This is along one. I'm basically going to lay down my current plans for the game, but no screenshots. Feel free to read or not, but if you do read, I'd love your feedback!!!!
Design Update 1:We are in a weekend and I couldn't find time today to work on the game, therefore I spend some time thinking about and solidifying some of the game design. I want to use this devlog both as a progress update tracker and a design log, so here we go:
MAIN CONCEPT:
3D Hack and Slash Roguelike.
COMBAT SYSTEM:Flexible combat system. Similar to DmC and Lords of Shadow 2 (and others), the main character can carry up to three weapons. You swith to them by holding one of the triggers, if not trigger is held, the default weapon gets activated.
On top of this, we have an equipment system that complements the combat system. Up to 4 body parts can be equipped at one. The effects of these bodyparts can vary, but in some cases they can add additional attacks and moves to the main character.
PROGRESSION SYSTEM:This is where the roguelike aspects come in. Level are procedurally assembled from a set of rooms. Each of these rooms has multiple variations. Some of these rooms may contain spawners with pickups (there is no item drop by the enemies). Levels will be separated by theme and there will be 5 of them. Exploration within a level is allowed, but at the time a system by which after defeating a boss a new level is started is the plan.
There's permadeath, so the levels need to be short enough, probably they should not take more than 15/20 minutes to beat each, which implies the enemy health needs to be low (we don't want enemies that withstand a lot of damage, or at least we don't want many of those.
There's XP, obtained by killing enemies, this XP can be used to upgrade your equipment or your character (which is a non-switchable equipment piece). Each piece of equipment has four levels, from 0 (the level they start at) to 4.
Also, some enemies have modifiers that can grant bonuses or minuses when the player kills them. Right now, this is the only way to regain some health.
METAGAME:Not every piece of equipment will spawn every game. The set the game chooses from will be selected from a subset that will increase in size (and power) as the player continues to unlock achievements. These can be metagame achievements (equip a full set of gear) or in-game accomplishments (find a secret room with an specific piece of equipment that will randomly spawn from now on).
THINGS I'M NOT SURE ABOUT YET:Level generation. I'm scared the levels will be too big/take too long to traverse. The game should play really fast, and exploration is an important but minor factor to consider. This is something I need to play careful attention to when I start to receive gameplay feedback.
Variety. Going 3D makes art production somewhat slower. For alpha the game will not have enough variety, but I'm unsure whether the plan for vertical slice (see below) will be enough, or if I need to introduce many more small variations into the mix.
Level structure. There's the option of tying all 5 different levels/areas together (think castlevania) and make the game more exploration based. bosses would actually be present, but it would allow for backtracking and more gameplay flexibility (performance may suffer, specially in terms of memory). By not dividing the experience in discrete levels, the experience would become more structuraly sound, but it will require some work on level generation and I don't know how "necessary" it really is.
The metagame progression is way too simple right now. Something along the lines of Rogue Legacy could be nice, but I don't want to go so heavy on the RPG elements. A possibility is to unlock characters and NPCs in the dungeon that allow the player to skip levels/progress faster to harder areas.
DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION GOALS FOR PRESENT MILESTONE (PLAYABLE PRE-ALPHA):
HAVE:
SYSTEMS:-Input
-Combat
-Equipment
-Level generation
CONTENT:LEVEL 1:
-Three rooms, with three variations each.
ENEMIES:-FlyBoy with three parts (four different configurations).
-GruntBot with three parts (six different configurations).
ITEMS:-Two Weapons (Katana - Single enemy focused. Limited combos and Shields -Block attacks). three variations each.
-Two Heads (Clockwork lens and Spectralizer)
-One Arm (Kinetic Accumulator)
-One Leg (Combat Legs)
-One Body (Rocket Pack)
MISSING:
SYSTEMS:
-None
CONTENT:
LEVEL 1:
-Two rooms, with three variations each. these are bigger rooms.
ENEMIES:
-NimbleBot with three parts (six possible configurations)
-Level 1 Boss.
ITEMS:
-One Weapon (BladeOnAStick - Medium Range crowd control).
-One Head (Visual Harmonizer, makes you invisible to enemies on evade)
-Two Arms (Power Projectors, push enemies away when running into them, and Resistant Bracers, give elemental resistance, three variations)
-Two legs(Spring shoes, self explanatory and another one TBD)
-Two bodies (Cannon Body, shoot cannonballs with your body and another one TBD)
POLISH:
-Rework many particle effects.DESIGN AND IMPLEMENTATION GOALS FOR NEXT MILESTONE (PLAYABLE ALPHA):
SYSTEMS:-Main Menu System.
-Metagame Unlock and progression.
-Level End/Start of next level.
CONTENT:LEVEL 1:
-Three more rooms (total of eight), with 5~10 variations each (will need to add variations to previous rooms).
ENEMIES:-Two more enemies, for a total of 5, with 5 parts each (will need to add two parts to the already present enemies).
ITEMS:-Two more weapons and two more of every other kind of equipment, for totals of:
-5 weapons with 5 variations each.
-5 heads.
-5 bodies.
-5 arms.
-5 legs.
POLISH:-Write unified shaders (performance and visual appearance)
-Post processing and setting the final look of the game (I'm thinking about a slight tilt-Shift plus some aggressive saturation/color-Correction, maybe a toon shading).
EXTRA:There are some systems implemented but without enough content yet. These will (I hope) provide variety without making the implementation too hard. But I don't know yet the extent of how many different variations to implement. The systems are:
Terrain modifiers: Right now implemented a slowdown (reduces player speed in half), a boost (forces the player into running for 3 seconds, and a gravity platform (when in contact, the gravity of the player switches to the normal of the modifier -basically allowing to walk up walls).
Enemy & player modifiers: Modifiers that can change the stats (resistances and damage) of player and enemies without requiring extra logic. The Health modifier enemies start with (that give the player 1 health on death) ios an example of this.
Cinematics: Special logic for certain rooms. Apart from a basic tutorial, I am using them to implement arenas (rooms which doors close on enter, and won't open until all enemies spawned are dead).
I feel I need to do significant design work on this last area, but it's been neglected from a while.
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