Super Toaster X: Learn Japanese

Hi there! I’m Trev!

Sorry to deprive you all of rad Toaster Tunes, but I’ve been in the process of moving my studio, and FINALLY got all the pieces in the right place last night.

As with the STG Theme, I wanted to incorporate some acoustic sounds, so I literally dragged the microphone into the bathroom, and played around with making noise with the sink, a toothbrush, and of course: the toilet.


A lot of great film scores turn sounds into music - go check out the score for 1408. Hopefully soon you’ll all be able to hear me brushing my teeth to the rhythm of the Toilet Guy Stage music!

-Trev







From what I understand, Sahand will need to rewrite part of his code to acclimate other gameplay elements such as slopes and being able to jump off platforms. I don’t know how long before it is implemented. I’m not too bothered however, programming is probably the most up-to-date “department” of the whole game. As usual, a gif will be presented as soon as I have one.


One thing I did, as you’ve already noticed, is to draw some actual banners. I thought the log was lacking in the presentation department. I have yet to do the banner for music (didn't know if I would have any news) and level design. It'll come though.

Ok, so the first thing I did was to redo some animations. I was looking back at some of them and quite frankly I wasn’t happy with them. Not that they looked bad but I just thought I could do better.

The one which was bothering me the most was the shooting animation. The way the back foot was going in reverse when Pan shot was doing my head in. I had tried to do just like in Mega Man but it didn’t look good. So… I changed it. I also tweaked the colors to make the face more readable. There was a lack of contrast between the face and the crust which was making it difficult to see what was going on. I also changed the position of the arm. By putting it a few pixels higher, the body is reading more like a torso than a misshapen form. I fixed a few stray pixels in the reflection of the toaster which were bothering me. I also changed the face animation to make it more dynamic (it only had one expression before). Pan was blinking even was he wasn’t shooting and that didn’t make sense. You blink because of the flash when you fire, if there’s no flash, you don’t blink. I changed the color of the cannon as Pan shot to make it look more interesting to look at. I also added some sparks effect every time a shot is fired like so:




I also re-did the projectile (well I modified it I mean). A member here mentioned that the projectile wasn’t readable because it was too small. I made it bigger and added an outline to the lightning. I also made the ball less static by giving it a different shape in every frame. Sahand had also mentioned that adding some particles in the trail of the projectile would make it look better. I added that too.


So all in all, it looks much better. Took about 2 hours to do.

Another thing I did was to redo Toilet Guy which I renamed Toilet Tank. I think it was quicksand-T who said he liked the concept but thought the boss was too small. Well, looking back, the second version really wasn’t good enough to be in a game and it was indeed very small. I don’t want to show anything just yet because it’s still to WIP but I think it’s much better than before.

Quicksand-T’s suggestion inspired me to exploit the size idea further and make Toilet Tank, well, essentially much bigger than before.

I also gave the boss health bar a shot:



Instead of having “guys” for the bosses I decides to use words which would rhyme.
So far:
Bathroom: Toilet Tank
Garden: Cannibal Charcoal
Playroom: Grim Gambler

Those are subject to change whenever I wish to but I figured I’d talk about the concept of those bosses.

Cannibal Charcoal: essentially a fire based boss. Haven’t determined his attacks yet.

Grim Gambler: a “magician” boss. I want him to use cards for attacks. He would use a variety of cards from a regular deck (aces, jokers, queens and so on…) and each card would have a certain effect. For instance pulling a joker would make him invincible for a period of time, an ace would fire a single energy shot at Pan, etc… There’s plenty of room for creativity here.


This time around, I thought I’d show you where I “work” (work sounds wrong as it’s an enjoyable hobby but anyway):


So just a quick one this time around. Notice the snow on the balcony. This shot was taken at 7:00 am, the days are thankfully getting longer which means no more being engulfed in darkness all the time.

Aaaaaaannnnd that’s it!