Development Log — Jérémie Tessier's website

There are some prefabs that keep getting messed up between different versions of the entity, so when I try to use them in other occasions they have to be fixed in many ways. Rigidbodies that shouldn't be there, BoxColliders that aren't triggers, things like that. It's especially true for my redux boss fights you can do at 4-1 in all states. The problem with them is mostly that my bosses have some hardcoded positional data.

Such as "to do such attack, move to X,Y, then do something". It works fine on the original map since the data fits, but when I try to place the boss in another spot to do the same attacks, it doesn't work well. So I have to take everywhere that uses hardcoded data and just add relative data (relative to where the boss spawns) instead. I'll have to keep that in mind for the other 4 members of the Security Seven!

I'll also probably figure out a way to not have to copy the 4-1 room to all the states since the room itself contains multiple rooms with all bosses. Maybe instead of that I should just make one room that changes layout and moves bosses in/out instead of making them all by hand? Sounds too much like procedural generation!

Currently working on: Fixing boss fights

Time spent on the project so far: 325 hours

Screenshot after the jump: Colonel C redux

PostedFebruary 26, 2015

AuthorJérémie Tessier

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A bit of detailed inside baseball today! How to build a new room from scratch, the way I do it!

Currently working on: Continuing the story

Time spent on the project so far: 323 hours

Screenshot after the jump: The result

PostedFebruary 25, 2015

AuthorJérémie Tessier

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Today I've been working on the different extra rooms you can unlock after getting the double-jump upgrade. Most of them are pretty inconsequential but some have extra gear or items in them, so they take a bit more time to make. I've also noticed that I forgot a door with a 15 on it somewhere, you can normally open it halfway through Stage-2. Luckily for me, it's not a big thing to forget because it's also pretty inconsequential.

Currently working on: Continuing the story

Time spent on the project so far: 321 hours

PostedFebruary 24, 2015

AuthorJérémie Tessier

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I had pretty bad performance issues with the bomb dodge challenge, the framerate dropped drastically whenever bombs were thrown and it just got worse if I had more than one bomb dropped at the same time. A little bit of inside baseball here, but I figured out it was because these bombs generated some NullReferenceExceptions which Unity loses some frames dealing with. I added the appropriate checks and now the bombs flow seamlessly.

After completing the bomb dodge challenge, you get the Grenade Launcher gun part that gives a chance to use the Bomb skill whenever you shoot. In order to give all weapons a more-or-less same chance to shoot the bombs, I had to multiply my odds with the fire speed of the weapon. Testing that was quite fun!

Currently working on: Continuing the story

Time spent on the project so far: 319 hours

Screenshot after the jump: Fast weapon testing

PostedFebruary 23, 2015

AuthorJérémie Tessier

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I had an idea while creating the design docs where some challenge rooms would be 'duels' with the other members of the security seven. I thought it was a neat idea, the duels would be simple things where you wouldn't fight them exactly, but maybe dodge their attacks and try to hit them more than they hit you. But then I noticed in my design doc that there were only 5 duels in all the game and three of them were against the same character, so I decided to scrap the idea. Maybe if I had spread it out evenly among all the characters it would have stayed, but I think it's a bit silly to create a different class of challenges only for these dudes. So I'm going to rework the duels as normal challenges!

Currently working on: Continuing the story

Time spent on the project so far: 316 hours

PostedFebruary 20, 2015

AuthorJérémie Tessier

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Now that Defender D is saved and the 29th InfoPack given, I made the special shortcut breakdown pit so you can move on as quickly as you want. I still have to go by the whole accessible map so far and create the rooms where you could double-jump into. I've also added the first 2x2 gun part - the item finder. Gun parts that take more space are usually more useful, but it's a balance act.

Currently working on: Continuing the story

Time spent on the project so far: 315 hours

PostedFebruary 19, 2015

AuthorJérémie Tessier

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The other members of the Security Seven are still moving around, mostly fighting you and causing nothing but trouble. Sometimes they'll help - if you help them - like Defender D, stuck in that ice cage on State-3. He'll give you an InfoPack if you free him and let him get out of there. Ain't he a nice guy! (Don't mind that you'll have to fight him soon after that!)

Currently working on: Continuing the story

Time spent on the project so far: 314 hours

Screenshot after the jump: Defender D in ice

PostedFebruary 18, 2015

AuthorJérémie Tessier

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After two fights against giant bosses, the player now has 28 InfoPacks and the game informs him that there is another one to gather in State-1. The player can just warp using a shortcut, but as for myself I'll take the scenic route, making sure the double-jump doesn't break anything and adding the special rooms you couldn't get into without double-jumping along the way. I think I have the Commander C simulation fight to add as well?

Currently working on: Continuing the story

Time spent on the project so far: 313 hours

Screenshot after the jump: Too big to be true

PostedFebruary 17, 2015

AuthorJérémie Tessier

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I'm all for backtracking and exploration once you have unlocked new abilities, but the critical path of the game shouldn't require tons of backtracking in order to complete it. As the game was, once you got the 28th InfoPack and the Double Jump ability, you would go back to the bottom of the map in order to breakdown into State-11 and then go back all the way up to get the 29th InfoPack, and then you'd go back to State-3 to continue. That's not too long of a trek, and there are hidden things here and there that you'll be able to collect if you take the long way around. For people who prefer to go straight to the next story beat, I've decided to add a one-way breakdown pit to get back to State-1 super quickly.

Currently working on: Continuing the story

Time spent on the project so far: 311 hours

Screenshots after the jump: Double jump and new breakdown

PostedFebruary 16, 2015

AuthorJérémie Tessier

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I'm now above 300 hours of work on 100RTBD. This isn't much, if you take into account that I've started working on this about 6 months ago, and it's doubly not much if you gather that if it were a full job at 40 hours per week it would've took me less than two months of work to get where I am right now. I really wish I could devote myself full time to my passion of game making, but creating such project won't put food on my table, as they say, so I'll keep going at it one or two hours per day. Which isn't shabby, but still means that my next project is far away.

Currently working on: Continuing the story

Time spent on the project so far: 306 hours

PostedFebruary 13, 2015

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I changed the way enemies take damage today since the addition of the Red Capsule - a gun part that adds 20% of your damage as fire damage for now (I'm thinking it should convert it instead of adding to it) - now enemies that are immune to everything but fire (there are a few) have to be damaged by normal bullets with added fire damage. It wasn't too complicated, but now it works well. I've done a few rooms and now I'm at a challenge room where the player has to dodge bullets for X seconds.

I've noticed on my design map that the double-jump is coming soon, can't wait to code that!

Currently working on: Continuing the story

Time spent on the project so far: 304 hours

PostedFebruary 12, 2015

AuthorJérémie Tessier

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This challenge requires you to kill enemies only with fire attacks. Much like the challenge that was tailored towards using the 'blade' skill, you only can use fire. If you didn't pick up the flame thrower, you could do this challenge by going to State-2 and acquiring two Small Molotovs, as they will be enough to defeat the flying fish enemies. Otherwise you'll need to explore the world a bit before you can complete this one challenge!

Currently working on: Continuing the story

Time spent on the project so far: 302 hours

Screenshot after the jump: A challenge of ice and fire

PostedFebruary 11, 2015

AuthorJérémie Tessier

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I had to fix a little glitch with the way ice cubes worked. I had given them a circle collider in order to track if they were shot or not, but that wasn't required, as they already had a box in order to be solid, so I tweaked that a bit and now they properly break when shot and block your way otherwise. I've made three new rooms and next up is a new piece of gear.

Currently working on: Continuing the story

Time spent on the project so far: 300 hours

Screenshot after the jump: Bullets!

PostedFebruary 10, 2015

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With the ice gun now properly tweaked - and properly slowing down enemies - I can go back to the series of room that make up the game. At the current point in the game, the player has 25 InfoPacks, so it's a quarter of the way done, if you use that kind of thing as a metric! Only four infopacks to go, and there will be a new boss fight!

Today's screenshot shows what the critical path looks like for that segment of the game, more or less.

Currently working on: Continuing the story

Time spent on the project so far: 298 hours

Screenshot after the jump: Tracking and backtracking

PostedFebruary 9, 2015

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The ice gun fires snow balls that bounce on walls in almost predictable patterns. The fact that the initial trajectory is random means that it's a bit hard to aim with that weapon - a bit like the bomb that has a random arc and random shrapnel distribution - but it's power makes up for it and also the enemy-slowing ability. Against giant enemies it's also easy to use because you know there is a high chance the bullet will encounter the enemy in question. A few tweaks here and there and I'll be done with this weapon!

Currently working on: The ice gun

Time spent on the project so far: 297 hours

Screenshot after the jump: Ice gun trajectory

PostedFebruary 6, 2015

AuthorJérémie Tessier

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I'm still having a little issue with the way you jump in from rooms below where you're going. If you're holding a key while you're jumping, the character will continue its movement in that direction, if you're not it'll shoot you on the left or right side depending on where the hole is. In some situations, the character might fall back into the hole right as he jumps - especially if you're holding the 'wrong' direction. On the other hand, I don't want the character to 'pop' on a solid floor every time you enter rooms from below. I have to find a solution that works and won't frustrate players.

Currently working on: Room entering

Time spent on the project so far: 295 hours

PostedFebruary 5, 2015

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The various ways you can move across the map and clear obstacles are acquired as you play the game and they allow you to skip certain doors in states where you couldn't get through. This door with a 20 on it will be turned into transparent blocks in State-1 and if you have the Ghosting ability, you'll be able to pass through it. Double jumps and C6 explosives work as well. These abilities will have some other properties that aren't related to movement in the map such as being able to dodge enemy attacks and stun them/remove their armor. There is also the B&R engine, but that's much more of an endgame thing!

Currently working on: Continuing the story

Time spent on the project so far: 293 hours

Screenshot after the jump: A note about Ghosting

PostedFebruary 4, 2015

AuthorJérémie Tessier

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There are a few items that allow enemies to drop items when you defeat them; otherwise the chance is 0%. That means that if you never find any such piece of gear, enemies will never drop items. I do think that most of them will be handed over to the player as he completes easy challenges and maybe in boxes placed on the critical path, but it's probably possible to beat the whole game without having any item drop.

I kind of want to make some gun parts / pieces of gear / even guns be drops from enemies, using the enemy cards, the player would see if he got a drop from a specific enemy. Even bosses will drop items! (Don't worry there's a way to re-fight all bosses!) I really love the drop-hunting aspect of games like the GBA/DS castlevanias and I wish I'll be able to convey that a bit in 100RTBD

Currently working on: Continuing the story

Time spent on the project so far: 291 hours

PostedFebruary 3, 2015

AuthorJérémie Tessier

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I had some issues with the energy blade skill when I made this challenge room where enemies can only be damaged by it - but to compensate, the cooldown refreshes instantly. I noticed that the blade's box collider wasn't placed well and that if you died while swinging such a sword, it would still be attached to the character after he respawned. So I fixed these two things. I also played around with size values for the blade upgrades. That's usually how I test things to make sure they work. Let's say some buffs adds 2% to do something, I test it at 100% so I know it works, then I reduce it back to the right number. In the current case, I increased the size of the blades by 12x instead of 1.2

I also decided to drop my idea to make all the maps squares in one fell swoop, mainly because it would be more difficult to manage it. A thousand lines of code is a bit much, but at least if I'm trying to find room X,Y,Z, I know where to look, while a huge array of numbers would require more overhead just to figure out where is the data I want to use.

Currently working on: Continuing the story

Time spent on the project so far: 290 hours

Screenshots after the jump: A lot of blades and big blades

PostedFebruary 2, 2015

AuthorJérémie Tessier

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Considering all the code I've written so far, there are plenty of spots where I could optimize it and make it easier/clearer for me to work on. The map module, for instance, is going to be a thousand lines just to define what the map is like if I continue the way it is right now. Instead of having one line per room, maybe I could just define the whole 10x10x10 vector of room types, room blocks and other things like that in one fell swoop. I think that's what I'll work on this weekend, it would also mean the beginning of my 'create all the content and then just build the game' idea...

Currently working on: Continuing the story

Time spent on the project so far: 286 hours

PostedJanuary 30, 2015

AuthorJérémie Tessier

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