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TIGSource ForumsCommunityDevLogsOperation Hardcore - 2D side-scrolling shooter
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« Reply #40 on: May 25, 2016, 04:40:54 PM »

Well, it's been a busy few weeks since I got back from the conference. Some of the highlights:

  • released 1.2, which includes most notably: rendering optimizations, a new intro/tutorial level, destructible blocks in several of the levels, and bigger explosions
  • released a follow-up patch (1.3.1) that fixed several bugs
  • sent a batch of preview/press keys via dodistribute.com (hoping to see a bit of activity in the next few days)

I've also got 1.3.2 just about ready to go, which will include, at the very least:
  • even more bug fixes
  • destructible crates (previously, they were one-shot), with bigger explosions!
  • more "destruction" to the intro/tutorial level, as well as some background ambience (creaking/cracking and whatnot)

And finally, I just realized that neither Ricardo or I shared this awesome piece!



We've used these not only for the intro cinematic and the coop player select screen, but we also had t-shirts printed Wink
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« Reply #41 on: May 28, 2016, 09:16:25 AM »

Here's a quick demo of the new crate behaviour in build 1.3.2, which is now live on Steam (two-stage destruction, bigger explosions, plus they now interact with grenades and rockets!)

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« Reply #42 on: May 30, 2016, 01:49:56 PM »

Meh, needs more explosions...



Better. Evil

New build uploaded to the beta branch: http://steamcommunity.com/games/395550/announcements/detail/611741000281301065
« Last Edit: May 30, 2016, 01:56:13 PM by snugsound » Logged

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« Reply #43 on: June 29, 2016, 02:04:06 PM »

I've been experimenting with a "charging laser" behaviour in an effort to add more variety and uniqueness to the different weapons. Check it out:



This is now live in the beta branch along with a bunch of other fun stuff, including more screen-shake, bigger bullets, better camera tracking, whiskey pick-ups (previously, whiskey could only be purchased between levels), and new weapon icons.

Going forward I'm going to be tracking changes to the beta branch via this Steam community discussion.
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« Reply #44 on: June 30, 2016, 07:58:53 AM »

I've also been playing around with Ferr2D, a really awesome 2D terrain creation tool for Unity, which I highly recommended:



I'm going to try to resist the urge to update all of my tile-based maps, and instead, be strategic by only updating segments of levels that would benefit the most from the more "organic" platforms that can be achieved with Ferr2D. We'll see how that goes.

One thing's for sure, I'll definitely be using this for future levels and 2D projects! (well, depending on how things go with Unity's own 2D tools... one of which looks strikingly similar to this)
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« Reply #45 on: July 04, 2016, 01:38:45 PM »

Here's a quick demo of the new velocity-based knock-back which I implemented over the weekend. It makes for all kinds of frantic and crazy randomness, especially in some of the later boss fights (in fact, I revamped a couple of them to really play off of this):



I'm pretty happy with how it turned out! This supersedes the previous (rather clunky) approach of "immediate re-positioning", and also extends to player weapon recoil.

This went live yesterday in build 1.5 along with a ton of new stuff. Full details here.
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« Reply #46 on: July 09, 2016, 08:20:03 AM »

I took some time this week to redo the UI in a more "minimalist" style, inspired by NES menus. I think it suits the overall aesthetic of the game much better and the initial impressions of others seem to concur. Here are some before/after shots:



This is now live in the current beta branch on Steam (1.5.1) and will likely be promoted to the main branch over the weekend.
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« Reply #47 on: August 15, 2016, 03:33:55 PM »

Well, I finally bit the bullet and upgraded Unity. First from 5.2.3 to 5.3.5, and then to 5.4.0. Overall, no major issues. In fact it went a lot more smoothly than past upgrades.

I'm happy to see they finally fixed an issue that was causing me major grief: rotations on negatively scaled objects now behave as one would expect them to! (obviously negatively scaling an object is not really ideal, but kind of a necessary evil in a 2D side-scroller IMO). Suffice to say, it took a bit of refactoring to remove all the hacks I had put in to work around this, but well worth it.

Subsequently, we're now in a much better position for the Xbox One port, which we intend to start in the next few weeks (we'll be demoing an early build at this year's Hal-Con in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada)

And on that note, I'd like to announce that build 1.6 is now live on Steam. Highlights includes better explosions, more blood, floating gib, PLUS improved rendering performance (thanks to the 5.4.0 upgrade). (full details)

Here's a quick demo scene showing off some of the new stuff:




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« Reply #48 on: September 04, 2016, 12:43:31 PM »

I recently started experimenting with a health meter/health pick-ups (via enemy gib Wink) in an effort to balance the difficulty and make the game a bit more accessible. Overall, I'm happy with how it turned out. The changes make it a bit easier to "storm" a level, but also easier to become over-confident, so I'd call it an even trade-off.



I've adjusted the difficulty settings accordingly:
  • Easy:  3 lives /  double health recovery
  • Medium: 3 lives / normal recovery
  • Hard: 1 life / normal recovery
  • Hardcore Badass: 1 life / 50% recovery

I've also removed enemy projectile speed scaling; projectiles are now the same speed regardless of difficulty.

This is live in the beta branch on Steam now, feedback is very much welcomed/appreciated before we push it to the main branch!
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« Reply #49 on: October 09, 2016, 10:45:03 AM »

Has it been a month already? How time flies! After a brief diversion--an idea in my head that I had to get out--it's back on track with OH.

The focus right now is two-fold:
  • replacing free/open game tilesets with original ones
  • preparing for Hal-Con, which is now less than a month away!

Regarding the former, as you can see above we've totally overhauled the City tileset. We've also made decent headway on the Forest and Cave tilesets:





For Hal-Con, the plan is to demo an early Xbox One build of the game. I'm still trying to figure out the best way to go about this. Originally, I had hoped to run an "internal beta", but this is proving more difficult than I had thought. I'm now looking at the possibility of doing a UWP build, and putting their consoles in consumer "dev mode" to load it.


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« Reply #50 on: October 20, 2016, 12:59:39 PM »

Beta build 1.8 uploaded to Steam:

  • possible fix for blur shader left on camera whem gamepad unplugged
  • fix for whiskey pickup giving player shield instead of whiskey
  • Cave: fix for missing ambient music
  • new challenges levels (2 for now, more to come)
  • Cave, Cave Secret: visual and design updates
  • Mountain: visual and design updates
  • Mountain: move boss camera target up a bit
  • Mountain: split map into separate segments to improve rendering performance
  • Infected Planet: visual and design updates
  • Infected Planet: push cacti and fire-breathing heads back a bit so gore pieces render in front
  • water drops in secret cave now use 2D physics/collisions
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« Reply #51 on: November 14, 2016, 07:50:40 AM »

Hey there! Ricardo here. It's been a while since I last posted. We've been hard at work fixing bugs, polishing the visuals, tweaking and balancing difficulty and level design, etc.



Hal-Con happened and the game was showcased, running on Xbox One hardware. It's always exciting to have people try the game after all the hard work, and especially so as we have it running on console hardware! Sadly I wasn't able to be there and share the experience with Adam. I also missed his panel on game development with Unity. Still, I'm sure this will change sometime in the future!

As we get ready for full release, Build 1.8.2 is now live and includes the folowing:

Fixes
  • possible fix for blur shader left on camera whem gamepad unplugged
  • fix for whiskey pickup giving player shield instead of whiskey
  • Cave: fix for missing ambient music
  • Infected Planet Secret: fix for rockets exploding when hitting botttom of clouds
  • Forest: fix for ambience missing
  • Alien Ship Boss: fix for missing respawn icon
  • Alien Ship Boss: fix for duplicated bloom effect

New Features/Improvements
  • new challenge levels (3 for now, more to come)
  • Apartment: visual and design updates
  • City: visual updates
  • Mountain: visual and design updates
  • Mountain: move boss camera target up a bit
  • Mountain: split map into separate segments to improve rendering performance
  • Infected Planet: visual and design updates
  • Infected Planet: push cacti and fire-breathing heads back a bit so gore pieces render in front
  • water drops in secret cave now use 2D physics/collisions
  • remove player collider (fixes isue with player "pushing" pick-ups before collecting them, also fixes issue with coins being double-counted)
  • increase projectile glow
  • increase ambient light for most levels
  • update act intro images to match recent visual updates
  • add light to player shield

Known Issues
  • touching edges of elevator when grounded triggers movement

I also wrote a post on our blog about the work done to update graphics all around. You can check it out here.

See you around guys and gals. Happy game developing (and gaming!)  Beer!
« Last Edit: November 14, 2016, 10:14:09 AM by Keops » Logged

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« Reply #52 on: December 10, 2016, 09:51:37 AM »

Well, we're ramping up for full release! We spent last weekend making a ton of visual updates, including several new backgrounds, tileset updates, improved weapon sprites, improved particle FX, etc. Overall, I'm quite happy with how things are shaping up.

Here's the new palette and background for the Infected Planet Level, for example:


And a totally overhauled tileset and parallax background for the Super Secret level:


This week, I captured a bunch (~30GB) of footage for the release trailer, and have started piecing it together today. Once we've wrapped up the trailer we'll deal with the nit-picky functional/design stuff (finalizing par scores/times, fixing UI quirks, etc.).

The only other big thing is the difficulty; we introduced a health system a while back, and I think it's made things a bit too easy. The good news is we have many ways to increase difficulty across the different difficulty settings (number of starting lives, damage scaling, health pick-up scaling, etc.).
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« Reply #53 on: December 17, 2016, 09:19:47 AM »



Using the close-up / portrait sprites with some old-school arcade-ish bgs  Hand Any Key This might be added to the final cut of the release trailer but I think it's cool enough to share with the world.
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« Reply #54 on: December 22, 2016, 09:05:59 AM »

Release trailer is done, just putting the finishing touches on the final build and then we're going to pull the trigger on the full release, probably some time next week!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=382ox8J8Ptg&feature=youtu.be
« Last Edit: December 22, 2016, 10:22:00 AM by snugsound » Logged

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« Reply #55 on: December 22, 2016, 10:08:53 AM »

Wow, you've done a really great job in a bit more than a year. How many of you were working on the game?
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« Reply #56 on: December 31, 2016, 05:56:55 AM »

Wow, you've done a really great job in a bit more than a year. How many of you were working on the game?

Thanks! It's just two of us
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« Reply #57 on: May 08, 2018, 02:55:40 PM »

Wow, long time no post! I've largely been focused on my next game, Undermine, but Operation Hardcore lives on. I've been working with Greenlight Games on a port for the Switch which is just going through certification now.

Here's a little promo image I put together for that:



As part of the process I had to upgrade Unity--twice--which meant quite a bit of regression testing, and quite a few bugs to deal with, but it seems pretty stable now. I haven't released a PC or macOS build on the new Unity version yet but it's in the plans.

I've also been contemplating adding some features that didn't make it in for the original release, such as a map screen.

Here's a prototype I put together over the course of a day or so.



As much as I don't want to lose focus on Undermine, it would be nice to be able to offer some new content shortly after the Switch release.
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« Reply #58 on: June 26, 2018, 05:39:00 AM »

I recently spent a bit of time playing around with Unity's Anima2D as I'd like to start using skeletal animation for everything going forward; it feels much more "fluid" than sprite-sheet-based anims and it's something I can do myself with my limited art skills. It was a bit clunky to set up, but just from my couple hours of playing around it seems quite powerful!

I figured I might as well make my R&D time count by creating something I could use in the future (i.e. for an Operation Hardcore Halloween DLC... someday). Here's the result:



This actually my first ever walk-cycle! I would say it's not half-bad for a first try, but I welcome your feedback. (my notes: I don't know that the head-bob quite makes sense for the walk cycle, although I am going for something kinda clunky/awkward. And I think the legs should swing forward a bit more, they have a slight bias towards the back as it is.)
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