These are the previous devlogs I've written for PROJECT GRAZE! They were all originally hosted on cohost (RIP), and are presented here without the images I posted there.
SOME progress, weeeee
What I did
I wrote up a short dialogue scene that has vibes MUCH closer to what I wanted compared to what I had last week. Going for a lighter tone really did wonders there. Sure it's a very small scene in all but I think it's gonna help guide me as a 'goal' in terms of vibes. With that, at least for now, I'm gonna say I'm good for dialogue. FOR NOW.
I also made a little system to make the boss move! Is it efficient or the most organized way to do it? NOOO :D
But I'm figuring this shit out as I go and I basically just give myself the weekends to work on this so I think it's pretty decent for what it'll allow me to do. Sometimes working alone is good so no one else sees my mess.
What I'll do
With dialogue done I want to dive a tad deeper into dialogic. I have basically 2 features I want to add to it, first is simpler: block inputs during dialogue. The second is to have characters automatically fade in/out according to who is speaking.
I'm hoping this is easy stuff to implement, though we'll see I guess!
Well.
What I did
I said I'd work on the story and.... again, I'm still not too happy with what I'm coming up with. I have the basic concept down, it's a date between the two protags and there's a mix of bullet hell attacks and dialogue, and dialogue options mixing up which attacks you get... but I can't get the feel right. I might try taking it to a plainer "ok we're shooting danmaku on a date did you like that attack" at least for now?? We'll see I guess idk.
....outside that though I did (re)implement homing shots for the boss, which is a fun use. Sadly this kind of shows how unyieldy my bullet hellper is at the moment. I want to redesign its usability slightly but I'm kind of afraid of that exploding in my face into so so so much more worrrrrrrrrrrk.
Bleh
What I'll do
ONCE MORE unto the story caves I go. It's becoming a bit of a roadblock so let's say this is the last consecutive week I'll spend time focusing on it. I'll try the more aloof 'we're just playing' angle and see if I like it, if not then it's just brainstorming after that.
On the technical side I want to make the boss move! That shouldn't be too complicated, though I know it can be u.u
We'll see!
Another week another couple small nudges forward~
What I did
Firstly I fixed an annoying issue where bullets were essentially hit twice, and that was a silly easy one: just had to check if the bullets were already dead.
Secondly I kinda drafted a couple scenes of dialogue/plot. Bottom line Im not enamored with the direction I took this so I'll for sure make a second pass, but hey, that's what I did. In gerenal I'm thinking that I took it a bit too much in a downer direction, I'll try to have it be less serious.
What I'll do
I'm thinking I'll basically repeat this week: work on both dialogue and a smaller task/issue. So yeah do another pass on dialogue to try a more light approach, and also add maybe a couple small different behaviours to bullets (spawn bullets on death and maybe homing? We'll see).
Welp after a week of no update here I am again weee
What I did
Last time I said I wanted to bullet sprites and... thats what I done didly do! I have them all in a spritesheet now, which helps, and I tried both unifying their design as well as distancing them from touhou sprites. Am I happy with the result? Somewhat! I do like the flatter look they have now, but the outlines on some of them I fear can mess up visibility and readability of some patterns. As with most of this game, this is likely to change in the future.
What I'll do
This coming week I'll....... try and work on the story/dialogue. I'll be honest the story I have planned for this is veeeery vague yet, so I'm hoping that having a more set in stone direction with this might help a lot. I also noticed that, apparently, when cleared some bullets clear twice effectively, which is a pretty annoying bug since it affects balancing of the boss' health. I'll try to get that fixed as well.
Kinda as expected, baby steps of progress this week.
What I did
Basically just implement deathbombs! And really just implement them, I want to add VFX and SFX to better differentiate the 'deathbomb window' in the future, but for now there's already a couple dozen frames where you can clear bullets to negate a hit. Only that the number of those frames decreases massively after each succesful deathbomb.
What I'll do
...and more than last week this week will be a toughie. Less time and energy than last week, and yet I want to get to doing one of the biggest remaining tasks: redesigning the bullets. For now I have only white bullets that can be recolored with godot's modulate, but I want enemy bullets that gradient into white at their center, and player bullets to be all one non-white color to help with readability. We'll see how many of the bullet shapes I want I get to redraw till next week,
Simple stuff this week, and.... tentatively I'll say that the devlogs for the next 2 weeks are unlikely, as a lot of stuff is going on, sadly
What I did
Slightly reworked my graze <--> scoring mechanic! Now there's a limit to how the graze clearing area can grow, and if you let it grow too big it'll give you way better score but make the area's growth slow considerably. I'm hoping this will make a nice balancing act for the players... but this is the type of stuff I'll really only see its worth once people are playing the demo.
What I'll do
As I said at the top, these next two weeks will be something, so my free time I usually reserve for developing this (aka my weekends) will be mostly taken up already. I have a couple small things I'll try to do, mainly the 'death bomb' mechanic, so a few frames of being able to clear bullets to save yourself a life, but it becomes a smaller window each subsequent time you do it. Here's hoping.
Before I begin uh... remember how I said I'd make this baby 1080p? Well terrible terrible idea, especially considering the patterns all depend on screen size for bullet size and speed. That went out the window : )
What I did
As I said, I didn't do all that for 1080p. A bit sharper UI elements arent worth it. However that did lead me to setting up a git for this project, which yeah I hadnt done yet cause Im very smart.
I did make a menu as I said I was going to! Simple start game and exit buttons are there and working, and I managed to have it preload a system that was causing a small hiccup there on load.
I also made a couple more attack patterns, and Im saying to myself those are enough for a simple demo that I want to make, and it's good cause Im also learning that at least one of those really doesnt work with my gameplay heheheh.
What I'll do
I made a list of things that should be done before I release a demo, since now stuff is more granular, and Im sure that list's bound to grow still... but I'll still try and set a small goal for each week at least, and hope for more! This week I'm making it my goal to rework my graze > clear area system, as it doesn't feel as good as I'd like it too, numbers wise.
AKA the thank goodness for dialogic devlog
What I did
Installed dialogic! Yes, pretty much thats it, I had to update the project for godot 4.2 to do it but I figured hey better now than having to do it later. For those who don't know dialogic is a great addon for godot to help out when writing VN style stuff, as well as dialogue trees and whatnot. In my usecase it's basically just for dialogue presentation, BUT I'm doing something where the dialogue you select will affect which patterns you have to dodge. Implemented this too this week, but it's a very dirty version of that, only checking for dialogic variables. I expect this will change a good bit in the future.
What I'll do
Well....... my deadline to send a demo for the event that triggered this whole 'ok lets get out of our asses and do this thing' is next sunday. I like what I have, it's turning out into a pretty fun proof of concept, but I'm not confident enough to send it yet. I think.
I can't say what I'm waiting for to do it, but.... this is just too barebones, and with work and commissions to do this week I don't see myself getting this above that ideal minimum for me by then.
So, what will I do? I'm thinking probably work on a barebones menu, and then release it as a minimum viable product. A version 0.0 maybe.
That way anyone who's interested can have a look, and I'll keep on trudging little by little at having this thing finished!
We'll see how long it takes for that ehehehe. Hopefully not years : P
No pic this week cause not a lot of visual stuff went on, Im sorry to say [Well I'm not bringing over all the images for these older devlogs so...]
What I did
Particles! And sfx mostly. Really, the main thing was getting graze sound and particles online and they did make it feel more interesting! Same for clearing bullets. I've learned how to make a particle queue and honestly it was much much much easier than I feared so yay for that!
What I'll do
I'm getting a bit worried that all the bullets and particles will make the game chug on lower end machines, which for an indie is... not good. But I can't think abt this now. The deadline for demo submission for the thing that got me to start on this is 2 weeks, and regardless of me sending it in or not I want to have a bit of everything in there, so next week I'll do dialogue! I've heard good things abt the dialogic addon for godot, so I'll look into it for the basics of what I've planned.
And week 4! Thats a month working on this on and off!
What I did
I hope it's pretty clear what I did: visual assets!! Wowie! All in all it wasn't much, and there's still a couple godot icons there, clearly, but it's enough to start capturint a feel. At least partially.
Plus, that background scrolls! Its a simple as shit shader but hey! It's there!
What I'll do
This week I want to add to the feel of the game even more. So that means more feedbacks for grazing, for getting hit, for clearing a boss pattern... aka it's time to figure out some particles.
Woot woot week 3 here we are
What I did
Again well... not much I managed to do actually during the week, BUT I still managed to do most of what I listed I'd do this week. A basic sketch of UI and player health are working! No actual art though. I had a bit of trouble deciding how to make the player/boss UI communication work, as the UI and level are different scenes and connecting those nodes directly didn't seem too good an idea, and I wanted their healths to be communicated via signals to be more generic compared to groups. So I went with the ol reliable 'manager' singleton, which while messy will let me get references to the boss and player more generically after they register themselves...
What I'll do
This time I'll work on the art I promise ToT
Now that I have an idea of a basic layout, even if its still highly subject to change, I think it'll be doable. If time allows I'll even throw in a backgroud. As a treat.
Alright, number 2!
What I did
Sadly I couldn't work much on the game this week, BUT! I still did what I said was my goal for this week: My boss now has different attacks, and I made a progression system which I'll be able to integrate with the story progression, so things can happen properly in order like A->B->C
What I'll do
Plans for this week: I want to dress this game up a little. I'm promising myself I wont touch the systems and gameplay yet, even if there's a lot of stuff missing. I want this to look not presentable, but to have everything in its place at least by next week: general UI done, and placeholders at least for the boss and player sprites, as well as a proper life bar for the boss attacks.
If I find myself having time then I'll implement the player's health too and the basic game over to reload actions.
Alright, so I'm attempting to make a game! I have been for a while (so many WIPs lost to time...) but I recently found out there's gonna be a queer games showcase where I live, and the deadline for demos submission is july 21st.
So I'm taking this as motivation to actually go forward with my current project and hopefully have something done by the deadline.
So... here's where we're starting, and what I did this first week:
What I did
First up, Im making a bullet hell game! Luckily (an one of the reasons for the genre choice) I already have a little tool I made to easily create bullet hell/shmup attacks, similar to touhou stuff, as well as a decent framework for the bases of how this type of games work.
What I'll do
For next week... I think I want the basic system of a boss done. As in, one attack occuring, with HP that the player can beat. Hopefully 2 attacks to actually get the sequence of what a boss can do as in attack -> attack HP depleted-> attack.
Wish me luck