Yes, way too many overly difficult games have lives even though it would be hard enough without them. But don't call me Shirley.
 

[Archive post:]

Archive post:

This a collection of earlier posts, which will probably expand as I get more new content to show. For updated details and GIFs see the opening post.


Sequence Breaker is a Metroidvania in which the levels are actively designed to be broken using bugs in the game engine- bugs that actually DO occur while I'm making the game, but polished such that they become almost user-friendly.

I had been making the game in one giant room using a very strange formula for gravity, but I rewrote the code and started from scratch about 2 weeks ago.

I've mostly been working on making sure basic features aren't too broken.

Some gifs of my progress so far
Moving platforms


Rockets


High Jump


Dash


Chaser drone


Screen wrapping


Bullet saving (I'll probably limit the player to 3 bullets onscreen at once so this won't be quite as useful as it seems)


Firing bullets onto screens you aren't on yet


Going crazy


Basically I'm making a game that's giving me as much enjoyment to play myself as I want it to for the players.

Since I'm only half-designing the bug-related puzzles in the game and finding out about the possibilities for myself as I go, I get to see for myself what's interesting and what's not, what's surprising and what's not, etc. Hopefully it's half as enjoyable to the player as it already has been for me.

Here's a quick example of what a simple puzzle could look like in the game...



All this is intended to do is show the general idea of the primary moving platform bug, NOT the way the puzzle level design will be handled. It took less than 3 minutes to do that because it doesn't have any level elements that give the moving platforms a non-bug related purpose.

You can always go up through the platform by touching the side that's going forwards while it's coming out of the cannon or hitting a wall. That will only be useful for more than a slight jump boost when there's a ceiling directly above these places.

There will be more than one bug per game object, though, because the bugs stem from how they interact (or don't interact). For example, if I have some type of reverse gravity item eventually (it is a metroidvania, after all) then you could jump into one of the moving platforms that's on the floor and it will act like it's on the ceiling.


As of right now I'm leaning more towards teaching the player the basic concept for each MAJOR bug but leaving the MINOR bugs up to the player to find. The moving platform bug is one that would fall under the major category and likely be taught to the player. As far as tutorials I'm going to try to make it non-textual, because nobody ever reads the text. The bugs will NOT be required to complete the game except in the case of major bugs that I do decide to teach the player. They will be sequence breaking to complete the game in less time and, more imporartantly, with fewer items.

I'm planning on having different areas in the game with different enemies, gimmicks, tilesets, themes, etc. so don't worry about the lack of progression.
For example, lava or water would be a little out of place in that lab-like setting.


Edit: Here's a first pass of an area with a Matrix-esque theme.



Note that the entrance and exit doors are at basically the same place in all the levels right now only because that makes it easier to shift them around for testing purposes- different exit doors will mean more verticality and lend more interest to level layout.





Experimenting with enemies that are more of a threat on their own.

Implemented dashing. (Replacement for the dashing before, now it's actually fun to use.) You can only dash once off the ground then you have to touch the ground again. In addition to allowing you to clear larger gaps, it lets you move while ducking (similar to sliding in Megaman in that regard)

There is one bug-esque feature that I very much doubt anyone will guess.
(Note that the room layout won't be so... um... incorrect once I start actually making the level layout. It's just connected test rooms right now so some rooms are connected in odd ways. Except maybe in one area designed around it.)

Experimenting with enemies that are more of a threat on their own.

https://soundcloud.com/how-should-i-know/leave-wav?in=how-should-i-know/sets/chiptunes-by-how-should-i-know

Hopefully it's not the worst out of everyone's again.   

one of my favorite shooters is half flaws

Out of curiosity, what's the shooter?

I think what makes it breaking the game is the usage of game mechanics or code in ways that almost certainly weren't the intended function. For example: in the original Metroid, doors exist, they reappear after you shoot them, and they're solid when they aren't gone. Each of these makes sense on it's own, because that's what a door is. It's the combination of these things that allow the player to get stuck in the doors and wrap around the level. It's entirely possible the creators of the game did this intentionally- it was mentioned in Nintendo Power, I believe- but it also could have happened without somebody specifically designing it to act that way. It's only when the rules of the game are dynamic enough to allow things to happen that didn't HAVE to be designed that it can be considered breaking the game. For example: playing Megaman in different orders was specifically programmed to happen in that way, and designed to happen in that way. For Super Metroid you have to kill the bosses and there isn't an order specifically programmed but there ARE hard-coded doors that are only supposed to open once you have a specific weapon and use it and there are barriers specifically created to keep you out without a specific weapon or tool. That means that whether they intended going there without those tools or not, you are effectively breaking the game's design by playing it out of the order the game is specifically set up for.

Effectively: breaking a game is the act of playing a game in a way that goes against the design of the game, not necessarily the designer.

Here's what it looks like when you aren't breaking the game

Seq Breaker (previously Sequence Breaker) is a Metroidvania shooter with a minimalist aesthetic.

However, you can break the natural Metroidvania progression by finding and abusing bugs/quirks in the engine to get items and access places before you should be able to and do what seems impossible.

For example:


Don't worry, there are plenty of other puzzles in the gifs if you look hard enough, and the ones shown aren't really that difficult compared to what I'm planning for later.

Also, don't worry; those fake blocks aren't counted as or required for puzzles. They are also only necessary to use when the player is tricked into finding out about them somehow.

Well the game I'm working on in my spare time at the moment is a metroidvania platform shooter with a focus on abusing the level layouts and mechanics to complete the game with as few items as possible. This isn't required to complete the game but the ending to completing the game normally will probably hint strongly at the possibility. The idea is essentially to have a deep, complex puzzle game where the puzzles aren't always clear hidden inside of an otherwise normal action game. So hopefully it's not a bad thing to let the player 'break' the game.

A platform shooter in which you can freeze your own bullets and save the positions of your bullets in the current room and take them into other rooms, allowing you to shoot from places you normally wouldn't be able to.

Is this any better? I'm not an artist and have practically no art skills, I just move stuff around until it looks okay to me... 

I made this a few days ago. I'm not planning on having these types of bullet-spam rooms in the main game but they'll certainly make interesting bonus levels or a hard mode...


Edit: Forgot the gif. 

I personally didn't like the controls for Super Metroid, I vastly prefered the gravity and momentum in Zero Mission, and the physics look better in SMT, but that doesn't make it a bad game. If anything the fact that it's still trumpeted as amazing after so long with slightly daunting controls proves it had great game design.

Not if you use knockback instead of damage.

What I mean by that is it would be fully possible to have an FPS where weapons never deal damage, instead it's about moving enemies out of your way so they can't prevent you from going forward. But the knockback would have to be powerful and the levels would have to be designed so that either there are pits you or the enemies can be pushed into that DON'T kill you and the knockback goes directly against getting to the objective and while being shot it is difficult to shoot back (aiming accuracy decreased or it just plain pushes you out of areas where you could shoot them).

It would be interesting, at least.

Try white outlined in black so it will always be visible. 

Trampolines that make the turnips continue moving in the direction they're moving and bounce.

With that joke the tensions from Gabe Newell are really coming to a head.

 

A platform shooter where everything happens in time with the music- i.e. enemies shoot/moving platforms move- and you can only jump or shoot in time with the music but you can move freely. Also maybe you could do things on the offbeats as well... I don't know. Just something where you jump and shoot and there's musical importance.

Somehow pressing attack once did this...



I am ashamed of my programming. xD