Killer 2017 - Entry Forty Seven

Quite done with the TV UI for now. There's still plenty of work to be done with it for sure - you can't buy upgrades yet, neither can you turn blood into serum, things like that - but for not, I can move on. I've decided to remove the 'Special' stat from the game entirely; Initially I wanted to have skills deal variable damage based on this stat, but now that I'm progressing through the game design in my head, I don't think it'll be useful, so I removed it! It doesn't impact yet, luckily.

Next up is swapping characters and swapping who has which ring equipped. I also have a bunch of design to do before I can code more stuff, then I'll continue with Chapter 0 - Angel! Really hope to have that level done someday soon :)

  • Time spent on the project so far: 79 hours
  • Currently working on: Character swapping, ring selection
  • Screenshot: Skill info
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Killer 2017 - Entry Forty Six

This UI is starting to be a bit much, luckily I'll be done this week and will be able to move on with other kind of mechanics. The problem I have these days is that I don't even have an hour to work on the game per day, so it goes quite slowly.

  • Time spent on the project so far: 78 hours
  • Currently working on: Character TV UI
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Killer 2017 - Entry Forty Five

Today I've been working on the weapon UI. In the original Killer 7, most characters only had one weapon. For instance, Kevin had knives, and these were your knives the whole game. Dan and Mask had upgrades, but I've always felt weird that Dan is the only one to get three different weapons. It's like he's the game's 'main' character or something! In Killer 2017, every character will get a choice of three weapons - except Garcian and Old Harman - which their own strengths and weaknesses. 

Some might deal more damage, others might have a higher capacity, others might have more special powers, it's not going to be straight upgrades, because that wouldn't work with only three weapons.

  • Time spent on the project so far: 77 hours
  • Currently working on: Character TV UI
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Killer 2017 - Entry Forty Four

Today I'll elaborate a bit on passive skills your character get in Killer 2017. In the original game, they were a bit limited - you only had a few tricks like Critical Lock-On, Slow Attack, Down Attack, etc. - and I want to improve a bit upon that idea. In Killer 2017, you use thick blood vials to create serum and you use that serum to level up character attributes. When these attributes go up, they unlock or improve a skill. Putting one point into grit, for instance, might give you Health +5, two points might net you Stamina +1, five points might improve upon the first skill, thus giving you Health +10.

Each character will have a more or less different skill list to match their playstyles and some skills will require a certain number of points sunk into different stats. Slow Attack might, for instance, require Power 5 and Aim 5. Tomorrow I'll work a bit on the weapon UI, which shouldn't take long.

  • Time spent on the project so far: 76 hours
  • Currently working on: Character TV UI
  • Screenshot: Skills!
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Killer 2017 - Entry Forty Three

More work done on the TV UI today, mainly buying stat upgrades. I've also started the skill screen, which should go by quickly, then the weapon screen, which at this point is also simple. I've reworked how I create and assign weapons as well.

  • Time spent on the project so far: 76 hours
  • Currently working on: Character TV UI
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Killer 2017 - Entry Forty Two

More UI work today, added serum bottles to represent the cost of stat upgrades, reduced the size of tutorial lines to fit more per page, continued to move forward with basic TV UI functionalities.

  • Time spent on the project so far: 75 hours
  • Currently working on: Character TV UI
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Killer 2017 - Entry Forty One

More work was done on the TV UI this weekend, but I'm still not completely done with it yet. I have to decide how it'll work in this game since I have a bit more customization options than in the original Killer 7. I also want to decide on the base building blocks for the rest of the game before I keep pressing forward; Not that I'll code everything, but I at least want to have my ideas laid down for the future. With luck, this bit of the game will be done before the end of the week!

  • Time spent on the project so far: 74 hours
  • Currently working on: Character TV UI
  • Screenshot: Character UI
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Killer 2017 - Entry Forty

Worked on the TV UI this morning as well. Now you can unlock characters by viewing them in the TV and I've started working on showing more info about them as well. You won't be able to fully customize them yet - since I haven't worked on the list of skills and upgrades - but this should be done pretty soon!

  • Time spent on the project so far: 72 hours
  • Currently working on: Character TV UI
  • Screenshot: Character UI
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Killer 2017 - Entry Thirty Nine

A few things done today; I've moved Power from the character to the weapon they use - I think that makes more sense - and I've worked a bit more on the TV. I decided that I wouldn't keep the 'you must kill X enemies to awaken this character' mechanic from the original Killer 7 since as a turn-based RPG with random encounters it would just mean that you need to grind a few enemies to get that, and that's just unfun busywork. Tomorrow I'll continue working on that UI, it should still take a while.

  • Time spent on the project so far: 71 hours
  • Currently working on: Character TV UI
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Killer 2017 - Entry Thirty Eight

Today was mostly work on the TV UI, mainly the blood room. Since I can only trivially extract basic textures from the game while it's running, I had to mess around in order to get the doctor and the rest of the room. I feel that I'll need to do the same for every character, but that's okay!

  • Time spent on the project so far: 70 hours
  • Currently working on: Character TV UI
  • Screenshot: The blood room
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Killer 2017 - Entry Thirty Seven

Saving and loading was way easier than I thought, and I think I won't get the problems I had with The Proton Orders. I also managed quite easily to make it so I can play the game in development mode without having to go through all screens every time.

Now I'm working on the TV UI. This is a pretty important screen where you can trade thick blood for serum, upgrade your characters and power them up, in this version you'll also be able to change/upgrade weapons as well. I'm not sure I'll keep the 'you must kill X enemies before you can awake a character' mechanic, but I'll figure it out as I go!

  • Time spent on the project so far: 69 hours
  • Currently working on: Character TV UI
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Killer 2017 - Entry Thirty Six

Haven't really worked on the game this weekend and today wasn't a great burst of productivity either, but I've managed to get the loading done in a relatively short period of time. Not all data is properly loaded so far - character health for instance, is always reset - and I still have to figure out how I'll work for the rest of the development - I don't want to go through the normal loading process every time I want to test the game - but this is almost finished. 

  • Time spent on the project so far: 68 hours
  • Currently working on: Saving and loading
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Killer 2017 - Entry Thirty Five

Today was mostly spent on the loading screen. I also hooked new bits and pieces of data that needs to be saved here and there as well. I still need to save a few things - which characters are unlocked, that kind of stuff - but saving is pretty done by now. The big piece left from that specific system is loading; The player needs to be put in the right room with the right character and all that. Probably will be done this weekend!

  • Time spent on the project so far: 67 hours
  • Currently working on: Saving and loading
  • Screenshot: Loading screen, don't remove your hard drive!
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Killer 2017 - Entry Thirty Four

Some more UI work was done today, but I've started moving variables around to facilitate saving and loading. I think that saving is in a good shape right now, but I have to implement loading to make it work. This is a pretty important bit of the project, because being able to load your game means not starting from the beginning and events, cutscenes and other progress-related things will need to be properly initialized when you load from an existing file. This might take a few hours!

  • Time spent on the project so far: 66 hours
  • Currently working on: Saving and loading
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Killer 2017 - Entry Thirty Three

Today I worked on the save room, mainly the save UI. I also took five minutes to implement some form of scanlines to make the TV look cooler. I think the end result is quite good! You can compare with yesterday's screenshot. Tomorrow I hope that I'll be done with the save system. 

  • Time spent on the project so far: 65 hours
  • Currently working on: Harman Room
  • Screenshots after the jump: Scanlines!
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Killer 2017 - Entry Thirty Two

Still working on Harman's room, now on the save system. There's a bit of UI work - to be sure that it looks and feels kinda similar to Killer 7 - but also I have to work out how my save system will be for this game. In 100RTBD it was a very bad text file system where I saved each data value on a different line - and it was a nightmare to navigate. In The Proton Orders I used XML serialization to properly save some objects, but I made mistakes in how and where I was saving and it could result in losses of data and behaved weirdly if I tried to access my data somewhere else than on the intro menu. Let's try and make Killer 2017's saving system better!

  • Time spent on the project so far: 64 hours
  • Currently working on: Harman Room
  • Screenshots after the jump: Tutorial panel and a shot from the save menu
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Killer 2017 - Entry Thirty One

Still working on Harman's Room, the tutorial module is more or less done - all that's remaining is to add content to it - and now I've started working on the save module. I also did some work on switching personalities and defining some more game mechanics. I'm not sick anymore and GamesDoneQuick is over, so I should pick back up the steam this week!

  • Time spent on the project so far: 63 hours
  • Currently working on: Harman Room
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Killer 2017 - Entry Thirty

Still working on the first Harman Room. Kinda still sick, and watching Games Done Quick, so I don't have that much free time. There are three components to the room; Tutorials, Saving, and Character related stuff, I'm starting with the tutorials since it's the easiest thing.

  • Time spent on the project so far: 61 hours
  • Currently working on: Harman Room
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Killer 2017 - Entry Twenty Nine

Working on the first Harman Room now. These rooms are quite feature packed, so it might take a while for me to go through with this one. You can save, level-up your characters - or at least unlock them. You also can view a bunch of tutorials from Iwazaru. I'll probably make most of the rooms identical - the only difference between them in-game is whether you can save, after all.

  • Time spent on the project so far: 61 hours
  • Currently working on: Harman Room
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Killer 2017 - Entry Twenty Eight

Spent a bunch of time working on the battle system this weekend, and then I worked on the next rooms you go to in the game, mainly the Celtic Apartments lobby. I had to fix the interaction selection system that began showing its cracks already, and I've re-hauled how character interactions with different things work, I want as little hard coded stuff as possible and now character one-liners are easier to manage. 

I've also implemented thin and thick blood collection and I'm not sure about how it'll go in the end but right now you get thin blood from hitting enemies and you get thick blood from defeating them. You get more blood if you hit with crits or deal high damage, but the amount of blood you get is proportional to the damage you deal related to the enemy's max health. We'll see how this works!

The next thing to work on is Harman's Room. This implies saving/loading and other things like that, a lot of work in perspective!

  • Time spent on the project so far: 60 hours
  • Currently working on: Lobby
  • Screenshot after the jump: The lobby
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