things are pretty much ready for rounding beta tests.

Right now i'm primarily looking at having Sunloft City beta tested while I work on the second level alpha.
I've got a text file full of all the bugs people find and I'm correcting em one by one (this includes things that don't work, seem clunky, areas that don't run well, and even parts that aren't fun or interesting).

if you wanna help, send me a PM and i'll keep an up-to-date build of the current beta level in your in-box! just make sure to let me know about any and all problems you encounter! thanks!

-Xiphon

here's a rough cut of Sunloft, it's not fully tested, there's one known jumping bug where your jump power doesn't appear to carry over, it seems to fix if you get hit or double jump, i'm working it out.

http://www.newgrounds.com/dump/item/b9 d34024b91665a12de91dfdba836d21

Everything's smoothed out, all the jumps, attacks, everything.

The game's even a bit easier to design, though i'm taking more care of it this time as far as gameplay matters.

Things you'd notice in an updated version:

Jumps are way smoother, they transition and control much better than before

Backgrounds are more detailed and now will go up and down as well as left and right

Game runs smoother and faster, even in medium - high quality

Players will collide with walls and floors in a much more reasonable manner (you won't ever slightly be inside a wall or floor, for example)

In general all graphics and effects look a bit better / more detailed

Many areas in each level are being revised to be either more fun, make more sense, look better, or run smoother.

HUD has been updated, there is no longer an invincibility in the game

Alcohol power ups now regenerate HP (Some enemies are harder to counter this, for example, the city guards in Sunloft have more HP and knock you back if you try to roll through them)

keys + and - will change quality as well as the interface tool

Canthos can now climb UP walls, (that's correct, you read that right, you are no longer limited in your wall climbing abilities!)

I'll be posting up a demo2 in my dumping grounds and linked to anybody who wants to give it a shot to compare it to the original demo in a few days. It'l just be the first level + first boss again, but you should notice a HUGE difference in gameplay!

kudos

So the entire physics engine is redone and running better than ever. It's smoother, it processes more efficiently, and best of all there's less hit Tests, so that means the game spends less time processing everything.

All of it helps tremendously in the game play department, things like, you actually land on floors, rather than sometimes you land a little inside of them. The same goes for walls and cielings. you will always collide perfectly with all surfaces, and it makes the game a lot less jumpy.
Where am I going from here?
well, I have to redesign the levels a bit, this isn't anything really serious, though it will take some work.
I have to do this because the new engine doesn't run the best with the existing levels. for the most part it's ok, but there's places where levels are now impossible, or to easy. (for example, Canthos can now climb UP walls, as well as slide down them, forcing me to rethink a bit how things are mapped out)

As well as the redesigning, I'm implementing a bit of "new technology" into the game that simplifies objects that are off-screen. This means those fans in sun-loft will stop spinning if your not looking at them, meaning flash is no longer animating it, and there's no longer any hit tests or code to worry about in it till you get close enough.
This means that the game can now run about 50 times better than it did before, in fact you may not notice any slowdown at all, unless your computer is absolute CRAP.

that's all for Canthos news for now folks, stay tuned.

Ok so...
I've been working on the Canthos control scheme here, and I know people said that it needed to be better (though, thinking about it now, nobody really mentioned a good way to change it, or what to make it to)

I've tried remapping movement to ASDW for jumps and left and right, to make way for the mouse to control the grapple, but this locks your left hand to just controling left and right, there's a LOT of left and right running in this game. People were saying make UP to jump, but that's also hard to control because you have to hit up + down to do slams, and than UP = wall jumping? that seems a bit odd, i want to press up to climb UP walls, not jump off of them to the side, it doesn't really make any sense.
This also means that other convinient keys near ASDW that people said would be great to use as attack and grab controls really can't be used anyway. Q,R,F,V, and R, though near enough for my pointer finger to hit conviniently, mean i HAVE to stop pressing A or D to press, essentially i have to stop running or moving to grab or attack anything, which i'm gonna say it, is pretty retarded. And i aint makin no retarded games...

That said, i'm re-mapping controls back to their original state. I'm making LEFT and RIGHT to run left or right, DOWN to crouch, UP to stand. SPACE is jump and double jump, and CTRL is attack. the only key i'm probably gonna remap is Grapple, since pressing shift a bunch causes issues on windows.

ok, so the new canthos engine is running real well so far. all floors and wall interactions are perfect (you no longer can push into walls or floors by moving to fast for example. they just block you indefinately) and things are cleaned up real nicely. when you fall now, you fall in an arc starting at a 0 fall speed, so it's more realistic, and less bouncy. Next i'm going to be working on jumping and cieling interaction, and eventually the grapple manuever.

I'm remapping the controlls to - A, D to move left and right, S to crouch, W to jump, Space to attack, and MOUSE to aim and shoot the grapple.

I'm also implementing a system of code that unloads movie clips that aren't on the screen, so the game should run about 50x faster, even on slow machines. that means you can watch all the artwork on the highest settings!

I'm working on Canthos in some great detail here.

Essentially I'm going over what must be a year's worth of coding (yeah, almost a year and a half that I think about it) to retool the game a bit. I want Canthos to feel less slippery and all the such.

So I'm going through the whole game manuever by manuever, line by line and re-organizing and reworking how i've done a lot of stuff.

This should probably take a month or two I'm sure, but in the end the game should float like a new balloon.

Starting us off, RUNNING.
I'm looking at how Canthos interacts with basic floors and walls. I'd like to work in diagonal surfaces as well and just pull the whole game away from using hit tests to record when Canthos is on the ground or up against a wall. It's just a nightmare to work with as it is. I'm taking comments and advise.
If you'd like to try it, go take a look at my newest submission and give me your thoughts and input.

I'm still alive and working on shit,
things are just, as always, taking longer than expected. Canthos is up to 3 levels finished and the rest are all about 70% of the way done. 2 bosses are done, a third is about halfway done, and the other 4 I need to work on.
Altogether i'd say it's sitting around 75% finished

Legends of the Black is nearly finished, with maybe a couple weeks of work ahead, I have to go lypsync the whole thing and find someone to write the soundtrack of course, man i'm way to busy these days.

If anyone's ancy on progress, well, I want to post a demo or something somehow, maybe i'll put it in the dumping grounds or something and link people to it through a news post.
If you wanna hear some of the music for Canthos, check out Cazok, he's the one writing it and doing a stellar job. Check out the newest track (the 12th one written so far for the game)
http://www.newgrounds.com/audio/listen /325666

I finished work on "Sarrina" who is the primary antagonist and villain in Canthos Adventures. It's a she! and believe it or not, the first woman i've ever drawn from pure imagination (I drew part of trinity once for my part in the Matrix has you again, but i was closely basing it off of a figurine i had a picture of, so it doesn't count)

I think it came out pretty well, a few people say she's a bit butch, but I had intended that as she's supposed to be like queen bitch supreme bounty hunter chick who hates all men.

We are 2 lines away from having the biggest scene of Legends finished. We did some math and it's about 1/3 of the entire movie, and has some of the more complicated effects. Now that it's out of the way it's smooth sailing from here, well, mostly anyways.

The art and animation are actually improving as we go, I suspect this is because we're getting better at working together in our group and plotting things out as we do them.

I still can't say much yet except i'm planning to soon release a trailor that will preview some of the animation techniques and art to at least give people an idea of what to expect.

I'll throw up a screenshot below of an area in the movie called "The Pinnacle of Doom" which is the mountain apon which they find the book that releases the ominous villain that plagues our heroes through the rest of the trilogy.
If your unsure what that means, go watch the original, the plotlines of the first movie are pretty similar.