Devlogs – Page 4 – StarvingFox Studio

Devlog 7

Defense of Humanity

The player model has been slightly reworked and is now available in multiple colors.

Currently all player animations are being reworked and it might highly impact the game feel in a good way, as well as being more true to visual objectives.

A lot of work have been done on optimization and tweeking the game.

The main objective after reworking animations will be finishing music production, that has already started 2 months ago and is taking a while, but it’s starting to sound somewhat decent and fits the game.

Side projects

Due to a burnout I really needed to slow down and work on side projects to get out of depression. My motivation was at its lowest and I can’t find any by just taking days off doing nothing, however, I realized that working on my side projects has always led to a huge motivation boost. So here’s some of what I’ve done the last 2 months on side projects.

It is a low-poly style action-RPG game with puzzle mecanics set in the medieval era in which you’ll incarnate a wandering knight, hired by local lords to eradicate evil. You’ll be able to combine a large set of weapons and magic runes in a complex real time combat system (dodging, combos, charged attacks,…) to get rid of hords of diversified enemies.

It is a simplistic slab based puzzle game featuring 50 levels and it will soon be published on Android, a PC version will come later this year (and maybe console ?).

All the graphics rely on lighting, the player being the most powerful light source in the game and all levels being played in the dark. You’ll be challenged to understand how each level is setup and find your way to the exit without being blocked or eliminated by death slabs, not to mention that you’ll have to collect prisms to unlock new levels.

The last tasks on the board for this game are the rework of the main menu and music production.

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Devlog 6

Uncategorized / Pierre

Playtesting

After dozens of hours playing the game, I decided to remove Hozirontal and Dynamic mode of the split-screen, so the split-screen will be Vertical only.

It appeared that both horizontal and dynamic mode were handicaping players and were making the game not pleasing to play, I guess these modes don’t fit the project.

Beside a few known bugs I’m still working on, a ton have been fixed, the game feels solid and encountering new ones is rare.

New FX

Enemies, props, weapons and items now have new explosions fx.

UI rework

As it was hard to know what weapon you actually get when you pick a gunbox (weapons are obtained randomly), all weapon related UI have been reworked.

All weapons are now relative to the first letter of their name, ammo is clearly displayed and the name of the weapon pops up for a few seconds when it’s picked.

All turrets are modeled

I finally finished modeling each turret and its upgraded forms.

Miscellaneous

Vulcan death animation has been reworked
Crosshair display has been fixed
I tried new colors for the players, yellow and orange seems like the best choices
Made some progress on music production

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Devlog 5

Uncategorized / Pierre

Main menu

The background and animations are done, still need to work on UI and maybe improve the font, but it’s there ! I modeled a huge mothership and a quite accurate earth planet (after 15 hours playing around with Google Map I hope it’s accurate !)

Levels rework

I have been play testing a lot recently, and beside fixing dozens and dozens of bugs, I figured out level 2 and 3 were far less fun than the first level. There was actually huge verticallity issues, so I decided to go back to modelling and try to improve what has been made. Spent 2 hours playing level 2 and I think it’s good now. Still need to spend a few hours on level 3 to be sure it’s fun enough after a longer play time.

Tweakings

Teleporters now have a delay between when you take it and when you actually get to the destination point. This will prevent getting surprised by enemies that would be at the same position you’re supposed to respawn. Arrows on teleporters are also animated and show the direction the teleporter is going;
Explosion decal sprites disables smoothly;
The game goes in pause mode when the window loses focus;
Mouse aiming system improved;
Controller assignement is working;
Health boxes have a new sound;
Super Meduse explosion range have been reduced;

Player 2 camera now shake along with the Player 1 camera;
Each player aiming crosshair has been disabled in the other part of the screen;
Health Auto Regen does not work anymore when the player is dead;
Money spent variable in the Win Panel has been replaced with Lifes lost;
Wave 7 of level 1 is easier.

Miscellaneous

Level 2 control room screens are now animated;

On buying an upgrade, particles are spawned on all players, upgrade sound have also been changed;
Stairs that have multiple destinations now have a panel to give the player visual feedback of the current destination.

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Devlog 4

Uncategorized / Pierre

Teleporters

Teleporters can now be used to travel quicker through dense levels.

Cutscenes

A short cutscene have been done for each level.

Loading screens

Loading screens for each levels.

Miscellaneous

– A restart button have been added to the in-game menu.
– New icons showed in the last devlog have been implemented and some do not fit and have to be redone.

Side Projects

When I start being overwhelmed and I feel like my productivity is getting too low, I just « take a break » to work on side projects.

This week I’ve made some level design and I prototyped a mobile game (2 different projects).
I can’t obviously show anything about the prototype but here is a shot at one of my level design session.

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Devlog 3

Uncategorized / Pierre

New split screen camera

There is 3 split-screen modes players can choose from : Vertical, Horizontal, and Dynamic.

Horizontal : The screen is split so there is one player on top of the screen and one on the bottom.
Vertical : The screen is split so there is one player on the left of the screen and one on the right.
Dynamic : According to players position in the level, the camera is either split or not. If players get too far from each others the cameras split and rotate accordingly to the position of players, if they get close to each others the cameras merge back to 1.

Script cleaning

The main scripts managing player controls and enemies health have been completely remade from scratch to allow more complex behaviors, especially player’s weapons behaviors and enemies ondeath behaviors.

Super enemies behaviors

Empowered versions of enemies that have been modeled recently have been implemented into the game.

New enemies death animations

Almost every enemy now have a death animation and is not just disapearing into an explosion.

New icons

Item icons and structure icons have been made.

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