Pajamorama Update!

New Pajamorama update is live!

http://marketplace.xbox.com/en-US/Product/Pajamorama/66acd000-77fe-1000-9115-d80258550924

If you already own Pajamorama, this update will automatically install the next time you start the game.

The fixes are all under the hood, mostly several stability and performance issues.  Special thanks goes out to everyone who helped bring these problems to my attention, including @tmpgoti and @BigAndiD!  Also special thanks to the Gaming Society at University of Oklahoma, who found a few bugs during their Pajamorama tournaments.  How cool is that?

Also, I’m still hard at work on my next game, Cheerzerkers!  I’ve got nearly ALL the code done, but none of the content.  There’s not a lot to show yet, but I think it’s gonna be REALLY fun.  If you like Pajamorama, you’re gonna love it

Cheers!

Cool article about “genre addiction”

I was reading this article today on Lost Garden and it really struck a nerve.

http://lunar.lostgarden.com/essay_genreaddict.htm

I was really reminded of 2d fighting games

Projectile-Projectile collision in fighting games

Had an interesting question come up the other day about fireballs in 2d fighting games, and specifically what happens when fireballs collide with each other.  Here’s the scenario:

Two players are facing off from across the board.  Both players throw projectiles at the same time.

The two projectiles collide in the middle of the room and cancel each other out.  Both players are back to the same situation.

OR…

The projectiles DON’T collide and pass through each other.  Now each player has to react to the other character’s fireball.

Some games do option 1, some do option 2.  Option 1 sounds like it might be more interesting because the extra defensive capability of the fireball can be used to balance long ranged vs close ranged characters.  Option 2 sounds like it might be more interesting because it adds another level of complexity if the characters have different speeds/strengths of projectile.

Option 1 seems like a bad idea because all these fireballs cancelling each other out will slow down the pace of the game.  Option 2 seems like a bad idea because if one character has a better ranged attack in a matchup, it makes sense to play “spammy”.

Maybe it would be fun if a game used a combination of the two?  Like some characters have projectiles that will block other one, or some characters have projectiles that will pass through other ones?  Maybe a EX fireball always blasts through a regular fireball, but a super always blasts through an EX?

Anyway, I thought this was an interesting game design question.  Chime in on the comments if you have any thoughts/feedback/examples about projectile-projectile collision in fighting games.  Cheers!

Pajamorama 1.1 Update

Hey yall!  The Pajamorama 1.1 update has been submitted for peer review:

http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/t/87866.aspx

 

I’m super excited about this update, the trial mode should be a lot smoother experience and the gameplay should be much crunchier.

There are a ton of improvements in this update:

 

-Game is much faster

-characters do more damage

-minor balancing (Olive and Apple slightly nerfed, Sashimi and Merlot slightly buffed)

-Tutorial available on main menu

-Better level select menu

-All players now have 3 lives with a 3 minute time limit to games

-AI is significantly harder

-fixed Apple throw

-fixed high jump

-mutliplayer improvements, including potential crashes and (hopefully) lag fixes

 

Make sure to follow me on the twitters @the_dannobot for updates when the new version goes live.

I’ve got a bunch 0f codes left too, holla if you are games press or run a blog or whatever.  I’ll hook you up if you want to do a review or giveaway or whatever.

Cheers!

 

 

Pajamorama: Advanced combo techniques

Hey yall!  Here’s some details about the combo engine in Pajamorama.  You may have noticed it is really easy to do combos, but when you really know what you’re doing you can do some cool stuff.  You’re gonna need to know all this info if you ever run into me online   If you’ve ever played fighting games before some of these concepts might be familiar, but I’ll try to break it down for new players.

 

So basically, here’s the easy way to do combos in Pajamorama:  Once you hit another character with an attack, start mashing all your attack buttons.  Pajamorama is smart enough to parse through all that input and find something cool for your character to do   Nearly every other fighting game out there requires precise timing and input strings, but Pajamorama is made to be super easy, so I took all that stuff out.

 

So a low level explanation of how that works: whenever the player enters an attack on the controller, it is put into a list in memory.  Every attack in the game has a time gap at the end called a “recovery phase” where the character is no longer attacking or doing anything.  If the attack missed, this is an excellent opportunity for other players to counter attack.  If the attack connected with another character, once the character enters the recovery phase the game will go to that list in memory and check if any attacks in there can be comboed into.   If it finds one, it will “cancel” the recovery phase and go straight into the new attack.  This lets you hit other players with several attacks before they can hit you back.

 

That was super technical!  If you didn’t quite understand that, don’t worry, here’s the part that will make you a better player.  All the characters have the same combo chain.  Any attack can be cancelled into an attack further down the chain:

Quick(X)

Strong(A)

Down+Quick(X)

Down+Strong(A)

Forward+Quick(X)

Forward+Strong(A)

Up+Quick(X)

Up+Strong(A)

Special(Y)

Down+Special(Y)

Forward+Special(Y)

Up+Special(Y)

 

The combo chain is a bit different for each character though.  Most characters can’t combo throws (usually forward+strong), and some characters have special stances that have their own combo chains.  Also the special attacks might be ordered differently between characters.  Usually the character’s projectile attack is at the end of the combo chain.

If that stuff looks too complicated, just try to mash those buttons as fast as possible when an attack hits and you should be able to figure out some comobos by watching what your character does.

Hope this helps your pajamorama skills!  Next I’ll break down each character and their strategies, starting with Apple.

Have a Pajamoramally weekend!  Cheers!

Pajamorama Basics

Hey yall!  So Pajamorama has been out for a few days now, and people have mentioned that there is no in game tutorial explaining all the details of gameplay.  When I was developing Pajamorama, I thought to myself “This game is super easy, I don’t need to put in a tutorial.”  Well, the feedback is in, and I was wrong   I’ll try to dig into some of the details of gameplay, starting with the basics like controls and the combo engine, moving into character strategies and more advanced tactics.

 

First, the goal of this game is to knock the other characters off the board.  You do this by hitting them with attacks or throwing them, which adds to the damage % up in the HUD.  The higher the damage, the farther the character will fly when they are hit.  This might sound familiar, it is very similar to how the smash series of fighting games works.  One of the differences between Pajamorama and Smash is that characters have many more movement options in the air, making recovery much easier.  In fact, if you get knocked underneath the board, every character has at least one attack move that adds enough upwards velocity to pop back up through the floor.

 

Next I’ll explain the controls, which are super easy.  All moves are a direction on the d-pad or left thumbstick, plus one of the face buttons.  The button scheme is as follows:

X: quick attack

A: strong attack

Y: special attack

B: defense

Each attack button has four different attacks:  button with no directional input, forward+button, down+button, and up+button.

All characters have a throw using forward+strong (A).

To block, hold down the defense (B) button with no direction held.  The only way to damage a blocking character is to throw them.

All characters have a forward dodge move that can be used to escape attacks, using forward+defense (B) button.

 

Hopefully these basics will help you out!   Tomorrow I’ll cover the details of the combo engine of Pajamorama.

Cheers!

Hello world!

Welcome to the developer blog for Dannobot Games!  I’ll update this site with news and updates about me and my little games.

 

First off, Pajamorama is finally available on the Xbox Marketplace!!!  Yay!!!  Check out what the reviewers are saying.

While I’ve got your attention, why not go check out Opposites while you’re at it?

 

Cheers!