I'm Tired But I Did It

Hello.

I'm goin to bed. I just need to post here because it's a commitment to myself.

Today I wrote a list of things I needed to get done and I actually did it even though I am tired and it's late and I'm sick. I'm proud of myself for that. I put the game up on itch.io today to get people testing. However it's pretty rough atm so I haven't posted about it - I'm going to clean it up probably just one more day and then start trying to engage with players.

Yeah baby.

Armor Prototypes, I'm Tired

Still WORKIN man.

I have recently discovered three games that are all party-based survivorslikes. So I need to do more research on them.

I'm getting really tired because I'm sick so I'm gonna go.

But I threw together some brainstorming for the art style - check it out. I think it's pretty damn cool tbh. 

Workin' Out the Details

Today I did a lot yet again. And I wish I had time for more. I really really really want to actually get this thing out there as soon as possible. I have no idea if it will be any type of success, you know, I just want to keep moving quickly. I'm actually having a lot of fun developing this because now I have such a clear purpose and direction. Picking a genre was a big move.

Today I removed the player switching characters and always controlling one - now it's either everyone auto shoots, or the player directs everybody at once. Nice and easy. Just five buttons to control the game - WASD (movement) and spacebar (toggling manual aim). Nice! Anyone can play it. This is great.   

I also worked on the in-between-rounds upgrade screen and worked out some details about the troops. I'm really trying hard to keep things as simple as possible. The idea now is, you gain equipment on each wave, but you gain either a troop or can upgrade existing troops' skills on level up. Nice.

I've also been continually posting my progress on Reddit and X. I hate X for the record; it's distracting and political. I'm still going to try using it anyway. But Reddit is great, I love Reddit. My goal as far as that goes is to get 500 likes on a post. I will keep refining the art and style until I get there.

Alright - see ya next time.  

 

Finally Committing to a Genre

Workin hard out here. Did a lot of research today - I played about 10 or 12 survivorslikes. Some were really good - Death Must Die, Brotato, obviously Vampire Survivors. I also played some really shitty ones. One was so bad I couldn't continue after like 2 minutes. It was a sight to behold. Anyway the point was to get an idea what the hell I am doing.

Oh yeah, I've decided to settle on making it a survivorslike. I have no idea if that's a good decision or not. Just seems like it's a popular genre, especially w/ the recent success of the new Deep Rock game. I have decided to commit to just making the game adhere to the rules of the genre, and the main hook of my game will be that you have a squad of dudes and not just one. And they each hold a weapon / have their own details. 

I've taken a ton of notes and something I have noticed is that the most common thing that makes a survivorslike game fucking suck or pretty fun is how well tuned the pacing is. There are so many out there with incredibly slow pacing. And that completely ruins it. So it's been nice to observe some obvious pitfalls that I know I will be avoiding.

Anyway, here's an animation I reworked. I am sad to move away from the jumping around that was the previous animation, but this looks a lot more considered and tactical. Still needs some work, but it's good progress.  

Painfully Restarting

 Okay. So, this sounds crazy. But the thing is, this project has become insanely bloated with shit that it doesn't need. I mean there has been line of sight cones, 3 different cover implementations, cover seeking algorithms, building systems, a turn based system, RTS controls, map stuff, I mean the list goes ON AND ON. It was so frustrating to try to rework into my new vision.

So.

I took the side project I based the new design on that I made in a week and I decided to run with that. It will take me a few days to get all the animations working and get things working as smooth as I would like them to. But the advantage here is that this has zero bloat. There is nothing in here that the game isn't going to use. I don't know if this was the right call but I do know the other one was so difficult to work with. Besides, let's say that this is a success; then maintaining it is going to be far easier this way.

Right now it looks kind of silly. But it'll come together. 

I I have also been  reading more about marketing and the business aspect of game dev. It is just reinforcing my belief that I need to iterate quickly and get this game done so I can make the next one. I already knew this but it's nice to see data, examples, and people who know what they are talking about say it too.

I still need to figure out what the hell to do about marketing. But I'm not sitting on my ass about it, I am researching. I'm just at like level zero with that so it's a little hard to know what comes first. A website, maybe? Somewhere for people to go to see what the game is about. We'll see.

Anyway, tomorrow will be better and the day after that and so on.

Cutting Everything!

So yesterday I had a massive amount of stress thinking about all this. You know, typical crushing inescapable self-doubt. The, "what the hell am I thinking, I am just an average dude, I can't do something like this" kind of stuff. And yeah, I am an average dude. But I'm doing it anyway.

So I didn't get barely any work done yesterday as a result. Which is fine. Sometimes you gotta just know when to stop and recover. Today I am feeling much better. I've said several times on this blog that I am aware that it's important to scope as small as possible, and to make as many games as possible, because you never know what is going to fail or succeed. And more games = more reps, which means faster improvement. 

It's just insanely hard to actually do that. I've spent nearly a whole year on this game and... I've realized I need to cut and cut and cut and cut. I wish I had done so earlier. But that's just the way of things. I am going to finish and release the game ASAP, planning for this month. I have decided I actually am not going to have that map feature I worked on the other day, because I think it's just one more level of complexity. I am also not going to have any sort of metagame. It's just going to be arcade-style. I also am going to completely remove RTS controls. It's just gonna be a top-down shooter with a squad that follows you. As lame as it can sound, I am really just going to make this a cooler EndSoldier.

Here's the mechanics list I'm at now:

• Top-Down Shooter (in there)
• Squad that follows you (in progress)
• Switching between characters via Tab (easy)
• Weapons and armor that can be equipped to characters, and are found in level randomly (easy)
• Simple stats like reaction time (rotation speed), reload speed, HP, etc. which improve with lvl up
• Several enemy types
• At least one map

And yeah that's basically it. Super easy. At least I think. I don't see anything here that is that crazy, especially considering I basically took the prototype I made in a few days (Deadly Operations Group) and just applied those mechanics to this. They were very easy to do. The only thing I am concerned about really is just having to deal with the massive, absolutely massive amount of dead code in this project.

Also it's just crazy to me that I wasted so much time during development. But.. I don't know. Maybe it was just a learning experience. Now I know what the game should be. And now I am very, very determined not to waste time in the future. I think I will be better at cutting things down because I know how brutal the process can be.

Two other nice things to note, I posted a couple GIFs on Twitter (X whatever) in an attempt to begin marketing. Finally. So, what I may do is spend the first hour of any work session just focusing on interacting with people by marketing or talking with other devs. I also shared a GIF on Reddit asking other devs for their opinion on the art style, and they were pretty much all supportive of it. So, while I already know it's not going to impress anyone, it may come off charming like I want it to. Also somebody even said it reminded them of Madness, which is a massive inspiration for it so that's a big win as far as I'm concerned.

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Just Working

 Today I started off by seeing if I could finish up that shell casings stuff I came up with the other day. I decided to put aside 30 minutes before moving on.

I ended up getting it to a pretty satisfactory place.  I think it could use some tweaking but I like it. Glad I just did something fun for the project instead of only doing the "right things". Right now I'm thinking I can spend Thurs / Fri doing the "right things" mostly and then through the week when I work I am free to do things I just think are cool.

Then I fixed the player aiming being horrible and started working on a new target detection implementation.

I am often struck by an intense feeling of "I don't know what I'm doing. What if I am making the wrong moves?". It's hard to keep a handle on those feelings.

Part of it is that I am still working on this big project that has nearly taken me a year.

Redoing Combat

Time worked: ~ 2 hours

I need to start writing on here more often. This has been my way of keeping motivated and remembering that I'm really doing this. I have been working on the game just haven't been sharing. It's been slow to be honest. I think since it's taking a new direction I am a little lost. And I also am trying my best to really think about things before implementing, but also not too much so that time isn't wasted. It's a hard thing for me to balance.

Anyway today I just worked on reworking the combat to fit the new game. The scale and pace is much different than before. The maps will probably be much smaller. And I'm trying to more clearly define things like health and damage. I added UI for health bars and I played with values for accuracy, fire rate and speed. 

Tomorrow will be more! Excited for it. 

Anyway here's just a lil GIF