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[garlandobloom]

DiveDive

This has been a great week, but also a rough week. I stayed up 22 hours yesterday, and only slept 3. It's been exhilarating, but also extremely challenging. It's been a powerful and emotional moment in my life. I feel like I've leveled up as a designer, and I want to keep this momentum going. This week has reinvigorated my understanding and faith that THIS is what I was born to do. Unlike probably some of the 7DRL participants, I work a day job 40 hours a week. Being too conscious of this has always held me back from engaging with most of these similar challenges in the past, but something changed this time.

 The challenge coincided nicely with my reading of Anna Anthropy's Rise of the Videogame Zinesters, which helped solidify some of the thoughts which were brewing in my mind from being unable to work on Duet effectively. The book finally convinced me that the only road to me being a more productive designer is to start focusing on finishing very small scope things, and making that a priority above trying to polish them to perfection. Don't think about it, just make a game!

 I think you only get good at things by doing them, and I've gotten awfully good at languishing in the middle of a gigantic multi-year project with no clear path to completing the game. It is so demotivating to work on a project for 3 years and still not have something you are really proud to show to people. But DiveDive is that, and I only spent a week on it!

I have a tendency to be too detail-oriented when working on a project. I tweak the tiniest details before I finish the broad strokes of the game. It is SO much better to make a complete experience as early as possible and then polish afterwards. I have heard an analogy with sketching from Derek Yu: The best way to get better at sketching is to put a time limit on it. Try to capture the subject in as few strokes as possible. Limit yourself to 10 seconds, then tyr moving up to 30 seconds, then a minute. And finally, remove the time limit all together. It's so important to not start your creative works with the details. Those don't matter at all if you never finish the big things. My brother played an earlier version of Dive Dive this week and what did he point out? There's no boss at the end. He didn't even notice there were only two enemies, or that the slimes didn't behave the way I wanted them to, or that the sprites vary wildly in color palette and rendering style. As a creator, you are the most intimately familiar person with your creation. All you will see is the flaws, but don't get caught up on polishing the slash animation for a whole day. Try to do as little as possible to get all of your points across. The audience won't notice that that  one pixel doesn't have the perfect color, but they will notice an experience which didn't even have an ending!

I didn't get everything into DiveDive that I hoped to, but I got way more done than I expected. I think this proves to me something I already thought I knew, that you really can build a functional prototype of any idea in a week. But, before I thought that meant it was "kinda working" within a week, but it actually means that by the end of the week you can have something that is really working because it either shows the potential of the idea or doesn't. DiveDive has heaps of potential, I could work on it for years if I want, just adding more and more features and secrets, tweaking and polishing the art, writing my own music rather than using licensed tracks...but I have reached a point within a week where it is polished enough to not embarrass me and I believe it has some great ideas in it already, while certainly firing the imagination about how much more could be done.

It's just impossible for me to overstate how satisfying it is to actually have something that feels like a complete experience so quickly, so that I can show it and feel confident if I choose not to ever work on it again. The funny thing about games (and art in general), is that you really can work on a project for as long as you like. But there eventually comes a time when you need to put the pencil down, and the sooner you can feel safe about doing that, the better.

So, here it is, DiveDive. A hopefully surprising "Roguelike " Zelda-style game. I like it, so maybe you will to.

A MINOR ADDENDUM: So, the game was completely finished yesterday and I uploaded it only to find out from the first player that it was totally bugged. In the game, you start with no money, but I had put in a hack to give you $500 so I could test things. I unfortunately, in my sleepprogramming state had forgotten to remove the hack before I released. Let the lesson be this: ALWAYS BE SURE TO TAKE OUT YOUR HACKS.

Click here to download DiveDive.

You will need 7-zip to unarchive the game, which you can get here

Uses music by Kevin MacLeod, and a sound effect by "RA The Sun God." Both are used under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

[deathtotheweird]

need to fix your links, they're all fucked up. and what's the point of putting a rar inside a zip? it doesn't take much to annoy me, I almost deleted your game then and there.

you misspelled cheeseburger. if you trying to be cute, it doesn't work. it looks dumb and childish.

I really liked the choice of music.

the wall art looks like bad wallpaper, doesn't match the floor tiles or the blocks. water should have been animated, wasn't sure what it was supposed to be.

sound effects are kind of abrasive and annoying. especially the sword swing.

enemies take too many hits to kill. enemy AI is nonexistent, they just seem to wander around aimlessly and have no interest in the player. so that makes the combat feel like I'm chasing a wandering cactus that will prick me if I get to close but otherwise doesn't give a fuck about me. not exactly thrilling. even basic chase AI would have been more interesting.

promising, but not very fun. I didn't finish it.

[garlandobloom]

Ah, sorry about the links, I haven't been on here in years and I assumed they were similarly formatted to HTML, and required quotes.

As for the 7z in a zip, it's because the only way I can upload is through my iPad. I have no internet at home, and no laptop. I have to transfer the files to an iOS app called Filer and then send them to DropBox, but Filer doesn't recognize any compressed file format except .ZIP files. So, it won't work unless I zip it inside a useless ZIP file, but 7zip saves a lot more space. I'm sorry that it bothered you so badly, if I had another option I would use it.

About the "cheezburger" debacle. Yeah it's dumb, but the story was supposed to be dumb. It mostly happened because I couldn't fit the extra character comfortably on that line and just tried spelling it differently. I'm sorry if it annoyed you, it's a good thing I fixed the "it's" used as a possessive. So little sleep...

I'm glad you liked the music, I was really surprised at how good Kevin's stuff is. Can't believe he lets people use it for free. The game would be totally devoid of atmosphere without it.

Yeah, the walls are bad but I chose to press on and add more things instead of redoing them. I didn't have near enough time to add everything I hoped to add.

I did have animating water, but due to the way I had been disabling every off-sceen entity. There was a bug in the way it animated, showing seams based on which tiles came on screen first when it scrolled. Could've fixed that, but I had little time.

(I know I sound dumb apologizing, because I'm posting in the feedback forum. But I didn't quite know where to post if I just wanted to share with the TIGSource community without needing the feedback.) EDIT: Ah, I see. Announcements. Well...I will still leave it here because I find the criticism useful and interesting, even if my way of dealing with it is trying to explain that I know already.

I'm sorry about the sound effects, I am not very good at that kind of thing. If it weren't for SFXR, I don't even know that I could do any sound effects at all.

Yeah, I'm pretty unhappy with the enemies. I didn't get enough variety in there before I ran out of time, instead I chose to focus on making a wierd ending and hiding one big secret in the game. Sadly the base game suffered for that choice. I think making the slimes take a lot of hits was a quick and dirty way to try to compensate for the lack of depth in thier behavior. Would've much rather had a dividing slime enemy that splits every time you hit it. I'm sorry if you felt like the combat was wasting your time by requiring you to just keep wailing on the Z key while not really being challenged.

I am a little surprised that you saw any promise in it without finishing it and seeing the ending (which I like a lot, not the boss, but the part after that...the boss is lame and the easiest and fastest thing I could implement) and also without seeing the big secret, which I spent a lot of time on.

Thanks for your feedback though and I hope you got a little bit out of it even if you didn't find it very fun. I would've liked to talk with you about the ending too.

[TestTrek]

I like how you start the game from the title. Nice touch.

Entertaining story too. Always wanted to kill satan, and now I finally had the chance, even if its for a strange reason.

The music was refreshing.

Sometimes the turrets spaz out before shooting, is that intentional?

after killing shop dude my movevent change. I had to key tapping the arrow keys to move instead of just holding them. Is the shop dude satan?

is their a save system in the game.

can you add regenerating health too, because I die way too easily.

[garlandobloom]

Thanks, the walkable title screen was actually mostly inspired by Spelunky, which I love and think this could eventually be almost close to. (in my dreams)

Yeah, the story is pretty ridiculous, and I wanted to have a different maguffin than the typical and problematic damsel in distress. And the idea of killing Satan made me laugh.

If you like the music, you should check out the other stuff at Kevin MacLeod's site. He lets anyone use his music for their projects, as long as you give credit.

The turret spazzing is a bug, I think I just now figured out how the collision system works in Game Maker, so I will have to fix it. They can get stuck in walls and stuff.

There is a save system actually. I think it's F5 and F6. I just used the default save and load buttons for Game Maker. Whatever the keys are, they are listed in the README with the game. I will probably remove saving and loading once the game is more interesting to explore though. It shouldn't be necessary, will probably just allow checkpoints after you beat bosses and get further down.

Sorry that it's so hard without being that interesting or different every time. I didn't realize it would be so difficult, since I didn't have time to playtest it properly in the week I made it, and I am very good at it from my own testing. I am probably going to keep working on it, though. I won't add regenerating health, but I will be more liberal about enemies dropping hearts. It should be less annoying once I get puzzles and some of the other features in and the dungeons have more variety. It's not so bad to die a lot if you are still seeing new things on your fifth respawn.

Thanks for playing.

As for the shopkeeper:

SPOILERS:
Did you kill the shopkeeper without finding how to purchase the shotgun? I think it may be possible, but it's supposed to not be. So if you were bugged after you killed him with the sword, that's possibly why.
END SPOILERS.

[deathtotheweird]

you don't have to apologize for anything. game making is a learning experience.

most of my complaints you addressed pretty well in your reply, so I'm glad you recognized some of the faults and most of them were due to time constraints anyway.

I tried playing it again, and got to the boss this time. the game seems to love to spawn hearts when I'm at full health and never when I actually need them. died in one hit, and quit again.

I think if the green blobs didn't take so many hits to kill and if you had a slightly better chance at getting a heart piece from a dead enemy when you're low on health, that it would have been a lot better.

[Nulldorf]

This was fun I always like games that are tight and focused. Couple things:

-Given that the sword is essential and is always within one room of where you start, it might as well be in the room where you respawn. If there was an exploration aspect, or the need to avoid danger until you find the sword then maybe it would make sense to have it spawn randomly, but currently it just adds an extra layer. Put it in the starting room and you still get the Zelda moment of opening the chest with minimal distraction from playing the game.

-I wanted to be able to open the chest from either side.

-You ought to give the hearts and fairies the same collision rules as the player. It sucks when you need a heart piece and it's sitting in the water after spawning from a dead guy.

-I had to end task after winning the game to exit.

-Given the narrow scope of the game (which is totally fine given the limits of the contest) I think it's actually slightly long.

-The Satan battle is fun. Simple pattern but his health keeps it tense sense you have to run around quite a bit before you'll kill him. I nearly died getting stuck trying to move through the single tile walkways around the outside though.

[garlandobloom]

you don't have to apologize for anything. game making is a learning experience.

most of my complaints you addressed pretty well in your reply, so I'm glad you recognized some of the faults and most of them were due to time constraints anyway.

I tried playing it again, and got to the boss this time. the game seems to love to spawn hearts when I'm at full health and never when I actually need them. died in one hit, and quit again.

I think if the green blobs didn't take so many hits to kill and if you had a slightly better chance at getting a heart piece from a dead enemy when you're low on health, that it would have been a lot better.

Yeah, I'm just sorry that I wasn't able to address most of those issues in the limited time that I had. I feel like if I had chosen to focus on more variety in the base game rather than on the ending and the secret inside the shopkeeper's $400 chest, that the general play expereince would've been more rewarding and you might've enjoyed it more. Luckily for you and everyone, I plan on working on this some more to add some of fhe things I didn't get to in that first week. And now that I've seen a playtest in person, I have a lot more things to improve.

For one, it's way too unforgiving, especially for as little variety as there is in the dungeon layouts currently. I was the only playtester in development, and I assumed the game was pretty easy, though I was trying to make it challenging. I want to take the slimes down to 3 hp and give you an extra heart and be more liberal about dropping health pickups. Right now they are too random, and the game doesn't give you hearts or fairies more if you are low on health. Ideally it shouldn't waste your time giving you health when you don't need it either. It's currently just random...and it feels bad.

Also, the movement is really awkward if you're trying to do close quarters combat, because it's too easy to bump into an enemy when you ate just turning to face them. I will just add an acceleration time to get to top speed, that way it's more forgiving to just change direction. I also want to put a delay on enemy spawning when you enter rooms, or find a good way to solve the problem of players rushing into an unexplored space and immediately hitting an unseen enemy. Most players seem to take the aggresive route of slashing when crossing room thresholds, rather than my preferred strategy of being careful. The biggest problem wi the aggresive strategy is that players accidentally attack the shopkeeper and then get killed. I want that to be a choice, deciding to try to kill him and get what's in the expensive chest.

This was fun I always like games that are tight and focused. Couple things:

-Given that the sword is essential and is always within one room of where you start, it might as well be in the room where you respawn. If there was an exploration aspect, or the need to avoid danger until you find the sword then maybe it would make sense to have it spawn randomly, but currently it just adds an extra layer. Put it in the starting room and you still get the Zelda moment of opening the chest with minimal distraction from playing the game.

-I wanted to be able to open the chest from either side.

-You ought to give the hearts and fairies the same collision rules as the player. It sucks when you need a heart piece and it's sitting in the water after spawning from a dead guy.

-I had to end task after winning the game to exit.

-Given the narrow scope of the game (which is totally fine given the limits of the contest) I think it's actually slightly long.

-The Satan battle is fun. Simple pattern but his health keeps it tense sense you have to run around quite a bit before you'll kill him. I nearly died getting stuck trying to move through the single tile walkways around the outside though.

Thanks, I'm glad that you liked it. I prefer short and focused games as well, although I don't think this fits that criteria very well.

You are probably right about just always putting the chest in the entrance room. I don't like that players seem to forget to pick it up and just see it as an annoyance when they try to attack an enemy and don't have the sword anymore. Though, I don't really want to lose the possibility for puzzles surrounding getting the sword, so I don't think just giving you the sword at spawn is the right idea. I think requiring you to avoid enemies while weaponless is a bad move, it would be too frustrating.

I appreciate wanting to open the chest at the side, and I will think about it. But I actually like having to be in front of it.

You are right about the frustration of losing hearts and money and fairies, but I don't think I need to fix it that way. I think I just need to make them a lot more common.

As for having to end task, yeah that's intentional. Did you not read any of the ending monologue? I mention it specifically there. It's supposed to be an anticlimax ending, and it also feeds into discovering the secret of getting what's in the expensive chest in the shop.

Yes, it is too long, I set the dungeon size range before I realized I wouldn't get to add puzzles or more enemies to the base game. I will keep it in mind.

As far as getiing stuck trying to fit through small corridors, adding acceleration to the movement should make this kind of motion mich easier to achieve.

Once again, thanks for your feedback everybody. I hope you will keep up with developments on the project going forward. As a special note, I did update the build in the first post to fix the bug where you could kill the shopkeeper by standing awkwardly close to him. Now he kills you 100% of the time if you attack him.

[garlandobloom]

Whoops, that build had a worse bug than the shopkeeper bug. So I reverted to the previous build. Sorry everyone.

[Sir Raptor]

So, once you buy the shotgun, you can actually blow up the treasure chest at the end of the game, making the game impossible to finish. Just throwing that out there.

[garlandobloom]

Yes, I know. That's intentional. But I would've liked to add a second ending instead. I didn't have that much time though. I barely just got the shotgun working in and of itself.

Besides that, I updated the build again, you can download it here or in the first post:

Click here to download it.

[Andrio]

I hate the ending. Everything else was not bad! Too bad enemies are completely unaware of your existence.