There’s not much I can do that can fix it sadly, but it’s more of a rare occurrence since I don’t expect players to hug the wall in any way.
It’s mostly because the walls are like 4 grid spaces tall and sometimes it doesn’t extract their Y value correctly compared to the player.
It doesn’t effect gameplay and you can’t clip outside of the map or anything, so I’m not too worried on it.
I started on the new area. It currently doesn’t have a corruption animation yet, so it’s completely black in the other dimension.
Since it’s the lower levels, I thought of keeping it that way, but I want to add many basic enemies from the main dimension, the only problem to this is that the only way to detect them is if you are either in the main dimension or by their shadow. Since the Corrupted dimension is completely black, you don’t see them at all in the Corrupted dimension until you switch over or realize you are taking damage, which I have yet to add.
Another thing I had to change was that the wall hitboxes would have their collisions turned off while outside of the screen, but I have some enemies that will slowly move away from you while shooting projectiles, and if slow chasing enemies get off of the screen, they can go through walls. So, I had to remove that feature. I originally added it to help with performance, but after removing it, I don’t know much of a difference, but I’m sure once the map starts to grow, it’ll be a bit slower on lower end devices.
Dang, been almost two months since I last posted anything.
Anyway, I made some minor progress on Refraction today. I redid the system so I can finally add levels instead of just a super huge map, which was starting to get very laggy to edit.
I also changed both player and enemy projectiles so player projectiles will now go through enemies in the opposite dimension and hit those in the same dimension. Enemy projectiles actually hit the player.
When you dash, you can pass through bullets and when I add a health system for the player, you can also dash through enemies, but I’ll probably add a cooldown or maybe a stamina system so you can only dash so many times in setting before you have to regenerate since it seems kind of OP at the moment.
Here’s the link if anyone wants to play the game or try it out so far, I haven’t added any new content other than some more bug fixes and polishing.
I added some new sound effects for dashing and damaging environmental decorations like the crystals. I finally added damage, but it’s only from red enemies and enemy projectiles at the moment. I used the old damage UI temporarily just to get the system working and I’ll work on the art later.
Damage currently has no effect other than turning the screen black when you reach 0 health, but if you remain undamaged for a short period, you’ll heal back up. I didn’t have the time today to add a level restart system since I need to rework the second level a bit better and make sure nothing resets (like previous dialogue, character data, etc) when this happens.
Red enemies also will pause for a moment when they hit you. You have a cooldown for when you get hit so you don’t instantly die, but you can also use this to pause a ton of enemies at once which I need to fix at some point since it’s based on collisions, not by the cooldown, so you can technically hit several enemies at once, causing them to stun for a second while you only take one damage. They are also supposed to display an attack animation, but it’s so quick and hardly noticeable. I also added a screenshake effect when you take damage, alongside this and the quick attack frame, red attack animations are barely noticeable. I definitely plan to make them a bit livelier.
As for the rest of the enemies, I have yet to add anything. Since White enemies don’t attack, but run, they won’t have any of these features.
There’s still a ton of display order issues such as enemies appearing through walls they aren’t supposed to and sometimes the player not ordering correctly.
Not sure if anyone else experiences the UI Label bugs, but for some reason when you load up the game fresh, all of the Labels will be present during the introduction and games and won’t disappear initially unless there’s a separate trigger than the Once behavior. The code I have should work and seems to work if you load up each level and refresh the entire game, but it can be a hassle for any new player, and I wish that this gets fixed.
Things I do plan to work on and add before I add more progress to the map is come up with some new enemy types, story dialogue and new areas/decorations. Although most of this won’t happen until I get indie again, but I would hate to buy Indie just to only be active for like 3 or 4 days and never touch it again for several weeks.
I also want to add a system so disappearing walls (walls that are only visible in the specific dimension) will still block enemies of its respective dimension regardless of if it’s visible to the player or not. Technically in the other dimension, it’s still there, just not in your current one so enemies from the other dimension shouldn’t be able to pass through.
Most of the current enemies are straight forward and are a bit boring. Since you can COD Zombie train them in a circle and they all eventually bunch up in a single group, making bullets bit more than one at a time. Not sure how I’ll make them spread out, but I may add a randomizer to adjust speed between two set numbers, so they’ll either run at different speeds or will randomly change speeds while chasing the player. This will probably be the easiest to try to split the enemies up while chasing you.
Another option, which I may add as well, would be that bullets will slightly slow enemies down and maybe add a system for critical hits, which would completely stun the enemy. Since this would be RNG, it would have a random chance to stun enemies, so if they’re all grouped up, it won’t stun all of them if one bullet does manage to hit several at once, but only stun whichever one rolled the unlucky chance.
For some nice style, the menu now had parallax. Since all of the sprites used in the menu were once in the original non-isometric top down game, they were used for a parallax, but for the new isometric version, it doesn’t fit, but still had the code, so I made it that whenever you move your mouse, it acts like the camera view.
After the new editor update, I started organizing a lot of my sprites within the game and saw that I had a few extra sprites to work with, since a majority of them were from the original game, which is no longer in effect with the new isometric game.
I was just wondering if anyone had any suggestions to be added into the game, such as game design, map layouts, enemy types, etc. I want the game to feel fun, while also not being repetitive.
I don’t want to submit a poll since I kind of want some real feedback on what needs to be added. Since a poll can be too easy to just click and ignore. I don’t mind any harsh criticism; I just need something to work with.
I do know that I have existing features I will need to work on, but I’m wondering if there is anything else I should add.
I’ve added a few new features to the game.
Updated damage UI, the screen displays cracking as you take damage instead of the disgusting original UI I had before. Enemies now have knockback, or slight knockback when taking damage. This is to help split up groups of enemies and is definitely helpful in keeping melee enemies away while also avoiding projectiles as well.
There are now leg animations, but I’m not very fond of them at the moment. Only the player and red enemy have leg animations, but they’re currently placeholders.
You can now actually die in the game, which results in new random death dialogue. I may add a secret dialogue option if you die after so many times in the game that kind of reveals a bit of the lore. When I get indie again, I’ll even make an achievement for it as well.
That’s about all I can remember adding, which may not seem like a lot, but it makes the game feel so much better. I do believe that red enemies still pause for a moment when they hit you, I don’t remember if I changed purple enemies to do that as well. Yellow enemies will still need some sort of animation or indicator when they are going to fire, and maybe have it so when they take damage, most of the time it’ll reset their projectile timer so if there’s only one guy left, you don’t have to worry about evading the bullets constantly.
Enemy projectiles can go through certain walls, such as the walls you need to dodge through, so I’ll just have to add some more collision detections for that.
The UI bug, where all of the UI will show up at once until you reload the page, seems to have been correcting during this last flowlab editor update, or at least I haven’t experienced it at all when I first played the game, so hopefully that’s another issue resolved.
Once I get a lot of these minor issues kicked out of the way, the rest of the game will be much easier to playtest and add new mechanics without other variables affecting them as well. If you have a game with too many bugs, it can be difficult to try and playtest to correct a specific one. I ended up adding a lot of these mechanics and polishes to the game last minute and weren’t originally in the concept, but if there’s anything to make it seem slightly better, then I’m going to take it.
for a isometric game being able to change the angle of which you veiw the stage would be neat
The only downside to having a rotating map would mean that I would have to switch all of the walls over to sprite stacking or add a ton of code in the walls, which wouldn’t be very optimized for low end devices. It’s definitely a great idea, but I would have to completely tear down the game and rebuild it again with that mechanic in mind, because the current system wouldn’t work for it.
Added some minor stuff today. I added some terminal inputs so you can now lock and unlock your camera from the player. Basically, being able to view the entire map during the game itself. I good example from my click and drag camera example.
Since the map layout is super atrocious, like the image below, It definitely helps to have this testing mechanic in the game so if I make new areas, I can view it and make sure it lines up correctly during the gameplay than having to either replay the entire level or move the player to the end of the level to see if it lined up.
Man. This game just seems like it’s getting better and better. Amazing.
I’m gonna continue this at some point. College has been a bit of a hassle, and I’ve also had some other life stuff going on that kind of put me into a hiatus. I’ve still been somewhat active on the forums, or checking it at least once a day, but not gone.
I may get some freetime in the coming weeks or at least for now, that I may continue dumping some more time into this project. I realized that I have been a part of this community for around 5 years or something like that and have yet to produce a legit full fledge game. I’ve made the bones and foundation of several good projects, but most ended up being paused after I wanted to use new mechanics, that would take quite a bit to actually configure, such as random map generation on a larger scale.
This was one project that was simple enough, but also my better polished project, which is why I have been working on it more.
Some smaller projects I want to actually finish is going to be a better computer terminal example. I made a small test example for a separate project, and I noticed that I have had a few users in the past use it, so I may update and make a better, more easily accessible and editable version. So, it’ll be more user friendly. May not be anywhere as good as the new Text examples, but it’ll feature mechanics such as being able to type specific commands and could be used for games that require hacking or coding. Who knows, maybe a game that could teach a text basic coding language like C++ or something.
Label was a silly project I wanted to finish. I’m unsure of making it a turn-based game, or how I want to continue it, but I was able to add new rooms and be able to bounce between them. I know there have been projects using only one object, but this game will only be made up of just code itself, with no sprites at all. More of a goal to achieve that no has done before.
And Refraction is probably my greatest priority at the moment. The game was already featured from a flowjam so I guess there’s not much to really hope for as a result of update it, but I wish to make it a more enjoyable game than the original state and something for players to be able to dive into. Some plans for the future on this project is mostly just expanding the game’s foundation to new mechanics and areas so it’s not the same repetitive run and gun gameplay, but maybe some puzzle solving or something to break the cycle. I feel the game has decent potential as is, but usually most games where you just walk into a room, kill an enemy or two, and move on can definitely be boring after a few minutes, so I wish to include a more in-depth story, puzzles or areas that can be difficult to navigate without the use of enemies, and more enemy varieties such as mini bosses, and enemies with different abilities other than the basic chase or shoot.
Not much will probably be added until I get indie, which probably won’t be until the next flowjam as I want to participate at some point again to hopefully get myself back into the coding of flowlab.
Finally got around to making some new progress on Refraction. I was wanting to add lasers and some environmental dangers as well as enemies to hopefully add more puzzles and difficulty to the game, but making lasers in a top down isometric game hasn’t been easy so I’m unsure if I should even continue with those or not.
Some other stuff I recently added are new doorways that can only be opened by pressing a button. Kind of generic, but I have a few different ideas with this. Considering I made it only a single object, it can be multiple sets such as an infinitely number of buttons and walls to match with it.
Basically you just have to name the object Button A or Wall A for it to be its corresponding counterpart and then when you play the game, step on the button, all Wall A’s in that level will open. The video below isn’t the final piece, since it won’t have a floor tile underneath and will have smoother animations.
I think I’ve decided that the game will be broken up into smaller levels so any player on lower end devices can still play and it will be easier for me instead of working on huge maps. I may make it similar to Hollow knight where you can go back to previous levels or sections like it is all one giant map, but I have yet to add a reason to do so.
With these new buttons and walls, I can add some inaccessible areas unless you explore and find ways around it. Such as unlocking short cuts later on, more puzzle solving, etc.
Since I don’t have indie yet, I’m still trying to conserve what little objects I have left, so don’t expect anything too crazy, but I plan to continue more progress on this.
This is very cool! When do you plan to get indie, if you do?
Not sure, I guess I could get it at any time, but I’m trying to save up what little income I got. Since I’m living on campus, most of my money has been drained.
Yeah, that makes sense. I really like the game, though! I love the idea!
It would be awesome if there were to be a very difficult ARG in the near future which awards you with a document that’s about Subject 000 (I was rereading the entire topic)
I don’t have a document over Subject: 000, yet. However, when I was working on the story, I figured out a better concept for Subject: 000.
There will be some lore drops in Refraction, not sure what characters it’ll be over though.
I made some new progress on the game. I plan to have a Metroidvania style level system so you can now bounce between certain levels. Since some secrets can only be obtained by beating later levels and returning to older ones. I also hope to make a map system and have the general layout similar to that of Hollow Knight.
The game is still relatively short since I spent way too much time working on code than the actual level so not much new was added.
