next »

[marcgfx]

True, it can get very colorful. I have been told nicely my understanding of colors is a little bit different than normal  

This reminds me: I added an option to change the saturation of player/non player elements. Had to make some adjustments to my new repair functionality, but I think this could be ok. One of the troubles I've faced with repair (and buildings in general) is that the prices have to be way lower than the Devaders upgrades. As I don't want crazy high prices I came up with a solution for walls, 4 walls cost 1¢. So when you get 1, you get 3 free so to speak. Now repairing walls is a similar problem, you have something worth 0.25¢ so how much do I charge to repair? Buildings can all be sold for 50% of their value, so this is also what I decided the repair needs to cost. As I don't want to charge a fraction of 0.125¢ to repair a wall, I have a second currency "repair points". 20rp cost 1¢, so if you need to repair something some conversions happen automatically.

Repairing all these wall pieces cost 18rp < 1¢ (they flash/smoke when damaged). You can also see that the saturation for the walls is 0...


17% saturation

[marcgfx]

Added two new towers, the Grinder and Bomb. The Grinder does melee damage, so it only hurts enemies that come in close. The Bomb explodes when destroyed, I've tried to make it so that it mostly explodes when the player attacks, but this still needs some tweaking.

[JobLeonard]

Any plans for synergy? In some games you have mechanics like "if you blow up your own landmine it does even more damage, but you might hurt yourself in the process"

[marcgfx]

Synergy is something I have a hard time wrapping my head around. One element strengthening a different, possibly unrelated element, right? I currently don't have any synergies of this sort at least and I don't know where to start. It sounds like a good thing though. In my mind I would need to add some kind of elemental stuff, e.g. Ice/Fire but maybe synergies can also work without that.

Synergie for this specific case, adding more power to the detonation if shot by the player, could be interesting. The thing is, the Bomb is supposed to be detonated by the player, at least that is what I want to happen. So it's not something unexpected. I don't want any self-harm for player elements. I used to have it (even bullet friendly fire), but there is so much going on already, I think it ends up being too much. If one player explosion causes harm, then I think all explosions should cause harm to be consistent.

[JobLeonard]

Probably a good call on friendly fire in general, yeah. Bullet hells are difficult enough already.

Elemental synergy is also interesting but I was thinking of something much simpler: detect if the bomb was destroyed by enemy damage or player damage. If it was player damage, make it explode bigger.

Alternatively keep track of player and enemy damage dealt to a bomb, and make damage output depend on ratios.

So, say a bomb has 100 hit points. Explosion damage = (5 * enemy damage + 10 * player damage), or something like that.

Or maybe the bomb is "charged" and decays over time (meaning less powerful explosions), and needs to be "damaged" by the player to charge up, but overcharging it causes it to explode.

Curious to see where you'll end up!

Many variations are possible here

[marcgfx]

Thanks for the example. I like the charging idea, think it could be very hard to visualize/make it understandable. I think this might work with something like an energy ball that grows bigger

I've checked out some videos on synergy and also did some thinking/remembering of stuff I have seen. I remember seeing things like reload synergies. Some special actions can fire on reload, so then you want to get your reload lower. Others might power up with longer reload time.

I remember another game where you had different slots you could fill, depending on how the slots were filled you received different bonuses.

Will have to think about this some more, maybe I can come up with something that works. Might just be for later. I'm already swamped with too much to do.

[marcgfx]

I've been giving some thought to what JobLeonard asked about synergy. It feels like something I have been overlooking completely. I've continued to add new stuff like crazy, but I have not really thought about how things work together, besides making sure that they can work together. Most of my mechanics work for themselves, but I am planning to add more connections. It's just good that it was brought to my attention :D

One of the simpler things is that you can now place the turrets that are tied to an ability as if they were buildings. They only show up to be placed now and then though. If you then also get the ability for these turrets, you can use them with the abilty.

While playtesting I came across a visibility issue. It's possible to build buildings where they are entirely covered by the pillars. I've now added a reveal around the players cursor. It looks a little strange, but maybe I just need to get used to it.

[Alain]

So cool to see how the system is evolving! I think it is fine to first add things like crazy and discard stuff later. It's a process

[marcgfx]

I always have quite a hard time discarding. I tend to try to make things work... oh well. Slow progress right now, lots of playtesting, making icons and fixing bugs.

Just now noticed my elliptical lasers still had a visual bug, sometimes a gap would appear. I wanted to have some kind of leed, so I decided to colorize the laser. I quickly found the bug, visual debugging aids really do help a lot.

[Alain]

That looks trippy :D

[JobLeonard]

Yeah, why not keep it? Go full "Vampire Survivors" in visual juice

[marcgfx]

hahaha, yeah.... I don't think it's a good idea. There is too much going on already, if I make the visuals unclear it will be bad.

Still working on tons of upgrades and other improvements.

Ran into a weird bug with some of the explosions and decided to visualize them with numbers. Fix was pretty easy, but it's interesting to see how many effects/explosions are active even when just moving around a bit (dust flying around)

[Alain]

There is not such a thing as "too many explosions".

[marcgfx]

There is not such a thing as "too many explosions".

Truer words have never been spoken.

I'm going to start posting more again. I haven't even taken many screenshots recently, although I was working intensely on various aspects of the game.

One of the big changes in a likely new release of Devader are the upgrades. Upgrade icons are all monochrome as anything else would be ludicrous for me alone. To differ between types of upgrades I use colors. Weapons for the chest cannon are yellow, orange for arm weapons. High power weapons that are activated with a dedicated button are pink, as you can see in the screen below. The nuke icon is currently selected.



The shop itself can be upgraded, adding more columns/rows/discounts. Upgrades are randomly listed, sometimes they can only be bought in packages of 2,3 or 4. Sometimes they come with a discount.

If an upgrade is too expensive it is visualized with diagonal lines. I originally made the price red and the text slanted, but it looked ugly. There will be an option to sell upgrades/units/buildings you currently own.

[Alain]

Great to hear about the upgrades! My feedback on the UI would be that the diagonal lines aren't the clearest indicator for unavailable upgrades. Just looking at the images, I noticed them as something special and asked myself what they mean, but I would not have guessed they mean "this is too expensive". As you say, you already experimented with the price being red, which you did not like. Maybe experiment with brightness?

[marcgfx]

I think you are right. Currently the ones you can't use are actually the ones that stand out. So maybe I need to color the background of the ones you can use. I can maybe layer over black lines to darken the ones that are too expensive. UI is one of the toughest things for me. I think it should feel more playfull, but still be visually clear. I find it very hard.

[Alain]

I think you are right. Currently the ones you can't use are actually the ones that stand out. So maybe I need to color the background of the ones you can use. I can maybe layer over black lines to darken the ones that are too expensive. UI is one of the toughest things for me. I think it should feel more playfull, but still be visually clear. I find it very hard.

Sounds like a plan! I agree, UI is crazy hard for me as well.

[marcgfx]

before selecting

after selecting


I think graying out might be the way to go.

---edit: not graying the borders

[marcgfx]

As I've decided to post more often, here I go. Devader has a few kinds of dashes, this evening I added a new kind, the graze-dash. It uses the already existing bullet-grazing mechanic within a dash and enhances it. It pretty much allows the player to wipe out bullets, but can't be used to dash through enemies. Still needs a bit more juice.

[Alain]

Cool, I like the lightning effect!