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[Neeko]

Yep, I think I agree with you guys. It's funny you mention it cause I got similar feedback on those background silhouette characters just last night as well.

Good ideas on how to fix it, thanks!

[Neeko]

Decided to add some small polishes and touches to the game tonight.

Added some projectile impact particles, which gives a nice effect during a firefight



And while not exactly Gears of War, you can take cover to avoid a fatal buckshot to the chest!

[Neeko]

Demons with Shotguns has received an overwhelmingly positive response since launching on Greenlight, earning over 1,000 Yes votes in just the first week! Thank you all for the interest and excitement. As much as we do to self promote, we really do need the fans help in spreading the word about the game. Get on Twitter, Facebook, Reddit and let everyone know about Demons with Shotguns! With your help, we can get the game green-lit fast.

Now we wanted to talk about a design change to the tarot cards that's recently been made to the game based on recent playtesting. The original design of the tarot cards were a way to provide random power-ups and power-downs, much like the gift system in the classic game Toe-Jam & Earl. So one card could provide temporary invincibility while another could snare your movement.

The more we playtest the game with the public, the more we see how little players like this system. It seemed clear that the risk wasn't worth the reward in most cases, so players started to avoid picking up tarot cards completely. It's clear that in a fast paced competitive game like Demons with Shotguns, players simply don't like random negative effects.

Thus, we've decided to remove all negative, power-downs cards. Instead, there will only be power-up cards.

This is why we're eager to get the game on Early Access so we can get a continuous stream of player feedback to help us create the best game possible.

Stay tuned as we have some exciting news to announce in the coming days. If you happen to be in Boston the first weekend of March, be on the lookout for demons carrying shotguns...

[Neeko]

Redesigned one of the Hell levels.

Before:


After:



Was way too tight and hard to move around. New design feels much better.

[Neeko]

I decided to revisit the decision to remove all negative, power-down tarot cards. Instead, I'm going to try something different. Instead of the card affecting the player who picked it up, it'll instead affect all other players.

For example, there's the Plague tarot card that'll drain a player's health to 1 point, making them extremely vulnerable. If a player picks up this card, all other players will be affected, leaving the player who picked up the card alone.

I've also changed how cards act in team game modes. If a team member picks up a good tarot card (power-up), the card affects all players on that team. Similarly, when a bad tarot card is picked up, it'll affect all players on the
opposite team.

Tarot cards are still completely random and players don't know which card they'll be picking up, though this may change in the future by creating unique sprites for each power-up/power-down. These changes should make tarot cards much more enticing to use.

I also made changes to the Apocalypse card, which originally immediately killed all other players, but without earning the player a frag (or releasing souls, depending on the game mode). Instead, this card will earn the player a frag for each player it kills or will release a soul (again, in the game modes that use souls). This change also lead to changing when the Apocalypse card is included in the card rotation. Originally it was just included normally like any other card. Instead the card will only be entered (and pushed to the front) when there's a big enough score gap between the player with the lowest score and the player with the highest score. It essentially acts as an equalizer since it's neither fun to be losing significantly, or winning significantly.

[vladharsan]

)) looks pretty cool...

[Neeko]

I've had the idea to include a singleplayer/co-op enemy wave mode for awhile (we're calling it the End of Times game mode). I happened to have some time available while I await new tile sheets, so I started implementing the groundwork needed to get enemies into the game.

Here are the first prototype enemies! Stock flying skulls!



Have some very basic flying movement behaviour and once the player gets within a certain distance, it'll start chasing them.

I still need to work out the details of the End of Times game mode before I take it further, but I'm happy that I finally got the groundwork for enemies somewhat out of the way.

[Neeko]

Work has begun on the next arena environment. Here's a sneak peak of the, very much, work in progress tiles for the Metro arenas.



While the sky is nearing completion, there's still the background layers to add, which will include skyscraper silhouettes and more detailed buildings on the layers closer to the camera.

We're aiming to give each environment some form of unique mechanic. Cemetery has hidden pathways, Hell has the portals. For the Metro arenas, I'm thinking about experimenting with movable platforms such as window elevators.

[Neeko]

Per the last post regarding the Metro arenas, while I wait for the Metro artwork to be finished, I started implementing moving platforms.



Not the most exciting gif in the world I'm using a stand-in sprite as well for the moving platform.

It was actually a lot easier to implement than I anticipated. I thought I'd have to deal with weird collision edge cases, but for the most part, it was painless.

Here's another peak at what the background for the Metro arenas is going to look like.

[Neeko]

Been doing some polish work past few days as I get the PAX East build ready.

New explosion animation!



Also added small blood splatter particles for when a bullet grazes a player. At times it's barely noticeable, but definitely adds feedback on when you're getting hit.



And here's another look at the Metro environment, which shows the window elevator on the side of the building. These will be moving platforms.

[Neeko]

I finally got my hands on the new Metro artwork and quickly put together a prototype level last night.



I was actually surprised on how well this prototype level actually played, considering how quickly I put together I think I'm going to clean it up, make some adjustments and include it in the PAX East build.

The Metro environments will range from the rooftops of skyscrapers to street level alleyways. It's going to challenging designing Metro levels because there's seemingly more of a limit on the number of platforms you can include that makes some sense from a game world perspective. Sure, I could simply add randomly floating steel girder platforms, but one of the design goals for the game is to make it so the environments make some form of sense, to have some logic behind why a platform exists. So we added artwork to allow cutaways from the buildings in hopes to increase the play area.

[Neeko]

Made some minor layout changes to the first Metro level. I opened up the top more for added platforms and created a pathway through the lower building for another travel path.



The sky also rotates, giving the scene a very ominous presence, and makes the scene feel much less static.



The sky is split up into three layers, each rotating at different speeds.

We also changed the shotgun sprite. It was originally modeled after a double barrell shotgun, but I decided to take a more modern, tactical approach with it. It's not modeled after a Mossberg 500 Pistol Grip.

I've also been trying to find ways to phase out the HUD, as it seems like most players don't bother looking at it much when playing, and it actually ends blocking parts of the level. However, it does hold vital information that the player needs to know, such as how much ammo they have left.

I decided to take a more diegetic approach with this and have the shotgun sprite have mounted shotgun shells on the side, which also indicates how much ammo they have left. The player is always looking at their character, so they should immediately know when they're out of ammo; the old double barrel shotgun sprite would change to a cracked open frame when out of ammo, but I don't think it was visually significant enough.

Here's a gif of it in action



Finally, we started experimenting with different soul sprites. This is our top contender right now.



I also changed the simulation space of the particle effect from local to world so that it has a nice trailing behind effect now. I think it looks great

With those last little polishes in place, we're ready for PAX East! We'll be at booth 11168, so please come by and check out the game if you're attending!

[Neeko]

PAX East is in the bag! What a huge success. Demons with Shotguns was universally loved and enjoyed by the constant stream of people that came and played. Many groups came back several times to replay!





Thank you all who came out and played.

[Neeko]

Since Unity 5 included some bug fixes surrounding 4 connected controllers, and because I really need to get my hands on that profiler, I upgraded the game to Unity 5. The upgrade went without a hitch, for the most part. One issue though is that hinge joints seem to have changed completely since 4.3.4. They don't behave the same, at all. I need to figure out how to get them back to their old behavior since I use them for the torture cages in the Cemetery arenas. I'm hoping I just need to twiddle around with the properties.

Another issue that came up is that projectiles now collide with player shields. In 4.3.4, for some reason, projectiles would never collide with the shields collider. I think it's because the projectiles always picked up the player's collider box instead of the shields. However, in Unity 5, this seems to have been fixed somehow, so the hacks I put into place to deal with it broke :p Not a big deal, I just removed the unused collliders from the shield sprites. It may sound crazy to opt to leave in the hack, but it's battle tested and I don't want to take any steps backwards. It works again with a very easy change, I'm going to leave it.

I also changed the behavior of the Power of Christ tarot card. This card gives the player unlimited holy water. Originally, they could easily blow themselves up if they spammed the holy water. Now, the Power of Christ card also makes the player invulnerable to holy water, so players can spam away without fear!

[Neeko]

For the past year, David L. Craddock, author of Stay Awhile and Listen, has been following me and the development of Demons with Shotguns for his latest project, Episodic Content. This project aims to tell the story behind game development, from no-name developers such as myself, to AAA classics.

It’s with great honor to announce that David has decided to use my story to debut his series. I hope some of you find inspiration, and insight, in Angels, Devils, and Boomsticks: The Making of Demons with Shotguns. Please consider supporting his work and becoming a monthly Patreon.

[Neeko]

I've been tackling some more bugs that've popped up due to upgrading to Unity 5. One of the most bizarre ones do with LINQ queries simply not returning the correct results now. These queries were tested and confirmed working perfectly in Unity 4, but after upgrading, they simply no longer worked. They would return the incorrect results So I went ahead and just removed them and rewrote the logic without LINQ; I was using LINQ to determine if a List had duplicate values.

With PAX East behind me, I'm now able to focus again on level design, designing a new Metro arena.



This is another rooftop arena, but features the interior of an under construction building, with a service elevator to take you to outside roof. The layout is simple, which I've started to appreciate more and more. The simple, symmetrical arenas really do seem to play best.

You must be careful with the elevators, however, as they can crush you!

[Neeko]

Designed another Metro arena tonight. This is one of the first smaller ones (there are three different sized arenas, large, medium and small).



I'm not 100% sure about the elevator, as it doesn't really serve any purpose right now since you can reach the top left and bottom left areas without using it.

[Neeko]

We've been exploring new Demon character designs. We wanted to make the Demon character more of a street thug mobster. Here are all of the current iterations that have been done.



This is the one I like best and will probably move forward with.

[RetroActionGames]

The game looks really good, lots of gory pixels

[Neeko]

Glass? Who gives a shit about glass?