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[bryku]

As you might already be aware, the goal of the game (well, at least its first chapter) is to reach the only intact bridge in the Capitol in order to get to the northern side of the city, which wasn't hit that hard by the sudden rat vermin attack.

Your characters traverse the city in small chunks, and (in most places) they have the possibility to reach a shelter.



Shelters are used as safe places, where you can rest, upgrade your gear and perform shelter-specific actions.



Until now, there was only one way of opening up the shelter - the player had to use a fusion core (so a fuel-like resource, if compared to, say, Pathway; it's far more than that though, but that's something for another entry) to power it up.



In order to make the game less predictable, I've added two more ways in which the bunker needs to be opened.

Also, I removed all the lock mechanisms from the front of the door. The mechanism is not accessible from the outside, as - obviously - the rats would be trying to destroy it.

And I've added some nice thud sounds and camera shakes to make it meatier:


Obviously you cannot hear the thud sounds. But the screenshakes are there.

One of the new ways of opening up the shelter entrance is using a remote valve. I mean first the player still needs to use a fusion core, but then it becomes clear that it will be more difficult:



Only after the player reaches the valve and opens it, the door is opened.



The last variation is that the door comes with a timer - meaning that after you activate them, you need to wait a number of turns.



The type of door opening is right now randomized for every mission, and the player is not aware of which one is used.

That's it for this entry. I hope you will find these new bunker entrance mechanics fun and challenging!

Take care!

[Ramos]

this shelter seems like solid mechanics and the door visuals and animations sure help the immersiveness of the moment.

[vivaladav]

Maybe this was mentioned before, but if it wasn't people on Linux will be happy to know that this game works perfectly fine with Wine. Just avoid to switch to other applications while playing as that will mess up input completely.

I will write you my impressions on the game after playing it a bit more, but so far I like it.

[bryku]

Maybe this was mentioned before, but if it wasn't people on Linux will be happy to know that this game works perfectly fine with Wine. Just avoid to switch to other applications while playing as that will mess up input completely.

I will write you my impressions on the game after playing it a bit more, but so far I like it.

Thanks for the info! And yeah, looking forward to your feedback!

[bryku]

(totally tired today - will try to keep this short)

I believe I did mention previously that the final mission of the first chapter in Shardpunk will be taking place on a bridge. On the contrary to standard missions where your goal is to reach the next shelter, where the player is tasked with surviving for enough turns so that the sewers entrance becomes open:



The vermin keeps on spawning on a constant basis. They can be approaching from both sides.



Now, the biggest problems I had on this level were to make sure that a) it's fun and b) it's not too difficult.

The difficulty issue is a tough thing, and I am aware that I'm still not in point in time to be balancing stuff, especially as I am still tweaking with the weapon upgrades system (which I plan to write about in a separate blog post).

About the "fun" part, I decided to add a twist to the level. I don't want to spoil too much, but escaping will not be as easy as just opening the sewers entrance.



Also, to make sure that the player tries to push their luck, there will be some loot crates placed further away from the exit shaft. It'll be up to the player to decide whether these goodies are worth it.



And what will be in these goody crates? Well, that's a very good question, which I am trying to answer myself as well! I mean currently they hold weapon parts, but I am pretty sure that won't be the case anymore. I will write more about it in my future posts.

Take care, and have a great weekend!

[bryku]

Guys, now I can officially share the news with you: after more than two years of part-time, after-hours hobby development I teamed up with a publisher!

This means that:

a) I am working on the game full-time now,

b) I will be releasing the game as a fully-fledged, correctly marketed commercial product.

You can't imagine how awesome this feels!

Now, first things first.

The publisher I work with is Retrovibe. Shardpunk is one of five games that have been announced, with the others being:

B.I.O.T.A



Janosik 2



The Looter



And, last but not least, Project Warlock 2 (which does not have an official Steam page. Yet.)



As for Shardpunk, the game is scheduled for 2022. I am still changing and tweaking lots of stuff with the game, and that's one of the reasons I am starting weekly streams where I will be talking about the development. If you would like to see how I progressed with the game so far and help me make the game better, do check it out!

I will be streaming on Mondays at 19:00 CET/12:00 PT/14:00 EST, with the first stream going live on 7th of June at https://www.twitch.tv/RetrovibeGames.

My first live stream is on Monday. I'm already nervous 0_o

So yeah, I am looking forward to seeing all of you on the streams.

As for the game development update, there was a lot going on. I am in the middle of revamping the weapon upgrades system, and hopefully I'll be able to talk more about it in two weeks.

In the meantime, here are some in-game gifs. Enjoy!

[Ramos]

Congratulations !
I am honestly happy for you.
You are living the dream and the other tiles from this publisher seem solid material.

[Alain]

Congratulations bryku, Retrovibe seems to be a great fit for Verminfall!

[bryku]

Thanks, guys! I appreciate it.

I was aiming for making Shardpunk a commercial project (i.e. one that will allow me to transition to a full-time gamedev thing) since the beginning. Now, after these few years of part-time, night-time development it does feel great to be in the place I'm currently in.

Most of the hard work is still ahead of me, but at least I have confidence that I'll be able to deliver this.

[bryku]

 Woah, so I'm after the first two live streams already! If you haven't watched them yet you can see them at Retrovibe's Twitch channel.

The game development is progressing smoothly. I still need to finalize some in-game features (that's why the game is still in alpha mode), and one of these is weapon upgrades.

Now, I've iterated on the weapons' feature at least two times, and I was not totally happy about it so far.

In the latest iteration, characters could have different weapons assigned, and these weapons could have different attachments installed on them:



Now, the above screenshot is a good depiction of my anxiety about that approach. It was too busy for me and had one thing that I did not like: clicking some buttons was using shelter action points. So basically the player was spending action points from the same pool in two different places: the main shelter screen and the character weapon details screen.


This is the only screen I wanted the player to spend shelter action points in.

Let's dive deeper here.

The thing with spending action points in the weapon details UI was caused by the fact that the player was able to scrap weapon parts and gain supplies - and to make sure that the game rules are consistent, such action had to cost action points. By making things "consistent", I mean that other shelter actions, like searching through the crates were also providing supplies - and they were costing action points.

So in terms of game rules that stuff was consistent. The problem was that UI started to be off.

Then I watched a YouTube video (couldn't remember the link, sorry) about UI design, telling how it is important to recognize UI elements that seem not to fit the rest of the game.

So I went back to the drawing board with this one. I wanted the player to have the possibility to upgrade character weapons, but without the whole unnecessary action points juggling thing with scrapping/upgrading weapons and weapon part.

And here's the current take on it:

Instead of having many weapons of each type available to characters, and a number of interchangeable weapon add-ons, every character has their own, one-and-only, unique weapon throughout the game.

Every weapon is upgradeable by using a new resource, called for now “Weapon Upgrade Tokens”, or “Upgrade Tokens”/”Tokens” in short. These do sound like temporary names, doesn't it? I guess "weapon parts" would be a better name.

These upgrade tokens can be found in special loot crates during combat (previously, weapons/weapon parts were found there)



Every weapon has a number of slots that can be filled with different upgrade types. Here are some WIP, icon-less screenshots:





This approach will allow me to maintain the general idea of upgradeable, moddable weapons. And it resolves a lot of issues:

- scrapping weapons is now unnecessary, as characters are not able to find "better" weapons - they will be able to upgrade/customize the ones they use. This simplified the game a lot. Previously the player had the ability to scrap an old weapon, or to switch weapons of the same type between characters. This mean that there might be situations in which one of the characters was without any weapon. The game had to prevent the player from scrapping weapons in some cases (to avoid having weaponless characters) and it had to be explained in the UI.

- weapon energy cells (so the part responsible for ammo capacity) could be unmounted and/or scrapped, which could result in a weapon with no ability to shoot if the player was not paying attention. Such dead-end situations are something that one should avoid in game design.

- the only place where action points are spent is the main shelter view. Upgrading a weapon does not cost action points, and it makes sense.

So yeah, I'm still tweaking that part to make it more fun. And if you'd like to ask me some questions about the game design (or any other question), do grab me on my weekly Monday streams.

Take care!

[bryku]

Howdy! Here's some information on the "map mutators" feature that I was working on recently.

As you might be aware, there's the "map travel"/"mission select" screen in Shardpunk that allows the player to choose the next mission.



Until now, there were three fixed properties for every map location:

Enviroment type

This was the 'biome' thing. In Chapter 1, there are industrial and sewer maps available, with the industrial ones being split into closed (indoors) ones and open ones (the streets, basically).

No matter whether we were dealing with sewers or industrial settings, the gameplay was the same. Sure, the visuals were completely different but they were not affecting the gameplay.

However, the game did differ for indoor/open locations - mostly because, well, the open maps were more... open - so they had not many tight corridors, enemies were able to reach you quicker, etc.

Presence of a shelter

I wrote about shelters lots of times here - they allow the player to rest, craft upgrades, and perform other shelter-related actions. Basically, it's a good thing to enter a shelter. Some locations might not have one.



Special loot type

Some locations might yield extra resources: a stash of medical supplies, grenades or other useful stuff.



After the latest changes, I introduced a number of extra properties (which I've called "mutators" in code and I'm not entirely sure why). Also, I made them dynamic, meaning that each location in the game will have random mutators assigned.

Here's how the map UI looks like after the change:



Here's the list of mutators that I've added so far:

Weak foundations: it can only be applied to an indoor location. It prevents you from using grenades.

No shelter: that's basically just the old "presence of a shelter" property, changed into a mutator. And a pretty punishing one.

Longer distance: the combat map is longer.

More loot: I guess this is self-explanatory.

Special loot: again, this is the old "Special loot type" property, changed into a mutator.

Rain: only available in outdoor locations. The rain is pouring down. And it turns out that the grenades your party is using are pretty sensitive to water, which might cause them to malfunction.

Ion storm: due to reasons I still need to figure out, this particular location is struck with a very intensive storm. Each turn random fields are struck by lightning bolts that deal heavy damage.



I especially like this last mutator - nothing is more satisfying than seeing the rats getting wiped out by a bolt of lightning. Now, I can already see that I am missing one important piece of gameplay mechanics here, and that is allowing the player to actively influence where the enemies should end their turn (in order to wander into the lightning bolt zone). Is it using some kind of a decoy? Or an "intimidate" skill? I will try to explore it further.

If you'd like to help me out with game design, do remember I'm waiting for you on Shardpunk's Discord channel!

That's all for this update - thanks for reading, and have a great day!

[Alain]

Nice, the map mutators seem to be an amazing feature and I also like the Ion Storm best

[bryku]

Yup, you've seen the news - after a year I've released another demo of Shardpunk!

You can grab the latest demo on Steam or on GOG.

 I won't be listing all of the changes that made it to this demo, as it would take too much space; the game is still in development and I am moving features around all the time, so many things that were present in the previous demo work completely different. Here's a brief list of the stuff that I believe is the most important:

More playable characters

There are seven unique playable characters that you can choose from, each one of them coming with their own set of skills. Three of the character models were present in the previous demo; four of them are new.   





Pistols as a new weapon type

Pistols, next to heavy weapons and sniper rifles are the new thing in Shardpunk. Two pistol-wielding characters that are present in the game are able to shoot twice per turn or shoot and reload (that's the unique perk of pistols in the game). 



Fusion Cores became weapons of mass destruction

If you follow me long enough you know I am a sucker for risk/reward mechanics. That's why I introduced another role for Fusion Cores which were originally used for unlocking shelters. Now you can use them in combat and fry your enemies with lightning bolts. 



Shelter phase revamp

Shelter phases are now simplified - I've introduced a common shelter action points pool that makes the decision-making process less complex. Also, there are more actions that can be performed there - along with weapon customization. 




Now, the demo has a similar length to the previous one. You can play through one mission (it will be taking place in the streets or inside a factory, and each of them has a set of random locations) and then go through one shelter phase. This, combined with the possibility to test out different character combinations gives a good amount of replayability. Also, last but not least - feedback is everything. There is a link to a survey in the game, so do make sure to leave me some feedback after you have your fun with the demo.

Take care!

[Alain]

That's great news, I'm excited to check out the demo next weekend!

Does the player have to decide whether to shoot the fusion core to destroy enemies or to unlock shelter? I remember in X-Com there were these UFO cores that you could shoot to explode and kill all aliens nearby. I often did that in early missions but later avoided doing that to be able to retrieve resources from the intact core. This was an interesting choice to make.

[bryku]

Does the player have to decide whether to shoot the fusion core to destroy enemies or to unlock shelter? I remember in X-Com there were these UFO cores that you could shoot to explode and kill all aliens nearby. I often did that in early missions but later avoided doing that to be able to retrieve resources from the intact core. This was an interesting choice to make.

Fusion Cores are usable items that each character can carry. One can use them to unlock the door or to use them as a lightning bolt thrower.

That being said, having map elements that are a combination of an explosive barrel/salvageable container is a nice thing to try out.

[Alain]

Fusion Cores are usable items that each character can carry. One can use them to unlock the door or to use them as a lightning bolt thrower.

I see, thanks for clearing that up, sounds good!

[Ramos]

The weapon customization is a very good addition. 

[bryku]

Ugh, these last two weeks did pass pretty quickly!

It's time for another devlog entry, so I'll make it quick. I'm currently working on making sure that the UI is supporting gamepads. It's a tedious process, but it does require some smart thinking occasionally.

I played a lot of Pathway, Mutant Year Zero and XCOM 2 on gamepad in the last days, to see how these games approach the controller support. I believe I've extracted and mixed their solution in an approachable way. That being said, I'm still in a middle of it so I might still encounter blockers.



Also, I've posted an article on Reddit recently containing all the lessons I learned since starting my gamedev journey four (!) years ago - go read it if you're interested in how I ended up here.

I'd love to write more, but I've literally run out of time to do things. There will be more content next time, I promise!

Anyways, here's a list of some unrelated gameplay gifs, as I know that everyone loves gifs. Enjoy!

[Alain]

Thanks for sharing your story in the Reddit post, it was a nice read!

I played a lot of Pathway, Mutant Year Zero and XCOM 2 on gamepad in the last days, to see how these games approach the controller support. I believe I've extracted and mixed their solution in an approachable way. That being said, I'm still in a middle of it so I might still encounter blockers.

I imagine implementing controller support can be a lot of pain but I am sure you will handle it fine. Mutant Year Zero is one of my favorite games of the genre

[iMaple]

Just found your reddit post chronicling your journey, so I went ahead and looked up your devlog. Super cool game, this! Thanks for sharing your progress, and massive kudos for making it this far. Excited to play this once it's out!