parallax using sprites in some levels too now.
I've also been adding a lot more mechanics like
laser beams that are blocked by obstacles and that act as walls, blocks that can spawn in enemies, and other stuff. There's now a one-per-level collectible that is usually behind some sort of challenge.