Not much to say today! I've finished the General G fight and started working on State-7, the "light" world. I think that even if I don't want to get into annoying screen-covering effects territory like in the dark world, I'll have to make some kind of screen effect in order for this place to feel bright and flashy. I'll probably post a screenshot tomorrow or in two days, look forward to it!
Time spent on the project so far: 596 hours
Currently working on: Starting State-7
Now I'm done with the General G fight and I'm working on what happens next, but it's also a pretty good time to release a new version of 100RTBD! A few hours of gameplay, about 36% of the final product, map-wise. Please try it out and tell me what you think!
Time spent on the project so far: 595 hours
Currently working on: Aftermath of the General G fight
This is it! The fight against General G! It uses air strikes on an approximate fix of your location and they just keep on coming over and over until you defeat it. Each time it takes damage, the damage of the air strike increases! The balance isn't perfect yet, but it's going somewhere! I think tomorrow I'll release another playable version!
Time spent on the project so far: 594 hours
Currently working on: Boss fight against General G
Screenshot after the jump: Airstrikes!
I'm here! I'm at the General G fight now! This should take a bit of time to work out, but it shouldn't be too bad. After that, State-7! Where there is light again and no annoying darkness effect everywhere. In my original design doc, General G uses air strikes rarely, relying more on gun attacks, but I've decided to make him use them heavily instead. That's more interesting.
Time spent on the project so far: 593 hours
Currently working on: Boss fight against General G
Today I've worked on some arena fights. The arena is a specific room where you fight 5 rounds of random enemies for fun and profit. It's a good way to rack up experience - and for me to see how the game is balanced, I suppose. With that done, I'm almost done with darkness world for now! I think I'll release a new version of my game when I'm done with the General G fight.
Time spent on the project so far: 592 hours
Currently working on: Creating the arena fights
Screenshot after the jump: Animated map gif!
Only four rooms the player won't be able to progress in right away. That's not too bad, and I'm trying to make it easy for the player to remember by not adding them to the map data (so they have an idea of where to go later on). I've also added the HUD Part A, a thing that tells you how fast your gun can fire. It's kinda useful! Now I'm completely done with the side areas - for the moment - so the story can continue! After the player collects the 58th InfoPack, they can go to the arena and fight a few rounds there to get the 59th! Then, to General G!
Time spent on the project so far: 590 hours
Currently working on: Making side areas
While trying to complete the map, I've encounter an InfoPack I had forgotten about. A lot of questions came to my mind, such as "Why is that InfoPack here? How did I progress through the game without collecting it? Did I think it was lost and added another one somewhere else?". I don't want to replay the whole thing again for the fifth time while I'm already replaying it, but I'll have to figure this one out.
Why is there an InfoPack in that room?!?
Time spent on the project so far: 588 hours
Currently working on: Making side areas
Didn't do much today, some other stuff went and disrupted my concentration, so I had to do other things instead of working on 100RTBD. This happens a lot recently. Maybe I should move the time when I work on it. Instead of doing it in the mornings like I do right now, maybe I should do it later during the evenings, when I have almost nothing left to do, but that would mean moving my gaming time to the mornings and stuff!
Maybe I should try that.
Time spent on the project so far: 586 hours
Currently working on: Making side areas
Regardless of what I've written yesterday, some side areas are completely fair game to work on, so I'm working on them right now! Currently making a challenge where you dodge falling computers - the theme of the room where it occurs is computers, if you'd been wondering. I still have no idea how long it will take before the fight against General G occurs, but I do know that I'm not wasting my time - although I'm not working on the main storyline - because a completed room is a completed room!
Time spent on the project so far: 585 hours
Currently working on: Making side areas
I've finally decided on how I'll deal with the story vs exploration problem in 100RTBD. It's quite simple, really! As I'm making the side rooms and the optional paths, I have to ask myself if the player should be allowed to progress or to stumble into a boss fight or something at the point he is in the story. In most cases, the answer is no; You can't fight the second version of a boss if you haven't fought the first, for instance.
So if you get into such a room and you see "Something is missing... Come back later", that means you'll be coming back to that place sometime in the future. For now, it's a good compromise.
Time spent on the project so far: 584 hours
Currently working on: Making side areas
I'm fully immersed in side-areas and optional content now. It's a bit scary! I have to make it all, but I don't know where to start. I could go straight for the 'critical path' and ignore the side content for now, but players might experience this stuff as soon as they can - I know I would - so it has to be balanced, no matter at what time you visit it.
Still have to make it fit with the story too! I guess I have a few interesting hours ahead of me regarding how the game will progress!
Time spent on the project so far: 582 hours
Currently working on: Making side areas
Some of these rooms take a lot of time to make because of the custom content or animation you'll find in them! That explains why on some good days I can make 6-7 rooms in two hours, and on others - like today - it takes me that time to make 2. I start with what I have in my design doc ("A room full of magma, Defender D is seen wondering if his barrier can protect him from it, he jumps into the magma and dies, an infopack appears afterwards") and then I have to make the little cutscene happen. It's not too difficult, but I'm not crunching these rooms at an incredible rate!
I wonder how things would work if I wasn't a one-man team. Could more than one person work on room generation? Or would it be different tasks like creating the remaining enemies, skills, items, etc. ? I wonder.
Time spent on the project so far: 581 hours
Currently working on: Moving on with the story
Didn't do much today since I was distracted by other things. A few rooms, started working on a new challenge where enemies don't do anything but they explode into a plume of fire when they die - and if that fire touches you, you lose. It's not the hardest challenge ever, but if you kill a bunch of enemies at once - like with the poison gun - you'll have a very tough time dodging the fire!
It's been a while since the last screenshot, but when I'm done exploring what I can explore I'll make an animated gif of the map :)
Time spent on the project so far: 579 hours
Currently working on: Moving on with the story
I've built a few rooms today! I'm at 56 InfoPacks now! Four more and I'll move on in a big way! I've noticed that although the player can skip some doors here and there and visit rooms with InfoPacks they shouldn't be able to get, storywise - at that moment in the plot - there are probably not going to be any InfoPacks there! That kinda fixes my sequence breaking 'problem' but it's a bit cheap, I'll go with the story I guess. If I can prevent huge gaps between my vision and the actual game, so be it!
Time spent on the project so far: 578 hours
Currently working on: Moving on with the story
I've taken a bit of my time today to finish and publish PoutineTime, my #DUPLICADE entry. Otherwise, I've created a few rooms and a few new items. I'm at a point where enemies are quite difficult to deal with because my State is much lower than its maximum, so all of my stats are lowered. This is a reality of 100RTBD and I think that it's a cool mechanic. I've also noticed that all of my sprites were set to trilinear filtering, I'd rather have huge pixels so I changed the import settings on everything!
Maybe this week I'll manage to get to the fight against General G, the last member of the security seven!
Time spent on the project so far: 576 hours
Currently working on: Moving on with the story
I've made a few more rooms today. Looking at the map, it's obvious that my initial critical path that I had in mind wouldn't work. Even if I tried to ignore some rooms, the player will definitely be able to gather InfoPacks faster than I had anticipated at first. This is okay, if you have most of the movement abilities and the will to explore, maybe you should be able to go to some places earlier than predicted, right?
If there were no Teleport ability in the game, the problem would be way lesser, because then I would know where you are. But I've decided that fast-traveling between pits/altars is a good mechanic to have, especially if you want to backtrack or go somewhere else quickly. I'll just need to be careful that the story keeps making sense even if you get the InfoPacks in a weird order.
Time spent on the project so far: 574 hours
Currently working on: Moving on with the story
100RTBD is going well! I've made a bunch of progress today, playing through a big part of the game and even resuming the creation of new rooms - you better believe that I'm going to backup that save file now! I'm also about 3 hours in PoutineTime, my #duplicade submission...
But this DevLog entry isn't about that, it's about how I'm terrible at game jams. I'm terrible at prototyping. I really ca't put myself in the right mindset to do so. I start with the big picture already in my mind and I feel that I can't progress on anything if that polished idea of what the final product should look and feel like.
Time spent on the project so far: 573 hours
Currently working on: Replaying through the whole thing and making new rooms!
Maybe I'll submit something for #DUPLICADE, since I have taken upon myself to try and participate in as much gamejams I hear about on the internets (In real life would be a good second step). My idea so far is PoutineTime, a competitive 2 player BurgerTime ripoff where you step on fries, cheese curds and gravy to make delicious poutines.
Speaking of 100RTBD, however, I'm still playing through the whole game and fixing bugs here and there. I really enjoy playing my own game, that's a good sign, right?
Time spent on the project so far: 571 hours
Currently working on: Replaying through the whole thing
Another day of testing the whole thing, it went well! A few bugs here and there, and at some points I was wondering what kind of ideas I had when I made certain design decisions, but overall it's a fun experience to play through! That bodes quite well, if I can say so myself.
Time spent on the project so far: 569 hours
Currently working on: Replaying through the whole thing
Last week I had a computer problem. My laptop wouldn't boot anymore, and it took me about three days to figure out it was a bad graphic card driver and I had to format twice and reinstall various versions of windows. During all these times I didn't forget to keep backups of 100RTBD on a thumb drive, but it still frustrated me that I couldn't work on it at all. This morning when I finally boot it up, I notice that I forgot to backup the save file as well, so now I'm replaying the whole thing.
It's a little bit frustrating, but not too much, there are always things to improve here and there and the game still feels fun. That's what matters, right? I think I'll still need two or three more days before I can actually move on with new content, but what's actually there will be polished some more.
Time spent on the project so far: 568 hours
Currently working on: Replaying through the whole thing
Screenshot after the jump: Not again...