Squires

[Released] Signature Moves

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[UPDATE]

Signature Moves is now released!

https://squires.itch.io/signature-moves

594e2def3d7c5_CoverImage-01.thumb.png.1d92d1164fcb4ff4af9765129dc042bf.png

This is my first game I'm "releasing" into the wild so any feedback (especially what still needs work) is greatly appreciated.

 

 

[ORIGINAL POST]

 

Hello all,

This is my first Wizard Jam, and in fact, my first game jam in general, so I'm basically just following other's lead in making a dev log. I'm a full-time graphic designer, who's dabbled in Gamemaker over the past year or two, so my main goal is to keep the scope of the game limited to things that I already have some idea of how to do. That way I can actually finish it.

Enough about me though. In light of my inexperience with coding, I've decided to go with the classic top-down shooter structure. The central mechanic that I started with is that the player does not move his/her character directly (via WASD or arrow keys, for example). Rather, any movement takes place as a result of the player's abilities (Signature Moves if you will), such as the knockback of firing a gun. I was inspired by immersive sims like Dishonored, to experiment with the combination of different mechanics, which I concepted over the weekend. Right now I have a pretty good idea of 8 Signature Moves I would like to include, but am going to hold off on describing them in depth until they're mostly finalized and implemented.

Once the Signature Moves are working, the next step is creating enemies, which shouldn't be too difficult, as my plan is just to create an enemy type for each of the player's abilities. That will hopefully leave me this coming weekend to finalize some of the more complex game elements, like how the Signature Moves are selected, leaving the last 5 days for polish, creating a simple progression system, and doing all the things that took me longer to do than I thought they would. I'm not sure if I'll be able to post daily updates, seeing as my first post is already well after the jam started, but I will do my best to do a write up at each of the milestones I described above.

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Sounds like a good concept! Curious to see all of the moves and how they impact your movement.

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And... we're back.

 

Unfortunately, due to some necessary late evenings at work, I haven't been able to work or write updates on this project nearly as much as I'd like. What I have done over the past few days is decide and implement the Signature Moves I will be including. There are two types; "Aimed" (in the direction of the cursor) and "Targeted" (at the location of the cursor).

  1. Dash: (Aimed) Move a moderate distance, damaging Enemies passed through
  2. Burst: (Aimed) Fire a short-range cluster of bullets, damaging/knocking back the first Enemies hit, and propelling the Player backwards
  3. Decoy: (Targeted - Anywhere) Creates a Decoy which exists for a limited time, drawing Enemies' attention and mimicking the player's next Move after a short delay
  4. Swap: (Targeted - Any other Unit) Switch the locations of the Player and an Enemy or Decoy
  5. Blast: (Aimed) After a short delay, fire a large, long-range bullet which damages Enemies passed through
  6. Explode: (Targeted - Any Unit) Damage and knock back any Unit in the surrounding area
  7. Implode: (Targeted - Any Unit) Pull in any Unit in the surrounding area

These Signature Moves are mostly coded and working, other than the two abilities I added later on: Decoy and Swap. I'll go into the thought behind the addition/cutting of these abilities, but in the interest of brevity, will save it for my end of day update.

 

Instead, to keep myself on task, here's my goals for the rest of the weekend:

  • Saturday
    • Add Enemies
    • Set room boundaries
    • Finalize abilities
  • Sunday
    • Basic Enemy AI
    • Add ability selection/limit tool and UI
    • Score/Combo system (Stretch goal)
    • Bullet Time system (Stretch goal)

Can't wait to show you guys the completed Moves and how they work together. Feedback is obviously welcome.

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Decided I wasn't going to skip out on posting for another day, regardless of how late it was. Over the last few days, I learned quickly that my plan of attack was actually pretty inefficient in that I needed certain elements of enemy AI and code reorganization before I could finalize the abilities. Two of the final Moves also ended up being more difficult to get right than I thought they would be. But anyway, here's what the abilities look like as of now:

 

Dash

SigMoves_AbilityPreview_Dash.gif.3cb448177940394b27e3822d7c8f9c99.gif

 

Burst

SigMoves_AbilityPreview_Burst.gif.8845f8e70854049e813395b5893449c9.gif

 

Decoy

SigMoves_AbilityPreview_Decoy.gif.7bf2889a43b5b06c93f8d4175c91d317.gif

This was one of the Moves that I added to the "roster". It actually came about as a result of a tool that spawned non-player objects, which I made to test out the other Moves. It wasn't a giant leap to figure out that this could be a fun game mechanic...

 

Swap

SigMoves_AbilityPreview_Swap.gif.f2dfd59d455355f543fb8afc9c2bd172.gif

...especially when combined with Swap, which felt like a natural compliment to the new Decoy Move. I cut the other two abilities, Lunge (single target melee) and Strafe (similar to Dash, but shooting bullets to the side), because they ultimately felt too straight forward. The idea I'm going for is to figure out creative ways to combine the Moves, and make up for the inherent lack of mobility. Synergistic mechanics like Decoy and Swap felt way more tuned toward that goal than more one-dimensional attacks.

 

Blast

SigMoves_AbilityPreview_Blast.gif.47f3a85350215a467fa6422a583c55c5.gif

 

Explode

SigMoves_AbilityPreview_Explode.gif.8ad48d485aa64fc83f6c3b55f63a728f.gif

 

Implode

SigMoves_AbilityPreview_Implode.gif.614afb49ac230d8d4c2c920c6aa95279.gif

 

So in closing, I like how the abilities work and combine, but I still have a lot of work to do. It seems likely that I may not include differing enemy types due to time. Though I like the ideas I've come up with and don't think they'd be too difficult to implement, I'd like the game to have some semblance of polish, so I think that's probably where my time will end up going.

 

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Today was the first significant time I've been able to dedicate to the game, and while I'm not as far along as I'd like, the game is functional at this point.

SigMoves_Gameplay1.gif.c5642cef607bd732b7e3b07fff44c1db.gif

The game is definitely in need of some polish as It's probably not clear at all what's happening in the clip. The plan right now is to more clearly indicate which Move is being selected, along with possibly simplifying the entire system, as right now it's a little too difficult to keep track of everything. Basically the game works, but the amount of times it's fun or satisfying is too low compared to how often it's frustrating.

 

Home stretch tomorrow.

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Well the game's done, and unfortunately I missed the submission deadline due to some last minute bug fixing, and never having used itch.io before. Definitely had fun though and am planning on spending some more time polishing it.

 

I'll write a more detailed write-up tomorrow, but for now bed time. Here's the link for anyone who's interested.

https://squires.itch.io/signature-moves

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Hey, you can contact @zerofiftyone to get your game added to the jam page. Regardless I've added it to my collection to stream. Congrats on completing your game, looks like a really cool concept!

 

Oh, also you need to tick the windows checkbox on your edit game page on itch.io if you want people to be able to download it through the desktop app.

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On 19 June 2017 at 8:30 AM, Squires said:

Well the game's done, and unfortunately I missed the submission deadline due to some last minute bug fixing, and never having used itch.io before. Definitely had fun though and am planning on spending some more time polishing it.

 

I'll write a more detailed write-up tomorrow, but for now bed time. Here's the link for anyone who's interested.

https://squires.itch.io/signature-moves

 

I sent you a PM :) 

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On 6/21/2017 at 6:40 AM, phill said:

Hey, you can contact @zerofiftyone to get your game added to the jam page. Regardless I've added it to my collection to stream. Congrats on completing your game, looks like a really cool concept!

 

Oh, also you need to tick the windows checkbox on your edit game page on itch.io if you want people to be able to download it through the desktop app.

 

Thank you, both for the Itch.io tip, and for the submission advice. Looks like I get to take part after all!

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SIGNATURE MOVES POST MORTEM:

 

Like with most things on this project, I'm doing this write-up much later than I planned, but it worked out well, as I stayed up way too late last night (aka this morning) doing some bugfixes, UI improvements, and most importantly, a tutorial. When I "finished" the game on Sunday night, I was pretty happy to have just made a full, playable game, even if I knew there was still a lot of work that needed to go into it. 

 

The next day, however, the game dev group in my area hosted a Demo Night for projects in process. As others played it and I looked at the game after getting some sleep, it became clear how rough the game really was. There were playstyles I hadn't accounted for, some of the additions I had made the night before had broken other things, and the game was all but inscrutable to players without me walking them through it. Despite all that, once players got the hang of it, they seemed to be legitimately having fun, which was one of the coolest feelings. Taking the feedback from those players and my own observations, I went back in over the last few days and fixed some of the most glaring issues, and am pretty happy with the result.

 

Since this is my first game jam as well as my first "shipped" project, there's nothing too technical to go into, so I'm just going to jot down some things I learned:

 

- Scope: I've heard from multiple devs to scale down every project by 50%, and then do that again. If you're also in the middle of a big project at work and apartment hunting, halve it a third time. I don't think the scope of my game was unreasonable, if I'd been able to consistently work on it nights and weekends, that's just not how the last couple weeks worked out.

 

- Prototyping: My original plan, which I did not accomplish, was to have the core mechanics by the end of the first week. Looking back, I'm pretty sure I should have shot for earlier. I could have saved a ton of time by realizing that my original ability system was too complicated, not to mention setting more informed priorities.

 

- Experimenting: Speaking of the ability selection system, I probably should have just built the simpler version first. I was not entirely sure how to implement the more complex system, but thought the idea would be more engaging than the Tetris-like system I ended up going with. Not only was it not, I fell behind on my schedule, working on a mechanic I would ebentually scrap.

 

TLDR: When in doubt, make Tetris

 

So ya, with that, I'm going to call this a Wizard Jam, though based on the feedback I've gotten so far, I'd like to keep working on the game. Since I'm a graphic designer first, I'm pretty bummed that I didn't have the time to put in the level of visual polish I wanted to, and there are still certain playstyles that kind of break the game. I would also love to add audio, enemy types, and maybe bosses, but right now I'm satisfied with the current package, and am already looking forward to taking part in Wizard Jam 6!

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