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[CleanShirt21]

The Meridian Age

I've neglected my little devlog here but have been working on the game this whole time, probs even harder!
I've gotten to the stage where I need to put proper sound effects in. It's the only part of the game I am not keen on tackling, and I would love to find a talented sfx artists to help me with this. Watch the video below to get a feel for the game and the soundtrack. I will need around 50 sound effects, perhaps more. Please PM your rates and portfolio. Thanks

[Retroopla]

Hey hey! Star Wars meets cyberpunk? Great idea... The combat system looks nice. I definitely want to see more 

[CleanShirt21]

Thanks Retroopla! I guess there's the light sabre like weapon, but it won't be that star wars inspired. Maybe more blade runner esque!

[CleanShirt21]

Update #1:



Spent this week implementing a new enemy, drawing the sprites and implementing it's moves.

I also finally fixed some problems with the rolling. Basically, rolling is used as a mechanism to leap across an enemy in your way, while also providing you with some i-frames. As well as the i-frames, the first few frames were rollable frames, which meant that if you were colliding with an enemy during these frames youd be able to go through them. Though I implemented it a while ago, there were some bugs that I hadn't resolved until this week. If your roll ended while you were still within an enemy, you could become stuck, which initially I resolved by automatically performing another dive automatically. There was also a bug in that if you'd gone through a character, youd be able to go through any subsequent character during that roll because I never resetted the rollable flag until the end of the roll (this was done on purpose, so you wouldnt stop rolling while still inside a character).

I never felt these solutions were ideal so I set out to fix it properly. I made checks that if the rollable frames had elapsed but you were still within an enemy, you'd continue to go through the enemy, but once you weren't colliding with any enemy, it was reset to false. I had tried a few things before hand and I was glad I was able to come up with a simple, more efficient solution that worked. The fallback for the auto roll is still there but I haven't seen it kick in (or need to which is the important part!) since implementing this fix.

Another thing I added this week were little tweaks to the enemy ai's to improve mob behaviour. If you aggro a few enemies, they can start to follow very similar AI patterns while chasing and attacking you, all the way down to the timing. To make it a little more dynamic and spread, I made it so that an enemy that has been set to start an attack resets the "when to attack counter" of the enemies around it. This little fix works surprisingly well.

[CleanShirt21]

Update #2



This week didn't feel as productive, didn't accomplish as much as I would have liked. Had to spend time fixing a bug in the ladders, which I will go over properly on how I did them in a later update. Started drawing a new area, and properly designing the first one. Also been working on the soundtrack, mainly trying to find the main direction I want to take it in. Have composed a few songs that may or may not make it into the game, but more than anything just trying to find the right textures right now and listening to stuff for inspiration. Definitely have had the chrono trigger, hyper light drifter, and bloodborne soundtracks on repeat! A bit of symphony of the night too.

The main progress I've made this week involve the implementation of terminals and elevators. Basically, elevators are initially disabled until you interact with the terminal next to them. Terminals will be used for other things too. The main purpose of the terminal is to prevent the player from just running and diving through every enemy and forcing them to stop and face the enemies to progress.

By interacting with terminal, the player starts typing away, initiating a screen that starts filling lines. If you get interrupted (ie take damage) before all the lines are filled then the process is cut off and must be started again. If it goes through successfully the elevator is activated.

Elevators, once activated, will sit just below the platform horizontal level if the character isnt on, and stay above a few pixels if they have arrived at their destination. This is to make sure that the character is able to get on and off properly. Once the character is on the elevator platform, it is parented to it's transform in order to move it up and down with it. Once the player steps off its deparented. Works really well so far. The elevator is still a bit rough though and I would like to add more of a reaction with the stop and also have to add some animation to the ropes.

Hoping to get a lot more done next week, already a bit behind on my schedule!

[CleanShirt21]

Update 3:

Most of this week I spent experimenting with different ways to animate a character. Though I think I will pixel most characters frame by frame, I do want some segmented ones too as well as a few animated by physics. This week I really wanted to get one in that used both. This took a lot longer than I wanted as I had to get properly reacquainted with joints and I struggled a bit with a few of Unity's "pecularities".

https://twitter.com/wrathandjustice/status/833857822446153728

Eventually I managed to get something going, though will still need a fair bit of tweaking on those anims and will have to do the AI properly (have a few more moves in mind for it). I had also earlier animated some background creature things that are part of the game's world. For these, I used Puppet2D, making a mesh from a sprite.

The other big thing I got in last week was dialogues. I had written a dialogue box for my old game, and reused it here. Unfortunately, I found some bugs which I didn't remember being there before (how do those little things keep creeping in?!), but I managed to sort it out. I really don't like coding stuff like dialogue systems but all the other ones I've tried seemed to be lacking in some way. The most important thing for me is that the system would look ahead and know when to start a new line, I've noticed a lot of editors sorta start typing a word and it reaches the end and its half completed and in a very janky manner it gets put to a new line. This was much trickier to solve than I imagined, though it didn't help that I implemented this in the most convoluted way imaginable! Anyway, last week of work before 10 days holidays, hoping I can get real productive on game development during the break!

[wuuthrer]

The art style caught my eyes. I like how you managed to design everything in a purple / fushia color. Also, j'aime beaucoup ce que vous faîtes.

[ｂ∀ ｋｋｕｓａ]

"attendez-vous, s'il vous plait" seems to be an incorrect usage of french. i don't think you should use google for translations. Should use "attendez un instant (un moment),s'il vous plait" or "veuillez patienter , s'il vous plait"

combat in the game seems quite solid already, good luck in this project.

[CleanShirt21]

The art style caught my eyes. I like how you managed to design everything in a purple / fushia color. Also, j'aime beaucoup ce que vous faîtes.

I am quite limited artistically so I am trying to keep a consistent and coherent colour range for each area, I feel like by doing that I am able to maximize my capabilities. I do quite like those colours too, part of me wants to make the whole game in that palette but I have been experimenting with different shades for different areas. Merci beaucoup!

"attendez-vous, s'il vous plait" seems to be an incorrect usage of french. i don't think you should use google for translations. Should use "attendez un instant (un moment),s'il vous plait" or "veuillez patienter , s'il vous plait"

combat in the game seems quite solid already, good luck in this project.

My francais is terrible despite paying for two semesters of lessons, so dont mind that! The line of dialogue was actually from a Bob Dylan song that I happened to be listening to at the time (He rhymes the line with "Black Diamond Bay"!). I originally had a more boring line of "test" and "test2" but I wanted to have something more interesting there.

Thank you! I was surprised I was able to get the combat flowing how I wanted it too without too much trouble. I do have experience from a previous game I was working on where I had something like it implemented, so that definitely helped.

[SolS]

Yeah the art looks great! The addition of those skeleton enemies are what caught my eye most, really gives the atmosphere an even more unique and memorable feel.

[CleanShirt21]

Thanks SolS! Enemy design is hard, still trying to come up with some more disturbing designs that stand out.

Update #4:
Long time since a devlog update, but I have been consistently working on the game. Some weeks more consistently than others! I'll go through a few of the major changes below.



Been working on drawing lots of new areas, working out the main destinations and connections. This is the path that connects the town (which acts as the hub really) and an abandoned campus to the west. I was too lazy to code my own reflection code so I used an asset from the asset store! The thought of doing it myself brought up bad memories of coding gl extensions and Direct3D render textures back in the day!
Anyway, the asset worked really well until I actually compiled a stand alone build, upon which it decided to stop working. Finally got it going by doing a 64 build. Might be a unity bug, the asset developer hasn't exactly been helpful with a fix.

https://twitter.com/wrathandjustice/status/833849251587190784

These guys are one of the new enemy types thats I've implemented. They belong to a militia that commands some power at the beginning of the game. There are two variations on display here, one with a shotgun and the other one with a pistol. Aside from the obvious differences in their firepower, the shotgun guy is more aggressive, advancing as he fires, while the pistol guy backs off with each shot.
The shotgun guy is rendered as two sprites, which I kind of needed to do to implement the ability to have him shoot and walk at the same time. Was my first experience using unity animation layers, and while they werent too tough to figure out, it's probably something I'd rather minimise.

https://twitter.com/wrathandjustice/status/833853830424956928

The militia guys have ammo, and once they run out they switch to their melee weapons. They also change their attacking styles, where as now the shotgun guy is more defensive and vice versa. Also, the shotgun guy can activate an electric barrier which prevents you from rolling through him.

https://twitter.com/wrathandjustice/status/833855187055833088

This is just a simple example of the dialogue tree system I've recently implemented. The dialogue rendering has been implemented for some time, but since the game features characters who's dialogue will regularly change as events happen, I needed to come up with a dialogue system that would allow the correct text to be drawn at the right time.

All the game's dialogue is defined by key in a csv file, which I did to make it easy to come up with alternative language files without repeating redundant information. The actual dialogue choice system is defined in xml for files for their corresponding characters. Each dialogue object in the file will include a set of conditions which have to be met for it to be chosen (referencing the games's global dictionary of properties). If it is chosen, there can be a group of properties defined to be set upon it's choosing. This way a character's dialogue state can be advanced through a conversation. Below is the corresponding xml definition for the conversation above:



As you can see, after triggering the initial conversation, the meeting flag has been set and any subsequent triggering of dialogue will go straight to the second option.

[jctwood]

The ghostly whites are really brilliant, look forward to seeing more!

[nu_muso]

Love the background art; great detail

[CleanShirt21]

Thanks guys! This is my first time doing art for a full game, it's definitely the craft I am least confident in when it comes to game development, but I've been quite content with what I've managed to achieve. The only issue is that as I get better I am finding myself less content with previous tile sets and sprites and I want to go back and redo them. Hoping to limit that as I can see the game being indefinitely delayed with that attitude.

[nu_muso]

The art is really good. Your game will never be perfect and as you get better with things you'll want to change previous work, as you mentioned. But at the end of the day, I think its good to look at the big picture. You have an awesome game, that's way better than a lot of the stuff I've seen out here and you should be proud of that

[CleanShirt21]

Yeah, its a constant balancing act between having something good enough or trying to make it really stand out. I did spend more time in the background sky because it's an asset that is shared between many screens, I am trying to be pragmatic like that. I really appreciate the support, it makes me more confident that the art is good enough that it supports the game underneath!

Ultimately though, the gameplay is by far the most important part, and it will be the key factor in the success or failure of the game though. I think I have some really good ideas designed for the game too, but I am focusing on the technical aspects in the devlog as to not ruin the surprise on playthrough! I think it will definitely pay off more for players that go in blind.

[CleanShirt21]

Update #5:

This is going to be a brief update since I've got work tomorrow and I've got an early start.

I had originally planned to buy myself a Switch upon finishing and releasing this game as a sort of reward. Unfortunately, I have no self control and snapped one up on the day it was released, and of course it affected my productivity right away! Lost all of friday evening and saturday to Zelda, but managed to make today more productive!


I implemented the weapon stats and upgrade system, I will go into further detail on how it works in a later update.

[CleanShirt21]

Update #6

Another brief update. Just thought I'd share some of the music I am making for the game. This is the main theme, it will play near the beginning in a cutscene of sorts and in the title screen after that. The main motif will pop up now and then though in other tracks.

https://soundcloud.com/user-554742669/afterlife

[CleanShirt21]

Update #7



Lots of work behind the scenes, but I'll keep it brief. Just recently added the "streak" system. Basically, hitting enemies will build up the bottom left bar, which will add a multiplier to your attack depending how full it is. Each weapon has a "streak" stat, where a higher value will allow the bar to be filled up more quickly. I came up with this system as a way to encourage the player to be aggressive and keep close to the enemies.

Also lots of little cosmetic changes, lost track of all of them! Still lots to do. I turned off the filters for recording the gif for a change.

[chrilley]

Looks neat - I like the impact of your character's slash attacks, the camera shakes really sells it.