It's that time of the month again, well sort of. I am slightly late... I was intending of getting this blog post out two weeks ago, along with the video, but I wasn't yet satisfied with where I was in development to actually do it. So I delayed it. I believe that FoD is at a point now where another update is due so here we go.
The development since the last update has been huge. A ton of things have been added and changed within the game, I am not even sure if I will be able to cover all of it within in this blog post, but I am going to try. The first, most noticeable, change to the game is the new scale of all the sprites and images. We have scaled everything up so that the enemies and textures are now larger. There was a lot of criticism about the original scale, and we have been planning on doing this for a while so we finally got around to doing it. It was a much needed improvement.
A couple of the characters have been redone. The Goblin of floor one, and the Rock Man of floor two have been redone. Jerry felt that the animations for these two characters could be improved so he redrew them and they are both looking much better.
Two more stats have been added to each character. These two stats are the ability to dodge, and the ability to parry. Dodging can be done by any enemy, but parrying can only be done by enemies that have weapons. Through the use of items however, any character can parry, but by default only the characters with weapons can parry. The difference between the two is that dodging can be done when attacked from the front and the behind, while parrying can only be done when attacked from the front but also stuns the enemy briefly.
Enemies now flash red when hit. This addition was made in order to make the combat feel more satisfying... we actually just finished implementing this about 15 minutes ago! Ha
One of the huge additions to the game are the elite enemies that are now within each level. Every level has it's own unique elite enemy. These enemies are stronger than the average enemies within the level. They are bigger, take more to kill, but give a larger reward for killing them, which I will get to in a bit. I will also go into more detail about each specific elite and what he does, but before I do that I must talk about the new items added to the game.
A major part of this update has been the item system. Originally, if you have been following, the only items where those found within the shop. The only way to get these items was to collect coins and buy them from the shop. This system is still in place, but these are no longer the only items within the game. Within each level there is a mystery chest that when opened offers one of four random items that will all increase a certain stat. Each elite enemy has the chance of dropping one of two types of items. He first has the chance to drop a powerup gem. Essentially, this is a small colored gem that greatly increases a specific stat for a small period of time. Elites also have the chance to drop items that can not be found within the shop. These items consist of stat boosters, passive items, and usable items. As of right now, only the stat boosters are in place, but usable items are on the way. This is very exciting for us because the item system is a very important part of this game, and can really make or break whether or not a run is successful, so by adding these new items it increases the options for the player.
That is pretty much it for the additions. Before I go into each new enemy in greater detail I would like to touch upon optimizations that have been done since the last update. With the growing code base, and the amount of sprites that have to be drawn to the screen and what not we have started to reach the point where performance is becoming an issue. This is bound to happen with every game at some point or another, and it finally happened to FoD, so being the programmer of this game I made an optimization run. It took about an hour or so but I got rid of a ton of old unused code, fixed up a few algorithms, and just cleaned up. The game is now running much better which is good news because we were having some really bad performance at times, but that seems to have gone away.
Now for the elites. The elites are all based on their floors, and their designs are meant to reflect the theme of their floors.
The first elite enemy is the Plump Goblin. He is a large, overweight, mega-goblin that rides a floating platform. He is the summoner of his smaller counter part, the regular goblins. The Plump Goblin has two attacks. He first has the ability to summon more goblins from Nexrolis' dimension through the use of a portal. Next he places a pentagon where the player is and brings up lava from it causing to the player.
The next elite enemy, on floor two, is the Ascender. This elite has a shield around him, which after a certain amount of time he shoots off from himself to his sides leaving him vulnerable for a short amount of time, giving the player the ability to attack him.
On the next level, the bog level, there is the Tree. The Tree is the only enemy in the game that does not actually move. He sits in place and has two attacks. The first attack is his slam in which he slams his arms down to both of his sides attempting to hit the player. His next attack is a ranged attack in which he erupts bile from his trunk into the air falling onto the player.
On the meat room floor, the 4th floor, we have the Nibbler. A giant mutant rat that stands up right, has one arm, and a sword. The Nibbler has two attacks, His first attack gives him the ability to jump up in the air and do a falling strike onto the player. His next attack is a normal slash when he is on the floor.
The final elite on the 5th floor before the final boss fight is the Skull Guardian. This elite has two stages. In his first stage he is flying and shooting a laser from his mouth. He stays in this state until he is hit by the player. After that he becomes a ground enemy, attempting to crust the player with his skull head.
That pretty much does it for update number seven. There was a lot that we got done in this last month or so... I hope that I managed to touch upon it all. There is still a lot of stuff to do, but we are coming close to having a finished product. I am not entirely sure what this next month is going to bring, but I have a todo list to finsh and I am hoping that it is my final one before launch.
I will also be doing a video update for Youtube which will pretty much cover what this blog post covered but will actually show the game itself instead of me just describing it. I'm probably going to do that later though since it is 1AM here right now....
Well I'm out, until next time, thanks for reading.
- Frankie
Saturday, January 17, 2015
Tuesday, November 18, 2014
Floors of Discomfort - November Development Update
Well, it has been another month and once again so much has been done with Floors of Discomfort. This month has mainly been dedicated to character creation and the abilities that go along with each character. Last month I only briefly introduced the Golem, but he wasn't even working then so there wasn't much to discuss. Since then, there are now five characters, all working, and I can not wait to talk about them all.
The first character is not new, but I feel as though I should talk about him because I never really have. The Knight is the main character in Floors of Discomfort. He is the default character and does not have any perks by default. He does however have two abilities, the whirlwind and vital energy. The whirlwind attack, activated by the Z key, is a 5 second attack that turns the Knight into a tornado, making him invulnerable and allows him to damage enemies and throw them up in the air. The attack has a cool down of one minute as of right now. The second ability given to the knight is the vital energy buff. When the knight reaches zero health, and he does not already have the vital energy buff on, he will be granted three more health bars and given an attack and speed increase. The buff lasts until the he dies or moves on to the next level. Other than the addition of the icons for the abilities nothing new has been added to the Knight.
The next character is the first of the new ones created, the Golem. The Golem is a tank character. He is slower than the other character, but much stronger and starts with an extra health bar. He is for players who are willing to gather hordes of enemies and take some damage. The Golem's first special ability is activated by the Z key. When activated the Golem hurls a fireball at his enemy and launching himself backward. This ability at the moment has a cool down of one minute but that may change in the future, along with the rest of the cooldowns. The second ability given to the Golem is activated by the X key. This attack allows the Golem to plant a fireball on the ground that burns and the enemies that come into contact with it. It lasts for 5 seconds and also has a 60 second cool down as of right now.
The Thief is the character to be created after the Golem. The Thief is a hit and run class, she is for the players who would rather kill one enemy at a time instead of taking on hordes. The Thief is much faster than the other classes allowing her to escape enemies much quicker and also travel around the map with greater ease. She has the ability to poison her enemies as one of her specials. Activated by the Z key, the Thief coats her weapon in one of three random poisons unknown to the player until the time of the strike. When an enemy is hit with the poisoned weapon it will either be paralyzed, weakened, or afflicted with a damage-over-time poison. The poison ability has a current cool down of two minutes. The Thief also has the ability to sprint for a short period of time. By pressing the X key the Thief's run speed is increased allowing her to sprint much faster for five seconds. That ability has a minute cool down.
The Skelewizard is next character on the list, he is a caster and is for those players who would rather keep a distance from enemies. The Skelewizard has a much higher attack power, but also takes double the melee damage than other characters do. The Skelewizard's two special abilities consist of a buff and an AoE attack. The AoE attack activated by the Z key causes the Skelewizard to drop a strip of tentacles that causes damage to any enemy that comes into contact with it. The attack lasts 5 seconds and has a 60 second cool down. The second ability is a buff. When activated using the X key the Skelewizard has sever stat increases. His damage done is increased, his attack speed, and run speed are all increased. This buff lasts 15 seconds and has a two minute cool down.
The final character added to the game is the Pumpkin. The Pumpkin has a slight attack power increase at the start but his true power lies in his abilities. The pumpkin has two abilities a thorn shield, and a pumpkin throw attack. The pumpkin throw is activated by the Z key and when activated the Pumpkin will hurl a pumpkin (supposedly his own head) at the enemy cause a large amount of damage. The attack has a 60 second cool down. The next ability is the thorn shield. When activated using the X key a shield of thorns surrounds the Pumpkin absorbing 200 damage until it is breaks. The ability has a two minute cool down.
All these characters are working, but some of their abilities and animations still need to be tweeked and what not. Other than the characters we are now working on a new mystery chest mechanic that will appear randomly on each level. The chest will contain a random item, ranging from a coin to a new item that we are working on. That has not been started yet though, so there is more to come on that in the next update.
These blog posts from now on will be the preview for the Youtube dev updates that we also put out. Those will normally come the weekend following the blog posts, so that is when I am hoping to get this one done. I plan from now on doing one update a month. I feel as though that allows for a more constructive post.
Our Youtube channel is located here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaJ1FgrlKZSnVPCSb342Nww
Well, thanks for reading! This was a long one.
- Frankie
The first character is not new, but I feel as though I should talk about him because I never really have. The Knight is the main character in Floors of Discomfort. He is the default character and does not have any perks by default. He does however have two abilities, the whirlwind and vital energy. The whirlwind attack, activated by the Z key, is a 5 second attack that turns the Knight into a tornado, making him invulnerable and allows him to damage enemies and throw them up in the air. The attack has a cool down of one minute as of right now. The second ability given to the knight is the vital energy buff. When the knight reaches zero health, and he does not already have the vital energy buff on, he will be granted three more health bars and given an attack and speed increase. The buff lasts until the he dies or moves on to the next level. Other than the addition of the icons for the abilities nothing new has been added to the Knight.
The next character is the first of the new ones created, the Golem. The Golem is a tank character. He is slower than the other character, but much stronger and starts with an extra health bar. He is for players who are willing to gather hordes of enemies and take some damage. The Golem's first special ability is activated by the Z key. When activated the Golem hurls a fireball at his enemy and launching himself backward. This ability at the moment has a cool down of one minute but that may change in the future, along with the rest of the cooldowns. The second ability given to the Golem is activated by the X key. This attack allows the Golem to plant a fireball on the ground that burns and the enemies that come into contact with it. It lasts for 5 seconds and also has a 60 second cool down as of right now.
The Thief is the character to be created after the Golem. The Thief is a hit and run class, she is for the players who would rather kill one enemy at a time instead of taking on hordes. The Thief is much faster than the other classes allowing her to escape enemies much quicker and also travel around the map with greater ease. She has the ability to poison her enemies as one of her specials. Activated by the Z key, the Thief coats her weapon in one of three random poisons unknown to the player until the time of the strike. When an enemy is hit with the poisoned weapon it will either be paralyzed, weakened, or afflicted with a damage-over-time poison. The poison ability has a current cool down of two minutes. The Thief also has the ability to sprint for a short period of time. By pressing the X key the Thief's run speed is increased allowing her to sprint much faster for five seconds. That ability has a minute cool down.
The Skelewizard is next character on the list, he is a caster and is for those players who would rather keep a distance from enemies. The Skelewizard has a much higher attack power, but also takes double the melee damage than other characters do. The Skelewizard's two special abilities consist of a buff and an AoE attack. The AoE attack activated by the Z key causes the Skelewizard to drop a strip of tentacles that causes damage to any enemy that comes into contact with it. The attack lasts 5 seconds and has a 60 second cool down. The second ability is a buff. When activated using the X key the Skelewizard has sever stat increases. His damage done is increased, his attack speed, and run speed are all increased. This buff lasts 15 seconds and has a two minute cool down.
The final character added to the game is the Pumpkin. The Pumpkin has a slight attack power increase at the start but his true power lies in his abilities. The pumpkin has two abilities a thorn shield, and a pumpkin throw attack. The pumpkin throw is activated by the Z key and when activated the Pumpkin will hurl a pumpkin (supposedly his own head) at the enemy cause a large amount of damage. The attack has a 60 second cool down. The next ability is the thorn shield. When activated using the X key a shield of thorns surrounds the Pumpkin absorbing 200 damage until it is breaks. The ability has a two minute cool down.
All these characters are working, but some of their abilities and animations still need to be tweeked and what not. Other than the characters we are now working on a new mystery chest mechanic that will appear randomly on each level. The chest will contain a random item, ranging from a coin to a new item that we are working on. That has not been started yet though, so there is more to come on that in the next update.
These blog posts from now on will be the preview for the Youtube dev updates that we also put out. Those will normally come the weekend following the blog posts, so that is when I am hoping to get this one done. I plan from now on doing one update a month. I feel as though that allows for a more constructive post.
Our Youtube channel is located here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaJ1FgrlKZSnVPCSb342Nww
Well, thanks for reading! This was a long one.
- Frankie
Wednesday, October 15, 2014
Floors of Discomfort - Development Update
We have been doing a lot with FoD over the past few weeks. Jerry and I have been adding a ton of stuff to the game, as well as discussing future gameplay features that will add diversity to the game, and make it more enjoyable. The first of these additions are new unique abilities that each payable character will have, giving him his own advantages. For the Knight, the only playable character right now, the abilities added are a tornado attack, as well as a buff called "Vital Energy". Essentially what Vital Energy does is when the Knight reaches zero health he will be given 3 more health bars and his stats will be increased. The tornado attack turns the Knight into a tornado for five seconds causing damage to enemies and sending them flying in the air. Like I said, each playable character will have his own unique abilities which allows for options when attacking monsters.
While I am on the topic of characters, let's discuss how character unlocking works. The player will have to build each unlockable character through pieces of the character found throughout the levels randomly. This pretty much means that two arms, two legs, a torso, and a head will be randomly placed throughout the levels at random, only one part at a time. The player has to find all the pieces of a specific character in order to unlock, and play as him. There are already ideas for other playable characters and I am working on the algorithms to make it happen. It is a lot of fun! This is a unique approach to character unlocking because it encourages exploration and taking the time to look through each level. As a developer, it is very exciting.
Other additions to the game that have been implemented already include mainly ways of making each floor more diverse, and dangerous as the player progresses through them. Environmental dangers such as lava, mud, stuns, and spikes have been added to the floors. On floor two there is now a giant eye (well it's supposed to be an eye) that hovers over you and periodically shoots down a ball of electricity at the player. If he is hit by this he will be stunned for five seconds. Floor three introduces mud patches, these floor tiles will slow movement when stepped on. Floor four introduces spikes that will cause one bar of damage when stepped on and floor five introduces lava which has the same effect. These environmental hazards add a higher degree of difficulty and diversity as the levels progress. It is no longer about just avoiding the enemies, now the player must also watch where he stepped because the world around him can cause harm as well. Without these hazards, items such as the springs and the parachute may seem rather useless, so adding these hazards also encourage the purchase of those items from the show as well.
Other than those major additions to the game, the rest of development has consisted of bug fixes and touching up the game graphics wise. Certain character sprites have been redone. The crate sprites have been redone. The keeper was removed from the game as we felt he wasn't really appropriate. An options menu has been designed, but I have yet to do the programming to implement it. There is now a loading screen when the game starts, and there is a company logo as well during the start of the game! You know, all the aesthetic stuff. That's pretty much it for additions.
Looking forward there is still a bit to do, but we are starting to narrow them down. There is talk between the two of us about possible mini-bosses that would appear on each level, they would be completely optional but they could potentially drop something more valuable than just coins. Such as maybe an item or something. All of the alternate playable characters have to be implemented, as well as the building of those characters. A character selection screen will have to go along with that as well. After those two things are added there really isn't that much more to do, it will just come down to doing some graphical and gameplay fixes.
Development is starting to move away from technical improvements, and move more toward gameplay. We are starting to really focus on how we can make the game look and play at its absolute best. Development is really moving along and we are starting to get excited! There is no real set date of release, but it is starting to get closer. I am hoping to have a Youtube video late this week or early next week showing all of these changes that I have mentioned in this post. Today is a good day.
- Frankie
While I am on the topic of characters, let's discuss how character unlocking works. The player will have to build each unlockable character through pieces of the character found throughout the levels randomly. This pretty much means that two arms, two legs, a torso, and a head will be randomly placed throughout the levels at random, only one part at a time. The player has to find all the pieces of a specific character in order to unlock, and play as him. There are already ideas for other playable characters and I am working on the algorithms to make it happen. It is a lot of fun! This is a unique approach to character unlocking because it encourages exploration and taking the time to look through each level. As a developer, it is very exciting.
Other additions to the game that have been implemented already include mainly ways of making each floor more diverse, and dangerous as the player progresses through them. Environmental dangers such as lava, mud, stuns, and spikes have been added to the floors. On floor two there is now a giant eye (well it's supposed to be an eye) that hovers over you and periodically shoots down a ball of electricity at the player. If he is hit by this he will be stunned for five seconds. Floor three introduces mud patches, these floor tiles will slow movement when stepped on. Floor four introduces spikes that will cause one bar of damage when stepped on and floor five introduces lava which has the same effect. These environmental hazards add a higher degree of difficulty and diversity as the levels progress. It is no longer about just avoiding the enemies, now the player must also watch where he stepped because the world around him can cause harm as well. Without these hazards, items such as the springs and the parachute may seem rather useless, so adding these hazards also encourage the purchase of those items from the show as well.
Other than those major additions to the game, the rest of development has consisted of bug fixes and touching up the game graphics wise. Certain character sprites have been redone. The crate sprites have been redone. The keeper was removed from the game as we felt he wasn't really appropriate. An options menu has been designed, but I have yet to do the programming to implement it. There is now a loading screen when the game starts, and there is a company logo as well during the start of the game! You know, all the aesthetic stuff. That's pretty much it for additions.
Looking forward there is still a bit to do, but we are starting to narrow them down. There is talk between the two of us about possible mini-bosses that would appear on each level, they would be completely optional but they could potentially drop something more valuable than just coins. Such as maybe an item or something. All of the alternate playable characters have to be implemented, as well as the building of those characters. A character selection screen will have to go along with that as well. After those two things are added there really isn't that much more to do, it will just come down to doing some graphical and gameplay fixes.
Development is starting to move away from technical improvements, and move more toward gameplay. We are starting to really focus on how we can make the game look and play at its absolute best. Development is really moving along and we are starting to get excited! There is no real set date of release, but it is starting to get closer. I am hoping to have a Youtube video late this week or early next week showing all of these changes that I have mentioned in this post. Today is a good day.
- Frankie
Friday, September 26, 2014
Where we are with development, and other general stuff
Well, after four months of developing we have finally reached the development of the final boss level within the game, and you have no idea how happy I am. Last night I finished the implementation of the final boss, Nexrolis. In this post I'm just going to go over how the boss works, and show some pictures.
So, if you don't already know, the game we are working on is Floors of Discomfort. It is a roguelike dungeon crawler with a bit of platforming. The way the game works is that there are five levels leading up to a final boss fight. Throughout each level you have to collect coins then find a key that will allow you to advance to the next floor. Each floor has it's own theme and level of difficulty.
The sixth level is where the boss resides. He will be the final fight in the game and will result in beating the game if he is defeated. Nexrolis, as he is called, has a three stage attack. He first executes his melee attack, a quick stab. If the play is close enough he will be dealt 10 damage.
Below is a picture of the stab:
Nothing too fancy about it, just a basic stab animation. Soon after though, he conducts his range attack, quite a bit more devastating than the previous attack. With this attack, Nexrolis casts a shadow skull at the player. The skull moves rather slow, but if it collides with the player it will deal it will deal 30 damage.
Below is a picture of the skull animation:
Nexrolis' final attack is the fire rain. The attack is pretty self explanatory, he causes fire to rain from the sky. It is his most devastating attack, and hard to avoid, but it is possible. The goal in creating this game was to make it very hard, but possible to beat. When you die you should feel as though it was a mistake on your part, and not the game being unfair. Anyway, below is a picture of the final attack.
The animations are very smooth, and everything for the most part is working. There are still some things that need touching up, but I am very pleased with how everything came out.
Nexrolis isn't going to have a health bar, and there is no pushback when he is hit so we are going to have to figure out a system for giving the player some indication that he hurt Nexrolis because if not the boss fight won't feel right. Other than that, things are going well.
Looking forward there is still a lot to do, but not so much gameplay anymore, development is starting to move toward aesthetics now. The entire game needs to be scaled up because the scale is too small, that is going to be a project. A pause menu has to be implemented, an options menu, the backgrounds need to be animated. The core gameplay, however, is done and that is a huge milestone.
All in all things are progressing quite nicely. We are going to start work on the cutscenes and making the game look awesome and then it will be time for release! Things are moving very quickly, it's hard to believe that only a few months ago this game consisted of a bunch of squares moving around the screen... it's crazy.
So, if you don't already know, the game we are working on is Floors of Discomfort. It is a roguelike dungeon crawler with a bit of platforming. The way the game works is that there are five levels leading up to a final boss fight. Throughout each level you have to collect coins then find a key that will allow you to advance to the next floor. Each floor has it's own theme and level of difficulty.
The sixth level is where the boss resides. He will be the final fight in the game and will result in beating the game if he is defeated. Nexrolis, as he is called, has a three stage attack. He first executes his melee attack, a quick stab. If the play is close enough he will be dealt 10 damage.
Below is a picture of the stab:
Nothing too fancy about it, just a basic stab animation. Soon after though, he conducts his range attack, quite a bit more devastating than the previous attack. With this attack, Nexrolis casts a shadow skull at the player. The skull moves rather slow, but if it collides with the player it will deal it will deal 30 damage.
Below is a picture of the skull animation:
Nexrolis' final attack is the fire rain. The attack is pretty self explanatory, he causes fire to rain from the sky. It is his most devastating attack, and hard to avoid, but it is possible. The goal in creating this game was to make it very hard, but possible to beat. When you die you should feel as though it was a mistake on your part, and not the game being unfair. Anyway, below is a picture of the final attack.
The animations are very smooth, and everything for the most part is working. There are still some things that need touching up, but I am very pleased with how everything came out.
Nexrolis isn't going to have a health bar, and there is no pushback when he is hit so we are going to have to figure out a system for giving the player some indication that he hurt Nexrolis because if not the boss fight won't feel right. Other than that, things are going well.
Looking forward there is still a lot to do, but not so much gameplay anymore, development is starting to move toward aesthetics now. The entire game needs to be scaled up because the scale is too small, that is going to be a project. A pause menu has to be implemented, an options menu, the backgrounds need to be animated. The core gameplay, however, is done and that is a huge milestone.
All in all things are progressing quite nicely. We are going to start work on the cutscenes and making the game look awesome and then it will be time for release! Things are moving very quickly, it's hard to believe that only a few months ago this game consisted of a bunch of squares moving around the screen... it's crazy.
Monday, September 15, 2014
Floors of Discomfort - What is being worked on now
After the previous post that I had published about minute ago, I decided to make this short post that will highlight the new features we plan on adding soon.
The first addition being a hot bar in order to map the player's items better and display it in a more logical way. What I am mean is, the play can go to the shop in order to buy weapons and spells of sorts. As of right now, those attacks are mapped to seemingly random keys that the player would never be able to figure out on his own without someone teaching him these buttons... Obviously this is not how it should be, so we have introduced the idea of the hot bar which will hold the spells and map the spell to one of the number keys. This is a change that we have wanted to make for a while, as it is an essential change, but only recently have we gotten around to it.
The next addition being a brand new enemy which will be the second enemy to reside on the bog level, which is the third floor. This enemy is named the Voodoo Master and he has the ability to teleport and shoot some type of arcane ball from his hand. We haven't yet worked out the specifics for that guy but the start of the animations are done so he will be thought out more and implemented.
The final addition that we plan on making is the final boss level. That also still needs to be thought out a bit but there is some idea for how he will work. Once the boss is made that will conclude the core game development itself and we will be able to focus on the aspects of the game that are not quite as important to the core concept of the game, such as an achievement system, extra playable characters, etc.
The development process is going quickly, and a lot of progress is being made every day. I am not yet sure of an exact release date, so we'll just see how things go.
- Frankie
The first addition being a hot bar in order to map the player's items better and display it in a more logical way. What I am mean is, the play can go to the shop in order to buy weapons and spells of sorts. As of right now, those attacks are mapped to seemingly random keys that the player would never be able to figure out on his own without someone teaching him these buttons... Obviously this is not how it should be, so we have introduced the idea of the hot bar which will hold the spells and map the spell to one of the number keys. This is a change that we have wanted to make for a while, as it is an essential change, but only recently have we gotten around to it.
The next addition being a brand new enemy which will be the second enemy to reside on the bog level, which is the third floor. This enemy is named the Voodoo Master and he has the ability to teleport and shoot some type of arcane ball from his hand. We haven't yet worked out the specifics for that guy but the start of the animations are done so he will be thought out more and implemented.
The final addition that we plan on making is the final boss level. That also still needs to be thought out a bit but there is some idea for how he will work. Once the boss is made that will conclude the core game development itself and we will be able to focus on the aspects of the game that are not quite as important to the core concept of the game, such as an achievement system, extra playable characters, etc.
The development process is going quickly, and a lot of progress is being made every day. I am not yet sure of an exact release date, so we'll just see how things go.
- Frankie
Floors of Discomfort - Where I have been and what I am working on
I left this blog off several months ago during the development of a game engine at the time I had called 3 Prong Engine. The development of that has stopped as I have moved on to bigger things which I will get to in a little bit. I had started talking with some friends about a game idea in late June, a platformer of sorts which would use 3 Prong Engine as it's base code and test the engine's ease of use and what not. The problem was, at the time I really didn't have much of an idea as to what I was doing when it came to game engines, and so the project soon turned into a big mess of impossible to manage code, and so the engine was retired with the game idea. At some point in the future I do plan on possibly restarting the work on the engine again, because they do help, but as of right now I am going to stick with my current game development method. However, that is not what this post is about. I want to write about what I have been up to during the summer, and why I have just neglected to write a post since June.
After retiring our previous platformer idea, which we do plan on coming back to at some point, I started playing around with random level generation. It was nothing more than a fun thing I was doing one night, nothing crazy, but then all of a sudden I had an idea for a game. A platforming, side scrolling, roguelike dungeon crawler that would be hard as hell, and like that Floors of Discomfort was born. Though, in the beginning it wasn't called Floors of Discomfort (I think I had named the folder Storm Cloud or something..). I had proposed the idea to my friend, the graphics designer on the 3PP team, and he thought it was a great idea as well and so we started development.
He started making some graphics for it, I started laying out some basic collision maps, and randomly generated levels. Before we knew it we had the beginning of a game, the first floor was done, we had some items, and the ideas were starting to fit together. This was about mid July. We still didn't know where we were going with this, or what our end goal was, but there was something here, we both knew that and so we continued.
Here is the first development video I had posted on YouTube:
As you can see in that video, things were still a little shaky, not everything was looking and working correctly, but the concept was there.
Fast forward a few weeks and we have already successfully created the second floor. Things started to really take off, and we started to have a vision for the game. We knew what we had to do. This next video update is of me talking about these additions.
Things are starting to come together a little more here, I had made a few bug fixes, and an entire new floor was in the game now.
Going forward another few weeks now and we have made a ton of progress. Three enemies are now present on the second floor, and the third and fourth floor have been created. I had done a complete rewrite of the game pretty much during that development period and so everything was working smoother, but there was still a lot of work to do.
This is the third video update for the game.
After that update it was two weeks until I had posted the next update. That update is the most recent update, and even though it is far outdated from the most recent version, it highlighted a ton of progress. A new level, five new enemies, and a new item.
Since then there has been a crazy amount of progress on the game. Enemies have been redone, new enemies have been added, bug fixes, and player movement flow. I plan on making a video this weekend on all of the new additions and fixes because it is too much to highlight in this post since I am so backed up on my blogging.
So, yeah, that is what I have been up to for the last few months, and why I have suddenly disappeared. With the development of FoD progressing though I will be making blog posts whenever I can, probably whenever there is a new addition to the game that I feel should be highlighted. I tend to only make the videos when I feel that there is a mile stone that has been reached, but the blog posts can be more frequent and highlight smaller changes in more detail than I can in a video.
Anyway, I am back, so expect some stuff. I am going to keep the old posts for novelty value, just know that the development there has been halted and the majority of my development time is being spent on FoD.
- Frankie
After retiring our previous platformer idea, which we do plan on coming back to at some point, I started playing around with random level generation. It was nothing more than a fun thing I was doing one night, nothing crazy, but then all of a sudden I had an idea for a game. A platforming, side scrolling, roguelike dungeon crawler that would be hard as hell, and like that Floors of Discomfort was born. Though, in the beginning it wasn't called Floors of Discomfort (I think I had named the folder Storm Cloud or something..). I had proposed the idea to my friend, the graphics designer on the 3PP team, and he thought it was a great idea as well and so we started development.
He started making some graphics for it, I started laying out some basic collision maps, and randomly generated levels. Before we knew it we had the beginning of a game, the first floor was done, we had some items, and the ideas were starting to fit together. This was about mid July. We still didn't know where we were going with this, or what our end goal was, but there was something here, we both knew that and so we continued.
Here is the first development video I had posted on YouTube:
As you can see in that video, things were still a little shaky, not everything was looking and working correctly, but the concept was there.
Fast forward a few weeks and we have already successfully created the second floor. Things started to really take off, and we started to have a vision for the game. We knew what we had to do. This next video update is of me talking about these additions.
Things are starting to come together a little more here, I had made a few bug fixes, and an entire new floor was in the game now.
Going forward another few weeks now and we have made a ton of progress. Three enemies are now present on the second floor, and the third and fourth floor have been created. I had done a complete rewrite of the game pretty much during that development period and so everything was working smoother, but there was still a lot of work to do.
This is the third video update for the game.
After that update it was two weeks until I had posted the next update. That update is the most recent update, and even though it is far outdated from the most recent version, it highlighted a ton of progress. A new level, five new enemies, and a new item.
Since then there has been a crazy amount of progress on the game. Enemies have been redone, new enemies have been added, bug fixes, and player movement flow. I plan on making a video this weekend on all of the new additions and fixes because it is too much to highlight in this post since I am so backed up on my blogging.
So, yeah, that is what I have been up to for the last few months, and why I have suddenly disappeared. With the development of FoD progressing though I will be making blog posts whenever I can, probably whenever there is a new addition to the game that I feel should be highlighted. I tend to only make the videos when I feel that there is a mile stone that has been reached, but the blog posts can be more frequent and highlight smaller changes in more detail than I can in a video.
Anyway, I am back, so expect some stuff. I am going to keep the old posts for novelty value, just know that the development there has been halted and the majority of my development time is being spent on FoD.
- Frankie
Thursday, June 19, 2014
3ProngEngine Update - Images, animations, and lots of progress.
School is finally over so I had time today to do some more work on the engine. Things are coming along really well! I even had the chance to start developing a game with the engine (with the help of two friends).
In the recent push I have added support for different animations (walking, jumping, attacking, etc). I added a "state" field to each custom object so now everything has to be stored as a dictionary inside an array. Other than that I just did a lot of touching up here and there.
The gif below is the engine in image mode, the mode that would be the end product of the game that shows all the fancy graphics (not made by me btw). The gif demonstrates the pushing of objects, background bliting, and just some general movements around the map.
There is still a lot that needs to be improved on. The gravity feels a little too slow to me right now, and jumping is choppy. There is still a long way to go, but progress is being made. If you notice within the gif that when I move the play he turns back to Rect mode (the blue square) this is because I don't have any images set for the running animation yet. This is a feature that I found useful when debugging the animations so I left it in.
Hopefully with my next post will come a full fledged level that will be playable, but we'll see, I still have a lot of work to do.
This was just a quick update, I don't really have anything else to say about this right now so until next time, thanks for reading.
- Frankie
In the recent push I have added support for different animations (walking, jumping, attacking, etc). I added a "state" field to each custom object so now everything has to be stored as a dictionary inside an array. Other than that I just did a lot of touching up here and there.
The gif below is the engine in image mode, the mode that would be the end product of the game that shows all the fancy graphics (not made by me btw). The gif demonstrates the pushing of objects, background bliting, and just some general movements around the map.
(Picture removed)
There is still a lot that needs to be improved on. The gravity feels a little too slow to me right now, and jumping is choppy. There is still a long way to go, but progress is being made. If you notice within the gif that when I move the play he turns back to Rect mode (the blue square) this is because I don't have any images set for the running animation yet. This is a feature that I found useful when debugging the animations so I left it in.
Hopefully with my next post will come a full fledged level that will be playable, but we'll see, I still have a lot of work to do.
This was just a quick update, I don't really have anything else to say about this right now so until next time, thanks for reading.
- Frankie
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