Dev Diaries - 12 Oct

12 OCT 2020

Project Violet

Pretty good progress on the final level. After a full day dedicated to it, I think I have an adequate shell. There are still a few things that could be added to really make it shine, but the overall direction and style is complete. One thing that makes this old project hard to continue working in is how set-in-stone a lot of the functionality is. For example, because the only mechanics are run/jump/crouch/shoot, its hard to build a level that is interesting without resorting to the moving platforms for any form of verticality. I thought about allowing the player to jump two spaces high to alleviate the fact that.. He can’t go under anything that he could jump on, but it breaks the feel of the game. It is supposed to be heavy, and I don’t want him mario jumping. That just means level design working around this is a bit stiff. I think it’s turning out okay, though.

14 OCT 2020

Project Violet

The final level is complete and ready for playtesting. They say that you become an expert at your own game, so limit the difficulty by 20%… so... I’m gonna need a lot of playtesting to know for certain. By all that counts, the enemies are incredibly basic and repetitive so I feel like players should get a decent grasp of them early on, but I can’t know until someone tries it out. I added a few little changes to help out, like the fact that enemies can’t shoot through active electric traps, but the player can. The level is mostly just boxed out, but if I can’t get more art assets that’s going to have to pretty much be the final product. Good enough, I’m just happy to see it come to life.

16 OCT 2020

Ship Game

Spent the day working on obstacle avoidance for each of the AI classes. Rather than adding it to each personality, the ShipMover class inherently tells all ships that move at all to avoid walls. If, for some reason, I want them to ONLY move forward, they can use the players movement instead which is just to move forward indefinitely. Then, I created a complicated AI that can listen for the player, turn if they hear them, and chase once they see them.

17 OCT 2020

Ship Game

With the general movements and logic down, I went ahead and made 4 distinct AI. Red is the original complex AI made earlier, Green only patrols, Black chases the player slowly from the beginning no matter what, and Blue is my “Boo” ship. This one doesn’t shoot, but instead tries to ram the player. If the player turns to face the ship, it picks a transform opposite of the player and moves to that instead. The blue ship will continue to evade until the player is either out of range or no longer looking.

18 OCT 2020

Project Violet

Got a chance to get some playtesting done on the game. Admittedly it was a 10-year-old, but they seemed to enjoy the challenge. They struggled pretty hard to get through it, and they were never motivated to jump down any holes, so I may need to add a visual cue that it's safe. I also probably need more health packs, but more playtesting will be necesssary to know exactly where. Otherwise, it seems like they picked up the concepts pretty quickly.