12/31/22

Time Worked: 10:45 - 1 PM

Total Time: 2 hrs, 15 mins

Did some pretty cool stuff today. Need to implement some Line of Sight. So I looked up some tutorials and I found Sebastian Lague's tutorial on Field of View (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQG9aUWarwE). And it's pretty sweet! Gotta admit I have a lot of trouble following the details of what's happening in that tutorial, but I'm not gonna sweat it. My goal is to make this game, not necessarily become a coding genius. 

Github Copilot is FANTASTIC. Especially if one watches a youtube tutorial and wants to implement the code, so many other people have done that that Copilot has picked it up and basically suggested every single line exactly as it is in the tutorial. Excellent. So much time saved.

So now I just have to work it into my project a little better. It's a little buggy as is but I'm real excited to get it working smoothly.

12/30/22

 Did some high level design for loot and shop.

12/29/22

Out on a hunting trip today. I did spend some time up in the tree sketching out ideas for Placed Explosives.

The pic is sideways I know. Deal with it.

12/27/22

Time Worked: 8:50 - 9:50

Total Time: 1 hr

Today I didn't do too much. I am really excited to work on the game because of the massive improvements I made yesterday, but today was busy and I wanted to play videogames. Darktide!

Anyway I just fixed aiming and started thinking about how to do line of sight. Thinking of taking inspiration from Zomboid for that one.

12/26/22

Time Worked: 6:30 - 9:30 

Total Time: 3 hrs

Today was great. 

I need to be my own manager. Like I basically am running my own business right now. So I need to make sure I make it clear when I am going to work and when I am not. Maybe. Idk it's just important to remember that this is my best shot right here and I can't miss it. This it the dream, it is time to make it happen.

I wrote that paragraph when I first sat down to work. I had been really lazy today and was feeling bad lol. But I had a point - if I "have work off" that doesn't mean I should take a break on this necessarily. I just need to look ahead and decide during vacations when I'm going to work, or if I should just relax. So it's a conscious decision and not an accident.

Aiming - since it's isometric, seems like it's really important to make the target of the player's attacks very clear. Since it's basically top down. So it's confusing for the player where they are actually aiming; they don't know what z position their plane of aim is on.  So I am acting on the feedback from pretty much everyone - aiming is really hard. And that's why. 

So I decided to make the light and laser pointer WAY more distinct. And I came up with this and it looks AWESOME I have to say. So pleased with how this looks. It's very easy to tell where you are aiming now, the laser actually terminates where it should.

This really made me feel good. It made me feel capable. Like I really can get stuff done and honestly this was really fun. I was just doing it. I'm still not sure what makes it easy and what makes it hard to work. Like this was way more natural than it is when I work in the morning. I guess it's partially cause I didn't do shit today and so am well rested...

Not sure. But I'm really glad I am still putting time in. This is gonna be cool!

12/25/22

Time Worked: 11:00 - 2:30 PM

Total Time: 3 hrs, 15 mins

Merry Christmas!

Today I worked on fixing the doors. At a family Christmas dinner yesterday, I had a few relatives try it out. It was great to see that nearly all of the annoying things that had gotten in players way previously have been resolved. The only issues were that the player often got stuck trying to open the doors from the inside. It's because the door collides with the player as they try to open it so it doesn't go anywhere. I can do it but I am the dev so that makes sense.

The only other thing was they still couldn't really tell where they were aiming. At this point, it was no longer because the mouse wasn't pointing the same direction as the gun, it was because the visual cues were not clear. They had a few good recommendations and I also had some decent ideas:

• Increase the brightness/visual obviousness (?) of the laser. So that the player can really see where it is pointing.
• Have the laser stop when it hits a target. 
• Maybe highlight the target with red glow a little to give additional visual cue.

This all works with the laser pointer kind of aiming. I'm just not sure if that's the type I wanna go for. I just might because it seems to work. I had originally wanted to have more complex aiming methods but I might just roll with this for now. 

Anyway I have been hitting some slower working times recently because I've been trying to figure out what's next. It's also the holidays so there's the obligatory excuse. But I'm still moving forward. And I'm never gonna stop.

12/22/22

Time Worked: Really not much

Total Time: Idk.

So today I watched this video when I was bored at work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNEe3KhMvXM&t=1742s.

It's a video about level design from GDC. Taught me some really important ideas and I have them all written down in my notes app on my phone. 

I already knew I didn't know how to do level design and was just gonna go with what I came up with, but this made me think more about it. I'm going to re-do it. 

Here's the notes I jotted down. Beware; lazy writing and bad spelling follows:

Map: design specifically with one piece of equipment in mind?? I.e. like breaching charges. So teqcht he player to use those in different ways. Maybe don't introduce other things until later...?

Or maybe I can. Not sure. Maybe it is a simple thing to learn.

Breaching charges or C4? can be used as like a landmine, to blow open obviously blocked doors, or maybe through certain kinds of walls

Don't worry about realism like at all. Make the player a total bad ass. Do not imitate real life

Multiple paths through level. Design easy ways, medium ways, and hard ways to play the level rather than outright setting difficulty.

Wait. Do not design the level. Maybe design modular mechanic driven encounters that can but put together in different orientations later

I'm tired so going to sleep. Going to put in some time tomorrow. Peace.

12/21/22

Time Worked : Intermittently 

Total Time: ~ 1 hr

Today I made a layout for the new map design. I am so hungry so gonna make it quick. I have gotten started on my first task with the Apartment Prototype.  I really don't know how to make a map I realize, I have barely ever gotten to the point where it mattered at all. This is actually kind of a cool thing to note. I think this might be the best I have done so far ever trying to make a game. Wow. And it has just been consistent daily work, no super-grinding.  This is pretty cool. 

Anyway, I don't know how to make a map. But since I know I don't know how to, I'm just going to move forward with what I've come up with. I watched some Enter the Gungeon, Darktide and Hades gameplay and paid attention to the map layouts, and learned a few things.

•  Map design is about gameplay first, theme/realism second.
• There needs to be interactable elements in the environment.

Aaaaand other things. I forget the rest. But I took them into account when I was working on this today and I feel like it's a somewhat decent result. It even includes a "Boss" room as the final room. So now on to implementing this map.

12/19/22

Today I talked to my brother about splitting up the dev work. I'll write better post tomorrow, Doing arlight.

12/18/22

  I did like 3 hours of design work and don't feel like writing about it.

12/17/22

Fixed some bugs and shit but don't feel like writing.

12/16/22

Time Worked:  8:53 PM - 2:30 AM

Total Time: 4 hrs, 30 mins

Today I went over to my friend Steve's place and we both just worked on our projects. I did really really good today and actually I feel pretty great. The dilemma I struggled with the other day was really just because I was tired and just needed to take a day to chill. I got so wound up trying to figure out what was wrong. I was just tired. Lol.

So today I ended up removing crouching and re-implementing the cover system. Was pretty kewl. Pretty happy with the result. Tomorrow I will work out the kinks in the cover system and get enemy actors to make use of it too, which could make things a little more interesting.

12/15/22

 Today I walked into my office, played the game a few times. And wrote this entry.

Feeling worn out right now. Discouraged for some reason. Just not happy with things. Idk if it's the game or if it's something else. I am just feeling trapped for some reason.

Hmm.

Oh well. I got up here and at least looked at the game. I'm not giving up on this.

12/14/22

Time Worked: 2:16 - 4:06 PM

Total Time: 1 hr, 28 mins

Hmm. Today I'm having a bit of a dilemma.  The problem is that I am fixing bugs, etc and trying to improve gameplay. As I worked on aiming and moving, I realized the environment is small and hard to get around in. The size of the environment impacts many things and has stuck out to me as something that need to be expanded. I think just from playing it so much and feeling like there's just not much to it. And it's true that there are a lot of things left to implement, and that has been on my mind and holding me back from just increasing the size. 

Basically I don't want to get ahead of myself and make sure I take care of stuff that needs to be done. However, I just really have a feeling that there is not enough gameplay time in this prototype to really get a feel for much. I also worked on making the game less difficult today by messing with the isometric controls as well as the rate at which enemies shoot, and adjusting player health. I am shooting for more boring rather than more difficult this time around, so that players can actually play the game.

Thinking about it, I think a short game need not be challenging. A player probably won't even have enough gameplay time to think "this is too easy", and the novelty of the fact that it is a new experience will at least motivate early players. If it's too hard they will not even get a chance to check out the gameplay features.

In fact, what modern game has the player die in the first 30 seconds of playing? None. So I'm going to aim for too easy for now until I get the complaint of "it's too easy".

Anyway, this also points to a longer gameplay loop for this prototype. If the game is easy, players can spend less time dying, which means they have more time to check out opening doors, shooting things, seeing how satisfying or not satisfying the experience of playing is.

Also a driving thought right now is that my goal is to test the gameplay idea. Right now they are testing technical issues and I don't want anybody doing that but me. The technical issues can be distracting, but right now there's not really much for them to distract the player from. Not only this. When I did have people play, they only played for a minute or two. It's possible that part of the reason is because they can clearly see there is nothing else to the game. If there are more rooms and things they can explore, they may be compelled to do so.

Alright, next playtest: I'm going to bore my players. I'm going to make the game big enough and easy enough that they quit because they are bored, not because they are dead.

12/13/22

Time Worked: 3:08 - 4:52 PM

Total Time: 1 hr, 20 mins

Today was tough to get going but loooooook I still did it. Not only that I solved like 4 problems! Still 9 issues to take care of before trying to finish up the main components that are still missing. I really need to hit this fresh sometimes. It's a little hard to figure out the best strategy. It's just really hard to work hard and focused so long in a day... maybe I can try doing an hour before work, then also after. Idk. Maybe like hit it when I'm absolutely the freshest, then work can have the next 3 hours. That might help idk.

Or I can always alternate. Work first one day, game dev first the other. 

Trying to figure it out. 

But today I added a vignette effect to visualize player damage. I can easily add a little "HP: ##" UI but I don't want to. I kind of want to make it as intuitive as I can rather than just displaying everything on screen. At least for now. I also fixed a few other bugs I can't remember. Oh yeah it was about enemy bodies colliding with player as well as them still being visible when the player leaves the room. But they are fixed now, hell yeah.

Tomorrow I am going to continue working on the aiming. The aiming is bad and just really needs to be fixed. Made some progress on it today but hopefully tomorrow I can wrap it up. Then maybe the crouching problem.

12/12/22

Time Worked: 6:30 - 8:23 PM

Total Time: 1 hr, 15 mins

Today I had to go into the office. Those days are really hard to work on this. I originally decided not to do anything on this project tonight, because I wanted to just focus on work then relax, but I decided to try to push myself. 

I met with the animator to see the progress he had on the model, and it's looking really nice. He had a few points of feedback after testing the game. I was aware of each of these but it's always good to get feedback for priorities

• Aiming is weird, not lining up
• Movement controls need improvement
• Maybe stick with isometric

I also spent some time trying to fix a few bugs. Having an issue with the projectiles moving too fast for the mesh collider on the ProBuild for the house. Tried a few different things like making the collider convex, Set Collider option for ProBuilder, using Continuous/Dynamic options for the rigidbody, none seemed to work. Except the convex can work if I were to make individual box colliders for each wall. May end up doing that at least for now. Can always optimize this kind of process stuff later actually. 

I have recently been acutely aware of process problems and inefficiencies, and it's important not to waste time. But I think right now, since I'm not making a whole bunch of rooms, I can just do something that fixes the problem even if it's inefficient to do in the long run. When it comes time to start doing more level design, I will make sure that process is efficient. Right now I'm just trying to bring the game to life and can't afford to think too far ahead. There will be time for it later.

Cool, decision made, box colliders it is.

I just tried it and it didn't work. Fuck it for now.

One more note. A big thing I'm going to try. to do is "Don't push where it doesn't budge". As in, I know I can trust myself to do this tomorrow, and to put in time this week. So if I'm exhausted right now and I know I have time to do it another time when it will be easier, I am going to save energy for that effort. 

Kewl stuff.

Actually I just fixed it! I just increased the size of the projectile collider. Didn't realize it was 0.1 units wide and tall, that probably made it harder to detect in the physics engine. Hell yeah.

After that last paragraph I spent nearly another hour. I had read an older blog post from another day I worked. It reminded me - I do this because this is what I love to do. This is not a job. This is what I want to do. I have to remember that and stop rushing. I sometimes end up rushing because I feel like I want or have to go do other things. But I need to take my time, and allow myself to get caught up in this. There is no rush.

PS I might start doing design work late at night. Just for fun. Had some cool ideas for progression whenever that comes around. 

12/11/22

Time Worked: 12 PM - 2 PM

Total Time: 2 hrs

I'm really hungry so I'll make this quick. 

Sundays I've decided are for planning and figuring out how to be more efficient. I don't have time during the week to sit back and think, I need to spend that time implementing stuff. So, I organized my office a little better. I posted a page of the prototype  doc on my wall next to the task post-it notes.  This way I don't get caught up in the weeds. Need to focus on what's important and cut out work that is not productive. 

I have already removed 10 or so tasks that really were not necessary. This is good. I have features that need to be implemented. Here's the features that are still missing from the House Prototype before I can move on and iterate:

• Captive
• Terrorist Leader
• Mission Completion
• Scoring System
• Taser
• Flashbangs
• C4
• First Room Requires C4
• Melee
• Slow motion with breach

I also need to make sure difficulty, bugs, etc. do not get in the way of the gameplay - playtests will reveal technical problems before revealing problems with gameplay.

My immediate long term goal is to figure out how to have very simple satisfying gameplay. Refine core gameplay.

Been thinking of ideas to improve the gameplay and one of the biggest ones is creating larger rooms for the next prototype. That way I can make it easier for players to get into the game (i.e. start off with less enemies). 

The wall I use to organize tasks. Added the prototype doc on your left.

The diagram of the basic House Prototype. Already have a fair amount of ideas to iterate on this, but I want to make sure I get all I can out of it before I move on.

12/8/22

Time Worked: 2:37 - 4:51 PM

Total Time: 1 hr, 30 mins

Today was actually really fun. I finished the wall colliders, and now I'm working on the cues for player getting hit, as well as enemies. I started looking for audio clips online, but I've always wanted to do voice acting and think it would be fun. So I decided to record my own! I ended up just spending about 45 minutes screaming into my microphone and making death/wound sounds. I even ended up voicing two different characters (I name them Mack and Connor) with a few lines each. It was fun.

But anyway I started implementing it and got tired about halfway through, so calling it for now. Maybe I'll do more later. The inclusion of just a single get-hit sound and a death sound realllllly improved the fun of the game however. Much better. So far to go but one little bit at a time.

Also my friend who does audio got back to me and he had a really cool track ready for the menu. It was honestly really well done and I could easily use it, but I felt it was a little jungle-like. I suppose it was sort of an adventure sounding track to me. So I gave him some feedback and he's gonna rework it. But super super cool that he's already got something to show me!

One of these days I'll get around to sharing videos of where the game is at on here but I'm too lazy right now.

Also an interesting thought came to mind that I'll have to think over later: What are the components of gameplay? I've always wondered like, what is gameplay? Beyond just "how the game plays". I want to understand.

12/7/22

Time Worked: 8:55 - 10:44

Total Time: 1 hr, 8 mins

Today I added a reload sound and a little bar at the bottom of the screen that expands then disappears once the reloading is complete. Had some friends playtest last night and reloading seemed to be a high priority thing. It was next on the list anyway.  I also added map boundaries so that the player can't fall off the map. I also started working on adding collision meshes for each room. I guess the best way to do this is just probuild a mesh specifically for collisions. 

Thinking over a few things. I may change the camera angle up, perhaps I will try third person. We'll see. I'm going to stick with what I'm doing until I finish all the tickets on this wall... maybe. Or maybe I should get a row done at a time before taking a step back? What I want to avoid is just adding on stuff constantly where there's no sense of achievement or completeness to a set of work. 

We'll see. Either way, today I did it, and tomorrow I will do it again.

12/6/22

Time Worked: 9:53AM - 11:01AM

Total Time: 1 hr, 7 mins

Chuggin along. So today I changed up the way I organize my day, decided to start with game dev before I start my job work, rather than the other way around. Not sure how I feel about it, it stresses me out that I haven't got any of my day job stuff done yet. On the other hand, I know I have my game dev stuff done and that's obviously very important. The advantage of having it done first is less interruptions can mess it up.

Anyway today I took down 3 tickets out of 29. I added a controls explanation to the title screen (it looks like shit but does that really matter right now?) and fixed the bullet impacts on actors. The third task is still in progress and will have to be finished later today or tomorrow; it's for adding cues for being out of ammo. The idea is for both player and enemies to have these cues so that the player can know what's going on in the game. Obviously knowing you're out of ammo is important, but knowing the enemy is out of ammo adds a sense of opportunity.

Just gonna keep up dis hard work and I can't wait to see the result.

But you know what, this right here today is victory. This is what game development is. I did it. It's the every day work, not the big prize at the end.

Here's a screenshot of the shitty title menu.

12/5/22

Time Worked: 5:22 PM - 6:22 PM

Total Time: 1 hr

Today was good surprisingly. Had an in-office day so didn't have the freedom as much to work when I want to. However, I already wanted to do this. I had planned ahead to just get up in my office and write a blog post and at least look at the game. So when I got home after a long day at work, I had a few other things on my mind to do but I just kind of found myself doing this. Which is a really good sign I think. And it was fun, once I told myself to slow down and just take my time doing this work, I realized I don't mind doing this.

So recently I spoke with a friend about making some sound effects for this game. He does audio professionally, and from what he has shown me the dude is pretty skilled. He knows what he's doing. He actually was really interested in working on it, and so I asked him to start with some background music. I looked at a few things, and it was honestly hard to figure out since I'm not an audio guy. But I found two distinct examples that I like:

• The Metal Gear Solid V soundtrack (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xq7GFIKZcoo)
• The Raid Redemption soundtrack (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s17AOzl52R8)

I think these give off that bad ass military vibe. Raid Redemption is pretty violent and has awesome choreography, and it's mostly a single dude blowing through a whole apartment building to complete the mission. And it has that flavor of desperation I want.

Metal Gear has that military stealth operator vibe. And not only that, it's also got supernatural components to it, which one day this game might also have.

I also have been thinking about what the game is - and I realized I want to kind of go with an Enter the Gungeon / Hades style of room generation. I may also need to increase the size and number of rooms in the demo.

I actually am really motivated to work on this right now but I gotta make sure I take care of other stuff tonight. Good thing I can trust myself to be here tomorrow!

12/4/22

Time Worked: 8:51 AM - 11:13 AM

Total Time: 1 hr, 56 mins 

Today I took some time to review the project. First I playested it, and wrote down everything I could find that was wrong with the game.  There as a lot. Then, I had my wife playtest it. She doesn't play videogames (except when I make her), so it was actually very helpful to get her feedback.  I would like games to be accessible as possible to all types of players. 

She struggled with some of the things I had already noted, but she also had a lot of trouble with the controls. The game doesn't tell you anything about what the controls are, so that totally makes sense. She also didn't know she could crouch. The game never tells you it's possible. 

So I took the things I noted from her playing and marked those as top priority, and then prioritized the rest of the stuff I had noticed as 2nd and 3rd priority. Some of the things I didn't even rank, because they probably don't matter right now at all (like door opening sound effects). 

I then took this list and wrote each item on sticky notes, added a color to show their priority level, and pasted them up on the wall next to my desk. 

The idea is to do all the thinking today, and this week each day I will just pick up a sticky note and solve the problem. This will result in less planning, long-term thinking, or decision making during the week, and more development. Then next Sunday I will do it again.

I also contacted a friend to set up background music for the game. Should be kewl.

The notes I took while playtesting. Left side is issues I identified myself, right side is notes from my wife's playtest.

Some of the sticky notes I set up on the wall

12/3/22

Time Worked: 7:16 AM - 8:51 AM

Total Time: 1 hr, 23 mins

Today I added doors! They currently use hinge joint and physics to open/close which I feel like will come back later to bite me in the ass. It's really not necessary. I think an animation is best and better performance. I just don't really know how to do animations and I am familiar with physics so that's why I did it.

I also replaced the coverSensor with a more generic interactableSensor. So doors and cover and other interactables will all be of the abstract class Interactable. Which I think is a good move.

One piece at a time, one step at a time.

This is the success right here. The fact that I did this today is my goal. I am a game developer. This is what I do.

12/2/22

Time Worked: 5:20 - 6:30

Total Time: 1 hr, 10 mins

Today I worked on adding doos into the game. I recognized that it was a good opportunity for polymorphism since there will be several other types of objects in the game that will be interactable. I want to have a little context popup that has the button that the player should use (E for example, or A if it's a controller...?) and I also want to alert Actors in general, not just the player. 

I went through a few options for this - an independent script, an interface, an abstract class or a a superclass. I decided abstract was the best. I stopped somewhere in the middle of implementation because I felt like it. 

I realize this will also be useful for cover. Cover can implement this instead of having it's own code for being detected. Perhaps remove the coverSensor part from the Actor and just use the trigger volume for hte object. Or maybe better, the other way around, just use the coverSensor but rename it to interactableSensor. I'll have to give it some thought. 

I will make it.

12/1/22

Time Worked: 5PM - 6PM

Total Time: 1 hour

Really tired today. Had a very busy day at work and then meeeetiiiiiingggsss ugh. 

I did good though I got my ass up here and did some work. Today I fixed the weapon to be higher up on the actor so they can shoot over most cover. I generally worked on getting the house setup with active enemies. I guess I'm developing like the level now.

Every day this will add up. It will be worth it.