[Luigi]

New update!

Luigi
This week, I’ve been fixing some more bugs as well as adding new features to the game.
For the first two days, I’ve been working on the new workflow we’re going to be using from now on, which Alberto will explain further.


We thought it was rather difficult to aim if no aim assist at all was provided, so I’ve been implementing it in a way that’s easier to hit now. I still want to iterate through it once more, but we’ve got to test it first to see how it feels. So far so good, though.


I’ve also been working on the first of the pickable items we will have, an ammo box.
It works similarly to the pickable weapon items we already have: you get close to it, press “A”, and BOOM!, magic happens.


Another of my objectives for this week was to make some balance design on what we have so far (weapons, enemies…), which I’ll be constantly reviewing as we progress through production.


Besides this, everything else I’ve been working on was bugfixing or adding some more particle systems Julio had ready to get into the game.


Alberto
Version control has been a headache for me this week. Until now only 2 of us were working on the Unity project, and the workflow was mostly painless, since we only had to merge the main scene from time to time (using (http://u3d.as/4XU “UniMerge”)). But now we are going to start with audio stuff and room design so we are adding 2 more people to the project, thus we need a more complex workflow.
It took me 3 days to get to the point where the workflow seems smooth enough to use it in production. It consists on the next things:


Git
Git LFS
Sourcetree
Git Flow
UniMerge as a merge/diff tool (this was the hardest part)



After that I fixed some particle sorting layer problems and I added Sons of the Void to our [](http://grogshot.com “main website”)


Julio

This week I’ve been iterating through the particles system that we have. I also have done some minor animation and bullet wall-collision effect.

While Dani was finishing the tiles, I started reading an interesting Game Design web focused on level design (I suggest you to take a look at this web (http://renegadesector.com/level-design-primer/)), taking some cool tips that I will apply next week when I start making the rooms of the Fungi Ruins.


Dani

I’ve been submerged in the tile’s nightmare, preparing the atlas and fixing a lot of stuff like color, sizes, connections… I’ve added some new tiles to the Fungi Ruins too, it’s the first one, so we are going to keep improving it until it is perfect.




I've also started doing some sketches of the weapons chest and treasure chest for the game.

[Luigi]

New weekly report! 

Luigi
Besides bugfixing, I’ve been implementing two new weapons!

Megalodon M107


Unnamed Electric Gun


I’ve stopped working on the Laser Beam gun I was working on last week as we’ve decided not to include it in the initial demo so far, but part of it (except for the bullet type itself) is pretty much the same as the Electric Gun I’ve been working on.


Alberto
Until last week my priority was to make a dungeon algorithm as I explained in the last devlogs. Now that I have finished it, I have focused on fixing most of the enemy behaviours that didn’t work as they should. Fixes were mostly related with AI and navmeshes, and some balance. There’s still lots of balance changes to make, but we’ll get back to them when we have most of the weapons working.



Next week I’ll be working on figuring out some kind of algorithm for making the sorting layers work well with enemies, players, objects…
I’ll also have to spend some time testing “unity + git”, that painful combination that most developers avoid, and now even Unity is trying to fix this problem by implementing a new service called Collaborate. Let’s see how it goes

Julio
This week, continuing with last week’s work, I’ve been creating new particles. I have focused on ambient particles for the cave (fog, water drops, fireflies, tiny worms, that kind of stuff you find in a dark cave...) and finished 2 more weapons effects ( a laser and a sniper rifle).

Also the room doors did not fit as they should, so I had to do some rework on them.



Dani
This time I returned to the design of the fungi world,in order to finish it and get the final touches for props, decals and tiles.

Another important task was to give live to the world with details like worms,drops of water, bubbles...

And of course, I kept working on new weapons.



We'll be back with more news soon!

[Weapon behaviours, by Luigi]

We're back with our weekly report!

Weapon behaviours, by Luigi
I’ve been putting into the game all the new assets Julio and Dani have been creating this week, things as particles, bullets and the weapons themselves.
I’ve also had to make some changes on the current UI so the weapons showed can be animated via Spine.

I’m working right now on programming a charged laser beam for a new weapon, which is turning out quite cool so far!

New Dungeon layout, by Alberto
I have continued working on the dungeon algorithm. Last week I said I was going to try a different approach on how dungeons were generated, and now the first results are coming along.

Before

After

(In both examples the rooms were made by me, that’s why they look so empty and… ugly)

With the new approach, there are smaller corridors between rooms, but some rooms can also work as corridors so I believe is a better result than what I had before.

Now I have started working on the spawn system. Expect an update for the next week!

Weapon Particles, by Julio
I kept making particles this week. I’ve been working on different FX for 4 of our new weapons (Balance’s revolver, SMG, shotgun and a grenade launcher)

Weapon Designs, by Dani
This week, I had to search weapon references (real weapons, Borderlands, Wildstar, Halo, W40k…), then sketch and draw new ones, and finally I gave them all a colorful and distinctive aspect. I’ve been designing and drawing their ammo too.

Lastly I made some textures for Julio to use on the particle systems.



We'll be back with more news soon!

Cool teaser, mate!

Can't wait for more!!

[UI & Weapons, by Luigi]

Hello,

we're going to start to do weekly rundowns of what everyone in our team is working on. We're just 4 people, so it shouldn't be too long

UI & Weapons, by Luigi

I’ve been working on finishing the UI we’ve got for now:

• Visual cooldown timers for our character’s skills
• Weapons HUD, which provides feedback the weapons we’ve got available, letting us switch amongst them, too.
• Since the player can also increase its character’s level, we’re also testing the experience gain UI, as it can see below.

I’ve also been adding extra functionality to our weapons system and I’ve been creating the first basic weapons: Shotgun, Gun, Machine Gun and Laser Weapon.


Dungeons, by Alberto

Most of my work had to do with the “dungeon generation algorithm”. It has been a tough week because part of the implementation that I had figured out (took me about 1 week and a half), had to be discarded. The problem was that all the corridors in my algorithm only occupied 1x1 tiles. After implementing the final corridor, it turned out that it takes 4x6 tiles, so it breaks the logic of how corridors generated themselves.

So now I see 2 new possible implementations:

• Think from scratch a new algorithm for the corridors
• Completely discard the corridors and implement something like in the Binding of Isaac/Zelda style

I’ll work on the easiest solution for now, so at least we will be able to test the flow of the dungeon (combat, enemy waves, etc.)


Particles & FX, by Julio

Mainly I’ve been working on FX & particles inside Unity. I haven’t used them for a long time so first I had to experiment a little with them. I finished the particles for a new enemy called “the mole” (just a temporary name), who digs and travels underground thus expelling a lot of rocks around while doing it. Also, I have started with one of the attacks of the main character. The attack consists on throwing a black hole, so all enemies that are close to it get attracted and then pushed away. Particles are already implemented, but they still need more polishing.

I also did some UI artwork for the weapons system, one dodge animation for the main character and some minor fixes in rooms design.


Tiles, by Dani

I’ve invested my time in making tar pit tiles and finishing a group of walls (also tileables) for the first dungeon. After that, I made patches for the walls, mainly rocks and hyphaes (roots), in order to hide the edges of the tiles to make them look more natural.

Like always, I’ve kept working on props:

and made the first skills images just for testing.

Great work so far- I think the concept looks really compelling and fun. I love the idea of procedurally generated rooms and permanent progression in a 2-stick shooter: I think I'm going to be addicted to this game when it comes out!

Thanks a lot!  
Our intention is to make a game where progression is the core piece of the design. At some point of the devblog we will talk about the progression part and how it will work in-game  

[We're back with more content!]

Wow - love the art. I don't know if it's the Title screen, or concept art - but that first image has all sorts of character to it. Really compelling. And the screenshots look great too. Liking what you're describing with the gameplay mechanics - following! 

Thanks, our artist is really good at capturing great moments

We're back with more content!

We've already got implemented the weapons interface. This is what happens when shooting/reloading.

We can already swap weapons, too!

And here we're getting hit! This is some of the experience feedback we're testing right now. Screenshakes (although due to the gif FPS you can't notice it...), flashing, etc. We might also add some flashing to the whole screen, to make it more obvious.

How do you like it so far? Any feedback is more than welcome!

Hey guys! Nice to see you around, the game looks amazing! Keep us posted :-D

Thanks man!

The art looks spectacular! Looking forward to play it!

Do you intend to have completely pre-made rooms, or room content will also be generated?

Thanks! We will do the layout, spawn points and things like that manually, however several content will be controlled procedural.

Love the art style! So far the game sounds awesome :D

Thanks!

More stuff Coming Soon™

A very nice concept and cool art style.

Thanks Kevin! we'll be showing more enemy animations soon

Update: We are testing a basic enemy with different skins and variations. All the animations are made with Spine

So now I'm working on the procedural room generation algorithm. It's taking me a few days to finish it as I've never done something like this before  

This is how it works at the moment:

*   We create some rooms with our tile editor and make them a prefab
*   We pass this prefabs references to the room generator script
*   Randomly, the algorithm chooses between the different available prefabs and distributes them across a squared map
*   In order to distribute this rooms, I've created an algorithm based on BSP (Binary Space Partitioning)
*   Now I link the rooms using Kruskal's algorithm
*   The problem with this algorithm is that it only creates one connection between each colum, so after executing it, I create extra connections with a self made algorithm

Here are some gifs to show the proccess:

Kruskal's algorithm  only generates one connection between columns


Adding some extra hallways


Testing the algorithm with lots of rooms


As you can see hallways are really ugly and unnatural. So this is what I'll be working on for the next few days. First I'll try with A* algorithm and see if the results are fast and well made.
Thanks for keeping up with us!

[Sons of the Void]

Hello everyone!
You can find more about us in our Twitter!

We have recently started working on Sons of the Void, a Twin-Stick Shooter game with Roguelite mechanics.
 
What is the game about?

In a distant planet, a lonely nomad runs into an ancient ruined monolith, past technology from a lost civilization. Touching it, visions come to him, where he sees the Universe coming to an imminent abrupt end and the only way to avoid it is to activate the monolith to it’s full power, for what he need to gather the Chosen Ones and train them to reach their fullest potential. As so, these Chosen Ones become the Sons of the Void.

In Sons of the Void, we will play as one of these Chosen Ones. Each character will have its own stats and game style, defined by their skill tree that we’ll be able to progress on based on our character’s level experience.

As a Son of the Void, you’ll have to take part into missions to get cash, reputation, weapons and items.These missions, will be generated procedurally, having different main objectives, difficulties or placements. New sub-missions or events can happen when we’re already playing one. Several missions will only appear depending on our personal reputation.

Our gameplay references are Nuclear Throne and Enter the Gungeon, adding some of the permanent progression that Rogue Legacy had. Wildstar, Borderlands and the comic Saga series are big artistic influences, too.

Although this is our second project using Unity, it is the first game we’re making for PC.
Actually, we’re working on a playable demo so we can take it to festivals and change things based on actual feedback.
We’ve got already implemented the first character and its basic weapon as well as several enemies that belong to the planet that will be playable in the demo: a hostile fungus cave, guarding some ancient ruins.

There’s still a long road ahead, but we want to start showing stuff early on so we can get your feedback!

We really hope you enjoy it!