Devlog 1: Planning and Getting Our Feet Wet!

Hello everyone!  Thanks for deciding to read the first devlog for Pogo Bouncer, a game coming to iOS and Android devices where you play as the greatest pogo athlete in the world attempting to make his way through some of the most perilous and exciting courses imaginable!  Pogo Bouncer will be a physics-based, platformer style game where the player attempts to navigate through obstacle courses by bouncing on the leg of their pogo stick without smashing their head on the ground or any other terrain.  The game will feature hand-drawn pixel art, easy-to-learn controls, and a small number of long and  thoughtfully designed levels that will feature frequent checkpoints, ensuring hours of entertainment and high replay value.

The dev team for this game will be me, Ho88it (the author of this post), and my brother, who will be helping here and there.  I will be responsible for most of the art and programming for this game.  My brother, meanwhile, will be working closely with me so that he can learn how game development works.  This is a learning experience for him!  We will be developing the game in Game Maker Studio 2 by YoYoGames, using the built-in physics engine, which is itself based on box2d.

We have done some planning for this game, and we have determined a list of features that we want to see in the game.  These include:

• Dynamic, fixture based terrain created using polygon triangulation (so no grid terrain, which is common to most platformers).
• A pogo character that looks like it is really bouncing on a pogo stick (I currently plan to accomplish this using spring-like physics joints!).
• Several thoughtfully designed and unique maps for players to navigate through.
• A shop for players to buy power-ups and other cosmetic/non-cosmetic items.
• A nonintrusive monetization scheme.

Work has already begun on several of these features.  My brother is familiarizing himself with a prototype of this game I made, so hopefully soon, he will be able to get to work on some of the simpler features in the game.  Meanwhile, I have already begun work on the art for the main character.  How does he look? 

Additionally, I have begun doing some research on what I think will be the most difficult aspect of this project, the dynamic, smooth terrain generation.  There are three things that need to happen for this feature to become a reality within the game.

1. Firstly, I need to be able to draw/create the terrain in shapes suitable for each of the levels.
2. Then, I need to break the shape created for the terrain up into triangles to create physics fixtures.  I need to do this because physics fixtures in Game Maker Studio 2 are required to be convex shapes, and triangles are always convex.
3.  Finally, I need to figure out a way to texture the terrain so that the levels look nice.

 Fortunately, I have discovered solutions for the first two steps.  For number one, I can use Game Maker's Path object to store all the vertices in the terrain.  And for the second, I have discovered a polygon triangulation algorithm that seems simple and good enough for my needs.  It is called ear clipping (see a demo here).   

What do you think of this game idea?  Do you have any ideas/recommendations for how it can be made better?  Feel free to let me know.  Additionally, if you are interested in keeping a closer eye on the development of this project, or if you want to be involved in testing later on down the line, feel free to reach out!  I may create a discord server so that interested people can keep an eye on this game, let me know if you are interested.  Thank you so much for reading!

- Ho88it