Vapourware Codexian Game Development Thread

[shihonage]

You also avoid rocket explosion damage if it explodes near you when you're ducking. Not sure if it's a problem, didn't really bother me.
EDIT: The NRG part might be too broken after all. You can just duck the NRG shots and the monsters will not only kill themselves but other nearby monsters too, while you're almost completely safe.

Will fix.

You get damaged by explosions even if you're behind a solid wall. That bothered me... until I learned to use it to my advantage.

Fixed this when it comes to harming monsters in the already-issued 1.02 patch. Will check if it still affects player.

Should bots leave blood stains? Because they do.

Yes they should.

There are some weird things going on with controls when ducking and shooting in rapid succession.
Try this quickly: Press shoot, press duck, unpress shoot. The hero will duck, then stand up for a second, then duck again. After that unpress duck and try shooting in the same direction as before. The hero will not shoot.

Completely unable to reproduce. Are you using non-default control configuration?

 

[Niektory]

You get damaged by explosions even if you're behind a solid wall. That bothered me... until I learned to use it to my advantage.

Fixed this when it comes to harming monsters in the already-issued 1.02 patch. Will check if it still affects player.

Oh, I see, I played 1.00. Will update.

There are some weird things going on with controls when ducking and shooting in rapid succession.
Try this quickly: Press shoot, press duck, unpress shoot. The hero will duck, then stand up for a second, then duck again. After that unpress duck and try shooting in the same direction as before. The hero will not shoot.

Completely unable to reproduce. Are you using non-default control configuration?

Yeah, numpad for shooting and left Shift for ducking.
And now I noticed it only acts up with Num Lock on, with Num Lock off it works fine.
So yeah... not surprised nobody else stumbled on this.

Having seen IRL people get confused and killed on the first level, I may have gone a bit overboard coddling the typical player who is not used to the game's unusual controls and the tile-based aiming concepts.

I found the controls and mechanics super simple. Nothing to learn, really. But I remember C64 gaming days so I'm probably not your typical player.

And yes, another guy pointed out that he only started worrying near the life extensions area in level 3. But he's also played this game extensively in alpha back in 1996 when it was written for DOS.

I would like to hear from more than just 2 people, preferably from a range of skill levels, so that some kind of statistics could be gathered.

1996? Holy crap.

About difficulty: It's easy for quite a while, I didn't have problems for the first half of the game playing on Seasoned the first time through. But the endgame is different story.
The first truly hard part is Volkov and the escape sequence. Then the rocket bot infested undercity. And then it's hard until the end.

So basically there's a large jump between the first and second half of the game. The beginning should probably be harder on hard, and the end easier on easy. Currently difficulty levels don't seem to change much. Though I guess differentiating them more would be a lot of work. There's no need for 5 of them BTW. 3 are enough.

I think you can remove some supplies from higher difficulties. I ended up with a lot of extra ammo on Reckless. I did use the killing through walls with rockets exploit but I doubt it changed much.

 

[shihonage]

Thanks for the feedback. I will be looking at this in the next patch, which will probably be a major one.

I want to include a randomized adventure mode (it won't compare to Minecraft or real roguelikes, but it extends longevity regardless), and possibly a beta of 2-player coop over LAN (or if you have the same ISP, reside in the same city, and know how to forward ports in router).

I decided to PROJECT THE IMAGE OF SUCCESS. Yes.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

First level is littered with health on purpose. It's a glorified tutorial.

Well, the problem is that it's non challenging. "Tutorial level" should still challenge the player and teach him to avoid damage, save ammo and stuff like that, because otherwise the player gets bad habits that make the last 3 levels even more difficult.

BAH, posted this under the game
" Currently looking into making highest difficulty harder, and possibly a random adventure mode."

... and the same guy who said he breezed through levels 1-3, replied:

"Harder? Holy crap! I only finished the Seasoned difficulty and the end of the game was violating me like a new guy in prison. I can only imagine how hard Reckless will be. Looking forward to it though. "

Which is exactly what I was talking about. The first 3 levels offer next to no challenge while the last 3 levels get brutal with stuff getting absurd in the rocket bot infested dungeon.
The rocket bot dungeon could use less rocket bots and more other aliens, while the first 3 levels could use an increase of challenge.
Also, melee critters could use a damage increase - about 2x for squids and 4x or more for greens because now they are way too tolerant to player errors.

 

[Destroid]

Thanks for the feedback. I will be looking at this in the next patch, which will probably be a major one.

I want to include a randomized adventure mode (it won't compare to Minecraft or real roguelikes, but it extends longevity regardless), and possibly a beta of 2-player coop over LAN (or if you have the same ISP, reside in the same city, and know how to forward ports in router).

I decided to PROJECT THE IMAGE OF SUCCESS. Yes.

Is it truly that much more work to get it going over the internet compared to LAN?

EDIT: Or is it you don't want to write efficient netcode.

 

[shihonage]

Truly, it is. That's why Doom and its offspring and Duke3D used the same method I do, and only in Quake did they get lag-tolerant multiplayer. And even then, it sucked donkey balls until its complete rewrite in Quakeworld.

 

[shihonage]

ASCII mode work in progress. I think it will end up looking better than the graphics mode, because the game started with ASCII in the first place. At least ASCII has a consistent style.

 

[Zed]

why make an ascii mode?

 

[shihonage]

Because is started in ASCII mode, and graphics were just my sad attempt to make it look better. Maybe the opposite was true all along - ASCII had a consistency to it, a "style", and my graphics have nothing.

See here and here.

___

On a completely unrelated subject, I'm being severely pulled in the direction of mobile game development as "way to make money" by certain individuals, because those certain individuals close to me have little faith in Shelter's ability to attract a large population of buyers. I don't see how oversaturated mobile game market would put me on top with some side-scroller... even if it does have good graphics and ingame purchases...

But I am also not sure how well Shelter would do, even with all-new graphics (which will still cost me a lot more than I paid for them so far).

It's funny how these things take on a new meaning when you quit your job.

 

[Rpgsaurus Rex]

While the Android market (which covers ~60% of mobile devices IIRC) *is* oversaturated by "freemium" bullshit, Kairosoft and other whackamole timewasters, it is still very hungry for unusual games with good gameplay.

I'm also quite sure you won't have much competition simply because no one has done anything like your game (I check the market daily...) - you *might* have to update the graphics a bit though, to attract a wider audience.

It's also a nice way to make money, if it counts.

 

[shihonage]

Dead Colony isn't going to work on mobile devices. It needs physical controller. The point is to make an entirely new game from scratch...

Shelter is tied to Microsoft's DirectX framework. I wonder how long it would take to completely untie it and port it to iPad. And also whether it would completely overload iPad's "disk limits" and "physical memory".

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Any chances for customisable monster stats?

 

[shihonage]

Any chances for customisable monster stats?

Sorry but no. ASCII mode and some difficulty rebalancing and then I move on. To reviving Shelter, or training to become a competitive alcoholic, not decided yet.

 

[Awor Szurkrarz]

Oh .

Then some suggestions to rebalancing:
No HP growth for squids on higher difficulty levels, but higher damage.
Much higher damage for green dudes - possibly even one-hit-kill against un-armoured player. Higher HPs so that they'd need about 1,5 high powered shotgun shots to go down.
Less rocketbots.

 

[Davaris]

ASCII mode work in progress. I think it will end up looking better than the graphics mode, because the game started with ASCII in the first place. At least ASCII has a consistent style.

I like the ASCII style, as it reminds me of the text from the movie Matrix. Now if you could find an artist, to create something as original and stylish as Matrix text, you could have a real stand out. And if you had the cash, you could get the kind of art those Cypher guys were using, to make their text adventure game look so good. Those guys have the right idea, at least when it comes to art.

 

[Zed]

if you're in need of cash, make a quick and dirty game and sell it on those faggy app-stores.

here, you can have one of my (fucking great) ideas:

imagine Snake, but at the head of the snake you control a separately controlled cannon. it's not as much about growing the snake, as it is defending a constantly moving body. Snake + Astroids. put some half-naked chicks in there. instant app top-seller.

 

[shihonage]

I keep hearing that the secret to financial mediocrity (as opposed to failure) is to make a F2P mobile game with in-app purchases. This is pretty much the devil to me, but I was doing a lot of thinking today and realized that the last thing I want to be doing is working on Shelter in a fucked-up state of mind and worrying whether I should "streamline" it for maximum profit.

I reject that mindset. I want to work on the game that I want to make, not rush some half-baked moron-shit product out the door because MONEYS BE RUNNIN OUT.

So I am in fact going to make a mobile game. Using all the tricks to keep the development short.

And it isn't going to be shit.

Currently testing idea of recycling Shelter human/critter art for it (so I could continue expanding its graphics while working on the mobile game at the same time). Shelter's sprites go in 8 directions, 2 of which are side-view, which could lend themselves nicely to an Oregon Trail game in a post-nuclear universe.

"The Road" - themed game on your iPhone is probably going to turn off a lot of the toilet-gamer population, but man, they've gotta be tired by now of all the match-3 bullshit. And also, I am not making match-3 bullshit. I'd rather be homeless.

 

[Davaris]

Snake + Astroids. put some half-naked chicks in there. instant app top-seller.

Snakes with Lasers... A top seller for sure.

I keep hearing that the secret to financial mediocrity (as opposed to failure) is to make a F2P mobile game with in-app purchases.

I don't know about mobile, but F2P with shop, is what I was told again and again, by the guy that made Dead Frontier. He said until he went F2P, he didn't make a decent income at all. I thought the games he made before that, were professional and should have sold well, but apparently single player was "to blame" according to him. I had that argument with him a few years back, so I don't know if his opinion has changed.

He also said it took him 5 unprofitable years, to understand the market.

 

[shihonage]

Interesting... I can only hope I'm not too late to the party.

 

[Davaris]

Interesting... I can only hope I'm not too late to the party.

He posts regularly at IndieGamer under the name Nexic, so you can ask him if you want. He started out making space shooters, but they did not sell well.

 

[Destroid]

Maybe his games suck?

 

[Saduj]

shihonage - Did you see that someone released a card game called "Shelter" with a zombie/survivalist theme for Windows Phone on Indie DB?


fake shelter

 

[shihonage]

Wow. One would think it's a common courtesy to search at least IndieDB for the title of your game before naming it.

He also bought the same trailer music for his "Shelter" that is used in "Dead Colony" trailer. Funny stuff.

 

[Davaris]

Maybe his games suck?

Maybe the market is too crowded?

Here is one of his games from way back in 2008, from what I can see. Judge for yourself.





Jagged Blade Software is where he sells them. Looks like he hasn't bothered with the website in a long time, since Dead Frontier is listed as coming soon.

 

[shihonage]

I look at the top-grossing (1-200) iPhone games and they are all horrifying garbage that I cannot fathom putting any effort behind. Jesus Christ. The toilet gamer generation is here.

... probably not the attitude I should have when it comes to mobile game development.