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[Andy Wolff]

I feel like the player needs to shoot in more than 4 directions what with the faux 3d of the space the character is moving in and the fact that enemies can shoot or attack in more directions.

Of course I haven't played it but it looks awkward in the videos.

Actually, players can only shoot in two directions. You can't shoot up or down, only left or right. This is probably what defines the gameplay the most out of anything.
The enemies are designed to (hopefully) complement and subvert this in various interesting ways. For the most part, the enemies also can only shoot in two directions, but it isn't as strict for them because that would get pretty boring. The only thing so far that breaks this rule completely is the black magic in the gif I posted a while ago, but I still want to trim that down a lot. Nothing will ever kill you from a place where you can't kill it (from above or below), unless it's something I'm intentionally trying to give more power than the players, like the indian chief. In those kinds of cases, I'll try to give as much chance to prevent, survive, or retaliate as possible.

It may be a bit awkward, but only being able to shoot left or right is a core game mechanic which makes it a lot more interesting to design for. For example, if you look carefully, you'll see that you can hit the gatling gun bandit right in the forehead while he's shooting if you stand in just the right spot, though it is a bit difficult and requires a lot of precision. This isn't terribly obvious in the video, but I have been able to flirt just above his bullets and nail him repeatedly.

That's how I'm trying to design the game: fair limits are imposed upon the players so that it is more difficult, but the extra challenge makes it more rewarding and fun. Success requires precision and timing. I don't know if I'm succeeding at this, but that's what I'm attempting to do. I want players to have to be good at the game to do well in it, and so far I've definitely succeeded in that
Actually, I think the game still depends on luck too much as it currently is. I'll try to remedy that sometime before release, but it's a fine line

@Ashkin: Nah, white outlines would be pretty out of place. I don't like outlines. Besides, the camera never moves, and none of the people I've played it with have had much trouble keeping track of their character. Though some people have had trouble identifying zombies, even with the rather obvious flame effect. I might have a button which makes little "P1" or "P2" flags appear above their corresponding players, though.

I'm on vacation from school this week, but a new term starts next week and it may be rather a lot busier than this previous one was (soft eng and hci are apparently a lot of work). I'll try to get a lot done before then.
current tentative plan:
tomorrow:
   Finish The Cracks:
    - black powder bomber brigade
    - tepees/indian village gen
    - finalize snakeboss
    - maybe put in one of the blackbison
later on:
   start enemies for either the dunes or mesas
   finish workover of mesa procgen

[Andy Wolff]

trying to figure out what i want to do for the black powder bomb explosion,
anim sketch 1:


anim sketch 2:

probably i'll end up with something very bubbly with lots of instances of smaller smoke puffs and maybe some shrapnel particles




edit:
smaller smoke puffs like this:

[todd]

Here's a nice compact explosion tut JWK5 did. I'm stoked on the game so far Andy 

[Andy Wolff]

Thanks, yeah, that's a pretty good tutorial

I should have mentioned, I'm specifically trying to make it look like an actual black powder bomb explosion. I've drawn quite a few explosions in my time, but this one is a bit strange for me because it needs to be so smokey. Because of all the smoke, the motion eases outward very sharply, then fades away slowly. I can't have it fade away all that slowly because that would mess up the pace of the game.
 The first one I posted above is definitely closer to that, but I'd like to make it look more forceful before I start adding detail. I might experiment a bit more but I think probably I'll cut the black powder bomb since my efforts would be better spent on other things

[todd]

Oh okay gotcha. In that case I like the first one better. The only thing that looks kind of weird is the smoke, but what you said in the OP(

probably i'll end up with something very bubbly with lots of instances of smaller smoke puffs

) will probably do the trick pretty well.

My uncles used to make those with 2 liter soda bottles for the 4th of July. So stinkin' loud.

[Ashkin]

The second sketch is great, I love how 3D it looks. However, if you want to make it look more like the video, I suspect working with tendrils of smoke going out from the bomb rather than one sphere.

[Andy Wolff]

I did some work on this last night and tonight in between serious homework sessions

The black powder bombs are functionally in, though I still want to do more aesthetic work on them

(old and not a very good screencap because it doesn't show the enemies getting killed by the explosion, and the bomb doesn't disappear)

Bison spawning is back in (it hadn't been since the new events system)

Chiefs spawn from teepees now. Next I'll make them teleport and be generally more menacing

Enemies kill each other now, with certain exceptions (indians don't kill each other). Bisons don't mow people down yet, but I'll add that soon. An enemy will only drop gold when it dies if a player has hurt it at least once.
Having the enemies kill each other is really cool. After you die, it's kinda fun to just watch them wander around and shoot each other occasionally. I intend to add more interesting interactions between them in the distant future

I'm hoping tomorrow to finish the last major parts of the first level, which consists mainly of getting the snakeboss to spawn in some archaic, significant way, and work out a better way to kill it

I had an interesting idea for replacing the player zombies with ghosts which can possess enemies with minimal control (you might only be able to tell the enemy when to shoot or something), but I need to think about it more. It might be an unlockable option. If I get it to work well it could be really cool

[08--n7.r6-79.84]

i came

[Andy Wolff]

I appreciate your venereal explosion



stuff today:

jumping bandits bounce off and hurt enemies they land on

wrote a dirty solution for enemies walking through cacti and teepees (they enforce a minimum distance when overlapping). it's probably badly inefficient and may slow the game on the xbox, but it runs fine for now. i might exempt bison from this so that they just trample over and flatten everything like they don't even care.

bison hurt other enemies if they run into them. I might make them flatten grass as well, though that will be really inefficient

I thought a lot about lock and key mechanics in game design (considering whether I should have unlockable things or do something potentially more interesting). I haven't come to any conclusion about it other than I should think about it more and maybe experiment a bit before serious development either way. I also thought a lot about having the enemies hurt each other, and I'm liking it more and more


I really badly want to finish the first level. There aren't that many things left to do for it and I keep telling myself I could do it in one night, but for all the other things I have to do. It is most bothersome

[jmac]

Really impressive work, it's been great seeing everything come together.

[Andy Wolff]

Added bandits which bring in the black powder bomb, place it, then scramble
Made the Chief teleport when shot
Made the snakeboss spawn, made it more possible to defeat it. Raised my max score to nearly 400 golds

The Cracks are basically finished. I'm not going to add anything more to the normal play on the level, though I might make a some edits to existing stuff later

well, I still need to add sound to most of the stuff in there. I think I'll continue to ignore it for now, though.

[Andy Wolff]

mummies that spew poison when hurt
poison clouds will poison cacti and possibly other things

definitely going to try more visual styles on the poison cloud, but for now I'm focusing on getting as many enemies functioning in as possible

[BlueSweatshirt]

It's weird but also cool how the shadows have more contrast to the ground than the actual objects do.

[Andy Wolff]

a mummy lassoed a sheriff and is using him to sandsurf

I did some code profiling and figured out that the bison caused slowdowns on the xbox not because of the dustclouds, but because of their collision checks with every other enemy. I was able to make those functions about twice as efficient, and the slowdown doesn't seem to happen anymore, though I suspect that more optimization might be warranted

It's been a pretty tough and busy ~month since my last update. I've got a week or two left before summer, but hopefully I'll have a summer internship or job, so I don't know if I'll have any more time to work on this then than I have now

[HarrisonJK]

I hadn't seen this before but now I love it