Secrets

[michalove]

People requested unlockable costumes. I like the idea of hiding stuff in the levels. As a second layer of player motivation.

• Costumes, skins and hats are an easy way to reward the player. Either we hide these directly in the levels, or we have some sort of coins that unlock costumes (a new costume every 5 coins...)
• Bonus levels: In each world, have one arcade-machine hidden. If the player finds it, he unlocks a bonus level, which is a tribute to known old games. For example the player can play the pac-man level with collecting dots, but instead of being pac-man you play as the ninja (with gravity and everything). Or play through the first level of super mario bros. but as a ninja.

[Germanunkol]

Love the idea. The costumes should probably simply be new images which overlay the same position as the player and are animated in the same way. Then all combinations with the different bandana colors are automatically possible, by simply drawing the ninja first and then the costume.

[michalove]

I like the overlay idea. We might even decompose the whole player image into individual parts (body, arms+legs, eyes, bandana ... ) and put them together in game only. That way, we can generate more possible combination. This would be even more efficient, when we'd use a technique as described here: http://gamedevelopment.tutsplus.com/tutorials/animating-with-asset-sheets-an-alternative-to-blitting--gamedev-2406 I am sort of doing this for the animation of the purple walker enemies, anyway, but by hand. I will think about it, if I can come up with a simple but flexible system for that, without blowing up the project size.