reghan120blog

[reghan120blog]

SKAT3RR

A 2D side scrolling game where you play as a skater kid roaming the streets while trying to avoid angry boomers and clueless scooter kids try and do sick tricks off benches, blocks and rails

Would like to have mechanics where you can input different combinations and do different tricks, or maybe a balancing while grinding on rails or benches.

I haven't done animations before so it might be tricky to make it visually clear or appealing but oh well.

The player character will need to be able to handle different states such as jumping, grinding, rolling, doing a trick. I learnt a bit on how to handle stuff like this when making the asteroids game so hopefully I can figure that out.

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SpaceFreight: Merc

The weeks be flying by, already time for wrapping up our asteroid prototypes. One part of the readings that was useful was Chapter 9 which was about playtesting. After the first week of development on SpaceFreight: Mercenary I got lots of people to playtest my game in the workshop and was able to see what needed improvement. I saw that people weren't really using the missiles so I made a on screen visual by the cursor to show when the missiles are ready to be launched.

Some playtesters also missed when the big spacefreighter you're defending was being hit and damaged so I made it more visually obvious when that occurred.

I also added a scoring system to the game:

Another change is that the difficulty increases wave by wave instead of ramping up over time. These two are pretty similar but the wave system also allows for a break in between to buy upgrades (not implemented but would be cool feature) and get ready for the next wave.

I would probably like to do more playtesting rounds in between adding features - to follow the iterative design process a bit better. Also while playtesting trying to get the playtesters to think out loud a little more (As it says to in Fullerton Ch 9.).

If I could change one thing about the design of the prototype it would be more enemy variation so there's a bit more gameplay spice.

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SpaceFreight: Mercenary dev post

Hellooo, back again with gdeveloping. Main focus has been particle effects in gdevelop, I have used them for the ships engine trail, asteroids blowing up, bullets hitting stuff and missile explosions.

You can do heaps with the particle effects and they make the game feel much better. Also learned how to do a scrolling background (The stars) which gives the illusion of constantly moving forward. Overall pretty happy with progress on the asteroid game.

As for my thoughts on the readings, the writers tend to waffle on a bit with examples and whatnot but the concepts that they repeat about 5 times over are actually useful to think about while making the game. Such as having to constrain the scope of what I want to achieve in the prototype (Fullerton, Ch 6). While developing this prototype I've had many ideas such as upgrade systems, making the asteroids come in waves or levels, turrets on the big ship on the bottom, shield system, many more types of weaponry and lots more (roguelite??). While all these ideas are fun I have had to constrain myself to get a working, internally complete game.

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SpaceFreight: Mercenary ev pitch

NAME: SpaceFreight: Mercenary

GENRE: Space shooter, top down

PRIMARY MECHANIC: pretty general twin stick shooting mechanics, but the primary goal will be to stop the big ship your protecting at the bottom of the screen from taking damage by destroying the oncoming asteroids

SETTING/STYLE: Set in space, a mercenary fighter space ship hired to defend big freight space ships from asteroids. with a pixelated style.

AUDIENCE: Probably a very wide range I plan on the game ramping up in difficulty over time so low skilled players can still start but more skilled players will be able to keep going longer.

Pretty basic game idea but on this project I want to more focus on polishing and making the game simple but feel good and play well.

[reghan120blog]

Repulsier

Got the mechanics to work with the physics 2.0 system in gdevelop and can now toss the coin anywhere which means the main mechanic for the game idea is now properly working

Very happy with how the mechanic works and there are many ways I'd love to incorporate this mechanic with varied level designs for movement, or cool puzzles and using the same mechanic with combat as well.

If I were to start this prototype from scratch it'd obviously go differently especially now that I am more skilled with how gdevelop works. But the main thing would just be putting a bit more time in earlier as I had to rush near the end just to get the mechanic to work. With more time I could have changed the sprites or added some proper feedback and effects to the game.

As the readings and class content suggested I focused on the main functionality first to get something playable (Fullerton Ch 7). However - especially after playtesting - it was clear that some extra feedback, such as visuals for when repulsing against the coin, would dramatically improve the player experience.

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Platformer Dev Post

Hello again, progress has been made. After following the workshop content I began trying to implement my main mechanic. Just using the coin given to us from the assets I first tried to get the player getting pushed away from the coin part working first. It's the most fun part I think and probably most important, tossing out coins and pushing them away from the player can come later.

Here's a very basic functional moving player away:

Success! With a basic left click triggering an action to add a negative force on the player towards the coin the player gets pushed away from the coin. But it's pretty bad. You can push away from the coin at any distance and the force doesn't feel very good. The camera was also too zoomed in and you couldn't easily judge where you were trying the land.

After a lot of tweaking and some math revision I created a much better function for deciding the force to push the player with. In GDevelop you can get the distance between two objects so I that to help decide the force:

Which looks like this:

This still could be adjusted more but the main bit is done. Woohoo!

[reghan120blog]

Platformer Elevator Pitch: Repulsier

Genre: Skill-based/puzzle Platformer

Primary Mechanic: Repulsion My Idea for A platformer is focused on an interesting mechanic based on an idea from a book I read (Mistborn - highly recommend). The mechanic involves pushing on a coin if the coin is in the air it'll shoot away from the player, if the coin is against a surface it'll push the player back in the opposite direction. These coins can be a resource carried by the player and tossed out whenever needed. I think this mechanic could create interesting interactions where the player can chain together pushes to maneuver through a complex level.

Setting/Style: The setting could either draw more inspiration from the book with a sort of grim/fantasy feel or could be taken in an entirely different direction with a more futuristic setting where the repelling mechanic is based on technology rather than magic. The style will be (hopefully) kept simple with pixelated sprites.

Audience/Demographics: A range of people with at least basic understanding of platformers to people with more skill looking for a novel mechanic to pose new challenge.

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Blog setup

Helloo, this is where the blog begins I guess? Still learning how to use tumblr and this first post is sort of just experimenting. Excited to see where this goes - expect some rambling.

So anyway what a crazy cyclone, amiright?