mygdevelopjourney

[mygdevelopjourney]

Assignment 3 - Postmortem

This project came out really well. We started playtesting with a very developed game, and were able to identify important bugs and key issues with the balance. I am really glad to have worked with my team, and I can't wait to make a game like an ARPG or RTS. I am hype for my journey at QUT.

Here is a video of the gameplay for our game:

[mygdevelopjourney]

Assignment 3 - Iteration

Many of the bugs were fixed, and the first few bosses were nerfed. This made the game much easier at the start and new player friendly. We didn't get to playtest this version sadly.

Reduced the first boss HP

Improved readability of the second boss

Granted dash immunity to ink (third boss)

[mygdevelopjourney]

Assignment 3 - Playtesting

Lets talk about bugs. There were some very interesting bugs, half of them graphical. Firstly was the Grapple death bug, where if you died while grappled to a fish, the grapple would stay there after death and be completely unusable. Then of course the notorious flashlight bug. When colliding into a wall, it sent the flashlight angle into a seizure. I found this bug during development but I thought I fixed it? It is likely that it was recreated during the development of the upgrades.

Everything else was minor.

Some personal internal playtesting saw me get into the late game without any trouble, fully countering and prepared for every boss, able to dodge every attack with my amazing gamer skills! I found some other interesting bugs. Firstly was the XP float. Some people may be familiar with a bug that occurs with dividing on a calculator, creating a very small number difference. Well, this was happening here. Another bug that was prevalent was fish stopped spawning under certain conditions. Those conditions were: is ready to level up & in a boss fight. We had disabled leveling up while a boss fight was ongoing, to not break the scripting, but while waiting to level up, the fish simply stopped spawning. This became extremely evident in one of the boss fights where fish spawns were supposed to increase making it more difficult. Another bug is the ink bug, where killing the squid boss while having the ink affect makes it permanent until getting the ink again.

Finally, there was a fish invulnerability bug, where under some unknown conditions, minor fish stopped taking damage. We couldn't figure it out or reproduce it consistently.

When the players do their first run, the game feels really difficult for them, for an experienced player like myself, who has had plenty of practice, the bosses are no sweat. But for the new players... they had trouble particularly with the second boss.

[mygdevelopjourney]

Assignment 3 - Development

We each had roles and played a fair part in the assignment. It was incredible how everyone fitted together.

Since it was Lucas's game, he took the lead development role. He developed most of the mechanics, like bosses and upgrades.

I was partially involved with the development of the game. I created a google drive and enforced the team to communicate and use folders to determine a manual version control. I also developed the flashlight fully utilising the additional layers and tried my best at balancing.

Drew was adamant on designing the audio for the game, and he also played a large role in the playtesting recording. He ended up with 3 minutes of high quality soundtrack and took many notes during the playtesting.

Tom, didn't help with the game development, but was completely in control of all the documentation and did a really good job at it. He made the feedback forms for the play testers.

The game somehow got 4 bosses each with different attack patterns and difficulties.

[mygdevelopjourney]

Assignment 3 - The Team and Game

My team consisted of some very devoted and talented developers like myself. This is the perfect situation for the team assignment. Of our games, we went with the Asteroids Game reskinned to underwater theme, with fish and sharks and stuff.

I wasn't too happy with this choice at first, but in the end I found the whole experience insightful and motivating.

[mygdevelopjourney]

Post mortems

The three games I had where a side scrolling platformer game, an asteroids game and a "racing" game.

The platformer game I was still learning the ropes to GDevelop 5, and as such didn't have such a high quality compared to the other games. I spent some time just getting the basic mechanics down. I planned for 3 stages and levels, with each stage including a new setting and enemies. Alas, it was time to work on the Asteroids Game. The Asteroids game, ahh the one where I decided the objective was no longer to shoot the asteroids, but to shoot other ships. I experimented with the parallax and it worked quite well, although not quite looking how I wanted it to. In the end, the enemy ships had cool modules on them, each with specific roles. The point defence was quite the challenge for playing the game, combined with the restricting movement and homing missiles. You can see the final game version I developed here:

Finally was the "Racing" game, which I had rebranded into a Gladiator style arena, with chariots instead of cars. This had direction and the potential to become a real game, but I did not get too much time to work on this with Assignment 2 coming up. For Assignment 2 & 3 I had used my Asteroids game, as it was the most developed and I felt really connected to the game.

[mygdevelopjourney]

Racing Game Dev Log 1

Spent some time making some nice assets. I am quite proud of the player controlled character, but there is much that can still be done on it to improve it. I added a couple quick assets for a mechanics demonstration. At the moment, the player uses top down control, and can move up down left right etc. The angle rotates depending on the input. For the background, I've used a tiled sprite that has its offset constantly moving downward to create a movement effect on the scene. I already used this technique in my Asteroids game.

The obstacles move downward at a constant speed. When reaching the bottom, they just teleport back up. When colliding with the player, they create an explosion affect and get reset.

[mygdevelopjourney]

Racing Game Elevator Pitch

I'm not very interested in a racing game, but I have thought of a neat theme change to mix it up. May I present: Roman. Yep, I will replace the cars with Roman chariots, and race around in the Colosseum, in an epic battle for.. uh... the recreation of the battle of... uh... somewhere. Maybe I have to do some research on that.

In the game, Chariots of Chaos, players will race Roman chariots in a Roman arena, using weapons to fend off foes, while avoiding crashing into objects and obstacles. This spin on the classic racing game will have players invested to the very end, so that they may become the ultimate gladiator!

[mygdevelopjourney]

Asteroids Dev Log 1

Lots of random variables for asteroid destruction. I played a lot around with forces for this one, having destroyed asteroids maintain some of their original velocity.

Spent lots of time making the background affect, that mimics movement. It is a repeated tile background that doesn't move, but instead changes the repeat offset based of the camera movement (which follows the player), so it works really well!

The enemy I have designed as 3 weapons, and anti-player weapon, and anti-asteroid weapon and a point defence weapon. The anti-player weapon fires homing missiles, which are pretty easy to dodge, but combined with the asteroid field it can make it quite a challenge. The anti-asteroid weapon tracks the closest target and fires shots at them (will eventually track the closest target, but it is very accurate, predicting for asteroid movement and projectile speed). The point defence creates lasers at nearby player bullets, to prevent the ships destruction. Its weakness is its rotation speed.

I really hope to continue this project, as it is coming out very nicely and already feels quite fun!

[mygdevelopjourney]

Asteroids Elevator Pitch

Asteroids is an old game where a triangle ship must survive as long as possible by shooting, you guess it, asteroids!

I want to mix it up, by reversing the objective of the game. Now, you want to NOT shoot the asteroids! Why? They are endangered dummy. Decades of asteroid blasting has lower their population drasticly.

In the game, Asteroid Saviour, you control a triangle ship with the objective of keeping the asteroids alive. Large enemy ships patrol the area, taking out asteroids, and it is the player's job to blow them up! They are armed with an impressive arsenal, so they have to be careful!

[mygdevelopjourney]

Platformer Dev Log 2

Some early playtesting.

Not very immersive yet, really need to add some enemies.

The deflecting works quite well! It is easy but not too easy to time correctly, but it doesn't quite have the feeling that I am looking for yet. I think I need to add more effects to the deflect. A visual shockwave, maybe a flash, or a camera shake could be good. A time-slow seems complicated for me at this point, so I think I will not worry about that.

Also thinking about resetting the deflects' cooldown, hopefully should allow for a higher skill ceiling and harder difficulty settings?

This game definitely needs difficulty settings if I want to expand the target audience btw. Some ways to make it harder are to thin the deflect frames, or like, use a windup time. Faster projectiles at higher levels, that sort of thing.

I have some thoughts for a story, hoping to use it to have more unique levels! I have theorised a WW2 naval battle and a battle against mechs!

[mygdevelopjourney]

Platformer Dev Log 1

A side-scrolling game is easy to make, but apparently having a character double jump? Not so easy. Unfortunately you can't just use 1 or 2 variables representing how many times you have jumped. The problem mainly comes from the inputs and what order the game processes events. For example, I should have started by only taking one instance of a jump at a time, waiting for a button release before jumping again. Then we can add in our grounded checks, making sure we don't use the double jump and regular jump at the same time (yes I accidently made this happen). I took a free model from as my main character here: https://pzuh.itch.io/ninja-adventure-free-sprites If I do continue this project, I plan to replace it. Finally I implemented the enemy projectiles. They were simple enough, they move in the direction that they face, and we simply have to rotate the sprites when either the player deflects them or possibly arching

"I" added in a health bar!!! (Some friends at uni showed me how to do it). 5 hearts is just something I can test.

Next step: animate the ground to make it look like it is moving, then and some enemy sprites!

[mygdevelopjourney]

Platformer Elevator Pitch

Platformers have been a genre of game since, I don't know, at least Donkey Kong. This age-old style has been used many many times, limiting the potential for original ideas, so let's just keep this simple. I want to make a platformer game as simple as possible, something that could suit a small fun mobile game. This means we are going to reduce our inputs to 2. Henceforth I will make a side-scroller platformer. Our inputs are jump and attack, but I have thought up something special for the attack. Immortal Samurai is a side-scrolling game where you play as a legendary samurai, wielding a katana, capable of deflecting projectiles! The gameplay is based of skillful timing of dodging enemy attacks and ricocheting bullets will be sure to keep you stuck to the screen. Be careful though, a mistiming could be devastating and potentially game ending!

[mygdevelopjourney]

About Me

Hi, I'm James! Gaming has always been my favourite hobby. I love real-time strategy, grand strategy, 4X and first-person shooters! I have always had an interest in making video games, but have always lacked the motivation and experience to do so. That's why I have enrolled in the Bachelor of Games and Interactive Environments, to pursue my love of games! My aims for this unit are to learn critical skills and apply them to modding projects.