Swing Batta Batta

Here are the basic attack sequences for the spider. This gives him something to do that will keep the players cautious.

I added some blur frames to the boss' drop in sequence so when he appears he can be scaled as though he is flying past the camera.

We did try this in Stencyl however, and it didn't quite work with the scaling code so I'll have to animate a shrinking fall animation separately. Ah well. Something to keep me busy for the two week faff...

Just So... Angry

And we have ourselves an anger cycle;

If we do things Crash Bandicoot style and have it that you have to evade his attacks in three stages, each stage could be marked by playing this sequence. It may pay to figure out a way to make his glow more red each time so the player knows they are making some form of progress.
Today Chris and I tested the animations to see if they looked just as good when the sprites are shrunk to half the size when saved from photoshop and scaled in Stencyl. Our aim was to make it so Stencyl could handle importing them easier, and so far they look pretty good. Whether or not this will translate to the projector screens as smoothly is yet to be tested.

Suddenly... Spiders

Hopefully when this happens the kids will be like "oh snap". What do you call a steampunk spider anyway? A "stunker"? "Spunker" just sounds dirty.
Anyway, here is the laugh loop;

This can be used as a taunt between attack cycles and after his drop-in animation.

The Spider Goes "Buzz"

Here are the most recent sprites I've managed to crank out. The saw is broken into three parts, the middle section being a loop-able set so that the saw can take out a lane for as long as desired.

Saw grind loop

Saw lower

Saw retract

I've also managed to do the drop-in animation for when the boss appears. The initial blur is for him coming in from offscreen. We hope to have the screen shake when he lands to add to the atmosphere.

I plan on having an "anger" animation that plays throughout the fight as you defeat him. I'll probably need to do a death animation as well.

Smashing!

I really should have posted these when I finished them but this weekend has been hectic. I'm actually working on the buzz saw version of this at the moment which will strike down and spin for a while, taking out a lane while it does. The piston would be a relatively simple attack to dodge on its own but when combined with others it could become quite challenging.
As far as other concepts go with Soul Furnace, I'm considering alternative ways we can utilize the souls collected from the level prior. One idea in particular that I like is the player is able to move on to the boss once they have collected 100 souls. These souls could then become the player's health for the boss encounter. Each hit the boss delivers deals damage that removes a certain amount of souls that the player cannot recover. Once they are out of souls they have to restart the level. Whether or not souls appear during the boss encounter is something we'd have to realise through playtesting.

Not so Incy-Wincy

I finished the spider boss today and he looks a little something like this:

Now it's just a matter of animating him. Considering the alternating pistons and saw I was thinking of replacing the saws on his hands with clasps of some sort, almost like pincers. Anyway, this image is just meant to show how he would look as a whole. In reality each arm would also be its own actor, the duplicates just offset by multiples of 60 degrees.

Dissection

Recently I've been working on producing the base of the spider boss whilst partaking in Mark's efforts in sound design. So far what I've managed to produce looks a little something like this:

These of course would be pieced together but I wanted to show the way we intend to construct this metal monstrosity. Each arm would be an individual actor, as would his main body. this means he could rotate to follow Voodude around the map easily enough. Any rotation can be set from the image's centre because all the actors will be drawn relative to the scale of the actual map. Each arm will be easy to animate because I'd only need to do it once, then it's just a matter of duplicating the actors with code.
With these images up it is also easier to comprehend my earlier comments about the boss making cameos. The first time he appears only one of his arms would be attached and he could attack the player in a basic motion then leave. On his next assault he has two arms available to make things more complicated under the player finally collects enough souls to encourage his final form (refrained from making a Dragonball Z reference). From this point onwards the boss would be the only thing on-screen and upon his defeat the player wins the game.