Entry Two Hundred And Seventy-Seven

Being in the dark adds a bit of a design challenge because the player will be a tad frustrated if he keeps falling into pits or fumbling around maps by mistake. So far, most rooms have ledges above pits and you can see where some stuff are - room exits are illuminated to show at least basic pointers - but I still want to keep the oppressive blindness of State-6. I also think that enemies are too strong, so I've lowered their HP modifiers and their armor. We'll see how that goes!

Challenges are a good way for me to think about how weak/strong enemies are, and the latest challenge I've worked on showed me that they took way too many hits to kill.

Time spent on the project so far: 519 hours

Currently working on: Continuing the story

Entry Two Hundred And Seventy Six

Today I had to fix a flaw in my darkness system; Some rooms are bigger than others. This effect is made by the camera pulling back, so you can see more stuff at the same time, although everything appears smaller. You might remember the big labyrinth-like room with lightning I've posted a while back. The problem is that my darkness sprites just fitted over the basic camera size. After messing around with things, I've changed it so the sprites scale with the size of the camera. That means that bigger rooms will have bigger pixels of light/darkness, but I don't mind.

Time spent on the project so far: 518 hours

Currently working on: Continuing the story

Entry Two Hundred And Seventy Five

Enemies in State-6 are a bit too tough right now. They have 5 armor, which lowers all damage you do to them by 5, and their hp is 275% of normal. If you're interested, here's the curve I have in mind

float[] hpMods = new float[] {1f,1.2f,1.4f,2.25f,2.4f,2.75f,3f,3.3f,3.6f,4f};
int[] armors = new int[] {0,0,1,2,3,5,7,10,12,15};
float[] damageBonus = new float[] {1f,1f,1.2f,1.3f,1.4f,1.45f,1.5f,1.6f,1.7f,2f};

The thing is, it might take a bit of fumbling around before I find the perfect growth curves, it also accounts a bit for player skill; no matter how tough enemies are, if you know how to defeat them, their stats won't affect you as much. Also after a while of fighting new monsters, the player will level up and find new gear, making them easier than they were when you entered the State for the first time.

I have to admit, balance isn't my strongest suit.

Time spent on the project so far: 516 hours

Currently working on: Continuing the story

Entry Two Hundred And Seventy Four

A bit of inside baseball today! You might wonder how I managed the darkness effect from yesterday's screenshot. The screen is basically covered by hundreds of little black square sprites, drawn over everything else. Then I have specific objects marked as "light sources", the black square's transparency goes up the closer they are to these lights. Also, each frame, all squares are turned completely opaque before this happens, so when you move, the light follows you. 

It might not be the most efficient method, but it works, the squares can't really be made smaller because the number of squares to black out and then check for nearby lights impacts the framerate in a meaningful way, and doubling their resolution would drop the framerate by about 10, so barring a flash of genius, that's how the dark world will work!

Time spent on the project so far: 514 hours

Currently working on: Continuing the story

Entry Two Hundred And Seventy Two

I've made FirstClass F a bit tougher by ensuring that it always get perfect slot machine spins. After all, why would it use that skill all the time - and be associated with luck - if it didn't give it consistent victories? So now it'll attack much more often.

I've also continued the slot machine skill, there is only the cherry option to finish and then add rank 2, 3 and 4 skill level effects, then I'll move on to State-6! I might work on this a bit this weekend, because I really want to move to the new map :)

Time spent on the project so far: 508 hours

Currently working on: Slot machine skill

Entry Two Hundred And Seventy-One

The fight against FirstClass F is a bit too easy, so I have to fix that in a way. His slot effects are too random to be a real danger and he can't really dodge your shots from the poison gun, even hidden behind his little walls. I think I'll figure out a way to make him tougher tomorrow, but today I worked on the slot machine skill acquired by the player. It can't do the same exact thing as it did when used by the boss, of course!

Time spent on the project so far: 507 hours

Currently working on: Slot machine skill

Entry Two Hundred And Sixty Nine

Didn't do much today, I had to go at the office and I didn't have much spare time. I did manage to make some tests and fixes to the various slot machine abilities. Maybe one or two more days and I should be done with them! There is a certain overlap between slot machine abilities and elemental blasts, but I think they're different enough. And since you're using them both on different cooldowns, it doesn't matter much!

Time spent on the project so far: 503 hours

Currently working on: Boss fight against FirstClass F

Entry Two Hundred And Sixty Seven

I think I'm happy about how FirstClass F moves now, he'll try to evade you the best he can. The only thing that I can't figure out how to 'fix' is the acid gun, because you can hit the little guy even when he's behind a wall! Now I have to work on the slots.

My initial idea was to have them do various things, then I decided that the Elemental Blasts would fill that role. But now I'm not so sure anymore. I think that the slots should still do various things. It's entirely luck-based, after all! So it can be a bit unbalanced and unpredictable.

Time spent on the project so far: 498 hours

Currently working on: Boss fight against FirstClass F

Entry Two Hundred And Sixty Five

FirstClass F fights with slot machine reels. Three reels to be exact. At fixed intervals during the fight, the reels will spin, and depending on the results, different patterns of bullets will be shot around. When he's not spinning reels, FirstClass F will just try to get away from the player as to not get shot.

That might take a bit of time to code, since I have to make the reel system from scratch, and it has to look AT LEAST okay. I know that I lack the artistic talent to create art and music that would match the idea I have in my idea, but I at least try to make everything look fine.

Time spent on the project so far: 494 hours

Currently working on: Advancing the story

Entry Two Hundred And Sixty Four

Almost at the room where you fight FirstClass F! Only two rooms left to be precise! And they're not too complicated, they should be done by tomorrow! The fight will probably take a few days by itself, but then I'll be able to move on with other stuff! Woo!

Time spent on the project so far: 492 hours

Currently working on: Advancing the story

Entry Two Hundred And Sixty Three

I'm moving right along with new rooms, new challenges and new stuff! The fight against FirstFlass F and the shifting to State-6 is also pretty soon! State-6 is Darkness world, probably a lot to do with semi-opaque veils of darkness on the screen to obscure the various rooms of the game. But right now I have to move along with the scheduled content. The current room I'm working on has a machine that dispenses fake InfoPacks! 

Time spent on the project so far: 491 hours

Currently working on: Advancing the story

Entry Two Hundred And Sixty Two

I've made two more rooms, create a new challenge, new gear and items. Now I think that all the side-stuff you could do at this point is completed, and I'll be able to go back on the main point story path shortly. I've also spent some time looking at all rooms with InfoPacks in them and making sure that when you picked them up, it would properly despawn them the next time.

I fear that there is still some InfoPack leakage somewhere, maybe in a cutscene where you get one or something like that, I'll have to figure that out one way or another, either by replaying the whole game or finding something randomly.

Time spent on the project so far: 489 hours

Currently working on: Advancing the story

Entry Two Hundred And Sixty One

I should play the game again because there was a disparity between the number of InfoPacks in my possession and the numbers that I 'think' I should have at this point. I however found that some rooms didn't properly destroy the InfoPacks you already collected in them, so that might explain this. I'm going to stick with that theory until I play the game again, then I'll check it more thoroughly. 

There also was a bug where rooms you had already visited wouldn't properly destroy the C6 blocks in them after you reloaded the game, that's also fixed. It's not gamebreaking so I won't release a hotfix just for that.

Time spent on the project so far: 487 hours

Currently working on: Advancing the story

Entry Two Hundred And Sixty

Your save won't carry over, you may experience different bugs and things that don't make much sense, you might find new things that didn't work before but now do. 100RTBD is a labor of love; it's a game I'm making because I love that kind of game, and it's to show myself that I can do it. It's about 25% completed. Please play it and comment in some fashion? Thanks!

Videogames are here to be downloaded

Time spent on the project so far: 485 hours

Currently working on: Playing the game

Entry Two Hundred And Fifty Nine

So, what could I do to make 100RTBD stand out a bit more? Does it need to? Should I try and make the graphics more unique? Is there some gameplay mechanic I haven't thought of that would work with this kind of game and make it seem more interesting? Or am I just working on something that can't get any better - for better or worse?

In any case, I'm still testing it by playing through it and going everywhere to find out how it all holds out. And it holds out fine indeed! You should probably expect a playable release tomorrow!

Time spent on the project so far: 483 hours

Currently working on: Playing the game

Entry Two Hundred And Fifty Eight

After a week spent on the game, now I'm mostly testing everything I have so far, fixing bugs, balancing things here and there and making sure everything plays fine. Some things had to be fixed, but overall I'm happy with the feel of the game. I might release another playable version soon, even if we're not at entry three hundred yet ;)

Time spent on the project so far: 481 hours

Currently working on: Playing the game