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[kecenr]

Hello everyone! I came to TIGForums after researching the very early history of a certain bestselling game. I'm not here to replicate its success, but rather I found the retro feel of this website to be quite appealing. I've decided to chronicle the development of my game, Cambria. I started this a couple weeks ago and I am now at the third main release of my game.

In this version, I added a map loading system. Before this, the game was limited to just one level. The map loading system works similarly to Legend of Zelda on the NES. Each room fills up one screen, and there are exits on at least one side of the map, sometimes 2, 3, or all 4, that lead to other similar rooms. The transition is a bit jarring, but it works. There are only 3 levels so far, the third one being mostly randomly generated. It's very chaotic and you will die. In the update before this one, I added the title screen music, a cover of Erik Satie's Gymnopedie No. 1, as well as footstep sound effects for the player and a death sound effect. This was a form of procrastination from working on the map loading system and ended up being released as Alpha 0.1.5. Music and sound are my specialties in game design so working on those gave me the much needed dopamine rush.

Here's the GitHub link for Alpha 0.2: https://github.com/kecenr/cambria_alpha_indevbuild_02

Installation instructions:

-Create a folder in a convenient place on your computer
-Install the .py files into that folder
-Install the Assets folder and its contents into the folder
-Double-click main.py

I will be uploading releases in .exe form along with the GitHub source code when the game reaches Beta stages. I encourage you all to tear through the source code, mod the game, use it as a base for other projects, and/or use snippets of it for your own projects. Most of the code comes from ShawCode tutorials on YouTube, and the rest comes from me and my colleague.

[JobLeonard]

Welcome! Can you describe a bit what kind of game you're making?

[kecenr]

It's a top-down narrative-driven shooter RPG

[JobLeonard]

Nice!

A lot of the value of these forums comes from feedback from other devs, but they have to notice the devlog. There's a little bit of luck involved, but it also helps to "hook" them.

Sharing screenshots and gifs and giving descriptions of the game is a good start. Also a good practice for pitching/marketing your game

[kecenr]

Thank you for the tip! I will be doing that in future devlogs. I'm still getting used to retro UI of these forums as I've been spoiled by the discords and reddits of today's internet. This is far from the last devlog though, so expect a lot of screenshots.



Here's an attempt at posting an image ^^ let's hope it works

[kecenr]

This was from a glitch I had during development of Alpha Indevbuild 02, lol

[JobLeonard]

Looks like a dude walking down a road being watched by tons of little aliens

(what's the glitch?)

[kecenr]

Hey! Sorry for the late reply. This was a glitch I ran into while trying to make randomly generated levels. Instead of choosing between 3 types of tiles (grass, stone, enemy), it rendered all 3 at once on every tile that was designated to be random. This slowed my fps to a crawl.

[kecenr]

The rover was so conveniently placed in this screenshot! The shovel hasn't been fully implemented yet though.

[JobLeonard]

Hey! Sorry for the late reply. This was a glitch I ran into while trying to make randomly generated levels. Instead of choosing between 3 types of tiles (grass, stone, enemy), it rendered all 3 at once on every tile that was designated to be random. This slowed my fps to a crawl.

Haha, yeah that'll drag things down

How long have you been working on the prototype?

[kecenr]

Development officially began in June, and the first alpha was released on June 22nd. Before that I had tried coding Cambria in C++ and Java, both to no avail.