A few more rooms done, only two or three left before the Colonel C² fight! Not much to talk about today, but things are still progressing smoothly!
Time spent on the project so far: 634 hours
Currently working on: Continuing the story
After much soul searching, I suppose my results are pretty clear; Moving to 3d wouldn't do much for the project as it is right now. There also isn't an easy way I could make 100RTBD's style change drastically, unless I found someone to do custom sprites for everything, more or less. I also thought long about if I should change certain things, gameplay-wise. But no, if I want to finish 100RTBD, I have to stay on target.
I could probably spend 100 hours right now trying different things; How would the game play if you removed the RPG elements? Got rid of the items and equipment? This is usually good practice, since you need to do this - think over what you've already decided - in order to make better games, but I want 100RTBD to be finished. I want to tell my whole story, add the whole of my items, weapons and skills, I want to make the game that I had designed in these first few forty hours or so.
I don't want to abandon such a project and going back to the drawing board would surely - through questions like 'if I am to change it that much, why not scrap it and start over with some new cool ideas?' - signify impending doom, if not for the idea itself, maybe for my motivation, and I don't want to risk that.
Time spent on the project so far: 633 hours
Currently working on: Continuing the story
Alright people! Some feedback might be appreciated on this one! I'm trying to think if it's worth to redo the style of 100RTBD to be more 3d-ish instead of sprites all over. It would be a solid piece of work, but I realized that I don't want this game to just come out and die immediately into oblivion, as I assume it would be if I released it with a flat boring look, i.e. it would look like babby's first videogame and nobody would ever bother with it.
I'm going to create a twitter poll for this, please vote between the two styles if you can! (Also keep in mind that the 3d style isn't completed yet, but it gives a rough idea of what I have in mind!)
Time spent on the project so far: 630 hours
Currently working on: Trying to change the style
After 350 entries, almost 630 hours, I'm now attempting to change the style of 100RTBD. From flat sprites to voxel-like 3D objects, to be more precise. This raises a few questions and concerns, but I'm not too worried. I'll spend at most a few hours on this idea and if it doesn't pan out I'll leave it alone for now. If it does work I'll have to find a good pipeline to change all my 2D assets into 3D things, but that's a question I'll ask myself some other time! Will post screenshots of before/after if it ever gets to a point where I find it cool.
Time spent on the project so far: 629 hours
Currently working on: Trying to change the style
The usual, a few more rooms, some new content. I've been wondering about how to make 100RTBD stand out in a graphical fashion that wouldn't involve me getting real good with pixel art and/or not having to change how the core of the game works, more or less. I was thinking that instead of being a flat 2d plane, the game could be shown in a 3d perspective - but still play more or less the same. The things on-screen could be made out of voxels, something like that? Maybe?
Time spent on the project so far: 628 hours
Currently working on: Continuing the story
I have to be very careful about refactoring my whole game; Since I've started actually working at a gamedev, I have learned much about Unity and about best practices - something I probably wouldn't have picked up on if I hadn't - and while I'm applying them to my job, changing 100RTBD to fix everything wrong with how I coded it would probably spell doom for the project. Maybe at the end, when I'm more or less done and optimization is all that there's left. Maybe then I'll rewrite the big bits.
Also I had made a mistake planning out the map when I was designing the game, 600 hours ago; There was no way to get to the 62th InfoPack and the Colonel C² fight from anywhere, oops!
Time spent on the project so far: 627 hours
Currently working on: Continuing the story
After a two week break (both to make Legend of Loadaia and to just take a break) I've resumed work on 100RTBD and made a few more rooms. Currently working on some story stuff right now! I don't plan to do many other jams in the near future so I should be able to give a few good straight weeks of work into this game as it is!
Time spent on the project so far: 625 hours
Currently working on: Continuing the story
Two more mini-games done today and some refactoring of the class system! I should be able to make everything before the deadline for this cool jam! Not a very long entry, but that's because I'm using all of my free time to work on the damned thing instead of writing about it ;)
Time spent on the project so far: 23 hours
Now all the classes are done for real - and their skills as well - you might say that they're not very balanced and you might be right - this will be something that I'll check if I manage to complete everything else in the game. Today besides finishing that I've made the Elemental Airvolution DDR-based game. Only seven games left to make, plus their upgrades, overall testing, maybe adding sound and music, and I'll have a game!
Time spent on the project so far: 20 hours
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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!
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!
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.
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!