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TIGSource ForumsCommunityDevLogsSuper Daryl Deluxe - A comedy action-RPG
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Author Topic: Super Daryl Deluxe - A comedy action-RPG  (Read 8500 times)
Codebread
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« Reply #40 on: January 10, 2017, 09:49:08 AM »

Status Effects

We have stuns in the game already, but I've just added poison and burning as well. Burning was a tough problem to solve visually, but in the end we decided to have an orange glow drawn over affected enemies along with a randomly placed ball of fire. We'll update the little fireball in the future, I'm just using the fire from a torch temporarily.

I've also made it so some enemies take extra damage from burning (Tree Ents, for example).



Mini weather system

This one we did on a whim and it turned out pretty cool. While working on some new areas for Chapter 2 we thought it would be cool to reuse the rain we had in the very beginning of the game. I added a few random timers and now we have a small rain system that randomly fades in and out, even darkening the screen a bit when it begins to rain. Small touches like this, although simple to do, really bring the areas to life.

We might continue doing different effects like this in future areas.

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Codebread
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« Reply #41 on: January 17, 2017, 01:47:34 PM »

Working on some really wacky scenarios for CH2 right now. For the sake of weekly phun pix, here's a screenshot:


I'm putting a lot of emphasis into weird side quests now. I think that sort of thing is important in RPGs to get a break from the story. However, I don't want to go the OG Assassin's Creed route and just have the same type of side quests repeated a hundred times. Due to the game's mechanics and engine (and because it was originally inspired by 2D MMOs that I used to play) a lot of side quests will be things like, "Collect 10 radioactive carrots" or "Slay 20 sentient keyboards", but I'm beginning to branch out and it's been a lot of fun. This particular side quest involves building lemonade-stand-esque booths all around the school.
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Codebread
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« Reply #42 on: January 17, 2017, 01:56:37 PM »

Oh my god, I can't believe I didn't think of this sooner. His name is now, "Tree Entrepreneur".

Because he's a Tree Ent.

That was a close one; can't let jokes like that slip by.
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Codebread
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« Reply #43 on: January 22, 2017, 10:55:57 AM »

New map with randomly generated, falling leaves


I spent too long working on getting these leaves to look just right, but I think it was worth it for the effect. We're trying something new here and making one large map instead of 3 smaller maps with a similar setting. I'm digging it.
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Mahn
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« Reply #44 on: January 22, 2017, 02:12:34 PM »

Very interesting premise and art direction, one can't never have enough comedy RPGs like these Grin All the best to you guys, looking forward to see it released.
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Codebread
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« Reply #45 on: January 23, 2017, 08:42:39 AM »

Very interesting premise and art direction, one can't never have enough comedy RPGs like these Grin All the best to you guys, looking forward to see it released.

Thank you! No one looks forward to release more than us, lemme tell ya.

In other news... big day today!

Last week we wrapped up our internal play testing (i.e me running through the game for hours) for the first 33% of the game. We're still missing VO and a few tiny things here and there, but ultimately I'm happy with it. It's certainly at a beta state finally, I would say. Because CH1 is now finished* I've bumped our progress bar up to 50%!

My plan is to bump the bar up 10% for every chapter that is finished*. We have four more chapters left, which leaves us with the final 10% for any tweaks and polish that need to be made. In theory the bar should go up 10% at the end of each 3 month cycle. The next cycle finishes at the end of March. We were a bit delayed with CH1's cycle because of the holidays, though Dan and I (the two main developers) actually finished our work and had moved onto CH2 by the end of December. So we're still on track.

Anyway, this is exciting and my plan is to send this beta build of the first 1/3rd of the game to our Kickstarter backers to get their thoughts. No one has played the game extensively yet... we've only shown vertical slices. I hope everything comes together well.

Oh, and as for the length of the first 33% of the game...


4 hours and 17 minutes, and that save is before the boss fight. I did absolutely everything that CH1 had to offer (except farm a mini boss for it's rare loot drops), so I imagine it will be 5-6 hours for anyone else. Phew, this is going to be a long game!

*By finished I mean done with main development. Tweaks will be made eventually, and there's still VO to be added, but the main content is DONE!
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Mahn
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« Reply #46 on: January 23, 2017, 01:16:31 PM »

That's going to be one long game Grin Hopefully not too much grinding involved? 4 hours can be both awesome or a drag depending on how repetitive it is.

Also, did you consider putting out an early beta/demo to start collecting feedback? Since this is going to be structured by chapters, it would be doable to have a one chapter demo out. No pressure, just thinking out loud of ways to get you feedback early.
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Codebread
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« Reply #47 on: January 23, 2017, 01:24:06 PM »

That's going to be one long game Grin Hopefully not too much grinding involved? 4 hours can be both awesome or a drag depending on how repetitive it is.

Also, did you consider putting out an early beta/demo to start collecting feedback? Since this is going to be structured by chapters, it would be doable to have a one chapter demo out. No pressure, just thinking out loud of ways to get you feedback early.

There isn't much grinding so far; I think the most time I spent "grinding" was maybe 8-10 minutes killing a specific enemy for their loot so I could complete a quest, but I could have purchased those from a shop NPC if I wanted to.

I'm actually in the first round of beta testing the first 33% right now, talking with a few early testers to stomp out any consistent bugs before I send it to a larger group. We've found a few bugs so far that I really need to fix. I'm hesitant to put out a demo for each part because we'll be continuously adding things (like VO and stuff) to these early demos. However, I am definitely going to be having small play tests for each chapter.

Since you asked, if you want to try out this first 3rd of the game I'd be happy to send you the link when I get it stable (probably tomorrow or Wednesday)! Just PM me your email or something. I'm looking for some testers that aren't close friends of mine to be honest with me about the direction the game is taking.
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« Reply #48 on: January 30, 2017, 12:38:18 PM »

Last week I spent a ton of time fixing bugs and adding a few clarifications into the game in response to playtester feedback.

Nothing super significant and nothing worth a screenshot or gif.

I did, however, create a crafting menu and system after sleeping on the idea for the last few weeks. Here's a screenshot of it in game. The equipment he has available are all missing their actual sprites because they're brand new, and the BUY button is stolen from another menu. In short, some art needs to be created, but the functionality is there.


Whenever you see Brawley the Blacksmith around and speak to him, you'll have access to this menu. If it's your first time speaking to him in a new area you'll unlock that area's craftable equipment. The plan is to make the equipment stronger than anything you'll find lying around, but you'll need to farm supplies and spend a decent chunk of money to make them.
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Codebread
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« Reply #49 on: February 09, 2017, 09:10:57 AM »

We've been working on a new area of the game over the last week or so. Or rather, Dan has been, while I spend time fixing bugs and making small adjustments based on play-tester feedback. Here's a coolio 'lil gif teaser:


I also finally got around to building the blog for our website. When we had our old website I enjoyed writing longer blog posts about whatever random shit I could think of. Building our website myself was a challenge that I wanted to complete for developer pride reasons, but also to save money month to month. Most of the website has been done for a while, but the blog posed a particular problem because the website is static, which means I can't have an online blog editor/posting feature.

I ended up using Hugo (a static website generator) to generate the blog offline, then I added it to my website in a hacky way that I won't go into. In any case, it's up and hosted and I'm only spending $0.50 a month on the entire thing.

Here's the blog (might have to clear cache if you've visited before and see the "Coming Soon" page: https://danandgarygames.com/blog

Dan will have to create a better background and banner, but I'm happy with it for now. The downside is that I spent two days doing it and now all of the desire I had to write something is gone.
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Codebread
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« Reply #50 on: February 14, 2017, 12:30:28 PM »

These last few days have been almost all boss design, which is easily my least favorite part of the game development process. It also ends up being very rewarding once the boss is finished.

The nature of our game makes boss designs difficult because of the sheer amount of ways the player can play the game. Bosses are typically made to test the players skills or reinforce their efficiency with a newly obtained ability or item, but neither of those necessarily apply to SDD because the player can constantly change their play style at any rate they want to.

My focus instead is to make the fights really unique, funny, and epic in their own ways. For example, the boss I'm currently designing is the first enemy in the game so far that can actually jump, and he tends to react to your damage by evading and counter attacking. This will make the fight unique by itself, but then we put a lot of focus on the character of the fight-- the game is a comedy so we want to make the bosses goofy. Typically this extends to the environment as well; we don't normally have a lot of moving parts in the background, but for bosses we want to step everything up and make it feel like a reward for the player.

Generally the boss development cycle goes like this:

1) Design attacks/behavior
2) Implement, discover the boss is too smart or difficult to beat
3) Nerf boss
4) Add alpha-level art
5) Play test a bunch and tweak as necessary
6) Add finalized art
7) Balance

This will typically take a couple of weeks at least, and by the end of it I end up thinking it's complete garbage. That tends to happen when you stare at something for two weeks straight though, so as long as I can walk away from it for a while and come back satisfied with it, I'm happy.

I might post gifs of this boss when we get the art in, but I'm not sure. This is the mid-game boss and is a sizable spoiler, so I most likely won't.
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Codebread
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« Reply #51 on: February 20, 2017, 01:02:50 PM »

More boss design. Boo. I am happy with the way this boss has turned out, though. I think it's the most satisfying fight in the game so far because his moves are very telegraphed, but take skill to avoid. You can feel yourself getting better as you fight him longer.

Other than that I added a three-step side quest chain that involves two of our Kickstarter backer NPCs. It's pretty hilarious and might be the most fuckin' bonkers questline in the game so far. It involves the spirit of two dead Christmas Elves, but I won't say any more than that. I might share some art once I get it.

Lastly, due to a lot of feedback from players saying they rarely used their Map Page in their Notebook, I added a convenient Quick Map feature. Your current area will be overlayed on the screen if you hold down the corresponding key/button (right now it's SPACE or Up on the D-Pad, but likely to change for controllers).


I like this solution a lot. Some of our testers were saying it's too easy to get lost, but when asked if they used the map page, they would say no. Other testers used the map page a lot and really like the open-world aspect and how little the game holds your hand. I didn't want to add a big ass "GO HERE" sign on the map, or any indicator in the game world that points you in the right direction (like a big "GO ->" arrow) because it would make the game too simple.

By adding this overlayed map I'm simply taking information that you already have and making it more accessible (i.e you no longer have to open up a menu and break the flow of gameplay). Of course, I kept the regular Map Menu in the player's Notebook so they can search through the maps of other areas, scroll around, zoom in and out, and all of the other features that come with using the full map.
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Codebread
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« Reply #52 on: March 08, 2017, 08:40:26 AM »

Just got back from GDC a few days ago and it's right back to work for us.

GDC was great, it was the first time we went as attendees instead of exhibitors so we were able to walk around and have meetings instead of standing at a booth all day.

There's not much to share from the whole experience that people would find interesting, except this: I would highly recommend reaching out to your connections at Microsoft/Sony/Nintendo if you're a game developer and you want to develop on their platform. See if they want to meet up for a little bit at GDC. Meeting people in person is a really good way to establish a relationship with them and you never know what might come of it.

Anyway, as for development, we're focusing on wrapping Chapter 2 up right now and we're moving at lightspeed. I'm going to PAX this weekend to meet with more people, too, so we need to really get as much work in as possible. Voice acting has been on our list of urgent things, but due to the voice actors strike we have to find VAs ourselves.

Anyway, here's an image of a cutscene.

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Xonatron
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« Reply #53 on: March 13, 2017, 06:13:01 AM »

I'm in! Glad to meet you guys at GDC and PAX East!
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Matthew Doucette, Xona Games
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« Reply #54 on: March 13, 2017, 08:51:24 AM »

I'm in! Glad to meet you guys at GDC and PAX East!

Hey Matt! Likewise, I'm glad we ran into you guys.


Another week means another post. Not much happened with development last week because of GDC and PAX, but I did add a new skill to the game, along with a scavenger-hunt style optional objective in the area we're currently working on.

The giant scope of our game has forced us to trim the fat a bit(I'm sure I've said this a lot in the past), but I don't want to get rid of every optional task or secret in the game. This content might seem like "fluff" while we make it, but having nothing but main quests and story to focus on will make the game seem more linear... which is something we don't want.

As for our timeline, things are REALLY right right now. This particular sprint was packed with things to work on and our week long trip to GDC+PAX made it worse. I think it's possible to finish all that we have scheduled, but I wouldn't be surprised if it bleeds into April a bit. If that happens we'll have to look for some smaller things to cut from the next chapter to make up for lost time.

Hopefully I'll have a visual update next week.
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Codebread
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« Reply #55 on: March 21, 2017, 10:25:14 AM »

I spent a few days last week working on a new mini-boss (and thankfully it's the last big piece of the puzzle for this part of the game). This enemy has really unique movements and attack patterns compared to anything else in the game, and that made it a pretty difficult boss to create.



The collision detection was difficult to do using only rectangles because the movement is so sporadic and in so many different directions. I originally decided to try pixel to pixel collision detection using the tutorial I found here:

http://xbox.create.msdn.com/en-US/education/catalog/tutorial/collision_2d_perpixel_transformed

It works by taking a texture and breaking it up into individual pixels, forming a 2-dimensional array of colors, then checking each pixel against the player's pixels to see if there's a collision. If your sprite is 100x100 that means you have an array that has a total of 10000 colors in it. Unfortunately the snake's sprites are huge, so I was ending up with an array of over 2 million colors. Looping through that every frame destroyed my performance (I was down to around 3-5 fps), so I decided that this wasn't the correct solution.

You can't rotate rectangles in XNA/Monogame so I couldn't easily cover the snake's movements, particularly the diagonal or corner movements, so I decided to make it so only the snake's head deals damage if you're hit by it while he's flying around. It was much easier to just attach a rectangle to his head and check collisions there.

The sad part is this also killed a couple of the more cool attack ideas (I wanted a giant laser that rotated around the room), but we'll live without them. To make up for it I added a couple different types of bouncing spit globs that he spits out as he moves around the room. One is a poison type that bursts into a puddle of poison, and the other is a flash-bomb thing that stuns you if you get hit by it.

Another issue we faced was trying to keep the snake moving quickly, but still allowing the player to avoid getting hit if they react fast enough. We solved this by adding the lines in the background that glow red when the snake is about to emerge from a hole. It only gives a few seconds warning, but it's enough to get out of the way. The best part is that it means we don't have to delay the snake at all; he can just slither around at full speed (which is what a giant snake would realistically do I imagine) and let the red lines indicate where the player shouldn't be.

Overall I'm pretty happy with this early version of it. It plays well, feels hectic, and relies on quick reflexes.
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Xonatron
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« Reply #56 on: March 21, 2017, 11:35:38 AM »

Interesting you are referencing the old Xbox LIVE Indie Games site. I wonder how long they'll keep that alive for. I have actually downloaded all of it -- all that I could as some links and downloads were broken -- in preparation for a doomsday. It's a great resource for all indie devs coding their own engines.

http://xbox.create.msdn.com/
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Matthew Doucette, Xona Games
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« Reply #57 on: March 21, 2017, 11:37:56 AM »

I've used it in the past for tutorials like this; I'm really glad it's there. I should probably download all of it as well.

Their method of pixel collision is great, I just wish that I could use it. If I did some tricky things I'm sure I could figure it out (like only calculating the area that the player is located in), but it's messy and I just didn't have the time to do it.
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Codebread
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« Reply #58 on: April 18, 2017, 01:27:57 PM »

Ooh boy, it's been a really busy few weeks. Almost a month actually, yikes.

As it goes with most projects, things are going slower than we planned, so we sat down and restructured a lot of the second half of the game. After taking a step back and realizing how much content we already have, we thought it would be a good idea to find creative ways to incorporate old content into the second half as opposed to creating only brand new things going forward. It took about a week of planning, but we did it and I think our game is going to be much better for it. Not only have we shaved off a bunch of development time, but we are doing some really cool things with the story now that we weren't doing before.

I took inspiration from other metroidvanias here: back-tracking adds content and story without necessarily creating a bunch of brand new assets. I didn't want to add typical back tracking though (i.e just re-running through old areas), so we're putting a bit of a spin on it... I can't be less vague without spoiling a ton of stuff though, so we'll keep it at that.

As promised, here's a version of that Asp boss with the finalized art. I'm really happy with how it turned out, both visually and gameplay-wise.


We're almost back on track now, but there's still a lot of work to be done. I'll probably be kicking the completion bar up to 60% within the next couple of weeks.
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Xonatron
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« Reply #59 on: April 18, 2017, 02:06:19 PM »

It's such an interesting game. Nice to see you continue to forge ahead!
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Matthew Doucette, Xona Games
- devlogs: xona.com/tigsource
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