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[snarkfowl]

double // slash is a 2D action hack and slash game currently in development for PC.

You play as an android named Dimka, who is originally a historical reenactor, now turned soldier, due to the uprising of non-humanoid robots. The game is set in an Eastern European country, in an alternate history.


Hi! I’m Ray or snark and I’ve been working on this game for a little bit, and have made slight progress.

double // slash is inspired by my countless hours speedrunning Metal Gear Rising: Revengence, playing Axiom Verge over the summer, and recently getting really into Duelyst, as I adore it’s art style.

Below is very early gameplay I have for the moment. Sorry about the visual quality on this, by the way.

Next, I’m adding in simple a simple enemy AI (mob type enemies) while working on character animations a bit more. Speaking of which, I have one done.

Scaled by 8, and true size

This is just an animation to help me know Dimka’s form. There is a frame of animation that their scarf is overlapping on their arm, in a way that isn’t possible. I’ll have that fixed for next week, and a proper animated gif, not just a video of it animating in Unity, turned into a gif in Photoshop. (edit: wow better quality gifs!)

To get this, I started from just a neutral standing pose of the character and drew out a stance, most commonly used for Polish sabre.

Also, here is some concept art I had sketched very early in the morning (3-5 am, I can't remember at this point) a few weeks ago.

Also I'll be starting a coffee counter now, as a way to track how many coffees happen between each update and the development of the game. These coffees were just for today, as I can't remember from a few weeks back.

[snarkfowl]

It’s been a week already I guess! I’ve been working on a game design document, and finished it to a point that personally I’m happy with looking at, but not necessarily for the public, because it’s very much a living document at this point of development still. I’ve also decided the names of the characters, in the GDD and finally have finished designs for the characters soon.

I've set up the character controller to finally use an Xbox 360 controller, I will make some art later to show the controls. In Unity, it's fairly easy and painless to implement (it's literally built in), so painless I had to edit this in.

Anyway, I fixed my camera follow script to not look bad now; it has some damping on it in a late update so it looks nice and smooth, but you can still tell what the player is doing. My old camera follow script was literally, so simple I would have been better off just attaching the camera to the player, but now it’s working well. Compared here, old(http://i.imgur.com/Qc2Mt8g.png) and new(http://i.imgur.com/fJHxemM.png).

 

I’ve also been implementing AI into the game. I was going to finish it this weekend, but a lot of major family stuff came up. Right now, the AI only attacks to the right. I just have to implement moving, and make sure that it attacks the right way when the bool checking if it is right or not.

I’ve got “dashing” “done”, however it is right now just teleporting the player, so that has to be fixed, but if I can’t it’s not like I have done a full animation for it. It also turns off your hitbox a few seconds, so you don’t die from dashing into enemies.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3c5DLi3VAag

I got one animation done over the weekend (at a Tim Hortons at 1 am on a Saturday morning), a jumping animation, which I may have to tweak the animation, timing wise (and the hair, I’m not sure how to feel about it), but works, from here I can work on the air idle and a small landing animation.

Scaled by 8, and true size

I had about eight coffees (there might have been secret coffee that I forgot) during development this week, a few energy drinks here and there and a couple of ginseng tablets. I’m trying to get better at the whole “eating” and “sleeping” thing right now.

[Thaumaturge]

First of all, I rather like the use of something that seems to resemble a historical (or perhaps sport) sword technique, at the least in the character's en garde stance. ^_^

As to the sprite above, her pony-tail looks somewhat stiff to me; I would expect it to flow with her movements, curving and lashing as appropriate.

[snarkfowl]

First of all, I rather like the use of something that seems to resemble a historical (or perhaps sport) sword technique, at the least in the character's en garde stance. ^_^

As to the sprite above, her pony-tail looks somewhat stiff to me; I would expect it to flow with her movements, curving and lashing as appropriate.

Me and my partner are obsessed with HEMA (historical European martial arts), among other martial arts, so having historical accuracy in regards to weapons and fighting is important to us.

In regards to the sprite, yeah, I do have to work on it a bit more, thanks for pointing that out!

[snarkfowl]

This week I mostly ended up setting up social media and working with my partner, Bill for our indie company Cerebrosis Arts, at https://cerearts.com/!

So, I changed some gameplay elements, there’s now a light and heavy attack, for some variation in gameplay! I have to adjust some values still, but light attacks, they don’t move as far back as a heavy attack, but heavy attacks do more damage than lights.

I got the AI working fine, and moving as well!

Now, I’m working on a boss that to attack them, you have to fight additional enemies to reveal the bosses weak spot. Right now, they enemies respawn but I have to fix how their health works, after you kill them for the first time, for some reason it falls apart. Also it doesn’t spawn the weak point. I have an idea on how to fix it, but I just didn't have the time this week to fix it.
 

So I lost the original file for the coffee counter, ;=;7, so I had to make a new one. Last week was pretty stressful, so plenty of coffees for me.

[snarkfowl]

Hey, it’s been another week, so here’s another development update!

So that boss I was programming, good news! It mostly works and all I have to do now is make sure the additional enemies in the boss room resets, the hitbox for the weak point vanishes after death and creating a door that locks off the rest of the level and activates the boss. Bad news is that I do not have video of the boss at the moment, but will show soon!

I have had the idea of when you move backwards, instead of flipping the sprite, you would walk backwards and move a bit slower, similar to fighting games, but have a change direction input, be just a button combination or a different button itself. However I’m not sure if that would be too clunky, and it would be more work to implement, but possible.

So other stuff I’ve been working on is animations for Dimka.

Jump animation scaled by 8 and true size.

Idle animation scaled by 8 and true size.

I finished the jumping animation finally, and started on their idle animation.

I also made a ground tile and a variation, however, I don’t feel like they’re up to par with how my other art is, it’s a bit rushed so I’ll be working on it a bit more tonight. I might start working on a walking animation tonight, I’m not too sure, the current weather (blizzard that won’t let me out of the house) has been keeping me awake pretty late.

I found the coffee sprite again, thank goodness. I've been pretty busy this week with some projects that were on the back burner so total coffees while developing this game are less than over all, I've been getting into tea recently too, because of my partner, so I should really start making a tea counter.

[Thaumaturge]

That jumping sprite does look improved, I think. ^_^

If I may, I do think that her hair still looks a little stiff to my eye, as does her sash. Part of this, I suspect, is due to the animations seeming to have a fairly low number of frames--and if the low frame rate is part of your intended aesthetic, then fair enough.

Frame rate aside then, two suggestions come to mind: First, I think that I would expect a little more change of shape in both the hair and sash--they're flexible, and so don't simply pivot, but flow and flap. Second, it might help to have their motions lag a little behind those of the rest of the sprite (reflecting momentum, I believe).

[snarkfowl]

Hey, sorry about being off schedule with my blog posts, I usually post these on Monday nights, but, I’m pretty sick at the moment and yesterday was mostly spent sleeping off my fever. This last week, we had more snow, and then my internet cut out on Friday, and then getting sick on Saturday, so my ability to work on the game, due to my work situation has been iffy.

The Volos boss fight, programming wise, is finally done! I fixed the issues I had last week, but now just have to get the art done for her. Now it is just balancing issues that need to be fixed, but I can fix that a bit later on playtesting.

Also, my enemies finally can turn around! It’s a bit embarrassing that I’m this far into development and my enemies wouldn’t turn around, but I finally got that working. I just needed to have the enemies, to get a bit of a speed boost to start moving in the other direction, because before they would just flip and not move in the other direction.

I got checkpointing working, kinda. It will teleport you back to the right place, let’s say if you fall off an edge, but if enemies kill you, getting health to reset right now is a bit of a hassle.

Sorry about the short post though, I don’t have any videos of what I did right now, because currently I have a bunch of other work to do, but will try to get some videos/images up soon!

Also next post might be a bit lacking as well, because I’m participating in a game jam from Thursday – Saturday. So sorry beforehand!

[Thaumaturge]

Ouch, that reads like a bit of a rough week. :/ I hope that you're fully recovered by now--and if not, then soon!

[Zireael]

Is Dimka male or female? The name is male but the sprite looks female!

Also mad props for trying to stay faithful to real-world fencing.

[snarkfowl]

That jumping sprite does look improved, I think. ^_^

If I may, I do think that her hair still looks a little stiff to my eye, as does her sash. Part of this, I suspect, is due to the animations seeming to have a fairly low number of frames--and if the low frame rate is part of your intended aesthetic, then fair enough.

Frame rate aside then, two suggestions come to mind: First, I think that I would expect a little more change of shape in both the hair and sash--they're flexible, and so don't simply pivot, but flow and flap. Second, it might help to have their motions lag a little behind those of the rest of the sprite (reflecting momentum, I believe).

Sorry about replying to this so late! But I'll be looking into changing how the hair moves, soon(?). I've been a bit more focused on the programming side recently but will be getting back to art soon! Thank you for your suggestions, it means a lot to me!

[snarkfowl]

Ouch, that reads like a bit of a rough week. :/ I hope that you're fully recovered by now--and if not, then soon!

Slowly feeling better but tomorrow is the 48 hour game jam I'm attending, so I'd probably end up throwing that all out the window, haha. But thank you anyway!

[snarkfowl]

Is Dimka male or female? The name is male but the sprite looks female!

Also mad props for trying to stay faithful to real-world fencing.

Dimka's gender never really crossed my mind to me, I just made a character design and found a name I liked with a meaning that's personally important to me. I don't really care how you see them, honestly!

But thank you, my partner sent me a PDF of stances to use from, which I don't remember where it is, but I know it had silly drawings of naked men in it.

[Thaumaturge]

Sorry about replying to this so late! But I'll be looking into changing how the hair moves, soon(?). I've been a bit more focused on the programming side recently but will be getting back to art soon! Thank you for your suggestions, it means a lot to me!

My pleasure! ^_^ (And don't worry about the delay in reply. ^_^)

Slowly feeling better but tomorrow is the 48 hour game jam I'm attending, so I'd probably end up throwing that all out the window, haha. But thank you anyway!

Hah! Well, good luck--with both the jam and not getting sick again as a result! ;P

[MaxTexeira]

Cool character concept :D

[snarkfowl]

Last week I couldn’t get that much done, like I mentioned in posts prior. What I did was that I started on a boss AI that’s too aggressive. I’ll be fixing it this week! Honestly, it’s a bit silly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DZLOJaCeLo&feature=youtu.be

I updated the Cerebrosis Arts’ website (http://cerearts.com/) today though! It features some of the games I’ve worked on.

So me and another dev, my good friend Jeff, worked on a game at a Game Jam, called Moments by Moments, the theme was “Broken Physics”, it was the winner of two awards, including first place! More info and the download link is on my games page (http://cerearts.com/games.html) of my website.

[snarkfowl]

Hah! Well, good luck--with both the jam and not getting sick again as a result! ;P

Weirdly, I got less sick as the weekend went on! All back to normal now!

[Thaumaturge]

I'm glad to read that you're feeling better, and congratulations on the game-jam awards! ^_^

That boss may not be too aggressive--it might be fine if you just slow it down a little, I suspect.

Of course, much depends on your intentions for this boss: if it's more aggressive than you intend, then fair enough!

[snarkfowl]

So, this week I worked on the last boss that needed to be coded, and it went smooth. The boss will go into the ground, and stay under there for a moment and then pop out of the ground. Other than HUD elements, which I'm going to program when I have art for it done and visual novel cutscenes, the game is almost all programmed. Now I will start working more now on art and level design. I don't have a video about this boss at the moment, so I'll make a video with all the bosses soon!

I haven’t really done too much else this week to show or tell about it, I’ve been quite busy recently!

[snarkfowl]

Cool character concept :D

Thank you so much! Sorry about the late reply!