next »

[Fallsburg]

I've been working on this for a short amount of time and finally have enough progress that I feel it is worthwhile to have a devlog.

The gist?

You are a hacker hired to make a run on the Ono-Sendai Corporation.  You only have a short time to make it through their data-fortress to extract your target before their defense AI's flatline you.

So, how does this actually play?

Controls are in the style of an Arena Shooter, but you have to navigate a Zelda dungeon-style levels.  All the while, defensive programs, traps, etc. stand between you and your prize.

Players will be able to find other files worth money, sell them on the black market, and buy upgraded ICE-Breakers (Intrusion Countermeasure Electronics Breakers).  

Most of the assets in the game are procedurally generated, levels, enemy sprites, player sprites, etc.  The game is also heavily inspired by Spelunky and Roguelikes so permadeath, uncertainty, randomness, and harsh penalties for dawdling are all going to be there.

Here is a current screenshot:


The player is blue, walls are lightbrown, enemies of different strengths are the similarly shaped yellow and red guys, the aiming reticle is the red rounded square, a projectile is the white thing, and the yellow circle is the jump point to the next level.

Currently, I have a maze populated with enemies.  The next step is making it actually interesting.  That should be easy right?  

Credit where credit is due, this game is heavily inspired by Spelunky and the graphics are inspired by VomitOnLino's Invaders: Corruption and RCIX's procedural pixelart spaceships.

I look forward to getting feedback on this.

[RCIX]

Nice! Glad to see i inspired someone. So you're using my library, or a recoded version in another language, or.... ?

[Fallsburg]

Oh, it's as I said in your post about your code. Mine doesn't use an actual image as the probability template, although it could.  As of now you just fill out a matrix with values 0-100 (which are the probability that it will get filled in) or >100 (which designates it as a special color, i.e. the white orb inside of the blue player sprite), but after that mine is essentially just like the Pixel Spaceships by Dave Bollinger.  I don't know if you use his algorithm for adding/removing pixels after the random generation, but I imagine our algorithms are similar.

The other things I've added are pretty simple, such as:
1) Symmetry: Horizontal, Vertical, Both, or None
2) Fill Color: Start, End
3) Outline Color: Start, End
4) Frames of animation

This is because some/most of the objects in the game pulsate, so as to make the visuals more interesting, but without going the extra (and very difficult) step of creating actual animation for my generated sprites.

[chumez]

Sounds cool! Love the "ICE-Breakers" 
Looks different from most games I've seen ... but I like it.
Though I think you should make more versatile graphics. Looking forward
to seeing it finished

Keep up the good work! 

[moonmagic]

I really like the look of those procedural sprites. I want to be able to run into HUGE fairly unique looking (maybe less randomly generated?) enemies; excited to see how this progresses.

[Fallsburg]

Yeah, I only have the small minion-y sprites right now, I'm not sure how I want to approach the more bad-ass minions, let alone the bosses.

[moonmagic]

Maybe you could give them names?

"Gregory Thimbledance the Younger"

[Fallsburg]

Well, I love the name "Gregory Thimbledance the Younger," but I will save that for when I make my Victorian England Metroidvania game.  For now, I'm not sure what the naming will be.  For now, the only things with random names are the weapons.  Things like "xXShadowNinjaXx's 1C3-pick", "Knuth's Blazing Knife", "Turing's Boomstick". 

Screenshots soon, but for now, development log.

I have the coarse structure of the levels down.  A lot of knobs that can be turned, the levels are tricky, but not insurmountable.

I have my two main weapon styles, chargeable or rapidfire, down, and they can spawn a whole variety of fire types (shotgun, shield, flamethrower, etc.).

Next up are homing weapons, player centric weapons (think leaf-shield from Megaman). Then, enemies that actually shoot at the player instead of trying to run into her.

Hopefully, I can get these done tonight.

After that, it's on to traps.  I'm thinking I'll have every single kind of trap from Zelda: Link to the Past, but if people have suggestions for trap types, I'm all ears.

[Fallsburg]

So, new things.
Since this is a battle of mind v. electronics, the player's health is their mental health. Therefore, EEG (ElectroEncephaloGraph).  The health levels for the player are Zen, Calm, Normal, Agitated, Schizophrenic, and Flatline.

Encryption:
My "hunger" mechanic, to steal yet more ideas from Roguelikes.  For the uninitiated, most Roguelikes have a hunger system that encourages the player to move through the levels and not dawdle, because if they do they will die of starvation.  For example, Spelunky's hunger mechanic is the ghost that appears after 2:30.  Mine is encryption strength.  The more time you spend in a level, the more time the AI has to crack your encryption.  Once your encryption is cracked, your weapons are drastically less effective (although they can still do some damage).

Currency:
In our cyberpunk future, the only true currency is the New Yuan.

[FishyBoy]

I'm really liking what I see here. The gameplay concept is definitely intriguing, and it looks like you're pulling off that cyberpunk atmosphere pretty well.

[Fallsburg]

So, progress.


Current Screenshot.

Tonight I spent some time and applied a bit of spit polish (or fake bloom filter, depending on how you want to look at it), and personally it's looking a lot like what I want. 

If people have a better idea about what the wall (orange) tiles should look like, I'd appreciate it as I'm not quite happy with them yet.

New things since last time:
Conveyer belts (the purple)
Bloom
Enemies that shoot (the red guy is a rotating turret and the yellow guy will chase you and fire at you if you get in his vision cone)
Slippery floors
Painful Floors
Minimap (Needs to be made more prominent and noticeable but it's in the lower right corner)

Things still to come:
Moving blocks
Painful blocks (like the spike blocks in LttP)
Painful Moving Blocks (like the blade traps in LttP)


Once those are done, I should have just about every building block in place.

[Fallsburg]

Ok, so progress marches on, but I'm at a bit of a block.
So in my game I have bombs (or whatever the digital equivalent would be), but I don't know what the explosion should look like.

Does anybody have an idea about what an explosion in cyberspace looks like?  Everything I've tried so far just doesn't look that good.

[Feral_P]

Maybe you could pixelate the explosion area for a short amount of time. Or maybe eminating blue circles?

[XRA]

concept is my type of thing, digging it, I think the visuals look better now that you've got them more saturated, the bloom helps too but it might be nice to add something more to it, like slight pixelated noise maybe?

for the explosions I'd suggest something that seems like corruption and signal interference.. anything from when videos get all messed up while streaming to weird patterns showing up on broken image files or the rom tests of old arcade games during startup, broken video game consoles, tilesets being assembled improperly etc

[Fallsburg]

So, long time no post.  No access to screenshots right now, but graphically things are mostly the same. 
Let's see, new things:

Bombs. They are now implemented. They do a boatload of damage to enemies, a large amount of damage to the player, and they destroy all terrain that they touch. They have a pixelation effect based off of this, with some fairly significant modifications. I think I'll add a nice little screenshake as well.

Money.  Enemies now have a chance of dropping money (other loot will come later) [also, they don't drop money, but you are able to salvage bits of their code and sell it on the black market].

Color schemes. Palette swaps. Whatever you want to call it.  Like Spelunky, similar levels (i.e. enemy make up, trap composition, puzzles found) will be similarly themed, which for Hack//Run means color scheme. 

Currently, I'm implementing the shopping system and the inventory system. Once those are in place, I need to start the thing I keep dreading, the tuning of the dungeon creation.  I have some rough ideas, but we'll see how it actually turns out.

[Fallsburg]

Ok, so here's a quasi-mockup (the sample sprites are not yet implemented in the game) of the shop screen.  Feedback would be appreciated. And yes, that shouldn't say "desired desired".

[Xion]

seems like the descriptions would be alot less crowded and more readable if the items were arranged vertically rather than horizontally.

[Fallsburg]

seems like the descriptions would be alot less crowded and more readable if the items were arranged vertically rather than horizontally.

Good idea, I like it

[Fallsburg]

Ok, no mockup, but question time.
Should I even have descriptions on the shop screen? Or should the picture tell the whole story?
The way it works in the game is that shots of different damages have different sizes/structures, shots that stun are blue, shots that penetrate walls are purple, shots that explode on contact are red, etc.  Would the icon of a weapon be enough to make purchase choices clear? 
There isn't really going to be much in the way of an inventory system, just bomb count, teleporter icon, current weapon (and the ability to cycle to the other 3 weapons you can have on hand at any given time).  This means that the icon and actually taking a shot are going to have to be enough to distinguish a weapon from another weapon, so why not do that at the shop screen?

Thoughts? Comments? Concerns?
I ask for your help. 

[Nektonico]

Maybe just have the icons on the shop, but make the detailed information availabe on a mouseover pop up window. That way you can tell them apart at a glance, but still have the crunchy bits of info availabe if you need them, without cluttering the screen.