#DEVBLOG

[klaasje]

de devblog - introduction to harry

“The game is set in a time of cold war in a world that never was. Off the coast you can occasionally spot airbound coalition warships keeping the peace. Further beyond the horizon there is the Pale that divides the continents. You play this guy: The finest officer from Precinct 41 of the Revachol Police Department! Sent away on a special mission to investigate a special report from the relatively remote port of Martinaise. There may be a slim chance the higher ups just want to get you out of their hair? There may be some haters who call you "a disgrace to the uniform", but you know what you really are; you’re a Super Star and the only cop who’s capable of getting anything done in that chicken-shit outfit. You’re here to represent the fledgling self-organized and semi-recognized police force of Revachol and goddamn if you’re not gonna rock at it!” (x)

[heartmachinez]

Hyper Light Breaker: Meet Dro

Who was Dro?

Whoever she was, she is now transformed. What does she want?

And what is the pain behind her howl?

A glimpse into our wordless storytelling.

Hyper Light Drifter was a game well-known for its wordless storytelling. A quick Google search will yield dozens of videos and articles discussing the art of worldbuilding without words.

As Jake Theriault artfully describes in his analysis of the opening sequence of Drifter:

“We discover all we need to know about the world in one wordless sequence. And from there on out, all the discovery made by the player is done visually.”

While Hyper Light Breaker will not be entirely devoid of text (there will be UI and some loadout descriptions), we have made the decision to lean back into our strengths and reveal our world and mysteries therein through illustrated vignettes.

There is so much about the Hyper Light universe to discover. With Breaker, we’re excited to share more about the history of the world that led to the events of Drifter.

Our Character Artist, Isaak Ramos, has established a house style for our studio, inspired by the works of Katsuhiro Otomo.

Some key aspects include:

Clearly defined straights and minimal curves

Shading using a halftone pattern (and/or halftone+flat value)

And reasoning includes:

Effectively receives color blend modes

Meaningfully calls back to our influences and to our past without resorting to pixels

Adds gravity/seriousness

Quickly creates a more finished aesthetic that will support looser lines and different drawing styles

Let us hear from you!

What do you think about this return to wordless storytelling? And our panel art style?

And what’s going on with Dro?

[henmesh]

Working on a crossbow

[thewakingcloak]

the shadow is back!!! (you probably didn't even know it was gone)

it's a small detail but should help pretty significantly with figuring out where you are when you're jumping or falling off a cliff!

[bubblegumrabbitwriting]

Blink Dev Update

Hi Guys,

Don't really have any exciting news. Work on the next update has been steady, and I have the high alert route done with one set of choices up until the end of the update; just got to finish the other choices, and then I will be moving to the other route. Pretty much still on track to have the update out by the end of this month unless something pops up and stops me from writing, but I'm working from that timeline.

Hopefully, I should have the next update done to check by the 25th, and then some minor rewrites and moving around I want to do to some of the earlier choices, and it should be out by the latest, the 31st.

Thanks all again, and I hope you are all doing well. 💖

[nextinline-if]

Bug Fix Update - July 9, 2024

Hi, everyone.

I hope you're all doing well and staying safe in this crazy world. There were a couple bugs in the last update of Ch 2, Part 1 from August that I never got fixed. Well, I just fixed them. Sorry about the delay.

I'm getting better mentally. Still have a lot of work to do but after many months of therapy and medications, I am feeling more myself than I have in a long, long time.

Anyway, thank you for sticking around. I appreciate each and every one of you who has taken the time to play NIL.

In this bug fix update, the following changes were made:

High Priority Fixes:

Chapter 1: (preface: I think this is fixed. Please please someone let me know if you find that it is not. I've been trying to fix this for more than a year lol). Some people could not move forward when F and Felix argue if they choose that F is an ex-lover.

Chapter 1: Coding typo in balcony scene with F at the ball.

Chapter 1: When finding out your pet is coming, it now clearly communicates that the pet is male. (someone asked me to add this on Itchio.)

Chapter 2: fixed a scene where Constantine's horse is mentioned incorrectly.

Chapter 2: Carriage Scene - fixed two coding errors.

I know this was only a bug fix, but I hope it helps improve the experience. I'll let you all know when I have something more for you.

Best,

Vi

[entropy-game-dev]

One of the new additions to the build is flagging especially hard enemies. Currently, enemies 1 tier above the current dungeon tier have a 2% chance to spawn. This can mix up the battles to keep players on their toes, and give especially strategic players the chance to earn equipment, and a possible ally, one tier higher than what they'd usually have access to!

However, during playtesting, I got absoutely wrecked by a single monster and I had no idea it was a strong one because I didn't have the chance to scan it. On the suggestion of a friend, if I had big flashing warning symbols on it, I would have been more careful and run away or played more defensively. And so now I do!

It was easy enough to make it yellow, since all sprites are drawn as white to begin with and then a colour blend is added to it in game. The warning symbol is new, but uses the same code as the HP and recruitment UI text, but with an image instead!

[jjeinn-tae]

Welcome to the journey!

Hello everyone, and welcome! I'm Jjeinn, and I'm working on a series where I'm building a retro game inspired by games of the N64 and Play Station! It is under a working title of "Journey Through LoGuo" in the vein of Zelda and the like. Our protagonist, default name Locca, is going to make her way through the Empire of LoGuo, ruled by the sun emperor who as of yet does not have a name.

In her adventures through the lands, Locca will win the support of various scholars dedicated to the 6 elements, learning various spells to supplement her ever-increasing array of... gadgets? I feel that implies a higher tech than we're talking here. In the very-shoehorned reference to Journey to the Wes I have in my working title, there is a rather Chinese-inspired theme to LoGuo, which being my attempt at a N64-era "Zelda" esque game, directly created the name of the empire.

Contrary to most games I've seen of this genre, Locca is not your typical sword and shield fighter. Locca's weapon of choice is the guandao, a Chinese polarm sword, leading to a combat system that will be very active!

To me, this is basically a modern port of a hypothetical game made in a world where the video game crash didn't happen, and thus there was a US competitor to Nintendo that was attempting to match pace. So... "out of universe" but still in-universe somewhat, this is just what was the latest of a series in the 90's. To that end, there are certain things that would be known to players in this non-existent world that the game was made for, but we obviously don't have that context in real life. So, I have been going back and forth on whether to talk directly on that or not. If I do, I will mark such posts as #loguo spoilers

Other tags to follow the project are mainly going to be #loguo but I might add more.

This post will also eventually have the elemental symbols surrounding the crest of Loguo (basically mirroring the medallions around the triforce in OoT) but my pen tablet is angry currently. So hopefully soon.

And a link to my previous master post, about J'ard here:

J'ard is not dead, I've been working on the world for 8 years now, but it isn't the correct start. Thank you everyone who's followed along with my dev logs, and here we start some more!

[echanart]

Seems like Cavina's having some OPINIONS about the second man of the Aria 👀

Also ft. the new background of the entrance of the Dancing Shadows Theatre! I was aiming for a blend of classic and vintage design (if that makes sense?) with elements from older theatres and 20th century ones.

There are many meshes on the scene. I'm sure my old laptop would just die 😵. Thankfully I've bought a more powerful laptop and it can handle so many meshes now! And my god did it run so smooth like silk I'm crying 😭😭😭

[runecrossed]

Runecrossed Test Build 02: Atien Revamp is finally out!

View the changelog and download it here on Itch.io: https://zerio105.itch.io/runecrossed/devlog/865975/release-test-build-02-atien-revamp

And of course, if the game interests you and you are financially capable, please consider supporting me on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/c/Zerio105

[dankdungeonsrpg]

FF X MtG Revised

Recall Illus. Richard Kane Ferguson

First of all, a big shout out to @uncleasriel for really digging into my last design post on this! Sorry it took so long to put this next post together. I hope to answer (most) of your questions.

One line in particular really stood out to me from their post: "Does this lead to fun gameplay? Or does it slow down the game? I feel I'm trying to make Magic: the Gathering with RP elements rather than a Roleplaying Game with MtG elements"

This is an important design decision that is so easy to lose sight of. Do we want Magic to be central to the game (ie, all characters use it, this is a game about dueling sorcerers) or do we want it to a sub-system within the RPG (ie wizards have this spell mechanic, rogues and fighters have their own things going on)

Personally, I like it as a sub-system. That behooves us to be slim in our design for risk of making the game overall too cumbersome.

Buckle in. This is a long (and somewhat disjointed) post.

Fighting Fantasy Skeleton

Kjeldoran Dead Illus. Melissa Benson

I spend a lot of time in these posts talking about Magic, but let's talk about Fighting Fantasy. I did a whole video series breakdown on the system if you're interested.

But actually, let's not talk about Fighting Fantasy. Let's talk about TROIKA. As I've said before, Troika makes one extremely smart mechanical change that fixes a lot of Fighting Fantasy's issues. It reduces base Skill. This ends up making rolls matter more because in the original game a high Skill (by and large) ensures victory. Let's adapt that.

Sidenote: I've done this before with my game AZAG

So here's our stat generation:

Skill - Roll 1d3+3

Stamina - Roll 2d6+12

Luck - Roll 1d6+6

And how we determine starting spells:

9 minus your Skill Stat are how many Ability Points you have

There are 5 Colors of Magic: Black(B), Blue(U), Green(G), Red(R), and White(W)

Distribute your Ability Points among them. Putting a point in a color allows you to cast it. Also, for each point you may choose 3 Common Spells of that color

Another very good thing to look at Troika for is flavor. Troika is a weird science fantasy rpg. It communicates this through it's backgrounds. They are delightful. Ranging from Burglar to Fellow of the Sublime Society of Beef Steaks.

from TROIKA! Numinous Edition

We could make all sorts of character archetypes inspired by MtG's multiverse. Or we could just do one per color. Lots of options in this framework. Plus both settings have multi-planar themes, they just approach them very differently.

Also worth noting that Troika advises 12 Ability Points when creating a custom background. This makes sense, but I just want to dial that back a bit for testing.

Testing Set: 5th Edition

It's not just the most popular D&D edition, it's also a great MtG Core Set.

For testing, I think a core set is important to keep things simple and avoid expansion specific gimmicks, but why use 5th ed in particular? Mostly personal preference. I think it represents a good cross section of the early days of the game, which are the days I'm most interested in.

Maybe it would make the most sense to use a starter set...

Banned Cards, Rarity, and Finding Spells

So what cards do players have access to? The basic rules are:

Remove the Creatures

Remove the Artifacts

Remove the Lands and land dependent cards (Enchant Lands mostly)

Remove Bounce (Unsummon/Boomerang)

Low cost creature destruction bumps up in rarity to Rare (Terror, Pyroblast/Hydroblast)

Remove Reanimation (Raise Dead/Reanimate)

When players choose their three spells on character creation they're looking at commons.

When they find spell scrolls or spell books? Random cards! Maybe not even in a color anyone can cast. Really make it feel like opening a pack. If they're easy to find then maybe just Commons, but if its the archmages study? Gotta be Rares.

Multiple copies of Commons are fine, a couple copies of Uncommons, maybe okay. More than one Rare? I wouldn't recommend it.

Monsters

Chub Toad Illus. Daniel Gelon

As I talked about in my last post on this topic, summoning creatures slows the game down to a crawl!

They're great as enemies though! (as long as an NPC isn't summoning them)

So right now that's all I'm using them for, but in future play tests I may introduce (very) limited use of them as summons.

In terms of creature abilities, particularly those that cost mana, I'm currently ruling that GMs get a Mana Die (see A Round of Combat with: The Mana Cube below). So creatures can activate or do more later into combat.

There are obviously a bunch of edge cases, even in a core set. Honestly I'm just flying by the seat of my pants on a lot of these.

Players fighting spell casting NPCs is something I've tried a bit. Still not super worth it for enemies to be able to summon creatures but starting with minions is fine.

An evil goblin sorcerer with a Flame Spirit, a couple Mon's Goblin Raiders, and a small deck of spells was a great boss encounter!

A Tale of Two Decks

Here's a thing that may change, each spell caster has two decks: One for combat, and one for narrative.

A wizard can decide which spells from their repertoire go in which deck at the start of the adventuring day.

Combat Decks are similar to MtG

We'll get into Combat later, but you're basically just casting these spells as written. You draw, you have a graveyard, the whole thing. One rule I'm not sure on yet is what happens when this deck runs out. In some instances we've reshuffled the graveyard back into library, in others we just view the casters as depleted for spells for that combat...baring a Feldon's Kane.

This deck lends itself to the crunchy cards we may see as better outside the narrative. I'd rather have a Brainstorm in here than in deck number two.

We just don't really care much about color symbols. If you can cast Green spells and Red spells than any mana you generate (outside of an artifact) is Green or Red in any combination you choose.

Outside combat cards are Narrative Decks

This is all about flavor and role playing. You're taking about taking a card name and interpreting it.

Flashfires creates spreading flames

Stasis holds objects or creates in place

Giant Growth makes a creature big

Portent gives a sign of weal or woe

Tsunami summons a wave

Flight...well you know

In a previous post I referred to this as Miltonian Casting, citing the way spell effects work in Ben Milton's Maze Rats, although unlike that game, we're not really generating spell names on the fly, just what they do. Also, pretty sure Milton is not the first person to do this. So I'm just going to call it Narrative Casting for now.

There are some limits, most obviously that if spells are in your Narrative Deck they can't be in your Combat Deck. Also, Narrative Casting is fire and forget. This allowed me to justify Armageddon. Ongoing spells last a number of Turns (10min intervals) equal to their Mana Value. Saving throws isn't something I've tried yet, but tying that to Mana Value in some way also feels like a good first step.

A Round of Combat with: The Mana Cube

Mana Vault Illus. Mark Tedin

I tried out the Hearthstone mana method mentioned in previous posts. It worked pretty well! We used a d6 (since it's the only die type in FF) that ticks up each round to track mana for casting.

Here's how Round 1 of combat currently breaks down:

Place character sheet, any artifacts or other items you control, your Combat Spell Deck, and a d6 (Mana Die) in front of you.

Set the Mana Die to 1

Draw a card

Take an Action (This can be casting any spell, activating an Artifact, or swinging a sword. Tap cards as normal and consider yourself tapped when you're done. Remove the Mana Die if you spend your 1 mana)

Pass Turn

Subsequent Rounds:

Untap

Increase Mana Die to 1 higher than it was last round (it's like lands, so spending your 1 Mana on Round 1 doesn't mean you're starting over at 1 Mana on Round 2)

Draw a card

Take an Action

Pass Turn

You can do things like activating abilities or casting Instants whenever, as long as you have the Mana.

We were worried this would be slow, but actually the narrowing of choice helped a lot. When players started with a multi card hand and could cast with Stamina it was overwhelming. Remember, it's still an RPG. You can use your action to attack with a sword or climb a way. There's still plenty to do while you wait for your Mana Die to increase.

You may also have noticed that the Mana Die (being a d6) means players cap out at 6 mana. Yes. I may change that later but for play testing right now. It's a workable limit. Get your hands on a mana generating artifact, play a Dark Ritual, or just play Green if you want more.

Misc Rules

Pentagram of the Ages Illus. Douglas Schuler

Artifacts: They're basically just items. Find them in the word and use them as written in most cases. They're not spells so you don't draw them. They're just on your character and thus "in play" when combat starts. Outside, as with any card, we interpret narrative-ly.

Enchantments vs Auras: Currently Enchantments are what you cast on yourself and Enchant Creatures are what you cast on others. Sometimes you can cast Enchant Creature cards on yourself too...its a bit squishy right now.

Lands: Still not involved. Not that there weren't some great ideas thrown out about them, but it's just an element I don't feel comfortable incorporating yet.

Attunement: I really liked the Attunement ideas in @uncleasriel's post. It's something I want to mess with in my next play test.

What even is Banding? Scientists just don't know.

End Step

The next thing to do here is just to write this up as a play test rules doc. That probably would have been quicker than writing this whole dang post...whoops. Anywho, that's my next thing, along with another play test.

[lavapulsemods]

cmd: homophobia -> delete

ANB Mod Update

Been a minute since I posted about mod progress. I did end up having to use the gender swap method for the main character, and all is going well. Currently in the playtesting/dialogue hunt phase. As before, I've been fixing any preexisting typos that I come across along the way.

Gaia always knows the right thing to say.

Breaking News: ANB Secretly Run by Squirrels

It turns out that A New Beginning is written in a language called Squirrel. This game is the first I've heard of it, but it reads like a hybrid of Java and Lua with minor squirrel-themed syntax sprinkled in, such as how script files use the ".nut" extension. I love knowing that the game devs chose a somewhat obscure language themed after little forest critters.

[girakacheezer]

Marlowe Devblog #18

Recently there's been a bug in Marlowe where if she tries to walk into a space that's just barely too small for her to fit in, she dies.

This happens only with spaces that are 1 or 2 pixels smaller than Marlowe's height/width, as pictured here in debug mode with the hitboxes drawn in cyan.

It's an issue specifically caused by the corner tolerance, which allows Marlowe to not get caught on the corners of objects as easily. This corner tolerance is useful when walking on a bunch of objects next to each other, like these boxes on the floor. Without corner tolerance it'd be easy for the corner of Marlowe's hitbox to get snagged on the corner of one of the boxes and stop her from walking over them smoothly.

However in the case with the gap slightly smaller than her hitbox's height, the corner tolerance is allowing Marlowe to slip into the gap underneath the obstacle, and then since the gap is pushing on her from both the top and the bottom, the game considers her "crushed" and kills her.

To fix this, the crush code now tries to move Marlowe to the position she was in on the previous frame, and then it re-runs collisions to see if she's still getting crushed. This allows it to save her from entering tiny gaps like these while still crushing her in other cases.

[henmesh]

I've had a few questions asking if the game's graphics were made with actual clay or just digital models with a clay filter/texture.

All graphics in the game come from photos of actual clay models! Then I process them in Aseprite to make the in-game sprites:

All animations for a standard enemy like this guy usually need around 70 photos total

A more thorough explanation of the full process will come in a later post.

[thewakingcloak]

Trying Some Stuff

So I said I would Try Some Stuff last time, and the most valuable thing I've been trying is talking with friends about all this stuff. Who knew?

In review: I need some kind of sustainable, healthy way to communicate online about the stuff I'm making. That is how I want to connect with people, via my games.

But in talking with my friends, I realized it had to be more than just "sustainable," it has to actually drive the engine forward. It has to be fun. Whatever this ends up being, I have to look forward to working on it, and working on it has to push forward the game development, which will fuel the devlog, which will fuel the game development.

So if you caught that, I'm just going with calling this future strategy thing a "devlog". Not "marketing," not "engaging on social media," not "feeding the algorithm beast." I don't know what form a devlog will take. I mean it could just be this, what I’m doing right now (and this will certainly continue). One friend suggested doing devlog videos. A long time ago I did gamedev streams, and that was fun, and I also cut together little highlight reels, and that was fun. So that may be A Thing. It may not, too, because I don't know if I can actually consistently do something like that. Editing videos is a lot of work. Streaming is, too, especially with our baby's feeding/sleeping schedule. But I'm enjoying thinking about it.

And that's really good, because every time I've thought about online presence recently, I've just wanted to shrivel up and die. Maintaining social media, to me, is misery, is bowing before an algorithm, sacrificing my wellbeing to a human-made god that doesn't care. "If you're Really Lucky, I might show your sacrifice to the other sacrifices, and if you're Astronomically Lucky, a few might like it. Now let me drink your blood and fill your veins with toxic liquid instead via my evil ritual. Also, you have to post all your stuff in gifs, the worst image format known to humankind, but not that way, this way. No not like that, like this."

I'm over that.

If a social media platform doesn't fit what I want to do, I'm going to cut it.

(wow that gif is old… nice to see Tav though, right?)

I'm starting with Twitter (I'm not going to call it X). Twitter is not fun for me and never has been. So I'm actually, 100% for real, deprecating my Twitter account. Do you know how much pleasure I get from this idea? Do you have any idea how much lighter I feel, having decided to get rid of it? Twitter has given me a few dear friends (whom I now talk to via routes other than Twitter anyway), but also nearly ten years of grief, and this platform is not getting better. Oh, the algorithm actively suppresses my posts now? Fine. Let it die. I'm not carrying that burden anymore.

(just constantly bashing my head against social media)

And I don't want a Twitter-like. If that format works for y'all, great, please keep doing what you like to do, but I'm not going to spend my time trying to recreate the evil rituals somewhere else (I've never enjoyed evil rituals). (To be clear, I'm not calling you evil if you engage on social media. I am calling social media algorithms evil.) My time on any remaining microblogging sites, if I even continue those, will now be devoted to simply directing people to the devlog, the thing I actually like and want to do. Does that mean just like a static post on each of them that has a few (shudder) gifs and some links? Maybe! Maybe!!

I'm not going to make any sweeping declarations of The Plan, partly because there isn't a firm one yet, and partly because I've done that before to little success or consistency. However, I know I want to do stuff that makes me want to make stuff, and I'm excited for that. I think it's gonna be fun. I think it may also be sort of a return to form, at least in ways that I can now that I've got my family. So stay tuned…

Oh! Don't forget to wishlist ProtoDungeon: Episode I and ProtoDungeon: Episode III on Steam! (II is in progress!)

[bubblegumrabbitwriting]

Dev update

Hi Guys,

Dev update time, so I wasn't able to get the update out for the end of last month. There are quite a few reasons, from just not getting time to write to looking for a new job and a family member being rushed to hospital. But writing has been going well; I have managed to write more in the last week than I did for the whole of last month, with about 50k words and a big chunk of one of the routes done for the end of the infiltration scene.

I'm not going to put out any expected release date for the update, as my writing time at the moment has been pretty sporadic, and I wouldn't really be able to even give a good guess on when the next update will be out.

But rest assured I am getting there with the writing, and there isn't any way I am going to be abandoning or dropping Blink anytime soon.

I have also been working/reworking another game, which can be found here with a short demo; the ideas and world are all from the IF that I was originally going to release first but lost when my old PC died and I didn't have any backups. There won't be any updates on it anytime soon, but I wanted to at atleast put it out so that it didn't feel like the 7 months that I spent on world-building and ideas went to waste last year.

Thanks again, and hopefully there will be updates soon. 😊