Entry Two Hundred And Seventeen

Guns in 100RTBD are you main weapon, they are the way you attack most of the time, and they all are kind of terrible in their way. The normal gun is the better one, followed maybe by the flamethrower with its very short range or the ice gun with its unpredictable bounciness. When I added the toxic gun, I had in mind a thing that would shoot upwards and then the projectile would fall back down. After playing with it for a while, I realized that the range was less than the flamethrower and that its upward trajectory meant that it would probably hit the ceiling 80% of the time.

Now the toxic gun fires blobs in a straight line, after a while they explode into a smaller number of blobs, which explodes into a smaller number of blobs, until they just disappear. It means that I have to tweak it's damage value because right now it hits a big chunk of the screen. But at least it's an upgrade on your previous guns, and not another useless thing!

Time spent on the project so far: 399 hours

Currently working on: Upgrading the toxic gun

Entry Two Hundred And Sixteen

Thanks to my third player ever (!!!) I've fixed a few bugs and tweaked a few systems, here and the small patch notes if you care!

• Brigadier B's movements should be a bit better
• Changed the way exiting a room from the top exit works, now instead of applying your current velocity to the movement, you'll always use a fixed velocity and move (hopefully) out into the next map without falling back in.
• Fixed issue where starting a challenge would make you fail it instantaneously.

I wish more people played what I had so far, but that's how it is, isn't it!

Time spent on the project so far: 397 hours

Currently working on: Correcting bugs

Entry Two Hundred And Fifteen

I have to say that following my design doc to the letter is more difficult than I thought initially. Adding challenge rooms here and there sounds like a good plan on paper, but it's a bit tiresome to generate unique code in order to make such rooms work. At least if my challenges rooms were more similar instead of having more or less all unique contents, it would be easier. Generating content still takes quite a bit much of time. It's all a question of tweaks, I'll probably add some content that wasn't planned in the design doc while cutting from it at the same time, the end result will still be in the spirit I want 100RTBD to be.

Time spent on the project so far: 395 hours

Currently working on: Moving on with the story

Entry Two Hundred And Thirteen

There's much balance work to be done, even in the parts of the game that I consider completed. It's actually pretty tough to properly balance systems - it's something I usually never do. Especially in complex-ish projects like 100RTBD where you can fight certain tougher enemies with certain gear to make the fights easier/harder, where bosses have to be re-fought in order to try and get their item drops, etc. So far I think I'm doing okay, but I just noticed that I increase the monster damage when they spawn and I ALSO increase it when they hit the player, oops!

Time spent on the project so far: 390 hours

Currently working on: Moving on with the story

Entry Two Hundred And Eleven

I've got two full weeks of vacation this summer, and I plan to use them to work on 100RTBD full time. That's right, about eighty hours of progress done in a matter of days instead of months! That could mean a lot for the game, as time is pretty much all it needs.

...well, I could use a good pixel artist and someone familiar with making chiptune music, and also some kind of web hosting for daily increments of my game, and someone good in marketing too so it doesn't stay practically unknown forever...

But eh! Game design!

Time spent on the project so far: 389 hours

Currently working on: Moving on with the story

Entry Two Hundred And Ten

Most items in the game aren't required for you to proceed; challenge rewards are especially not required, although some guns and special gear here and there can make the difference between an easier experience and having less options. Some items are especially not required and will probably only add flavor to the world. An item that tells you how many HP enemies have left might be 'useful', but it's not doing much besides giving you data, for instance. There will be a fair number of 'useful' items too, so don't worry about it!

Time spent on the project so far: 388 hours

Currently working on: Moving on with the story

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