Project for MegaconHN 2017 -Releasing November 10th-12th

Hi everyone,

I wanted to share the current project I’m working now for MegaconHN 2017, If you want to know more about the convention check out their FB page: https://www.facebook.com/megaconhn/

This will be a 2 month project for a small commercial game and I want to use the forum as devlog showing the progress until the convention date (November 11).

Here’s the idea in a nutshell:

  • Genre: Rogue-like
  • Theme: Modern/Technological
  • Platform: Windows x64
  • Core Game Mechanic: Absorb mobs powers and mix them (Like Kirby)
  • Other Features: Quasi Procedural generation for maps (3rd version of one that I have been working on), puzzles
  • Graphic Style: Pixel Art
  • Music Style: Chiptune

The Team

  • Game Design, Development and visual art: Gelo
  • Sound Design: Nicole Marie

If you want to contribute to the game and you can match or do better pixel art, animations and have time to deliver in 2 moths feel free to contact me.

The Progress so far

Main character

Visual Key for the Electric Power

Absorbing Mobs Mechanic: Electric Power [ Early Stage ]

The Project was started on August 21st

Closing the Post

I have been doing almost daily updates on social media and will try to keep that here in the forum so keep checking back to see the progress at end it will be only 2 moths :stuck_out_tongue:

On November 12th I’ll share the pics of the convention too so the ones that followed till the end can see the reaction of the people at the event :slight_smile:

You can post feedback but keep in mind that it’s a short game made in a short period of time by 2 persons so if it’s out of that scope I won’t take into account that feedback.

Disclaimer: I haven’t cancelled Human Piñata coming soon to steam but it will take more time until I can release it because we are still looking for financial support to deliver it. we are presenting it to investors in October

Hi everyone 0/

I wanted to share the progress I made regarding the core mechanic of the game: You can now mix the Powers!.. kind of jajaja I still need all the assets to say it is fully implemented but I made a simple system that can mix any power that I decide to add.

But first, before showing you the mixing I finished some of the assets for a new power: Water here take a look to the concept

I wish I could embed a youtube video using BBcode but I always fail at it so here’s a gif with crappy quality due to optimization instead.

Tomorrow I’m planning to make the basic assets for the Electric - Water Combination. Then I’ll start coding the actual powers so you can see what they do. I hope you like them when they are finished ^_^.

I’ll probably will release a build when this 2 basic powers and their respective combination are finished just to test how they feel.

Well Thanks everything for today. Bye

I couldn’t post yesterday because I was all day in the chamber of commerce but here’s the a sneak peak for the first combination concept:

I still new a few assets to start coding the 2 powers and the combination. probably by Sunday I’ll be able to update a test build to get feedback on them.

Well this is everything for today but I’ll post more exciting updates this following days when I start “coding” the powers :slight_smile:

Nice!, will it have a gameplay similar to the previous game, are you reusing the maps, or just doing tests on them? :slight_smile:

Hi Lizard-13 thanks for passing by the thread 0/ , Yeah it will have similar gameplay since it will be rogue-like game and I’ll keep the boss battles similar because I received good feedback on it but this game will feature some improvements like:

The Powers Mixing feature which is the core mechanic for this game
The Procedural System now records the maps it generates so you can save your progress
I’ll do bigger maps and hopefully but I can’t promise this, if I find a way of connecting separate sprite objects, each part of the map will be randomly generated
It will contain some basic puzzles

And yeah I’m re-using some assets for testing purposes jajaja but I’ll change the world aesthetic when I finish implementing the powers and mixes that I have planned.

HI everyone 0/ here’s today update!

First of all I want to show you the water power in it’s early stage:

The first thing that this power allows you is to move quickly to avoid enemies attacks here take a look

It doesn’t let you move intermediately after you appear in the other place just to keep it balanced also the mobs at the moment don’t have AI but when they do I think it will be pretty useful.

The second thing that this power enables you is to shoot water to slow down the enemies so you can mix them easier or to escape, as you can guess this is a defensive power take a look.

I tried to make as dynamic as possible the water and I think it ended up well.

well that’s all about the water power, it still needs some improved animations but the hard part it’s done it’s only lacking of polish but don’t worry I’ll work tomorrow on that :slight_smile:

Finally I wanted to show the animation for the mix between the electric and water power

I think this will be a pretty fun combinations being a balanced power mix both offensive and defensive but rather than telling you I hope I can show it in action by Sunday.

As I told before I plan to continue polishing the water power, then “code” the electric one and finally the mixed power. I hope you are liking the progress that is being made ^_^/

'Till next time!

Hi, Everyone Sorry for the lack of updates but I’m having troubles with animations :frowning: I’m very picky with them for this game and I don’t feel that they are ready yet so until I don’t have the animations that satisfy me I can’t finish “coding” the rest of the powers.

but here’s a sneak peak of the progress done:

But not everything are bad news, A very talented artist that I have worked with, is making a cool boxart Illustration for the game it should be ready by next week so yeah stay tuned for that

Also I’ll be pitching this game (That don’t have name yet) and Human Piñata on October 3rd to Investors (As I said in my first post) who know like almost 0% about gaming jajajaja so that’s the main reason I’m being picky with animations because they do not care about sophisticated gaming language they want to see something that looks fun even if they don’t get it at all. For this same reason I’m giving controller support to the game because they do not think of a game if they don’t see you playing with a controller jajajaja (Sadly Laughs)

I’m using an xbox controller I hope it is the most common and fits with most controllers.

bare with me while I finish the base animations (After I will just recolor this base animation and add a few props for powers) and the development process will speed up thanks that it so easy to build stuffs with Gdev :slight_smile:

Until next update (Hopefully this week) Bye!

I finally made a decent animation for all 4 directions. It still can be improved in my opinion using more colors but for know I think they work because the key frames are good. Here are the animations in action

The gif do not show them that well but I can’t embed a video so yeah you get an idea.

Also I finally gave full support to the controller and you can grab the mobs from all 4 directions.

This grab function still needs work so I’ll continue improving it but it does it job.

I also took the time to made this animations because It was going to be a trouble later with too many animations to do and I’ll have to re enter all the points the different animations needs. But now that I have a template the rest of animations will be done quickly.

By the way in case you are interested in how to manage a game project I made a Gantt graph for the project and calculated the completion percentage

Completed: 6%
Deadline: November 10th
Gantt Graph (Part of it):

Well that’s all for today. Until next time!

Hi everyone, here’s today update:

I’m finishing the running cycles for the 4 powers available until now I have just finished the front running one for all 4 take a look

I know it doesn’t look that much but there’s a lot of work on doing those jajajaja by the way you can see some of the difference in speed between this powers. I plan to do them as unique and possible and each one plays different that the others.

Yesterday I didn’t update because I was busy with stuffs not related to the game but I made up for that delay.

Game Completion: 6%

That’s everything for today. Until next time.

Hi Everyone!,

First sorry for the lack of updates! I bet you thought I wasn’t going to finish the game jajaja but I was working harder than ever in the game but I didn’t have the time to prepare the resources for this updates!.

I finished all Walking cycles for the 4 available powers in all walking directions BUT I worked together with a professional artist (not a hobbyist like me) and she polished the game’s character and in my effort to deliver a quality game I’m retouching the sprites with her input here take a look to this work in progress:

She isn’t working with me on the game but she made an awesome artwork for a banner of the game, I’ll share it once it’s time to do so! ^_^/ . If I won financial support at the chamber of commerce of my city this artist will join the team so fingers crossed!

Until Next Time!

Hi Everyone!

Today was a really busy day for me but I wanted to share with you the Artwork made by an artist for the game that will be the face for the game and it will be displayed as a banner during MegaconHN take a look:

Isn’t it cool? by the way the name of the game has been decided and it’s going to be Armony Code.

Also I made progress with the protagonist sprite but there’s still a lot of work to do but until October 10th I’ll work with this one because I really need to launch the first alpha build before that date.

I’ll be super busy tomorrow too because I have to receive a training at the chamber of commerce before presenting the game and also I’ll have a meeting with an artist that will help with music but I’ll animate more during the night when I came back Hopefully I’ll have and update to share :slight_smile:

Until next update!

Edit [ Sorry I didn’t realize that I have already posted the animation gif x_X but yeah the small progress I made was on animations that was the point :stuck_out_tongue: ]

Hi everyone 0/

It has been a long time without updates but today I have a special one.

First and the more important is that progress in new animations is being made… slowly but it’s being made, here’s the idle animation in all 4 sides:

Also today I presented my pitch of the game in the chamber of commerce in Tegucigalpa here take a look:

This is the reason of the slow progress of the game and I still have to improve my pitch, finish and deliver a 90+ pages business plan before Friday BUT I MUST have a playable demo of the game by October 17th because in that week I’ll have the presentation that matters because is in front of investors and it has to look awesome even for a non gamer person… because the investor aren’t gamers and if they don’t say: “hey, that looks cool” they will put their money in a baleadas business or something like that. I’m confident on my business mumbo jumbo but I need a solid game build too.

So since I don’t want to throw to the trash can all the effort I put the last 3 months on this, you can expect fast progress from this Saturday and Forward and hopefully you can help me with feedback on the demo so I can bring a tiny but awesome demo :slight_smile:

Well that’s all until next time!

Hi Everyone 0/,

As I said on my last post now that I’m free from the business plan I delivered last week I’ll be able to focus more on the game and here is the progress I made today:

I basically just created the core structure of some systems that I’m going to use such as the Mobs AI here take a look of the first steps:

At the moment it’s kinda messy and they move too constantly and that makes them hard to pick:

But hey this are the fist steps on the behavior of the enemies, it just need balancing aaaand… I need some animations and assets for them because I want them to behave as the power they give, for example: The electric mob should move quick like doing a dash and stop to try shock the player when near meanwhile the water one will move and let some water to slow you down.

And to achieve that I need the graphic assets because just to tell them: move randomly while the player is far and move to player’s position when near is already done and is the base for each behavior at least for these 2, there will be some that attack from long range.

Also I made all powers functional but are bare bones which means they lack makeup here take a look to the electric one:

Quick Movement
Throws sparks that damage enemies and paralyze them for a few seconds

Here is the Water one (Also without makeup)

Shoots water that slows down enemies
Dodging ability

by the way the new thing here is that now you shoot no matter which direction you are facing even if you dodge, something that gave me some troubles before I could achieve it :stuck_out_tongue:

And finally the mix between the 2 above:

Water comes from your feet and you can slide leaving water ponds charged with electricity and will make you move faster
Then by pressing “A” you send an electric shock that electrifies the enemies near by the water ponds

Yeah I know hard to get it from the gif but trust me all the “code” needed is there I just need the assets, The small blue pixels is the trace you are leaving and once you press A they change to yellow… with the assets the blue pixels will look like water and once you press A it will trigger and animation and also an animation from the near by enemies and when it finishes it will remove the enemies from the map.

Also there’s a value that limits you how much you can slide and this value will recover over time. Just to keep things balanced because if not it will be easy to put tons of water and then kaboom jajajaja and also you will move too fast all the time.

Well that’s all for today, now I’m going back to make those assets and then show you this mechanics with the makeup on them.

Until Next time!

Hi Everyone 0/

Just wanted to show the process is being made, first the sparks that you shoot has an animation… still needs improvements but now you can tell it’s electricity

Also I added some animations for when you are water sliding with the mix of electric and water power take a look:

As you may have noticed I’m slow at making graphic assets so it actually only works for the front side. Until I can’t afford (of find a volunteer) for the graphic assets the development will be kind of slow or graphically speaking unpolished.

Well I don’t want to annoy you with small updates so I’ll make a new update until I finish the other sides and that you can electrify the mobs.

Until next time!

Keep going dude ! It’s really cool :slight_smile:

Thanks Kink! I appreciate your comment, let’s see what I can accomplish this afternoon to see if I have something to show at evening if not at least I’ll have something for tomorrow for sure :slight_smile:

Something I was thinking about lately was how to achieve larger maps with the quasi procedural system that I made for my jam game Heaven’s Tea Party so this new game could have more content at low cost to me. Well I think I found way to do it so I try it out, here are the results:

This is a satisfactory result that I had, It only uses 6 shapes which means I only will need to do 6 graphic assets for the World 1 floor and walls and get tons of results. This saves me time :slight_smile:

As you can see it is divided by different shapes that match well together. It just randomly select the first shape, then if that shape has 2 directions to go it again randomly selects a path to go and then checks if there isn’t anything occupying that slot and then it randomly selects from possible solutions what shape should go next and repeats.

I made it this way so the game can fill the sections with mobs, puzzles and decorations one by one to create the whole map for that level.

Also I like that it generates them quickly. Here are few more but since I haven’t finish the system they are small.

I think this will work for this game let’s see how far I can push this idea for the game.

Until Next TIme!

I can see that some of the zones (for example the final blue zone in the first gif) can go backward, do your algorithms prevent them to collide with previous zones?
Nice idea by the way, debug with color zones approved! :smiley:

Hey thanks! yeah, it’s just a grid and each time it creates a section it flags that slot with a variable changing it from “Free” to “Used” so when it reaches an used slot it stops there :slight_smile: . it’s the first stuff it does before doing the rest, check if the next slot is free

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