64Digits

DSR Log #3

Posted by Mega on May 5, 2016, 5:08 a.m.

I actually remembered to write this on my own this time, kept notes since last week's blog to summarize my work a bit better.

Also, for some random reason, Chrome wants to auto-fill the Blog Entry text box with my post-code.

Thanks to SpectreNectar for pointing out a way to do this. Took a bit of tweaking to get things feeling responsive, but the system I have is now based on velocity, force and friction instead of per-frame pixel movements.

Much difference from what I had before? Not massively; it's still responsive, though there is now a bit of notable momentum when stopping from full-speed or a dodge, and there's a bit of apparent easing when you start moving from a standstill.

Kinda hard to show it, but let's just say "it's there".

Had to re-implement my dodge mechanic in a bit of a different way to fit this system, but that's all done. Added in 'backsteps' while I was at it: if you're not holding a direction and dodge, the character will dodge backwards.

I also added 'running', but didn't like the feel (You'll basically be spamming run all the time, so may's well make that slightly higher speed the base speed or a permanent upgrade that doesn't effect stamina usage).

I decided I wanted doors. So I made a couple of doors. They do nothing yet.

While thinking about doors, I started coming up with an idea to 'gate off' rooms behind doors from being visible when outside them.

So I created a little object that I can lay over a room or series of rooms that either draws a rectangle over itself if the player is outside the boundary, or over the 'outer' area of the view if the player is within the boundary.

Here's a gif of it in action:

Most of my slated work for the next couple of months is going to be art related. I have 14 visually distinct areas I want to work in to the game, each with their own unique tiles and decorations.

The first area is a "Forest on a mountainside", and I got started on a bit of groundwork yesterday.

I'm not 100% happy with my trees, I kinda feel like I might just make them extremely tall, make the player feel dwarfed by them. Will tweak over time.

Something I'm doing as part of each area is creating a set of visual 'decorations'. For this forest, I want little environmental things like the occasional firefly floating around, leaves falling gently to the ground, long grass blowing in a breeze, that kind of thing. Adding even one or two little details like that can make a game seem much more alive than it would be without them.

Not the greatest amount of tangible progress, I'll admit. A lot of my week has been spent working on the design of the game, sitting with pen and paper and fleshing out ideas, discarding ones that won't work or won't be fun, coming up with concepts for bosses and areas… a lot of that kind of thing that might never see the light of day, depending on what I cut later on.

Speaking of cuts, I've decided to cut a few features from the original design in order to make things more workable:

> Change players appearance based on equipped armor pieces

- Instead of doing this, I'm allowing the player to find and equip whole armor

'sets' that change the appearance of the entire sprite. This is a bit easier to

code, and allow me to maintain fine control over the visual appearance of

armor.

> Create complex weapon system for both player and enemies

- I wanted a "do it all" system for players and enemies to use any weapon I added

to the game. Good idea on paper, silly idea in the implementation.

The player definitely uses weapons, and there I can use a template system of sorts

to allow for various weapons to be picked up, equipped and used…

But monsters for the most part use attack patterns: Specific series of animations,

movements and decisions coupled with visual effects to pull of an attack. They're not

"using weapons" so much as they're "inflicting damage". It's easier for me to just

leave that system as-is, and keep the weapon system on the player side.

And that's about it. My next week is probably going to involve a lot of visual work, things like weaponry, an enemy or two I have planned, effects, tiles… that sort of thing.

I'm seeing a steady stream of progress in this, and I'm hoping to actually have a playable version ready by November; assuming I can keep the pace up in between work.

Comments

aeron 7 years, 11 months ago

Looks fucking great, man. Because I had not kept up with blogs lately, I had to dig to read more and find your prototype. Keep it going and keep posting these updates, it's inspiring.

Nice call on the cuts. There's a place for the do it all weapon system but its not the best for this style. I loved the prototype felt like Castlevania meets Gauntlet meets Binding of Isaac. Having really diverse enemy attacks is a good thing in those games, and unless you're writing a hardcore roguelike or shooter it's better to have an imbalance like that.

Mega 7 years, 11 months ago

Quote:

But speaking of doors these 'ground planar end tiles above the door' in the first shot bothers me:

Me too, don't worry. That entire area, as seen in the prototype, was made up of rapidly re-purposed tiles from another project :P

So nothing that really 'fits' the situation.

Quote:

Aand speaking of tiles I love the new tileset yet think you're right about the trees. They need… something. The grass seems a bit non seamless too.

The grass has two pixels out of place that have been plaguing me since I spotted them yesterday. I'll be working on getting rid of those and making the tiles 'flow' a bit better, then adding in some variations on the grass.

The trees… I'm probably going to redo from scratch. Need to expand my palette a bit and add some contrasting cool colors to make it out of.

Quote:

Looks fucking great, man. Because I had not kept up with blogs lately, I had to dig to read more and find your prototype. Keep it going and keep posting these updates, it's inspiring.

Thanks! Posting these is, in turn, inspiring me to continue working for once :P

Quote:

I loved the prototype felt like Castlevania meets Gauntlet meets Binding of Isaac.

You nailed a few of my inspirations there! BoI's upgrade system is one of my favorites in the genre; I want something similar to it, but at the same time not so over-the-top and unrestricted.

So far I have slated permanent 'stat' upgrades (Things that increase your strengths passively), and equip-able items that provide boosts in other areas (An amulet that makes your attacks fire out a short wave, rings that provide some small amount of health regen, etc, etc).

To keep it simple, I'll probably allow for 3 'artifacts' to be equipped at a time, selectable from the inventory screen, as well as the armor set as mentioned above, and a broad weapon category.

The only thing I'm planning on doing with weapons is basically to have varying 'types': Swords, Axes, Throwing Knives, Spears, Greatswords, Whips, Poleaxes, etc.

Just one 'generic' version of each that you can find scattered through the game, each with slight differences in attack (Spears have long reach but leave you open on the sides, for instance).

A final equipment slot I'm still debating is an "elemental" slot, where you will equip one of several items that can change the type of damage your equipped weapon does (Fire, Lightning, etc…)

I might be testing that after I've implemented status effects (Damage types are already in the subsystem and taken into account).

Mega 7 years, 11 months ago

Just a heads up, there might or might not be a log for a little while. I made a few big design decisions, some of which are going to take a lot of time. One of my decisions as well is regarding the 'story' of the game. Because it isn't exactly a randomly generated experience, I'm crafting the world to suit the story as closely as possible.

And because of that, I want to spoil as little as possible.

The November date is still in effect, but will probably be more along the lines of a second prototype for people to play; I'm actually fully committed to spending a couple of years on this project in order to get it into the best state possible.

This includes quite a lot of legwork, a boatload of artwork and a ton of testing (I will probably release periodic test versions here for people to play with and give feedback on).

There are a couple of things I want to spend extra time "working out". Things like co-op (A feature I've just barely tested but already proves to be fun enough to want to spend the time on), a trimmed down list of RPG stats (Currently a bit too big), a simple skill system (Think Risk of Rain, if you've played that), and a bunch of miscellaneous features.

Another big design decision is, again, the question of whether to keep doing this in Game Maker or not. For all the workarounds I've implemented, all the things I've done differently than I would normally in order to accommodate GM, I'm hitting far too many blocks; many of the things I'm implementing should be a lot easier, but are hindered by GM's object system.

I'm currently evaluating the "cost" of moving the game into another engine, or even just making it straight in C++.

If I do make the move, I've got a plan to keep the ball rolling: I'll split my day into two parts. Mornings for work on the GM version, mostly resource addition and testing of new features. Afternoon for 'porting' into the new engine. I'll probably mention this coming Thursday what my decision ends up being.

Hell, I might just continue the logs, but they will be notably less 'interesting' for a while. I'll probably just post them and keep them off Activity Feed, unless anybody wants to see me writing that kinda stuff.

Weekly logs are pretty handy (They keep me somewhat motivated, gotta keep posting them), but I don't want to clutter the front page :P