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[Yong]

Today I'd touch on some more of the weapons found in 99999. Being a game which constantly forces you to switch and adapt to your new weapon-pickup on the fly, having enough of a variety of different weapons will be crucial to the gameplay I am striving for. As you progress further into the game the weapons you'd unlock will also begin to depart further and further away from a typical gun.

First off, the Uzi. The Uzi functions very much like the Blaster - the first gun you'd get in the game. It fires a constant stream of bullets as you press fire. Its rate of fire however, is MUCH faster than a Blaster's, and the ammo cap is higher too, meaning you'd have to reload less often. There is however, a pretty significant drawback. The longer you fire, the more random the Uzi's arc of fire becomes (Check out the ending of the gif).

At a longer distance you'd have to periodically stop firing to reset the Uzi's firing arc but at close range it can be utterly devastating.

The Charge-gun (I need to think of a better name  ). The Chargegun is kinda like the reverse of the Uzi. The longer you hold fire, the stronger the shot becomes. A quickly fired shot is incredibly weak but to make up for that a fully-charged shot can one-hit kill any enemy, it can even pass through a few enemies before detonating (the blast radius can hit enemies too). The knockback is also very strong however so an awareness of surrounding environment is rather necessary.

The Bounce-gun (I REALLY need to think of better names  ). Bullets from the Bouncegun bounces. This can be extremely useful because you can shoot round corners and what not. Since most stages are screen-sized without any camera scrolling, the Bouncegun can be really powerful. Its one drawback is that direct shots are incredibly weak. The bullets only gain their true strength after they bounced off a wall(If you notice, the bullet lights up after it touches a wall).

The Grenade-Launcher. I thought the game needed more weapons that can interact with the environment, so I made the grenade-launcher. The grenade detonates whenever it comes into contact with an enemy, otherwise it'd explode when it comes to a standstill. The grenade one-hit kills any enemy. To prevent it from being too OP the ammo cap is just 1, so you'd have to wait for it to reload (a short while) before you can fire again.

The Bazooka, another one-hit kill, one ammo-cap weapon. Very powerful. The bazooka flies in a straight line so it is much easier to use and hit a target compared to something like the grenade-launcher. The blast radius is huge too and any enemy caught in it auto dies....sounds a little too powerful so I gave it a drawback (again lol).

If your avatar gets caught in the blast radius, you'd get hurt too. It is (thus far) the only weapon that can actually hurt the player. You'd need to be especially careful when an enemy gets close in case you get yourself caught in the blast radius. Hopefully this will prevent indiscriminate firing of the bazooka in favor of tactical shooting.


That's all I have for now. Cheers!  

[Yong]

Hi again, forgot to include a few weapons I've already made for the game so here goes.


I've been thinking about alternative weapons, weapons that depart from the typical point-and-shoot functionality of a gun. I thought it might be interesting to have a weapon that you're not even fully in control of, so I made this:

The Ring of Fire. Upon pickup, three "Fire orbs" will spin around you automatically. The fire orbs extinguish as they hit an enemy and do not respawn until all three are gone. Initially they might seem very powerful but you'd soon notice its shortcomings when you are left with a single orbiting orb. Holding the fire button will extend the orbs' reach(to a point) and orbiting speed but otherwise they pretty much function on their own.

I made the Fire orbs orange-red because obviously that's what one thinks of when it comes to fire. HOWEVER, the second World is lava/volcano themed, which sort of blended the orbs into the background. Not to mention enemies' projectiles are also warm in colour. Amidst the chaotic action and your own swirling fire orbs it can be easy to miss projectiles coming at you. And so the "Fire" orbs became this:

Blue flames I think it works pretty well. Consideration of how one set of sprites look against different environments/colours is super important. Pixel art only works when different sprites look coherent together. So now moving forward, the headache will be ensuring all new art/backgrounds etc etc will work when they are put together 

Another 'not a typical gun' weapon is the sword here. The sword is yet another one-hit kill weapon (maybe there are too many of those lol  but I think it works considering you'd get overwhelmed eventually through the sheer quantity of enemies that get spawned)

The 'sword swing' sprite is essentially the length of the hitbox. Any collision with an enemy's mask counts as a hit. That means that while a typical bullet is destroyed upon impact with a target and thus can only hit once, the sword's hitbox is free to overlap with as many enemies as it can fit in. The sword's power is of course mitigated by its relative short range.

Hammer. Inspired by the hammer bros in Mario games. It doesn't really makes sense to have ammo and reload for a hammer so once again I am using a 1 ammo cap for a slight delay between spamming of the hammer. The hammer doesn't "fly" in a smooth arc, instead its flight pattern is slightly lopsided to give it an impression of being top-heavy. This is particularly obvious towards the end of the gif when the hammer is being thrown in an upwards arc. The horizontal friction acting against the hammer is dependent on the angle which the hammer is thrown. In most cases the friction is stronger than the gravity, resulting in this "top-heaviness".


Alright, that about covers it for now. Cheers~ 

[Yong]

Continuing on with weapons...

Since the game is all about being forced to switch weapons on the fly, I thought having a "Training room" for players to try out currently unlocked weapons would be nice. Think of it like the later Street fighter games' training mode.



This provides players a chance to get familiar with the various weapons before they have to deal with them during the in-game random spawning. But I quickly realize that shooting and playing around in an empty room provides absolutely zero information regarding weapon damage, impact on enemy etc.

So I added this:



Mr Practice dummy. The difference in weapons force/impact can be clearly seen. Then I added a healthbar to gauge weapon damage:



Just for kicks I also gave him a "death" animation lol   But he's basically invincible.

[sand-bird]

It looks so unassuming at first, but after spending some time with the gifs you really start to notice the quality of the polish here -- the recoil/knockback, the screenshake, the animations, it's all so frictive! Every weapon has such a distinct feel, and that practice dummy looks like so much fun just to beat up.

I'll definitely be following this

[Yong]

It looks so unassuming at first, but after spending some time with the gifs you really start to notice the quality of the polish here -- the recoil/knockback, the screenshake, the animations, it's all so frictive! Every weapon has such a distinct feel, and that practice dummy looks like so much fun just to beat up.

I'll definitely be following this

That's high praise, I'm touched lol. Thanks dude! :D

[Yong]

Hi all, I'm back again.

Today I'd like to talk about the tutorial, one of the things I dreaded doing most
Now that it is done and out of the way (hopefully), I can go back to focusing on the other things I care about lol.






The tutorial segment share a tile-set with the training room (previous post) as they are both safe environment for practice.

The tutorial is a short self-contained stage that has the player performing basic movement and shooting in order to progress. The tall wall forces players to wall-jump, alternating walls with spikes teaches wall-kick, obstructing spikes in a narrow path can only be bypass with dodge-roll, etc etc. Pretty self-explanatory I hope.





Texts will fade in in the background to provide more specific instructions should the player get stumped. The key inputs are in  'brackets', informing players about the button for said function. Now that I'm looking at it again, I think it would be even better if key-presses are in a different colour. *adds yet another task to the to-do list*

Key inputs also changes in real-time when you customise the controls. The only control available now is keyboard/mouse configuration so there is still more work to be done for controllers support 


That's all I have for today. If you have any feedback/suggestions about the tutorial please feel free to share!

[Yong]

So, I've been working on yet more weapons.

The Boomerang!


The Boomerang will alwayds strive to return to the Player until it loses its momentum. It's speed, damage and distance travelled before returning all depend on how long the Boomerang is "charged". Throwing out the Boomerang leaves the Player defenceless so it is quite the tricky weapon to use.



Here you can see a fully charged Boomerang destroying the slime in one hit whereas an uncharged one requires two hits. The Boomerang also rebounces upon hitting solid wall.

[Yong]

Part of my aim for 99999 is to encourage different play-styles and enable players to come up with various strategies to tackle each stage. I suppose part of the reason is the prevalent of streaming and let's plays these days. I think it'd be that much more interesting when there are real choices to be made.




Equipping special abilities and choosing weapon loadouts to utilise different strategies and customise your play-style.




With "Explosive Collection" equipped, a mini-explosion that kills enemies upon contact is created whenever the player collects a weapon.




Here is another ability. "Final Stand", probably one of the strongest ability thus far. It activates when the Player has only a single heart(health) remaining, killing all enemies currently on-screen.


I finally have a DEMO ready!
You can download it here: https://yongjustyong.itch.io/99999

[Yong]

Hello again.
Today's post will be about the enemy types found in World-3.

World-3 is horror/halloween themed and is reflected in the enemies' design. The enemies have also gotten more difficult to deal with. World-3 is already pretty far into the game after all, it only makes sense that the difficulty would ramp up.

First up, the jumping Pumpkin, it throws up 3 projectiles into the air upon death. The Pumpkin might seem easy to deal with because of its relatively slow movement speed, but those projectiles can often hurt you if you're not paying close attention.

The Bat. Once it sees the player, it will not stop giving chase. It also has the fastest movement speed (thus far) among all enemies, making it an immediately threat that must be quickly dealt with.

Ghost. The Ghost reacts much like a certain character in a mario game. Come face-to-face with it and it will turn transparent, making it impossible to hit. The Ghost is also the only enemy type that can pass through solid wall.

Floating Skull. The Skull shoots the fastest(and biggest) projectile yet. To balance the difficulty, it also takes slightly longer to charge up its shot compared to previous projectile-shooting enemies.


That's it for today's post. I already have an alpha-demo on itch.io here: https://yongjustyong.itch.io/99999 if you want to try it out.
Feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Have a good day. Cheers 

[Aw0]

Really likin' the look of the project :D Gameplay is right up my alley.

[Yong]

Really likin' the look of the project :D Gameplay is right up my alley.

Thanks!   HyperSplash looks really good, I can see the similarity between our projects.

[andyfromiowa]

The Halloween themed enemies look great and add a lot of personality to the design. This is shaping up nicely. 

[Yong]

The Halloween themed enemies look great and add a lot of personality to the design. This is shaping up nicely. 

Thanks Andy!! 

Here's one where all the enemies(thus far) are together in a single gif.

[Aw0]

Thanks!   HyperSplash looks really good, I can see the similarity between our projects.
[/quote]

haha thanks, was thinking the same XD I'll be sure to try out the demo soon.

[Yong]

I finally have a STEAM PAGE!woohooo

also, trailer:




As you probably already know, wishlist is now more important than ever with the recent changes to Steam's 'Upcoming' tab to 'Popular Upcoming'. I think it's a great change, makes a lot of sense and could really help us.

I also got some really valuable feedback from the initial release of my demo and made some changes accordingly.

DEMO_v2

Feel free to comment/critique, feedback is always appreciated!

[Mloren]

Wow this looks great. Shame I'm terrible at these fast frantic games. :p
I look forward to seeing the end result though.

[DieMango]

Defently going to keep a eye on this. This is quite nice.

[Aw0]

I played the demo last night, was a pretty solid experience so far Great job on the UI and main gameplay. Only things I'd suggest is giving more feedback to taking damage (a few times I didn't realize that I had been hit) Adding a red flash to the character or some hit sparks would do the job.  Good work all around!

[Yong]

Wow this looks great. Shame I'm terrible at these fast frantic games. :p
I look forward to seeing the end result though.

Defently going to keep a eye on this. This is quite nice.

Thanks guys! <3

I played the demo last night, was a pretty solid experience so far Great job on the UI and main gameplay. Only things I'd suggest is giving more feedback to taking damage (a few times I didn't realize that I had been hit) Adding a red flash to the character or some hit sparks would do the job.  Good work all around!

Hey, thanks for playing! 
You're the second person to tell me that. I think you're on to something here, I will work on that, appreciate the feedback

Do you plan to have any demo/playtest for HyperSplash?

[Aw0]

Ah, nice! lookin' forward to seeing the progress.
(I'll answer your question to your reply on my thread)