tosodev

[tosodev]

Sierpinski Again

Ok so after the failure of Overlord (my last project) due to a bunch of stuff happening in October meaning I had very little time to work on it, I've decided to just restart work on Sierpinski again, which I haven't posted about on here.

I'm going to be making it in Godot this time around instead of my python engine, mostly because it's not a 2d text based game anymore, instead I'm following the path of Toso and going from a 2d game made in python to a 3d game made in an actual engine.

I'm hoping that my original vision for Sierpinski can be more accurately made this way (with some obvious changes to the core concepts to better fit the new 3d game) since I felt like I was too limited in my abilities when I only had ASCII characters, 16 colors, *and* two dimensions.

That's it for the devlog, hopefully some of the mechanical ideas I had for overlord can carry over into a future project but I highly doubt it. For now Sierpinski (and more than likely a demo) is going to be my primary focus.

Katlikesnero

[tosodev]

Devblog 017:

Did some work while I was at school, came home, hopped on Wynn, and I'm still on Wynn. So suffice to say not much got done today apart from pathfinding (which seems to be working pretty well).

Tomorrow....

Katlikesnero

[tosodev]

Devblog 016:

No work today, if anyone reading is familiar with Wynncraft you’d understand. Game is too fucking addictive man god… god… but anyways I got a lot of free time on my hands tomorrow so hopefully I’ll finish the editor with the remaining 2 weeks being spent on finishing up the sponsorships menu (1 day maximum time) and then 13 full days of adding content.

I hope the games at least slightly fun to play in the end but of course I won’t know until it’s done… :)…

That’s it I’m going to bed now.

Katlikesnero

[tosodev]

Devblog 015:

I did really good work yesterday and then would up passing out before I could write a devblog (why I was writing the first couple in "past tense")

Editor is now fully functional, I've also begun work on Pathfinding using the A* system. This'll be mostly used for Heros (obviously) as well as some homing dart spells(?) and making sure your dungeon is actually completable by a Hero.

Elaborating on how Dungeons will be checked, here are some visual representations of what'll happen.

This one represents what an "Empty" room will look like. It'll check to see if it finds a valid path between the start (dark red) and the end (dark green) and if it does the room will be marked as an "Empty" room within the game. While the room isn't empty (since there's a dragon, seen by the purple pixels) it's technically empty since there's nothing to stop the Hero from walking all the way through.

Here's a sped up version of this to show what a "Puzzle" room looks like. The game first does the method for an "Empty" room, but since there's no direct path to the end, it looks for the nearest "interactable" (switch, place, etc) and then marks the start location where it is, and then triggers it as a Hero would. Then it repeats the process until it reaches the end.

All of this won't be done by the Hero as to make them feel natural. More than likely I'll have 3 different types of AI's for the Hero to use which'll make it act like different types of players (specifically dark souls players as the way that other people play those games facinates me)

So that's it. There'll only be 1 Hero or (if I have time) 1 Party of 4 Hero's active in the Dungeon at any time so depending on how I implement this algorithm for the Heros this should be pretty efficient. (Talking about Hero's pathfinding here since the Room Check will only be run once the player "saves changes" on the room, to reduce lag.)

Ok that's all I worked on I'm going to write another Log later for today (10/16) but until then... adios...

Katlikesnero

[tosodev]

Devblog 014:

DID WORK!

Editor can now place, move, and destroy tiles. That's it but it's big progress mechanic wise!

Each tile has it's own function that it uses to decide whether or not it can be placed, moved, or destroyed. This is to make sure that certain tiles, like the staircases between floors, can't be destroyed which would effectively "reverse softlock" the game (since hero's wouldn't be able to travel between floors, making it comedically easy to just have them walk into the same trap multiple times).

Big things are happening. We're so back.

Katlikesnero

[tosodev]

Devblog 013:

Not only did I not do anything today, I even forgot to write the devblog on time!!!!!!...1.1!!!! FUCK.

The most minor of minor progress made on the editor and that was it. 43% through my time on this project. lord hopes i get it working QUICK AND SOON!

That's it that's the log.

Katlikesnero

[tosodev]

Devblog 012:

Did not work at all yesterday or today, to expect tomorrow's devlog to be slow or empty as well.

I will say, I have big plans upcoming for what to do when I actually do start work on Overlord again. I got some reworks, some mechanic ideas. All of this seems so cool until you notice the little nagging feeling in the back of my head that's telling me I need to write a short story...... My forever curse of having ideas. But that's for later me to figure out. Right now me is tired. Tomorrow me is tired but in future tense. And day after that me is already working.

Even though I haven't been working for the last 5 or so days, I will say that in my mind I'm still on pace to meet the 11/1 release date. I got mechanics and content to make but because of all the work that I've done to make this whole process easier on myself adding content should be basically friction-less.

I'm also coming up with ideas for what to do in November. I don't want to work on Overlord bast the date but a fun little themed game would be a fun idea. Meanwhile I'm thinking about reviving Sierpinski just because I have far more ideas and plans for it that I think would actually work well in the system/engine/whatever you want to call it.

But these are all problems for future me, now me needs to work on OVERLORD!!!!!! And now me also needs to finish this post. I think I'll do that in the least abrupt way possible, maybe add a nice little outro like I usually do...

Katlikesnero

[tosodev]

Devblog 011:

Did NOTHING TODAY! I was very busy with family stuff so I had no time (and probably won’t have time over the next two days) but I can hope!!!

That’s it that’s the post.

Editor work coming up soon…… maybe :)

Katlikesnero

[tosodev]

Devblog 010:

BINARY NUMBER!!! ITS 3!!!!

I don't remember doing much of anything besides adding more onto the editor, there's not a lot to look at *visually* right now (still) so I'll not be including any screenshots. Besides that I'm in a sort of inbetween point in the project where true actual real gameplay is about to be added and in a working, functional state but it uh. hasn't yet.

TOMORROW THOUGH! I will be working on Overlord for most of tonight so hope to god I at least have some kind of gameplay to show for tomorrow's devblog.......... hope...... pray......

That's it. Mic drop.....

Katlkesnero

[tosodev]

Devblog 009:

Ok pretty solid work yesterday.

Worked on the editor yesterday, I was still distracted with many other things but I got some stuff done! I have a cursor now for selecting tiles, as well as since the floor size is 16 I'm able to skip trying to make a whole coordinate system look good and use Hexadecimal (0-F) to represent coordinates, so now the tile at x16, y16 is FF and the one at x0, y0 is 00. This makes my brain very happy because I effectively turned 5 characters of space (16,16) to 2. That's 3 whole characters saved.

Beyond that I haven't made any sort of *actual* progress towards the whole placing, destroying, and moving tiles thing. But I have plans. I always have plans... So many plans...

But that's it for now, I'm going to keep my nose to the grindstone or whatever and work. Work hard. I do it.........

Sincerely, the boog goog munger gal;

Katlikesnero

[tosodev]

Devblog 008:

Ok so third lazy day in a row, I'm actively working on Overlord as I'm writing this (so what will appear on tomorrow's Devblog) so thank GOD I'll have something to post.

I don't remember what I did yesterday but it sure wasn't enough for anything to visibly change within the code. So instead I'll be writing about GOBLINS!!

I have (or had) an idea about how the goblins will work. A lot of these ideas involve a psuedo coding system which would be killer to play with and also a killer to implement (because I'd die) but I think that it would vastly improve everything involving the goblins. Also, as someone who always used those systems in video games to program the weirdest things, I'm a big fan of these "turing complete games".

But that's just an idea for now, If I have time (and I emphasize both "if" and "time" for that part) I'll definitely work on trying to make it. But until then it's just a distant thought on the sea that is my mind.... sigh....

Sincerely,

Current Pirate, if only for the love of the game, money is no object, fuck capitalism, Seafarer...

Katlikesnero

[tosodev]

Devblog 007:

another pretty slow progress day.

Ok so judging by the GitHub repo history, I worked on sponsorships a bit more, specifically implementing a GODOT style "signals" system in order to manage time based functions (I.E. do x by y). Also looks like I had intended to start work on the Editor but then never got to it, which sucks but I guess I know what'll happen later today. Tomorrow I have dedicated time to work on everything so I'll be grinding away at it. I'm also going to remove some of the tags on these more lame "sorry for lack of progress" posts since at I'm writing these out of obligation instead of achievement.

Going to go play DS3 now and work on Overlord later, finished Yotsuba vol.1 so until I go to the comic store that's one less distraction B).

Kat out.

Katlikesnero

[tosodev]

Devblog 006:

I didn’t do shit yesterday my bad. Here’s an image I made as compensation. I’ll be rambling below about game design.

Ok so I’m still sitting around thinking about the sponsorship system. I think that it checks a lot of the boxes that I have in my head for a good mechanic but the ones it doesn’t it *really doesnt*. So let me try to explain this the best way I can.

I think that the sponsorship mechanic meets most of my criteria for a “good mechanic”. It’s diegetic and makes sense in the story, it’s a fun system to manage (subjective and on paper) and makes for entertaining gameplay (subjective), and I think overall it’s a pretty unique mechanic.

Where it fails, however, is in mostly everything else. Gold is the primary currency that you use to purchase most of the non-monster tiles that you can use in your dungeon. You also use it to pay your employees. It’s a vital resource. And the only way to get it is in large inconsistent batches of which you have little control over when they appear or if you can meet their requirements. This makes gold really annoying to get and by extension really hard to use.

So I’m stuck. Gold is too rare in the current economy, but if I were to add an easier way to get gold that would make the scholarship system obsolete. I also can’t even think of a better way to get gold story-wise.

I’ll be workshopping it for most of the day probably. I’m still on pace to meet the release window at the end of the month but this hiccup is a pretty big one.

I’ll figure it out! For now I’m going back to bed.

Katlikesnero

[tosodev]

Devblog 005:

Day 5 welcome to the fucking thunderdome here's a child being thrown off a swing.

Ok so I mostly worked entirely on back-end stuff yesterday. But that's not a bad thing (especially for me), as now save files will save the current game state including what mode you're in, all the playtime data, etc. It's actually done in a weird, maybe unoptimized way but it works and I really can't hurt the performance too much since Overlord is written in Python and runs at a max of 30 fps.

I also worked on the whole system behind sponsorships, and have added a system where sponsorships can be offered by "authors" who you have reputation with. Of course, this won't stop sponsorships from other sources coming in (just to keep players from entering a "lose" state since they will have effectively softlocked themselves out of the main way of earning gold) but those will be randomly generated and I want to have at least a good portion of the game hand-crafted.

The sponsorships aren't *done*, but they're maybe 85% done so far. I'm probably going to hold off on working on them to full 100% completion just till I, first of all make sure that this really is the direction I want to take this system, and second of all I have something "visual" to show not only for a devblog but for my own motivation.

Also I've made it halfway through the fucking hell that is the Irithyll Dungeon in ds3 and I bought myself the first Yotsuba! so I have even more distractions to juggle... :)

Katlikesnero out.

Katlikesnero

[tosodev]

Devblog 004:

Another day another dollar

Ok so yesterday was actually a pretty unproductive day by my standards. I wrote a bunch of dialogue for the opening tutorial part of the game before realizing that there were numerous problems with having dialogue in the first place, gameplay-wise anyways. So i took out everything related to dialogue and started work on the essential game systems, I.E. the map and save file stuff.

I'm planning on sort of soft including world-building in the tutorial/help menus, maybe having them written by the advisor as a sort of rundown on all the essential mechanics. But that's a way later goal that I have since my first priority is getting the game to actually work and work in a coherent and possibly self evident way before I try and explain it to the player.

I don't know why I chose the month that I'm playing through dark souls 3 (a big distraction of mine currently) to work on a self made game jam but hey, um, gabagool or whatever.

That's it, that's the log. Moral of the story? I cannot spell dialogue for the fucking life of me.

Katlikesnero

[tosodev]

Devblog 003:

Forgot my password to tumblr this morning and wound up making a hugely complicated password generator so it wouldn't happen again and so I could actually remember it.

Now time for actual dev content:

Since all the VFX has really been done and dusted I don't have any cool gifs to show you (that and I don't want to make them since it was really complicated.) So today I will have boring ass regular-degular screenshots. Sorry!

So first off I've implemented the save-file ranking system, of which there are 3 ranks. Silver (the basic one), Gold (the one that you get for doing something tdb), and the Rosegold (which you'll get for having the gold one and then doing something extra on top of it). I also have the hearts counter in place, which track how many "boss heros" you've killed so far. While your normal every day run of the mill hero's will be pretty easy and flimsy (and namely, randomly generated), these boss heros will occur at specific times or under specific conditions and will be like you took a high level dark souls player (me) and dropped them into your dungeon. And, as you can see, there are 5 of them. Which means they get harder. Pause for dramatic effect.

Next up I have the states of gameplay after you load a file. They have their names in the top corner of the screenshot for simplicity as well as their own color scheme which I discussed a little bit about in 002.

So in order we have:

The Combat Sate (red) : Which is for the player to use their own attacks and powers to directly combat the heros, seeing as you're the final boss and all I felt like you should be able to defend yourself. Also adds an extra layer to game design.

The Sponsor State (yellow): Will be your main way of getting GOLD which is the primary currency for all "static" buildings, traps, walls, etc. You'll accept them and they'll become visible in a sponsor tracker that I've yet to add, where you can see how happy the sponsor is with you and, in turn, how much gold they're willing to give you per day or let you spend on certain items.

The Editor State (blue): Pretty self explanatory, will allow you to place units, move units, walls, traps, etc again.

The Dialouge State (purple): This is where your little advisor goblin, which I've named Bartholomew because I thought it was funny, will speak to you. He acts as the tutorial guy for the beginning part of the game but will later on just kind of help with some more automatable tasks. Such as "if x is y then z". This is more of a later if I have time thing as it's complicated on paper so it might be more complicated in practice.

And finally the Shop State, which is basically completed apart from adding content and listings to it. This is where you buy units and everything else. You can use souls and/or gold but some units also come with a "gold/souls per day" stat, which since these monsters are your employees, will mean that you need to pay them per day. Lest they overthrow you. Gwa gwa gwa.

Right now all the listings are randomly generated and have some placeholder text as the description, but it does it's job and I know it works. As you can see here, "433" is the name of the item, "10x" is the quantity, "33g" is the basic one-time payment price and "82g/d" is the price you'd have to pay per day (obviously this will more than likely be souls since walls and traps will probably not have a gold price, but I hear dragons are pretty greedy...) And then the "Lorem ipsum" text is where the description would go.

Purchasing already works and gets added to an inventory not yet accessible to the player (today me's problem). So all I gotta do is just add in the rest of the gameplay loop elements and it should actually be playable (I say that as if that's not a lot of work.)

Ok well that's all for day 2. I'll open an ask page or whatever to answer any questions about OVERLORD while I'm working but don't expect me to keep up with it too closely.

That's all folks!

Katlikesnero

[tosodev]

Introduction

Hi I'm Katlikesnero also known as Tosodev and I'm a *game developer originating from Arizona* (scary I know).

Here are my other two blogs which I use for whatever and game dev reposts mainly and respectively: @katlikesnero, @katlikesgamedev