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[JigxorAndy]

Day 293
* Fixed bug with enemies walking through gates (can still attack through and so can players)
* Bats can now fly over boxes
* Fixed bug with AI choosing a player to target. Enemies wouldn't always attack a player if they were in their LOS. AI should be a little smarter now
* Decoupled player shadows from their "feet" (refactoring)
* Implemented Level 3

I had two massive bugs today which both took a long time to fix but they're fixed now! Besides that I worked on the third level and implemented it.

Tomorrow I would like to implement another two levels, make the End of Level screen better and give recipes for beating quests.

Level 3 - The first level you encounter goblins. Long corridors give the goblins an advantage. This shot also shows how ranged targets are marked by which are in LoS.

[JigxorAndy]

Day 294
* Did a long playtest over Skype screenshare and got some feedback on how the new levels are playing
* Minor bugfixes (textbox positioning, health counter not displaying, fireball drawn at back, textbox skip button not showing)
* Added more on Level 2
* Added Charge skill icon
* Allowed spikes to start in the up position

I did a playtest today with a friend over Skype - he shared his screen while I wrote down notes on how the levels were playing. The feedback I got was mostly positive. All the stuff I've been doing the past two weeks seems to have paid off in terms of getting closer towards the sort of game I want Dungeon Dashers to be.

Steve from GamersNexus.net uploaded a gameplay video of him playing a level from the last build. The game is actually running at 30FPS (half gamespeed) due to the recording software he was using. He has a lot of fun with it and it made me really happy to see him enjoying the game so far. You can watch it here:



I didn't get around to making the levels that I wanted to make. I'll try again at making them tomorrow.

[JigxorAndy]

Day 295
* Did some real-life taxes.
* Added manual camera look (hold + direction keys to move around the map)
* Changed footstep sound - it's hard to find something subtle that works
* Made switches be able to deactivate (in addition to already activating) traps/gates/etc.
* Made levers able to be affected by other switches (i.e. you won't have to "double pull" a lever to activate it anymore - as you did sometimes)
* Added cutscene image to the first cutscene
* Fixed some problems on level 3 and polished with dialogue

Still didn't get around to making more levels like I wanted to. I have to do some taxes stuff this week for setting up Jigxor properly which is taking a bit of time.

Philip is working on the forest tileset which I'm really excited to show everyone when it's done. It's going to bring a lot of variety to the maps rather than just having caves all the time!

Chris is working some images for the first cutscene. Here's one of them:


Tomorrow - trying to make more levels again!

[pinaster]

Upvoted, but I don't really like the enemies hit animations.

[happymonster]

What can look a little odd to me is that the sprites and objects tend to have a black outline around them, while the tiles don't. Have you tried to use one approach for all the graphics?

[Uykered]

It makes sense to me and looks coherent, the tiles are walked on so I don't see why they need equal attention with an outline as the other obstacles.

[JigxorAndy]

Thanks for the feedback everyone. I won't be able to change any of the existing artwork due to budget constraints, but as Alastair mentioned, there's a style in it.

As for hit animations - I'm not sure if you're referring to them being attacked or attacking the players. Again, either way I probably won't be able to change anything due to budget constraints. I can't feasibly add any more frames of animation. I could however add more particles, movement, etc.

[JigxorAndy]

Day 296
* Fixed bugs with bells/gates and how they activated
* Designed and implemented Level 4 (which has Orcs)

I'm annoyed that I can't make levels faster! One more major feature I want to implement before the next build is giving the player recipies/rewards for completing missions/quests. But it's all taking quite a while. I was also thinking about the difficulty of the levels and I was scared that some of the levels I'd be making now won't be all that great. But I realised that I can just iterate as I have been. If a level doesn't work, change it, or move it further/earlier in the game.

I've also realised that I need to change the lobby system somehow. It kind of breaks flow at the moment if you go back to it. There needs to be a convenient way to change equipment between levels and load new items that you've used without going back to the lobby.

Seems legit.

[Bandreus]

Day 296
I've also realised that I need to change the lobby system somehow. It kind of breaks flow at the moment if you go back to it. There needs to be a convenient way to change equipment between levels and load new items that you've used without going back to the lobby.

Seems legit.

If you could implement a world map screen, you might have that serve as the main screen for navigating the game. The player would load levels directly by picking their location on the map itself.

Icons on the bottom would be used to navigate to the Heroes screen, Diary, Crafting, Shop, etc.

[JigxorAndy]

If you could implement a world map screen, you might have that serve as the main screen for navigating the game. The player would load levels directly by picking their location on the map itself.

Icons on the bottom would be used to navigate to the Heroes screen, Diary, Crafting, Shop, etc.

I've thought about a world map screen, though having to draw that is more art. The main thing is now the game is more continous, so going back to the lobby between levels feels to break the flow (as now the game just goes onto the next level, cutscene, etc. after beating the current one).

[Bandreus]

If you could implement a world map screen, you might have that serve as the main screen for navigating the game. The player would load levels directly by picking their location on the map itself.

Icons on the bottom would be used to navigate to the Heroes screen, Diary, Crafting, Shop, etc.

I've thought about a world map screen, though having to draw that is more art. The main thing is now the game is more continous, so going back to the lobby between levels feels to break the flow (as now the game just goes onto the next level, cutscene, etc. after beating the current one).

So what about this. After the level is beaten, you display a richer winning screen.

Icons for "Play next level", "Return to map/main menu", Equipment, Crafting, Shop, Diary are displayed on top of your score, completed quests, earned recipes or what have you.

[Games Inquirer]

This looks really nice but is there some technical reason such rogue-like games can't have point & click controls like, for example, Mysterious Castle? I find that more convenient and it helps the presentation of the game. Forgive me if you've already implemented it, I'm just going by the video in the first post. Other than it, great!

[JigxorAndy]

So what about this. After the level is beaten, you display a richer winning screen.

Icons for "Play next level", "Return to map/main menu", Equipment, Crafting, Shop, Diary are displayed on top of your score, completed quests, earned recipes or what have you.

Yep! That's what I'm planning on implementing. A richer End of Level screen with most of those options on it.

This looks really nice but is there some technical reason such rogue-like games can't have point & click controls like, for example, Mysterious Castle? I find that more convenient and it helps the presentation of the game. Forgive me if you've already implemented it, I'm just going by the video in the first post. Other than it, great!

There are no proper mouse controls in the game yet, but I do plan to implement them. It hasn't been a high priority since I've been getting many other features in, but I will consider doing it soon since most of the game's core functionality is more or less final. Where as before I was iterating a lot on the movement/basic stuff.

My original idea has always been to allow the game to be played with the mouse only or the keyboard only. So hopefully I can still achieve that.

[JigxorAndy]

Day 297
* Redesigned the screenflow and menus on paper
* Made End of Level screen better
* Made Win/Lose screens better
* Made 5-Star rating system work (at a basic level)
* Tweaked earlier levels

Still no unlocks or brand new levels. Again I'll try that tomorrow.

The game flows differently now to how I first envisioned it would during my early idea of it at the start of the year. I thought that the game would have very discrete levels and jumping into one, selecting another and jumping into that wouldn't be such a problem. However now the game is more cohesive and it seems to break the flow if you have to go back to the menu after each level or to change a few pieces of equipment. The game feels much nicer now that it just goes from level to level so I've thought about how I'd like to redesign the menus so that they reflect that longer playsession idea rather than these short playsessions akin to something like an iPhone game.

It's strange to think of this kind of feeling "emerging" from the game itself. I've heard other developers talking about a game "telling them" what it wants to be, and I haven't really experienced that all that much until this project, and more specifically right now with regards to this new congruent fluid level progression.

My core vision of a "streamlined turn-based dungeon crawler" reminiscent of a tabletop game without all the needless waiting still stands. So really, it just makes sense to have a menu system which reflects the streamlined nature of the game itself.

New End of Level screen (with my non-final artwork):

[Loren Schmidt]

This looks pretty fun. I like your art. While the tiles are really great, one thing I'd recommend to your artist is to tweak the colors a bit. Right now the walls and background are similar colors, and I think it would really gain some depth if you use colors which separate these elements a bit.

[JigxorAndy]

This looks pretty fun. I like your art. While the tiles are really great, one thing I'd recommend to your artist is to tweak the colors a bit. Right now the walls and background are similar colors, and I think it would really gain some depth if you use colors which separate these elements a bit.

That's a good suggestion. I'll pass on the feedback about the tiles.

[JigxorAndy]

Day 298
* Improved End of Level screen and made it prettier
* Made skills become unlocked when you complete the appropriate level (YEAAAAAH!)
* Designed new flow between the menu screens
* Built new Level Selection and Equipment screens
* Refactored cutscene/level selection/level loading code

I'm really proud of what I managed to do today. I managed to get a lot done! I knew that the (now) old Lobby/Menu system just wasn't fluid enough to work with how the game is now. So I decided to replace all of it. I've mocked up my own. And this is the reason why I'm so hesitant to have UI done in final artwork. It's something I seem to change a fair bit depending on the needs of the game.

The main change is that the level selection screen and equipment will now be separate so that you'll move from one screen to the other. The reason for this was that after some levels you'll want to change your equipment, without completely breaking away from being "in the game". This solution seemed to make the most sense. It also just feels a lot smoother and I removed the network code for singleplayer so your firewall might/should/will not ask you about it when you're playing by yourself.

I didn't completely finish the equipment selection screen (as you can see the icons are all misaligned) but I'll tackle that first thing tomorrow. If anyone has any ideas on a cool way to display all the different items you can choose between I'm very open to suggestions. I've looked at some other games but they all seem pretty boring, so I think I'll just go with [Click an item] > [Popup box shows the other items you can swap in] which is the same as previous builds.

This is all my placeholder art, but it's not the worst placeholder art ever created.


WIP badly aligned equipment screen with "tabs" for each player.


A WINNER IS YOU!

[Uykered]

Nice! Seems better than I thought it be. Looks a lot more clear than the old lobby menu I think. Although if people want to just change skills and not items, would it still make sense to go to the "change equipment" button? Or would something more generic like "customize characters" or something encompass skills better?

[eigenbom]

this game looks great

[JigxorAndy]

Nice! Seems better than I thought it be. Looks a lot more clear than the old lobby menu I think. Although if people want to just change skills and not items, would it still make sense to go to the "change equipment" button? Or would something more generic like "customize characters" or something encompass skills better?

It's crazy how I spent a while on that last UI and then I was able to come up with this new flow within minutes. I think it really just shows how the core game experience molds the rest of the content.

Changing it to say "Customize Characters" might be better, you're right. Another idea is  "Change Loadout" or something to that effect. I think players will craft items "on the spot" in the equipment/loadout screen, but I'm not sure where stuff like Potions will fit if I have those later.

this game looks great

Thank you!