With the room and corridor generation now properly done, I'm working on more actual gameplay stuff now, the next step will be fighting enemies in an automatic, turn-based fashion. I still want to tweak the way I've been doing some stuff - i.e. associating skills to cards too directly - but the game will be moving forward tonight and tomorrow, for sure. I'm also working on the title screen where more buttons will unlock as you move forward!
Time spent on the project so far: 24 hours
I fix the wall generation for my rooms, but there still is something wonky going on with the corridor generator. Now you can move properly as well, but I still have to fix that part before I can move to anything else. I realize that in a normal GameJam this more or less would be solved by just looking at a dungeon generation algorithm on the web, but I want to make it myself, so yeah, that might take a bit more time. I'm pretty excited about the game and I can't wait to keep working on it!
Time spent on the project so far: 20 hours
I think the corridor generation is quite well implemented! Now I'm working on having the character move around the map, which is almost completed as well. Next up would be fighting monsters and progressing through the game. Tonight I'll fix the movement and start working on these other things!
Time spent on the project so far: 18 hours
I've worked on the game a bit this weekend and this morning! The intro for the story is coming along nicely, so are the map generation algorithms and other core components. I still need to create passageways between rooms - and populate them with monsters and other things - but so far so good!
Time spent on the project so far: 15 hours
More work was done on the flow of how the game starts today! Small mechanics that will be re-used through the game and some more UI work, mostly on the tarot cards themselves. Still lots to do, but I think it's progressing quite well!
Time spent on the project so far: 10 hours
Bear with me, and think that it's much warmed outside and that our calendars say April right now...
I've worked on the UI, thinking about how the game will develop, I've also started to create the tarot card template as it will be used it many places. The next step will be the first tutorials - getting new cards, drawing them, your first run through a dungeon, etc. - with all that this entails. I should be done with the tarot card by tomorrow, I think!
Time spent on the project so far: 7.5 hours
Bear with me, and let's pretend we're still in April...
I've changed the font because I already had used the pixelated one on Legend of Loadaia and it didn't fit well with the whole magic tarot thing, I've also finished the intro 'cutscene' and started working on the core game UI, it should be done tonight or tomorrow morning, then I'll work on the actual mechanics! Fun stuff!
Time spent on the project so far: 5.5 hours
Bear with me a little and let's pretend we're one month from now, when #TarotJam actually starts...
What a start typical of me; I spent most of today trying to find out a specific sprite for something, I lost way too much time to that thing! In a regular gamejam, that would have never gone over well with the rest of the team - but again, I probably could've just asked someone to draw that piece of art. Tarot Trials is underway and - like I usually do - I'm going at it from the "what will the game look like when it's done?" angle, so of course instead of working on core systems/gameplay mechanics, I'm working on the title screen and the opening cutscene! Of course!
Time spent on the project so far: 2.5 hours
Here's a new 100RTBD version! I'm 69% done with the total core game experience and about 45% done with the project overall, I've also added support for Unity's Input Manager, so you could theoretically play this game on an xbox controller? I might test that sometime soon! Here's an exclusive screenshot of what you could be playing RIGHT NOW!
Joking aside, this version goes to 7-1-3, where you play a slot machine game against FirstClass F to win the 69th infopack and the Casino Card gun part. If you try to exit that room to the right, your game will kind of crash.
Time spent on the project so far: 695 hours
Currently working on: Implementing a more usable control scheme
Another day, another room, another bunch of weird unity problems. Apparently yesterday the game didn't save when I stopped working on it, so today I had to redo a few things that I had already done, then I moved on to the 68th infopack! I'm having fun with the Light world so far, but today I had computer troubles, so one room was all I could make, oh well! Maybe I'll push a bit this weekend so that I have another good chunk playable before I stop development for a while!
Time spent on the project so far: 690 hours
Currently working on: Moving on with the story
Today I've made one new room, a new challenge and a few new items and I've tweaked the light gun a bit, now it fires in more interesting ways than it used to. I also had five unity crashes while trying to play my game! And once the Unity Crash Reporter thing crashed! I don't know what's up with that, but I'll re-iterate that I never had any of these issues on Unity 4 ;(
Expect a new playable release before March 1st, since then I'll be participating in #TarotJam!
Time spent on the project so far: 689 hours
Currently working on: Moving on with the story
I was so happy today that my performance issues were over that I worked two hours on 100RTBD instead of the customary one ;) I've created three new rooms and advanced the story quite a bit. The player is now at 67 infopacks - bordering on 68 - so while the total map percentage is around 45, I'd say that i'm 68% done with the core main story of the game! Numbers!
Time spent on the project so far: 688 hours
Currently working on: Moving on with the story
This only took like, six hours, but the framerate is back at a solid 60. What a waste of time that was! Tomorrow I'll be back on fun stuff such as content creation, and maybe a releasable playable version this week? That would mean a bunch of playtesting, and that'd take a few days as well... We'll see! At least everything is going smoothly now!
Time spent on the project so far: 686 hours
Currently working on: Fixing performance issues
I've spent a few hours this weekend working on my performance problem; The issue is related to the number of stuff done in the GUI loop, this leads to things being calculated way too often for no reason and that drops the framerate by a considerable amount. I've started to separate the GUI data from the rest of the code, but that's still going to take me a little while. At least after that the core of the issue will be fixed and I'll be able to move on confidently!
Time spent on the project so far: 685 hours
Currently working on: Trying to fix performance issues
I'm kinda losing it. Unity crashed 4 times today and using the profiler has become increasingly difficult as it crashes itself. OnGUI is killing my game for no good reason, opening the menu drops the framerate to insane levels depending on which panel I have opened. I think there is a chance that the recent addition of Vampire Gloves might have broken a lot of the game? They allow you to heal while damaging enemies, but they halve your max level. I think that there is a slight chance that adding equipment checks to the level check might slow the game insanely, I'll try to test that this weekend, exceptionally.
I've gotta say, situations like these are what might tempt me to scrap a project, even 700 hours in.
Time spent on the project so far: 683 hours
Currently working on: Trying to fix performance issues
After some messing around and some very frustrated looks at that framerate counter (15 FPS isn't a pretty thing to see) I've went into the profiler (thank god I learned about that at work!) and found that two things were adding a bunch of time each frame; The first thing is the monster.FixedUpdate function. I programmed that, I know it's not perfect and it does way too many things and it's not optimized at all, so that's fine. I turned that function off (by adding a return; at the first line) and I think I've found the real culprit.
OnGUI is taking insane amounts of time for no good reason. My GUI isn't that complicated, I know I'm not using the newfangled unity UI system but it has worked very well so far and turning my OnGUI function off gives me back that silky smooth 60 FPS that I kinda want for a game like 100RTBD. So confusing.
What should I do? Rollback to a previous version of unity? Remake my UI in the new system? Not to mention that I also had 4 crashes-on-game-start today...
This is getting frustrating.
Time spent on the project so far: 682 hours
Currently working on: Trying to fix performance issues
Screenshot after the jump: Megasolbot lightshow
A couple more rooms done here and there and a few tweaks to that light gun weapon. For some reason I'm still getting really bad framerates (1-5 fps in menus, where nothing is happening) which wasn't the case a week ago, maybe my update to Unity 5.3.1p2 was a mistake? Maybe some stuff that worked well previously started to be broken in that version? I doubt that, but it could be possible!
Anyways, another infopack then another mini-boss fight, then I might just test the whole thing over.
Time spent on the project so far: 681 hours
Currently working on: Continuing the story
Another day, another room and challenge, followed by a new gun that shoots light beams, it's not 100% complete (that'll probably go to tomorrow) but it's almost done. I have some weird framerate issues to investigate as well. I'll probably have a playable version to release at 45% done next week or so!
Time spent on the project so far: 680 hours
Currently working on: Continuing the story
Unity crashed like five times while I was trying to start my project! That's a bit weird, usually programs get better as you upgrade to newer versions, not the other way around! I also think I've managed to fix the stupid indentation problem that was driving me crazy and I got beams half-working, I think! Tomorrow Admiral A will acquire the Light Gun!
Time spent on the project so far: 679 hours
Currently working on: Continuing the story
Not to complain too much about Unity, but this move from 4 to 5 hasn't brought many good things for 100RTBD, for one, the editor crashes way more than it did before, I also dislike how the default selection tool was changed from position to freeform selection, Unity 4 didn't append dumb numbers after clones of game objects you made and now my MonoDevelop is generating weird tabulations everywhere. Some of these things can be fixed, but others are juste the way the engine has evolved, it's still a bit of a pain how these things change.
Also, Application.LoadLevel is now SceneManager.LoadScene, which requires Unity.SceneManagement, why's that?
Time spent on the project so far: 678 hours
Currently working on: Continuing the story