Entry Two Hundred And Thirty Seven

I was a bit annoyed about how the P.R.I.D.E. system worked - achievements - because I had to enter all 12 levels by hand (how many things you need to do to get the different achievement levels) and that was a bit cumbersome. Now it's a flat growth curve, if you need 1200 kills to get level 12, while before it might have went 10, 50, 125, 300, now it will go 100, 200, 300, and so forth. Achievements aren't that important for a normal 100RTBD playthrough, but they have to be obtainable without frustrating the player too much, since you'll need 100% achievements to unlock some story ending stuff.

Also, the lightning gun isn't completely done yet, but I like what I have so far. It's not shooting chain lightning - maybe I could make it leave a trail behind - but it's bouncing between enemies and while it shoots slowly, I feel that it could be useful for certain rooms.

Time spent on the project so far: 439 hour

Currently working on: Making the volt gun and fixing the achievements

Entry Two Hundred And Thirty Six

Apparently, I had made a mistake where everything electric in State-5 was using the sprite of the volt gun ammo, so working on the lightning gun by itself messed up the sprites for most of the rooms I had made so far. I fixed that. I also added the finishing touches to the mini-boss you have to fight in order to get the volt gun. Next is making how it works, I think going through walls isn't such a big deal especially if it's slow to fire and doesn't do much against single enemies.

Time spent on the project so far: 437 hour

Currently working on: Making the volt gun and fixing some sprite errors

Entry Two Hundred And Thirty Five

Should chain lighting go through walls? Maybe if it was a skill you would use that shot lighting I would allow it, but a gun you can just fire nonstop? Maybe not a great idea. I'm still unsure if the toxic gun is fine so I really don't want to open the can of worms that a gun shooting bouncing electricity from enemy to enemy through walls would represent.

Time spent on the project so far: 435 hours

Currently working on: Moving on with the game

Entry Two Hundred And Thirty Four

State-5 is pretty story-less so far. It's about in the middle of the 'critical path' of the game, so a lull in story beats doesn't bother me too much. I have to say, still, that the lack of treasure chests and other rewards is starting to bring me down a little, since all I'm doing is exploring around and finding nothing good for my troubles. Don't leave me hanging too long, past version of myself writing a design doc without knowing anything about what the game is going to be like!

Time spent on the project so far: 434 hours

Currently working on: Moving on with the game

Entry Two Hundred And Thirty One

I've fixed the whip because it was acting very weird. It's not an important part of 100RTBD but I still took a few hours making that whole #igavania special thing. Just so you know, you'll need to get to 5-10-5 and then - usually by arriving from the top entrance and killing the enemy to your right without moving - you input the konami code in reverse (Enter, A, B, Right, Left, Right, Left, Down, Down, Up, Up) and the barrier to the right should break, allowing you to fight a teleporting, fireball launching boss. Then you get the Whip Module that turns your gun into a whip-like attack.

But now that it's done, I'm moving on with the rest of the program, mainly collecting the infopacks in State-5 and all that!

Time spent on the project so far: 429 hours

Currently working on: Moving on with the game

Entry Two Hundred And Twenty Eight

Cool Glasses protect you against status ailments and also stop the dialog boxes from being all messed up. Creating this piece of gear, I can't help but feel that every piece of gear is very situation-dependent and therefore the player will never be tempted to switch them around when he finds one he likes. Or he just won't care because it's not having a big impact.

Instead of individual pieces of gear, maybe these could be modules you equip with positive and negative effects, and you can equip as much as you want, so you wouldn't have to switch around between them for no reason. I wonder if that's a better system? Maybe! I'll try it out and see how it turns out.

Time spent on the project so far: 422 hours

Currently working on: Continuing with the story

Entry Two Hundred And Twenty Seven

Are skills useless? This is a question I've been wondering for most of my time playing the game this morning. Although they have useful effects, like killing enemies you otherwise wouldn't get at, or protecting you from damage, or stuff like that, I feel that it's quicker to just use the toxic gun to kill everything than to take the time to use skills properly. Is this about skills or about the toxic gun again?

I suppose that if the player finds one skill that he likes and runs with that, it should be enough. Some people might enjoy the shield skill, others bombs, etc. Also there is equipment that can trigger skill usage automatically whenever you attack, so it's not entirely lost.

But is this about the toxic gun again? Maybe I should change it so instead of exploding in a 360 hail of bullets, it just explodes it front of itself? That way you couldn't clear a room just by firing. But then it'd become not much than a spread shot...

Time spent on the project so far: 421 hours

Currently working on: Continuing with the story

Entry Two Hundred And Twenty Six

I'm STILL having trouble with the toxic gun and the way enemies take damage multiple times from the same source whilst I wish they wouldn't. I think I fixed that by increasing the invulnerability timer for giant enemies a bit and by tweaking it so all sources of damage don't trigger it. If you attack with certain gun parts equipped, you'll trigger more than one call to the 'take damage' function, since each damage has only one type (fire, ice, etc.) and you can deal multiple types per hit.

I've also increased the health of enemies a bit.

Time spent on the project so far: 420 hours

Currently working on: Continuing with the story

Entry Two Hundred And Twenty Five

Enemies are dying too fast to the toxic gun. I figured it was because their invulnerability period wouldn't trigger after they got hit, and fixed things around. I do want that gun to be fun to use, but like I said earlier, I don't want the player to just stand around and shoot down a whole room in seconds. State-5 is going okay, I'm a bit finicky to add boxes with treasures in them because there hasn't been any new piece of gear or item in a while. Then again, killing enemies will yield gear and items at a later time.

Time spent on the project so far: 418 hours

Currently working on: Continuing with the story

Entry Two Hundred and Twenty Four

A lot of work has been done on 100RTBD this weekend, mostly making new rooms in State-5 and tweaking enemies and skills. I've tweaked the poison gun yet again because while it has to be powerful enough, I don't want the player to be able to just shoot into a room, waiting for everything around to die. State-5 is full of electricity, so there's that to watch out for! There is also plenty of static electricity around and the dialog boxes get corrupted a little, I'm probably going to add a piece of gear to prevent that, for the people who want their text boxes proper!

Time spent on the project so far: 416 hours

Currently working on: Continuing with the story

Entry Two Hundred and Twenty Two

The fight against Ensign E is over and the elemental blast skill is more or less done as well. I'm changing the way it works - and I'll have to change the slot machines as well because there is a bit of overlap between the two  - but it didn't take too much coding around. Now I'm working on the yellow-tinged State-5, home of electricity and overworking computers.

Time spent on the project so far: 410 hours

Currently working on: Starting work on State-5

Entry Two Hundred And Twenty

Design documents are sometimes wrong. Well, in my case I haven't got the slightest clue about writing them, so they are quite wrong indeed. Ideas are easy to come by and translating them to code is a bit harder, even more hard is to write a doc that will talk about a good, fun game that represents your vision. I try to follow what I have written for 100RTBD as much as I can, but it's not always good to do so.

For instance, elemental blasts should have elements and either deal more damage, freeze you, or bounce between enemies. I find that a bit boring and instead I'll make them break into different patterns by default. Maybe the elemental effects will be added after that. The fight against Ensign E has started and already the toxic gun has proven too strong, dealing multiple hits per shot. I have to tweak the invincibility period of enemies a bit. To do so I've removed the 'monster' class out of controller.cs - my controller class file is littered with other classes that should be in their own files.

Time spent on the project so far: 405 hours

Currently working on: The fight with Ensign E

Entry Two Hundred And Eighteen

I've spent a bit of time messing around with the toxic gun because the idea of cool, useful weapons - opposed to so-so weaponry with horrible drawbacks - opens a bit more doors as to how I'll design them. But I think I have something I'm okay with right now. A very useful gun, but not too overpowered.

So I'm continuing with the maps I have left in State-4. It's pretty soon that another boss fight will be upon me and that afterwards you'll move to electricity land! That being said, being at State-5 (out of 10 possible states) doesn't mean I'm 50% done, sadly.

Time spent on the project so far: 401 hours

Currently working on: Moving on with the story