Entry Two Hundred And Seventy-Eight

I have a nagging suspicion that skills aren't as useful as I would want them to be. Challenges are much easier if you use skills, but you have to use many keys in order to get all the good skills out, and that might not be easy to do 100% of the time, especially when you're on a timer. Maybe I should map the skills to the number keys? But then how would it work with a controller? Should I rework all the skills so they're on the same timer but are all much more stronger? Should I get rid of them? I'm still thinking about all of that.

Time spent on the project so far: 520 hours

Currently working on: Continuing the story

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