D.A.Moran Dev Blog

Scoping out

Well, we're now entering the first quarter of the year. Time flies, doesn't it?

Over the holidays I've once again, against all odds of work and other responsibilities to put in a little work. This time I focused more on creative practice rather than some tangible, concrete progress. As "proud" as I am of my progress, I am equally annoyed by the never ending scope creep combined with blatant indecision.

Due to my limited coding abilities I struggled to make an engaging game loop - especially in regards to the combat system. I started off with something incredibly basic, a mechanic that would just "do the job". Later however I've tried to do something more original, so that the project could stand out a bit.

That forced me to think a lean into the slower paced, more tank like controls that I've already established. Instead of spawning a bullet object which damages the first enemy and gets destroyed right after I tried to experiment with something more nuanced. My previous mechanic killed the gameplay in a sense where there isn't much counter play (no matter how many enemies are present, only the first one gets hit). In order to give some freedom to the player and open up space for more nuanced mechanics I decided to make a targeting system with a crosshair (somewhat of a bootleg raycast).

Boom, Boom part Two

So considering i lazied out on the grenades - skipped their proper physics etc. I thought i would add one more usable item. A simple mine that procs after a certain distance and a timer. Nothing extraordinary. Now i think i have added enough of these items, time to make their alternatives with different status effects.

Oh, and i also need to figure out proper particle effects and their individual sprites.

From gameplay perspective, its starting to not be as boring (meaning just gunning everyon down when standing at one place).

Boom, boom

And we are back. This time with prototyping more usable items. So far this throwable expllsive is set to spawn only as a key press - implementation within the inventory system is coming next.

Everytime i try to fuck around with new features, i always ask my self... does it make sense within the games settings and does it make sense gameplay wise?

From a realism standpoint, such objects should fall down, bounce, have a timer and a MASSIVE explosion hitbox. If i were to follow such realism all the time, i would either

a) break the game

b) never actually finish anything because it will not be up to the realistic standard (aka perfectionism)

Yea, a "levitating" explosive" does not really make much sense, but the way the levels, enemies and their AI is set up, it alligns pretty well. Next thing to prototype might be proximity traps.

Remember... people play videogames to take a break from reality, do not ruin it for them.

As much as I try to be as consistent as possibly, some times things just do not allow it - is it a question of circumstance? Or A false sense of discipline?

We consisntently see on the internet that if you want, you can be consistent. And partly it is true, if i would really put my priorities in order i would not have a month long development gap.

But from my real life experience, experience from companies and corporations, even their targets and "dead lines" are barely accurate. Never ending change requests, postponing of deliveries etc. It kind of gives me hope....

Sometimes a one week worth of sprint gives more results than one month of "consistent" effort. Life is not linear and it should not be....

Anyway, my most recent task is to finalise a playable, executable demo/prototype (a short one of course around 20 minutes tops).

Surprisingly, coming up with the backstory of the demo, the level layout and (oh god) the visual assets like tiles, props and objects is an absolute hell - it is quite ironic considering that I do digital illustrations as another hobby.

STATUS EFFECTS

This time I have spent more time heading into a different direction and use this week as a practice to think about different styles of implementing features.

Managed to pull of stun effect, new armor resource and bleeding effect.

To be honest, the only feature ill keep is the stun. Is a great adition and makes sense gameplay wise, also is not as hard to keep and maintain to not break gameplay.

Armor to me now seems as just an extra bar/number that goes down. So does not really bring much apart from some "immersion".

Bleeding was a bit of a challenge to implement, did pull it off but is extremly broken without a proper controlling feature/object - once it stacks enough times, the player just dies instantly, which is not much fun. When thinking about how to implement some controlling features my brain almost exploded - so just said fuck it, not keeping it.

Development is just bunch of wins and sometimes losses and i intend to take some Ls in order to keep the game somewhat in tact.

Now i need to focus of making a demo/prototype level that I can present to others and perform some testing. Will surely by super fun, because i have yet to test how values and objects behave when changing rooms - how respawns work etc... fml

So the birthday week is finally over. Time to treat my self with some dEdIcAtEd work.

Fucked around with new player abilities. Switching between them works and added some VFX. This one enables the player to clean targets even if they are behind each other - apart from standard combat which focuses on the closest enemy and doesnt damage enemies behind it.

Bit of a challenge was to make the flagging work so that the bullet collision does not trigger twice, hence dealing more damage than planned.

As cool as these features are, i should start focusing on some actual playable content. Still feel a lot of trouble when it comes to color palletes and tiles design. One fuck up and decision to choose a slightly different shade of color, and I might as well redo everything from scratch.

The power of stories...

Well, the content is quite self explanatory.

But good news. The dialogue system is now in place, from this point on, I can make inject a bit of sense and do some world building.

The dialogue system is and most likely will be in this basic form. No branching dialogue, alternative responses etc. Why? Well, this is enough and I also need to take the scope of the project into account.

As we all know, sudden issues always come up and you never know which system you need to revamp.

I was actually amazed by my self, that I have managed to keep the habit of keeping the blog (and the project itself) updated.

But now however, I have now caused myself a head on collision. Have not done much progress, to be show-worthy in the blog, so in order to keep the habit of posting going....

I am now posting this...

A gentle reminder (read: excuse) that we all slip once in a while. It is not how many mistakes we do, but how often we are able to come back from them.

More quality of life improvements.

Moving the HUD from the effective yet not nice looking debug area to the lower side of the screen. Have to admit, doing anything GUI related in Gamemaker is a pain in the ass. Can already see that the HUD will require some more thinking, but as of now, it shall suffice.

Tweaked the dashing - put it now on cooldown and varies between a dash and a step back depending on the player state. Looks better, but feels like an ABSOLUTE cop out.

Can already smell the balancing issues - tweaking ability cooldowns, weapon stats, etc.

Anyway, healing has been implemented along with animation. Also added warpers with a *gorgeous* fade effect (hurray room switching and persistent objects).

Considering my lack of coding skills overall, I am unfortunatelly not allowed to think about a feature I want to implement for 15 seconds, put my hands on the keyboard, write all the code, press enter and harvest the fruits of my labor.

Being the idiot that I am, I have developed a simple, fool proof process of implementing individual features.

Simply go from most barebones, broken, ugly "as long as it works" state to a somewhat polished version.

As of now, a great example would be my recently implemented spawner objects.

At first I just made a single color block with a wave count, and time. Then added --timer. Put into game room, tested, works. Next.

Second step, implement code for running the timer to 0 and substarcting from the amount of total "waves" in the spawner. Refresh game room, tested, works. Next.

Lastly add a code for spawning a selected object instance after the timer reaches zero. Also should check that the correct amount of enemies are spawned. Refresh game room, tested, work. Next.

Stupid simple, but works and also ensures I do not have to spend hours finding a simple typo or a bug.

Most of the time i do not do the final polishings, because i intend to do those in waves, but exceptions arise. Sometimes implementing them make me feel more motivated, due to the fact that I start seeing the project in its final light.

If this step by step process does not workwork I refrain back to other "weapons" in my arsenal like "From now on that is a feature" or "fuck it - it will have to do".

Oh dashes, a feature thats a must have in every action game. To be honest, to me it seems a bit of a co out - unless the game loop will be too boring, perhaps complicated i intend on keeping the dashes restrained

a) everyone does it

b) im trynna be different

duh

Will see once public playtesting takes place. Anyway.. once again introduced melee enemies, variable fire rate and climbing. Elevation as of now seems a bit of a challenge, but i think i can work around it during level design.

Implemented weapon ranges. Hurray to further "opportunities" to balance the main game loop. Alongside that, have added a placeholder field for dialogues.

Im either thinking of implementing the dialogue as a loop of strings, or just drawing one big text box with all of the dialogue.

As of now, the project is approaching to have the same amount features as the past one - except i have done some tidying up now and have way less "test objects" and "test functions", etc.

When it comes to balancing, I have some ideas which i am genuinely surprised some other action games have not implemented it yet. Down the line i might make it a part of this project, or base the whole project on this one idea.

Updated the debug GUI with proprietary player HUD. The aim is to keep the information centred around the player - lets BeReal... shoving the HP bar and icons to the top left corner is a bit overused.

Style wise I am going for a minimalistic retro/sci-fi/VHS like look. First thing that will have to change is the right firearm icon. Takes way too much space and the resolution is also out of place with the rest. 

Now that I am thinking about it... in order to increase immersion, i'll attempt to draw the GUI out (fade in/fade out) only during certain player actions. 

With a more concrete idea of what to work on, I started off with the basics.

Basic mechanics

Adjustable debug structure

A bit of flair - basic projectile hit particle. Later will probably transition on a hitscan system.

Currently struggling with enemy AI and colour palette - ironically as a hobbyist illustrator, dealing with a limited amount of colours seems more problematic than expected.

Enemies, spawners and stress tests