Although I didn't have much time to work on the game today, I've fixed a few issues with the save/load system and moved on with the story. I have to fix some little thing regarding bullets as well and think about a way to make the story system more flexible.
Currently working on: Continuing the story, working on saving/loading
Time spent on the project so far: 75 hours
Screenshot 16 after the jump: The plot thickens
I'm still moving forward with the meat of the game, the actual moving around and the building blocks of the story and the setting. Right now I still only have a wire-frame of what the story is, but as I'm thinking about neat systems to implement and other things, new ideas come for what the characters should be like and how it fits in my original ideas.
I want 100RTBD to have a big story made from bits and pieces you'll pick up here and there, I want the gameplay to feel deep enough for such a game and robust to stand the test of of playability, more than my other games. It's a big goal, and I'll keep at it.
Currently working on: Continuing the story, refining the way enemies spawn
Time spent on the project so far: 74 hours
Screenshot 14 and 15 after the jump: A new type of enemy and the stat screen
I've decided to place static spawn points for my enemies, meaning that they'll always spawn in a few specific points on the different maps, I have also made it so they don't pop in immediately, dealing damage to the player without them having time to react. I also created multiple sets of spawnpoints in a specific map so different enemies will have different spawning zones.
Now the player can properly get hurt and lose durability - but not die, yet - also you can accumulate experience - but not enough to level up yet - and I keep on plinking at the huge map of mostly custom rooms I will have to make myself. About 5 / 1000 done!
Currently working on: Improving the way enemies spawn, continuing the story
Time spent on the project so far: 72 hours
Screenshot 12 and 13 after the jump: Enemies spawning and spawn point placement
Not much to talk about today, I've implemented a way to spawn enemies in the map and continued the way through the game. I've decided to remove the 'Data' tab I was going to put in, which would've shown you data like the steps you've took and the number of times you've shot, it's kinda useless. The data that will be useful for achievement purposes will be shown in the achievements proper.
I have to fix a few bugs with the map and things, but it's still going smoothly!
Currently working on: Continuing the story
Time spent on the project so far: 70 hours
Things are going smoothly! There is a main menu for your stats and things needs, the game also is now automatically saved every time you transition from one room to another, which is cool! It means I don't have to see the whole game everytime I playtest it. I am working on numerous systems right now and while I'm still not churning rooms like crazy, I have progress in other spots.
Maybe my main menu (with your stats and things) is too busy, but that doesn't concern me too much right now, I love the multi-box aesthetic I have here in my current GUI.
Currently working on: Main menu stuff, changing the cutscenes and story
Time spent on the project so far: 68 hours
Screenshot 10 and 11 after the jump: Quit menu and new intro cutscene version
Didn't do much today, again because of outside annoyances. I started the main menu and worked a bit on the continuation of the game in that room.
Currently working on: Making the main menu
Time spent on the project so far: 63 hours
Screenshot 9 after the jump: Main menu skeleton
Not much done today either, too much stuff that prevented me from working on the game. I've still added a knockback system and a way for the player to get hit, it's something..
Currently working on: Adding player vulnerability, continuing the story, adding the experience system
Time spent on the project so far: 62 hours
Screenshot 9 after the jump: Getting knocked back
Not much to show today, I just re-worked how my monsters would work and how guns/bullets works. I didn't work much either because of distractions at home. Still, now my little worm monster things shoot bullets too and I won't have to copy/paste my code in each monster subclass.
I also changed the way the dialog boxes work, instead of pressing 'shoot' to go through them, now you press 'down', the down key isn't used anywhere else and while it feels a bit weird at first, it'll help the players not shoot past some dialogue ;)
Currently working on: Improving the enemies and dialog system
Time spent on the project so far: 61 hours
Although I'm changing a few story bits here and there, I still am following my initial design document. What I didn't expect was how everything would 'unlock' progressively through the first few screens of the game, as in, I thought initially that you would start with your gun and all of the menus unlocked. It now seems to me that it's best to give some of it over time and now I have to think of things I hadn't planned
Such as: If I want the player to kill two enemies in order to act as a 'shoot enemies' tutorial, I have to 'force' the player to do so in a way that doesn't seem contrived. In this case, I've decided to block the path down with some C6-able rubble that will clear conveniently out after the player dispatched the two helpless enemies.
Currently working on: Making the gun and the enemies work, continuing the story
Time spent on the project so far: 60 hours
Screenshot 8 after the jump: Shooting an OctoBot
It's amazing how fast you can create things with Unity, well anyways, it didn't take me too long to set up the bases for my GUI, my minimap, the way the item system would work, how my character would interact with things, how cutscenes would work, etc. It's way more convenient to make all rooms of my game actual scenes so I can split the functions in their proper boxes without mixing everything around.
Of course, it's taking me way more time to make these first rooms than it'll take me for the rest of the game, after a while I'll be just making content and the core systems will be done. But while I'm working on them, I'm of course trying to make the game feel good and fun as quickly as possible. The game is getting built as it goes and I'm pretty excited to continue tackling new systems over time!
Currently working on: Creating the GUI, the map, the guns, the enemies and the story beats
Time spent on the project so far: 58 hours
Screenshot 6-7 after the jump: Shooting around and minimap
Creating an introduction cutscene wasn't too bad. Creating a simple-ish spaceship, adding the characters, moving background, then text, dialogue, events happening and everything coming together for the actual start of the game. You can probably figure out how it goes!
Currently working on: Created the intro cutscene
Time spent on the project so far: 50 hours
Screenshot 5 after the jump: Some text from the intro!
Today I spent it mostly making the main menu and the control screen but also reorganizing my assets and trying out new ways to instantiate them in different scenes and things like that. Prefabs, you know! I wanted to put a little bit of animation into that main menu so here are characters randomly falling around. It's the Security Seven, yeah!
Currently working on: Coding the main menu
Time spent on the project so far: 48 hours
Screenshot 3-4 after the jump: Main menu and controls
Although I had a rough day at work today I also managed to complete some tutorial I've seen online - without following it properly, as I tend to do - and now I have a little character that runs, jumps and bumps against things. I also have started the basic door system for my game and am thinking about the UI and things like that.
Next step would be to make a proper menu before you start playing and then start the story and think about how I'm going to make this work. I'm thinking about a vast list of boolean switches.
Currently working on: Coding various things
Time spent on the project so far: 46 hours
Screenshot 2 after the jump: Work In Progress on the first room of the game
I've started programming! Looking at some tutorials here and there on the best practices for unity 2d programming. I have to say that using animators and animations and conditions and things like that only to flip between two frames is kinda silly but I suppose it's better than to do it like I used to - by keeping which frame I should render in code and check every frame to draw the right one
I hope the assets I've salvaged are going to be enough for me to make the game fun and make it the way I want. Programming abilities are a big part of what I'll be able to do, of course, but I don't want to compromise too much on my vision
Currently working on: Started to code!
Time spent on the project so far: 45 hours
Screenshot 1 after the jump: Work In Progress - Very humble starts
I've been spending the last three hours on this project working on editing and moving sprites around to get the kind of things I'll need for my game. I'm quite grateful for the free sprite packs you can get online, but the fact that they're not exactly fitting with my game only forces me to use my imagination and make approximate representations of the things I need. No computers in the sprite packs? I'll use a window and some metal block and stick them together, no biggie!
I think that I'm almost done with the 'obvious' spritework I can do right now, I'll have to start programming soon, it doesn't mean I'll be done with the sprites, but it's going to be something to look at while the game is being made and evolving.
Currently working on: Editing sprites
Time spent on the project so far: 44 hours
I've decided to push the programming part a bit further and work on modifying my sprites and grouping my assets in folders to further use. Maybe it's a bit overkill at this step of the project, but I want all my resources to be ready to go when I decide to start coding. Which should be in a couple of days, but still, gotta make these sprites black and white and stuff!
Currently working on: Working on organizing assets
Time spent on the project so far: 41 hours
I took a good look at all I had written in my design doc, and I think that there's enough stuff here to make a cool videogame. Sprites, music and other FX are probably not going to be what I had in mind when I started this project, but I'll still do what I can with the assets I have. In any case, changing sprites during production is possible and not too difficult.
Instead of starting to program right away, I've been working on splitting the huge sprite pool that I have in multiple folders to divide them well between enemies, items, hud elements, maps, etc. etc. It's going to take a while to do that too. I have to tweak most sprites in order to at least bend them a little to my vision.
Currently working on: Working on organizing assets
Time spent on the project so far: 39 hours
Today I worked on completely adding all the remaining items, skills, boss fights, achievements and much more. I try to make things that are going to be do-able in Unity, but it's a bit difficult to know beforehand how it'll go. Achievements are always cool so I'm trying to think of a bunch of different ones the player will be able to get. Items are also interesting to design because some are upgrades of others while there is also a spot for unique game-changing pieces of gear.
The next step is probably going to be reviewing all of my design docs and then start programming! Yay!
Currently working on: Creating items, gear, enemies, bosses and achievements
Time spent on the project so far: 38 hours
As I looked at the assets I could manage to pick in these art packs, I have to come to the conclusion that I won't be able to do everything i had in mind on day one. If I want to use art that looks good and coherent together, I won't be able to do things such as showing your equipped gear on your character, nor will every gun look different. They are not really things that would break how the game plays and feel, of course. I'm thinking about taking Hero Core music, it's always been some of my favorite tunes.
Here's a sprite I think I'll use as our main character, Admiral A! He kinda looks like a Starmen, doesn't he? All the characters are robots/aliens in this game.
Currently working on: Creating items and gear
Time spent on the project so far: 35 hours
I was looking at sprite packs today, mostly because I know my drawing talents are very bad and if I want this game to at least look and 'feel' good, it needs to have good sprite art in some capacity. Basic shapes and characters made out of four blocks stacked on top of each other wouldn't work at all. It's not like I have a thousand choices, the biggest problem with choosing the good sprite resources is that they need to 'fit' together. I need something big enough so mostly everything I could want for my game would be in there, because if there's stuff missing, I would have to make them myself and try the best I could to mimic the style of that other stuff.
I've arrived at two ideas, either this sprite bundle thing, which costs something and would probably be lacking in some areas - although it probably has a lot of what I need - that I would have to work at myself - and this idea horrifies me - or go with this other pack of sprites that would be easier to mix and match and make more myself - their style is way simpler and cleaner.
In any case, I'll probably go with the second choice. Today I've worked on fleshing out my enemies and the items in the game and it's going quite well, that being said I'm not ready to add numerical values to anything yet.
Currently working on: Searching for art, creating items, enemies and skills
Time spent on the project so far: 33 hours
