Game Dev Diary for "Daughters and the Exotic"
" Sure. Your tactical suit has a light built in. Actually every piece of gear that you wear has a stealth rating. So when your suit's light is off it will have stealth rating 'x'. But when you're suit light is on it will have stealth rating 'x + light'. But really I'm not balancing the battles around whether you have your light on... usually. There might be some situations. But for the most part I'm thinking that the light will help you find loot at the expense of exposing you to enemies. For example some loot can twinkle subtly if you turn on your light. And there is another balance mechanic in the game that causes enemies to ambush you. Basically, even if you evade all their vision cones, if you walk around long enough you will spawn an ambush based on how UNSTEALTHY you've been. The rate of being ambushed is influenced by the mods on that dungeon map. So some areas might have low ambush rate while others have very high ambush rate, which would encourage you to use stealth in those zones. ------ Anyway this is a brief updaterino - just throwing this on on the pile here. My feelings about game development have been evolving. It's because at this point programming will always be challenging... but never again will it be an insurmountable obstacle. Well, I can't do shaders or networking or stuff like that. But I can improvise my way into implementing almost any gameplay mechanic. This feeling in my heart must be what they used to call 'zen'. And I understand better how No Man's Sky and others get into a mode where they promise every single thing ever. It's because, individual mechanics are simple to add - I could script a full Metal Gear Solid clone in a week... I mean each of its individual features. But don't ask me to wrap all those features up into a bow and to make it playable and bug free. That would probably take me 6 months at my current level. Because it's the tying the features all together that requires so much brain power. Every single thing has to be thought out ahead of the player. Every single thing we take for granted. I feel like my consciousness has ascended toward the 2nd layer from the 1st. Anyway I've started opening up some other important programs other than blender. I thought I'd post the pics cuz I love how these programs look just like I love how blender looks. I'm weird. This first one is a pic of Genetica. A CRIMINALLY underrated graphics program. I don't know where to start. It's a wonderful piece of software and I want to learn more about it. So I'm using it instead of Quixel and instead of Photoshop I'm all in with Genetica!  And Renoise. OST OST!  | |
" Sounds good to me, I'd enjoy that. No hurry, 'course. " Cool! " Also cool :) | |
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I've been struggling all day. The scope of the battle system is fluid as f. I'm juggling 30 variables in my head as I code. It's fun. The revisionist I am, I went back and tightened up some stuff to make it easier for me to use. Particularly the text. Even though it has a bug where I can't stop it from running... but anyway it is easy to implement super immersive radiant AI now with the improved text system
 Anyway the red triangles are their vision cones. Don't stray too close!! | |
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Pathfinding is in. But Pathfinding AI is still stupid. The colorful bits are the navigation mesh. The little star icon things are the nodes the AI has available to toggle between on the map.
 @Altnaharra - Standing on the shoulders of giants that's all. ;) | |
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@Altnaharra - Story is more important to me than to most gamers. The story is central to the Exotic design but at the same time being concise is important to me too. I remember that Final Fantasy Tactics did a superb job of having concise story telling duringn gameplay while also supplying a ton of optional lore for the player to read. So I'm thinking of something like that approach.
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" Ideally, in the kind of game you're making and which we all clearly enjoy, playing the game should progress the story, with you feeling a sense of agency within it. I think that everyone appreciates a good story, even if they don't realise a weak narrative is why they find a game dull, predictable and forgettable. Have a strong story, with characters that make sense and are fun to progress, that's most of the battle there. How you deliver the details and how much detail you include should flow on from that. Simple games have stories too PAC-man speech, 1:32 short clip, from Bandersnatch. | |
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Well those are some things to think about. Let me see, probably the most lore heavy games that I enjoyed playing were Dragon Age: Origins, the Witcher series, and Final Fantasy Tactics. As far as feeling as if the moment matters, I would have to hand the crown to the Persona series. It's because you get that sense of agency when you choose who to develop a relationship with and how to spend your time. The best story of all time though to me would be Breath of Fire III. But let me not get into that lol. I'll be typing for days about it.
And yeah putting lore in item descriptions is a good idea. Anyway, disaster people. I changed my diet the other day from avocados and bacon and cheese and salad to just seeds and salad lol. The idea was to bomb my body with good nutrition or something pfft. But all I got was a long night full of gas. Gas so bad I just took the night off from doing anything but farting and writhing and occasionally going to poop. Point is, real update is delayed so now for a micro update for fun. I thought it was fun when I posted my first 10 minutes of blender development screenshot on the first page. So here is my first hour or so of working on the OST for Daughters. Yay, right? lol This version was never meant for public consumption but this diary is about exposing e-thang about the process. Keep in mind if you listen to it that it's rough, unfinished, unmastered, unmixed. It's literally a rough sketch. The only thing you should listen for is its basic energy and melody. Pony Up! Cathleen's Theme https://soundcloud.com/user-518096741/pony-up-cathleens-theme Cathleen a NPC shopkeep on the colony who loves anything having to do with the wild wild west. You can either visit her physical shop or order items remotely via the mobile manufacturing kiosk (MMK) while inside the dungeon. This was mixed to sound like it was coming out of a videogame or an old radio because this is the version of Cathleen's theme that plays when you order something remotely. A more robust sounding, warmer, expanded version would be appropriate for when you visit her shop in person. | |
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I'm currently listening to Mozart's Requiem, kept playing on in the ol' headphones.
Best not follow up with yours, or heaven forbid pause and flip over, as it would be an unfair leap, for anyone. Will listen in a bit mate. | |
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Most people will yawn but I think this is very interesting. I'm finally to the point where I'm BALANCING THE GAME WHOA!!! I thought I'd be at this point two days ago but ran into some puzzles that took me time to figure out.
Anyway, I'm sure the code is bad and clunky but it works and I understand it. I'm just gonna post the most basic barebones elements of how the Use Skill command works. I gotta shout out to PoE because learning how to play this game helped me figure out what is going on behind the hood in these games - just a little bit. The whole concept of adding 'tags' came from my observation of how this game works. So below you'll see the console spitting out data. Basically the heroic badass BearCares is equipped with a Prog Knife and using Arm Blaster skill to attack Derelict Host. The next turn, Derelict Host who is also equipped with a Prog Knife, uses Arm Blaster skill on BearCares but if you read the console he does more damage to me than I did to him. That bastard! It's because he has a Gift! (perk, ok? ;)) That gift is called Aim Bot. Which means whenever he is using a skill with the Aim tag on it, such as Air Blaster, he'll get 33% bonus damage to his base damage.  And here is the code. And as I said real programmers will laugh at it, but hey it works.  I could be wrong about some of what I'm about to say but... ahem - the 3 lines I circled are called class methods. Basically they mean that a certain type of object in your code shares the ability to perform certain tasks. These 3 methods all coexist within the Characters class. Which means that all Characters in the game will now have the ability to Use_Skills, calculate their own Base_Damage, and also Check_Tags on the skills and compare those tag with their own Gifts and Curses. Because the Use_Skill method calls the other two it means that I only have to assign Use_skill to the menu and the rest of the skill usage processing is done automatically. This is just a basic example, but more complex things such as checking for resistances, and field elevation can all be added using class methods like these. That's all. | |
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cool, well I'm just excited because it looks like I might get to start playing by the end of the week. And that is the point; to make a game that I can play
and looking at that code I posted is embarrassing i just realized a much better way of doing those tag checks |
