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[Mckenon]

Hello all! It's been quite a while since I've posted here, but I can assure you development is still progressing as strongly as ever! 

Here's a copy of this week's changelog as well:
Bugs(fixed):
* The player's sprite moved back a few pixels when beginning to walk.
* Hostile slimes did not kill the player
* When the game was ran under the lowest graphics settings, things like moving platforms would move very fast.
* Players could become stuck in the walking animation if they hit a wall in a certain way.
* In some occurrences two copies of a map were saved.
Additions:
* Added a restart level button in-game.
* Revamped the main menu a bit.
* Added an exit button to the main menu.
* Updated the player's knockback animation.
* Tweaked the player's jump height(still up for change)
* Added a player death animation.
* Added a grayscale effect when the player dies.
(Side note - A 'box select' feature for selecting/editing multiple tiles was heavily requested and is being worked on now. Should possibly be out next week.)

Just to satisfy your gif needs, here's a gif of the new death animation!

[Mckenon]

Ok, been a long time again.
Since then the previous artist has quit however a new artist has joined the project.

To cut to the chase I'm not going to try to stick to a schedule for posting to this dev-log as that has only proved that the schedule will inevitably be broken. So from this point on I'll be posting when I feel the need / need opinions, as I should've done from the beginning.

Anywho, on to a small teaser screenshot of what's to come with the new art:


Alright, I'll be back whenever!
(Probably when Runed InDev 0.6 is released, which'll probably be this friday. :p )

[gaarlicbread]

I like the new art style!

Also, deadlines and momentum are tricky to handle well. I went on a "zero deadline" spree and it wasn't good. It was bad. If you keep missing deadlines, I suggest measuring how long it *does* take you without deadlines to do N units of work, and then set the next deadline at about the same pace. It's not easy, but I find self-imposed, based-on-past-measurements deadlines are more useful than no deadlines.

Also, if you prefer, you could just *pretend* to tigsource there are no deadlines, but then tell yourself and your coworkers or friends the deadlines. Maybe telling tigsource is too much pressure, for example.

Looking forward to hearing more about Runed!

[Mckenon]

I like the new art style!

Also, deadlines and momentum are tricky to handle well. I went on a "zero deadline" spree and it wasn't good. It was bad. If you keep missing deadlines, I suggest measuring how long it *does* take you without deadlines to do N units of work, and then set the next deadline at about the same pace. It's not easy, but I find self-imposed, based-on-past-measurements deadlines are more useful than no deadlines.

Also, if you prefer, you could just *pretend* to tigsource there are no deadlines, but then tell yourself and your coworkers or friends the deadlines. Maybe telling tigsource is too much pressure, for example.

Looking forward to hearing more about Runed!

Hmm, you're right. I'll attempt to get things on a schedule as soon as I finish up with Runed 0.6, as it's currently a mess of half finished features that still need to be finished, due to my erratic schedule a few weeks back.

I plan on setting deadlines and then posting the new deadlines + planned features with every changelog that I post here, so expect more posts!

Cheers

[alvarop]

This projet is looking better with each new page. Tracking.

[Mckenon]

Hello, been hard at work on a new level editor(I'll get to why later.), and a nice little art revamp.
Anywho, onto some concept art!

Runestone work, too large to show in the log.
As you can see we've been hard at work on getting the overall universe of Runed down, which will hopefully lead to more vivid levels/aesthetics in the game.
Note - Our artist's DeviantArt page can be found here.
Past this comes the matter of the editor. First off, my reasoning in recreating it from scratch. I am aware that I have already done this far too many times, yet I believed that it would help the game to have a better code-base for the editor. Aside from that, it also gives me the experience I need in coding, as each time I redo the editor I learn a plethora of useful things in C#. I know it's essentially a waste of time in perspective to completing the game, but the value it has to the end product, along with my own skills is extremely valuable.

Anywho, on to what's new!

Aside from the reworked tile, object, entity, and NPC systems(which are not all completed yet.. more on that later as well.), there is the addition of a new UI, and objects/entities that aren't locked to the tile grid!
Here's a gif demonstrating what I mean in them not being locked to the grid:


Now, onto what isn't finished for the editor:

These are all planned features for the build next week, yet I can't guarantee a few of them being complete by that point.(Specifically Ambient FX, Sound Objects, NPCs, and Parallax Backgrounds.) - Please note this does not mean these features are doomed to not be completed, just that I may not finish it by that point.

I know I've said this a lot and failed at holding up to it, and I'm sorry about that, but I will see you all again soon. 

[Mckenon]

Hello again!  
As you can see from the gif below, object placement and map items now work, including animations!

Past that, I've began working on one of the most needed things for Runed, NPCs!
As it is only the beginning of my work for NPCs, I do not have much to show in-game wise(will link images as it progresses), but I thought I might as well update the log about my current progress.

Thus far I have introduced a nice module based system, here's a nice rundown I made to help myself make sense of it all:

Code:

Base
	AI
		Behavior	(Update)
		Sight		(Check)
		Stats		(Access)
		Movement	(Access)
	Movement
		Movement	(Update)
		Pathfinding	(Check)
		Collision	(Check)
		MoveTo		(Function)
	Stats
		isFriendly	(Value)
		Health		(Value)
		MoveSpeed	(Value)
		AtkAmount	(Value)
	Animation
		PlayAnim	(Update)
		ChangeAnim	(Function)

This list shows the organization of classes, and what inherits from what.

Once I got that figured out, I needed to figure out how I'd lay out the AI behavior, and needed to find a good source to plot it all out. Thankfully a friend mentioned State machines/charts, which would help greatly in my search for a good pipeline for NPC planning. Due to this I found a site called draw.io, which let me map it all out. Here is the resulting map, a concept for the rock creature(can be seen in the previous post):

Now, onto my first order of business coding wise - giving our NPCs eyes and ears, as we can't tell them what to do if they don't know the conditions around them, right?
For a base sight system I went with a simple Physics2D.Raycast, which will allow the npc to look directly at the player, but it will only see him if there is a direct line of sight. In the future I may make multiple scan points, most likely originating from the eyes of the npc, but for now it is simply from the npc's position.
Next up is the npc's ears, which are pretty simple to implement. Simply get the distance from our npc to the player gameobject, then see if it's inside of it's hearing range. Currently it returns true if the player is in the range, however in the future i intend to make it so that the player must actually be making noise to be heard. Regardless, it's there.
During my time testing out both of these systems I found debugging code to be very difficult without some form of visual description of what was going on, so I wrote a script(with the help of a friend on some of the math) to draw a circle showing the radius, along with another line for the raycast.(both of these are using Debug.DrawLine, mind you )
Here's a gif of my debug drawing in action, just to show you what I mean:

Along with that, here's a link to the code for drawing the radius: http://pastebin.com/nU5aUiUS

Thanks for reading, I'll be back soon with more screenshots / info!  

[UnfoldGames]

Looks pretty cool - any word on the story?

Also, may I ask: what are you using for making gifs?

Good luck with the project!

[Mckenon]

Looks pretty cool - any word on the story?

Also, may I ask: what are you using for making gifs?

Good luck with the project!

Hi!
I'm quite ashamed to say that the story is very unfinished and sloppy, however we have had quite a few ideas that we've been tossing around regarding it. I hope to talk about those ideas and their possible gameplay leads more in future devlogs.

I'm using LiceCap to record the gifs, and then uploading them to Gfycat, as it seems a bit faster in comparison to imgur.

Thanks for stopping by! 

[Mckenon]

Well, I seem to have spent more time on NPCs than originally intended... whoops. 

Lucky for you guys though, the more mistakes like this I make in assuming timeframes, the better I get at estimating them in the future! 

So here's what's done thus far, and what I need to do:

Code:

Complete	-	Base UI
Complete	-	Tile System
Complete	-	Saving and Loading
Complete	-	Camera movement
Complete	-	Layers
Complete	-	Objects
Complete	-	Map Items(ie.Player spawners | Renamed to 'special')
Complete	-	Entitites(ie.Torches)
WIP		-	NPCs
WIP		-	Wiring
Planned		-	Sound objects
Planned		-	Parallax Backgrounds

Thankfully I have quite a bit of time to work today, so expect some updates.

[Mckenon]

Here's a gif showing the progress on AI, if you find anything wrong with it please do share!  

Also if you will, ignore the outdated version number.. 

[Mckenon]

We finally finished Runed 0.6 today, and can thankfully begin work on Runed 0.7!
Here's the changelog:

Code:

 #22 Options menu implementation
[Improvement]
 #23 Assets/Code/Environment/Interactable/OneWayPlatform.cs(6,10): warning CS0108: `OneWayPlatform.enabled' hides inherited member `Unity[Engine].Behaviour.enabled'. Use the new keyword if hiding was intended
[Bug]
 #24 Assets/Code/AI/Enemies/Slime_AI.cs(21,14): warning CS0168: The variable `result' is declared but never used
[Bug]
 #25 Assets/Code/AI/Enemies/Slime_Offensive_AI.cs(12,20): warning CS0219: The variable `tempMyObj' is assigned but its value is never used
[Bug]
 #26 Assets/Code/AI/Environment/MovingPlatform_AI.cs(184,23): warning CS0219: The variable `rightBound' is assigned but its value is never used
[Bug]
 #27 Assets/Code/AI/Environment/MovingPlatform_AI.cs(183,23): warning CS0219: The variable `leftBound' is assigned but its value is never used
[Bug]
 #28 Assets/Code/AI/Environment/MovingPlatform_AI.cs(219,23): warning CS0219: The variable `rightBound' is assigned but its value is never used
[Bug]
 #29 Assets/Code/AI/Environment/MovingPlatform_AI.cs(218,23): warning CS0219: The variable `leftBound' is assigned but its value is never used
[Bug]
 #30 Assets/Code/AI/Environment/MovingPlatform_AI.cs(240,20): warning CS0219: The variable `other' is assigned but its value is never used
[Bug]
 #31 Assets/Code/Environment/Interactable/RuneStone.cs(87,29): warning CS0219: The variable `prevPos' is assigned but its value is never used
[Bug]
 #32 Assets/Code/Environment/Interactable/RuneStone.cs(86,28): warning CS0219: The variable `prevSprite' is assigned but its value is never used
[Bug]
 #33 Assets/Code/UI/DE[Bug]/De[Bug]_Console.cs(47,22): warning CS0219: The variable `classlist' is assigned but its value is never used
[Bug]
 #34 Assets/EditorScripts/map_Class.cs(123,32): warning CS0219: The variable `spriteRenderer' is assigned but its value is never used
[Bug]
 #35 Assets/Runed_LevelEditor/Tile_InEditor.cs(40,47): warning CS0472: The result of comparing value type `Tile.tileType' with null is `false'
[Bug]
 #36 Assets/Runed_LevelEditor/Tile_InEditor.cs(40,64): warning CS0162: Unreachable code detected
[Bug]
 #37 Assets/Runed_LevelEditor/dummyTest.cs(8,13): warning CS0219: The variable `npc' is assigned but its value is never used
[Bug]
 #38 Assets/Runed_LevelEditor/mono_gmail.cs(24,15): warning CS0219: The variable `msec' is assigned but its value is never used
[Bug]
 #39 Assets/Code/Classes/Player_NotificationBase.cs(31,10): warning CS0414: The private field `Player_NotificationBase.offScr' is assigned but its value is never used
[Bug]
 #40 Assets/Code/ConstCollisionFix.cs(14,20): warning CS0414: The private field `ConstCollisionFix.s' is assigned but its value is never used
[Bug]
 #41 Assets/Code/Player/Player_Movement.cs(34,10): warning CS0414: The private field `Player_Movement.moveSet' is assigned but its value is never used
[Bug]
 #42 Assets/Code/Player/Player_Movement.cs(59,10): warning CS0414: The private field `Player_Movement.tempOnPlatform' is assigned but its value is never used
[Bug]
 #43 Assets/Code/UI/DE[Bug]/De[Bug]_Console.cs(109,12): warning CS0414: The private field `De[Bug]_Console.inputDisplay' is assigned but its value is never used
[Bug]
 #44 Assets/Runed_LevelEditor/Tile_InEditor.cs(110,16): warning CS0414: The private field `Tile_InEditor.m_coords' is assigned but its value is never used
[Bug]
 #45 Assets/Runed_LevelEditor/mono_gmail.cs(19,10): warning CS0414: The private field `mono_gmail.doAgain' is assigned but its value is never used
[Bug]
 #46 Assets/Runed_LevelEditor/thingEditor.cs(398,9): warning CS0414: The private field `thingEditor.tempLayer' is assigned but its value is never used
[Bug]
 #15 Editor fails to load a level after saving it.
[Bug]
 #16 NPC class system
[Engine]
 #20 NPC placement system
[Engine]
 #21 Editor tab interface
[Feature]
 #13 Refactor the way that tiles, entities, etc are loaded.
[Refactoring]

[Mckenon]

Member loss | Additions | Runed's Future

Hi again, Runed has been through a few changes since the last post, but that isn't my main reasoning in making this post.
I've come here today to update you all on the status of the team, and what's in Runed's future at the moment.

The Sound Designer

I suppose I'll begin with the best explained(actually the only explained) reasoning for departure. Originally when the sound designer for Runed joined up, he had the intention of using Runed as one of his projects for Uni, which was fine until the trouble with artists and such approached. Admittedly I could have done much more work on the game during my free time, however that became much more difficult with each artist that joined and left, or simply stopped talking at all. This caused me to have a severe lack of motivation to work on Runed, as I lacked the ability to create any near-bearable art assets.(Seriously, most of the character textures were rectangles and other oddly shaped objects at this point) This all culminated into him having two weeks to turn in his project, and a 10%-20% finished game. We both decided that it would be better for him to go find another project to work on, with a specific point on one that could be finished within his two week time period.

The Artist & Concept Artist

I have not heard from either the Artist or the Concept artist for several months(3-4), neither of which showed any signs of being unhappy with the project or the workflow(which was essentially saying that certain things needed to be done, no real deadlines that were enforced.(However I did from time to time say that it'd be helpful if something was finished before a certain date, but no real push for it.)) I am officially making this post/update in saying that they are no longer part of the team, as I found that it was not helping anything for me to sit around and wait on them to respond, and it was simply a waste of my time, along with a waste of the time that could be spent on Runed.

What that leaves

Well, that's the thing.. it leaves me, and only me. I hope to find another artist in the future, however that is extremely difficult due to the lack of funding to pay the artist.(Which is fine, just that that was never the type of person I needed), finding an artist is difficult in it's own right, but finding an artist who is remotely good at what they do(not talking amazing pixel art or anything, just something more than what I can accomplish by myself.), willing to work with no immediate payment, and actually passionate about the project is extremely hard.

Runed's future

Runed's future is undetermined at the moment, as it's getting more and more difficult as each day passes to stay motivated to work on it, as I am truly alone in working on it now. I will still attempt to continue working on it, just that development may slow down even further if I can not find an artist, and may eventually stop completely.

Additions

As far as additions go, I've began thinking about allowing the character to transform at any time, which would allow for some more interesting level design, but at the same time would also grant the ability to glitch out the game far more often.(ie. Flying through an entire level, sneaking under everything, etc)
Along with that, I've made a few designs for the initial tutorial levels of the game, each showing the ability of each animal.(Note - I only managed to finish the first three last night, working on the next two today.)

Runed's editor has also been downgraded to one layer for the moment, as I don't currently see a need to go through the loading time for 7 layers, nor will I even be using that many layers for quite a while.
Along with this I've managed to get the player animator back up and running, along with transformation fixed.

It was nice making a post for Runed again, hopefully it isn't the last.

Until next time

[Mckenon]

The return | Editor | New Members

Hey guys, over the past few weeks I've been attempting to get back into the swing of things. Thankfully some new kind souls have come forward in hopes of aiding me on this adventure that is Runed's development.

New Concept Artist

The first person I'd like to mention that's been added to the team is our new concept artist! She's already shown some promise and interest in the project, which is great. Here's some of the concept images we've had created over the past few days

New Pixel Artist

Next up is our new pixel artist, aka Skarik. You may have seen him before from his posts on TIG, particularly AFTER, or even Project M03.
For more information on either of these projects, be sure to head over to Epic House Studio's Site for more information. [Disclaimer - I am not affiliated with Epic House Studios, I simply wish to bring a bit of publicity to someone who was kind enough to offer to help with this project. ]

The Editor

Finally, we arive at the editor.(Which by this point I might as well say editors). I've made several iterations on the Runed Editor, however I believe it's time for me to part ways with it given the new tools provided in the latest alpha build of Unity. Finally, after all of this time, there is a dedicated 2D tilemap editor. This means I can stop worrying about file formats, how the editor's UI should work, how I can efficiently load in 17,500 tiles(50x50 map, 7 layers at the time), along with the worries of having all of our files out in the open for anyone to reap the rewards. Anyways, back to the new editing tools. Here's a gif of it in action:

Stolen Borrowed from Unity's blog on the matter.

UI Work

As of late I've been working on recoding a lot of things, in order to get it up to par and independent from the editor/level loading system. One of the things I decided that should be redone is the character UI. To start, here's a gif of the previous interface:

I'm aware that this is in the old art style.. don't kill me please ;-;
Aside from the lack of general motion, there is no depth being conveyed or sense of these stones actually being in the world. Not that I want to have shadows coming off of them or anything, but it'd be nice for them to feel there.
Not to mention my lack of image effects for focusing on the UI, no darkened background, blur, vignette, etc.

Which brings me on to the new UI. I knew that making a simple sliding menu wouldn't work, as frankly it's just boring. After meddling around for a few hours and catching up on Full Metal Alchemist, I realized that we could use something akin to the transmutation circles found in the show, as our character is basically transmuting himself into another form in the first place. With this in mind I created a small non functioning UI script that could convey my idea. This is what I ended up with:

Now, there's quite a few problems with this:

• The lines in the center are crossing over the player, which clashes with him being unblurred/brought to vision.
• The lines connecting the runes on the outer edge simply look too harsh/jagged.
• Kinda looks like a pentagram..
  
• There still just isn't enough movement to it.(I know this is a still screenshot, but you'll just have to trust me on this one.)
  

After thinking about this for a while, I made another mockup, this time animated.



I removed the inner lines, and made a horrible mockup circle image. The particle effects came about whilst I was messing around with the thought of particles shooting into the player from each rune, however I later settled on them radiating out of the player himself.

Next we have the final(current) version: (note - I mean final as in "good enough to move past it for now.")


Now, here's what I changed/did differently:

• Added a circle being drawn procedurally around the outer edge, this is the same circle that my code uses to plot where each icon will go.(Note - yes, that means it can support up to ~20 icons at a time, with the only border being displaying all of the sprites in such a confined space)
• Added back lines between each rune, however not clashing across.(This way they don't interrupt the player's visual.
• Tweaked the circular motion when moving the rune icons, along with adding left and right movement.
  
• Added a nice fade in to the background blur, as it seemed a bit too abrupt for my taste.
• Made the rune circle(wheel?) smoothly fall in from the top of the screen. I've toyed with the idea of having it randomly come in from a randomized direction onscreen, but never looked further into it.
• (Minor)Made those blasted particle effects start only when the rune ui is ready, and not 'pop' on screen like before.

I do however still have a few gripes about it, though:

• The player's feet cut too sharply on the ground
• The drop-in from the top of the screen still feels a bit strange

All in all, it's definitely good enough to press on into further development.

Thanks for reading! I know I haven't updated this devlog in a long while(I've come to find that scheduled posting is my mortal enemy), however I hope I can start back posting here again with updates as things progress.

Cheers!

[Mckenon]

Yeah.. about not working on the runestone UI anymore..


Added some fades, changed the animation and such.
IMG:

[Mckenon]

Hey guys! Things are getting quite busy here as momentum begins to grow back up again. Admittedly you guys are going to see a visual break in updates around the 9th, due to No Man's Sky being released. In the meantime, here's a WIP concept image of our main character, along with some AI design on my part:

[Mckenon]

The slime is finally alive!

I initially started out making the classes for the AI out of modules, however I realized later on that although it seemed to make things more organized, it also added a ton of overhead to adding different types of AI. Due to this I simply decided on making a base class NPC, and to have all of the NPC's in Runed extend that. The base class has things like checking surroundings, getting the player, getting a wander point, etc.

I'm not completely sold on if it should be a slime or not, as to be honest a slime is kind of cliche. I may end up going with some kind of beetle esque creature that has a bouncy shell of some sort.

Ignore my debug art if you will, just wanted to make sure that the custom animator was working and all .