#-quasijam

[shoutscion]

so on the significance of the -quasijam tag that i've been stapling to Landshark Lariat posts:

basically, in an effort to work on games more efficiently and more effectively i've been constraining myself to working in time-limited, feverish bursts of activity- the overhanging deadline serving to keep me from getting too comfortable and the brief time period keeping me from getting bored or accidentally running into scheduling problems

the entire thing is structured similar to a gamejam, but isn't actually a gamejam

a quasi-gamejam! geddit?

there's a really great quote i based this concept on, i'll try to dig it up later. (it's from civ 5, actually! basically, everything i know about video games i learned from video games.)

i'll post more directly-video-gamey related things probably later this week. i just got the go-ahead to use someone else's character and setting and i have this great idea in my head from the get-go so this is bound to go super well

[shoutscion]

this weapon system came out infinitely more robust then i thought it'd be

im really proud of myself and that's probably a little self serving but i'm thinking of scrapping the 'handful of weapons that all do specific things' philosophy and instead setting the player up with a shit-ton of discoverable guns that by-and-large serve no purpose except to give you more and more things to blow up enemies with

move over borderlands lariat's in da cloughb now

like, if i were to take this to a logical conclusion, i could do something like how mario does stars except instead of rewarding the player with progress i could reward the player with more ways to shoot the shit out of things

actually, that sounds like some sort of amazing alternate universe ratchet and clank. like banjo kazooie but instead of jiggies you get firearms

[shoutscion]

i think its clear now that i have no sense of self control

like not even with the explosions, i've got stuff to do today. what am i doing

this project was supposed to be shelfed now everyone will think it was all some form of attention ruse or something

[shoutscion]

this is stupid

why did i do this

[shoutscion]

i wanted to make a joke about gun designations in video games but then couldn't fit the punchline in the 500 pixel window

the weapon swap system is actually really robust and cave story-like right now. i can even add specialized scripts for different attack styles and everything, it's really cool

anyway, today marks precisely 1 week of development from the point i said 'i'm going to work on this game for a week'. the framework- how Lariat moves, interacts with the environment, shoots her gun- feels good and it's entirely complete and really the only thing left to do with her is to make a game with her, which i thought i would have accomplished by now but my stage designer slash musician got swept up in other duties so i might not have put forth enough effort to get this into a playable state

i'll probably shelf it for now, come back in a few days; i've got a few orders to work on real quick. can't keep the customers waiting

[shoutscion]

this is the Lariat Custom! she's 3 times stronger, faster, and pointier then the normal Lariat! 

... also, i got enemy parents done. and now you can swap out Lariat's head for other heads. oh, and item boxes. and proper bullet collisions. but there's no time for that i have to go fast

[shoutscion]

this is operating with about 12x the starting EN, so you won't get this kind of freedom of dodging right off the bat. at least, not without getting energy pickups to refuel your jetpack in midflight

the screen also might not be big enough to contain all this fast, so either i will have to up the resolution or reduce the speed at which you move like this. or make the speed upgradable somehow. which also sounds cool

next step: jobber enemies and explosions and not having the bullets just be really well disguised particles. oh, and speaking of particles, fixing the jet's mini dust clouds so they're always present when Lariat is jetting, instead of 'only sometimes'