Vapourware Codexian Game Development Thread

[ProphetSword]

Here's one more video.

This one shows a bit of exploration mode before the combat begins. Primarily, I wanted to showcase how much faster the combat can run, so I adjusted the combat speed upward, though still not the highest speed possible. (I will point out that the capture software seems to be missing some frames, as the flashing effect isn't showing all the flashes upon a hit, and it is much smoother when actually running it on the machine. This is likely something I'll have to fix in my capture settings).

Anyway, here it is...

 

[Dorateen]

Are you able to generate the combat maps automatically based on the location of the party in exploration mode? Or are these encounters hand-placed, and you have to design the battle map to transition to?

 

[ProphetSword]

Are you able to generate the combat maps automatically based on the location of the party in exploration mode? Or are these encounters hand-placed, and you have to design the battle map to transition to?

Would you believe a little of both?

 

[Dorateen]

CryptRat

I downloaded and started your dungeon crawler today. Gameplay is appropriately addictive. Seems like it will be a fun mapping challenge. Created half our dungeons & dragons characters, and sent them to hell... with guns! (And a couple of katanas.) Went with a Veteran, Berserker, and a Snoop. Once we got a few fights under our belts, was nice to see the quick advancement.

 

[CryptRat]

Dorateen You may eventually face two confusing bugs worth mentioning :
- Changing the type of ammo currently in a gun for another type creates more ammo.
- The text displayed in the log during combat when targetting exactly a group of enemy (with grenades especially) is broken, it also repeats what you've done in previous rounds.
If you (or someone else) face a critical issue then I'll make a patch but otherwise fixes for these bugs will probably wait for the release of the version I'm working one and which is currently not in a releasable state.

 

[vlzvl]

Much work has been for the game. Too much that i am going to release a demo, hopefully by the end of the coming week, to get some feedback.
What you see is the game's sort-of introduction where you start in some forest, which is close to a small town.
A proper showoff of everything (images and hopefully, demo) will be posted in my codex topic, patreon and some gaming site(s).
Things i have developed, in the last 1.5+ months), include:
- a proper, 3D spell system, in the likes of "Eye of the Beholder" and "Might and Magic 6+"
- 14 spells completed. The total number of spells will be close to 50 and those are just for Wizard. Nothing for the Priest, yet.
- Sound work almost completed. Including item placement, use, walking, attacks etc.
- Data packing (well, this is internal but it is a bitch to implement, especially if its your first time and have lots of credits to attribute)
- Save/Load mechanism complete. Yawn (but read the previous bullet as well)
- As you see, rain (and fog) weather effects were implemented for enhancing realism and perhaps changing game mechanics.
- Events mechanism completed. The party will be given a number of options, along with text and optional image. Their decisions will have an impact, not only on current dungeon but in *any* dungeon. Even a single "No" to some buried question by some random beggar, 25 dungeons before your current area might give you a surprise later. I consider this one of my better things about the game. My goal is to provide rich, context-based discussions and events that will ultimately make use of your memory and character later.
- Game's title screen + Logo (although you will see them later)

Obviously, things like "balance" are still unknown to me and i do not like that term anyway. I care mostly for bugs at this time.
In addition, i am working in parallel with what i call "Open Rulebook System for CRPGS", which is about 30 pages (for now) and acts like a middle ground between a proper "manual" and the game rule mechanics in a much more "calculative" way, similar to "D&D Master Guide". Plus, i am improving my game editor and make changes to my 3D engine as well, while working normally my 9-5.
Still, no level design yet and the scenario is buing developed. However, this is slowly changing with demo, after some months of coding.

 

[Ninjerk]

nice

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

Alright, two major announcements today.

Here's the first screenshot of the mobile version:

And here's the first screenshot of the... Switch version:

Arrite, let's get serious. Here's a very quick summary of the past weeks.

Spoiler

• Finalizing the first chapter, running all over the place and optimizing every area that causes even a slight noticeable FPS dip. There were a few problematic areas, but they've been fixed.
• Doing the Ghost Ship chapter now, and it's going to be pretty kewl.
• Did more work on Dark Zones. Now they also affect your stats (reducing your accuracy and evasion) and as well as reduce the Analyze range. So if you end up in one of these and get ambushed by an enemy, you're in for one hell of a ride.
• Been running around the bigger levels and optimizing them by hand, cutting away lines that are higher than the player's viewport (visible from the distance, but not up close) or replacing them with hand-edited 'low res' versions, which should potentially fix the minor fps dips to ~50 in certain places while slightly sacrificing the detail where it's not that necessary.
• Noted down the potential 'next gen' version by figuring out how to cram lighting into this style (tesselation of polygonal stuff and baking the vertex colors). It's very interesting on paper and I can't wait to sit down and actually implement this... unfortunately, this won't end up in Das Geisterschiff.

 

[Dorateen]

CryptRat

I had a blast finishing up To Hell With Guns. It's a devilishly good dungeon crawler.

Spoiler

Needed to level up a few times after we first stumbled into the final battle.

Slicing up demons with a chainsaw is awesome. Very Evil Dead.

 

[CryptRat]

Glad you liked it.

 

[Dorateen]

Glad you liked it.

Since it was a demo, I didn't mind the limitations of playing with a three character party. But I imagine the finished game will expand to six slots?

 

[CryptRat]

Sure, the final number is not stated but it won't be less than 6 (nor more than 9 or 10 because of keyboard shortcuts).

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

I'm lazy so regular gang members will use the same cheap shit mech model w/ various tweaks, but their fighting style depends on the gang and their rank.
Say hi to junior suicide bomber of the Crows Gang from Earth.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

10 days without any updates from any of you guys? Tsk.

Submitted the demo to another showcase, will see how it goes. The last one brought enough lulz to keep me entertained for the entire evening. Speaking of which, I should write an update on that on IndieDB.
I planned to not update the demo until the full game is out to make sure all of the pre-release improvements are in place, but due to another showcase I'm going to update it anyway so I can get up-to-date feedback.

Grab the updated demo here.
IndieDB and GameJolt pages will be updated shortly.

Current changelog:

Spoiler

-- Shift key can be used to move faster, useful for backtracking/cleared areas while maintaining the intended pace of the game. Thanks to HobGoblin42 for the suggestion.
-- Additional visual and audio details added.
-- Added the ability to analyze certain details on the walls.
-- Doors can be damaged w/ explosives when they're open, rendering them inoperable.
-- Tweaked audio components for the enemies.
-- Removed the ability to move from level to level during combat.
-- Removed unused files from the demo.
-- Signs translated to German due to lore requirements. Try analyzing them.
-- Changed the demo ending. Now you can get a short glimpse of other areas.
-- Fixed rendering issues on SM2.0 hardware.
-- Fixed a bug where door would render cracks if it was open.
-- Fixed an issue where text typing effect would be affected by FPS. Thanks to barker_s and Duckard for making me double-check the old code.
-- Fixed an issue where event flags wouldn't revert to the earlier state upon reload of the current map.
-- Fixed a minor inconvenience when the player's facing direction would change while travelling between levels.

Also, one of my friends who helped out w/ playtesting before agreed to make a guinea pig run through the first half of the game while I was busy w/ other tasks and couldn't allocate enough time to beat it in one sitting while keeping track of time.
Results: took him roughly three hours, although he was trying to make a completionist run and already knew his way through the Tunnels/Hideout. Going to take a nap and see how long it'll take for me.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

Some of the first glimpses of the second chapter.

 

[Ninjerk]

nice

 

[Tavernking]

story design

 

[levgre]

Today I realized that I had basically neglected screen scaling in my 7+ months of development thus far. I thought it could be a nightmare to fix (I've had bad experiences in Unity UI so far), but ended up not too bad transferring lots of my UI from Game World Space to Screen Overlay.

Also I accidentally deleted an elaborate prefab, and had to go back to my last backup (about 22 days ago), and work it again from there, took about 40 minutes so again not bad.

Facing these hazards as well as working more like 6 hours a day from 1-2 is making me feel more like an actual dev, and guess I should be backing up daily/multiple times daily like one.

 

[ProphetSword]

You should definitely be backing up frequently. I tend to back up my work every time I finish working on something and end up keeping like a month's worth of backups at a time, just in case. I also back them up online.

There's been a couple of times I had to reverse some work I did or had to reformat my hard drive and pull the most recent work from the cloud.

 

[vlzvl]

Facing these hazards as well as working more like 6 hours a day from 1-2 is making me feel more like an actual dev, and guess I should be backing up daily/multiple times daily like one.

You should definitely be backing up frequently. I tend to back up my work every time I finish working on something

Backing frequently is a nice habit if you code frequently. But daily backing seems a major leak to me, due to the time wasted.
I usually backing up (in some external drive) when i am completing some kind of milestone or some important piece of code that took me ages to write.
It is always a bitch when you have to use your backups but its always easier when you know that some important code is already backed up.

 

[levgre]

Backing frequently is a nice habit if you code frequently. But daily backing seems a major leak to me, due to the time wasted.
I usually backing up (in some external drive) when i am completing some kind of milestone or some important piece of code that took me ages to write.
It is always a bitch when you have to use your backups but its always easier when you know that some important code is already backed up.

I could see this with uploading online with a larger project size (assuming you aren't using a platform like github which only uploads changes). But you could maybe transfer onto a USB or External HD which would be quicker. At about 300 MB My project doesn't take too long to upload to Google Drive though.

 

[vlzvl]

At about 300 MB My project doesn't take too long to upload to Google Drive though.

300 MBs is pretty small for backing, even online
My entire project data (including my game as well, other projects and all kind of resources, used or not) reaches about 10 GBs and i do not even compress it because that would take ages as well; i just store it in a single RAR to allow several volumes (files) to be created because some external drives are mot allowing such big files on uploading.
I could easily upload anything smaller to Dropbox but for those sizes i prefer to use some external drive. Perhaps this is dinosauric to some but its pretty quick and the chance that both internal + external drive to get fucked up is rather nanoscopic

 

[Yaar Podshipnik]

Have you guys heard of git with git lfs https://git-lfs.github.com/ ? All those backup strategies you mention just sound like a recipe for lots of tears and grinding of teeth...

 

[ProphetSword]

I've heard of it, and used it. But, I don't use it with my current project, since it clocks in at around 30MB in size when zipped and it's fairly easy to just backup in multiple places. People with 10GB projects should probably look into it, though.

 

[DosBuster]

Jesus christ, use version control, even if you're solo keeping track of commits and having the ability to rollback as well as have a development history is super useful.