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[Thorig]

Hello everybody! Project Wormhunter is an action RPG game where you hunt down worms and will hunt other creatures.



The first version of Wormhunter, the name is not final, was created for Ludum Dare: Beneath the Surface. It was the first time working together on a game for Dick Poelen and myself. We took inspiration from Dune, Tremors, Monster Hunter and the Maasai. We gotten a lot of positive reactions during Ludum Dare which was great. There was still room for improvement. The AI of the worm was not so great and the code was a mess.



After Ludum Dare I reworked the AI of the worm and refactored the code for two months. Each new version of Wormhunter was released as part of One Game a Month. Now we are at the point where the core of Wormhunter is solid enough to start working on the subsystems on top of the core.



The first subsystem will add missions to the game. For picking up missions there will be a hub town. The player will walk to a NPC and pick up the mission of the NPC. The player will kill the target of the mission and return to the hub for a new mission. This will be repeated till all missions are done and the game is beaten ( at least this version of the game ).



Wormhunter can also be build for the Playstation Vita. Unity made this really easy to do. It plays really wel on the PS Vita. During the development of Wormhunter I used a controller as input for the most part. It is still playable with a keyboard on the PC. You can also do local coop if you have a controller hooked up to the PC.

The Story

There is a story, but no introduction story is written yet. This story will be posted here when it is done.

The TODO list

Village

Villager


Water

Animations done:
   •   Edges
   •   Waves

Animations WIP:
   •   None

Hit boxes done:
   •   None

Hit boxes wip:
   •   Body (temp boxes placed)

Desert Junk

Bug in code:
   •   There is no check if junk is placed in a house/village, water or in a desert wall.

Player

Controls WIP:
   •   Controller
   ◦   Missions (display accept button for PS4/Vita and Xbox One)

Testing:
   •   Player 2 controls

Hippo Enemy

Animations WIP:
   •   G****
   •   Death

Hit boxes WIP:
   •   AOE attack on ground

Code WIP:
   •   Screen shake, must also be based on distance between Hippo and active player.

Testing:
   •   Player 2 on the attack alone, player 1 is no more.
   •   Player 1 and 2 on the attack.

Normal/Hard Worm

Animations WIP:
   •   G****

Bugs in code:
   •   Worm does not retreat before moving to the player when attack. Bug in mood change.

Poison Worm

Poison pole

Enemy X

None, work not started yet.

Enemy Y

None, work not started yet.

Enemy Z

None, work not started yet.

Sub-systems

Desert generator

Bug in code:
   •   None, work not started yet.

Village generator

Missions generator

Animations/Frames WIP:
   •   Accept button, controllers (PS4, PS Vita, Xbox one)
   •   Accept button, keyboard
   •   Mission Accepted icon

Bug in code:
   •   When moving away from NPC when mission is accepted; the icons are not remove. Happend because another bug was fixed.

WIP:
   •   After killing the enemy for the mission, the player should be called back to the village.
   •   Only the active player may accept missions.

Reward system/generator

None, work not started yet.

Screen shake

Music system

None, finished for next public release.

Needs a bit more testing!!!

The team

Dick Poelen
Dick is working from the beginning on Wormhunter together with me. He created all the assets for the game. He and me are always talking about the gameplay and how we can improve it. Follow him on Twitter @dickpoelen https://twitter.com/dickpoelen

Martijn Thorig
I am the coder of the game. I am spending a lot of time on making maintainable code and making sure the gameplay does not change. I will be updating this devlog and also post little updates on Twitter @smallgaming https://twitter.com/smallgaming

In the media

http://www.gamer.nl/achtergrond/475842/doe-het-zelf-maar-wormhunter-kat-en-muis-spel-met-wormen
http://www.pcgamer.com/2014/05/31/the-best-free-games-of-the-week-28/

Downloads v 1.6

Windows https://www.dropbox.com/s/ixl4gx918kky8zn/Wormhunter-Windows-v1.6Prototype.zip
Mac https://www.dropbox.com/s/p3xrrht68nbgpuu/Wormhunter-Mac-v1.6Prototype.zip
Linux https://www.dropbox.com/s/nmx662v7ac9q9lo/Wormhunter-Linux-v1.6Prototype.zip

Added TODO list for project.

[Chromanoid]

Intriguing theme! Great visuals.
Unfortunately I couldn't do anything but run around in the linked demo.

[Earthling]

I've previously played wormhunter and I'm looking forward for it to be made into something bigger.

[Thorig]

Intriguing theme! Great visuals.
Unfortunately I couldn't do anything but run around in the linked demo.

This issue is what we will address also in the next update. Now the player only has the scan (R or J key) for worm action. If you don't use the scan then finding the worm can be really hard. In the next update when the player picks up a mission then the player will also be pointed into the correct direction of the target.

I've previously played wormhunter and I'm looking forward for it to be made into something bigger.

I glade to hear you are excited. We are working hard to make this into a good hunting game. There so many ideas to add to the current prototype.



I will be working more on the village today.

[Blambo]

beeeeeest

[Thorig]

Here is a little update. We added missions in their most simplest form. We also remove the random spawning of a worm after the player beaten one. Now all worms for each mission are spawned from the start. Next step is adding animations of the villages and assets for accepting missions.

[Derity]

This looks cool!

One thing though - I can see some pixels look like half pixels, it would look a lot cleaner if it were pixel-perfect, this is probably because of the camera in Unity, we had this problem originally too but as far as I remember it's a pretty easy fix!

[jesseb]

Very cool. I really like the visuals. One note I have is that the one-color sand looks a bit flat and boring. It would probably be nice to have some texture, something like wind ripples or small dunes, or even just minor variations in color, especially since 90% of your world is sand.

Overall though, I'm look forward to seeing how this develops!

[Thorig]

This looks cool!

One thing though - I can see some pixels look like half pixels, it would look a lot cleaner if it were pixel-perfect, this is probably because of the camera in Unity, we had this problem originally too but as far as I remember it's a pretty easy fix!

Thank you for pointing this out. I think the problem is me and not scaling the assets correctly.

Very cool. I really like the visuals. One note I have is that the one-color sand looks a bit flat and boring. It would probably be nice to have some texture, something like wind ripples or small dunes, or even just minor variations in color, especially since 90% of your world is sand.

Overall though, I'm look forward to seeing how this develops!

Thank you for the suggestions. I will discuss this with Dick. We have junk tiles, but we turned it way down and they are placed at random, but we could at more as filler. The sand color is the default color of our camera.

[Thorig]

It is time for a new update. Dick created new houses, water and cattle for Wormhunter. Now I am working on a system for randomly placing the village. It is simple but effective. I hope to share the results of it in the next update. We also replaced the standard physics of Unity3d with casting rays for collision detection.

[DevWithoutACrew]

Saw the pick on SSS, really nice looking game! Seems promising.

p.s. I actually like the name Wormhunter, it's original (as fas as I know)

[Andy Rhetoric]

Really digging the visual style. Very cool stuff!

I'm at work and can't play the demo you have up...what's the core gameplay against the worm like? Is it strategic and slow? Fast paced hack and slashy type of stuff? Or what are you going for?

[JLJac]

I love love love the look of this! And how you have a low tech weapon and also electronic trackers The best! That's like world building with just tiny little details that are also all relevant to game play... Makes your imagination wander...

The thing that makes me lift an eyebrow is the worm itself... The palette of the humans and environment is awesome, everything feels really dry and hot. The worm doesn't really fit in to that IMO, it's just a very pink neon pink that seems a bit out of place. Maybe having the worm take on some of the color of the sand might make sense? For camouflage, and because it would probably get some dust on its skin?

Also the anatomy of it seems like something I've seen many times before - the circular set of teeth etc. Maybe you could try to make it your own in some way, through some variation on the design?

[pottering]

following

btw:

http://sinyasiki.tumblr.com/post/94830284728/imascientistofmusic-whoa-look-at-this-thing

if you search "bobbit worm" in youtube, there are some vids with cool closeups of that thing's jaw

[s-spooky g-g-ghosts]

@pottering
holy crap that's terrifying

[Thorig]

Sorry for the really late replies. I was occupied by flu, work and a course last week.

Really digging the visual style. Very cool stuff!

I'm at work and can't play the demo you have up...what's the core gameplay against the worm like? Is it strategic and slow? Fast paced hack and slashy type of stuff? Or what are you going for?

We are glad you like the visual style of the game. We want the fights to be really agile. The player has fast attacks and dodges to get out of harm's way. The worms, there are 3 types of worms in 1.6., all share states like sleep, hunger, defensive. But they have different parameters so one will go hungry faster then the other. When a worm goes hunger within a fight, it will go to its feeding spot to eat, but this is not visualized yet. All the worms have patterns for attacking. Those patterns can be randomized to make the fights harder.

I do hope you already played the prototype and enjoyed it.

I love love love the look of this! And how you have a low tech weapon and also electronic trackers The best! That's like world building with just tiny little details that are also all relevant to game play... Makes your imagination wander...

The thing that makes me lift an eyebrow is the worm itself... The palette of the humans and environment is awesome, everything feels really dry and hot. The worm doesn't really fit in to that IMO, it's just a very pink neon pink that seems a bit out of place. Maybe having the worm take on some of the color of the sand might make sense? For camouflage, and because it would probably get some dust on its skin?

Also the anatomy of it seems like something I've seen many times before - the circular set of teeth etc. Maybe you could try to make it your own in some way, through some variation on the design?

It is great that this game makes someones imagination wander, because that is what we are aiming for. That's what I like about old games like defender on the Atari 2600. That game sparked my imagination to build spaceships and aliens with lego. Wormhunter inspirited Frank to write the introduction story for it. If more people get inspirited by Wormhunter, that would be awesome.
We used the standard worm design, because it worked for Ludum Dare. Don't know if you seen the poison worm which is in 1.6.. It has a bit more then just the standard worm look.
Thank you very much for your suggestions are great and we will use them.

Saw the pick on SSS, really nice looking game! Seems promising.

p.s. I actually like the name Wormhunter, it's original (as fas as I know)

Wormhunter is a nice name, thank you very much and also for your kind reply. It sounds a bit much like Monster Hunter, that is why we not sticking with the name.

following

btw:

http://sinyasiki.tumblr.com/post/94830284728/imascientistofmusic-whoa-look-at-this-thing

if you search "bobbit worm" in youtube, there are some vids with cool closeups of that thing's jaw

That is one hard core worm! s-spooky g-g-ghosts is right, it is terrifying. Thank you for sharing.



As an update on the progress of Project Wormhunter. I started working on the village generator with the new buildings. Still playing around with some basic ideas. hopefully it will be working as imagined.

[Thorig]

Here is a little update on our progression. A musician, kenrick, joined our little team. He is working on the music for the village. He is a pro at making music. Dick is hard at work on the assets for the village and mission system. Frank is working on the story and what I read was promising. I am working on the village generator. I first used a grid to place the buildings, but the result did not feel authentic enough. So instead of a grid, I used a set of positions in the world where buildings can be placed. If a building is placed on a position the generator will add pots, ladder and a shelf if there is enough room. There are also brick formations places near the houses on the ground. The results can be viewed below.

[jctwood]

All of the Dune vibes and on Vita! wonderful.

[Thorig]

All of the Dune vibes and on Vita! wonderful.

Thank you very much. It plays very well on the Vita.

[Thorig]

It had been a long time since I posted an update. We are still working hard on Wormhunter. We worked on the generator for the village.



Added a new enemy, the Hippo, to hunt. It is a great enemy for new hunters.