INTERACTIVE EXPERIENCES

Midwest Lost Post #2

Stanced Up Sidestepping:

The main thing I've been working on this week is implementing a new stance / sidestepping mechanic. I've been playing through the No More Heroes series lately, and the sidestepping in those games feels so good. It inspired me to want to implement sidestepping alongside rolling as a secondary form of dodging attacks. I really like how Bloodborne implements both methods, but my biggest issue with how it works in that game is that it's tied to whether or not you are locked on to an enemy. Because of this, I decided to replace the button I had planned for heavy attacks (R2 / Right Click) with a stance button. Holding this button down causes the player to strafe slowly, replaces the roll with the sidestep, replaces the light attack with a heavy attack, and causes the lock-on camera to focus onto the target more quickly (the default lock-on is fairly loose). You can also switch stances instantly, so you can sidestep away from an attack and then immediately follow up with a dodge roll. I had to make 8 different strafing animations and 4 different sidestep animations, so deciding whether or not to implement this idea was a fairly big commitment. I really wasn't sure how it would come together, so I was a little scared to put in all the effort to implement it because I didn't know if I'd have to scrap it. Thankfully though I think it came together really well, and it adds a lot of variety to how you might choose to dodge certain attacks and navigate around the bosses.

Hitboxes and Hurtboxes:

This is the first melee-combat oriented game I've ever made, so it was also my introduction to many mechanics that are commonly seen in fighting games, 3D actions games, etc. It took a lot of complex-ish programming to setup systems for knockback fall-off curves and things like that, but I will just cover the basics here. Every character has a series of hurtboxes placed on their limbs that, when colliding with an enemy's hitbox, will take an amount of damage determined by the damage value stored in the hitbox and the multiplier stored in the hurtbox. If a hitbox is set to do 100 damage and the hurtbox has a 2x multiplier, then if the hitbox hits that hurtbox, it will do 200 damage. Pretty basic stuff, most of you probably already know how all of that works. I thought once I had that implemented I'd basically be done, but collision detection showed its stupid face like it always does. Basically, when you have animations that move this fast, you are going to run into a lot of inconsistent collision detection. This is because if a hitbox is on one side of a hurtbox one frame and then on the other side of the hurtbox the next frame, it will have never been overlapping with the hurtbox as far as the physics engine is concerned. To fix this, I do a recursive series of boxcasts between the hitbox's current position and its previous position to make sure that it didn't pass through anything. A boxcast is basically just a laser in the shape of a box that you shoot from one point to another to check if anything was hit. You can see them in action in the images above (they are made up of those pink lines). I'm not sure how interesting this is to read about, but I had an absolute blast programming all this. Combat and movement related programming is always the most fun for me to solve issues for, and it's just really satisfying seeing all those hitboxes move around.

Conclusion:

Midwest Lost Post #1

Introduction:

This is my second time writing this post because I pressed ctrl z on accident at the end of my (very long) first attempt and apparently tumblr doesn't have a redo button. I am going to scream. Anyway, Midwest Lost is a souls-like set in the American Midwest in which you play as an angsty teenage boy with a big fuck off sword. My main inspirations for this project are the mainline souls games (also bloodborne psx), metal gear rising revengeance, and kingdom hearts 358/2 days. The best way I can describe my goal for this project is that I want it to be a fun, earnest, introspective, and emotionally raw teenage drama with a focus on atmosphere, narrative, and cool bossfights. As you can probably tell this project is the most early in development of the three I'm currently working on.

Story:

I'm not going to go into too much detail here because I want to avoid talking about spoilers, and, also, anything is subject to change at this point. The gist of it is that you are playing as an emotionally troubled teenage boy who (figuratively and literally) hides behind his big ol' sword. His ultimate goal is to leave his dead-end home town behind and make a better life for himself. The first obstacle of many in this goal is the protagonist's abusive stepfather who serves as the introductory bossfight of the game. I have a lot of ideas for bossfights that I am extremely excited about, but I'll avoid talking about them here so that I can show them off when they are more developed (one of them I'm excited about is a mom van). The game is likely going to be 50% exploration of a vibin small town and 50% fighting bosses, so most of my effort is going into those two things. The game's story is going to take place in chapters with various time gaps between them. This will allow me to set different chapters in different seasons, and, most importantly, it will let me set a chapter on Halloween night. The last thing I'll talk about in regards to the story is that, as absurd as the subject matter may get, I want to avoid the game feeling irony poisoned at any point. I want the game to feel earnest as that is how I'm feelin' while making it.

Mechanics to Appease a Goopy Goblin Gamer Brain:

I would describe my enjoyment of games as a medium as belonging on a spectrum where the left has experiences that touch me in an more complex emotional sense, and the right has experiences that are pure serotonin injected straight into my soul. The souls games sit comfortably in the middle. This is because the atmosphere, storytelling, and general vibe of the souls games is really harrowing and beautiful, and the gameplay gives me the kind of intense brainworms that lead me to play through it twice a month. Before working on my current three projects, I hadn't really worked on something that I intended to necessarily be fun. In a way, I'm sort of getting out of my comfort zone by making something so mechanically heavy. It's been a nice change of pace to learn that I can focus on atmosphere and gameplay without either of them feeling creatively unsatisfying. Something you must know about me is that I have an immeasurable fixation on dodge rolling, and I think it's one of my favorite mechanics of all time. All this to say I put a dodge roll in my game, and I think it's feelin' really good.

Animation is Hard:

(But if I'm being honest, I'm getting there.)

Souls-likes are sort of unique as a genre in that animation is extra important in them. In something like a platformer you might have a bad jump animation that makes the gamefeel all wonky, but the jump itself will still work the same. In contrast, a 3D-Action game like Dark Souls is very dependent on its animations to control timing, spacing, and telegraphing on top of the gamefeel. Before starting this project I didn't really know if I had the animation chops to pull something like this off, but heading straight into the deep end has, I think, really helped me improve my animation skills quickly. The moment I got the stepfather's "lunge + spin knife around" attack implemented (as pictured above) I got a lot more confident in my ability to probably make this game feel pretty dang fun. Recently, I had to make 8 different strafe animations and it strangely didn't feel like a chore at all. I'll talk about that more next week since it's related to the mechanic I'm currently working on.

Drinkz:

The main healing items in this game are a variety of energy drinks, coffee brands, soda, etc. that each have their own unique effect. In the above gifs you can see the two that I have currently implemented. These are the green and blue varieties of in-world brand "Vlade Energy". The green one is the most basic heal item, and it's the one you start off with. It allows you to take two sips per can with each sip healing a good deal, and you can roll out of the drink animation at anytime; however, cancelling the animation also discards any sips yet taken while still using up the can. The blue one stacks a passive buff on the player that allows them to heal by dodging through enemy attacks. I'm really happy with the presentation of the heal mechanic with the fun particles, the sfx (take my word for it I guess), and the animation of the protagonist throwing the empty can away.

Music:

The game currently has none. I'm looking to commission a bunch of artists to fill up the soundtrack with some banging Midwest Emo or songs that otherwise have an indie feel. If you make music and are interested in doing a song or two please hmu. It'll be a p long while before I'm actually worrying about getting music in the game, but I thought I'd mention it. There is also gonna be some fights that have tracks way outside of the Midwest Emo genre, so don't be afraid to hmu if you are making different types of stuff.

Conclusion:

here’s a behind-the-scenes shot of a painting I made earlier this year

Basidia Post #1

Introduction:

The Winds of Basidia is an adventure roleplaying game that I am co-developing alongside Modus Interactive. It's a sequel to his previous game The Snow of Basidia. Our main inspirations for this project include the n64 Zelda games, Fallout: New Vegas, Nausicaa, and Pathologic.

Tha Plot:

The kingdom of Basidia faces an apocalypse in the form of an extremely deadly, infectious basidium storm that is set to hit by the end of the next three days. Luckily, following an assassination of the king, the protagonist (a lowly nobody) chances upon an ancient artifact that was lost during the altercation. With this artifact they can relive the last three days of this beautiful, dying land over and over in order to try and find a way to save it.

Tha Factions & Misc. Basidia Politics:

There are three major factions in Basidia that are all trying to realize their own solution to the storm. Through their actions, the player can aid and join them on their respective quests. These factions include the Basidia Military, the Basidia Church, and the Rebellion (note: these are all working titles). The military and the church are in the process of fighting for primary control over the kingdom following the king's assassination. The military feel as though they have the majority of power and resources, so they should be able to take charge. On the other hand, the church feel as though they were second to the king in terms of closeness to God, so they have a right to be in charge. The military would prefer to just eliminate the church, but they cannot. The church is extremely important to the citizens of Basidia, and the military cannot risk losing that support. Operating in the background of this tension is a relatively small, organized anarchist-rebellion group. They were responsible for the king's assassination as a means to cause infighting in the kingdom. They operate through a horizontal hierarchical structure, and they are made up entirely of any Basidia citizens that believed in the cause. I'll leave it at that for now. Maybe I'll go into more detail with these factions and their motivations another time.

Tha Mechanics:

So this game is taking a while to develop due to how many interworking mechanics we need to build (as it turns out making a whole rpg is a lot of work). We want to emphasize player freedom (shocker ik), so we have to account for things like the player being able to kill whoever they want and go anywhere they want. This game has a timeloop, open-ended world, murder, infected areas, gliding, resource gathering, a weird marble lock system, a bomber's notebook type thing, etc. Maybe I should go into detail about the gliding since the game is kinda named after it. The player is going to be placed in a fairly vast world that takes a while to traverse on foot; however, as the game progresses the player will acquire various different types of gliders that they can equip and use. With these gliders the player can, well, glide freely to get around quicker, access new areas, and generally get more stuff done within the time limit. Sorry this section is poorly structured and rambely, but there are so many details I could go into for each mechanic that its probably best I just save a lot of it for individual development posts.

Conclusion:

so… Twitter’s going to hell, and Tumblr seems like a viable alternative for development updates, so I’m gonna try posting here more often.

Here’s a clip just to test the video encoding. Watch closely as Wonky grazes bullets to charge his shot, only to die miserably :(