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[mokapharr]

[...] It's a task based multithreaded system to get most out of the slow 2-core CPUs and then it runs on an OpenGL ES 2 rendering backend, so I have systems to batch all sprites to be drawn in one draw call etc.. [...]

Hey there, been following this for a while now and that trailer looks great.
I have one small technical question: How do you deal with draw order if you batch all those sprites to one call?

[StoneTide]

Great looking game!

[gimblll]

Hey there, been following this for a while now and that trailer looks great.
I have one small technical question: How do you deal with draw order if you batch all those sprites to one call?

Thank you! I just sort all sprites back to front on the CPU. Or was there something specific you had in mind?

Great looking game!

Thanks!

[gimblll]

Log Entry #62

So I posted the trailer, Steam page and all that around a bit. It didn't really get much attention though. Not that I was expecting much, but it's a bit sad that my stupid #screenshotsaturday .gifs get more views on my Twitter feed for example, than a proper game trailer. Oh well, attention spans are measured in milliseconds nowadays. It did get small articles on Touch Arcade and Pocket Gamer, but that's it. I didn't really reach out much though, so I'll have to be happy with what I got. But onwards, finally all that is set up and I can work on the actual game again. I'll do a larger marketing push nearer to release when I can send a version out and have a fixed release date.

I did start this week to work on World 4, I've drawn a few new enemies. Struggling a bit with coming up some new gameplay ideas. Most that I have are a bit too elaborate to implement, I need to keep this simple now. I have some basic things I can do, so let's see if it's enough. I hope it doesn't get too repetitive when players get this far.

Anyway, next week I hope I can finish all new units and buildings for World 4 so I can do the maps the week after that.

[lithander]

The physicallity of interacting with the hordes (pushback etc) looks incredibly fun. The blue crystal things remind me of "Gods of the Fallen Land" and I can't help to think that that gameplay (which I enjoyed immensely) and your engine would be a perfect fit. Not meaning to imply that your hack&slash approach needs basebuilding, resource-gathering etc to be fun. Nope. Wishlisted!

[gimblll]

The physicallity of interacting with the hordes (pushback etc) looks incredibly fun. The blue crystal things remind me of "Gods of the Fallen Land" and I can't help to think that that gameplay (which I enjoyed immensely) and your engine would be a perfect fit. Not meaning to imply that your hack&slash approach needs basebuilding, resource-gathering etc to be fun. Nope. Wishlisted!

Thanks! The game originally started so there was some base building and resource gathering there, but more something like a defence game, but I ended up going into full hack'n'slash direction eventually for various reasons. Would be fun to do some of that in a future project maybe.

Log Entry #63

So this week I've been doing new enemies for the fourth world. Didn't get them all done yet as I wanted. I've now got 7 that are not seen in worlds before this, which is more than intended, but on the other hand a few of those are just reskinnings of old types so it's not that much really.

Here's a golem. It spawns from a statue that stands around in the playing field and does nothing unless you break it (on purpose, or accidentally). Then it's a high HP melee enemy that you're good to keep a distance from. Haven't really tested it in a proper level yet, so it will probably need some adjustments depending on how it works with other stuff. Also some effect work is needed and sounds are missing, but I'll do those later.



Next week, I still have one new enemy to do for World 4, and one new building. That'll take two or three days. Then I'll start doing the levels and see if that's enough of new elements to keep it all fresh. I hope so!

[gimblll]

Log Entry #64

Time for an update again! I finished the rest of the new enemies and started creating levels for World 4. I now have 4/5 of the level content done, and I hope I get the last levels done today. That's only the first pass though, I know for sure that there's places where difficulty balancing is all wrong so I will have to do another pass on them once I've taken a bit of a break from them and can look at them with fresh eyes.

While making the levels, I also fixed some problems with the new enemies. Things like buggy animations and enemies reacting stupidly to situations.

Another big problem was visibility. I've had this teal kind of color in use as "metal" in the game, and now I made the new bunch of robot enemies with the same color. Well the problem is that I made the World 4 lighting kind of the same shade. So it quickly became obvious that the enemies get lost in the noise once there's large battles going on. So I recolored the robots as gold (I don't know why, maybe they build robots out of gold then or something ) and adjusted the lighting and ground coloring to make them pop out more.

Left: first pass, metal skellington robots
Right: golden robots, darker lighting and ground


Next week, I think I'm going to focus on getting a new boss done. I think I'll do one "semi-secret" side boss... just a very simple, should be doable pretty fast I hope. Just get it out of the way now. I also have a new idea of how to improve storytelling flow a bit in the game (simple stuff), might just do it too. Should be pretty fast. Let's see.

[Continuous_Dreamer]

This looks great man, this is a game i would play! Keep it up 

[gimblll]

This looks great man, this is a game i would play! Keep it up 

Thanks man!

Log Entry #65

Alright, got the new side boss done. I got it done pretty fast, 3-4 days where as for the main bosses I've spent near 2 weeks. It's not my best work ever, but I think it'll be a fun little distraction. Again, it still needs sounds (and maybe some effects), but I'll do all that later. Then I spent a little time adding some more storytelling flow to the game to provide a bit more mystery to the place. Just a little touch that'll add some depth. It's kind of a bad idea to add more text to the game as I suck as a writer really, but on the other hand I like to add some depth to the world. And if I'm going to do any localization after release, it's going to be harder/more expensive the more text I write...

Anyway, then I started getting my menu graphics in shape. Trying to be cost effective as always... As the game already looks pretty good, I'm just rendering that to an offscreen surface. Then I render that to the screen with a custom shader that blurs it a bit, adds a vignette and does a colorization on top. Looks good enough and I don't have to draw anything new. (The "Press Any Button" font is still temporary)



So next I'm going to do some basic graphics for the "generic" menu selection screen. Something simple again. And also I have to find proper fonts for the menus. After that I'll probably do a few maintanance things, like setup the build so I can upload it to Steam whenever to make it a bit easier to give out test builds and etc.. Then it's time to move on to Boss 4, that'll be one big main boss again, so I'm probably going to have to spend at least 2 weeks on it. We'll see how it goes!

[gimblll]

Log Entry #66

So I finished the menu look and fixed all lingering bugs with it etc. It took a bit longer than expected, as I had to rearrange some rendering code too to make it all flow well in in-game pause menu too. Menus are always one of the huge pain in the ass things where you definitely regret using your own engine usually. But it's done now, so that's good. I still need to do a few screens, like control remapping etc. to finish it, but the basics are all there.

Then I did scripts to upload everything to Steam, so I can now share the test build through there easily too. I also spent some time putting all my developer tools and cheats under a command line switch, so they're disabled by default for normal players. Usually I've just compiled them away, but I don't know, I don't see any harm if someone wants to play with the tools. Probably not, but why not. And there's no multiplayer or anything, so there's zero harm in it to anyone.

Then I started designing Boss 4, but it's proving to be quite hard. I'm starting to run out of "simple" ideas to do and all my plans seem to create something super elaborate. It would be super fun to go completely AAA crazy, but it's just not possible to spend that much time on this thing. I think I've got a basic form for this now, I'll just have to start prototyping it if it works.

Really feeling the stress of deadline looming and still so much to do.

Alright. Next week will be all just Boss 4.

[gimblll]

Log Entry #67

I've worked the whole week on Boss 4. It's proved to be the most difficult to do so far, not because of any technical thing, but because it was really hard to come up with some simple idea that I hadn't worked to death yet. I don't know if I succeeded, but I'm happy with it anyway.

And that's 4/5 chapters of the game content complete. The final chapter will be a bit easier, as there'll be less quests and only one or two new enemies. Then it's only one boss battle remaining to do, the final boss. There I get to go all crazy finally and spend a bit extra time.

I've also been having a few new people test the game now and then, and it's becoming clear that the beginning of the game is not very good as people don't really bother playing past World 1. Which is a shame as the game really starts opening up and working on it's own in World 2 and onwards as you've unlocked a few things and gathered more minions. So I really have to tighten things in the first world to make it flow better. Somehow pull the player along a bit better so they know that there's much more that awaits.

So. Next week I'll work on the beginning of the game again. And I'll also go back to all the other little items that I've been gathering to my list in the past few months. I'll probably spend the rest of April just trying to make things more polished in general before moving to the final gameplay chapter. Then May would be all about the final quests and the final boss + story. Then June to do all the rest and maybe release in July.

No screenshots or gifs about the new stuff as I don't really want to spoil any of the late game... sorry! If there's any aspect someone would like to read about, like some part of the tech or design or art or whatever, just tell me and I could do a longer post again?

And here's a final insiders look into how typical game development projects look at this point in their development cycle. From the birds eye view you can see how everybody from programmers to artists and from designers to QA is calm and relaxed. Scheduling has been succesfully and skillfully managed throught by producers who are clearly on the ball. Nothing is on fire and there's no need for emergency overtime or any undue stress. Bug list is steadily growing shorter and everything is on track to finish just perfect.



Until next time!

[SamLouix]

Pretty cute... really well animated and drawn 

I see something pretty big in the works. Good luck!

Feel free to shout at me if you need support ( just tweeting or whatever, doing what I can ) I am in awe of your work

[gimblll]

Log Entry #68

So this'll be quick. For the first few days of the week I reworked many of the World 1 levels in the hope that people will actually play beyond it too. I made many of them shorter and faster to complete. I also tried to add some more interesting scenarios there. I also reworked the story somewhat and integrated some missing things there. I think it might be best to cut a few levels from the beginning, but that would kind of affect some annoying balancing things in a negative way, so I would prefer not. Let's see if these changes are enough.

But that only half of the week and then my computer broke down. Long story, but multiple things failed and I decided it's time to upgrade anyway, so now I have new internals for my PC and I've finally finished installing everything and setting up the development environment etc. It cuts badly into my budget, but there was really no option. It is a luxury though to notice how some of the software work much better now that I have a modern computer again with enough memory etc. Also all compiles are faster and my game starts much faster in debug mode etc. Now just have to start again.

Next week: I'm not sure yet. I'll have to really comb my backlog and see what's essential and what's not. And just push non-essential stuff later. Now it's really the time to start putting together a fully completable game as deadlines loom and this new PC tightens the budget even more. I'm missing some "master quests" and the final boss + final story bits. That's going to be my main target for the next month.

Pretty cute... really well animated and drawn 

I see something pretty big in the works. Good luck!

Feel free to shout at me if you need support ( just tweeting or whatever, doing what I can ) I am in awe of your work

Thanks Sam!

[gimblll]

Log Entry #69

I went through my todo lists and sorted all stuff that are essentials and what can be cut if needed. And now this week I've been going through the simple things, polish things, that are needed so that my game would be near release quality from beginning to end of World 4 (excluding audio and some visual effects).

- I made the "memory stone" menus final look. They're bits of art that you can unlock to show some of the main character's back story before he got into this whole mess.
- I polished the NPC dialogue and added some more here and there. I'm still going polish this until the end of the project, I don't seem to ever be happy with my writing. There's also still the ending to do, but I have a pretty clear idea how that's going to happen.
- Polished the chain/combo mechanic. Added a 'chain lock' so you can continue the chain between levels.
- Polished the HUD so some of the effects are a bit more noticeable. Things like low health warning... which I might have to make even bigger still. Sound will help too here once added.
- Some minor touches here and there... timings, damage, loot, animation, etc.

Now I started working on the iOS touch controls as I've been neglegting the iOS port for a while. I refactored the old system from Trigonarium and setup defaults for small screens and large screen. I kind of wish I had one button less, but what can you do. It works pretty well. I'm going to spend a few days on finishing that and then making a control customization screen for them. It's impossible to make a works-for-all layout good for everybody on the touch screen, so I like to make everything customizable.

iOS testing also revelead a couple of bugs, as I have to run the game 30fps on some of the older iDevices, there's a problem or two. The machine gun bullets are so fast that they tunnel through some enemies sometimes, I'll probably have to elangonate the collision shape for it. Also a few minor things where I've accidentally made some gameplay code framerate dependent. I'm not even sure if it's even smart to release it on those old things, as the devices are getting a bit rare according to stats, but let's see.

It also got me thinking... On PC I run the game always locked to the screen refresh rate (the CPU and GPU usage is pretty low that it's ok even on old devices), and I haven't tested this on those fancy over 144hz screens. I hope nothing is broken, no away I can afford one myself now. Maybe I should just cap my update rate to half-hz on those.

Next week: Work on the touch controls continues, then I'll probably do a bit more iOS work to get the build to a good quality so I can start sending iOS test builds too. Then it's probably time to start on the "master quests".

[gimblll]

Log Entry #70

I finished making touch controls work again for iOS and while at it I did the menu screens for it too (so everybody can customize their own button/stick locations if they want). I'm again surprised how well the controls work, but I kind of wish I had one button less there (and in the game in general)... but what can you do. I've always purposefully tried to keep the number of buttons low (I even cut a feature I thought would be pretty cool, because I don't want to complicate controls), so it kind of bugs me. I might also make a "hold down to quick attack" option too, as repeated tapping can be a bit fiddly on touch screens. Anyway, it's done now. Later I need to do keyboard + controller customization menu screen too.



Then I spent some extra time on the iOS build so it's fully playable and all pause screens etc. flow work ok so I could start sending a few test versions on that platform too. A few extra bugs found already by a tester, so that's good.

Next I started doing the first "master quest", its 3/5 done so the first pass should be ok pretty soon. I also have the ideas ready for the other two so I think I finish them next week.

I also took a day of extra on the weekend to see if I could port it easily to MacOS. I started with porting my own windowing and mouse/keyboard code ot GLFW. That was surprisingly trivial, as I had pretty much made all the same choises in my code. That took only a few hours. Then eventually got my engine test application to compile and link on MacOS, but then I messed up something in the settings and Xcode started instacrashing whenever I hit build... nice. I'll continue some other day.

What else... my brother has been doing the soundtrack steadily and it too is in a pretty good place, which is great!

Next week: I'll try to finish the master quests and then it's some work to get them integrated to the world and add a few story bits here and there. It'll probably take my whole week.

[gimblll]

Log Entry #71

Ok, so I did the first two "master quests". They took a bit longer than I expected, mostly due to me starting to run out of steam a bit again. Gotta just keep chipping away. Also there was a national holiday on Thursday so I took the day off too. Then I did the world integration, as in I drew the stuff needed to the meta world and added the dialogue etc. to tie it together.

For the remaining quest I wanted to do one new enemy, as I already have unused graphics and it could maybe bring a bit more variety to it. It's the last basic enemy I'm going to do too. Half way there, but I'm writing a new weapon for it so there's some extra time there. I'm making it so I can recycle that a bit in the final boss fight too so it's not just one off extra feature. It'll probably still take a few days to get that enemy polished and be fun, but it should be worth it I guess.

So that's next week, finish the new enemy and then finish the final remaining master quest. After that the only new content remaining to do is the final boss + game ending. Gotta keep going!

One thing that's worrying me a lot is that I might've made the game too big... People seem to abandon it quite early because of, form what I can gather, of two things: difficulty and there not being enough hooks in it. Difficulty is quite easy to solve, but I've always had the aim that this is a hard game. Not sure where to draw the line... Then the other thing, it doesn't seem to make people care enough to continue. That might be partly because there's not too much story interests maybe(?), and partly because there's too much to play until something moves on in the world? After this much time spent on doing all kinds of content, I'm having a lot of trouble mentally to cutting stuff. I'm thinking that I might change the structure so that there's less mandatory levels and more optional levels in there... Argh, what to dooooooo.

[nkm]

Like the art style! And the flocking mobs, that's really awesome!

Press: make sure your game has a unique hook so that the press people have something to write about. Find a hook if necessary and pitch it to them.

I wouldn't cut away content. Just don't front-load your game with content. Start with just the core game mechanics and then gently introduce new stuff along the way. That keeps your players entertained.

Just my 2 cents.

[gimblll]

Like the art style! And the flocking mobs, that's really awesome!

Press: make sure your game has a unique hook so that the press people have something to write about. Find a hook if necessary and pitch it to them.

I wouldn't cut away content. Just don't front-load your game with content. Start with just the core game mechanics and then gently introduce new stuff along the way. That keeps your players entertained.

Just my 2 cents.

Thanks!

Yeah, I still need to go through my options and think how (and if) to change the flow. I've tried to keep it pretty smooth, but I don't know, it seems that the game doesn't grab the players attention strong enough. I'll probably do a few tweaks here and there do another test round ASAP. Or maybe the game just sucks and nobody is brave enough to tell me, who knows...

[nkm]

I tried to look for a playable version but cannot find any. You're using a group of private playtesters?

[gimblll]

I tried to look for a playable version but cannot find any. You're using a group of private playtesters?

Yeah, I'm keeping it private for now. Should probably open it a bit more.