Little Ninja: Retaking the Game Engine

• By Yuan Works
• 26 February, 2013
• 10 Comments

Hi everyone, welcome back to the Yuan Works DEV blog! ^^

We are slowly bringing Little Ninja back on his feet, as well as our GameDev blog, with information of what’s happening behind the scenes.

Regarding some questions you may have or that we usually get asked a lot (IE: “Will this game run on my favorite console”, or, “Is Little Ninja your next big project?”), we’ll be addressing them at the end of this post. For now, on to the Engine!

Game Engine update, and a new member in our team!

One of the most important aspect of a good platformer is how smooth it is played, as you may remember in previous posts, mechanics like running, sliding, double jumping, and wall hanging were pretty much functional. However, physics and collisions were temporarily implemented just for the Ninja itself, so adding a new enemy or player would mean having to program each of them separately.

The solution was to start working on a solid Physics and Collisions Engine, which programmer Alejandro Di Mare, is currently working on. He’s working on game mechanics and general development too, but as for now this is one of our priorities, while I (Yuan-Hao) will be working on tools and editors, as well as porting old tools from Wind and Water to Little Ninja.

Anyway, we’ll be posting with more details on that later :) Here’s a short video of Little Ninja’s new collisions as well as the Map Editor. Jumping physics have been improved too:

Old collisions have been removed for now, but the new ones will work with all sprites, so as soon as it’s done, adding enemies and real gameplay will be quite easy!

What about the graphics?

Speaking of enemies, Yuan-Hsi decided that a Ninja without a Nemesis is not a real ninja! So here’s some WIP of a new sprite:

Graphics are not as important for now, as the three of us are more focused on engine and gameplay mechanics, but it’s always a treat to get a hang of the look and feel :)

Future of Little Ninja

For some time now, we’ve received some questions regarding Little Ninja, as well as a lot of support from fans. Thanks! It’s actually your support that got us back into working on Little Ninja, and what will shape its future!

Will Little Ninja run for  [ insert your favorite console here ] ?

Little Ninja technically run on whatever Wind and Water worked for, as we are using the same architecture. So that means: Windows, Linux, Dreamcast, and Linux-based portable devices like Pandora and the GCW. Technically…!

Yay! So will it be released for my [beloved console] !

That’s a whole different story! =D Each different release needs a lot of work, testing, and porting. For example, W&W’s Dreamcast manual was 50 pages long, and designing the whole packaging took a long time! The game was also translated 100% to Japanese.

Wind and Water’s packaging for Dreamcast

We’re not even sure if it’s going to be our big project or if it’s going to get released — we’re not thinking about that yet, it’s too early for that!

So why don’t you guys Kickstart or open preorders or do some funding? What about newer systems?

When W&W was released, things were different! Android was not so popular, Steam was not as big as it is now, and Kickstarter probably didn’t exist.

We’re aware of all the options, but to tell the truth, we enjoy the process of making games — we love making them, even though there are hardships to endure.

Little Ninja is on a very early stage of development, and we wanna show you guys more of Little Ninja, and think less about how we’re gonna make it happen.

Let’s worry about making a fun game, all we ask from you guys is your support and feedback! This will all shape up the future of Little Ninja – let us know what you think, share it, follow Yuan Works on Facebook, we’re retaking our Twitter account, and if you blog about us, don’t forget to let us know! (English, Español, 中文, 日本語, Italiano, un peu de français, or any other language we don’t speak is fine!)

Updates will be coming, and thanks for reading!