Not much to talk about today, I've made it so you can actually loot items and get them added to your inventory and that it adds another checkbox to the card of that enemy. Cards are used for a few things in 100RTBD but they mostly add flavor to the game. Now onward to creating rooms and things when I get to them!
Currently working on: Advancing the story
Time spent on the project so far: 165 hours
After getting the 13th InfoPack you can backtrack to a door near where you spawned into state-2 in order to get the Lucky Coin. This is one of the various items that allow enemies to drop things and/or increases the drop chance of items if you have others equipped. The lucky coin gives you 2% of getting an item off any enemy. So far all enemies drop basic healing kits because I haven't worked out the distribution of my various items and equipment/guns/gun parts in the world, what's left are probably going to be enemy item drops.
Next thing is going to be... Boss re-matches I guess?
Currently working on: Working on item drops
Time spent on the project so far: 164 hours
Screenshot after the jump: Item dropped
At first I thought all skills were going to be on the same cooldown, but that's a bit silly since using a 600 seconds skill would prevent you from using anything else, forcing the player to wait before they can go fight using their unlocked abilities. Now they all have their own cooldown and I'm saving it because it would be silly for teleport to have a 10m cooldown when you can just save and quit to bypass that.
Currently working on: Making the teleport ability
Time spent on the project so far: 160 hours
The teleportation skill is still a work-in-progress, even in my mind, right now it only warps you to the nearest room with a breakdown pit or a restoration altar you've visited. Eventually it might teleport you more intelligently with some control over where you go. But for a level 1 skill, just moving around might be enough. Especially with the backtracking and all. That being said, I think I'll make it cancellable by moving so you don't teleport by mistake.
Today's screenshot is the edge of the planet! If you jump off, you die for sure, the planet sure seems squared!
Currently working on: Making the teleport ability
Time spent on the project so far: 159 hours
Screenshot after the jump: Void of the planet
Not much to talk about today, that giant fire worm is taking me a few times to kill, but now giant enemies give more enemy kills. They give more experience but only if you still have enemy kills left for that particular enemy.
I really think I should add item drops soon because as-is the game is quite difficult and killing enemies past the 30th one is useless, at least by allowing item drops the player would have a reason to defeat them (besides them getting in its way)
Currently working on: Continuing the story
Time spent on the project so far: 158 hours
I'm keeping at the story, now you can defeat a mini-boss that is a giant worm that shoots flames around and short-range bullets. He's just a bigger version of the generic worm that shoots flames, etc. The next room has two InfoPacks and the teleport ability, so that's gonna take a while!
Currently working on: Continuing the story
Time spent on the project so far: 157 hours
Screenshot after the jump: Giant fire worm
Today I fixed a few bugs, enemies were moving out of bounds and were acting very strangely, this was because the bounds detection was not placed appropriately, I'll know it for the future. I also fixed a bug where the flamethrower stopped shooting when you died/respawned. It was because the flamethrower's flame is attached to the gun and I forgot to set a local scale to the bullets AFTER the gun was set as their parent. Fun stuff!
Currently working on: Continuing the story
Time spent on the project so far: 156 hours
Screenshot after the jump: Fire room
Being on fire now deals 1% damage per second instead of 5% twice per second. The max amount of health you can have is around 1000 so that's ten damage per second, I think it's better that way.
I'm having some issue with the monster behavior, they get stuck in weird places sometimes, I'm going to investigate that more and then I keep going at the story. In about three room the player will find the Teleporting ability which allows it to warp between specific rooms in the game. That will allow easier transportation in the world, which is pretty key in metroidvanias.
Currently working on: Continuing the story
Time spent on the project so far: 155 hours
Now the flamethrower properly deals fire damage and can burn enemies. Enemies suffer from ailments like the player does, but if they get stuck with one of them, it stays until they die. I think I'm going to make burning less damaging for the player since it's so easy to get burned in the fire world. Right now it's 5% remaining health per second? It's a bit much.
Currently working on: Continuing the story
Time spent on the project so far: 153 hours
All enemies now give 1 experience point to a maximum of 30 experience per enemy. Multiplied by 300 enemies it's 9000 experience. There also are 20 bosses worth 50 experience each, that's 10000 right there!
After completing the fire challenge, I did the flamethrower type gun, I still need to make it so fire enemies resist it and enemies can burn because of it, but besides that, I'm happy with how it functions. I'm not sure if it's balanced yet though, since enemies have invulnerability frames when you hit them, it's not like the flamethrower just burns all the time.
Currently working on: Continuing the story
Time spent on the project so far: 152 hours
I'm still conflicted between having different EXP caps for each enemy. I don't really have any good idea as to why it should be that way so maybe I'll just change it so they all give 30 experience max. There are ten ranks of enemies, bosses and giant versions of enemies, I wonder how I should divide the experience from these as well? I suppose that's the core of designing a game.
Also, I've beaten the fire dodging challenge, therefore it's doable.
Currently working on: Continuing the story
Time spent on the project so far: 151 hours
There is plenty to think about, balance-wise, for a game as complex as this. I think I'm going to change the experience curves and formulas so 30 kills of one enemy will be the max needed to get all the experience that enemy can give. I'll have to think about the other ways to split 30 experience - as stronger enemies wont require as many kills. Or maybe they could? It's a thing to think about.
Now I'm at a challenge where you have to dodge flames coming from the ground for 45 seconds. So far I haven't been able to actually beat the challenge, so I might try and make it easier still, or just try again until I get it and see if it's actually fun as-is.
Currently working on: Continuing the story
Time spent on the project so far: 150 hours
Screenshot after the jump: Dodge the fire!
Some items give you buffs, like the Small Overclock - the item I added today - which basically makes your skill cooldown go faster for a short while. There are plenty of buff items in 100rtbd and using them will probably make your job easier. I probably should add some on-screen indication of the buffs you have active too...
Currently working on: Working on buffs
Time spent on the project so far: 147 hours
Continuing the story is easier in known territory, I can copy the scene, change the graphics, change the script, add new enemies, add new elements (fire and such) and boom, new map. As I go along, new things get added to the core mechanics of the game; for instance, by walking through a fire, you can get the Basic Armor, a piece of body gear that raises armor by 1. Since the character doesn't get armor naturally before level 4 or so, I had to code it now. Now you'll take 1 less damage from enemies when you have that thing equipped!
I'm a bit worried about the leveling curve though, I'm at 13 infopacks and I'm only level 3, the infopacks are supposed to gate your level, not be way above it. Maybe I'm not grinding enough? Should there be grinding, or an incentive to do so? Questions to ask myself as I go forward and balance everything.
Currently working on: Continuing the story
Time spent on the project so far: 146 hours
Screenshots after the jump: Minimaps 2 and 1!
Not much to show today, I'm re-factoring some aspect of how enemies work because I don't want to create 10 identical enemy prefabs if the only difference between them is the sprite (the difference in hit points between a fire enemy and a normal enemy is set programatically, so is the fire spewing behavior and the (not implemented) weakness to ice and resistance to fire)
Currently working on: Reworking the enemies
Time spent on the project so far: 144 hours
As you go through the different states of the world, things will change in ways that fit with where you are. For instance, that acid pit is now boiling in the fire world and bubbles of boiling acid are flowing up into the room. Maybe in the ice world it'll be frozen over and completely harmless, maybe in the darkness world the room will be pitch black and you'll fall into the acid by accident! Who knows!
Currently working on: Advancing the story
Time spent on the project so far: 142 hours
Screenshot after the jump: Bubbles!
As I make more and more rooms, I noticed that my game is quite difficult and the fact that it auto-saves when you enter a room (and reloads if you die) could potentially create a situation where you get in some room with 1 HP left and are doomed to forever restart the same room over and over without being able to proceed, henceforth I've made it so when you die, if you had less than 25% of your max HP, it would bring you to 25%. It's an okay compromise, I think.
Creating rooms takes some time, but I do hope I will be able to make more than one or two per day, otherwise it will take me more than a year to create all of them... Then again, I shouldn't be surprised if development of this game takes that long.
Currently working on: Advancing the story
Time spent on the project so far: 141 hours
Now your status ailments are saved and you can equip stuff, the first piece of gear allows you to see monster health!
Currently working on: Working on gear
Time spent on the project so far: 138 hours
Screenshots after the jump: Gear selection and monster health
Working on the gear interface/equipping screen. Probably will be done tomorrow, I'm encountering some weird bugs here. Also I'm still wondering about how to deal with status effects and saving/loading.
Let's say you take burning damage and it burns 3% of your remaining hit points each second for 10 seconds, if you save and quit immediately and load back, you won't be on fire anymore. What I would have to do is save the status and the number of 'damage ticks' remaining, that could probably do it.
Currently working on: Working on the gear interface and status effects
Time spent on the project so far: 136 hours
Everything in the game requires saving and loading - mostly everything. Adding gear that you can equip leaves me with a few things to consider. I have to save the gear the player has, I have to save the gear he has equipped too. Then after all of that worked, I started working on the actual UI for equipping gear. The first piece of gear is a helmet that lets you see monster HP.
I'm also unsure how to deal with status effects in regard to saving and loading, right now if you quit the game and come back, your status effects will go away. Should I really do the work so you come right back on fire?
Currently working on: Working on gear
Time spent on the project so far: 135 hours
