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[bryku]

A lot of great stuff to see in this thread! I like when the characters in my team comment on what's happening currently in the game and that's something I'll definitely have to add into my project too.

Thanks! Do try it out - it does add more depth to the game.

[bryku]

Well, this week was quite different. I decided to spend my game development time to actually set up a webpage. And host it somewhere. And assign a domain name for it. The process was pretty entertaining and I didn't encounter any major roadbumps.

I decided to use steampunkratgame.com as the domain name - after all, that's the hashtag I'm using on Twitter. So here's a screenshot of the final result:


You can see that I used almost identical, simple logo which I was using before.

Initially I was considering using one of paid website creation/hosting services (e.g. SquareSpace); in the end I decided to create the page myself and probably saved a decent piece of money because of it.

In addition to the webpage, I've set up a presskit on my site as well. I guess that's a must in current times.

This quasi-marketing stuff actually took a lot of my time - and this is just a starter. But hey, I guess that's how it works. And that's why games take that long to make, especially if you're not a big game studio.

Character speech bubbles

I still managed to find some time to push the development work with my "speech bubbles" feature. I made sure that random messages are being displayed in different situations (healing, picking stuff up, killing enemies).


The actual speech bubble is visible only at the very end of this gif. The rest is there to show of the gameplay.

New models

Kurt (the freelance artist I am working with) has recently provided me with new animation for ranger's ability, allowing him to take a shot in a "fast" way. It is about taking two quick shots at a target (with penalty to aim and damage):




Additionally, the appearance of rat enemies will change.

First of all, the crossbow/melee low-tier enemy will become a melee-only character (I am already treating it as a melee-only in my game - it's "only" about changing the model):


New model concept on the right, old one on the left.

Additionally, there will be new model for enemy shooter. Here's a concept:

Yes - he is wielding a rat-made Khalashnikov!

What's next?

Even though I am happy with how the "speech bubbles" feature looks like, I need to reiterate on it more. I simply want to see how these messages would look like if placed directly above player characters, and not in the top-right section of the screen.

Besides that, I might spend some time on introducing new character models/animations into the game.

Thanks for reading! ! As usual, if you'd like to receive more frequent updates about the development, follow me on Twitter at @bryquTheDev.

Enjoy the gif on which the characters are blowing themselves up:

[Ramos]

Good to see you made more progress

[bryku]

Good to see you made more progress

Thanks! Yup, trying to move just by at least little bit each week

[bryku]

Ok, so I experimented with displaying character messages directly above their heads (I mentioned about it it my previous entry). The outcome wasn't very good, as the text was covering other stuff on the map (including stats of other characters) - so I decided to drop that idea.

More animations incoming

But - I have some new death animations ready for basic melee rat enemy type - and they come with a knockback:








I decided that death animations are a pretty important part of the gameplay, so there will be different variants of them available. I will post more about this in the future.

Picking up loot now also has an animation of its own:



Also, the reaction shots now display the % to hit - it made the game rules more transparent.


Cheating

Speaking of transparency, I have expanded on my idea about introducing behind-the-scenes cheating to the game. Currently two systems are in place:

- Each time when the player character misses a shot, next shot will have its % to hit increased artificially (player won't see that)

- Each time an enemy is about to deal a lethal blow to a player character, there is an additional roll for them to completely miss such attack. The probability of that roll succeeding is decreased with each such situation.


These systems seem to make the gameplay more tense. The first one reduces frustration of the player not being able to hit too many shots in a row; second introduces these "he would've killed me, but somehow missed" scenarios (much more often than using a non-rigged RNG would do).

Besides that, I spent some time tweaking the camera behaviour again. Just wanted to be sure that it feels right when it is centering itself on a target/between targets and when it performs auto-zoom on character's attack and death animations.

What's next?

Mostly bugfixing; during my latest test playthroughs I found a number of issues that need to be addressed.

Then I will focus on tweaking the visuals. The levels seem too empty for me sometimes; maybe I need some additional visual effects, like rain or dust? I will have to investigate and try different things out.

Until then, enjoy the summary screen of a failed mission:



As usual, if you'd like to receive more frequent updates about the development and a heads-up about release of the demo, follow me on Twitter at @bryquTheDev.

[bryku]

Hello there!

I spent most of this week's time fixing gameplay issues and tweaking camera behaviour yet again. I am just constantly unhappy with how it moves and zooms. Tried number of different animation curves and it simply didn't click for me. In the end I have started to use a simple linear animation curve, and made the scrolling slower in some cases. I will see how I feel about it after some playtests.

The game is starting to look nice. Here's some footage of fog of war disappearing:



Backfire mechanism

Initially I was planning to tweak the visuals of the map this week, by adding some effects like rain. I decided to postpone that part and focus on expanding the weapon backfire mechanism.

So the idea is simple: weapons do not have a regular ammo capacity. They are powered by crystals instead; when you take a shot, crystal heat level increases. After it reaches maximum level, you can still perform a shot. What is more, such shot is more powerful and can melt through armor.

There is one disadvantage though: when firing an overloaded weapon, there is a % chance that the weapon core will malfunction and harm the attacker.

So it's a nice risk/reward system. I have added it to the game a long time ago, with hope that I could expand it if it turns out to be fun:


Now the time has come to improve the visuals for it.

So right now the user is presented with one of two animations during the weapon malfunction check: one ends with nothing (which means that the core did not break); the other ends with character being harmed:







Shaders

Additionally I wanted to be sure that the crystal piece visible on the weapon is displayed in red all the time if the survivor is having its weapon overloaded. As it wouldn't make sense to create a separate set of sprites for each character, I guess the only reasonable solution was to use a shader.

Now, I wasn't very familiar with shaders so - but based on this tutorial I was able to write something that works. It included some extra work about making sure that existing sprites are using an exclusive color for weapon crystals, but it was worth it - weapon crystals now are red if overheated.


Now that I am officially able to swap colors on my sprites, I will have no problem with making character colors customizable.

What's next?

I will probably work on putting more death animations into the game. Kurt has created some awesome new animations, which are related to a specific cover stance (high cover/low cover).

Also, I have at least one bug about enemies coming back from the dead that I have to take care of


Many thanks for reading! As usual, if you'd like to receive more frequent updates about the development and a heads-up about release of the demo, follow me on Twitter at @bryquTheDev.

[bryku]

Howdy!

I am a little short on time today, so I will keep the text to the minimum.

Improved death animations

Until now enemies were flying through obstacles:



Now they don't:




Also, bodies now fall in correct direction when dying from explosion:




Handling multi-shot animations

Ranger's quick shot now has a double shoot animation; this required some code changes about enemies reacting to multiple hits:




What's next?

Improving the visuals can wait; right now I am busy implementing (well, expanding) the enemy reinforcements and combat danger level features. More about them will (hopefully) come next week.

And here's a portion of some gifs, as I am aware that 99% of you are here for them anyway:







As usual, if you'd like to receive more frequent updates about the development and a heads-up about release of the demo, follow me on Twitter at @bryquTheDev.

Also, do help me out reaching a bigger audience by telling about "This is The End" anyone who you think could be interested in this. Thanks in advance!

[nathy after dark]

I've been reading a book about Twine games called Video Games for Humans and there's one called Rat Chaos: https://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=7wip22dpvlzil83

Might be of thematic interest 

[bryku]

I've been reading a book about Twine games called Video Games for Humans and there's one called Rat Chaos: https://ifdb.tads.org/viewgame?id=7wip22dpvlzil83

Might be of thematic interest 

Ha! I am not too much into Twine games, but will gladly search for inspirations

[bryku]

Danger levels

In one of my previous posts I wrote about the idea of making sure that the player is kept under time pressure that does not require introducing explicit in-game mission timers. Timers were present in e.g. XCOM 2. If the mission timer runs out, you lose.

I started to experiment with a different approach: the player can stay on the map as long as they want to - however, there will be more and more reinforcements appearing. Now, to make sure that spawn rate of reinforcements is not linear, I've introduced danger levels.

For higher danger levels enemies spawn more frequently and are stronger. There are four danger levels in total.

 
 

Danger level is increasing automatically every couple of turns - but only after the player encounters their first enemy pod.

What is more, using explosives automatically increases the danger level by one point. This gives a nice risk/reward mechanic - you might want to use a grenade to clear an area from enemies, but you risk more of them appearing sooner.



Notifications

I have also started working on in-game notifications, appearing at lower-right part of the screen. Right now they are notifying the player about new danger level and a player character being killed:



What's next?

I believe I am slowly reaching the point when I will consider the demo "ready" - or at least feature complete. I was recently browsing my backlog, and there's just one major outstanding feature, which are character traits/quirks. I will hopefully expand on this idea next week.

Then there's still audio and graphics that need to be finished and put into the game. But I will get there, eventually. I am especially looking forward to the audio stuff, as I have zero experience in doing it

Thanks for reading! As usual, if you'd like to receive more frequent updates about the development and a heads-up about release of the demo, follow me on Twitter at @bryquTheDev.

Also, do help me out reaching a bigger audience by telling about "This is The End" anyone who you think could be interested in this.

[bryku]

So it's been two weeks since I've published something, due to having a week off. 1st and 3rd of May are public holidays here in Poland, so I've decided to go on a holiday trip with my family. After all, it is important to live a normal life during that whole game development process, right? Especially if it is still only a side project

Anyways, I did manage to work more on character traits system that I decribed in my previous post. One of the new concepts I have tested out is the availability of character actions based on a trait.

Here's an example: there is a "Rush it!" action available, which grants an extra action point to the player character. Initially, this action was exclusive to the Rogue character class. Rogues wield a close-range shotgun, so having the possibility to get closer to the enemy and fire at point-blank range on the same turn was fun.

However, I felt that I might want to expand on this idea. So I've introduced a "Fast" trait, which grants the "Rush it!" action to whoever has this trait.


(I know, there's an icon missing in the trait rectangle indicator. In fact I don't have any of the trait icons ready yet.)

It means that even non-rogue characters can have access to that action, which gives the player a lot of more tactical choices. You want to have a ranger (a sniper-type class) performing a move and then firing their weapon at full accuracy? With rangers having the "Fast" trait it is now possible.


(Alternatively, a ranger can reload their weapon even after performing a dash move which normally consumes all action points)

Of course now it means that there can be shotgun-wielding rogues in the game that do not have the "Fast" trait. This kinda broke my initial idea with rogues always having the possibility to rush their way to enemies to kill them from short distance in the same turn. Was that a good tradeoff in the end? I don't know. It might be that after some playtesting I will make sure that the "Fast" trait gets assigned to Rogues a little more often than to other class types.

Aside from implementing the traits, I worked on a trait triggering animation. Every time when a trait needs to be checked for activation (e.g. if a character with "fear of missed shots" quirk misses their shot), there's a vignette effect, information about the trait itself, and information about the outcome (a character can resist the negative effect of a trait).




Now, I had to make sure that this animation is not too long so that it does not interrupt the gameplay too much. I personally hate when I have to wait too long for some animation to finish in games.

Also, I had some nice feedback after putting a trait activation gameplay footage on Reddit. I decided that despite my initial need to present the gameplay rules as clear as possible to the player, I will hide the trigger probabilities for traits in the game (to make the characters more "human", and not following some raw numbers), and make sure that these probabilities are not very high - to make sure that the player actually is surprised when such trait gets triggered.



Finally, I made sure that the traits are assigned randomly to characters, thus making sure that each demo run is different.

What's next?

Alright, so this part was very exciting for me: I checked the backlog, and there were no more gameplay features that I wanted to be present in the demo - meaning that the demo is now officially feature-complete!

It doesn't mean that the demo is ready - there is still a lot of work ahead of me. It is just that I am not planning to add any new gameplay features to it. I want to focus on providing a vertical slice of the gameplay based on the current features.

From now on I will be focusing on implementing audio (sound and music), and adding more graphics. Kurt (the freelance pixel artist I am working with) is currently creating new character models, and I am planning to make some pixel art myself as well.

But the sounds are first on my list. This will be extremely fun, as I have no experience with it. But hey, I had no experience with game development in general and somehow I am here, right? :D

Thanks for reading!

As usual, if you'd like to receive more frequent updates about the development and a heads-up about release of the demo, follow me on Twitter at @bryquTheDev.
Also, do help me out reaching a bigger audience by telling about "This is The End" anyone who you think could be interested in this.

[danresn]

Just wanted to say that I think this looks cool and enjoys seeing the updates here (and on Twitter) every now and then. I've not played a ton of turn based strategy, but for some reason this appeals to me.

[bryku]

Just wanted to say that I think this looks cool and enjoys seeing the updates here (and on Twitter) every now and then. I've not played a ton of turn based strategy, but for some reason this appeals to me.

Thanks for that Daniel! Hopefully you will be able to evaluate the game yourself after the demo comes out

[bryku]

(alright, before I dive deep into the audio-related subject, grab this rat shooter with a machine gun)


Ugh, so when I started working on the game I had literally no idea what I was doing. Sure, I was already a good programmer and had a vision of the game's setting and core mechanics, but I had no experience with creating a real game.
Currently, several months later (well, it's been almost a year now!) I can surely say that I have some knowledge on how to approach game development. Heck, I might even be able to give some valuable advice to absolute beginners.
However, all of my currrent knowledge was not enough to prepare me for facing the ultimate challenge: the sound design.
I thought I was ready for it. I was collecting free audio assets from any free giveaways since I remember. I also bought one interesting sounds pack the other day. Also, I hired a freelancer to create a couple of sounds for the game.
Implementing the sound handling code was not that difficult. After all, Unity has a lot of stuff already done so it was only about making good use of them.
The struggle was (well, it still is as I am still working on it) about finding a sound that fits just right to a particular situation. I basically found myself listening to hundreds of different sounds (which in a lot of cases were almost similar), just to find out that none of them appealed to me.


All of these button need a sound. Or maybe two sounds, one for highlight and the other for click?
And there's the volume levels. Obviously, the player should be able to change them to their liking (the music and volume levels, independently) but I have to make sure that the volume levels of the sound files are similar.
Also, it turns out that a sound might sound *completely* different depending on what volume level it is played on. And I am not just saying that it would simply sound louder, but... different.
Oh, and don't forget that the sound differs based on the type of audio device. The button click sound sounded good on your speaker? Well, be prepared that it can sound like crap on your headset!
But - when you finally will be able to find the right sounds, the game gains A LOT. Or at least that's what the others say - I still have to reach that point. But I have to say that it is getting better and better!
Now, I won't be showing any gameplay video with audio just yet - I still have to reiterate on it a couple of times. I will write something about how I work with sound though.
For fast prototyping, I use... Camtasia. Yeah, I know that it is a video editing software, but it allows me to put together some audio assets on top of a gameplay video to see and hear how it will sound like.



After I am happy with the result, I use Audacity to mix the sounds together into the final thing. Its user interface is horrible, but at least it's free!



If any of you have any better way of handling the audio design, do let me know.

What's next?

Well, you probably guessed it already - I will spend more time on the audio in the upcoming weeks. If it turns out that I have no interesting progress to show to you, I will
consider skipping next week's devlog - we'll see.

And grab some more gameplay stuff:





Thanks for reading!

As usual, if you'd like to receive more frequent updates about the development and a heads-up about release of the demo, follow me on Twitter at @bryquTheDev.
Also, do help me out reaching a bigger audience by telling about "This is The End" anyone who you think could be interested in this.

Take care!

[bryku]

Alright, so here we are! I thought that there wouldn't be enough interesting (at least visually interesting, that is) stuff this week to actually show it to you in a devlog, but luckily that is not the case.

Last week I was still busy with the sound-related stuff. I have the sounds in place for weapon reloads, shooting, explosions, and for the footsteps. Also, most of the UI sounds are there (button clicks, sound representation of traits being triggered, etc.)

I still miss a lot of stuff, like character grunting sounds and something for bodies falling down.

Anyway, I had do to some non-sound related stuff as well to make sure that I don't go crazy.

So, I've added a healing animation. Characters use adrenaline shots to heal themselves during combat.





The tricky thing is that a character can also perform the healing on another character, standing next to them. In order for this to work correctly, I should have five different "heal other" animations to cover all the possible directions (up, down, to the side, and two diagonal ones).

Speaking of different directions of animations, I really believe that the game would benefit from having different move and shoot animations as well. Right now the characters are always running to the side, even if their movement direction is different:



Another tweak I did was changing the character trait checking animation. Previously there was an animation being played every time when a trait needed to be checked for effect. Even if the character resisted the effect, the player had to see the animation. I made sure that the animation is as short as possible, but I still felt that it was interrupting the gameplay. So right now the animation is only displayed if the trait actually gets activated - otherwise, nothing happens.


Old behaviour (at the top) vs the new one (bottom).


As with any other change, I will playtest it and see whether it feels right.

What's next?

I actually see that not focusing solely on audio works good for me and prevents me from burning out - so I will surely split my free time between adding more sound and few more visuals. Also, I am approaching my first year anniversary with development of "This is The End" - I still can't believe that I've already spent that much time on it!



Thanks for reading!

As usual, if you'd like to receive more frequent updates about the development and a heads-up about release of the demo, follow me on Twitter at @bryquTheDev.

Also, do help me out reaching a bigger audience by telling about "This is The End" anyone who you think could be interested in this.

Take care!

[nathy after dark]

Oh, I totally forgot to post this a couple weeks ago, but I was reading a sci-fi anthology called Invisible planets and the very first story in it was amazing and should inspire this game. "The Year of the Rat" by Chen Qiufan-- you should definitely check it out from a library or something

[bryku]

Oh, I totally forgot to post this a couple weeks ago, but I was reading a sci-fi anthology called Invisible planets and the very first story in it was amazing and should inspire this game. "The Year of the Rat" by Chen Qiufan-- you should definitely check it out from a library or something

Thanks for the tip! I would definitely use some inspiration; sadly, I searched the Internet and wasn't able to find any info on where to get it - and I highly doubt it will be available in a public library here in Poland

[bryku]

After my last experiences with being almost burnt out from dealing with audio-only stuff, I decided to balance the time spent on different activities. I did create some new sounds though, and completely redone the weapon shooting sounds as well. There are still quite a lot of sounds waiting to be handled though. This will be a long process...
Still, I won't be sharing any audio with you just yet. I will focus on gifs as they are more amusing.



Anyways, I also tweaked some animations. Here is the ranger taking his adrenaline shot:



Now that I am thinking of it, injecting stuff in your neck might not be a good idea... But I can always say that such way of injecting medicaments is completely fine in the game world. If it seems funny, just explain it with the game lore, right?

I have also spent some time on the fun/gameplay mechanics aspect. It seems that recently I was focusing too much on the audio part and forgot that the game needs also to be fun to play. I have redone the demo level three times. I made sure that it is more horizontal than vertical (horizontal gameplay looks better in widescreen aspect ratios); I've also restructured the places which contain the searchable loot so that the player needs to take more risk to reach them.

Evac points

Now, the evac points will get their own section here. Until now I was placing them at the edge of the level. Player needed to reach that point anyway, so placing it at the end made sense.


Old approach: evac point is right next to map edge. Also, the ranger is picking some stuff up.

However, moving the potential positions of evac points deeper into the level made the gameplay more interesting as it introduced some extra risk/reward stuff: player is now able toperform an evac as soon as they reach the point, or try to move further into the level to grab more stuff. Then they'd have to backtrack to the evac point, but - due to enemy reinforcements appearing constantly - this seems like a good backtracking practice.


New approach: evac point is placed in a middle of the street.
Also, note that I've added blue background to the exit area which helped it stand out.

I had more ideas on how to make the evac point even more interesting. Player might be requesting evac on any place on a map (therefore the evac point would be created dynamically); such evac point would be then appearing only after a couple of turns (as the airship needs to reach the destination), and would only be active for a couple of turns as well (as the airship would have to leave, to avoid being shot down).

What is more, calling evac would be draining airship's fuel - meaning that the player would think twice before performing such action.
Anyways, this will not be a part of the demo. As I mentioned some time ago I want to avoid feature creep; I am now focusing only to finish the demo, which itself is pretty time-consuming.

What's next?

Well, I'd like to have the rat sounds done! I am planning to record them myself so we'll see how it will work.
I might be also adding graphics for another enemy chararacter as Kurt (the freelance artist I am working with) is nearly done with it.

Thanks for reading!

As usual, if you'd like to receive more frequent updates about the development and a heads-up about release of the demo, follow me on Twitter at @bryquTheDev.
Also, do help me out reaching a bigger audience by telling about "This is The End" anyone who you think could be interested in this.

See you next week!

[Superb Joe]

hello, here is my advice for doing any audio work: uninstall audacity and invest in adobe audition

[ProgramGamer]

Hmmmmmm, I'd recommend a more affordable solution if there's one available.