Hello all,
This thread is dedicated to regular updates on my first commercial project
Try the Alpha Demo now!
Wake of Poseidon is a bullet-hell, beat em up, platformer that I am currently developing using a technique called ‘Forced Rapid Development’ or more commonly referred to as - ‘Seriously dude get off yer a** and make a f***ing game already’.
The original post here as become seriously outdated so I’ve changed a bit but left the original screenshots to give you an idea of where it started.
So after a lot of hard though I ended up changing direction with the project. Turns out once I got everything in place and roughly working it was - well boring. It was kinda scary throwing a lot of stuff away but I’m glad I did it. I feel far more excited about the project now and I’m focusing more on creative goals and less on technical ones.
The emphasis has moved from a cardinal-direction top-down shooter to more of a sidescroller beat 'em up style. It still relies on a fair amount of gunplay but everything is now much more focused on the horizontal axis. This has rid me of many headaches involving widescreens and arbitrarily rotating rooms in random ‘dungeons’. It’s also freed me up from having to animate all four cardinal directions (or at least three if I using mirroring) which means I can spend more time on the quality of the animations.
The AI is currently busted so I’ll just post some gifs and a very short (and terribly compressed) video for now. But hey, one of the two playable characters is nearly completely animated now so, huzzah!
Looks cool. There are very less side-scrolling beat 'em up games on the market since classic arcade era.
My suggestion is the camera can be perspective instead of orthographic so it’s 2.5D game play.
Originally it did have a little perspective, something like an FoV of 6 but I ended up flattening it out to an FoV as low as I could go (can’t use true orthangonal due to deferred rendering) because it made the sprite-based characters seem a little out of place. I’m considering playing around with some oblique othagonal angles too. I’ll like be experimenting with it some more once I get the core mechanics working. Thanks for the suggestion.
Wow! Did you experience ‘the fun’ prior to getting to the point where you started to feel like the gameplay was boring?
Finding the fun needs to be apparent long before starting ‘actual’ development.
I like the direction your now headed.
Yes, the fun was there but the situation was different. It was a small arena with enemies spawning in at fixed points in time. However, I really want a game that is more progressive - where players have to get from point A to point B rather than run in circles. The very core mechanics worked fine but the ‘presentation’ was not meshing. That was what prompted the change. Now I have a much tighter focus on progression by forcing the player to move forward and the level design, gameplay, and goals seem much more aligned now.
Good question by the way. This descision was very much done by gut instinct and feel. I didn’t really have a formal understanding until just now when you made me explain it.
Thats awesome. Its really cool to hear revelations in design & dev processes. I have minor experience but have experienced the exact same thing in the past.
I was firm on a design element I felt needed to be a certain way even though there was strong logical reasons to change/improve/enhance the element. Several weeks later when the design could be tested in the original design and the improved design, it was obvious to all the intuition I had about the design was correct and adding to the element actually made the gameplay overly complex and less fun.
I also find A to B more enjoyable over arena based progression. Although certain games have provided well done, entertaining arena based progression.
So this week didn’t see much in the way of actual gameplay or content creation. Instead I focused on two things.
The camera. it now uses a very nifty oblique projection. I’m especially happy with how the controls turned out since they are still camera relative despite the fact that the xyz axis are skewed in the new camera view. I also added a slew of features to the motion tracking - deadzones, focus points, and position locking. These are all tools that will allow me to easily create rooms and scenarios where the camera is always in just the right position. (If you look closely you can see it taking effect in the video when I cross the first set of grated platforms, it actually moves the camera back a little so the floor stays centered).
Controls. I definitely want gamepad support and it has to work seamlessly for both players. Unfortunately Unity simply doesn’t provide that service out of box. Originally I was using my own wrapper, then I upgraded to a free library called TeamUtility InputManager. I had been working with that for a while but sadly it just doesn’t work well since it still relies on Unity’s input as a back-end. This week I just bit the bullet and purchased and integrated Rewired and man was it easy! Couldn’t be happier. I’ll never work without it again.
C) Menus… I hate, I hate, I Hate programming menus. I have a lot of utilities to help ease the pain but it doesn’t help much. Honestly, I just gave up at one point and started hard-coding the stuff. Probably regret that later. I feel sorry for people that work on complex systems for stuff like RPGs. Luckily, this game is very menu-light. I did that on purpose. I hate making menus.
@Sluggy1
The Rewired plugins look cool. I should wishlist that for future projects. Thanks for sharing.
Haha. My programmer friends also not quite like coding the menu UI/UX part.
But I personally like it. Maybe I’m an Artist? I’m using iTween / LeanTween / DOTween.
The camera angle remind me of classic beat 'em up arcade games.
Although they are using art to cheat the effect but the feeling is the same.
Keep it up.
Man, after a real slow start due to some issues in Unity I managed to make up for lost time. I’ve added a ton of new features and finally have the game back in a working, albeit, completely different state.
The features this week included:
-more camera system tweeks (with more on the way)
-three mobs fully animated and integrated into the game
-a basic AI for mobs
-a pseudo-database system that I can use in conjunction with the mob spawner. It allows me to recycle a small set of generic mobs from a pool and ‘dress’ them with animators and stats based on database entries
-strafing and target locking
-sound effects and visuals for feedback when the player hits and enemy
-sounds, visuals, and a knockback effect when the player is struct - again for feedback
-a basic inventory front-end and the ability to swap weapons with a button
I’ve also got a video of some early gameplay. mostly just me running about while blasting up some baddies. I promise next time I’ll record in a higher resolution.
Once again a week that had a slow start and finished off with a total rush! Unfortunately I’m a little behind since I wanted to post another video by yesterday and I’m still putting pieces together tonight. This is actually a rather outdated video from Monday. Quite a bit has changed since then.
The list of improvements was quite large:
-Worked out the last of the kinks with the camera. It now smoothly centers all focus objects on screen and can be snapped to specific areas for important events.
-Rewrote the AI from scratch after a few suggestions from the Game Design forum Adding New Feature vs Leveraging Existing Ones
Also added a few other AIs and a few new enemies.
-Fixed the UI issues with weapons. Developed some new weapons and balanced them.
-Started work on environment props and scenery.
My big task right now is to build a library of ‘rooms’ that I can build small combat/platforming scenarios around. After that I’ll start working on the rules for stringing them together to make semi-randomized levels. For now I’ll leave you with some screenies of the new artwork so far.
It’s been a while since I’ve had a chance to work on this project. Mostly been doing ‘black triangle’ work while getting accustomed to a new job and shift.
However, I’m back at it and more eager than ever! You can follow my progress on my youtube channel here Post Existence Games
Thanks for the feedback. I was a little worried about the overtly and cartoonishly egotistical presentation but then I figured “Screw it. Let’s just try it and see”. I hope the future episodes will be just as entertaining!
I will admit, I was shocked to see you scrapped the first design. It was lovely. I love your additional design even more but the original had a very familiar feel to it. I am not sure how old you are but I remember a game on Sega Saturn called Loaded (Also, Re-Loaded) that had that same look and feel to your game. Very fun game. Your new work looks great. I love the art design and the feel of it. Gives me that dungeon crawler type of vibe. Diablo-esque if you will. Keep up the good work.
Never played Loaded but I vaguely remember hearing about it. Looking at footage of it, the game reminds me of Smash TV, which in fact was a source of inspiration!
It’s interesting that you mention Diablo since the original concept was in fact supposed to be a dungeon crawler and my principle design philosophy was, ‘Diablo with Laser Guns’. Once I realized I wasn’t going to have time to do it all I started cutting back the content. Without the content I had to scrap the randomizer. Once that was gone, the left over gameplay just wasn’t interesting anymore as it involved running down hallways holding the shoot button without thinking. Luckily, a single pixel-art image I found on the net one day inspired me to change my concept to, ‘Double Dragon with Laser Guns’ and I haven’t looked back since!
