Development Log — Jérémie Tessier's website

Today was all about the battle system; Classes, Skills and Magic spells! I think I'll be done with these things by tomorrow, then I can work on the remaining minigames! Not much to say otherwise, I have been trying to bring my project at work to continue during my lunch break, but the version of unity here acted very weird today, so I couldn't progress as much. Keep on loading!

I've been thinking about the theme of the jam a bit more, I wonder how I could incorporate the principle of dumb software patents in my game... Maybe the big enemy you're fighting should be based on some patent pun? Maybe!

Time spent on the project so far: 17 hours

PostedDecember 2, 2015

AuthorJérémie Tessier

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Today I've completed the list of classes you can unlock for your character and I'm pretty advanced with Skeleton/Wolf/Zombie, the second minigame you can play while loading around. I want to make at least ten of these, create a few more spells, add upgrades, playtest, add music and sounds, and then I should be good to go!

Time spent on the project so far: 13 hours

PostedDecember 1, 2015

AuthorJérémie Tessier

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Working full time at a game dev is taking most of my time nowadays and chores / real life stuff keeps piling up, what with the upcoming holidays and all, but there's still time for the Loading Screen Jam, a gamejam that gave me a cool idea about stuffing minigames during loading screens. Legend of Loadaia is exactly that; A game where you play mini-games while the game is loading, trying to make it load as much as possible.

The framing device of the game is that an evil tyrant, Overload Deathbload, is attacking the realm, and you, the Hero of Loading, must stop him. To do so, you must collect Loadstones and buy upgrades in order to become stronger and finally defeat the last boss (the only enemy in the game).

While at first the game will load straight into that final battle, resulting in terrible defeat, you'll progressively load through more and more minigames that will allow you to collect loadstones, buy upgrades to either unlock or improve these minigames or just to boost your character, rinse, and repeat.

I like the idea! I like where I am with the game so far, but I'm kinda afraid I won't have time to finish it properly for friday, but that's a risk of the trade!

Time spent on the project so far: 10 hours

PostedNovember 30, 2015

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It's been a good while since I've worked on 100RTBD for a two hour chunk of time like today, and it shows! I've made about five new rooms, bringing my game completion percentage around 40%! If you consider that most rooms are really quick to make, that's pretty encouraging. Alright, you also have to consider that some take longer because they bring new stuff in, I suppose...

Time spent on the project so far: 624 hours

Currently working on: Continuing the story

PostedNovember 26, 2015

AuthorJérémie Tessier

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New rooms, new challenges and new items. I'm starting to think that I wont have enough gear/gun parts to fill every challenge room and every enemy drop with unique stuff! I'll see when I get there, it probably won't be too hard to create new things!

Time spent on the project so far: 622 hours

Currently working on: Continuing the story

PostedNovember 25, 2015

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Finished a mini-boss today, it's the giant teravoltbot, it fires a potentially increasing number of electricity bolts at you. Didn't have much time to work on the game today since I had other obligations, but I do hope that tomorrow will fare better.

Time spent on the project so far: 621 hours

Currently working on: Continuing the story

PostedNovember 24, 2015

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Back to our scheduled programming! After the two gamejams - and a break taken because of my new job, I'm back on working on 100RTBD! Today I've made three rooms and I've started work on yet another mini-boss. This will continue until Friday, then I have the "loading screen" jam I'll participate in, and that lasts another week. I hope I'll be able to make the Colonel C² fight during this week, but if that doesn't happen, it's no big deal. I'll keep trucking along!

Time spent on the project so far: 620 hours

Currently working on: Continuing the story

PostedNovember 23, 2015

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Two days left for the ProcJam! Today I've mostly worked on mechanics and adding new items and mechanics that are procedurally added to the rooms you have to go through in order to get to room 999. I've also messed around some more with the merkel tree based text generation for my computer dialogue. I think I'll also make the ending work in a similar way! Anyways, all I have left are some 'super' obstacles, the ending, lose conditions, and I'll have a game!

PostedNovember 13, 2015

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A few cool things were done today! This morning I've worked out a way to get 'music' generated from markov chains, now it sounds kinda okay I guess! I've also worked out a way to get computer text procedurally generated in a similar fashion. Now all that's left are to make the items/obstacles, test it, add the ending, and I should be golden!

PostedNovember 12, 2015

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I think I'm more or less happy with the basic skeleton of the game, created from no random sources of logic, procedurally built to be so-so. I know it will be a bit repetitive, but I'll try to add variety in the number of things that you can encounter in Area-15-51-51. I've added ladders to replace doorways between very close-by floors and locked elevators - if you have the appropriate keycard, you can open them. The next step is to either add the procedurally-layered two beats soundtrack, or to start working on the core obstacles and items you'll find. Ideally, both will be done before the end of this jam.

PostedNovember 11, 2015

AuthorJérémie Tessier

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Here's some actual procedural generation! THis room was completely procedurally generated! It's a bit barren and might not look like much yet, but it's a start! The first rooms are going to be quite calm and simple to deal with anyways. There's much work to be done yet, but I'm happy with what I have so far. The style of the graphics from the ProcJam Sprite Pack is also pretty neat too!

PostedNovember 10, 2015

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Here's to another project! The Procedural Generation Jam is also something that interests me and I've started working on my new title for this one - Area 15:51:51, a game about time, procedurally generated rooms and hazards, and some vibe of survival horror - well, that's my goal at the moment! Can't say how good I'll manage to make this game, but I'll work on it this week! For the exceptional reason that I haven't been playing any games lately - only working on them - there won't be any game review today. Sorry!

PostedNovember 9, 2015

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I'm almost almost done! Today I've done nothing but create enemies. I'm at fifty of them now! I've decided to test out the game and some stuff came up with balancing and adding a new stat - bonus damage - because enemy health keeps climbing up and your spells don't really get more powerful. I'm still tweaking things here and there - and I think that fifty enemies might be enough, so we'll see if I'm done by tomorrow morning!

PostedNovember 6, 2015

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Today was all about content creation! I've mainly created the 33 spells you'll be able to use and more or less defined their effects. Balance is out of the question yet because that's related to how enemies will be created and I'm not done with them at all. Tomorrow will probably be more about enemy creation and balance. The core level-up path is kinda done too, but I'll probably keep it simple - have only a few bonuses that loop every Xth level or so.

PostedNovember 5, 2015

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The core loop of the game is more or less established now; Throw darts, cast a spell, get attacked by the enemy, continue until either of you die. If you die, it's game over, you can only restart the game at that point. If the enemy dies, you level up, get a random bonus from a slowly growing list and a new enemy appears, growing in strength and in abilities as you go.

PostedNovember 4, 2015

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I thought about how I could figure where darts have hit the board and my first idea went to a separate texture used to keep sector IDs encoded in color data. I've spent about two hours making it using Paint.net and the result is aesthetically pleasing, if I say so myself!

PostedNovember 3, 2015

AuthorJérémie Tessier

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Hey there! This is my first Entry for the NES Box Art Jam, a gamejam based around the concept of picking a NES game boxart and making a game around it, without knowing what the original refers to in the first place. I've downloaded a set of all the boxarts and it didn't take me too long to find one that interested me...

PostedNovember 2, 2015

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The Brigadier B² fight is over, so I'm moving on with the State-5 part of the current story arc. I'm looking at the map of State-5 and there is a lot of terrain the player will have to go through before they find the 62nd InfoPack (well, in the order that I'm going right now, you can go and find the 6 of them in any order) and there is vast potential for sequence breaking and other things that I have to be careful for.

On another subject, there are three gamejams I plan on participate in November, all hosted on itch.io. The NES Box Art Jam starting this sunday, the Procedural Generation Jam starting on the 6th and the Loading Screen Jam starting the 27th. During these jams I probably won't work much on 100RTBD, but the idea of taking a few weeks off and making smaller games here and there appeals to me very much.

Time spent on the project so far: 619 hours

Currently working on: Continuing the story

Screenshot after the jump: Brigadier B² fight

PostedOctober 30, 2015

AuthorJérémie Tessier

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I think the fight against Brigadier B² is almost done. The balance between a 'tough' boss fight and a 'cheap gimmicky pattern based loop' is fine, but I guess I have managed to do good by it. I didn't have much time to work on it this morning anyways, so not a ton of progress was made. But I'm sure that by tomorrow I'll have something good!

Time spent on the project so far: 617 hours

Currently working on: Brigadier B² Boss Fight

PostedOctober 29, 2015

AuthorJérémie Tessier

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The Brigadier B² boss fight is going well! I hadn't planned it to be 'simpler' than the initial one, but it sure is looking up to be that way! While the first one was walking and jumping around occasionally throwing bombs, this 2nd version just flies across the room at various heights and drops explosives on you. It should be done by tomorrow!

Time spent on the project so far: 616 hours

Currently working on: Brigadier B² Boss Fight

PostedOctober 28, 2015

AuthorJérémie Tessier

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