next »

[Indecom]

That really sucks dude, i've had that very same thing happen to me like 3 times before, so i'm taking initiative and saving all my important files to the cloud so i can access them from any computer. Really helps keep from losing both your projects and your mind. Hope you can pick up a new hdd soon and start working on something amazing and get dropbox to save your sanity!

[Magnesium Ninja]

I really hope you can recover it. Hate hearing stories like this, 'specially since I've been there before.

[Kevin]

Thanks guys. No one to blame here but me! I should have been doing some... any kind of backup. That said, whether I can recover the data or not I'll pick this up again at some point. Most of the real work that I'd done so far was more based around getting stuff figured out, and re-coding it from scratch (again) shouldn't be super prohibitive. I mean, it was only a few weeks back that I started fresh anyway. The real loss here is the art. It'll be much more troublesome/annoying trying to recreate all of that, but still not too bad. Again, all the lost data, now that I really stop to think about it, only amounts to a couple months' lost time at most.

Anyway, I'll be taking a bit of a break from this for now. I have other, more pressing things to work on at the moment anyway. Near future though, this'll be back on I'm sure!

Update:

My sister was awesome enough to donate an whole, entire computer to me. She has, single handedly, saved this and any other projects I may or may not have been working on.

At this point, I've recreated the player sprite (and soon enough, the plant boss) by freeze framing my uploaded videos, and I found and old (pre-rewrite) copy of the source which should contain much of the engine's meat, albeit in a rougher form. Many of the tiles are unchanged from that point, so they're as good as recovered (short of the process of actually redrawing/exporting them, or whatever I end up having to do). Boss sprites on the 3 other near finished bosses are lost, but I remember most of the process of coding them and, honestly, I'm really relishing in the decision to limit the game to one colour sprites, as recreating them from nothing won't take long.

Consider this still on hiatus (I've taken on some freelance projects and was set to announce a pause in progress anyway), and set pretty far back in terms of development, but definitely still on. My initial reaction might have been a bit over-reactive, as it was coloured by the shock and rage of waking up to a spontaneously fried hard drive. I'm choosing to look at this as a positive, since code was getting messy again as I shoehorned in new features. I think I have pretty much everything I want to include figured out at this point, so the new re-build should be clean from start to finish.

[Eigen]

Ouch, that's bad but I'm glad you're seeing things in the positive colors and managed to restore at least some of the files. Hang in there!

My fear of my 8 years old laptop's hard-drive (or the whole thing) dying has escalated to a point where I do full backups of my active project(s) every night before going to bed. I zip them up and upload to my web-server (I should probably write a little script for that). That way if the computer's dead by morning, I have a recovery option and the party can begin because I'm getting a new computer. I should probably get a new computer anyway.

Jebus backups.

[Kevin]

I've rewritten basic player movement/shooting/etc. which means that this, officially at least, exists as an honest-and-real thing again!

I often take forget how much free time one has when, uh, under-employed, so I'll likely continue working on this concurrent with commissions. With some effort, things should be back to where they were pre-data-loss relatively soon.

[Kevin]

Progress report:

The basic engine is essentially finished, I've re-coded (and redrawn) the first boss, and redrawn the sprites for the plant boss which I think looks slightly better than it did before.

I've implemented the weapon and health upgrades and, after thinking for a bit about how I wanted this aspect of the game to play out, came up with a slightly altered set of upgrades. Originally, the plan was to have a health-centric path and a power-centric path with upgrades taking the form of a straight boost to the appropriate stat. This wasn't working out so well on the power side of things, as the player quickly became too powerful and the game became heavily unbalanced. Health upgrades still follow the "straight boost" approach, with each pickup granting 1 additional life point, but weapons are now completely changed, and considerably more interesting. They are:

1) Speed
When the game starts, firing speed is limited by the fact that only two bullets may be active on screen at any given time. Because of this, missed shots and stray bullets carry the risk of significantly reducing attack speed. The speed upgrade removes the bullet cap, greatly improving the player's attack ability.

2) Rockets:
The rocket upgrade allows for a more  powerful, secondary attack. The rocket launcher has a maximum payload of 4 rockets which regenerate slowly once depleted. This allows for greatly improved attack power (x5 normal bullet damage) without leading to the balancing issues mentioned above.

3) Bomb:
The bomb is a powerful attack damaging bosses for an equivalent of 16 normal bullets, and destroys regular enemies outright while also clearing the screen of enemy projectiles. It is detonated by pressing both the primary and secondary attack buttons simultaneously and takes one minute to recharge once used.

The upgrades will appear in this order, so following a mixed path (that is, neither pure health or pure power) will cost the player the ability to collect the bomb and, possibly, rocket upgrades.

I'm toying with the idea of giving some perks to the pure health path but, frankly, given the low-level of health obtainable the benefit of having five hits versus three or two seems pretty substantial in its own right.

Other additions I'm working on include a pause menu which displays current upgrades and player stats (health, score, time played and number of deaths). Apart from that, 7 or 8 more bosses need to be drawn and coded, I need to start work on generic enemies, hazards and level design and produce title screen and cut-scene art and menus among other things. Despite the amount of work ahead of me, this is coming along well again.

[DrDerekDoctors]

Are you going to have baiter enemies to harry the players into the next room once all the enemies are dead? Otherwise you could just sit there for a minute in each room to recharge the bomb, then move to the next one, fire the bomb, rinse and repeat. How about having the bomb recharged by destroying enemies will primary and/or secondary fire only?

[Kevin]

Are you going to have baiter enemies to harry the players into the next room once all the enemies are dead? Otherwise you could just sit there for a minute in each room to recharge the bomb, then move to the next one, fire the bomb, rinse and repeat. How about having the bomb recharged by destroying enemies will primary and/or secondary fire only?

Those are excellent points, that is an excellent suggestion! I'm going to change things so that rockets/bombs get points towards recharging every time a bullet connects with an enemy. That way, you can still recharge missiles and bombs during boss fights, but can't exploit the system as you can now.

Dr, you've been super helpful and supportive of this so far. It means a lot to me that you've taken an interest in it, so thanks a ton! ♥

[SolarLune]

The bullet charging system makes sense and sounds pretty good. I like the idea and how you're going about making this - it seems like you know what you're doing, or at least are giving it thought and consideration. Nice job!

[DrDerekDoctors]

Are you going to have baiter enemies to harry the players into the next room once all the enemies are dead? Otherwise you could just sit there for a minute in each room to recharge the bomb, then move to the next one, fire the bomb, rinse and repeat. How about having the bomb recharged by destroying enemies will primary and/or secondary fire only?

Those are excellent points, that is an excellent suggestion! I'm going to change things so that rockets/bombs get points towards recharging every time a bullet connects with an enemy. That way, you can still recharge missiles and bombs during boss fights, but can't exploit the system as you can now.

Dr, you've been super helpful and supportive of this so far. It means a lot to me that you've taken an interest in it, so thanks a ton! ♥

My pleasure. It's always nice to talk that special kind of bullshit we call "game design".

[Kevin]

Small update to prove I'm still alive.

Three bosses are in, and with that I'm essentially back to where I was when my hard drive died. I've also implemented the upgrades and pause/menu system, though, so really I'm quite a ways beyond where I was before. Things have been a bit slower due to other commitments and, frankly, a bit of burnout. I'm taking a bit of a step back from working on this as I don't want it to become a chore.

I'm having a bit of an internal debate about the bosses. Namely, I can't decide if it would be better to force the player to encounter some of the same bosses regardless of the upgrade path they choose or having unique bosses for each area. I'm leading towards the latter, but I've considered the possibility that forcing the player to face certain bosses regardless of upgrades could make the upgrades seem more, well, useful. For example, say you face off against the plant boss I showed earlier; having either extra health or extra firepower could change the dynamic of the fight a bit. Like, more health and you'll be able to hold out longer but so will he due to your lack of firepower. It just occurred to me that allowing the player to choose their upgrades might be an option as well. Like a pseudo-rpg skill tree type system where you can ultimately only unlock three abilities, resulting in the same end loadout as would following any of the given paths under the current system.

I think I'm getting rambly so I'll stop here but feedback, as always, would be great!

The bullet charging system makes sense and sounds pretty good. I like the idea and how you're going about making this - it seems like you know what you're doing, or at least are giving it thought and consideration. Nice job!

SolarLune: I'm glad I'm giving that impression because, despite putting a decent amount of thought into things, I certainly have no idea what I'm doing.

[Kevin]

I've finished the fourth boss, and I figure it's time I posted some new screens. These screens show each of the bosses I've finished working on, so if you want to be surprised when you play the game, maybe don't look at them.
Boss 1
Boss 2
Boss 3
Boss 4 (the plant thing shown earlier)

The numbers don't correspond to the order they'll appear in game as I'm still working that out. Also, all of the rooms and tiles are placeholders and will hopefully be more interesting before I'm done with them.

Here are some screens showing the menu:

General Status
Weapon Status
Configuration Screen
Volume Slider
Quit Screen

The number on the robot's chest in the general status screen corresponds to number of deaths. The most important config option, the ability to remap keys, hasn't been implemented yet and is a bit intimidating for some reason and might get scrapped, depending on how ambitious I get. If I do scrap it, I'll at least try to include alternate default input options so as not to alienate anyone not working on a QWERTY board.

[SolarLune]

Sounds great, and I like that the number on the robot's chest is the number of deaths. Maybe the true ending could be getting through the game with the first robot, number 00? Perhaps even make the robot number 01 or 02, and the true ending explains that the 'first' robot you've been playing with isn't the original? Just thinking out loud.

Anyway, game's looking sweet. I like how crisp and clear your pixel art is - no muddiness in your screens (haven't looked at the bosses so that I can be surprised).

[Maud'Dib Atreides]

I clicked your signature to get here and I'm so glad that I did :O

[Connor]

its been a year, i clicked on this topic and i am pretty surprised noones replied to this in a while...