I moved to a new URL! Check it out!

posts tagged with: gamedev

Dev Log: Tougher Foes

Dev Log: Tougher Foes
Part of adding more stuff to Sky Sisters was the addition of yet another difficulty level beyond "Impossible." It sounds crazy, but I do want to make sure that people that put a lot of time in the game have a lot to get out of it. This new difficulty mode doesn't have any effect on unlockables or achievements in the game, and is really there just for an insanely tough challenge.

I wanted to make this mode unique somehow so I spent some time making "elite" versions of all the enemies in the game.

Image


These enemies have more aggressive attack patterns and will ruin your day a lot faster if they're not dealt with immediately. You can actually run into these enemies in a normal playthrough as well but not until you've made it far into the game. The game does allow you to keep going as long as you can survive, so eventually you face harder versions of the bosses, and now you can face harder versions of the regular enemies.
sky sisters gamedev dev log
Posted June 25th 2016 11:33 AM (General)
No Comments

Dev Log: Demo Night

Dev Log: Demo Night
Whoops I've kinda neglected posting on my blog this month but I think it's because I've been so busy working on stuff! Which is a good thing. Maybe.

This past Saturday night I was invited to demo Super Sky Sisters at a Denver Comic Con "afterparty" type thing. It was a bunch of local Colorado game developers all showing off their stuff and it was fun on a bun.

Image


I set up Super Sky Sisters and this was the first time in awhile that I was having not game developers play it. A lot of my feedback comes from my other game developer friends playing it, and although I get good feedback from them, it's not really the same as having folks who play a lot of games give feedback.

Image


I feel like Super Sky Sisters is actually not that well received among my peers! This usually fills me with doubt as I don't see anyone get hooked on the game when I have other game developers try it out, and I usually feel like I am very careful to notice things like someone saying the game is good and fun and not wanting to play it anymore (which happens a lot.) These doubts were pretty much erased by the demo I had on Saturday though! The second group of people to play the game tried the hardest difficulty right away, and when they got destroyed they went right back in for round 2, and even a round 3. I went up and talked to them and they were SUPER EXCITED about the game and I feel like it was the first time in awhile that this has happened with Sky Sisters.

Image


So things went pretty well! There were a few more groups of players that played the game really well. I was actually pretty impressed with the level of skill I saw going on with the demo. A few teams even made it past the first boss which I've rarely seen in my play tests.
sky sisters dev log gamedev
Posted June 21st 2016 10:56 AM (General)
No Comments

To SFML or not to SFML

To SFML or not to SFML
That is the question on my mind these days...

I think things would be smoother if I were just running the main C++ version of SFML, but unfortunately I am just way more comfortable in C# which means only having access to SFML.Net.

Don't get me wrong, SFML.Net is pretty great, but I think more and more I'm feeling like I should jump off to something else. I like SFML's API, and I think it does a lot of things in ways that make sense to me, but the support from the game development community just isn't there.

I know I am probably experiencing the old grass is greener feeling, but right now it feels very tempting to start to build Otter to run with something else underneath it. If I were to switch to anything I think right now my best option would be XNA/Monogame.

Image


This is just a quick little test, but it is running in XNA with something much like Otter. Monogame seems to have the biggest support lately when it comes to portability which is pretty appealing. Right now I can barely get the latest version of SFML.Net to cooperate and that's after having someone else send me a compiled version of the library because for the life of me I just cannot get SFML.Net to build.

Just rambling a little bit here. I did manage to get SFML.Net 2.3 working with Otter... but with an unfortunate downside with texture smoothing that for some reason doesn't exist with 2.2. Texture smoothing for whatever reason now has a weird effect on the edges of textures, and when I try to use those textures in shaders I get weird results when sampling pixels around the edges.

Just feeling pretty frustrated I guess! I'm going to go down the XNA rabbit hole a little bit inbetween finishing up Sky Sisters... maybe it's possible to get an XNA build of the game rolling but who knows!
sky sisters gamedev sfml
Posted May 18th 2016 10:19 PM (General)
1 Comment

Visual Studio and Itch.io Refinery

Visual Studio and Itch.io Refinery
Itch.io just released their brand new Refinery tools to the public and I immediately jumped into them head first. After just a little bit of set up I was able to get their new magic up and running for Super Sky Sisters. I have a set up now in Visual Studio in which I can select "Itch" as my build target and push F6 to build and deploy the game to my beta testers on Itch.

So using Visual Studio 2013 (and probably other versions can do this as well) here's how to set up your game to publish on Itch with just the push of a button!
Read More
gamedev itch tools programming
Posted May 17th 2016 3:50 PM (Tools)
2 Comments

Dev Log: Health Pick Ups

Dev Log: Health Pick Ups
Whoops I have been totally neglecting my blog this month. I've got a lot of posts to catch up on! I think when I stream a few times a week that actually gives me the same feeling as making a blog post, so I end up just totally forgetting to make a post about what I've been up to.

One of the things I'm playing with to make the demon sisters boss fight a little bit more fair is having the demon sisters drop health whenever they're knocked out by the players. Basically the demon sisters obey the same rules that the players do so they can be temporarily disabled by damaging them enough. Eventually they will revive though and continue their assault.

Image


Sometimes the best course of action in this fight is to try to knock one of them out before they unleash one of their crazier attacks. Right now this boss fight is incredibly tough but most of their attacks are a lot easier to deal with if one of them can't join in. I think I'm actually approaching the end of this boss fight and that just leaves a few things left on the list (until I add more stuff but I actually don't see that happening again for real this time.)
gamedev dev log sky sisters
Posted May 16th 2016 3:30 PM (General)
No Comments

Dev Log: Damage Numbers

Dev Log: Damage Numbers
This week I did a quick experiment with Super Sky Sisters. I didn't really think it would work out, but it I was proven wrong, I think! I ended up adding damage numbers to the game. Check it out!

Image


One problem in the game (and in any game I think) is letting the player know how effective their attacks are. In a game as fast as this one it can be pretty tough. There are a lot of objects that don't actually take damage from your bullets, but they still react. Some players end up continuously attacking things that don't take any damage, so hopefully this will help with that.

Image


Not only is it useful for communication with players, but it also looks super cool. Why do numbers flying off of things make everything better? I'm pretty sure it's some sort of fundamental rule of game design.
dev log sky sisters gamedev
Posted May 12th 2016 9:45 PM (General)
No Comments
« newer posts
older posts »