Entry One Hundred And Twenty-Six

The buff system is done. Buffs are now saved properly and there is a buff window to see the ones you currently have. Now that it's done, I'll be able to continue with the story, one last InfoPack to pick up before the world changes again into stage 3, but before that I also have the boss fight with Colonel C to do. He fights in close combat so I suppose I should have him dash at the player and attack, but that can do weird things if he's solid, since bumping into the player would make both characters stop in their tracks. I'll try solid at first and see how it goes.

Currently working on: Continuing the story

Time spent on the project so far: 229 hours

Screenshot after the jump: One buff

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Entry One Hundred And Twenty-Five

Buffs weren't properly defined in the game so far, there was only one (Small overclock, giving you faster skill cooldowns for 30 seconds) but it was a boolean that I set on or off, which isn't useful if I want to have more than one buff, save the buff state, etc. So now I'm working in a buff system where the character will have a list of buffs and they will be visible in the menu (so you know what buffs you have) and things like that. It'll also allow me to save/load the buffs (beforehand, if you used a buff item and died, the buff would be gone when you reloaded)

Buffs.

Currently working on: Buff system

Time spent on the project so far: 227 hours

Screenshot after the jump: Minecarts on FIRE

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Entry One Hundred And Twenty-Four

Giant enemies aren't as well defined as the "robot" bosses so far. All I know is that they're enemies with bigger hitboxes, more hit points and they deal more damage. I also have to give them a trick so they become properly dangerous. While an enemy with better stats is probably challenging, it's not enough just to do so. The Giant MegaPyroBit for instance shrinks and speeds up whenever you hit it, making it a much harder target to shoot at.

The positive side of this is that giant bosses are a surprise (at least the first time), the flip side is that I have to create a little gimmick for all of them. It'll be useful in the arena, though...

Currently working on: Continuing the story

Time spent on the project so far: 226 hours

Screenshot after the jump: Some giant fly thing

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Entry One Hundred And Twenty-Three

I'm not sure if I'm the only one with that problem, but the more recent versions of Unity are really messing up my style. The interface is sluggish and even doing simple things like hitting CTRL+A to select a whole block of text in a field just acts unpredictably (most of the time it'll ignore the CTRL and just type a). Moving around my folders to select the right prefab or to create a new script is a pain, it's like being on a pentium 3. The older versions worked fine but I kept updating and now I'm stuck with this.

It's annoying, it's not like I can restart 100RTBD using another engine, maybe I'll spend some time this weekend to try and figure if there's a setting I can change or if I'm doomed to work trapped in jell-o.

Currently working on: Continuing the story

Time spent on the project so far: 224 hours

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Entry One Hundred And Twenty-Two

The puzzle room is done, you solve the puzzle by picking the computers in the right order. You have to leave/re-enter to try again. It's not perfect, but it works. The reward is a gun part that increases your gun's range by 25%. I also fixed a bug in the saving method where I put all of the gear you had under head gear (while there should also be body gear and misc gear). I'm a bit confused about the number of infopacks my character has, because I should have 15 and I was at 14. I chalked it up to an error when I messed around with the save file directly, but maybe I calculated wrong and there is an infopack missing somewhere, I should try and replay the whole game to figure that out.

Currently working on: Continuing the story

Time spent on the project so far: 223 hours

Screenshot after the jump: A puzzle well solved

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Entry One Hundred And Twenty-One

Now that the little side-area in State-1 is complete, I'm free to continue working on the main story. The room I'm currently working on has a puzzle in it. You have to piece together a story chronologically using computer terminals. It won't be perfect (you'll have to exit/re-enter the room to try again) but I think it'll work alright and keep the spirit of the game.

Currently working on: Continuing the story

Time spent on the project so far: 222 hours

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Entry One Hundred And Twenty

I've fixed two things about the UI today (and added some constants here and there instead of obscure int values to represent things, GEAR_BODY is way clearer than '3', although it takes more space to write). First, I've added an abbreviation of what each gear piece are, as they all have the same icon. It helps differentiating them a bit. Second, I've added a 'Remove All' button when you're customizing your gun. Whenever you break down to a lower state, your stats are taken down appropriately (Your maximum level is, after all, the minimum between your actual level, the number of infopacks you've collected, and the state * 10) so you might have gun parts stuck in customization slots that you can't use and there were no way to remove them, until now!

Currently working on: Continuing the story

Time spent on the project so far: 221 hours

Screenshot after the jump: Reworked interfaces

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Entry One Hundred And Nineteen

Not much to talk about today besides a new tileset being started and death lasers! I had to make my death zones more deadly, because right now they only dealt Max(2,max health/50) damage per frame (ideal for slow deaths, like acid or the void of space), and that's quite not deadly enough for an instant death laser, so now my death zone can be provided a number of damage they deal per frame to override my usual idea. In this case, it's 999. Anyways, there's nothing you can do about the laser, yet.

Currently working on: Continuing the story

Time spent on the project so far: 219 hours

Screenshot after the jump: A ship's hull with a laser

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Entry One Hundred And Eighteen

There were a few bugs to fix here and there, a few details I didn't know would become problems such as the horizontal doors blocking bullets above them and cutscenes getting stuck in weird places. Testing the whole game also made me figure that editing the save manually creates a bunch of weird issues. Maybe I should move away from using PlayerPrefs and write my own thing instead?

I'm not really happy with unity nowadays, it seems that for each successful update they make to their editor, the more sluggish and unresponsive it becomes. It's not fun trying to click on things but not having the click actually register. Oh well, kinda too late to change the engine right now ;)

Currently working on: Continuing the story

Time spent on the project so far: 217 hours

Screenshot after the jump: Another platform room

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Entry One Hundred And Sixteen

It seems like my changes didn't break anything major. Doors that don't have to be interactive aren't, I've reduced the code pretty much everywhere and I had a few small glitches to fix but otherwise everything is pretty playable from start to - the very unfinished - finish. Now I suppose I can start adding new rooms to the game and finally progress forward.

Currently working on: Testing the game

Time spent on the project so far: 215 hours

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Entry One Hundred And Fifteen

I think I've cleared out most of the fat in my code and redundant/useless stuff shouldn't be there anymore, making it easier to read and also making my job easier when I'm going to make new rooms. Tomorrow I'll test the whole thing to be sure that I haven't messed up anything badly, but otherwise I should be able to start making new rooms and progress towards new content soon!

Currently working on: Re-factoring the rooms

Time spent on the project so far: 213 hours

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Entry One Hundred And Fourteen

Still working on refactoring the rooms, removing some code that is repeated at many places and putting it all in one spot! Hope I don't break anything!

Currently working on: Re-factoring the rooms

Time spent on the project so far: 212 hours

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Entry One Hundred And Thirteen

A bit of programming inside baseball today! I know most of you are going to chuckle and shake your head slowly, but as of last week, each room class had some code in it that would a) make sure the game controller is loaded (this happens when I playtest by just pushing play in a room I'm working on, the controller is actually loaded in the main menu so the game won't work if I don't do this), b) place the character at the right spot depending on where he came from and c) most rooms with enemies have the code to spawn them.

In theory, I know about inheritance in OOP, but in practice, the fact that room already inherited from MonoBehaviour objects, combined with the fact that I wasn't too sure how it worked in C#, made me do this. And now it's a huge pain because for each of the 1000 room, I have to copy/paste the code. So I just decided to rework that bit, creating a base 'room' class and adding most of the code re-used in it. I think the result is saving me some time overall, although I have to rework all classes now. I probably won't stop there, if I can save time in the future, it's worth to fix now, I think?

Currently working on: Re-factoring the rooms

Time spent on the project so far: 211 hours

Some code after the jump!

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Entry One Hundred And Twelve

After a few mistakes were made, the map module is now more easy to maintain and more understandable for me. Instead of simply having a number to represent things (type of rooms, what exits they have, etc.) I now use constants with more evocative names like ROOM_LDR (for a room with a left, down and right exit) and I use things like DOOR_LEFT and DOOR_UP to represent exists instead of numbers that I always forget about.

NEXT!

Currently working on: Continuing the story

Time spent on the project so far: 208 hours

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Entry One Hundred And Eleven

Boy, making platforms that move up and down is kinda tough, well, the part where the character has to stand on them is kinda tough. When the platforms are going up, it's fine, when they're going down, the character hovers a bit above them? I should probably fix that in some way. I'm also going to modify heavily my mapping system code because it's a pain right now and I'm losing time trying to figure out what my own mapping system is.

Currently working on: Re-factoring some code

Time spent on the project so far: 206 hours

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Entry One Hundred And Ten

I've decided to make the objects that rule if you should be moving to another map square instead of circles, but that didn't go so well, so I went back to circles. I've also fixed the weird physics of standing on a minecart, now the player doesn't stick as much if he tries to move while on one of them. Also my tester is having issues figuring out what keys do what. I really should show the 'controls' screen when you start the game, if this is to become an issue.

Currently working on: Continuing the story

Time spent on the project so far: 205 hours

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Entry One Hundred And Nine

I didn't have much time to work on the game today, but I've made it so you can stand on moving platforms while they're moving. It's not much, but it had to be done. I'll have to tweak the distances of the colliders and things like that a bit tomorrow because right now the character is twitching a bit on top of the minecart, but now at last you can use them to move around!

One person that tested the game so far couldn't figure out that X and Z are the keys to select options in the main menu, I probably should put a note there for basic controls (so you can at least get to the controls)

Currently working on: Continuing the story

Time spent on the project so far: 204 hours

Screenshot after the jump: That's how you get there

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Entry One Hundred And Eight

With the mine tileset comes mine carts and pits and elevators and things like that. You'll be able to use the carts to cross some obstacles and get specific items that way. I've re-done how some objects move so I can just use the same script for all of the generic moving objects. Three more rooms of optional stuff to do, then I'll go back with the main story path!

Currently working on: Continuing the story

Time spent on the project so far: 203 hours

Screenshots after the jump: Mines and more mines

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Entry One Hundred And Seven

My computer fixed itself (I don't know how) so I managed to sneak some time on the game today, working on the side-area you can explore when you get to 2-8-5. There are minecarts moving around on rails, presumably once used to carry minerals from somewhere to somewhere else. This is a mine tileset, after all.

Since I don't really know how to make good sprites, I just take what I have in my sprite pack and modify them. The minecart for instance is a weight flipped upside down with greyscaled logs as wheels!

Currently working on: Continuing the story

Time spent on the project so far: 201 hours

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Entry One Hundred And Six

Because of computer issues, I wasn't able to work on the game today. Let's talk about difficulty instead! I feel like fail states in videogames are often used in strange fashions. Running out of lives in the most recent mario games is a bit silly since you can always restart at the level you lost them all (usually) and at most, you'll lose your checkpoint. In older games, when you ran out of lives, you had to start from the beginning.

In older RPGs, when your party was wiped out, it was back to the title screen for you - and if you hadn't saved recently, tough luck - in more recent ones, you can usually restart at the battle you died in, or just before it (so you can change your party/strategy or go somewhere else for now). I think that the difficulty in 100RTBD is difficult to pinpoint since the game automatically saves each room and will never let you respawn with less than 25% of your hit points. Maybe I should make the difficulty up to the player. Maybe when you start the game you could choose a number of times you're allowed to die and if you die more than that, it's game over? There should be an incentive to do so, of course...

Currently working on: Continuing the story

Time spent on the project so far: 200 hours

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