Entry Two Hundred And Seven

I should use the objective marker even more in order to streamline the critical path as much as possible. Of course, there's a certain type of people who like to explore and they would be bummed out by too much hand holding. Maybe when you start the game you could have a choice between "normal" and "easy", and in easy mode there would always be the location of your next Infopack on the map - alongside coming back to life with more health when you die.

It is common in metroidvanias to have a critical path and optional side content and while I don't mind asking the player to go out of its way in order to access the side stuff, I more or less always want the critical path to be clear. Looking at a map and figuring out ALL the places you haven't been yet that could be connected to rest of the game sounds woefully boring.

Time spent on the project so far: 382 hours

Currently working on: Moving on with the story

Entry Two Hundred And Six

Things are still going smoothly! I'm quite almost done with the critical path in State-4, after that is a boss fight against Ensign E. This guy uses elemental attacks and I have a good idea of how he'll work. But before that I have plenty to do, challenges to build and the like. A new gun part that increases your stats based on your achievement rating was also added. It's the kind of item you'll use if you're a completitionist! 

Time spent on the project so far: 381 hours

Currently working on: Moving on with the story

Entry Two Hundred And Five

"Puzzles" is something that appears in various places all over my design documents. I'm not sure what kind of puzzles I had in mind when I wrote it, but a metroidvania game doesn't lend itself too well with text input boxes to answer questions and complicated quiz processes. This also limits the range of puzzles I can make, because just asking logic questions and things like that would not fit with the world either. So far most of my puzzles are simple memory tests and are trial-and-error based. You also can retry them as many times as needed, so I don't think they're too bad.

Time spent on the project so far: 379 hours

Currently working on: Moving on with the story

Entry Two Hundred And Four

Boss design is important, as bosses are often blocking you from moving forward. Any sort of puzzle you have to tackle in order to continue in a game and any critical path thing have to be non-frustrating. A boss that can kill you in a few seconds, an enemy that is immune to your attacks for no reason, a puzzle without a simple way to beat, if these things are mandatory, they have to be non-frustrating.

They can be tough and challenging, bosses can have tons of hp and deal high damage, but if you can dodge their attacks and if you can see when you're damaging them, it's not as bad as if they had less HP but you didn't know if you hit them. All of 100RTBD aims to be like that, challenging but not frustrating. 

Time spent on the project so far: 377 hours

Currently working on: Moving on with the story

Entry Two Hundred And Three

I've fixed a few bugs recently, now you can interact with things properly, and the save/load system is constantly updated. I've did such thing by playing through the whole game (for the fourth time in less then two weeks, no less!) And I've arrived at a conclusion:

I love 100RTBD. It's a fun game with the right stuff. No matter if nobody else cares about it or if nobody else plays it, I won't mind. It's a game I've made mostly for myself, and so far it's going pretty well, and I'm not going to stop making it.

Time spent on the project so far: 375 hours

Currently working on: Playing the whole game

Entry Two Hundred And Two

For some reason, my framerate dropped to 20-40 numbers instead of the solid 60 you should be expecting from a 2d sprite based game. Maybe there's something in my code that I call each Update() that I really shouldn't? I'm not too sure. I've changed the way the game saves your progress, instead of being in the registry, it saves to a file. It necessitated mostly changing all my PlayerPrefs.Save() and Loads() into FileWriter.Write()s and Reads(). But then I also had to change my Int.Parse()s into Int.TryParse()s and they don't have the same parameters. Fun stuff.

I was also thinking about base64 encoding the save file or some other light obfuscation to at least prevent casual editing of game values, maybe I'll do that when I'm done with it, but right now being able to edit the game is kinda useful for testing.

Time spent on the project so far: 373 hours

Currently working on: Trying to figure out why the framerate is so low

Entry Two Hundred And One

I got only one comment so far - far more than I expected - and it was about how the controls are a bit obtuse and the fact that you can't check them in-game was not helping. It's true, 100RTBD is made with a Xbox360 controller in mind, but I don't want to add controller support before I'm done with the content of the game. Therefore, the keyboard controls require the use of QWERASZX, the arrows and ESC/TAB. It's a bit confusing if you don't know by heart what keys do - and even I forget if A uses the skill or the item. So I've added the controls in the game menu.

Another thing I could do is just stick letter icons in the HUD to tell the player which keys does what. 

Currently working on: Adding controls to the game menu

Time spent on the project so far: 372 hours

Entry Two Hundred

This is not an April's fools, this is not a drill, version 2 of One Hundred Reasons To Break Down is released for you to play and then comment on!

After a few hundred hours of work, here is about 16% of the game. There are many things that could be worked on and improved. I know that there is no sound and that the game freezes a bit between rooms, but you can still sink a few hours into it! The save system might not be compatible with the later versions, that being said. Also there is no controller support yet.

Please, anything you find of interest about this game, tell me about it. Either here, or at my twitter @poik007 or by email at poik007@gmail.com. Making games is a creative process that only works when reflected upon players, otherwise it is a self-indulgent empty endeavor. The more people who play this and comment on it, the better!

Click here for 100% Organic Video Games

Currently working on: Testing the whole thing

Time spent on the project so far: 371 hours

Entry One Hundred And Ninety Eight

I'm testing the whole thing, again, because in two days you'll be able to play it if you want! I'm 16.6% of the game done, and there should be for about 2-4 hours of content in it. The whole game might be 10 to 20 hours long, but right now I fear to have too much content rather than not enough. There are still some weird bugs to fix - and some differences between the editor version of the game and the one you get as a .exe file... - but I think two days is enough. I'm having fun trying to play the game as a new player - but after a while that might become bothersome since the game will be so vast and complex.

Currently working on: Testing the whole thing

Time spent on the project so far: 368 hours

Entry One Hundred And Ninety Six

Some rooms are more problematic than others since they have wide gaps where the player can fall in, and die. According to my - now standard - way rooms work, it would instead teleport the player to another room. I have to find a way to fix that before I can release the 2nd playable version. I was thinking something like death pits everywhere.

I was also thinking of releasing a commented playthrough for the people who want to see 100RTBD without playing through alpha versions, maybe that would work? At least people could see everything there is right now in my game!

Currently working on: Refactoring the whole thing

Time spent on the project so far: 364 hours

Entry One Hundred And Ninety Five

I know it might not be the wisest thing to do about a week before release, but I've decided to implement some major changes in the architecture of how 100RTBD works in order to help me build the rest of the game. While it is true that such changes aren't very gratifying - I barely modified how the game engine works and it won't add anything to the player nor to the 'designer' part of my work - and that it's going to be a bit of work right now, making new rooms will be much easier and less frustrating than it had been before.

In order to purify the scenes I work in - placing blocks, enemy spawn points, etc - I've decided that the Room Controller object would be instantiated by the game controller and added to each scene when you enter them. Then I'll automatically add the right script file (each room has its own script) based on the scene name, instead of having to manually find the RoomControl and select the right file and drag it in. I've also deleted the MainCamera from my scenes and will add one programatically - this doesn't help, but it removes clutter from the scene view. Lastly, I'll remove all my MapTransition circles everywhere you can exit a room to go into another one. Now all rooms will be bordered by 4 huge rectangles that automatically send you to the appropriate room when you leave the bounds of the one you're in. I had to add some code for me to be able to delete some of these rectangles because some maps have bottomless pits, but it's no big deal.

Now I have to basically go into each room and delete the superfluous stuff. I also need to go into each room script and remove a few lines of code. It might take a few hours - and then I'll test the whole thing, probably - but rooms made after that will be much easier to make.

Currently working on: Refactoring the whole thing

Time spent on the project so far: 363 hours

Entry One Hundred And Ninety Four

Since I work only one or two hours a day on 100RTBD and that I'm doing it in my free time, all of this project's chance of being completed hinges on my motivation, motivation is driven by making things that work and not by futzing around for ten or twenty hours on an idea that might not work. Not doing anything productive for 10 days would be crazy and I might even lose interest if that happened.

That said, there are the weekends where I could theoretically take a bunch of time and try something that modifies the core of my code in order to help me in the future. A lot of the tasks I have to do when I create a room could probably be automated, such as changing the hue of all tiles, or creating the room script, or adding it to the RoomControl object of the room.

It's like that thing I said a while ago, maybe I should create all the content; all guns, skills, enemies, items, gear, etc. Maybe I should also create all the maps and all the scripts and add them right then and now. It would take a while, but at least it would be done. At least automating that process would help. I miss procedural generation of things :P

Currently working on: Continuing the story

Time spent on the project so far: 361 hours

Entry One Hundred And Ninety Three

There is no cool tech in 100RTBD. I've tried looking for things to add that would be neat and would make the game stand out from the stream of awesome stuff that the internet will tirelessly produce forever, stuff that I can't frankly compete with. The initial idea I had of the game would've been all pixelated and the enemies would have looked much more cooler, the gameplay is more or less what I thought during the design process, but I do have to make concessions in the interest of time and my drive to work on this.

I give one or two hours per day to a game that might take me another year or so to complete, and I fear that by looking like a prototype for a real game - or by looking like a project made by college student - no one is going to care. At least I'm making my own vast metroidvania with plenty of systems to go around, but I also wish it had a hook, something anyone could look at in a screenshot and go "that's kinda neat".

Maybe I'll spend some more time looking for that hook, or maybe I'll just console myself in the realization of what I want to make without comparing it to what others are doing.

Currently working on: Continuing the story

Time spent on the project so far: 359 hours

Entry One Hundred And Ninety One

I've finally got back to where I was in the game's design, and boy was it tough. I figured out that my bosses had much more hit points and damage than they should, so I tweaked that. I also fixed a few bugs where items and gear would get duplicated for no reason. While I was frustratingly failing to kill Defender D, I briefly wondered about counting the number of times the player died, and after a certain number I could give them an item that increases the life you get when you resurrect to 50% instead of 25. 

Maybe after another number of deaths I could give another one to heal you fully. 100RTBD is of course a game of some skill - you can't just 'facetank' everything and come out fine, and healing items are as of right now, in short supply - so I don't want players to just die in every room in order to heal themselves. On the other hand, it would be quite a shame to lose people to difficult fights. 

Only nine updates to go! I'll really try to send it out there so more people see it and give me feedback, I think?

Currently working on: Testing the whole game

Time spent on the project so far: 355 hours

Entry One Hundred And Eighty Nine

I'm still going through the game, testing the more or less critical path and giving some thought to side areas and challenges. I've fixed a few bugs here and there - mostly mistakes on my end - and I've spent a good long time trying to figure out why you couldn't use the Energy Blade while having the Fire Gun equipped. 

It took a bit of messing around, but I figured out that when you use the fire gun, if you're holding the attack button the gun fires continuously - like a flamethrower - but if you release it, the flames stop. To do so, I'm destroying all player projectiles when the key isn't pressed, therefore, the blade is never there. I've fixed that by making it so it only destroy your flame bullets.

Onward with the rest of the game I haven't tested yet, then I'll continue with my actual work on new stuff!

Currently working on: Testing the whole game

Time spent on the project so far: 352 hours