I've actually been meaning to post here forever ago but I did have some neat stuff with godhood back in the day.

First one I ran into while trying to create my first explosion particle effect:



In the end, this was the actual look I was going for.

Next issue I ran into while working on cutscenes. I drew all my art in SAI which represents transparency with a plain white background instead of a checkerboard like most other programs. It's easier on the eyes, but as a result, sometimes I forget to color in things that are white which yields some pretty interesting results:



I feel like this might be a cool gimmick to use somewhere else, but I've got nothing.

Hey! This game is looking pretty neat so far and all the tech stuff you've posted so far is super informative actually! The movement style you're looking for sounds super familiar, and I just can't put my finger on it, but it definitely feels like it will work in my head at least. The behavior tree editor is actually SUPER neat, I'll definitely have to take a look at that and the sound propagation technique seems like a very nice compromise between simplicity and effectiveness.

But the big reason I wanted to post here is: oh my god, Dragon is an absolute cutey cute cute mccute cute and I could not resist whipping this up

^{(click for full view)}

This is my own interpretation of the character based on the sprite, so I hope this isn't too far off from what you originally had in mind for the character. Dragon is just TOO precious though :D

I'll definitely be keeping an eye on this as it goes on and I look forward to seeing the final product!

This game is looking wonderfully captivating, not just in its premise, but in the fact that it looks as though it'll be an enthralling opportunity to learn morse code as well! The feedback mechanisms for which letter you're creating and how long to hold to for each type of press are quite clever, and the starting tests look like a great way to introduce people to the concept of morse code.

I know this is gonna sound odd, but it actually kind of reminds me of learning to play DDR in a strange way! When I started, I remember being blown away by the stuff at higher difficulties, but just with enough practice, I was able to make it there myself. I've always felt the same way with morse code in a way too, seeing the speed at which people can send messages and understand what they're hearing. I feel like this sort of game actually has the potential to do the same thing, granted the story's long enough and the balancing is done just right!

Now, I realize you may not intend on taking it nearly that far, but it does leave me wondering, how much do you plan to scale the difficulty between chapters? Is it actually the kind of thing where by chapter 7, the player's slamming out entire telegrams within a time limit? I'm guessing it would be pretty difficult to balance a game that perfectly the the player becomes a morse code master but I'd still be interested to see how good someone could get after finishing this.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to seeing how this goes because with all the historical accuracy going into this, it looks like it'll be a great learning opportunity a few other ways too!

[I'm putting GODHOOD on hiatus]

With about 2 and a half hours left in the campaign and a little over 1% funded, I decided that it was high time that I wrote up an update on my future plans. It basically goes over a lot of what I already went over in my last post here, but if you want to read it, you can check it out here:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1664515104/godhood-a-rhythm-hacknslash/posts/1593521

Essentially, what this is all building up to is that with the kickstarter campaign not coming through, I'm pretty much totally strapped for cash at this point, so I've decided that I'm putting GODHOOD on hiatus. For the next while, I'm going to need to divert my focus to finding work. Once I do have a job lined up, if I'm not bound by a non compete clause, I would love the opportunity to step back and really evaluate GODHOOD. Withe the past few months being an absolute blur with how much I was rushing to get everything together, I think it's going to be really nice to have the chance to make sure I'm doing things right.

I've learned a ton from doing this kickstarter, and as I said in the update, even though it wasn't a grand success, at least I get to walk away with a great experience and some REALLY COOL GODHOOD MERCH :D

As for the whole GODHOOD comic thing, I might drop a quick post here once I get started on it since I most likely will be drawing it no matter what job I get but apart from that, it is most likely going to get pretty quiet on this thread for a little while.

In the end, I'd still like to thank everyone who supported me here! I'm really appreciative of all of the feedback you've given me and I look forward to when I can finally return here with the right skills to do GODHOOD justice!

And by the way, here's a slightly higher resolution version of that somewhat hasty doodle at the end of the update.



Fun fact, the kickstarter update is called The Next Chapter when in fact, this very picture most literally is the next chapter of the game!

Anyway, I'd like to give everyone reading this a big thanks and as always, I hope to see you next time!

This memory based pathfinding is actually a wonderfully novel idea! I can definitely see where this might bring about some really interesting and slightly hilarious interactions between the dogs. I get this sad image in my head of a dog navigating to a node where it remembers there being food only to find it barren but I also find this imagery rather humorous given their constant facial expression being a perfect portrayal of how they would feel when they find out their food is gone! I sort of want to make a Pavlov's Dogs reference here to sound smart, but honestly, this system sounds like it'll have many more applications than simply training a dog where to go when!

Apologies for the gif quality. I was having recording troubles because my debug lines are the same shade of green gifcam uses to block out unchanged pixels.

If you go to edit the gif you just recorded, right click it and highlight "Green Screen," you can actually change the color Gifcam references unchanged pixels with which I'm pretty sure fixes the problem you're having (I think)!

I'm surprised you don't have a stretch goal for multiple language support. I don't know how many people that would win you over, but even if it doesn't do anything to help you finance your kickstarter project directly, it'll eventually be accessible to more people. So maybe give it a thought?

You know, that's actually a really fair point. In all truth, getting multiple translations for the game was always something I considered doing after the game's release but I do suppose that making that intention a little more explicit, or just offering it as a stretch goal to have it done before release, would possibly give the game a little more draw.


Well, the kickstarter campaign is now a little under half done and I've currently raised $469 CAD which is just a little bit over 1% of my intended goal for GODHOOD which means it is pretty safe to say that this probably isn't going to work out.



Now, before I say anything else, I want to preface this by saying that this is basically EXACTLY what I expected was going to happen. For the longest time, this is something that I really wanted to try, knowing that even if failed, I would still learn a whole host of important lessons and I very VERY much did! Of course, while 95% of me knew this was going to happen, there was still the 5% of me that was secretly hoping the kickstarter fairy was just going to show up and sprinkle my project with pixie dust and of course that part of me is slightly sad, but again, I knew too well that this was the way things were going to turn out.

Now, fret not, for I have no intention of making this post a giant sob story because this is most certainly not the end of GODHOOD! Definitely, there are going to need to be some alterations made and things are probably going to slow down pretty significantly for the next while, but I'm not dropping this game quite yet! But anyway, back to the kickstarter and stuff

Now, it's obviously a little early for a postmortem of the campaign when it's not even half over yet. On top of that, as someone who hasn't even raised 2% of their goal, I think it's important to make clear that I am in no position to identify what I did wrong or what I did right. There could be a whole host of things that I haven't even considered that could be a point of contention for the kickstarter's success, but there's at least a few things I can think of that could have helped. I'm going to skip writing the postmortem for now though because, again, we're barely even half way to the end so at this point it'd be more like a premortem which is a really grim term if you think about it haha

That said, in a strange manner, I actually have a whole bunch of reasons to be happy that this is the way the kickstarter went because it means I now have a ton of options for how I go about this in the future! For so long now, I've been working on the game building up to this kickstarter and if it were successful, I would have been working on it for even longer now up until release. With this campaign failure, I've basically been rid of any due dates or deadlines which means I now have all the room in the world to ensure I'm doing this exactly the way I should (within reason, at least. I know there's something to be said for maintaining some sort of pacing through deadlines).

As I mentioned I-don't-know-how-many posts ago, I think the big thing I want to do is get started on is presenting GODHOOD in the form of a webcomic! I'm probably going to be ditching all of the pages I have online right now and I'll be starting from scratch so that I can start the story off properly instead of starting a little ways in due to time constraints I had at the time. On top of that, I'll actually be able to design it around being a comic rather than just jerry-rigging the game's cutscenes into comic form! And in all truth, I actually can't wait to get started on this because what better way to refine GODHOOD's story and my art skills than to have the whole thing already drawn out!

On top of that, it'll now give me the chance to further refine GODHOOD itself and play around with its design a little more. The past few months have definitely been an absolute rush job into getting the game where it is now, but now that I can invest some proper playtesting and design into it, I feel like I can really get GODHOOD on the level I'm looking for!

Right now, my only worry right now is that I REEEAAAALLY need to find a job! I said I was going to try and avoid the sob story in this post but I've basically spent my last dollars on preparing for this kickstarter which I guess is not the smartest idea given how I knew how likely it was to fail. Anyway, while I do have my less-than-desirable options for where I can go and work, it'd be cool if I could find something that still leaves me with the creative energy to work on GODHOOD every so often! In all truth, I'm actually rather tempted to start a thread on the business board to see if anyone has any recommendations for what kind of jobs pair well (or don't) with trying to maintain an indie life of sorts, but I'll save that for when I get to it.

Despite my current situation though, I can't say I regret the kickstarter in the slightest because on top of all the important lessons I've learned, I also have some REALLY SICK GODHOOD merch on me now! I am still hugely appreciative to Chu for doing up that awesome poster and, no joke, I literally have the Way plush on my lap as I type this! :D

And, as I've done so many times before, I'd just like to thank everyone for your support! Even if the kickstarter campaign isn't successful, it's still been a fascinating experience to interact with the community and enjoy the feedback that you guys have given me! On top of that, it's neat to think that I could have even raised the money I did and to see that the alpha has gotten about 250 downloads on itch.io is actually quite the concept! This is the most attention any of my work has gotten in a long long time and it's been a wonderful experience the whole way through!

Thank you guys so much! I may be nearing the end of one chapter but that only means I'll be beginning another soon enough!

HOTFIX! The game no longer crashes on startup now!

Hey guys, I updated the alpha with some new stuff that should make it much more friendly to new players! Here's the changelog:

V0.02 - May 5th, 2016

• Added practice mode
• Added a quick info prompt that shows up the first time the player starts a gameplay section
• Added the ability to go back to main menu during a cutscene or gameplay
• Added the ability to fast forward through cutscenes (hold F)
• Instead of constantly having 6 ways active at all times, Avadra will start by keeping 1 way active and then increment that number every 30 seconds up to a maximum of 8 Ways
• Decreased the amount of damage the ways do (you die  in 3 consecutive hits now instead of 2)
• Increased Riff's health regen
• Fixed inputs sometimes getting completely eaten

For a more in depth overview of the changes, you can check out the devlog post here!

Just finished uploading the files to itch.io and IndieDB for the new version of the GODHOOD alpha! Even in the middle of a kickstarter, it's nice to know that I still have time to sit down and program for a little while. I've managed to get enough done too that I could practically make a whole devlog for it!

First thing's first, I finally got around to implementing something that I've been wanting to implement for months (or at least a basic version of it)... Practice Mode!



Here, you can sit down, just listen to the music and play along with the rhythms without getting mercilessly assaulted! You also have the option to mute the music and only listen to the isolated rhythms which are programmatically generated.

You can even explode the Way!



I have a lot more features planned for this mode in the future, such as:

• Converting it to more of a training mode style thing where you can move around, spawn Ways, and enable/disable their AI
• For the isolated rhythms, allow the player to pick instruments to represent specific rhythms.
• Disable individual rhythms so you can get a feel of how for how they play out on their own.

For now, this makes for a nice alternative to getting completely slaughtered!

On that note, after a lot of feedback I've gotten from the alpha thread as well as some people I know offline, I've finally properly adjusted the difficulty. Let's go over those changes quick:

• You no longer start the level with 6 Ways immediately on the offense. Instead, Avadra decides that it'd be better to ease you into it, so instead, starting out, there will always be a minimum of one Way (usually works out as two though). Every 30 seconds, the minimum is incremented until after 180 seconds, there will be a minimum of SEVEN Ways active (even more than there were before)!
• The Ways now do significantly less damage. Previously, they actually did 80 damage where as Riff had 100 health. The reason for this imbalance is because Riff actually regens health every time he connects a hit, but only a small amount. Perhaps this was a little excessive to fight back from, so instead, I've adjusted the number down to 45, meaning Riff dies in three consecutive hits now instead of two!
• Speaking of Riff's regen, I've upped it so that it's a little more generous now. If you take a hit, a combo about two measures long should fully heal you!

Apart from that, I've added some quality of life features, such as the ability to fast forward through cutscenes!



If I wanted to, it might have been fun to actually pitch up all the sounds that happen during fast forwarding but I thought that might be a little overkill.

On top of that, ActualDog makes a good point a few posts up that it seems kind of silly that the only way to look up the game's controls is through the options menu so I decided that instead, the first time you play the game, time will slow down after the introductory explosion and show you this message:



There's a really cool fade in/fade out effect where the time and the music slow down and speed up with the fade and I tried to record a gif of it but the fade effect blew up the file size to ridiculous proportions so I decided a screenshot will do.

Apart from that, there's a whole bunch of boring stuff like the ability to go back to main menu as well as some bug fixes.


As for progress on the Kickstarter, I gotta say, this stuff is tough! Right now I'm at day 3 and I've raised a grand total of $362 CAD which, since I really had no expectations on how I was going to do, does not come as a very big surprise. Undeniably, I'm learning an absolute ton on how I should have approached this thing, as well as what I could have done differently in the planning process.

Now, I know I may sound a little crestfallen here, but at least I still know that the most important thing right now is that I should not give up! It's only day 3! I'm barely 10% into the whole campaign and there's still a ton of avenues that I have yet to try, but definitely this is going to be exactly as difficult as I imagined it would be, if not more.

Oh man, this is some of the best feedback I've gotten! Thank you so much for the informative write up! Here are my thoughts:

The gif is kinda funny but ultimately it's really useful information and it's a little disruptive to have it spin out of control while you're trying to read it.

I agree that it is rather disruptive, but in all truth, this is actually an idea I came up with a really long time ago for this campaign and I got really attached to it, so it would be too difficult for me to just part ways with it. Again, I do agree that in its current state, it is a little much though, so how about we settle on a compromise and I instead hugely increase the delay between the gif freaking out (right now it's only 10 seconds, but I think I can up it to 60 and still be happy)!

The first thing that stood out to me was that you've got a few grammatical mistakes in the cutscene. It's mostly small stuff, but one of the very first lines has "your" and "you're" mixed up.

You know, I could have sworn I saw that ages ago but I guess I never actually corrected it!

There are indeed a whole bunch of things that need to be changed in the cutscene actually. In fact, there's a few lines that are totally different now and there's even one pose for Avadra I need to switch up in one spot, but yes, the cutscene indeed has a lot of work that needs to be done with it!

I am quite flattered to know that you do think the cutscene is worth seeing because I actually disagree! Perhaps it's just the "I HATE MY OLD ART" trait slowly seeping into me (which I am honestly trying my darnedest to avoid), but I'm honestly so bothered by the fact that Riff's face looks different in literally every single frame haha.

Perhaps I shouldn't be so bashful about it though! Again, this might be another place for a compromise! Perhaps I could cut down on the disclaimer so that it isn't so long and perhaps add a fast forward button to the cutscene in case anyone wants to get to the point.

Once I got into the game itself, I was sort of overwhelmed. Again, I know this stuff isn't final, but since you're showcasing the demo at the top of the kickstarter page it might be worth tightening up the experience a bit.

This overwhelming aspect of the game is starting to become a recurring theme in the feedback I'm getting so I'm indeed starting to think that I should look into this. But first, I'll cover each of your notes individually.

Firstly, it would be great to have some in-game prompts for button presses, at least for the first few actions. It was weird having to go into the menu to even figure out how to kick off the first explosion.

There actually is an in game prompt for the first explosion. It slowly fades in after time has stopped, but I suppose I'm trying a little too hard to be artsy with it so perhaps I can make it fade in earlier and faster, or have something to only show it the first time you get to that cutscene.

As for the next few prompts, this is actually really difficult to figure out how to do this eloquently. The best I can do is, after the first explosion, just have a little sign display somewhere on the screen that basically shouts the controls at the player, but beyond that, things might get tricky. I can't really do stuff like "PRESS Z NOW" because the slowest rhythm is literally under every 0.5 seconds, which might get even more overwhelming than before and slowing down time like with the explosion would just make things even weirder.

Thinking about it though, at least having a little sign might be a good idea.

After that, the game was way too hard for me to get a good feel for it. I'm sure it's not that bad once you get into the swing of things, but as someone who's never played before I died ridiculously fast and felt too overwhelmed by enemies to even get the timing down. I'd really consider starting the demo off with only one or two enemies, and maybe increasing the player's max health so you don't die in (2?) hits. Definitely feel free to ramp up the baddies after a bit, but I think it would help a ton if it started off a little more forgiving to give the player time to pick up the rhythm. It feels like there's a really solid experience there (digging the music), I just couldn't quite get to it.

From the people I've tested the game with, it seems like I've definitely fallen victim to "the dev is way too good at their game" syndrome as these are comments that I've definitely gotten from a few other people as well. I think it's time that I finally bite the bullet and make the needed adjustments! Fortunately, a lot of what you've suggested is pretty easy to adjust actually. I've already been spending the morning on some adjustments that I wanted to make so it shouldn't be hard for me to mess around with the ideas you suggested!

I'm not a fan of Riff's voice in the trailer (I'm assuming it's from the actor you've paid and are planning on using). I think Avadra's voice is solid and her monologue is a really nice little closer to the trailer, but Riff's opening lines don't give off a great first impression.

I can understand where you're coming from but I just want to formally say that any shortcomings in the voice acting can very definitely be attributed to my inexperience as a director. While I thought the clips I got sounded great while I was in the studio, upon editing them into the trailer, I realized what I actually needed was far more than what I thought I needed.

The voice acting session has indeed concluded and everyone's been paid, so it would be tough for me to alter it now, but based on my experiences, as much fun as it was, I'm starting to wonder if I should look into changing my plans for having voice acting in the game in relation to my inexperience as a director. Despite my inexperience, though, I suppose the only way to get that experience would be to follow through with the voice acting as intended!

Anyway, thank you so much for the informative review. It's been extremely helpful and I look forward to seeing how your suggestions impact the game!

It's been about 7 hours or so since I've launched and I must say, it was an absolutely exhilarating experience! I know I've said this 100 times or so over the course of this entire thread, but it's just so surreal to make it this far.

GODHOOD has raised $174 so far and while it is a humble beginning considering my goals, I'm still absolutely thrilled by the idea of being backed at all! I've even received a message complimenting my art style which admittedly threw me for a loop!

But the thing that put the biggest smile on my face...



AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH SKLJDFHLSKDJFHLSKJDHF

I AM SO EXCITED EEHEHE!!

I have to admit, I was worried for a little while when a campaign that was created after mine got a "project we love" stamp BUT THEN I GOT ONE TOO! I know I must sound like a little child right now but GOD, I was so giddy!

I've already updated pretty much every devlog I can think of, and I've even contacted the local newspaper to see if I can get covered here on the island. Beyond that, I've had much to think about regarding who and where I can contact in press. Part of me wants to believe that this will just work out magically and that journalists will flock to my game and cover it, but I know very much that in reality, that's not how it works. Chances are, over the next few days, I have a lot of emails to send out.

While I sort that out though, next up on the menu for GODHOOD: Steam Greenlight! Now is as good a time as ever to set one up, especially considering that I have basically every single resource I need for one ready to go! I just need to buy the pass and then set up the page and I'll be good to go!

For now though, there's one more thing I want to add. After working on GODHOOD for two and a half years, I have learned an incredible amount about game development, marketing, and the indie scene in general. From all that I've learned, no matter what happens, I'll still be proud of everything that I've done and I look forward to seeing what happens next. I know I haven't been as active on other parts of the forums lately and because of that, I'd like to extend a huge thanks out to anyone here reading this right now for giving me your time and support. It's been hugely helpful and wonderfully encouraging to know that people out there actually like my work!

Thank you so much!

After two an a half years of development, it is with great pleasure that I announce...

The GODHOOD Kickstarter is live!

Just a quick thing for this update, but I added to the front page, the OFFICIAL GODHOOD TRAILER!!





Having this actually finished is an incredible experience! Despite what I perceive as my shortcomings as a rather amateur developer, I can't help but feel proud of what I've created. it's wonderfully exciting!

p.s. thanks for the advice, Natman! I'll be sure to give it a closer look once I get the chance.

[IT'S READY!!!]

THREE WEEKS!? My god, have I been working on this marketing stuff for three weeks now!? Here I was like a month ago saying I should post more often and then I suddenly just disappear! Well, at least now

it's ready...

IT'S READY!!!

The GODHOOD kickstarter campaign is fully written up, approved and ready to be launched!

That's... not to say I'm going to do it right away, though. There's a ton of preparation that needs to happen; development logs need to be updated (including this one), friends and friends of friends and friends of friends of friends need to be messaged to see what help I can get, and I might even toss a few emails around to gaming press sites to see what I can make happen.

For now, I will say that I have indeed very heavily adjusted the budget of the game. Evaluating all of the work that I've done over the past many months, I've made some cuts to my plans and the new kickstarter budget comes out to:

$45,000 CAD
or $35,000 USD
or 31,000 euros

I'll get to the adjustments I made a bit later in another post (running a little low on time here), but first, let's get to the fun stuff, shall we? From the top!



The GODHOOD official trailer is (nearly) finished! I currently have the short version lodged in with the kickstarter video and I'll be probably making the final touches to the long version some time tomorrow (have to redo some audio balancing things that I messed up)! The above gif is the closing scene from the trailer and is basically an alternate angle of the CHAOS poster!

Creating the trailer was an interesting experience and it felt once the whole thing was actually tied together. What really made the experience interesting, though, was the fact that I got voice actors for Riff and Avadra!

A few weeks ago, I locally posted job ads for voice acting in and around my home town! In the end, I received 9 auditions combined for the two roles and eventually, I made a final decision and picked my two voice actors! A big thanks goes out to Chris Carson and Brenda Nichols for lending their voices to my characters, and another big thanks goes out to The Hill Sound Studio for doing the recordings!

It was a fascinating procedure and it feels odd that I was actually a director for about an hour. It was a ton of fun but I can't deny that it was actually very difficult! Props go out to people who actually do this sort of thing for a living because by god, directing really requires you to be talented to and above all, to be able to describe what you're looking for. My vocabulary has never been the best so I gotta say it was a tricky conundrum in the end!

And you know what. I walked out of that studio and thought to myself, "I FORGOT TO TAKE PICTURES GOD DAMNIT LOL."

Now, as much as I'd like to show off those voice acting clips, since I'm so close to finishing the trailer, I might just wait until I have the trailer uploaded instead. Besides, I'm not sure what the best way to host an audio clip is without making you guys download it so whatever, moving on.

As you may have noticed, something else I've contracted for the GODHOOD kickstarter is a brand new poster!



The artist, Chu, did an absolute wonderful job and I am absolutely thrilled with how it came out! The scene may look a little unfamiliar because it's actually a depiction of chapter 2! I don't want to get too deep into spoilers (as in, talking about mechanics before I even start working on them) but I will say that the game mechanics should get interesting when you're literally falling from the sky!

On a more silly note, I always liked those pie graphs that all the other kickstarters seem to have, but in all truth, I never really knew what was the best way to generate an animated pie graph like I wanted....

So I coded my own!



After all this time I've spent sending emails and worrying about kickstarters, it was nice to just sit back and code for a second. Even better, since I made it, I can do silly stuff like this:



Finally, a week ago, I decided that it was high time that I do up a brand new reference for the Ways since the old one was getting pretty, uh, old. I'm actually super happy with the result!



It quite adequately captures the odd texture that the Ways are composed of. In my head, I almost sort of imaging poking one would feel like an odd mixture between skin and soft clay, perhaps almost like squishy play-doh or maybe even one of those stress ball thingies. For the most part though, I simply like to leave it open to interpretation. Besides, with the way the Will lore works, they very much would feel exactly the way you imagine them!

Anyway, the interesting part of this reference is that I actually created it for a reason! Originally, I created to demonstrate the Way's appearance for one of the backer rewards for the kickstarter campaign, but now, I'll instead be using THIS:



LOOK AT IT! LOOK AT IT LOOK AT IT KJDFHLSDKJFHL

It is about 20" tall and it actually stands on its own! I've had it posed up in my room on my bookshelf for the past while and I ABSOLUTELY ADORE IT! It's been growing on me for the past few days and it always puts a little smile on my face every time I see it! Also, I like to squeeze its ears every so often. A huge shoutout goes to Castlekeep Creations for designing and creating the plush!

Anyway, I have much more to show yet by means of trailers, stretch goals and other donation incentives, but I'm heading out soon and this post is, as usual, getting long enough. I'd also like to also add how thrilled and terrified I am for the upcoming kickstarter, but I'll save the emotional gunk for later hahaha

I have definitely considered going the game engines route for a long time now, but if I did decide to convert over to Unity or something, instead of recoding DirectX, I'd end up recoding most of the game systems instead, which gets especially tricky for things like the character structures and the rhythm detection.

I think my best bet would probably be to overhaul the graphics engine to use SDL 2.0 instead of just basing it on GLFW. That way, I can take advantage of all of the compatibility stuff that SDL 2.0 has wrapped up inside of it. In fact, the only reason FIRE2D wasn't written in SDL 2.0 is because it was released several months AFTER I had already started on FIRE2D and I decided that it would be better to continue using GLFW as a learning experience, which is the very same reason that the whole game engine itself was coded manually as well! While it has been difficult, I can't deny that I've learned an absolute ton about engine design!

DAMNIT LOL

DirectX port it is then, I guess! haha

Thanks you so much though, for having the patience to download and try this game twice to no avail. It's such a huge help!

[IS]

Oh well now don't I feel foolish! There IS actually something I can do!

GLFW 3.0 is the graphics library that GODHOOD uses and it's actually open source, but I just downloaded the compiled version of it a few years back because I'm lazy and usually the default options are fine. Earlier today though, I was checking if there was a way I could remove contexts from the game, but instead, I found something else! Turns out, of the 5 or 6 things you can configure when building it, one of them just so happens to be "force high-performance graphics cards on optimus systems"!

After a little ballroom dancing with CMake, I finally managed to get GLFW 3 compiled with that option enabled and I've recompiled GODHOOD with it! I must warn you, though, I'm still not 100% sure if this is going to work, but it's by far the best shot we've got at it!

If you're still up for trying it out, nnyei, you can download the new version here:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/21521620/GODHOOD%20Alpha%20Optimus%27d.zip

Damn, it looks very good and it plays very breathtakingly! It reminds me of old beat-em-ups of SEGA, like Golden Axe and Bare Knuckles, but it has kind of schtick which I can't find an appropriate comparison. Keep it up, guys! Personaly I would buy this game for 5$ or something around that.

Hey, thanks a lot! It's really exciting to know that there most certainly is a market out there of people who do appreciate this style of rhythm action!

Funny you should say beat-em-up because for the longest time, I was always wondering if I should refer to the game as a beat-em-up or a hack'n'slash! I chose the latter because I figured beat-em-ups always tend to have that small amount of up and down movement that my game didn't have, but I do understand your comparison!

I tried playing it, but I get this error message when I try to launch the game:

"WGL: OpenGL profile requested but WGL_ARB_create_context_profile is unavailable."

You're correct in your assumption, your laptop is indeed defaulting to your intel chipset (whose max OpenGL version appears to be 1.4) which is especially frustrating actually because I checked up on your nvidia card and by all means, your actual graphics card (whose max OpenGL version is 4.5) should be able to run the game just fine!

I must say, this playtesting session has been incredibly educating on how surprisngly modern OpenGL 3.2 is and it's made it very apparent that I'll need to redo the graphics engine in DirectX which seems to have much more widespread support on Windows, which I guess isn't too surprising really. Sadly, that'll have to wait for the future for when I have the time and the knowledge to actually create a DirectX system ._.

Rambling aside, there is a potential fix for this sort of thing, but I know from experience that trying to keep the graphics cards from arm wrestling with each other is an extremely finicky matter so I can't say my hopes are too high. Still, there is a few superuser threads on how to force which graphics card is used for which game:

http://superuser.com/questions/525041/can-i-force-my-laptop-to-use-nvidia-instead-of-intel
http://superuser.com/questions/578148/intel-hd-graphics-4000-is-used-instead-of-nvidia-geforce-630m-for-old-game

With that latter thread, I'm somewhat concerned that there may not be a way around these shenanigans. Again, I actually have a laptop with a similar setup and even after messing around with it myself a while back, I still have no idea if any of the changes I made actually did anything. Still definitely worth a try though!

Long story short though, the fix for this is on my end and it is unfortunately not a speedy one.

Thanks a lot for giving the game a try though!

Oh hey, that's interesting! I actually ran into that error a long time ago on someone else's computer and I thought I went through and fixed all those. I guess I missed a few!

Also, frame limiting is a great idea! I actually have a system implemented for that but I left it off and I guess I never actually thought of adding an option. I'll be sure to add that to the list!

Thanks!

[Shephf]

It doesn't work for me. Windows 10, Intel HD Graphics 3000.
The error window does say: "WGL: OpenGL profile requested but WGL_ARB_create_context_profile is unavaliable"

I just looked up your card and I have to say this is rather dismaying. Intel HD Graphics highest supported version of OpenGL is version 3.1, literally one version below the lowest version I can go! This is actually especially worrying because after checking out the Steam Hardware Survey, it looks like this is pretty common card...

I think what this is building up to is that eventually, I'm going to need to make a DirectX version of my graphics engine. Unfortunately, this would take way too long for me to do right now so I'm afraid there isn't much I can do to help you right now. Sorry


Shephf, thanks a lot for the detailed reply! Allow me to go over your points!

1. I'm experiencing constant shader warnings in the background, see this:

Oh man, I hope you didn't have to deal with these throughout the entire play session! That must have been awful frustrating and it probably means that I should add an option to straight up disable the console.

As to what that actual shader error is, I can see a few other shaders variables throwing errors in your screenshot, including pixelHeight. I gotta admit, this is actually pretty strange and I'm not sure what would be causing it, BUT, there is one way to check!

In the Release folder containing the exe, there should be an error.txt file! Right now, due to a bug I never bothered fixing, there should be one line that says "ERROR: Unknown key '<b>ESC</b>'" but if the shaders didn't compile properly, then there might be more information about it in that file. If you see the file there, would you mind posting or PMing the contents?

2. The cutscene, IMO it's better to let the user decide when to move to the next piece of text

Haha, I'm flattered that you watched the entire cutscene and admittedly slightly embarrassed. As you may have noticed, I'm pretty iffy about it's current state. For letting the user move onto the next piece of text though, that is a good idea and it's actually something I have planned! The reason it's not in right now is because I basically designed the cutscene around the idea of it having voice acting, so what you're actually seeing there are the subtitles for the voice acting that doesn't exist haha.

3. The gameplay. Last time I died so many times was when I played hotline miami 2

It's cool that you were able to pick up on the rhythm as the game was pretty heavily designed around that! Being able to chain off four explosive attacks is actually much better than I've seen a lot of other people play this game! If you play as long as I've been playing this, then you'll basically get to a point where you'll never die hahaha

4. The dodge button - I didn't use it, I tried but I didn't quite catch the mechanic behind it, how exactly do I dodge ?

That's actually fascinating that you managed to play without using the dodge at all! I find it absolutely necessary as a means of getting around, especially because it gives you a means of passing through the Ways. On top of that, you're actually invincible for the first few frames so if you time it perfectly (on the beat) you can actually completely go through an attack! It kind of leaves me wondering if the dodge somehow broke for you actually because if you press the dodge key, you should just perform a dodge no matter what.

5. If I understand correctly there's only half of level done, right ? So, can I actually beat those guys ? I mean, I keep killing them, then I die and so on... Or do I have to kill some specific amount of those guys without dying to pass further ?

It's, uh, literally endless ._.

Truth is, when I say only the first half of the level, I mean it! There is literally NOTHING done after that point so because of that, it just goes on forever haha

6. Overall, I still die a lot, I last about 40 secs, not more. Am I doing something terribly wrong ? How long do you last ?

40 seconds is a pretty decent amount of time! Again, if you've been playing for months and months like I have, you'll soon have the song perfectly memorized and be able to survive forever basically haha.

7. Also, I find it hard to land explosion attacks without looking at the bar below. I would like to land explosion attacks by just listening to the music and hitting "C" at the right time, but I just can't... but m.b. it's my problem...

Explosive notes happen every 4 measures, or every 16 beats (on the top bar). If you listen closely, you can hear a large, trumpeting BWAAAH like noise. These notes are when you can do an explosive attack!

8. And yes, I liked the music, cool

Cool! Once again, Craig will be pleased!

Overall, I think you're doing a good game, but there's definitely a lot of work for you to do, so good luck! btw, how often do you release ? Are there any major updates planned in the near future ?

Oh I have tons planned for the game, but unfortunately, before I can get to any of that, I need to have a successful kickstarter campaign first! I'm planning for it to happen very soon actually, hopefully in a little over a week from now if everything works out! Until then though, I've got a lot of marketing that I need to do lol.

Also, as for how often I release updates for this alpha, I can't say I've released any at all because this is literally the only version I've made so far! I haven't had time to fix any of the bugs I've run into ._.

Anyway, thanks, both of you, for trying out the game!