deusvervemakesgames

[deusvervemakesgames]

Project RBH DevLog 0112

As I mentioned last week, I upped the number of room options to increase the variations in the procedural generation. It wasn’t too hard to set up, but designing rooms for a game like this is a bit trial and error sometimes. You want to have enough obstacles that there’s interesting cover without being so tight that you can’t maneuver.

I also need to clean up a few rooms where some of the walls are slightly rotated in the editor somehow which somewhat breaks the level generation. (It creates a single-tile invisible wall and the floor doesn’t appear on that tile.)

I’ve also uncovered an exciting game breaking bug in one of the rooms, but that’s also an easy fix; I had a variable too high. I also knew this was a possible issue when I set up that code, so I might go back and fix that up to better future-proof it.

I have not, however, finished adding new rooms. I have four more that I want to add in.

Until Next Devlog!

-DeusVerve

DevLogs like these are brought to you by Patron(s) like Haelerin!

Support me on Patreon to get Early Access to builds!

[deusvervemakesgames]

Postponing tonight's steam; probably no stream next week

[deusvervemakesgames]

It's still incredibly fucked up that my Credit Card company has any say over what I spend my money on.

I'm an adult, I earn my money like everyone else. Who the hell is MasterCard to say what I can and can't spend it on?

[deusvervemakesgames]

*Dead media (assassinated)

[deusvervemakesgames]

Great and now there's this. Theres truly no room for an ounce of complacency this is a direct attack on queer creatives.

Here's a link to the whole thread for more context

[deusvervemakesgames]

obsessed with the official Etrian Odyssey guide on how to use your imagination

[deusvervemakesgames]

Project RBH DevLog 0111

Felt weird to not update last week. I don’t think I’ve ever missed an update except for my holiday breaks, so it was a little disconcerting to have nothing to show. I have however since touched up some things.

If these black holes/magnets pull in enemies, it stands to reason that they should also pull in bullets, correct?

This has a small problem with this, which is that this adds redundancy to the tornadoes/whirlwind effect of pulling in bullets. This was an easy fix; all I did was modify the bullet attraction code so that I could also make it repel bullets. Now tornadoes blow bullets away. I then had to turn down their range of effect to improve the game feel.

This week, I think it’s time I expand on the Procedural Generation options. The room layouts so far have been mostly placeholder, and I can definitely do with having more options to increase variety.

Until Next Devlog!

-DeusVerve

DevLogs like these are brought to you by Patron(s) like Haelerin!

Support me on Patreon to get Early Access to builds!

[deusvervemakesgames]

Court is now in session! More Tyrion Cuthbert!

[deusvervemakesgames]

Whenever the history of video game consoles comes up on this blog, folks tend to be surprised by remarks like describing the PS2 as "sixth generation" – like, if the PS2 was already six generations deep, what the fuck did the other five look like? The idea that home video game consoles have been around since the early 1970s is unexpected to many, and I 100% encourage anybody with an interest in the medium to read up on those early consoles, not only because knowing your history is handy, but because they were often pretty fantastic aesthetically. Like, look at this thing:

This is a Magnavox Odyssey from 1972. I love the juxtaposition of sterile white plastic, faux leather texture, and artificial wood grain – it's like it can't decide whether it wants to be a Star Trek prop or a footrest. However, I personally regard 1977's Coleco Telstar Arcade as the pinnacle of the form, because... well:

Like, this is it, folks. This is what peak performance looks like.

[deusvervemakesgames]

ok time to pirate ubisoft games even harder

[deusvervemakesgames]

We're done with Case 1, onwards to my mentor, who will surely live a long and happy life where she gets to tell me all of the secrets she's keeping! GOing live with Tyrion Cuthbert: Attorney of the Arcane!

[deusvervemakesgames]

There's an interesting alchemy by which, for certain TTRPG fans, WotC's misbehavior makes it more moral to play D&D if you're broke.

The logic goes something like this: WotC is bad, and therefore it is good to steal from them. Indie creators are good, and therefore it is bad to steal from them. Therefore, if you don't have money to spend on games, it is moral to play D&D and immoral to play indie games.

For some reason, the fact that this unimpeachable logic only benefits WotC and only harms indie creators is not relevant.

[deusvervemakesgames]

Microsoft just laid off 9,000 people from Xbox - cutting 4% of its workforce and cancelling some projects entirely.

Teams hit hard are the Raven and Sledgehammer who support Call of Duty development, Rare who have had to cancel their Everwild project, and The Initiative - a studio that hadn’t released a game yet - and were working on Perfect Dark.

One thing that’s frustrating when seeing layoffs like this is that’s there’s always a line in there about the development of a project being difficult.

In my experience in both Games and Tech, one of the biggest barriers to development is lack of clarity on what departments are working on and no cohesive planning beyond ‘X’ milestone every few months.

One role that is commonly dismissed in the industry is the role of ‘Producer’ - often being referred to a glorified JIRA ticket-watcher, to the point where some producers joke about it. That’s the role that needs to evolve if game development is going to mature as an industry.

Other barriers is larger studios not having the resource or not putting in the effort to onboard and cultivate new people into the industry. They bring new ideas!

[deusvervemakesgames]

The more I think on it, and I know this greatly differs from what people have come to expect in recent years, but to me a TTRPG with no adventure modules is like booting up a video game and finding out the devs didn’t make any levels. Like I wanted to play this but I guess we’ll have to wait until someone in the group, who may have never played the game before, spends a not-insignificant amount of their free time in the level-editor throwing something together for us to play.

[deusvervemakesgames]

Project RBH DevLog 0110

To be honest, I wasn’t convinced I could do the black hole. I was afraid it would overwrite the enemy movement, instead of what I wanted, which was them struggling against the pull. The code I used for the enemy knockback does do this, using the state machine, and I wasn’t totally certain I could make it work. And then I remembered the magnet code, which applies a simple effect to all bullets within range. Using that same framework, and some repurposed code copied from the knockback, I successfully made a black hole that… made the enemy orbit halfway around it and stop.

Turns out I used the wrong function at one point to do some math. Easy fix.

Why yes I did reuse the magnet placeholder sprite. Work smarter nor harder.

I did also try to make the pull stronger as the enemy got closer to center, but that led to some loony toons nonsense that somehow flung it out of the black hole. Hilarious, but unusable in play.

It’d also make sense for these black holes to attract bullets, since they’re pulling in enemies.

However, do to some real life events occurring this week, I don’t know how much work I’ll get done before the next DevLog comes out.

Until Next Devlog!

-DeusVerve

DevLogs like these are brought to you by Patron(s) like Haelerin!

Support me on Patreon to get Early Access to builds!

[deusvervemakesgames]

Do you like lawyers, murder, and magic? Streaming Tyrion Cuthbert: Attorney of the Arcane!