Loot Snake

It has been a while, hasn’t it.

The last post on this blog was back in June 2018, announcing that development of Loot Snake would be slowing down while I work on (the then unnamed) Cats are Liquid - A Better Place.

Now that A Better Place is out in the world and I’ve had a chance to catch my breath a bit, I’m here to say that unfortunately I’ll be continuing the entire “not much progress happening on Loot Snake“ thing for at least a while longer.

The reason for this is that I honestly don’t feel like I can work on another large project. A Better Place took a lot of out of me, and Loot Snake is a lot bigger scope-wise. I just don’t think I’d be able to put my best work in it. These games are (if you don’t count the music and SFX) a single person effort.

That’s why I’m taking a break from long-term projects and instead focusing on something smaller. Quite a bit smaller. I won’t be sharing too many details about this new project yet, but you should of course follow @lastquarterdev on Twitter for the latest news on that. The scope of it is pretty small, and I’m trying to be careful to not add too much stuff in it.

And Loot Snake won’t be forgotten!

Just like I said in the original post: the development is just slowing down. I have gotten all sorts of new ideas for the game, including plans to do a bit of a redesign of the ability system and certain other things. I’m honestly feeling very excited for it.

Hi.

This is just a quick announcement that the development of Loot Snake will slow down while I work on the next Cats are Liquid game (for which you can read the plans for here).

Let’s get right to it.

You can now control the snake using the mouse! Previously the only way to control the snake if you didn’t have a controller was using the arrow keys, and for this type of game it didn’t really work out that well.

I’ve also added some subtle camera idle movement and rotation to the screenshake.

Here’s the new power up pickup screen and the description for the fire charge, blizzard and spear power ups. All of the power ups have descriptions now, these are just the ones I decided to share. The rest you will have to discover yourself when the update comes out.

I’ve also added a whole bunch of sound effects. There’s new sounds for getting a successful hit, fire burning, and things freezing.

A couple days ago, I started work on a new tutorial map. You can see a video of it (with some new sound effects) here.

I also started work on dynamic music system and there’s already one track working in it. More tracks coming soon.

This is going to be a short one.

Shapes are now treated as additional components to items

All of this is happening behind the scenes so you won’t really see it (unless you go and dig through the map files). Some of the benefits of this change include less code to maintain and that there’s now only a single “polymap.data” file, instead of the separate “shapes.data” and “items.data” files.

Camera zones

Previously you had to manually tweak the camera lock position by typing in coordinates into the room configuration screen. Only problem was: there was no way to know which coordinate was where. You could also only lock the camera to a single position per room.

The new camera zones fix this. A camera zone is a PolyMap shape you can put on the map, just like any other shape. You can then hover your mouse over it and press E to edit that shape to set the camera mode inside that area. If the camera mode is set to “Lock on position“ a small icon appears. Just drag that to the position you want the camera to lock on to.

The orange lines won’t be visible when the map is played. Here I’ve enabled them just to show where the borders of the zones are.

Here’s some minor fixes / tweaks to pad out this blog post:

Fixed snake color flashing when hidden.

Fixed being able to apply the same powerup to multiple slots.

Small tweaks to the PolyMap system.

A ton of stuff has been completed since Pre-Alpha 0.3.0 came out. Here are just some of them:

(Most of the images I’ll be showing you have been previously posted on Twitter. So make sure you check that out.)

Here’s the biggest change:

No more separate shape and item editing modes. The two modes have been combined into one. This takes so much friction away from creating and modifying rooms.

Now let’s get to the smaller changes.

New cursor system. The cursor now shows you what actions you can do with the object you’re pointing at.

New toast notification system. Shows up when you’ve saved a map, or started editing an item.

Room and map configurations are now in a single panel.

+ some other smaller tweaks.

These all culminate into a brand new super clean UI. 

There’s also a bunch of other changes in the editor, not related to the UI.

Keyboard shortcuts:

You can now duplicate shapes and items using Ctrl + D.

You can save the room using Ctrl + S, and open the room list with Ctrl + O.

The camera in the editor is now controlled with dragging, instead of the old hold-and-point system.

Improved shape point manipulation. No more need to hunt down that exact spot between two points where you can create a new one.

That’s all the editor related changes. There are also some small bug fixes, but those aren’t really worth mentioning here.

Oh, and new music is actively being worked on. Same goes for sound effects.

Yay, plans.

The two main focus points of the upcoming update are going to be:

Better audio

and

Better map creation workflow

Details!

Better audio

The whole game sounds a bit empty right now. There’s only 35 sound effects currently in the game. 14 of those are spit powerups hitting something. That’s just sad. And who was the idiot who though I’d be a good idea to just have that one track looping constantly in the background?

More sound effects

Everything you do will have a sound effect. From launching a projectile to it setting fire to an enemy. All the enemies will also have their own distinct sounds and new idle sounds, so that you know who’s around the corner. And opening loot chests will definitely have some epic choirs or something.

More music

Listening to that one track gets pretty boring, doesn’t it? There’s plans for at least 4 new tracks for the game.

Better map creation workflow

Right now, the map creation workflow is a complete mess. With these changes, it’ll be much more easier to create maps and share them with friends.

Better shape editing tools. (No more shift+left click to delete a point, nor trying to get your mouse just in the right spot between two points to create a new point.)

The game will automatically set up a basic room (with a spawnpoint and everything) when you create a new map.

An in-editor tutorial.

An “Open map folder“ -button, so that you can easily zip some maps and send them to a friend, and unzip received maps.

Other stuff.

These aren’t going to be the only changes to the game. There’s also going to be a ton of smaller changes, new powerups, visual tweaks and such.

You can get the new version here.

Yes, I know, an in-game tutorial would be a lot nicer. That’s coming in the next update. But for now, this will have to do.

This tutorial will run you through the steps that you need to take to create your very first (very basic) map.

Setup

Click the “Map Editor“ button on the title screen, and select “Create New” in the bottom right corner of the window that just popped up. After entering a name for your new amazing map, press enter, or click the arrow in the input field.

UI

Let’s go through the UI. All the important controls are on the left of the screen.

Selectors

You can use these selectors to select what types of items and shapes you want to add to the current room.

Dock

Here are all the dock icons, from left to right.

Open - Open existing rooms.

Save - Save the current room.

Clear - Clears the room of all shapes and items. Doesn’t delete any saved rooms.

Switch - Switches between shape and item mode.

Wrench - Opens the room preferences.

Plus - Adds a new shape in shape editing mode.

At the top left, you can see the name of the map, and below that you can enter a name for the current room. You can edit the map preferences by pressing the cog icon next to the map name.

Creating and manipulating shapes

Move your mouse over to the selectors, click “Floor and Walls”, and then click the plus button in the dock. This creates a new shape that has a floor and walls surrounding it. Click the shape in the editor to activate editing on it.

You can manipulate the shape by dragging the points around. Holding down control while dragging a point locks the movement of the point to a grid. You can add new points by right clicking between two points. You can delete points by shift-right clicking a point. (All shapes must have at least 3 points.)

Try making the shape you just created a square.

You can also move the entire shape. Make sure the shape is selected, and move it with your mouse, just like you would a point. Control + drag locks to grid. Pressing backspace when the shape is selected (the points are visible) deletes the shape.

Creating and editing items

Press Tab or the switch icon in the dock to toggle between the shape and item modes.

When in item mode, use the selectors to select the spawnpoint. It looks like the letter S.

Click anywhere on the map to create the spawnpoint. You can move it just like a point.

Put the spawnpoint inside the room you created. Then, while holding down the mouse button over it, press E. This opens the item editor on the left.

You can edit the settings of the spawnpoint here. You can rotate it, and set the name of it.

Let’s set the name to “spawn“.

After setting the name, click outside the spawn point name text box (to make sure that you won’t keep writing to it) and press E again to close the editor.

Some other items also have special data that you can edit:

Doors

You can set the room it should load, the name of the spawnpoint it should go in the next room. Or should the door just end the map.

The key amount slider does not work yet, as the game does not have any keys implemented yet.

Loot Chests

What loot should the chest spawn when opened and how many.

Powerups

What powerup should be given to the player when they pick it up.

Text

What text should the text box display?

All items can be rotated. You can delete an item by right clicking it.

Room preferences (optional)

To edit the preferences of the room that you can currently in, just press the wrench icon in the dock.

Here you can control the camera mode, zoom, and position lock coordinates.

For your first room, I’d suggest leaving these settings untouched.

Finishing up

Click the room name input field and enter “start“ in it.

Save the room by clicking the save button in the dock.

All maps that you make should have a starting room and a starting spawnpoint set in the map preferences. Otherwise it fails to load. Let’s set those.

Click the cog icon next to the map name.

Put “start“ in the “Starting room name“ field, and “spawn” in the “Starting spawnpoint name” field.

Press X on the top right corner to close the preference editor, and save the room again using the save button in the dock.

Playing your new map

Close the map editor by clicking the X in the top right corner, and then close the Select map view. Click Start Game and choose the map you just created.

If you followed the instructions correctly, the game should load the map you just created.

This is going to be a really short progress update post.

Just like the title says: the pre-alpha 0.3.0 update is basically done.

Over 30 bugs were fixed during the last couple days, and no new bugs were found during the last play test session.

You can expect the update to come out early next week. Monday or Tuesday.

And it’s only going to be about 40 days overdue.

A lot has happened in the last couple weeks. I got sick, and that caused the pre-alpha 0.3.0 update to be delayed. Yeah, not fun.

I also just recently posted an update of the situation with the update.

With all that out of the way, let’s look at the things that I managed to complete.

(Something that you might notice in the screenshots is that the colors seem a bit different. That’s because I switched the color space back to gamma instead of linear.)

The fire effects look a lot more like fire now. All fire based attacks now also use the same color palette. That way there’s less fragmentation between the different kinds of fire attacks.

The fire powerup visuals were completed a couple days ago. Right now I’m working on the look of the ice-based powerups. The biggest problem was getting them to stand out from the white background, but I think I found something that will work.

Adding a shadow under the powerup helps it stand out, but still keeps it looking like, well, ice. This is the same method I used with the snake parts.

There’s also been a lot of smaller changes:

Added the ability to lock the game camera to specific coordinates.

Fixed status effect particles rendering below the enemies.

Enemies that can’t powerup will no longer target or eat snake parts.

Fixed player not getting hurt when being over spikes before they came up.

Reduced player invulnerability time to 1.5 seconds from 3 seconds.

Switched wall decorations to the default layer from the overlay layer.

Tons of bug fixes.

The pre-alpha 0.3.0 update is getting really close to completion. All that’s really left is adding proper costs and cool downs to the powerups, and fixing a couple remaining bugs. Oh, and the website and itch.io page also need to be updated to reflect the new visual style.

Hi.

Remember those really cool powerups I had planned and promised to include in pre-alpha 0.3.0? And a couple other things I can’t really remember right now. Yeah. Those are being push back to Pre-Alpha 0.4.0.

The reason for this is the update taking way too long to get done. I had an internal deadline set for it and it’s already way over that. Me getting sick didn’t really help the situation either. So right now I’m working on just finishing it up and getting it released.

As always: the latest progress updates can found on the @lastquarterdev Twitter feed.

Hi. Me again. Surprised? You shouldn’t be. This is a bi-weekly thing, remember?

Let’s start with the biggest change: a more contrasted look for the environment.

This goes back to what I was saying in the previous progress update. The environment should look harsh, dark and uninviting, and the loot should look the opposite: soft, colorful and inviting.

Now let’s get to the smaller visual changes...

I added a fade transition when moving to another room.

Made the visual transition between being hidden / visible smoother.

Powerup items no longer show what powerup they are, instead, the player has to pick them up. (This might change in the future)

Added a part growing animation for when you eat an enemy.

And the most important thing of all: screenshake. (This is an older gif)

Other stuff that changed:

Disabled scaling items in the map editor. (This is (maybe) temporary.)

Fixed the enemy eat animation.

Decreased the snipers cooldown and lock-on time.

Adjusted the thickness of the outer walls so that important objects that may be vital to your success can’t just disappear from your view.

New design for the doors. (You already saw it in all the gifs)

The snake doesn’t have eyes anymore. (Those things were pretty overrated anyways.)

The sniper now uses the basic enemy growls. (This is temporary.)

Pre-alpha 0.3.0 is slowly nearing completion. As I said on Twitter, it’ll most likely come out mid-March. Especially now that the look is finalized, there’s only very few things left to do.

Hey look! It’s just like I promised last time. Tons of tiny improvements and fixes! (and a new enemy type, and some new environment art stuff)

Environment art stuff

Considering the environment, the style of it wasn’t quite where I wanted it to be. I tried taking it in a more cleaner, geometric / minimalist look, but that didn’t work out. I also tried to make the loot and enemies pop out more by making the floor darker, but that just didn’t work out either. Now I’m testing out a more gritty, dirtier look for the environment, and I think it’s working out a lot better. The goal is to make the loot look clean, modern and inviting, while making the everything else look uninviting, old and rundown.

Here’s a couple pictures of the style I was experimenting with:

The style I’m going to go with is going to be similar to the current one, but with more detailed floors and backgrounds. The goal is to make the environment look more like a drawing or a black and white watercolor painting.

Here’s the current progress:

It’s still in its early stages, so it doesn’t look that different yet, but it will improve during the following weeks.

New enemy

It’s a really simple little enemy that just charges at the player and can be destroyed with just one hit. It doesn’t offer as large of a challenge as the other enemy types, but can still hit the player if they aren’t paying attention.

Small changes

Here’s the change log of most of the smaller changes that were made during the last couple weeks:

PolyMap / Map editor:

Fixed PolyMap item loading and saving.

Fixed PolyMap ShapeManager Reset method.

Replaced the PolyMap 2-state active system, with a 3-state active system.

Fixed and refactored PolyMap shape and point moving and selecting.

Fixed item editor rotation loading to UI always going to 1 instead of the actual value.

Fixed all shapes becoming active when switching from item editing mode to shape editing mode in the map editor.

Fixed PolyMap points not updating location on startup.

Fixed the editor error and warning message popups.

New layout for the shape selectors.

Updated map editor shape icons.

New map editor icons for loot container, floor spike and all enemies.

Fixed map editor room loading buttons sometimes having buttons from the previous map.

Fixed map editor item editing panel not opening.

Fixed the map editor UI.

Other smaller PolyMap improvements.

Powerups:

Added the Ice Square powerup.

Added distortion effects and the ability to spawn gameobjects on hit to the Projectile class.

Added hit distortions to all powerups that should have it.

Added impact particles and slightly adjusted the look of the spit powerups.

Misc:

Fixed enemies lunging and shooting at the player when frozen of confused.

Added the ability for enemies to spawn loot on hit, and fixed the loot grouping up bug.

Fixed enemy AI stopping when the room the enemy is in gets unloaded.

Reorganized some scripts to correct folders.

New smoke particle material.

Fixed Spear hit sounds.

Added possibility of using a Rigidbody2D to the Spinner class.

Fixed powerup discard button not working.

Updated the look of the floor spikes.

Added a slight wiggle to the snake movement.

Improved the pause screen.

Whew.

These last couple weeks have been mostly all about small improvements, but there’s also two new ice-based powerups in there that we’re gonna take a look at. Let’s get started!

First small improvement: the subtle shadow on the snake parts. Really helps the parts to stand out from the light background.

One of the new powerups: the blizzard. Powerful enough to throw enemy (and player) projectiles and also the enemies themselves around. Spawning one of these costs a lot of loot, and it also has a long cooldown. That means you won’t be spamming this every time an enemy gets too close to you. Video of this in action can be seen here.

There’s also a brand new visual effect when collecting loot. It’s subtle, but it’s there. Here’s a link to a video showing it off.

The second new powerup: ice square. It’s a tad bit too big for a drink, but the perfect size to freeze enemies that might be pursuing you.

Here’s the new water distortion effect. It looks a lot better on video.

I also added the MiniProfiler (by Kleber Silva) to the project. It makes performance monitoring in builds easier.

I also inverted the title screen colors. The previous color scheme was rather straining on the eyes.

There’s also a ton of other small improvements scattered around, but the ones listed here are the most prominent ones.

I’ve also done a lot of work improving / fixing up the PolyMap system. You won’t see it directly in the game, but the code is a lot cleaner and maintainable now.

Focus for the next few weeks is going to be on bug fixing and polishing some things up a bit behind the scenes, so don’t be surprised if the next progress update doesn’t have as much stuff as this one. After that it’s going to go back to adding new stuff, and then final bug testing before the release of the update.

Oh, and I also haven’t forgotten about all those powerups I promised. They’re coming soon, I swear.

I think that’s all for this week!

[insert meta intro here]

Let’s look at some powerups!

Spear: Flies through the air, piercing and knocking back any enemies that stand in its way. The only thing that can stop it is a wall.

Poisoned part: Drops a part that the enemies try to eat. Then they get poisoned. Next-gen stuff right here folks.

I’m also experimenting with a darker visual design for the game. The current one can be really straining for the eyes, especially if you look at it for a long time. Here’s an early prototype.

Welp, I think that’s about everything for this bi-weekly update. See you in two weeks!

Hey look! It’s the first progress update of the year! Yay!

Lately, I’ve been working on brand new powerups for the game. I’ve only managed to complete a couple, but there’s plenty more on the way.

This doesn’t mean that all of the current powerups will be removed. Some of them will stay.

Let’s take a look at the ones that are completed.

Stun cloud. (Video (of a slightly older version) on Twitter)

Shotgun-spit. This thing has some serious knockback. (Video on Twitter)

Flares. (also the new burning effect) (Video on Twitter)

I do realize that this isn’t really a lot, so I’ll set up some expectations on what you can expect to see soon. Now I can also stress out about all these promises I made to you, each night when I go to sleep. So that’s a plus, right?

Here are some of the ideas for future powerups I have in mind:

An arrow that flies through the air, piercing through enemies until it hits a wall.

A tiny explosive that the player can shoot. If it hits an enemy, it attaches itself to it and explodes (after a while) dealing massive damage to the attached target + a bit to the surroundings. If it hits a wall or something else it just disappears.

Poisoned snake part. The enemies get the poison status effect when they try to eat it.

Pandora's Box. Spawns a bunch of projectiles that can go through walls and give random status effects to enemies they hit. An ultimate ability. (You won’t be spamming this all the time.)

A ray / spray gun that freezes enemies. Or maybe a giant rolling snowball?

A drill. Long cooldown and wind-up time. Slows the player down for the duration of the powerup, but causes massive damage to anything in front of it. Once you start it, you cannot cancel it.

Some simple small bombs / grenades. (These can’t all be cool.)

A phone. Spawns a terrifying ghost right in front of the player that stuns all enemies within its range.

These sound a lot more interesting than the powerups currently in the game. Don’t you agree?

Oh, and I also posted updated long term plans for the game a while ago, so why not check those out as well?

I don’t know if you noticed, but the year just (give or take a week) changed. So it’s the perfect time to revise the long-term plan for Loot Snake.

Note that the Alpha and Beta sections are going to be split into smaller updates. (Alpha 1.0, Alpha 1.1, etc)

Pre-Alpha 0.3.0

The version that’s currently being worked on. The main focus points are the complete art and powerup refresh.

Pre-Alpha 0.4.0

More sound effects, music, ambiance, stuff like that. After this version gets released I’ll start contacting YouTubers and other content creators that might be interested in the game.

Pre-Alpha 0.5.0

More stuff for the rooms. (Traps, decorations, new enemies, etc.)

Pre-Alpha 0.6.0

Environmental effects. Fire spreads on grass, water can be poisoned / frozen, stuff like that. (This might also come in an earlier update, or be pushed to the Alpha version of the game.)

Alpha

Shops, pets, procedural maps. Add easier map sharing to the list as well.

This version will most likely have a price tag on it. And if it does, it’ll be somewhere around $1 - $2. People who played the pre-alpha will get this version for free.

Beta

New game modes, content, and polish. Small price increase. People who have played the pre-alpha, or the alpha can play this version for free.

Release (Gold)

A story driven campaign. Lots of more content.

The game will be released on Steam and get the final price tag. Between $5 - $10. People who have played pre-alpha, alpha or beta versions of the game will get this version for free + a Steam key. (If you got the game in pre-alpha, you have to have donated some amount of money to get the Steam key. This is a restriction put in place by itch.io.)