More Prototype Enemies (the Warrior)

Time Worked: 1 hour, 15 mins

Today I added the third enemy type. Adding a new enemy type is pretty easy, but adding weapons is pretty difficult actually. So tomorrow I'm going to clean up that process. I also had some tweaks that I have in mind for the other two types. I think adding each one has given me more context about how the other ones should behave. It's not like these enemies will be the a single type in a mission, so it's important to get a feel for how they will interact together.

Also made a little new gun for this guy. I think it's pretty cool. I'm not sure how I feel about the general design of the enemies - I'm sure it will go through several iterations, and it's not like it's that much work to make one of these, it only took like 20 minutes and the process was pretty fun anyways.

Another day down! 

Messing with the Camera

Time Worked: 40 mins

Didn't do anything crazy today. Just trying to put in a little more time when I can. I was just messing with the camera because I think that the enemies are a little hard to see when you're trying to shoot them in TDS mode. So I either need to increase the size of the enemies or somehow zoom the camera.

Probably need to look at TDS games and get a grasp on how big the enemies are and how big the bullets are.

Aliens!

Time Worked: ~8 hours

Today I feel like I got the ball rolling again. After being overwhelmed yesterday, I finally confronted a few major problems. The biggest of which was "What are the enemies?". 

It took a little thinking, but I decided on Aliens. I think that human enemies are cool, but there's a certain expectation with how humans would behave. Humans are also locked into a certain visual form as well. I didn't like zombies because even though I have plenty of fun with the zombie genre of games, we can all agree it's a bit of a trope right now. Robots was another idea but that just doesn't strike me as that cool. So, Aliens. 

Aliens are good because they allow much more creative freedom than most of these other options. Color, size, sound and behavior are all up in the air and there is a lot of room to play around. From looking over some of my favorite sci-fi games like XCOM 2 and Halo, I realized most games start you off with some type of "grunt" enemy to fight. It's obvious, but sometimes things just don't click for me until I bang my head against them. So, I developed my own grunt character. He's slightly shorter than the average human character in my game, which hopefully will sell the idea that they are the weak and numerous type of enemy.

I also made a little plasma gun kinda thing for him. Not yet sure how I want alien weapons to work but I feel pretty good about it so far actually.

I spent some time making the enemies easier to kill and shoot slower, with slower and less damaging bullets. And I think the game improved a good bit as a result of those adjustments. There's always room for more deadly and challenging enemies as the game continues to be developed.

Additionally I implemented artwork and a separate type for the Sapper enemy, who runs faster, is easier to kill and blows themselves up on your walls. It's gonna take a little work to make them more scary, mostly having them pick walls to blow up that the player actually cares about.

Lastly, I took the time to clean up some redundant scripts and remove code from like a year ago that isn't being used.

Things are going alright. Just keep it moving!

 

Overwhelmed

Time Worked: 4 hours, 30 mins

For some reason, today I have just been struck with such indecision. There are things about the game right now that just do not feel right. I think a lot of it has to do with the way the game controls and the speed at which things happen. Also, since there's no cover implemented since I switched to 2D, there's nothing to do except use mobility and chase enemies or run away.

I'm a little frustrated right now.

I will just list some things that are on my mind:

• I am not sure if the RTS/TDS hybrid I'm going for is going to work
• The game just feels too fast, it's hard to catch things before dudes are just dead suddenly
• Enemies are too good at shooting
• Enemies have no identity. What are they going to be? I really, really need to make a decision on this.
• Both TDS and RTS modes are very simple, there is nothing to do really other than shoot and move. I need to implement abilities, equipment and weapon diversity
• The building system is neat, but extremely simplistic (there's only one building type.. walls)
• and so much more...

I have that big list of things to do from last week that I had identified, and yeah it's a big list and all the problems are real, but, I don't feel like it's proper to be cleaning up the UI when the very basic gameplay does not feel right. I think I need to keep focusing on that basic gameplay. Ignore the  "strategy layer" for now and just focus on getting base building, TDS and RTS modes worked out and more interesting. I don't know what a proper milestone is... maybe when I really start to feel like it's solid?

I'm doing a lot of cool stuff so there are moments of inspiration, but right now is just one of those lows.

Tomorrow will be better.

Here's a random screenshot because words are boring without pictures.

Le Strategy Game Controls

Time Worked: 7 hours, 30 mins

Theeeeeere we go I think that's enough time put in for the day.

I cannot believe how much I can get done working on this. This is so wildly different than any work I have done before. 

Anyway, today I was able to do a few things

• Removing the player actor - now the player has no individual character, and they can take control of any pawn at will. The idea is to allow the player to just play it as an RTS, and also to play it as a top-down shooter. We'll see how that works, I feel like the RTS controls feel really nice compared to the direct control... we'll see what happens with that.
• Implemented Deployments - now it's not just "Begin Combat" when you're done building. Now it's properly set up as turns, and you end your turn (which ends the "Week"), and there's the chance for an attack or not. This is a major feature that was planned.
• Fixed the aim lines (or did I do that yesterday?)
• Added Free Camera Controls - now it's possible to just use WASD in Command Mode to move the camera directly. Niiiice.

So yeah pretty good. I really like the idea of allowing the user to play as top-down mode or RTS mode. I think that would make it very unique and allow perhaps a wider player base to enjoy the game. I'll just have to see how to make both of those play styles fun. I have a feeling I might end up ditching top-down shooter controls and just go full RTS. But I think once I get cooler abilities and weapons in the game, perhaps TDS mode will be more fun.

Later!   

Cleaning up the Selection & Commanding

Time Worked: 4 hrs, 30 mins

It's interesting changing up the workflow to basically two days a week but much more time. Today I didn't get enough time on the project but it'll take some adjusting, so whatever. 

I mostly spent today improving the RTS controls, because it was just really annoying trying to select guys. It now feels way better and it's a pretty damn good feeling honestly. I used just a lil' ole' ChatGPT to help me out with a selection box (just the visuals) - of course I could have just done it myself but I was lazy and RectTransforms have always been confusing to me. That improved the look and feel of the game quite a bit to be honest, so that was nice. The selection feels easy, quick and accurate which is good.

I also re-enabled the player "laser" aim line, but it doesn't really look that good right now so I'm not sure if I'll stick with it or not. I'm sure there's some kind of lighting solution for 2D that I can do... but I'll have to look into that.

I have itemized the giant list I wrote the other day in Trello, so now the goal is to just chug through those issues as quickly as possible with the goal of releasing an early version of the game on itch.io at the end of January. I haven't really thought that idea through too much yet... but I just feel like it would help because it could get people playing or interested at least. It would be live somewhere and that brings with it a sense of accomplishment. I'll have it free to play and browser based for now, and as it develops I'll figure out what I'm going to do financially. The goal is to put it on Steam as well and have some kind of monetization scheme. I thought about just releasing the base game for free and adding content for paid users... we'll see. I have no idea what I'm doing as far as the business side of this goes. But I will soon enough.

Degenerate Strategies and a Massive List of Issues

Time Worked: ~5 hours, 30 minutes

Got sucked into some day job stuff today so didn't get quite as much time as I would have liked but it's fine. 5 hours is 5 hours.

Spent a lot of time on a little exploding people feature today. Basically I drew little chunks of the pixel dudes and made it where if they are hit by an explosive and die, they blow up into little pieces. Fun! I think it was a worthy thing to do, because I think one of the biggest things the game lacks is nice visuals. It does strike me how much better it looks now than it used to, I can't help but feel pleased looking at that improvement. 

There are still a ton of things to do. I have set a goal for putting the game up on itch.io by the end of January, which is a solid move I think. I'll have to put a little more thought into it, because I'm not sure if there are like release day boosts on visibility in Itch (I think there are), but even if there are I don't know I care about that right now. I still need to do the very best with the itch release though and try to maintain a lively page right away. It would be an initial release of the game so I need to take it seriously.

I just need to start putting it out there and getting people to play it. I think when I released the last game on Itch it  motivated me a lot. Anyway I have put a list together of things that need to be fixed before then and it is huge. A lot of it is just cleanup of stuff and bug fixes, but there are some major problems such as the troops you command being kind of boring in-game. You can just move them and that's basically it. They don't really respond that well to threats sometimes as well, like they will just ignore enemies. So yeah, they need to be made more interesting. I have a few ideas for that. The building system is also pretty dull right now. As you can see in the GIF attached, there is a degenerate strat where you just wall up and funnel them and that's a pretty unbeatable strat if it wasn't for the poor enemy detection of the troops.

There's also the issue that your troops and you still die super duper quick and there's not really an edge for the player - I need to look at other games and consider how that's done. I'd rather avoid just adding health to the player's troops if possible but we'll see. Also the camera work isn't that great. Enemies only chase the player or set bombs and that's it. Enemies also have no unique sprites. And much more.

But that's all good, I still have come a really really far ways and I can't wait to just keep it moving. I had a great two days of effort and I'm feeling like I probably will be motivated to keep working in the coming days. 

I'll see ya around.

 

First Full Weekday of Game Dev

Time Worked: 6 hours, 15 mins

This is my first full weekday of game dev. I have recently moved to part time at my job. They were gracious enough to allow me to become hourly and work 24 hours a week which is incredible. I mean I have never had such an amazing opportunity. I decided to do so because I really want to make this stuff happen, and as much as I enjoy working in my spare time, I know that I can do more. 

I was a little worried about my ability to focus but I barely even needed any caffeine today; I was just in the zone the whole day. This is fantastic. Of course I know this is the first day, and the first day of something new is always exciting. But I can tell that there is something to this. This is my dream coming true right now.

Not only that. But the results of the work I put in have been phenomenal. Today I did a lot, mostly focused on adapting the game to the correct camera size and updating various things related to the art perspective. One major leap I made was fully beginning the transition to 2D. I was already doing 2D clearly, but I was working with the same pathfinding and collision that EndSoldier used (which was 3D). I figured it wasn't a big deal and the player wouldn't notice. But there were enough issues that came up that I decided it was worth fully getting away from 3D. That's an entire dimension of calculations and memory usage etc., weird rotations and all that are completely unnnecessary.

So I picked up the A*PathfindingProject for navigation instead of Unity's NavMesh system, and it has been fantastic. I'm not sure what it is in all I did today that made the difference, but the game just feels way better. I think it's just that little bit of wonkiness removed improved things alot.

There's still a lot of cleanup to do, but I am so excited to do it. I seriously can barely pull myself away from this right now, but I know I need to go workout, gotta take care of the dogs, and gotta spend time with my lovely wife. But I am super super grateful and excited to be given this opportunity to do my very best, and I'm telling you, this is the year.

Here's a little screenshot (a bunch of stuff still isn't working right), but tomorrow I will post a GIF. GIFs are fun.  

Importing the PIxel Art

Time Worked: 57 mins

Started importing the art today because I got burnt out on the mockup. Which is fine, I think I made enough progress.

Don't feel like writing a lot today, but made progress. 

A Big Step Forward

Time Worked: 4 hours

Today I did a lot. I picked up Aseprite, and I'm glad I did. It's only $20, I can afford that. And it's just so much more simple than GIMP, which is really nice. GIMP is a general purpose image editor, while Aseprite is specifically for 2D pixel art. I am feeling very confident about the looks of this game now. It's not going to be beautiful or realistic, but it will sell the idea I want to sell! And that's good enough for me.

I took inspiration from Madness and Rimworld about sprites with no legs or arms. I may include hands, but I haven't made up my mind yet. I tried to get the smallest character I could to force myself to keep the details simple, while bumping up the size until I could get the details I want in there such as battle scars and facial hair.

It's really really fun making these little dudes. I have already made like 8 face variations and it's just a piece of cake. I think picking this simple style for the game is a MASSIVE solid move, I don't have to rely on anyone else to do my art and I also don't have to do a whole ton of work when I want to add more variation - I just throw together like 15 pixels and I have a new armor set or like 5 pixels for a new face.

Sweeeeeeeet.

I decided to do a mockup of the game to just get a better idea of what the game might look like and to make myself consider things that I haven't thought of yet. I'm not sure what I'm gonna do next, as this has been a really big learning experience for me, but I'll leave that up to decide tomorrow. I have put in enough time today lol. But this is really great and I feel very excited to be doing my own art. I feel confident.

Here's some sample dudes I've made. They exported foggy for some reason but are more crisp in editor and in game.

Here's the mockup I came up with. This is from the RTS perspective.

Learning Pixel Art

Time Worked: ~ 2 hrs, 15 mins

Took a few days to be lazy as hell. Didn't really intend to it just happens sometimes lol. Funny that it's literally the first few days of a new year and I'm already slackin :P

On the other hand, work has been busy lately.

Anyway, the other day when I was working on the background art for the game, I had a lot of trouble with the resolution. The guns and character are just some arbitrary resolution, and I didn't really put much thought into it because I'm not really experienced or educated with this stuff. So, that, plus generally being aware that my art fucking sucks right now, I decided to watch some videos about game art.

Found Adam Younis' video about pixel art canvas sizes (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=upEGBGCiWEw) and my god, that was so helpful. I know so much better what the hell I'm supposed to do, I just needed some direction. Something to work with. I also have been reading about the development of Battle Brothers, and I noted that the artist has a little mockup file that just has random characters etc. splayed about so that he can compare his current work to other game assets. So that, plus the video I watched, convinced me to make a mockup of the game.

It will take some time, but I think it's really necessary. And it's fun. But it gives me the opportunity to create prototype art and really get a grasp on what this game is going to be, rather than just a bunch of placeholders. And I am  actually feeling way more comfortable now that I have less pixels to work with! I feel like it just gives me a frame to work within.

Exciting!

Here's a screenshot of the new character / gun art I've put together. Super cool! I have no problem if the game looks generally like this. Hell yeah.