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[Bauxite]

The game has been released, see https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=58097.0

Get it here: https://bauxite.itch.io/black-diode

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Hello everyone, I've been working on a game for like 5-6 weeks ish and I'd like to start a devlog. Admittedly, it's going to be a short one, as I'm rushing to get the game done before I have to spend more time on my studies.







The game is called Black Diode and, as the title says, it's an electronic puzzle platformer. Electronic means, in this context, that the puzzles are based on electronic devices inside of a big and intricate machine, full of traps. You take control of a robotic drone stuck inside the machine, solving puzzles until salvation comes.

To avoid boring people with walls of text, here are some gifs of what I've got so far:


To read more about how the devices work exactly, and to get more regular updates, check my tumblr: http://bauxitedev.tumblr.com/

If you're wondering: who are you? Well, I'm a 20 year old computer science student from the Netherlands, and I have quite some experience with gamedev. This is one of my first projects with a blog and devlog and everything, and my first time participating in at least some kind of attempt at marketing (but the game will be free anyway). I'm a one man army by the way: I've made everything in the game myself except the fonts.

The engine is written in C++11 and SDL, and I've already implemented gamepad support, controller hotplugging, dynamic control prompts and other cool things.

[Bauxite]

Hope you guys don't mind if I bump this with some progress. What follows is a demonstration of the different kinds of signals that devices can send. The trigger pads send signals when you stand on them, and the gates open/close when they receive signals. Specifically, there are blue and green signals: blue triggers the device's primary action, and green turns them on or off, in which case they cannot receive any signals except green.

I've skipped over the details a bit, if you're interested in a more in-depth explanation see http://bauxitedev.tumblr.com/post/150409746285/more-complex-devices

The game is slowly but surely getting ready for release now, I just need to write some songs and add some more sound/particle effects.

[Bauxite]

Couldn't pass up the opportunity to post this here. Some of you might recognize Game of Life going on in the background of the main menu.

Other than that I'm working on the Windows port (been developing this on Linux so far) and the soundtrack.

[Tuba]

The puzzles look cool and I like the style but you might consider giving the main character a little more color so it can have a better contrast with the background.

The gif compression might be making it harder to see thought.

Anyway, good luck!

[Bauxite]

The puzzles look cool and I like the style but you might consider giving the main character a little more color so it can have a better contrast with the background.

The gif compression might be making it harder to see thought.

Anyway, good luck!

Thanks, and you're totally right about the player being too dark. I've made the player a bit brighter and I might consider adding a blinking light to it, to make it even more obvious where its current location is.

[JWest]

I'm a senior studying Computer Engineering Technology, so I'm pretty interested to see how you implement some of these electronic concepts as puzzle pieces.  Following for updates!

P.S. - Really diggin the logo

[Bauxite]

I'm a senior studying Computer Engineering Technology, so I'm pretty interested to see how you implement some of these electronic concepts as puzzle pieces.  Following for updates!

P.S. - Really diggin the logo

Thanks! I'll admit, I initially planned to add a huge array of electronic components to the game. Stuff like include capacitors, transistors, resistors, and even integrated circuits... but then I realized I ran out of time. I've changed scope so now my goal is to create one of those "short but sweet" games, so right now I have about 9 devices in the game.

Anyway, here's another gif. This is what the tutorial signs (aka memos) look like:
(note - tigsource seems to resize the image a bit so it becomes blurry, try right click -> view image)

As you can see, according to Tuba's suggestion I've also made the player sprite a bit brighter and added a blinking light to it, to make it more visible at a glance.

[Bauxite]

Admittedly most of the gifs I'm posting aren't really indicative of what I'm working on right now, as the devlog was started a bit later in development than usual, so I haven't mentioned everything in the game yet. In this case the two things I want to show are the timer and the laser. In this gif the timer sends a signal to the laser at a fixed rate, which then repeatedly turns on and off... and then kills the player.


Next time I might make a video with sound, so y'all can hear the progress on sound design and music as well. I actually spent quite a lot of time on that, as I think sound and music are both really underrepresented in video games in general.

[Bauxite]

Alright, done with the gifs, here's a gameplay video with actual sound and music:



As you can hear, I decided to go for a slightly experimental ambient soundtrack, also the first time I've composed music for any game.

The game is nearing completion as this point: the Windows port is already complete, the levels are finished, the music/sound is done, et cetera.

[Bauxite]

The game has been released, see https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=58097.0

Get it here: https://bauxite.itch.io/black-diode