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I Did a Thing!
I realize lvlDown can be somewhat tricky to get into, so I made a quick video on the basics of how to get deeper into the world. This gives you just enough knowledge to get going, and an idea on what you need to focus on, without spoiling all the secrets.
This is the first video I’ve ever recorded and commentated, so hopefully it’s not complete crap.
Enjoy!
Art and the Art of Planning
Last week was a great week for art. I managed to get assets in for the large list of placeholder art that was in the game. And while the new art is still very much considered placeholder too, it’s way less placeholder-y looking than the boring circles and squares I had in there before.
Here’s some of what went into the game:
mine entrance:
dirt processor:
smelter:
mineral deposit box:
updated dungeon entrance:
for comparison, here’s what the old dungeon entrance looked like:
Sam and I also spent a few hours over the weekend doing some brainstorming and planning to get a better idea of the game we’re making. Up until now we’ve kind of just been working on stuff that seemed cool and felt like belonged in the game, but we really wanted to have a better focus going forward.
Friday night we watched this awesome talk by Zak McClendon where he breaks down the framework he’s developed over his career to help get everyone on the same page about what game is being made. I highly suggest giving it a watch. We definitely got a lot out of it and will be using this method going forward for all of our games.
By determining our Creative Promises and Values we were able to not only brainstorm new features that would deliver on those things, but we also were able to inspect all of the existing features in the game and see if they actually added anything toward those goals. There were a few features that we wound up cutting because we found they just didn’t fit anymore. Which is great! No more wasting time on features that don’t add value to our design.
Here’s what our board looks like:
The board is now hanging on the wall beside my desk for easy access. So now as we come up with new ideas, it’s super easy to run them through the filter of our current promises and values and see if they work. The features are also ranked in priority order so we always know what should get worked on next. And since it’s just note cards and thumbtacks, it’s very simple to re-prioritize items as the project dictates.
This process doesn’t replace actual progress tracking like you would do in Trello or another program. It’s meant to be super high level to provide a working language for everyone on the team to agree upon to ensure everyone is working toward the same end goal.
So yeah, even though no code or art was done over the weekend, I feel like the game overall took a giant leap forward just by taking the time to do this planning.
The plan for this week is to start tackling the board and cleaning up what we decided to remove from the project as it stands now. It’s nice to have focus!
Thanks for reading!
- Matthew
The Week That Was
I spent last week focusing on getting one of the core gameplay loops finally working. It’s a bit janky, but at least the core loop is in there and the game is kinda playable. Once I had that in and working, I spent some time just adding in some easy wins, like torches:
and collectibles that magnet toward the player:
Sam and I also brainstormed name ideas for the game, and I think we landed on one that we are both happy with. We’re looking to do a first-look gameplay video soon, at which point we’ll also announce the title.
This week I plan to spend some time on art since a lot of crummy placeholder crept it’s way into the game since the last time I did an art pass. It’ll be a good coding break for me, and I always feel much better about a work in progress once we throw some better art into the game. So even though the game won’t get many new features this week, I think it’ll be well worth the time.
So that’s it for this week. A short and sweet update so I can get straight to work. Keep and eye on Twitter this week as I’m sure to be posting in progress pixel art!
Thanks for reading!
- Matthew
puddlelang
puddlelang is finished! You can download it on itch.io here.
This is the esolang I mentioned I was working on in the last blog post. I’m quite proud of it, and feel like it turned out pretty well considering I only spent a couple days working on it. There’s more that could be added to it, but at this point I need to get back to our main project.
The whole reason for trying to make puddlelang was a proof of concept to see if it had some gameplay application. Having finished it, I do think there’s some ways we could work it into our next game--though I would probably tweak the language a bit to simplify how it’s used. The good part is that the way I wrote the parser, I can easily modify the functions it handles to support however we decide to use it in a game.
The language is extremely bare-bones, and it’s complicated to perform even the simplest of tasks...which is the point of esolangs. It actually felt good to work on something that isn’t meant to be user friendly for a change. Which is also probably why I was able to finish it in two days.
Here are the functions that the language supports. My goal was to keep the final function count at 10 or fewer.
Here’s an example of a nested for loop where both loops run twice--causing the inner loop to run 4 times:
The code is on the left side of the screen. When running in real-time mode, you can see the results of your code on the right side of the screen--each cell in the grid represents a block of memory.
You can also print the output of your program, which will display in the bottom portion of the screen.
The language is ascii based - so if you wanted to write a program that prints out text, for instance the letter ‘M’, you would have to make the cell you are telling the program to print equal to 77. You could just enter a bunch of plus signs into a single cell to make it equal 77, then print it. But the fun is in trying to optimize that operation to make the code as efficient as possible.
So yeah... that’s it. I don’t expect many people to actually try it. But if you do, hit me up on Twitter to let me know what you made.
As a side note, I first heard about esolangs last Friday (a week ago today), started brainstorming my own esolang that night/Saturday, started coding it on Sunday and by mid-day Tuesday I had it wrapped up. That’s what happens when my brain becomes fascinated with something :P
Anyway, thanks for reading!
- Matthew
Fun With Bugs!
The first half of last week was working the kinks out of the inventory system, and then getting everything in game using it. The original implementation of the inventory had it so all inventories in game were “infinite.” But once I slapped a hard limit on how many items an inventory can hold, plus a limit on how many items each inventory slot can hold, plus the addition of some items being stackable but others not....YIKES! So many combinations to test and ways to break it.
I think at this point I have the most obvious cases handled and now it’s just a matter of continuing to test the system as I play the game and add more into it. The upside is that we got some pretty cool bugs out of the transition.
For instance, the ability to infinitely clone pickaxes because they weren’t actually being removed from your inventory when dropped:
I had a similar bug when I added a portal to the inventory and was testing placing the portal and removing it from the inventory...oops!
Toward the end of last week I started working on enemy AI because even though they can pursue the player, it’s only due to the minor fact that they don’t collide with anything. So I’m working on figuring out a good system to get them to intelligently avoid obstacles while pursuing a target...which is a lot tougher than it sounds.
So far I think I’m on the right track, but there’s several more test cases the enemies need to be able to handle before I know for sure my current plan will work. I’m trying to avoid using mp_grids because the way the game is set up I can’t just make single grid for the entire game room, and those get costly fast. And I want to do something simpler than A* path finding, but I’m not opposed to giving it a shot if I need to. Hopefully I’ll have some GIFs to show off over the coming days on Twitter, so keep an eye out!
As always, thanks for reading!
- Matthew
Swing Away
It’s amazing what a week of vacation will do for the brain. Whereas the week before we left I felt like getting anything into the prototype was a slog, this past week I experienced quite the opposite. Not only did I get the rest of the placeholder art into the game that I wanted, but I also slammed in a couple new features that I hadn’t anticipated having time for.
One of my favorite pieces of placeholder art is the dungeon entrance. Very much inspired by the original Zelda game. I didn’t want it to be just a static structure, and I think the addition of fire gives it an ominous look and feel.
Something that wasn’t even on the list of things to do last week was a roll animation for the player. But for some reason it just popped into my head that I should add it, and much to my surprise, it only took about an hour to get in and working! And of course now this is my main mode of movement through the game when I’m testing.
One of the big tasks for last week was adding attachments. I want the player to be able to hold a lot of items in the game, but I don’t necessarily want to have to make animations for the player holding and swinging every possible item. Solution: attachments. So here you see the player holding and swinging a pickaxe. However this GIF is a lie. A LIE!!!! The player character is actually composed of 4 separate elements: the body, the front arm, the back arm, and the pickaxe. We attach all the parts in relation to the body in code, and by having a specific draw order, we can make it look as if the hand is holding onto the pickaxe and the pickaxe will even appear in front of the back hand when it’s swung. It’s all very quick and subtle, but it helps to give the player depth.
Naturally we couldn’t just stop there. Once we had one hand holding an item, it was only too simple and obvious to add in DUAL WIELDING!!!!! I even gave different swing speeds to each hand so it wouldn’t look so robotic, swinging at precisely the same rate.
The final major task I worked on last week was getting the inventory set up in a more complete way. I had a basic inventory already in and working, but in order to truly be able to test holding different attachments and switching between them on the fly, I needed to have an inventory in place.
I really don’t want the inventory to become a pain point for players where they feel like they are just constantly managing it rather than exploring the game world. So Sam and I had some brain storm sessions and I think we came up with some interesting ideas to help alleviate constantly going into your inventory. Hopefully more on that soon...
Thanks for reading!
- Matthew
We’re Back, Baby!
That’s right, Sam and I are back from our honeymoon voyage across the sea to undiscovered lands!
No gamedev updates this week, but here’s a glimpse into our travels...
We traveled aboard the Carnival Magic...because if it ain’t magic, it’s tragic.
I bought this shirt specifically for the cruise and it worked like a charm, garnering much praise and enthusiasm from everyone who looked upon it. This was my attempt at posing like a t-shirt model you always see on websites. Was I successful? I’ll let you decide.
Sam’s love of sea turtles knows no bounds. We even managed to see several (real) turtles throughout the week, aside from this clearly magical flying turtle that Sam found in Amber Cove.
We took a catamaran from St. Thomas over to St. John where we spent the afternoon snorkeling off a beach that could only be accessed by boat, or by a perilous hike through untamed wilderness. No boardwalks here! We both agree this was our favorite day, and by far the best excursion we have ever been on. We will definitely be coming back one day.
Our reward after a fun and exhausting day of snorkeling was a beautiful sunset over St. Thomas. The view from our cabin was extraordinary. While we are advocates for always picking up after ourselves and leaving a place the same as it was when we arrived, I think it’s safe to say we both left a piece of our hearts in St. Thomas.
In San Juan we explored forts built in the 16th century. Our imaginations ran wild as we roamed the many tunnels and overlooked the ocean from watch towers, seeing fleets of great wooden ships on the horizon making their approach. We tried to warn everyone, but nobody seemed to listen.
Atop Castillo San Felipe del Morro we found a lighthouse that looked straight out of Harry Potter. Needless to say, this was right up Sam’s alley.
And in Grand Turk we enjoyed some more snorkeling and explored a rocky beach before finally relaxing on the beach with some fried plantains and of course nachos and queso before returning to our humble ship that would ferry us home.
In a Post Slamoids! World
Slamoids is out and doing well! Sales have definitely been coming in quicker than Star-Pit Starship. I didn’t do a launch discount with Star-Pit so that could be part of the reason why Slamoids is performing better during launch week...but at the end of the day I don’t really know.
Just the fact that we have 2 games on Steam now makes me super happy. Our goal from the beginning was to make several small games and build up the Puddledock library as quickly as possible without skimping on quality, and so far I think we’ve done just that.
The game is discounted to 85 cents until August 15th, so hop on over to Steam and pick up your copy if you haven’t already ;)
In lvlDown news: there’s no new build this week (again). I did make some updates to the game over the weekend, but nothing too drastic. Mostly I worked on getting achievement art squared away for Steam, and added the demo gating that I mentioned last week. Once I turn the build into a demo on itch.io, you’ll only be able to play the first two levels of the game, and it will prevent you from going to level 3 or beyond. I don’t think I’ll put that into effect for a little bit though. You can play the full game on itch.io here.
I did add a custom mouse cursor for the game. The standard Windows mouse cursor just felt out of place. What do you think? (sorry for the potato quality GIF)
And here’s a sneak peek at the achievement art (cheevos as I call them in code because it’s easier to type). Mostly they’re just icons from the game, but there’s a few unique ones in there. And what could the ? ones mean!?!?!
In other news: I spent the majority of last week working on the new prototype. Normally with prototypes my goal is to get basic gameplay working in a matter of a few days so we can see if the game is fun, but with the plan of making this a much larger game, there’s quite a bit of setup to do before we can even see what the game is.
One thing that I did though was integrate a dialog system made by Friendly Cosmonaut into the build. I’ve tried writing my own dialog systems in the past and they always turn out super janky. And since Cosmonaut always does high quality work, it was a no-brainer to just go with her system from the get-go. It’s super robust, and I was able to write some wrapper scripts and objects to make it even easier to use in my game. If GameMaker is your thing, be sure to check out her YouTube channel.
I want to start showing off the game and doing dev videos soon. Right now it’s literally rectangles and circles moving around the game world. So I may take a day soon to get some half-decent placeholder art just to get the basic ideas across.
That’s pretty much it for now. If you’ve read this far, be sure to tweet the word “cheevos” at me so I know. Until next time!
- Matthew
