Sunday 31 May 2015

Revolver Continuations

I've gone and done it. Go HERE and you can watch my first video log. It's a little hit and miss with quality and the sound balance is poor (I did try though), but it does the job. Any future ones will be better made I promise. As for the standard dev log, here it is:

24/05/2015:
-Tweaked several levels.

25/05/2015:
-Created a new tile for hazard looking floors.
-Replaced the perk system with a simple, small increase in maxHP, movement speed & reload speed. It now only heals 10HP too.

27/05/2015:
-Began work on rGuardQuarters.
-Created another tile.
-Vastly neatened up the spawn code and set up spawning for every level. Obviously the quantities of foes needs testing but the system works.

28/05/2015:
-Did a little work on rGuardQuarters (now renamed rLivingQuarters).
-Created some basic table tiles which I will add "furnished" versions of soon. Also created two varieties of bed tile.
-Alterered grid for pathfinding, allowing enemies that use the grid to move around the edges of the map if they need to, fixing the problem with enemies getting stuck and wierdly teleporting to the top left.

29/05/2015:
-Wrote initial draft of Revolvers main theme.

Ooh that last one looks interesting, eh? I do plan on making all my own music, and Gods be good, that should be the case. There is actually a good chance that the whole soundtrack will be piano based, that'll be cool I hope.

In other news, I've been playing a ton of  Robocraft. Robocraft is a really cool MOBA style game where you build robots out of blocks (kinda like Minecraft) add wheels, hover blades, plane wings, FREAKING HELICOPTER BLADES and caterpillar tracks. You then add guns of many varieties, join random teams and beat the blocks out of each other. It's a very fun game and constantly upgrading your vehicles with the money (RP) you make for fights is a very addictive & rewarding system. Oh, I forgot to mention it's free too. There is actually a paid premium system that doubles your rewards, that I use occasionally and really do recommend. It's not too expensive and double rewards are very big in late game. All in all Robocraft is a lot of fun to be had in small groups (there is a limit to the amount of people in a party: 3 or 4 with a premium user) and the game is a bit buggy with its party and lobby systems but if you can look over that it's a real good time.

That's enough for today I think.

-Beau

As always you can follow me on Twitter: twitter.com/Bocodillo

Sunday 24 May 2015

Revolver Returns!

Huzzah! With exams out of the way nothing can stop the progress on Revolver, apart from student finance, placements and other personal issues. Ahhh joy. Jokes aside though I am getting back to work with Revolver and making some good progress in certain areas. A lot of tweaking, a couple more "finished" (I still need to add finishing touches) levels, some AI fixes and the like. All in all a not bad start. Here's the Dev log for your eyes only:

19/05/2015:
-Worked on rFactory & rLFireTesting.

20/05/2015:
-Worked on rScience.

21/05/2015:
-Worked on rScience. Touched up previous levels to make them look more like real places. Added pits to represent where the table, shelves, etc. will go, as the player can't walk through such things but can shoot over them. Makes the maps way more interesting to play and look at than loads of blank rooms.
-Added some code that allows zombies to be pushed off walls they collide with.
-Altered sprites slightly, to fix weird looking heads.

22/05/2015:
-Tweaked more past levels
-Made several tiles including: shelf tops and carpets.

23/05/2015:
-Finalised basic design of rScience.
-Tweaked spawning code across levels.
-Discovered that many enemies that can't move (due to being spawned trapped between walls and the levels edge) are teleporting to the top left corner. I need to either: alter the spawn code so this doesn't occur at all, remove enemies that enter the top left corner so that they respawn (kill or teleport), or alter the path-finding so that they can get around the outside of the room.

Discovery that I can add pits as tables, shelves or anything else the player can shoot over (which the pit objects allow) and then add tiles to simply make them look like tables, shelves, etc. was a stroke of genius! Maybe I'm being a bit over the top there (I totally am) but it's still a great solution to the problem of how I furnish the many, many rooms in the many levels. Now I can fill a room with shelves or have large areas filled with offices, it really does make the maps look and play that more interestingly.

Speaking of playing things I have two pieces of news. Firstly my video log will be made next week. I've had a few issues with the software I tried to use during testing it (I attempted to make a short video I could make into a gif and post on Twitter) but I believe I have the kinks sorted. All I've got left to do is install the very nice mic my brother got me and give it a shot. Hopefully it'll be up some time this week. That's what I'm trying to do at least. Secondly, you may have been thinking at some point, "When will I get to play Revolver?". Good news on that front then because I'm officially aiming for an mid July release. I was originally going to say end of June but an extra week or two dedicated to polish & bug fixes I think is a good idea. You might also think, "Where will I be able to get a hold of Revolver?". At the moment the main location you'll be able to get a copy of Revolver is HERE. That's when it's released of course. I'll probably be putting it in other places too but I'll make sure to mention where, if I do.

That's all for this week, and I'm realising more and more that I need a better way of finishing these posts.

-Beau

twitter.com/Bocodillo

Sunday 17 May 2015

A Brief Holiday

It's been a super fun week of revision and other university obligations this week. I've been putting side projects to, well, the side for the past week in order to make room for such things but that'll all be changing again start next week. Well more like Tuesday (I have a phase test tomorrow) but still, I'll be back in the swing of things again soon so keep your eyes on this space. In other news I plan on making a short playthrough of my game at its current stage sometime next week so we've got that to look forward to.

Keeping it super short this week (once again eh?) but as I've said above about swings and that, I'll be back into one next week and these posts will become more ramble once again. Looking forward to it!

-Beau

twitter.com/Bocodillo

Sunday 10 May 2015

The slow period

Hot damn have I got so little done this week. Thanks to an annoying mix of uni coursework and upcoming exams I haven't really done much in the way of Revolver developments and sadly that'll probably continue throughout next week. It's always a shame when I have to stop work on something I enjoy for a while but, getting my degree is kinda important so I don't mind. Hopefully all things going well I should be back developing like I like to do after a week on Monday. That's the plan at least. Here's this weeks Revolver Dev Log:

05/05/2015:
-Removed the wave counter and improved the spawning and level selection code.
-Added a basic muzzleflash after much effort.
-Made a start with tiles by making a basic wall tile. Wont add these properly until the full level design is finished.
-Added a bullet speed variable that I can use later to add a really cool bullet time trait.

06/05/2015:
-Worked on several levels.

07/05/2015:
-Created a couple of metal floor tiles.
-Added a bullet time and maximum revolver capacity trait, both are fun.
-Each starting character now has an individual sprite. Surprisingly nice effect it has.

08/05/2015:
-Created a system that tells the player what traits they already have during selection. Combine this with a proper randomly picked trait and not showing already picked traits and we have a good solid system.

So as you can see a little less than usual got done in the past week, still I was able to add some muzzle flash (albeit a little crap) and I've added a nice feature that highlights traits the player already has when they are on the selection screen:


Mmmm that bland GUI. Also of note how the player can currently re-pick traits they already have. I need to fix that.

That's all for this week I'm afraid. I need to get some revision done today before I head out for dinner with the family so I'll leave talking about other stuff for another week.

-Beau

twitter.com/Bocodillo

Sunday 3 May 2015

Quick Update Post

Not much important to say about Revolver, just general developments. I'll just post the log and get on with other things:

27/04/2015:
-Started work on another room called rPower. It's going to look like a sort of large space full of turbines. I have no clue how or if I will furnish this area.
-Began furnishing rPower with ammo and healthkits. Added spawning and chasing code for the enemies.

28/04/2015:
-Created a basic zombie corpse sprite (very basic) to test placing a corpse on a zombies death. With improved art this'd actually look pretty cool.
-The gas now does less damage but upon leaving the rooms are the player instantly dies. This means players aren't penalised as much for accidentally or purposefully walking into the gas but leaving the room still has the consequence it needs.
-Renamed rOpenSpace to rGuardPost seeing as that is basically what it is.
-Began work on rFactory. Will need to create a conveyor belt object or tile before this map can finished though so I'll be leaving this one for a while. I realised now that the player needs to be told how they are actually getting from room to room and why they are collecting floppy disks. My old idea for a character guiding you over a tannoy speaker or something will have to revived I think.
-Began rHousing and also edited rPrison a bit to make it look more like a prison.
-Tweaked and fixed a lot of small problems with multiple levels to do with the gasses placement.

29/04/2015:
-Added a player health bar and placed the ammo counter so that they follow the player.
-Tweaked spawning, chase ranges and added basic stuff to new rooms.
-Began another room called rLFireTesting, which will have a lot of turrets.
-Vastly improved the corpse sprite as it was bugging me. Should add a blood effect.
-Experimented with tiles to get an idea on how to use them later.
-Made character selection into an actual fucking menu. YEAH SON!!!
-Altered alpha for the lighting so that the player can slightly see what is in the dark.

30/04/2015:
-Added a perk that increases the flares radius and reduced the starting flares radius.
-Made some text more readable.
-Added a perk noise.
-Had game tested. Results: Improve reloading mechanic, make navigation easier, make perks more noticeable.

01/05/2015:
-Vastly improved the reloading. The player can now either mash the space key or hold it to reload.
-Turned spirits into a purely debuff enemy who: reduce your movement speed, reload speed, max HP & bullet spread.

02/05/2015:
-Decided the basic idea for the total of 12 levels and what order the player will travel through them. I could set the traits up so that each level the player gets a choice of one of three and that they're the same each time.
The traits could be practical for the upcoming level. i.e. Flare based traits on the choice before the first level with spirits.
-Rebuilt the first level to make it more architectuallry better. Simplified the level making it more suited to being the first level.
-Added a light to the bullets. Will mess with and make look nicer later.

As you can see I've ditched the idea of randomly chosen rooms and decided to have a coherent order for the levels. This allows me to add some story and a difficulty curve (something which was really lacking in earlier builds) and honestly, I much prefer this to what I was originally doing. Without having properly randomly generated levels it's not really worth having the levels randomly picked.

In other news, I've decided to make a video of Revolvers current stage in development. Not really sure when I'm actually going to make it, probably some time this week, but I'll be using it to showcase to all the lovely people I know what I've actually been up to. There is only so much you can show with a few still images and huge dumps of text. If it turns out well, I might even make it a common occurrence, I don't know yet, we'll see how it goes.

Not much more to say this week, I've been playing a bit of Creeper World III which is a fantastic RTS/Tower Defence game but I've yet to finish it yet so I'll save talking about that until a bit later.

-Beau

twitter.com/Bocodillo