Deus Verve Makes Games

[deusvervemakesgames]

Project RBH DevLog 0147

I got a few more sprites done, like the exclamation mark that appears before enemies attack. I also went through and finally made it so that all enemies had that warning—before now I’d only bothered to have it on one for testing purposes.

While I was working on that I remembered a bug that I hadn’t ever fixed and figured now would be a good time. After the first floor of a dungeon crawl, all of the damage number text would be much, much larger than it was supposed to be. I crawled through a lot of code looking for the issue before I figured out it was a weird quirk with the GameMaker engine. Basically, once you set the font for text on screen, all text uses that font. So if, for example, you used a different, larger, more readable font for certain UI and never set it back to the smaller font used for damage numbers, then your damage numbers will continue using the larger UI font instead. All I had to do was make sure the damage numbers also set their own font. Well, ideally, I would reset the font every time it’s used but honestly RBH isn’t a complicated enough game for me to need best practices all the time. Also, this means that all of my playtesting tools are in the wrong font until I shoot an enemy which is very funny to me.

Anyway. I’ve also got to do the drones and also redo the player weapons, since my last attempt at those came out poorly. Plus bombs. Who doesn’t love a good bomb.

-DeusVerve

DevLogs like these are brought to you by Patron(s) like Haelerin!

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[deusvervemakesgames]

All that's left is the summit. Live with what's likely to be the finale of OPUS: Prism Peak!

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[dndmultiverse]

Tons of respect towards TTRPG designers that openly acknowledge their game won't appeal to every person

[azspot]

Magic Arena developers say they were told to relocate or effectively lose their jobs

It's one of many reasons that workers tell Polygon they are eager to unionize.

Employees and developers working on Magic: The Gathering Arena say they were hired with promises of remote flexibility, so they bought homes and built lives around those assurances. But they say they are now being told they may need to relocate to Washington state — or effectively lose their jobs.

Those concerns are a major reason why a supermajority of workers on the Arena team are attempting to unionize with the Communications Workers of America, under the banner United Wizards of the Coast. The group publicly launched its campaign on April 27, calling on Wizards of the Coast and parent company Hasbro to voluntarily recognize the union by May 1.

[apricops]

These employees are doing important and laudable work in response to being forced into a bad situation but I’m glad they still took the opportunity to call themselves “United Wizards”

[basic-bamboo]

WotC has still refused to recognize the union and has escalated to sending organizers letters directly to their homes about how unionizing is a bad idea. Luckily, our United Wizards are educated, organized, and agitated and the form letter from Hasbro was as laughable as it was threatening.

If you want to help out the United Wizards you can sign this petition

cwa.org/uwotcletter

Solidarity baby!

[deusvervemakesgames]

Project RBH DevLog 0146

If I’m being honest, sprite art devlogs are my least favorite. There’s so little for me to talk about in them that I always feel like I’m stalling for time, especially if I was particularly busy and thus only managed to get through a few sprites that week. Here. Have some fire and earth spikes.

I forgot how small the spikes are. I know they’re player-sized and everything—these are the same size as the enemy spikes, if I recall—but I’m used to games with earth spike attacks being giant explosions of stone, and these single spikes are much more restrained. It’s not something I think needs to change, but it’s something interesting to think about.

-DeusVerve

DevLogs like these are brought to you by Patron(s) like Haelerin!

Support me on Patreon to get Early Access to builds!

[deusvervemakesgames]

We begin the ascent. Live with more OPUS: Prism Peak!

Watch this video on Twitch Live

[neosilverthorn]

So. For those of you who didn't pay attention to the details of the legal spat between Krafton and Unknown Worlds, allow me to give you some details of the finest legal comedy of a generation.

Krafton CEO looks at the hype surrounding Subnautica 2, goes over the contract between Krafton and Unknown Worlds, realizes he'll have to pay out bonuses and freaks out because shelling out those bonuses will make him look like a pushover.

CEO goes to his legal department, asks them to come up with a plan to weasel out of paying bonuses. Legal tells him the contract is iron-clad and to accept the loss.

CEO refuses to take the loss, asks ChatGPT for a plan. ChatGPT says the exact same thing the legal department did.

CEO demands a plan from ChatGPT, which dutifully spits out a plan at this point because clearly the CEO is a goddamn idiot.

CEO deletes the chat logs, failing to understand that 'delete' doesn't permanently remove things.

CEO follows plan, and is surprised when Unknown Worlds sues for breach of contract despite being told by both humans and an LLM that is exactly what would happen.

Court does not go well for Krafton's legal department. It comes out that after ignoring the sound legal advice of human beings, the CEO went to ChatGPT and asked for a plan. When asked for the logs by the court, Krafton's legal team states they were deleted, thus that it's simply herersay. Judge goes "Oh, that's okay, we'll have our IT folks recover them." Krafton's legal team is astounded that's even possible.

The chat logs are recovered. It comes out that even ChatGPT was in agreement with Krafton's legal department, and only spat out a plan after being asked a second time.

The judge, now thoroughly done with the stupidity of Krafton's CEO at this point, rules in favor of Unknown Worlds. Her ruling doesn't simply undo the scheme, but effectively leaves all control over Subnautica 2's development in the hands of Unknown Worlds, including the early access release date, reducing Krafton to just publishing out of contractual obligation. Krafton must also return all social media platforms for Unknown Worlds and Subnautica 2 to Unknown Worlds' control. Financial damages will be determined at a later date.

Krafton proceeds to violate the court order in less than 72 hours by trying to set an early access release date before returning Unknown Worlds' social media platforms.

Summary: In trying not to look like a pushover, Krafton's CEO now looks like a complete idiot who's going to have to fork over bonuses, plus court-mandated damages, plus whatever comes out of violating the court's orders. Krafton's legal department may as well come to court dressed as clowns after this. I suspect Unknown Worlds might buy the rights to Subnautica back after all this and either relegate Krafton to just publishing or find a different publisher for future games altogether.

[captain-price-returns]

[thefloatingstone]

btw, Steam is currently having an "ocean fest" where they showcase all the ocean themed games on the store

which they obviously decided to do by complete coincidence and didn't mean to say anything by this or anything 🙂

[shabby-blog]

Part of the brilliant idea krafton had btw, was to fire the top 3 people of Unknown Worlds to avoid having to pay them. The judge ruled one had to be rehired on the spot.

Part of the contract was he would have to pay big bonus' if subnautica 2 hit a certain amount of sales by a certain date. So he pushed the early release back. The judge ordered that the time wasted on all this was void and the countdown for the earning for the bonus would resume after the decision (so if they had 6 months and the lawsuit took 4, the final date would be 10 months from the start instead of 6)

There's a great video breakdown on the entire shit show here

https://youtu.be/VGaUWKyNkag?si=cPzkKCflRBnNDJjQ

[prokopetz]

The really funny thing about folks dutifully trotting out the old "well ACTUALLY Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition commercially underperformed because it's just tabletop World of Warcraft" line every single time I discuss the economic realities of 4E's publication is the cyclical nature of those complaints.

When 4E came out in 2008, people complained it was trying to turn D&D into tabletop World of Warcraft because it has explicit class roles.

When 3E came out in 2000, people complained it was trying to turn D&D into tabletop Diablo because it has feat trees and magic item affixes.

When 1E came out in 1977, people unfavourably compared it to the then-nascent medium of computer games because the Dungeon Master's Guide contains too many tables; they probably would have called it a tabletop roguelike if not for the fact that the term "roguelike" did not yet exist, the publication of Rogue being three years in the future.

We have been doing the "[edition of D&D] in some respect vaguely resembles [computer game], and that's bad" thing for fifty goddamn years. We've been doing it since practically the very moment computer games existed for comparison to them to be made.

(For the folks about to well-actually that Rogue was technically only one year in the future on account of the fact that 1E's Dungeon Master's Guide was delayed until 1979: I see you.)

[deusvervemakesgames]

Project RBH DevLog 0145

I’m pretty much just going down through my folder of Sprites and doing them one-by-one. I got through two of them last week—the shattered rock sprite from when a rock spike breaks, and the lightning bolt. The rock was easy, I just did it again but with vector art. Making the lightning bolt look good took a bit more work. It’s something that chases the player, so I didn’t want a single bolt strike effect, and I didn’t want to spend forever on some kind of looping series of bolt strikes, so I compromised by making a sort of cartoony wobbly bolt.

I also threw in an effect there at the bottom, which both looks decent and helps inform the player of where the hitbox is.

Another short one this week. Nothing really exciting is happening development-wise, so this is probably going to keep up for a while.

-DeusVerve

DevLogs like these are brought to you by Patron(s) like Haelerin!

Support me on Patreon to get Early Access to builds!

[deusvervemakesgames]

Crashing that train was definitely part of the plan. Live with more OPUS: Prism Peak!

Watch this video on Twitch Live

[videolottery]

Someone should make a disco elysium spiritual successor that takes place in a maze and follows a protagonist who has to eat all the dots in the maze whilst avoiding several ghosts

[dragongirlbunny]

you can actually homebrew this in d&d 5e

[deusvervemakesgames]

Project RBH DevLog 0144

Okay I’m coming back to the walls later. Despite my best efforts, so far all I’ve managed to get to actually look good is a pretty simple gradient without any real detail, like literally a single brick. I’ve got some ideas on how to deal with it, but I’m kind of sick of working on this one wall texture when there’s others to do, like the attacks I mentioned last week.

This is going to end up being on of those things I keep tweaking until I eventually decide that it’s good enough and force myself to stop, I can feel it.

As for what’s left, I can think of several particle effects off the top of my head, plus the elemental attacks, and I’m sure there’s more that I’m simply forgetting. I’ll have to go through each sprite one-by-one—which is probably a good practice anyway to make sure I don’t miss any placeholders, just in general.

I know it’s a shorter DevLog this week, but that’s what happens when I’m both busy and unsatisfied with the progress I made.

Until Next Devlog!

-DeusVerve

DevLogs like these are brought to you by Patron(s) like Haelerin!

Support me on Patreon to get Early Access to builds!

[deusvervemakesgames]

Going back to a place where the flowers are always in full bloom. Live with OPUS: Prism Peak!

Watch this video on Twitch Live

[deusvervemakesgames]

Project RBH DevLog 0143

I’ve mostly been working on the tileset images, as I said I would last week. I keep having to restrain my urge to put in the kinds of small details I would use for pixel art due to how the camera issues with RBH tear them. Regardless, I think they’re done, minus some tweaking of the values to better contrast the floor with the pits.

The floor tiles are pretty simple; I know a trick to make a stone texture which I applies to some colored squares. The holes are more complicated, what with their pesky perspective and everything. I gave up on having them have a brick texture the way that I’d done them before—when I tried, I quickly found that the perspective was impossible to do with a tileset the way I wanted it to because each tile would have its own individual vanishing point which wouldn’t align when applied to an actual level of the game. Instead I have a simple pseudo-gradient of progressively darker blocks.

I still need to do the walls, and there are several attacks that need to get actual, non-placeholder sprites, but I’m overall happy with this.

Until Next Devlog!

-DeusVerve

DevLogs like these are brought to you by Patron(s) like Haelerin!

Support me on Patreon to get Early Access to builds!

[deusvervemakesgames]

Say your goodbyes if you've got someone you can say goodbye to. Live with the finale of Space For The Unbound!

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[deusvervemakesgames]

Project RBH DevLog 0142

I’ve whipped up a sprite for the new boss enemy. Compared to the enemy sprites, it’s not only larger but slightly more detailed. Not too much more detailed, given the art style, but enough to set it apart.

While experimenting with the sprite to make sure that each frame flowed correctly, I noticed that the tilesets—that is, the floor, the wall, the holes etc. —are still pixel art somehow. I don’t know how I missed that, but it is what it is. While working on updating those to better match the player and enemy art styles, I finally figured out what was causing the screen tearing. Simply put, the details on the tilesets were too small. I’m not sure how or why, but it seems the image scaling on GameMaker really hated them. Having larger details fixed the issue entirely—fewer bricks per wall, or tiles on the floor, for example. I’m still fixing up the other sprites and getting them properly aligned, so I won’t show them off yet.

Regrettably, I’m going to be busy most of this week, so I can’t guarantee they’ll be done by next week, but I’ll at least chip away at them.

Until Next Devlog!

-DeusVerve

DevLogs like these are brought to you by Patron(s) like Haelerin!

Support me on Patreon to get Early Access to builds!

[deusvervemakesgames]

Can you tell me what was ever really special about me all this time? Live with A Space For The Unbound!

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