#matcm

[mizukidevlog]

Devlog 35

Making progress on Mizuki and the Crimson Moon has been difficult this week. Seems like I'm hitting a roadblock no matter what I work on.

The first roadblock is something that you guys could help with... Pixel Art If there are any pixel artists out there that see this, I could use advice ^^;

The main obstacle preventing me from working on the Yokai Hunter has been not having the sprites that I need for his attacks and movement. Other than Mizuki, the Yokai Hunter has more going on with him than any other object in the game (so far)! Not to mention that his animations are much more complex than anything in the game (so far).

The first sprite sheet is a quick slash that he does if the player gets too close. I'm relatively happy with that one but also know that it could be improved. The second sprite sheet is still a work-in-progress and includes a stickman that I drew to help with posing throughout the animation. It's supposed to be a jump-slash directly upwards followed up by several thrown kunai and then landing. Feedback and advice on this kind of pixel art stuff would be really helpful :)

I won't spend too much time discussing my other two obstacles. I've been trying to figure out how to best use the particle system I created. The particles are great but seem a little restrictive in how I can use them. The final obstacle has been getting a spawning system working. I made a fun shaking bush/leaves that I plan on using to show when an enemy is about to pop out of the trees, but the coding behind that has been pretty tricky.

(Anything could pop out)

Thanks for reading this far if you did and bearing with my ramblings. Just wishing that I could have made a bit more progress this week :P

Have a good evening!

<3

[mizukidevlog]

"That's a boring looking flag, and it's in my forest!"

When you see a flag in your forest, might as well make it your own.

[mizukidevlog]

Devlog 21

Some crazy life events happened this week, so I'll be brief.

Did a lot of polishing on the player UI and added some animations, it's looking real good! (Animations not included...this time)

Now that UI stuff is finished I can move on to creating some menus and polishing up combat.

Here's a Mizuki flag for your enjoyment

[mizukidevlog]

Devlog 31

This was a week of optimizations for my game, and I did something that I don't think very many games have ever done, especially platformers...

I have removed contact damage from the game.

I know, pretty crazy right? Literally every platformer that I could think of has it. Something just feels off about it though. Like, if an enemy is jumping over you through the air and its foot just happens to touch your character, how is that supposed to do any damage???

Instead of contact damage, I opted for very quick sudden attacks that an enemy can do when you get too close to them as shown below:

But yeah. I think contact damage might be a little overrated or at least an old mechanic that doesn't really need to stick around, but what y'all think?

Contact damage?

Important element of all games

Overrated / Outdated game design

I get enough contact damage IRL

Other? (Comment or something idk)

Voting ended onApr 27, 2024

Something else that I am very happy and excited about is completing NPC dialog! I know that I showcased the basics of it last week, but this week I got dialog branches working. Now you can say yes, no, or whatever else appears in those two small boxes

That's all for now. The weeks are starting to blend together in terms of game development. I might need to start taking notes on what I've worked on or something.

See you next week! <3

[mizukidevlog]

Devlog 30

Hurray! 30 Devlogs Complete! New Milestone!

This week has been alright for game development. Lots of art, lots of polishing code, and lots of being exhausted after my full-time job. Some of that code polish has resulted in a whole new dialog system!

I'm very pleased with the improvements I made. The objects that create the dialog are MUCH easier to work with, are more flexible, and is much simpler. Having some very nice character sprites (courtesy of @kiwi-comics) definitely adds to overall feel of the dialog too. There are actual characters to talk to, and Mizuki isn't just a bunch of pixels!

A lot of work has also gone towards the Yokai village.

Figuring out how to add a little forest and yokai flair to traditional Japanese houses has been a fun challenge. When the village is complete, I'll have a whole showcase for it.

Anyways, I find myself kind of laughing at the fact that I thought I would have my steam page up a couple weeks ago. The amount of work, information, and other stuff that I've had to create and upload has been way more than I was expecting. So, the Steam page will have to wait for now while I get everything ready for it.

Thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoy the art/pixel art! See ya next week.

[mizukidevlog]

Devlog 29

Sooo...I accidentally lied in my last post...

I mentioned that I would be launching the Steam page for Mizuki and the Crimson Moon right? Turns out that it takes up to a week for all the digital paperwork to be completed and stuff. I probably should have been ready for that, so I only have myself to blame. On the plus side, this week was still a great week for game development!

I had some friends and family playtest my game a got a ton of valuable feedback. To any game devs who are reading this: HAVE PEOPLE PLAYTEST YOUR GAME. You cannot playtest your own game, you just can't (bonus points if you get people with different experience levels to play your game). Don't backseat game your own game though, even if the person playing is really bad at it...

I also reworked and polished the dialog system within my game. The original length of the object that handles all that use to be 200+ lines of code, but now it's down to around 80. Gotta love optimization.

Oh! I also got the Yokai Forest area map looking nice and pretty. It was real nice to finally get that finished.

I'm really looking forward to next week, because other than getting a ton of other half-finished work finished, I'll ACTUALLY be creating and publishing my Steam page.

<3

[mizukidevlog]

Devlog 24

A bunch of hard work really paid off this week! I got 'pausing' to work properly in my game. It really surprised me at just how complicated a simple game function could be. Of course, some of that difficulty would have existed if it was one of the first things I worked on.

There are two kinds of pausing. The first is your standard pause, pausing the game to leave the stage. view stage info, etc.. The second kind is a 'quick pause' that enables the player to switch between attacks mid-combat. Both are showcased below:

Having to use 5+ buttons to use different attacks or even using a single button to cycle through attack options felt too slow and tedious/ That's why I implemented a system that allows the player to change attacks on the fly. I felt like the benefits to having a quick and easy-to-use attack switching system outweighed any drawbacks to allowing the player to essentially FREEZE TIME whenever they wanted. Is freezing time on a whim too much power? You tell me, I'm not sure and could definitely use the feedback!

Fun fact: Despite the player needing to click on both pause menus, both are built entirely out of sprites with a single controller object! No extra buttons or instances needed!

Who said pausing time isn't fun?

'Till next week, stay safe!

[mizukidevlog]

Devlog 22

Another good week of game development.

Creating "pause" functionality was much harder than I thought it would be. Gamemaker Studio 2 has a helpful feature in its "Deactivate" functions, but those can only get you so far. That's what I spend most of my time this week working on.

There are two types of "pauses" in this game. The normal pause where you hit a button and bring up a menu. The other is a more temporary pause that the player can use to change which attack they're using. To work on that, I made two separate objects in Gamemaker to apply the different effects that I want. Sadly, they aren't quite finished yet, otherwise I'd love to show it off.

Here's what my menu code looks like if anyone is interested. Huge thanks to a Shaun Spalding tutorial I found online along with some other helpful posts. Just modified it so it would be tied to pressing and releasing a button rather than something that works like a switch.

Something I can show off is the finally-finished player UI. Above the health bar are the number of teleport charges the player has available, and inside the gold orb is the current attack that the player is using. (You'll see everything freeze in the video occasionally. That is me testing the pause functionality).

Looking forward to having pausing finished next week along with some combat polishing. Stay tuned!