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TIGSource ForumsCommunityDevLogsHANDMADEDEATHENGINE (HANDMADEDEATHLABYRINTH issues 1+)
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Author Topic: HANDMADEDEATHENGINE (HANDMADEDEATHLABYRINTH issues 1+)  (Read 3107 times)
droqen
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« on: September 15, 2020, 10:48:52 PM »






So, HANDMADEDEATHLABYRINTH issue 0 is individually released!!! but we're also selling a bundle of a bunch of 10-minute-long games because we want to see more 10-minute-long games. So I'm repping my 10mg crew!!! Thanks to everyone on the team <3

~

Hey, droqen here! I used to post on tigsource a lot, and then I released a game that was successful, and then I, I dunno, I stopped posting here and stopped thinking I could (or should) make small interesting games anymore. Hubris. Anyway, I started posting here more because it's nice to get into some crazy conversations with game devs and I feel like I'm actually moving forward these days rather than stuck in the same place over & over.

I've been working on HMDL since April of this year, and some stuff happened, and it's taken on a sort of zine-ish issue-based structure; I'll probably just keep this thread going as a devlog for issue 1... Not sure how many issues we'll do, but I still have lots of ideas I want to explore (issue 0 is kind of intentionally hamstrung/short in terms of fully exploring the HMDL mechanics; it's like a very particular short story told through the language of the larger game that isn't even playable yet, haha.)

Okay, that's enough from me. I'll write a better first post eventually. Thanks for welcoming me back to tigsource!
« Last Edit: January 12, 2021, 08:02:48 AM by droqen » Logged

Bones
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« Reply #1 on: September 16, 2020, 12:31:14 AM »

Hey, you been feeling nostalgic too?
Missed you bud, you and your odd project names.

Looking good and simple. Can't beat that. Plus that sure likes like a floaty sword to me.
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« Reply #2 on: September 16, 2020, 03:44:00 AM »

Oo, looks interesting :D - I was automatically searching for a download/play button somewhere on your first post Blink  Grin
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droqen
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« Reply #3 on: September 16, 2020, 06:45:29 AM »

Hey, Bones Smiley Yeah, nostalgia's lingering. Saw your reintroduction in the introduction thread! I've poked around tigsource for a while and something felt different, and I know part of that is the people who are active these days are different people, but I also did a lot of changing myself. It's nice coming back when I feel like I've figured out how to get back into the old mindset.

Thx Rogod! Glad the screenshot had that effect on you Hand Any Key The button is coming pretty soon!!

I'll post some devloggy stuff soon, just getting my Steam page set up.
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« Reply #4 on: September 16, 2020, 02:52:47 PM »

Love it droqen. Nice to see you back
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droqen
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« Reply #5 on: September 19, 2020, 04:26:24 PM »

So I spent too, too long fretting over how to build steam capsule images, because part of that is coming up with BRANDING and part of that is figuring out wtf the name of this game is. So, this is a NAME REVEAL post, but I also just want to share my branding images because they bring me a great deal of joy.



AAAND here's a screenshot of one of the earlier encounters in the game... (it's not a difficult encounter, but it's the first combat encounter so it has to be easy!)



...

I've been prepping the game to get to this point for a while so all that's left to do is a bunch of level design. Combat scenarios and balancing/playtesting. This one is going to be a very short game, and I don't want to spoil anything! But I'll try to post a few interesting tidbits here and there. Really I just want everyone to play the game but it's not done yet so that's not an option so here I am making a devlog without wanting to give anything about what I'm working on away Durr...?

I'll post some things about my process maybe? I'm using Godot. It's nice.
« Last Edit: September 19, 2020, 05:52:08 PM by droqen » Logged

Golds
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« Reply #6 on: September 20, 2020, 11:32:00 PM »

looks great, droqen. Also cool you're building it in Godot. That engine appears to just continue to get better and better. One of these days I'd like to take the time to build something with it myself.
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droqen
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« Reply #7 on: September 21, 2020, 05:19:35 AM »

Thanks NinthPower and Golds <3

Nice to be back.

I remember trying Godot a few years back and while I wanted very much to like it, I couldn't get into it. I imagine a bit of that was due to it being worse back then, but I think my mindset changed a bit too. It does take a few tries and a bit of time to warm up to a new tool, but I am so glad I did. I'm too lazy to be bothered with writing custom plugins that modify the editor but just running scripts in the editor scene has let me do so much lifesaving work to support my internal workflow.



^ I'm still really proud of this tool I made for 'flagging' various tiles in my tileset, every time I use it, it makes me happy. Just to give you an idea of the level of hackyness I'm relying on: it uses a couple of Godot's tilemap editors stacked on top of each other and parses the data from this scene whenever I run the game. Not that hacky, but definitely feels like not quite the way they were meant to be used ;p

(I use Tiled for the actual room editing though. Nicer interface, and I need to make a lot of levels.)
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« Reply #8 on: September 21, 2020, 09:53:09 AM »

Welcome back!

Nice pixel art you have here, clean and in style
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« Reply #9 on: September 21, 2020, 08:52:55 PM »

So I spent too, too long fretting over how to build steam capsule images, because part of that is coming up with BRANDING and part of that is figuring out wtf the name of this game is.

Seriously! What is with this archaic garbage steam still has with the capsules when I can make a good looking itch.io page in half the time? And don't get me started on managing steam builds oof...

I love the name and the branding you did. Weird but I'm a sucker for white modern typography on low-rez stuff.
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droqen
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« Reply #10 on: September 22, 2020, 05:47:58 AM »

Storytime.

HMDL is made up of multiple one-room "floors". When you travel from one room to an adjacent room, it keeps both rooms in memory. This is so that I can do stuff like this:



... where rather than reset everything in a room, sometimes they hang out and do weird shit. I thought, what the hell, this is a small game with small independent physics islands, I'll just never unload them from memory. You die pretty often and then everything should get reset. I will deal with this when the time comes.

This was months ago. Now the time has come: doing playtesting, I'm getting reports from more than one person about the game getting laggy. Horribly laggy. Unplayably laggy. I am dreading this, because I know I'm keeping a ton of physics objects in memory and active and this is obviously the place to look for problems.

I went to bed and woke up with my left hand completely numb because I slept on my left arm weird. (I'm trying to do something about this but I think I should probably just get an arm brace.)

And I was like, oh:

Quote
I'll just never unload them from memory.

Maybe I actually never unload them from memory, as would fit my conscious detailed plan. This is still a long-term problem I will need to solve for issue 1, but...



Godot appends @ to the beginning and end of things that have the same name as something else along with a number that indicates how many other clones it's skipping over. So if I spawn five dogs, I'll get
  • dog
  • @dog@2
  • @dog@3
  • @dog@4
  • @dog@5
... or something like that. That is my understanding, anyway.

I do not have a single clue why it's jumping straight
from 0905-temple firsttemple-upper
to @@@@@0905-temple firsttemple-upper@14@19@24@25@28.
Like where are those numbers coming from? What the hell?
The only possible solution that is occurring to me is that this would happen if I spawned a new level, then cloned it (and deleted the original), then cloned the clone, repeat a few times. But I am not doing that.

I actually started writing this post thinking I'd solved it but I now realize I have more problems than I initially thought. Tears of Joy

edit: oh

« Last Edit: September 22, 2020, 05:57:38 AM by droqen » Logged

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« Reply #11 on: September 23, 2020, 10:04:09 AM »

i like the tiny pixel art style and it's cool seeing a godot game on here. excited to see where this goes Hand Clap
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droqen
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« Reply #12 on: September 23, 2020, 01:48:16 PM »

Seriously! What is with this archaic garbage steam still has with the capsules when I can make a good looking itch.io page in half the time? And don't get me started on managing steam builds oof...

I love the name and the branding you did. Weird but I'm a sucker for white modern typography on low-rez stuff.

Steam is so choosy =_=
Itch also has kiinda weird capsule (cover) image sizing that I used to struggle with.
Now I'm like, ha ha, no problem, I've been through hell

i like the tiny pixel art style and it's cool seeing a godot game on here. excited to see where this goes Hand Clap

Yayy thank you! The art style has been really fun to work with and develop. Godot has basically been a dream the whole time.

Some of these amazing bitsys I've seen have been huge inspirations for me: https://candle.itch.io/castle
« Last Edit: September 23, 2020, 02:34:16 PM by droqen » Logged

droqen
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« Reply #13 on: October 02, 2020, 07:39:44 AM »

Hello! So, the game actually isn't like 100% done done done, hence the devlog progress bar still being at 90%

(I need to add credits and fix up some music stuff and do another build)

But, the big news today is the it's live on steam and coming soon and publicly 'announced'

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1413790/10mg_HANDMADEDEATHLABYRINTH_issue_0/

I wish I could figure out how to link a video easily here... but if you click on that link you can watch the trailer Smiley it has music and sound and shows some gameplay.

EDIT:: Oh, right, and also I should rep the 10mg crew!



HMDL issue 0 is being released alongside 9 other games designed to be 10 minute experiences. I... ran a bit long. But, the spirit of being a finite bite-sized dense super-cool experience remains.

Check out the website! It has all the other games.

https://10min.games/
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droqen
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« Reply #14 on: October 05, 2020, 06:49:19 PM »

I gave a talk over this past weekend's Roguelike Celebration (which was this awesome text-based MUD-like social space) about some of the themes that inspired HMDL in the first place. I haven't talked about this much yet but I often think fondly of HMDL as a "low value roguelike". Anyway, the talk...

If you're interested in it you can watch at this link:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/760769871
at the timestamp 03:59:23



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« Reply #15 on: October 11, 2020, 10:46:48 PM »

Candle's castle series is really great and inspiring! Flotsam was my favorite.

Your game is looking great btw, and congrats on the near release with 10mg!
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droqen
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« Reply #16 on: October 15, 2020, 07:26:59 AM »

edit: to clarify, thanks, SolS. <3 and I LOVED Flotsam, damn. What a good damn series.

Thanks! Uhh! So, it's out! I'm probably a bit too gung-ho on the first post, all I've eaten is a single banana all morning and I need more energy, but I finally got to set this thread's icon to "DONE!"

TEchnically the game was "DONE!" like last night, when I forced myself to finish all the things and put it down

10mg! I am bad at repping it, but 10mg is a bundle of 10x10 minute games, and HMDL is one of them, and I'm so glad that I made a game with this limitation. Making a 10-minute game is really joyous. I wrote about how I feel about short games on my blog.

Anyway you can find the bundle here: https://itch.io/b/619/10mg-collection
« Last Edit: October 15, 2020, 10:52:07 AM by droqen » Logged

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« Reply #17 on: October 15, 2020, 01:51:56 PM »

I found this from the Gamasutra article, it's super fun and I absolutely love the pixel art, the textures are awesome, and the mysterious dialogue and odd dream and attack mechanics are super unique! Really great work droqen

Although, I think I may have run into a gamebreaking bug in my gameplay, I can't get past the Slime Wizard... I won't post details here since there's no spoiler tags, but I posted about it on the Steam forums, then decided to repost here since I'm not sure if they will be monitored
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droqen
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« Reply #18 on: October 15, 2020, 02:43:52 PM »

I have responded! Thanks for reaching out to me here and I hope you enjoyed the game and are satisfied with my answer ^^;
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« Reply #19 on: October 15, 2020, 04:49:41 PM »

I have responded! Thanks for reaching out to me here and I hope you enjoyed the game and are satisfied with my answer ^^;
Thanks so much and no problem! I'm satisfied and glad I don't have to kill that wizard again. XD

Great game, looking forward to the next issue
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