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[rhys_vdw]

Enter the Chronosphere
A tactical bullet hell roguelike where each turn is a slice of real-time action.
A game by Effort Star.







Watch this space for updates!

Links

• Twitter — @EffortStarGames
• Steam — Wishlist Enter the Chronosphere
• itch.io — Play Enter the Chronosphere demo
• web — Official website
  

[Alain]

Looking interesting! Just a little heads-up: for me all your links do not seem to work.

[rhys_vdw]

Looking interesting! Just a little heads-up: for me all your links do not seem to work.

Thanks. Apparently this forum turns

Code:

https://effortstar.games

into

Code:

http://"https://effortstar.games"

[rhys_vdw]

Out first development update! We’ll be posting an update like this biweekly, summarizing the most interesting developments.

We’ve been working on this game since the start of 2022, so I’ll try to include context for the updates instead of doing a full summary of work-to-date.

Map generation

For the entirety of this year we’ve been using a basic map generator that we originally created during the initial week of development during 7DRL 2021. Now it’s time to overhaul it and create some more interesting levels.

This is an overview of the old map generation algorithm:

1. Generate a circular maze.
Mazes are a convenient type of level generator because they guarantee that every tile is accessible from every other tile.

2. Knock out walls at random.

This helps to alleviate the undesirable parts of maze generation (specifically that being lost in a maze is not much fun). This results in creating little clusters of cover for the player to pull into or sneak around enemies.

We have editor tools for customizing how this process works, using Unity’s animation curve to control the probability that a wall will be removed based on its position (either distance from the center, or x or y position).

3. Randomly select enemies from a weighted probability distribution.

4. Randomly place health, weapon pickup, entry staircase and exit staircase.

And that’s it! We use 13 configs to generate these levels and stack them up to create the game world.





Revamping the generator is one of the meatier tasks on our roadmap, so hopefully I can show off the new system in the not-too-distant future.

New weapon, “The Crumbler”

We’ve been working on the “mole mines” biome—a cavernous underground area defended by industrialized sci-fi moles with drilling weapons and explosives.

The crumbler is a minibomb launcher which serves the 'shotgun' room clearer role in the mole mines biome.

Depending on the distance of your reticle from your character, you can either fire a tight, constrained arc or a loose spread.

Tying attack properties to reticle position, rather than aim direction, opens up some interesting space for weapon design and opportunities to raise the skill ceiling for players.

[oldblood]

First time seeing this project. Definitely giving me top-down, 2D, SUPER HOT feeling. Which is a great vibe to have and a pretty unique take on it all. I cant help but wish for a slightly more interesting characters but I do love the simplicity and color-themes you've got going on. Looking forward to seeing more updates.

[rhys_vdw]

First time seeing this project. Definitely giving me top-down, 2D, SUPER HOT feeling. Which is a great vibe to have and a pretty unique take on it all. I cant help but wish for a slightly more interesting characters but I do love the simplicity and color-themes you've got going on. Looking forward to seeing more updates.

Cheers! Assuming you mean visually more interesting, then watch this space. In fact, if you mean more interesting gameplay then also watch this space. :-)

[nathy after dark]

Seems cool!

[rhys_vdw]

Looks like a missed an update last fortnight! That's because we've been working hard on a new art style (looking forward to showing this off, but it's not ready yet).

Character selection screen

Today I want to show off our new character selection screen. Here's a video of the whole flow from game boot to starting a run:





Super happy with how this turned out. The characters aren't playable yet, but we thought it was important to have the menu screen in now so that players can get a sense of what's to come.

Map generation

As mentioned in the last update, I have started on the new map generation system. I ended up putting it on hold to support the new art assets and also build the character selection, but I'll share a couple of dev screenshots here.

First simple map generation

The idea behind this new system is that our designer can build up generation rules in a node-based interface. This system replaces the simpler config system I showed in the last update video. To begin with I'm just supporting these very simple circular-maze style maps, but the goal is to expand it with other generation techniques (for example voronoi, which could create more organic patterns for caverns, forests etc).

Here's an example of a generator graph:

Generate a circular maze, and then randomly remove walls with a probability across a diagonal axis.

And an example map it creates:

The walls are concentrated towards the NE, as instructed by the "randomly filter walls by position" node in the graph.

Okay I don't really expect to knock anyone's socks off with the map stuff, but it feels like nice starting point for a more sophisticated system.

Love to hear your thoughts on any of the above!

[correojon]

This is an awesome concept and I love how elegant and polished it looks already

In games like this I love it when the player is able to turn a completely unfavorable situation into a big win by making the enemies attack each other. This is something that is done brilliantly for example in Into the Breach and it makes the player feel really clever. I see that there is already friendly fire but, have you though about designing your enemies and challenges to take more advantage of this?

[mobilelast]

Very solid gameplay as well as clear and nicely stylized graphics. This would fit perfectly to touch-devices also. Extra mention to the fantastic transition from sphere to the level.

I cant help but wish for a slightly more interesting characters

But isn’t "@" already the greatest hero in computer gaming since Hack…

[rhys_vdw]

I see that there is already friendly fire but, have you though about designing your enemies and challenges to take more advantage of this?

Yes! This is a big feature in the biome we're working on now. The theme is an exploitative mining corp that doesn't care about its workers. Larger enforcer enemies will carelessly destroy lesser grunt enemies if they walk into their missiles.

Very solid gameplay as well as clear and nicely stylized graphics. This would fit perfectly to touch-devices also. Extra mention to the fantastic transition from sphere to the level.

Thank you! Yes, I'm trying to keep the game touch-friendly. Not because we have specific plans to support mobile, but I think it's a nice constraint for accessibility and to force me to think of elegant interactions. Admittedly it's getting trickier as the game gets more complex.

[rhys_vdw]

We've been hard at work on our graphical overhaul. Some exciting updates to come, but for today I just want to share our new "world select screen".





This is where you'll decide which run you want to take. We've added these "callout" boxes that highlight obstacles and benefits to the run. Long-term they'll tie into our "research projects" system, whereby you may select a run that contains a rare required to complete a mission.

Looking forward to sharing our new art style with you all (that's when this thread will get truly interesting).

Happy to hear your thoughts!