Industrious Flair's New Aspects

Hey everyone. Firstly, don't get too excited because this is not a post revealing a new playable demo. That will come soon! But until then, I thought I should write something here for the poor people who, for some reason, still check back expecting news... Well, here's a post for you people. And yes, we are still working on Industrious Flair. In fact, unless we directly state otherwise, we will still be working on it until it's finished, even if months go by without any word from us. Amazing... So first, check out the new update video below if you haven't already seen it.

Things look different, right? One of the major changes was actually to Rust, the playable character.

His color scheme and design was updated to help him stand out better, and it just looks better in general. He's got metal boots now which gives his legs more definition.

The biggest thing, however, is the aspect ratio change. In pixels, it used to be 480x360, but now it's 480x270. Yeah, this means it's technically smaller, but it's the same width. So really, it's chopping off unnecessary vertical space and "zooming" in the "camera". This also removes black bars when the game is full screen, at least on most modern displays.

This is how it looks now.

This is how it used to look.

There are some changes to the game mechanics as well. If you remember, we had given Rust a dash ability, but it was very limited. It worked like Megaman X, where you only go fast for a short while until you have to tap the button again. Well, now it's more of a run button. Think: Super Metroid, Donkey Kong, Mario, etc... As long as you're holding the button down, Rust will dash. Double tapping either direction works as well. 

He's got a new animation to go along with this, of course. He used to just awkwardly slide along the ground in a single frame pose. Now he starts sprinting at full speed, which looks intense in motion (see above video).

Another thing that was relatively new was wall jumping. It felt kinda flimsy because you couldn't grip and slide along walls, so you just fell down the side. Well, that's not right, so now Rust positions himself correctly and falls slower as long as you're holding the direction of the wall. It feels way more solid this way.

You can also shoot from this position which should be handy.

Alright, now apparently the game didn't have a gimmick, and people love gimmicks (they won't stop asking for them!), so here's the gimmick. Rust has a gun, right? Well it's not just any gun, it's an Adaptability Blaster (or whatever). Instead of only being able to shoot normally, you can insert different Adaptability Chips that change the way the gun shoots. Rust finds these chips throughout the game from NPCs, shops, or in hidden areas. Here are some of those chips in action:

This is the standard chip. It's what you start the game with. You're limited to 3 shots on screen, and each one does 4 damage.

This is the liquid fire chip. It shoots rapidly as long as you're holding down the shoot button, but the first bullet doesn't go very far, and each successive bullet travels farther until it reaches the max distance. (What, it's not a Mighty Switch Force 2 knock off, those bullets are blue!). These only do 3 damage each. And each bullet takes away one energy point, and if it reaches 0, you have to wait. It recharges as long as you're not shooting.

This is the mega triple chip. It shoots 3 powerful shots, with the biggest doing 24 damage. And it powers through walls and enemies, unlike the others. The catch is that after firing, you must wait for its energy to refill back to 100. This only takes a few seconds, but not being able to shoot is a huge drawback, so you're encouraged to use your sword in the meantime (you'll always have your sword ready no matter which blaster chip you use), or switch to a different chip. By the way, switching chips is as easy as pressing one button at any time.

This one has to be the coolest chip. They're like little buzz saws that travel along the ground, building up speed as they go. Walls are no problem, as they'll just climb up those. Also, they deal 6 damage each, making them quite useful (see above video for the sick strats you can do with them).

This one is kind of silly. It's basically a popcorn chip. Each shot only deals 1 damage... Wow, that sucks! But wait, if it splits open before contact, it creates 3 "popcorn" pieces that deal 4 damage each. And each of those pieces randomly bounce around until they hit something. So as you'd expect it can be pretty powerful, but because of how random it is, it can also be slow and weak. But whatever, it's popcorn, so that's cool.

Hey, you probably want to see some random screenshots.

This is Flair's Base. It serves as the game's central hub, so you'll go to all the other major areas from here.

These shots below are all from the newest area we started working on. It's Industrious Flair's obligatory "snow level".

 Damn, that aurora is huge!

 

All these face sculptures are made by the native people, based on a crash landed InfiniSpark robot that they found long ago, and worship because they don't know any better. Haha.

Basically we're trying to finish this place, and have that done for a new playable demo, in addition to all this other stuff, and more (Making a competent pause menu is one thing. Oh yeah, and the entire text system had to be re-coded from scratch, allowing characters to still animate while text is on screen.). So it's taking time, but Industrious Flair continues to improve in almost every way as we understand more and more about making games. Thanks to all of you who still stop by to read these updates, whoever you are.