Entry Ninety-Three

After another few rooms, a challenge and a new item type... I'm noticing that the game gets too hard too fast and that the levels are not gated at all my the InfoPack collection, like I had in mind. I'm going to redo the experience curve (which, so far, was 100 experience for each level with enemies giving 1 experience each and bosses giving 50), probably something simple and linear.

I also want to change the way text is shown in the text boxes, character by character instead of all being shown at once, since I wanted to add synthetic voices to the dialog boxes, I have to change it that way eventually. Not too sure if I'll do it right now, though. 

Currently working on: Redoing certain core systems

Time spent on the project so far: 176 hours

Entry Ninety-One

There's something wrong with my computer so I can't work on the game. I did change some things, but it's impossible to work like this. Oh well.

Currently working on: Working on that one boss fight

Time spent on the project so far: 171 hours

Entry Eighty-Nine

Not much to talk about today since I had no time to work on the game, all i did was modify the layout of the arena where you fight the giant fire ladybug and remove her ability to shoot random fireballs.

Currently working on: Working on that one boss fight

Time spent on the project so far: 171 hours

Entry Eighty-Eight

Right now, you can get another gun part that increases fire speed and I'm currently working on another miniboss fight against a giant enemy that might charge at you and throw fire while he's doing it. I'm way underleveled for that boss, it seems, because I die in one hit and take forever to kill it. Either that or he isn't properly balanced, that also could explain it.

Being not entirely linear - 100RTBD is about exploration, in parts - I have to make sure that I keep my hard story beats separate from the softer flags you can trigger whilst exploring.

Currently working on: Continuing the story

Time spent on the project so far: 170 hours

Entry Eighty-Seven

Not much to talk about today, I've been swarmed with actual work so I didn't have much time to spend on the game this morning, about one hour instead of my target two. 

I've been wondering about where the difficulty will come from in 100RTBD; The maps themselves aren't that difficult because they're small and you can try them as much as you want since you automatically respawn in the same room when you die. The challenges could be more challenging, I could make the side-content also more difficult to get. Bosses also. But I also have to be careful - a player that manages to avoid good gear and items will have a though time if he's locked in a boss fight that he can't get out off. Maybe I should make it so the player respawns in the PREVIOUS room when he dies in a boss fight?

That seems like a plan.

Currently working on: Continuing the story

Time spent on the project so far: 168 hours

Entry Eighty-Six

There's a new enemy in 100RTBD, the MegaBit! All enemies are divided by rank, element and type. There are three types of enemies, bits, bots and bytes. Bit-type enemies usually just move around and try to bump into you somehow. Bot-type enemies will have projectiles. Byte-type enemies fly. Of course, some of these types can overlap and you can have moving enemies that also shoot or flying enemies that also shoot. The MegaBit moves around slowly but when you arrive in front of it, it'll try to ram you.

Currently working on: Continuing the story

Time spent on the project so far: 167 hours

Entry Eighty-Five

Not much to show, but I've made sure that the hero is making a frowny face whenever he dies, before he could still be smiling - or moving in place - when killed. I am also re-working how hazardous projectiles (dripping acid, flowing bubbles, meteors) are instantiated and I'm re-working their spawning functions as well.

Currently working on: Refactoring things

Time spent on the project so far: 166 hours

Entry Eighty-Four

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

Entry Eighty-Three

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

Entry Eighty-Two

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

Entry Eighty

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

Entry Seventy-Seven

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

Entry Seventy-Six

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

Entry Seventy-Five

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

Entry Seventy-Four

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