Please finish Frog Sord, it will be brilliant and you will get lots of money.

I will, but there's a separate devlog for that 

I'm going to release nine versions of FROG SORD. Why let people clone your game when you can clone it yourself? And yes, he's teleporting. There will be animations and what not for it soonish. This game is much more "blow shit up" and much less "hop over that spike".

 

Might as well get that comment out of the way early, haha. But in all seriousness, this game will be somewhat more complex than FROG THING. Perhaps he'll make a guest appearance though?

Cross-post.

A lot of design work has been going on behind the scenes, so I have been hesitant to say/show more. Here's a rough GIF showing off a small portion of the gameplay in OTTO REPAIR.

Early Movement Preview

[Why this game is as good as FROG SORD:]

I'm Zack.
I was making FROG SORD and now I'm not.
I came up with another game in need of unnecessary capitalization and misspellings.

Why this game is as good as FROG SORD:
-You still jump and kill shit

Why this game is better than FROG SORD:
-Big hair


This is a WIP thing from the game that I'll probably take down soon.

Wrote another small article thing today. It's a brief interview with JW of Vlambeer. http://couchdevs.tumblr.com/post/84946042980/gm-series-part-1

I talked to a high school class about games and education. Wrote a little bit about it, here: http://couchdevs.tumblr.com/post/84786546900/game-development-and-education

I really like the pacing of those lower deck rooms. Looks super fun and fluid, while also seeming to be pretty challenging.

I prototyped an idea that plays somewhat similarity to FS today. I am also talking to a few key people about how to possible continue the project or the "spiritual successor" or whatever you want to call it.

Part 3: http://couchdevs.tumblr.com/post/83940496179/whats-next-for-me

@Bones- That's the main issue. The full team is no longer on board. If that were the case, things would be fine. As far as your other questions go, I'm sure we do have options, but we decided it was best not to step on anyone's toes. Hope that makes sense.

I'll just leave this here...

http://couchdevs.tumblr.com/post/83465789478/frog-sord-post-mortem-part-1
http://couchdevs.tumblr.com/post/83538472823/frog-sord-post-mortem-part-2

A quick look into the overworld generation.

1) The first step is simple. All I am doing is splitting the world into nine rooms and assigning locations for the dungeons that are necessary to further story progress.


2) The second step is where things get a bit complicated. Each of the nine rooms are broken up into nine, smaller zones. Each zone is represented by several strings that work together in parallel to save a bunch of information. This info includes the layout of the zone (1x1 zone island, 2x1 zone island, a small cluster of islands, etc), some info for how the game should generate that particular set of islands, accessibility (which metroidvania item(s) are necessary to make progress and/or access each island), etc.


3) The final step (for now) is all about the actual island generation. I look back at the information that I have already generated and use it to determine the actual procedural generation of each island. This is where I create actual game objects, auto-tile the island depending on how difficult it is and what items and obstructions are necessary, as well construct dungeon entrances, shops, secrets, etc.


Obviously, I am leaving a lot of the information out of this post, but I wanted to show something somewhat visual and give a little bit of insight into what the project actually is.

If you boil it down to the bare minimum, I am basically trying to procedurally generate a top-down Wind Waker like game.

More to come 

[EDIT:]

Working on better/smarter ways to fill the world with semi-important items (heart containers, stat boosts, keys, etc). I want there to be a good balance of items hidden in plain sight as well as hidden in caves/mini-dungeons.

Right now I'm balancing how many of these locations can be accessed prior to each metroidvania-item. These being the items that you get while in large dungeons that will allow you to access more of the map.

EDIT: This sort of thing is getting too complicated to leave unfinished and come back to later. My notes hurt my brain.

OMG THIS IS SO GREAT! I WANT TO SEE MOREZ!

That would be Alejandro. He worked on Frog Sord too. He knows what this is and how many headaches it has given me thus far.

 

[Intro]

Intro
Since Frog Sord and affiliated projects are on some form of hiatus, I have been working on a side project of mass proportion. Myself being the programmer, I have decided to focus on something tech-heavy in the mean time.

About
Essentially, this project will be a roguelike-like reminiscent of Spelunky or The Binding of Isaac. The catch is that I am trying to add a few layers of complexity by generating an entire Zelda-like/Metroidvania rather than something linear.

The project isn't exactly DevLog-ready, but I am hoping that this encourages me to work hard on it and share my journey/process with all of you.

 

Questions
1) Should the overworld map always be the same size? I'm playing with starting the player out with small maps (2 dungeons) and then working them up to larger ones (3-4 dungeons). Or perhaps the player should be able to choose in order to approximate the length of their play through (4 dungeons will make the game significantly longer than a round of BoI).

2) Perma-death? Yes or no? I like it, but I feel like it may be too harsh if the game gets a bit lengthy during later play throughs. A set number of lives, maybe?

Concerns
1) The world generation is complicated and because of this I haven't posted any screens yet.

2) No art yet, so nobody gives a shit about the game. Ouch.

I said I wouldn't, but I guess I'll leave this here... 

I can do that. Oops.  

EDIT: But again, please remain excited. Things are happening 

[So how much longer till you can officially reveal this secret revival project? Can you share any other hints?]

I only just found out about this(new here) and its..dead? Damn. I'm confused but as far as I can see everyone had some kind of falling out? That sucks yo.

The project within this devlog is dead... Err...Mostly. I like how this guy put it:

just saw this and went to the last page to ask:

where, when, how do I buy it?

I'm going to be super optimistic here and say hopefully Steam, roughly ten months from now, and uh...PayPal and/or credit card?

So how much longer till you can officially reveal this secret revival project? Can you share any other hints?

^More info coming soon. If (when) it happens, a different devlog will open up.