• Add Review
  • Subscribe
  • Nominate
  • Submit Media
  • RSS

Devlog 58






Greg is busy fixing bugs and adding quite a lot of little things. He's also fixing the animation speed in-game. He's adding the water too... and the new boss health meter bar. He'll be in a better position himself to fill you up next week but trust me, it's a lot of stuff.








It’s a wrap! See previous log to find out more about this.






Hey guys!

Long time no see (not really!) First of all I’m sorry there’s been so much action in the devlog for the other developers. It’s exceptional circumstances and I didn’t mean to hug the board for myself. Once the title screen is done, things will go back to normal with people not commenting :D.

As you can see, the title screen has improved tremendously. I feel like I’m repeating myself but the input you guys provided made all the difference. This has been the most helpful community so far, nothing even came close. So:

-zorg: kudos for the creative edits and input.
-crabby and Sun Wu Kong: thanks for the support!
-siskavard: I still lots to learn from you man. Thanks sensei.
-marcgfx: your blunt replies always make me cringe as to what you’re going to write next but I have to say, you always provided very informative input!

Speaking of which:

marcgfx
- don't really like, that antagonist and pan overlap

True. That’s fixed. I’ve also moved the bad guy more on the left to make it less of a focus for the screen. I also moved the hands (and slightly modified one) to make better use of the empty space and reduce overlapping to the minimum.

- the antagonists hands have different colored lines, the skull interferes with the writing (thats why I changed it)


Agreed. That’ fixed too. I took the opportunity to slightly change and move the skull.

- I prefered the old X, this could be because the new one has weirder shadowing on the \  


The shadowing of the text is actually messed up to begin with as it gives the impression that the light comes from different positions. Considering that the light comes from the upper left, I had to change everything. So that’s done.

- super toaster is quite far apart, but the X and toaster still kind of overlap (better than before)


Better than before as in…? It doesn’t overlap as much and that’s better?
I moved the text around. I re-did the “X” entirely.

- I would prefer a darker background color, it's too much like the hairdryers,
the floor could also be darker to make the actors stand out. right now it looks like the antagonist is actually black and not just dark because of the setting


Right ok, I get you. I made the background darker. I think it makes the background antagonist less noticeable. My concern is that the hand is not readable enough now…

- the angled floor is kind of weird, as the curtains are perfectly straight. the setting looks like from a play to me, you could add perspective with floorboards if you want


My objective was to make the thing less flat. I’ve moved things around so that the floor takes less space. I’ve lessened the angle too. I’ve also made the floor darker.

I’ve added boards to the floor too as well as the shadows you mentioned.

Shadow still looks off to me but I’m struggling with that the moment.

I've also scrapped the old, outdated, ugly presentation of the game in the first thread which had not been updated since... devlog 37.

Before:


Now:


Power-Ups

This is something I’ve brushed slightly in the past but never really got to talk about. I was so busy drawing various things that I didn’t get time to write about this.

Now that the title screen is well underway, I got to thinking about this very important mechanic and I’d like to write about this today.

I’ve played a lot of games in my life so I’ve seen so many varieties of this that I have hundreds of concepts in my mind.

At first, the idea was to hide BNA in various stages and people would be allowed to use them to improve Pan. But, as I was doing my dishes (I zone out when I do that), I thought that this is problematic. This means that if players can’t find BNA, they won’t be able to improve their character? This would mean that, for many players, upgrades would become something minor.

Upgrading is fun. It’s rewarding and you feel like you’re better equipped to face the challenges the game has to offer.

So, here’s what I’ve thought of:

In the Bread Cave (where you do your upgrades), there’s a computer Pan can use. One of the options is: challenges. Challenges provide opportunities for players to undertake said challenges and earn gold medals (
). The idea had been to have bronze, silver and gold medals for the completion of a stage but I felt that was cheap so I’ve scrapped that entirely.

Let’s say, one of the challenges is to kill 100 enemies. Once you’ve killed 100, you earn a certain amount of medals, from 1 to 10 depending on the difficulty of the challenge. You can then trade 10 medals for a BNA unit, which act much like a PRAXIS unit in Deus Ex.

I don’t know about you guys but that’s something I’ve always enjoyed in games, those little challenges which reward you with something.

This gives more value to a BNA (as they’re worth a considerable amount of medals on their own, so finding one in game would be rewarding) and gives more replay value and depth to the game.

Completionists will also find this to their liking as well.
* * *

Ok, so now you understand how to acquire BNAs, but what do they do exactly? Again, this is something of game design which required (and still requires) much thought.

The question is, how to give power-ups to players while limiting the effectiveness of said power-ups? In other words, what’s to prevent a player from acquiring and using the 50 power-ups intended for the game?
The idea is to limit a maximum of 4 power-ups. This will force the players to choose their equipment wisely by picking every power-up carefully. Of course, players will have the opportunity to change those in-between stages. A certain stage might require more firepower so a power-up which increases fire power would be appropriate. In another stage, having some extra health would be advisable because of the high damaging enemies. So you see, different power-ups for different stages.

Power-ups are thus purchased with BNA. Does it mean that each power-up costs the same amount of BNA? In a word: No.

The more powerful a power-up, the more BNA it costs to purchase it. The costs for each Power-Ups will be something we will tweak as we get feedback from players.

I've also got a new cursor going for selecting options and whatnot.








Hi everyone!

This week i could propose a first demo (with a three levels) to few testers.
Greg has correct a lot of bug already, and i will done all levels for the 30th...

A demo coming soon?
Stay tuned.
- Goulven (Nev