Busy Busy Busy

Damn have I been more busy than usual. Then very lethargic. None of this excuses not posting thought and I'm actually quite annoyed that all this has gotten in the way of posting weekly (see absence of a post on the 19th) but hopefully, with assignments mostly out of the way that wont happen again. Hopefully.

Here is the log on Revolver for the past two weeks:

13/04/2015:

-Turret kills now do not give the player XP.

-Created basic version of the blockade enemy. Not sure if worth continuing with so will leave out for now.

14/04/2015:

-Started work on a new room. Got the pit object to work meaning levels can have a little more variety compared to just having walls everywhere the player now has huge chasms blocking their path.

-New room is a about 1/3 finished. Building it up and then sticking great ass chasms everywhere.

15/04/2015:

-Finished basic layout for rOpenSpace, the large chasm filled room.

16/04/2015:

-Made a poisonous gas object that will cover the edges of the room to deters the player from leaving the game area by dealing massive damage to them.

-Began editing rTest to accomodate this gas by increasing the room size and adding it to the edges while shifting the room around.

17/04/2015:

-Finished and shifted the whole of rOpenSpace to accomodate the new gas objects.

-Reduced view so the player has a smaller view of the map (think zoomed in).

-Finished architecture for rOpenSpace. Furnished area with turrets, ammo and healthkits. Also added spawning for this room.

-Altered the spirit sprite slightly to make it look less shit.

-Small tweaks with the player sprite and flashlight to make it look much nicer.

18/04/2015:

-Turned rOpenSpace into rChasm as it is a more fitting name. Now creating a real open space kinda map.

20/04/2015:

-Redesigned rOpenSpace to increase combat. Need to set turrets on this level to only hurt the enemy.

-Messed with views and found that it changes differently sized rooms differently making some look good but the tall rooms look like dick.

22/04/2015:

-Worked on screen stuff to try to set up the screens better. Still tired from uni work but will begin getting back into the swing of things tomorrow.

23/04/2015:

-Fixed the screen bug. Turns out I just didn't have the view code in rOpenSpace's creation code.

-Started and mostly finished rPrison, a new map. Thinking more about details for maps like tables, doors etc. Adding these and making the levels seem more like real buildings rather than bizzarre mazes would greatly improve aethetics.

24/04/2015:

-Tweaked chase distances for enemies and added a sound effect for a spirit chasing. Fixed a bug I didn't notice with oFlashlight not being created properly.

As you can see I've been concentrating on level building mostly which has actually been a lot of fun. As much as I enjoy programming, taking some time to design and build levels (especially with the goal to make them play and feel generally different) is really enjoyable. Here are some pictures below:

rTest:

rChasm:

rOpenSpace:

rPrison:

Important things to note here. Firstly, I really, really need to add some decorative stuff to the maps now that I'm attempting to make them look like real places. Tables, chairs, doors, beds, furniture basically just the give the game a bit more colour and look a bit more real. They could also serve some sort of application in gameplay too. Maybe I'll make them work like the big black pits do in that no-one (apart from the spirit enemy) can go through them but the player and turrets can shoot over? Either that or I'll make it purely decorative. Secondly, while I originally decided on the setting I wanted the levels to be randomly chosen but I'm getting a feeling that it would work better in a sequential order with dabs of story thrown in here and there.

As for what I've been doing in my downtime I've actually found myself spending more and more time playing short bursts of little games. Two in particular come to mind. Hoplite and Dungeon Warfare. Hoplite to me is like a weird first person chess game. You and the enemies take turns in a large hexagonal room either making moves or attacking in variety of ways. You, the player have a bash ability, spear throw and leap with each being able to be vastly improved at prayer shrines found on every floor. A neat little trailer can be found here: youtube.com/watch?v=WI84xaw2tEk I really do love this little game and how each run feels so different even though each floor always seems to have the same enemies. Oh and the basic version of the game, with no achievements (which unlock extra abilities) is totally free, so you have no excuse not to try it.

Magma Fortress's Blog (Hoplite): magmafortress.com/p/hoplite.html

Dungeon Warfare is an amazingly satisfying game. For me personally it's a brutally difficult tower defence game with a huge plethora of traps to plant which deal with the huge range of irritating good guys trying to reach your portal. The game play involves fighting multiple waves of these "good guys" and you mashing them, spearing them or throwing them in pits in several different ways just to keep them from reaching your portals. It's very fun and somewhat addictive but I've found each level can be beating in a pretty short burst, you're not going for a perfect run that is; and although it's only in it's (10th?) alpha build a lot of the core game is there. A huge range of levels, traps and other goodies are available for you to play with but be prepared to play with the easy mode on to start with, I had to at least. Here's a trailer just for you:

 

Personally I'd recommend playing it on a website like Kongregate or Armor Games first as I did find the cost on Steam a little high, although that said the amount of content you get is pretty damn high with 20+ levels all those traps I mentioned, and endless mode and difficulty modifiers. My favourite way of adding difficulty levels to games I might add. Just give it a try first and see if it is for you. It was for me, and still is.

Anyway that's all from me for now. As always following me on twitter is the best way to see what I'm up to, if I ever post that is.

-Beau

twitter.com/Bocodillo

Why Portal & Half-Life 2 are still worth your time

Another week has passed and the Easter holidays are over. I'm going to be getting busy with uni work again so this'll probably be the kinda progress I'm going to be making at best. Either way I don't have much else to say about Revolver this week so I'll leave talking about it for future posts.

05/04/2015:
-Created a spirit enemy (AGAIN) that can follow the player through walls.
-The spirit enemy can now be hurt by any placed flare using the power of circle_collision! Two important things need to be done soon: The players flash-light needs to somehow be able to hurt the spirits & the flare needs to burn out (instance_destroy()) after a period of time. This period could be altered by a trait as could the flares radius (global variable for the radius could affect both the flares radius and the spirits collision).

06/04/2015:
-Changed the variables for the flares radius and spirits damage range to a global so it can be affected by a trait.

07/04/2015:
-Sprits now deal a small amount of damage to the player both in the form of health and movement speed. This has a minimal cap to prevent game breaking but can still be very detrimental.

08/04/2015:
-Using a fake flashlight (copy of the light sprite used for the actual light) set to an alpha (opacity) of 1 and setting it to the samish location as the actual light I've made an effective collision for the players flashlight and the spirit enemy. For balance reasons the range of damage is actually a little shorter than the flashlights length but, if it is a problem, I'll fix that later. Just copy over sLight and re-make it. Next job turret enemy.
-Created a basic turret base sprite. Create the turret tomorrow.

09/04/2015:
-Did some turret stuff. (FORGOT TO WRITE IN AND NOW I'VE FORGOTTEN) From looking back it seems like it was a basic attempt at the AI.

10/04/2015:
-Vastly improved the turrets look. It looks like a god damn turret now rather than a gross looking blob.
-Started work on its aiming capabilities. It can aim at the player if they are within range and there is nothing blocking its view. I need to find a way to differentiate its aiming so it can aim at either the player or the zombie enemy and shoot whoever is closest.
-Discovered a bug where the xp always carries over 10 no matter what.
-Can't get the turret to shoot at the zombies even though both they and the player share the same parent class, will attempt to fix tomorrow.

11/04/2015:
-Turret now works pretty well. Next thing to do is limit its ammo, allow no exp for a turret kill, allow it to harm the player and balance it.
-All works now. Next step Goliath enemy.


I was kinda bored yesterday so I decided to play the first Portal again. All of it. I kinda forgot how interesting and fun that game was. The puzzles are rewarding to work out and flinging yourself around with the power of SCIENCE is incredibly enjoyable. The game has a great atmosphere too. While playing it I remembered the first time I beat the game and how rewarding it felt (hearing Still Alive for the first time was really awesome) and playing the game I remembered how scary I found the game the first time. It's funny really because the game is not really like a traditional horror, there are no obvious monsters with more claws and eyes that it should have, but the whole being a lab rat constantly guided by an omnipotent AI that you can hear going haywire while mocking you is incredibly unnerving. I also think this game would be really good for someone who hasn't played many or any first person games. It's cheap these days, has a great story & the whole game is based around teaching the player which is great for new players. Although it was just a short romp back into the world of Aperture Science it was one that I thoroughly enjoyed and I'm definitely going to play the second now.

Speaking of Valve I've also recently finished Half-Life 2 again using the Half-Life 2 update that was recently released. Damn is that still a damn fine game. Yeah the graphics are not great by todays standards (although the update helps that) but, like Portal the atmosphere for each area is brilliant. Ravenholm didn't scare me this time round but the whole area felt like I was walking through the aftermath of a horror movie apocalypse. To be fair, the whole game has that kinda setting but this area is still creepy as all hell. Oh and the combat, while feeling a bit dated due to its lack of iron sights and a few other features is so well designed (along with the levels of course) that running and gunning is still really fun to this day. It's funny actually, I've never really believed this to be the be all and end all of FPS games like some people think but honestly I can't name an FPS I like more. I don't know if that is a good thing though. It came out in 2004 I think and there isn't a game since then I feel that has surpassed the overall quality of HL2. Certain aspects; yeah of course. There are FPS's with better graphics or combat but none that have the complete package of story, combat, design, direction and atmosphere. I think that's what has made it the powerhouse it has been. It's such a fantastic all around game, all its parts work so well together that we have this wonderful whole, that to this day at least, stands the test of time and continues to be the wonderful game it is.

-Beau

twitter.com/Bocodillo

How I haven't used scope like I should have I think

Now I'm feeling a good bit better, I'm going to write up a couple of things I've wanted to for a while now. Firstly Revolvers scope & how feature creep has screwed it up royally.

A quick definition for those who don't know. Scope is a term similar to goal, in that a scope is decided before a project is usually undertaken a gives a brief idea of how big a project might be. An example might be "Create a game that is pong and breakout combined". A project with a small scope might just be a short story or a small game with minimal mechanics, like our example whereas a project with a large scope might be a AAA game or huge ass MMO. In general a smaller scope means less budget, time and effort required to finish the project whereas a large scope might mean years of development, huge budgets and a lot of man hours. Revolver is defiantly on the smaller end here being developed solely by myself in my spare time. That said, thanks to the alluring power of feature creep, the scope for Revolver has been expanded which means the game is bigger than it was originally going to be.

Feature creep is a favourite term of mine but it is the arch nemesis to scope. Take Revolvers scope "Create a game where a player only has a revolver with limited ammo to defend themselves from lots of evil beasties". What feature creep does is see this as an opportunity to add, well, features. Revolver was meant to originally be a much simpler game but now it has: lighting systems, effective path-finding, multiple waves, a trait & perk system, multiple enemy types etc. Now all this said, feature creep isn't inherently a bad thing but, like many things in life, too much will quickly fuck up your day. Feature creep can quickly & effectively make your project, what ever it might be, become much too large, take much too long and cost more money depending on what the project might be. There is a silver lining I've found and a technique that actually allows me to a degree at least, control feature creep in games, although a similar system would probably work for most varieties of creative project.

Let's say you're part way through building your game and you have a fantastic idea for a new mechanic. Start with throwing in a very, very basic version of whatever this mechanic is and have it tested over and over again. While getting it tested ask these questions to yourself and sometimes to whoever is testing it:

"Is this particular mechanic enjoyable & why?"
"Does this mechanic benefit other present or to be implemented mechanics?"
"How much longer will it take to implement this new mechanic?"

If the answer is positive to all three questions e.g. yes, yes, not that long, I'd personally say add it. If it's 2/3 I'd probably still say go for it but honestly it isn't probably worth it in that instance. Anything else of course should be ignored. You might be thinking now why these three particular questions? Well the first question asks about how fun the feature will be and in most instances I'd argue a games primary goal should be to be enjoyable. No matter the game type or setting the player should leave the experience feeling that they have learnt something or at the very least had a real good time. The second question brings up the importance of having all parts of a game work soundly together. This may seem obvious but the amount of games I've played with poorly tacked on RPG elements and other terrible features (real money marketplace in Diablo is a common example). Interestingly Revolver actually has tacked on RPG mechanics as they we're not an original feature but because I've been putting in the effort to have them affect a huge variety of things and the progressive difficulty of waves it actually fits in the game pretty well. I think so at least. The last question is simple to understand. If I we're to add this to the game how much longer would it take to finish? Obviously this is much, much more important to people with deadlines but it's still important to note whether working on one feature might take time out of working on another and whether that is a good thing to do.

Anyway to sum all of this up I think it's important when working on pretty much anything really that every so often you take a step back and make sure you aren't making more work for yourself that isn't even going to give decent returns. Make sure to keep a tab of all the ideas you've had though. I've already found that old ideas I haven't been able to use yet can have a comfortable place elsewhere if you take the time to think about how it can be implemented.

For more interesting info about this sort of thing I'd really recommend checking out these folks: youtube.com/user/ExtraCreditz They cover pretty much anything about games, how they are made and especially how they can be made well.

-Beau

twitter.com/Bocodillo

Meh

I've got a headache, so I'm keeping this super short and I will write another post probably tomorrow or Tuesday. Progresswise Revolver is going good with the final main part of the game being made, the flares and their lighting. With that done I'm pretty much free to make whichever part I want next, which is always nice.

REVOLVER DEV LOG:

30/03/2015:
-Created a character/job selection at the start of the game allowing players to select difficulty in an interesting manner. Can't get a display for it though. Current pressing ZXCV are what set starting characters.

31/03/2015:
-Balanced movement speed for the new traits and perks.
-Designed several trait effects.
-Edited the GUI for the trait selection so you can actually read what traits you are picking. I should add a description too but for now its fine.
-Added variables for healthkit restoration and ammo pickup so I can alter it with traits.
-Created a total of 8 traits up to now.
-Added a basic difficulty scale with each wave adding 2 new enemies. It'll do for now.

01/04/2015:
-Set up a trait that increases the perks strength, but need to think about how it should work. Increases bottom half by a value and the other half by double that?
-Perk bonus trait is done. Each of the three buttons now has three traits to pick from. Will add more later as currently all are just a single small bonus to a stat.
-Player now gains 20 xp for collecting a floppy disk. The wave now ends without the player killing a no of enemies.

02/04/2015: REDACTED (WORK LOST)
-Created spirit sprite.
-Created basic spirit enemy which can chase the player. Needs to be able to go through walls, hurt the player & be damaged by the flashlight/flares only.

03/04/2015:
-Game doesn't work for any apparent reason. The code to do stuff is there but the update has just gone ahead and broken everything.
-Added XP carry over allowing larger chunks of XP to be given to the player without error.
-After this mornings frustration I have managed to work on the flares' lighting a bit but I'm still not sure how to fix it.
-Created a short theme that will become the main theme for Revolver. Most of my game music will be piano based because that's what I do best.

04/04/2015:
-Fixed the error of flare lights not working.
-Flares now work as an ingame item. All character can carry a max of five with different characters starting with 1 -3 flares. Collecting ammo has about a 50% chance of giving the player a flare if they have room spare.
-Added a flare perk that gives the player 2 extra starting flares and increases the capacity by 1.

I'm going to write about scope soon I promise, but I don't feel up to it today so I'll make this post now, those soon and then post all links at once.

-Beau

twitter.com/Bocodillo