Super Toaster X: Learn Japanese

Not received.


E and I had a long chat this week regarding music for STG. It seems the 16-bit is a bust for now. I have been over complicating things and after talking to Etienne, I have some clever ways of stripping the music down. I’m excited to get started with what’s coming next, and I think E is right - it’s a good thing for STG.
-Trevor



These last three days for me have been about management. I had an online chat with both Trevor and Sahand to discuss their respective tasks. I find an online chat works well to give feedback especially when it involves starting something over. There’s immediate interaction and less understanding, frustration or hurt feelings (those three I plan to avoid at all costs).

I also received a request to be bound by contract. I had intended to work this way from the get go but I had planned to do this later down the road when more work on the game had been done. So I invested more time trying to get my contracts in gear. I don’t know how to make contracts legally valid so it will involve further research. Just to clarify, I’m totally comfortable with the request, I’m just explaining why there’s nothing new in the art department. Except...

I could introduce another member of the Breasistance: Butter-Fly. The name came easily! Butter-Fly used to be The Dough’s top engineer until it turned rogue along with Pan. He will join Pan on his adventures to give input much like Navi did in Zelda (but without the annoying “Hey”). I want the relationship between Pan and BF to be somewhat peculiar in the sense that Pan constantly fights back an urge to devour BF. BF is thus constantly worried whenever it interacts with Pan.


But, I’d rather not leave with you nothing at all, so here are some gameplay idea from a member of another community, Cactus:







Hi !

Good to see you this week for a new Devlog. Right now i reflect to how STG can be original and to
stand out from the mass.

Firstly i'm working on a new fight system with Pan's grapin. A enemy could be stunned then throw
against other enemies or buttons.

(A little sketch to illustrate):

Also, i'm on way for done a new design of the KS's level, with different roads and a lot of secrets to
find out ! ;)

I can't show the level design for the moment but this fast sketch can express the idea.

I hope you enjoy our evolution.

Stay tuned !

-Goulven



This time around, I’ll talk about the upgrade system. Basically, I’ve drafted a few attempts on paper about the upgrade system. As you already know, collected BNA can be spent to upgrade Pan’s abilities.

This is the design aspect which has given me the most difficulty so far. It might seem easy but it’s tough to put in place. I want the layout to be a grid (sort of like in Final Fantasy X and XII). Every time you spend a BNA, more upgrades become available to you.

What’s boggling my mind is determining what the upgrades are. There are the more obvious ones like damage upgrade, damage resistance and so on.

The difficult thing to figure out is the abilities. Should the player have access to all of the game’s abilities from the get go (grapple, charged shot, etc...) or should they need to unlock them.

If they need to unlock them, I can see how that could lead to a *lot* of issues with the level design. On other hand, having access to all the abilities from the beginning sort of spoils the fun. There’s not much to look forward to afterwards. I always found it addictive to play some more time in order to unlock this ability to try it out and to have access to new areas in a game world. In Castlevania, you’d get those abilities at key points in the game.

This leads to a linear progression through the game. Admittedly, in Castlevania, you had the main linear quest but you could also explore some side-areas in any order.

I’d like STG to be more open. First of all, you have access to all of the game stages/worlds from the very beginning. That, in my opinion, has always been a major appeal of Mega Man.

The thing is, we can’t really go too deep into level design without being sure about the abilities otherwise we end up having to change the levels over and over again (which is a lot of time).

BUT setting the abilities in stone right from the beginning stifles the creativity for the rest of the game in case I/we get new ideas.

So that’s what I’m thinking about right now.