Ahoy, once again!

Sorry for not posting anything last week. I was away on a-bit-of-a-kind-of-a-holiday-thingie. But now I'm back! And I've brought GIFs to prove it!

Here's what's been happening this week:




You used to be able to pull off something like the above before, but it required you to use slow motion and align yourself right, and it was very fiddly and now it's better! Now you can pull off this move by simply walking up to an enemy and jump off of them as you would a wall. The result of this move has changed as well. This used to just kill the enemy before, now however, it merely pushes them back, but stuns them for a couple of seconds.




Lasers! Because everyone loves lasers. Right?
I've made some laser detectors that can be used to trigger all kinds of things, like doors ooor...




... Deadly and intimidating turrets! The idea of this turret is that you want to be aiming for the weak-spot behind the shield, and the turret only moves slow enough for you to do that when it's firing.




There's also now an emitter for those Tesla-ball-baddies.




The main motivator for making the laser detectors is this idea, allowing for people who've mastered the acrobatic side of the game to really shine, but still allow people who are yet to master the acrobatic side to not get stuck.


And there you have it! I believe that's all that's new this week. Might have missed something... I should start keeping notes. Hmm...

Until next time!
Toodles!

I can't believe this is DevLog Entry nr. 10 already! It's growing up so fast.

This week quite a bit of time has been spent on "paper design", or just thinking up ideas to make in the future. I've got some ideas for new weapons and ways of combining the various new gameplay elements, which is rather exciting!

However, what I actually managed to create this week is also really rather exciting!




I started by iterating on that Tesla-ball-baddie, making it a bit more challenging and unique from the rest of the enemies. It now "scans" the room from top to bottom, leaving you a clearly defined time limit to shoot it before the beam reaches you.




With the change of the Tesla-ball-baddie-thingie (it should probably have a name...), and 'the way electricity works in this world', it made sense to make this. It's a static wall/roof/floor-mounted electricity-emitter and it turns off for a brief moment when shot. The beam can also be blocked with objects to clear the path. I'm pretty certain this will create some cool gameplay moments when I get around to putting my level-design-hat on.




This next one I get excited about! I did some work on the bullet impact effects and discovered some new tricks in the Unity particle system.




So this got me excited enough to try out this idea which has been growing in the back of my mind for a while. Basically any slow motion game has to have lots of stuff blowing up and things flying all over the place. It also provides some pretty cool gameplay, using those boxes that take a couple of hits before getting torn to pieces.




Lastly here's a little sneak-peak of what's next. The rough idea is that there's a drone-thingie (which is probably trying to kill you, somehow) that you can grab on to and hover around with. Let's see how it turns out!


That's all for now.
Until next time.
Piece out!

This week the focus has been mainly on experimenting with new weapons. But before we get to that, I'd like to show the result of what I started working on last week:



It's a drone-like-thing which roams around until it sees you. When it does it follows you and tries to kill you. BUT! The cool thing is that if you manage to get underneath it you can grab on to it and use it's weapon against other enemies!




Next I started playing around with some new weapons, like this short range impulse-gun-shield-combo. You can use it to launch you a bit further in the game, or vaporize an enemy at close range. Holding down the right mouse button activates a time limited shield which bounces back the enemy bullets. It's pretty good fun!




"I used to be a bad-ass like you, but then I took an explosive arrow to the knee."
This is a "double cross bow" which fires an arrow that you later can explode by pressing the right mouse button. Firing it is silent, so you can use it to set up some traps, if you feel that's how you'd want to tackle the situation.




This is a rifle which is quite powerful and can be shot rapidly. Holding down the right mouse activates the long range mode which allows you to take out unsuspecting fools from a distance.




And lastly, I just got a little idea of making it so you can open a car door in the background to turn it in to cover. Which makes me think there should be more things you can interact with in the environment. Will have a think about that later...



Aaaand, that wraps it up for this week. There could potentially be less updates from now on, since I might shift gear a bit in to actually putting all of this stuff together in to an actual game. Would be cool to release some gameplay videos showing these things in context.

Until next time,
Piece out, bruv!

This week I didn't quite manage to do as much as I'd have liked in the game. There were a fair bit of pondering about how to introduce the various mechanics to the player. The conclusion was that a good place to start is making some speech bubbles. So I had a first stab at getting speech bubbles working in the game! There was a bit of a struggle getting my head around the Unity GUI stuff, but I'm starting to get to grips with it now.

Check it out:


Oh and let's not forget, Pedro is making his first appearance! Much excite!

I'm afraid that's about all I can share from this week! The focus is shifting on to stuff that's hard to capture in GIFs at the moment. So, again, not sure if there'll be a post next week.

Stay tuned to find out! (:
Ta!

Guess who's back. Back again.
It's been a while since my last update. The reason being that I've been doing a lot of work on stuff that isn't too exciting, or even possible, to show. Basically I've been putting a lot of effort in to having some sort of start to the game, with the intention of being able to hand over the game to someone and have them play the game without me explaining anything.

So yes, now there's a system in place for making cutscenes, timing speech bubbles and having on screen button prompts. Still lots of work to be done in those areas, but at least there's something to start with now!

Anyways, so earlier in the week I took a bit of a break from that kind of work and suddenly felt I had to make a mech enemy. It seems to fit with all the other new enemy types and my general idea for the setting of the game. Also it makes for a pretty cool enemy.

Check it out:


In addition to all of this I've been working on little tweaks in the controls of the player and feel like I have managed to iron out some of the major stuff I was doubting before, hopefully making it easier for more people to play the game without limiting the potential for the most skilled players.

And also, here are some screenshots of some of the new areas showing the current state of the button prompts and tutorials.










That's it for now! Again, could be a little while before next update. Let's see.
Until then.
Chip chip ploop.

It's high time for another update, don't you think?

Despite the lack of posts lately, things are moving on steadily! There's been quite a bit of work on stuff I can't really show in a screenshot or GIF, like implementing a checkpoint system so that you don't have to restart the whole level when you die.

However, there are a few things I can show off, like some of the HUD work that's been going on. Check it:

Here's a snazzy little animation that let's you know when you've picked up a new weapon and what type of weapon it is.



I've also made it so that you can now hold down a key/button to bring up this weapon selector. And while choosing your weapon, time slows down extra much in order to help you plan your next move.



I also did a little bit of work getting the ammo and health HUD to match with the new look. I'm still not sure how final all of this is, but it'll work for now!




After putting quite a bit of work in to lots of smaller things, I've been excited to FINALLY sit down and start focusing on actually making gameplay for the whole big game. I've started white boxing some new levels, like this obligatory roof top level below (can't have an action game without a roof top level):




Also, here's a little bonus GIF of some of the trickery that you can do in the game.




And there you have it! Though there are probably a bunch of stuff I forgot to mention. But mainly I just wanted to let you all know the game is coming along nicely.

I've actually managed to have a little bit of a break too, in the hopes of saving myself from a complete burn out. It's also healthy to try and get a bit of distance from the game from time to time. Luckily enough, when I came back to play the game after the break I really really enjoyed it! And I hope you will too, one day

That's all for now! And again, it could be a while before the next update. I want to get stuck in and super focused on making loads of fun levels!

Until next time,
High fives all around! High five!

It's hiiiigh tiime... foor.. an update!

Gosh, it's already been two months since last update. Time flies! But just because there hasn't been any updates, doesn't mean there hasn't been any progress.

Up until about two weeks ago I was mainly focusing on making white box levels, which I've found to be quite tricky to share in a DevLog update, hence the lack of updates. But now! Now, now I've got some new exciting things to share with you all.

Let's start with something that I've been pondering for a while: A high-speed motorcycle chase sequence!

It's still in a very early stage (as with most things currently in this game) but I feel like I've proven that the gameplay is really good fun and totally worth investing the time to polish it up.


The next thing that gets me really excited is this new move I've added to the core mechanics of the game. You can now spin in the "local y-axis of the player" to dodge bullets. Check it out:


... Adding this was pretty huge for me since it opened up possibilities of more challenging enemies later on in the game. It also makes you feel like a total bad-ass when pulled off right.

So! After adding the spin-dodge I started sketching out some new heavier looking guards which take a bit more damage and are generally a bit harder to deal with. This is what they currently look like:


The idea is that these guards will be working for whatever will end up being the big bad boss you're fighting in this game. So I thought it could be cool if they could appear in different, more surprising, ways from the other "gangster" enemies. So I started experimenting with having them rappel through glass ceilings:


Another little thing I thought could make things interesting is adding some other technology to these guards arsenal. I made these little "shield projectors" which you have to destroy before being able to shoot the guards. I believe placing these shield projectors in interesting places can create some nice gameplay.


And finally I've done a quick experiment with this "laser-detection-mine" which homes in on you if you're detected.


Aside from all of this there has been quite a lot of little tweaks and things going on in various places. There are some new levels and all in all I think there is currently about 1 hour worth of unedited gameplay (that's me speed-running through it). Some of that will probably be scrapped, but there will definitely be loads more to come.

That is all for now. I can't make any promises about when the next update is coming, as per usual. Just trying to keep my head down and stay busy!

So until next time,
Buh-bye!