Gamedev Progress Report: 01/29/2018
A new year, a new devlog post. Just something quick.
..::The New Game::..
Screen Templates
I’ve begun adding some template screens so the game can be navigated. I’ve completed templates for the main menu, options, binds, game over, and pause. They still need to be stylized, which will be taken care of in the future. The real fun will be implementing the final main game HUD and the pause/inventory screen. They are more complex and will be tougher for me to block out.
As you can see, there are also HUD key/controller hints implemented.
Engine Progress
I’ve added a Borderless window mode to the new game, much like Turnover has right now. I also spent a good amount of time ensuring 16:9, 16:10, and 21:9 resolutions have proper screen scaling and support.
The new game now makes greater use of vertex buffers for rendering most everything (like Turnover now as well). This gave the game a good speedup and should go towards improving performance for lower end systems.
Completed a lot of back-end usability stuff, just to make development go a little smoother and quicker. This included how levels are made/loaded.
A lot of optimizations and fixes. A lot of refactoring to ensure stability.
Game Progress
The core of the game design, which includes the weapon system, gameplay, and objectives are now established and planned. Now, just to get them done...
A full prototype of the player’s weapon setup is complete and in-game. Refinement is on-going.
Completed draft versions of a few new enemies, as well as a couple more minibosses.
Roughly 60% of the game world is “draft complete”, including art. Still, much work to go.
Current work is focused on newly planned gameplay elements. Once I have a few successful tests of those, then back to level work.
So the major sections of the game to get draft ready are as follows: “objective sections”, the game world, and the minibosses. Once those are drafted, I can then link them together and have the first full playthrough of the game. A pre-alpha, that’s what I’m working towards currently.
Depending how much I have “show off ready”, I think Summer might be a good time to reveal the game and the concept behind it. We’ll see as it gets a little closer.
Recent GIFs
Some test minibosses in a test room.
..::Turnover::..
Turnover has recently been updated. The new build brings some nice improvements.
SFML has incorporated vertex buffer support into their library. I’ve rewritten Turnover to accommodate them. This should give a nice performance bump, particularly to anyone with a lower end GPU.
I added a separate option for music and sound volume, instead of one master volume.
I knocked out a few 21:9 scaling issues in the menus. Some text was too large and positioning was out of whack. It wasn’t game breaking, just a little annoying.
A handful of fixes to general issues I’ve run into while testing out the recent changes.
Also, Turnover is now available for a new, lower price of $4.99 USD.














