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[backtotheabyssgamestudio]

Hi everyone!! Back to the Abyss is an independent videogame studio, based in Uruguay. We are a team of 2 people, Programmer/Game Designer and Graphic designer. We have years of experience in software development in C#, .NET, XNA/Monogame. See our introductory post here https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=45.msg1443776#msg1443776

We are currently working in Lucifer v1.0 (working title), our first top-down shooter, action/RPG game, for PC/Windows, Windows 10 and XBox. Lucifer is a difficult top-down shooter/action/RPG game about occultism and magic, where you'll have to fight and summon demons of a wide range, that will bring you several powers and knowledge. Set in the medieval age and inmersed in a huge, dangerous labyrinth, Lucifer will teach you about Chaos Magic, throughout the pages of an ancient book you'll have to find.

More details about Luciferian at https://backtotheabyssgamestudio.blogspot.com/p/games.html

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/backtotheabyss
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/backtotheabyss
Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkh8_Kljjdvzu35vYXQMj6A
Website: https://backtotheabyssgamestudio.blogspot.com


Prototype, Pre-Alfa, Alfa, Beta, v0.7, v1.0
2016-2020

We are building a dev. blog for the game as a way of bringing you closer to the creative process and tell you the story behind it since we started in early 2017. You will be able to follow the development of the whole game in there, when it's ready.


v1.0
DECEMBER 2020

Hi, quick update before 2020 year ends, hope you like it! We've been working in enemies death and close attack, player's death and combat mechanic in general. Some enemies will throw up powers, we are working on it and in game's balance in general, design-wise. We are adding new sounds, reason why we deleted all audio in this video. More progress in the next days! Back to the Abyss never rests





JANUARY 2021

Here's a new update, regarding sound FX. Monster steps can be heard now. We also replaced player steps/walking with new sound, and screaming for both, player and enemy have been added, when they die. More updates in the next days!





AUGUST 2021

We are working in new levels for Lucifer, Level 4 in this case. We are bringing in more graphic depth, overlapping and combining textures. As you see, we are adding other structures as well as houses/buildings, tables and other objects the player can interact with. We hope you like it



We've found a bug in the exit area, it wasn't showing level requisites and/or required objects in order to move forward into the next level. Besides this, we wanted to let you know we are building a dev. blog for the game, as a way of bringing you closer to the creative process and tell you the story behind it since we started in early 2017.

[backtotheabyssgamestudio]

SEPTEMBER 2021

Hi. I've been working in several things code-wise lately, mainly code refactoring, things not visible to the player, but structural and needed for optimization. Also I've been doing a level editor, something we didn't have so far. I remind I am making the game in C# and Monogame entirely, within a propietary engine, so for good or for bad, everything takes more time than using an existing engine.

In addition to this, the idea is completing the first 10 levels for Steam's Early Access as soon as possible from a level design angle, so to view the game more conceptually, not so focused into the minor detail. This will allow to speed up the development, which is already been forever since I started.


"Lucifer v1.0 - Level 9-Floor-1" (Photo)

Part of August's work and currently September was focused into creating less-laberintic looking-like levels, design-wise, with more open spaces, more aimed into combat and less into level resolution. It will be plagued with enemies of different sorts, skills and speeds. In fact, I am adding a layer of of new enemy paths to all existing levels. Enemies already see us and can change the path as well, also shooting. There's no gameplay footage made for that yet. Graphically, our designer Giordano have been working a lot in giving more richness, breaking the walls/sides linearity, also adding other objects such as houses/buildings and structures where the player will be able to interact with and explore.


"Lucifer v1.0 - Level 4 - Floor + Wall textures-1" (Photo)


"Lucifer v1.0 - Level 4 - Floor + Houses + Wall textures-2" (Photo)

More updates soon.

[backtotheabyssgamestudio]

We've been working in removing the sharpness of the borders, for some old levels from 2018. As you can see in this before/after comparison, we found a way to make them look not so lineal. What do you think of the change?

[backtotheabyssgamestudio]

NOVEMBER 2021 - Week 2

Here is some work in progress from one of the new levels from World 1 for #Lucifer (working title). We've been also revamping some old levels to standardize the overall quality.

Besides this, we've been ironing out bugs regarding collision layer and hitboxes, as well as perfecting other aspects such as player sliding over the corners of the walls. It feels much better now. Other improvements as well, regarding screen limits detection, so to work perfectly on every resolution, even non-standard ones. All of this meant lot of code refactoring.

More updates soon.  

[backtotheabyssgamestudio]

NOVEMBER 2021 - Week 3

Here is some more work in progress from yet another of the new levels from World 1 for #Lucifer (working title).
We've been also working in a development mode to expose hitboxes (collision rectangles), so to ease the debugging of errors. We'll be posting a couple of videos soon about it, with details how we did it.




We are making good progress in the game lately, from implementing two sword attacks for the player, the addition of dozens of enemies walking in all 8 directions to a reduced visibility/sort of night mode for some of the levels.

[backtotheabyssgamestudio]

DECEMBER 2021 - WEEK 1
** to be detailed

DECEMBER 2021 - WEEKS 2-4
** to be detailed

JANUARY 2022 - March 2022
** to be detailed

APRIL - WEEK 2

Sword attack implemented. We are working in adding blood animations and new sound FX.



APRIL - WEEK 4

Level up your power-up to +6 x4 can really make a difference in the game.

[backtotheabyssgamestudio]

MAY - WEEK 1

v1.0

We've been working tirelessly in polishing the combat mechanics for the game, for which perfecting the work made on hit boxes is a must. This rather technical video exemplifies the problematic for these types of games where there's close combat between characters (i.e. fighting games), where re-definition of hit boxes is made constantly within the game loop, depending on what the characters are doing, detecting the intersection between all of them, defining the correct threshold values and a potential snap/correction in-between rectangles.

The complexity relies that you can't keep an strict rectangle snap policy, or you risk a constant correction of x, y for the player, yet not allowing rectangles overlapping each other too much. For this, thresholds and tolerance range(s) are used. And given the case rectangles overlap too much, collision and intersections needs to be equally treated and managed properly. At the same time, you have the issue that an eventual correction / snap of x, y values, based on the intersection, doesn't end up putting the player inside a wall and keeping you stuck.