Hello everyone! Thank you for following the development of Dreadshot. I'm a bit late with this post, nevertheless, summer is over, which means it's time to sum it up and lay out plans for the autumn season!
What's New?
As usual, let's discuss what tasks were completed during the summer season and which ones remain:
Music System
Full implementation of the railgun AK-72Full implementation of the new revolverFull implementation of WMPv2
Full implementation of WM_BOmBRedesign/Rework of the shotgun, BBHML, and katana for the new animation system
3 out of 6 items completed!
Visual Changes
Besides that, I did some work on the game's visuals!
Namely, I changed the look of the dashes. Here's how it looked before:
And here's how it looks now:
I also updated the robot death effects. Here's how it looked before:
And here's how it looks now:
There are also some other visual changes, like effects from bullets hitting surfaces, which you can see in the video above.
WMBOmB - A New Enemy Fully in the Game!
But all that is just visuals, not that interesting, right? Then let's move on to something hotter... Like WMBOmB.
I wrote about it in the previous report. There I described its general functionality and what you would be able to do with it. Now, I've added all of it into the game.
WMBOmB is an enemy that will constantly chase the player, and when it gets close, it will jump towards them and explode, dealing significant damage. It's fast and small, making it hard to hit. However, it only takes one hit to make it explode.
Also, if the player is agile enough - they can catch the moment when WMBOmB jumps towards them and kick it in mid-air (if the kick is equipped). Then WMBOmB will fly towards the point where the crosshair is aimed and explode upon impact with a surface.
Revolver Rework
But you know, the explosions from WMBOmB weren't enough for me, so a full revolver rework was implemented: from the model and animations to the mechanics. If before the revolver was quite dull: on RMB (alternate fire) it just quickly fired the entire round with a small spread, which was quite useless and boring, now on RMB (alternate fire) it tosses a pack of dynamite in the direction of the character's movement vector. And the dynamite has huge potential for mechanics. For example, if you shoot it with the revolver - it will break into several smaller dynamite charges that cover a fairly wide area and can help against a crowd of enemies. And if you shoot the dynamite with the BBHML - a more powerful, red explosion will occur, dealing more damage and having a larger area of effect than the regular dynamite explosion, so it can be useful against bosses with a lot of HP. By the way, a regular explosion will occur if you just throw the dynamite and leave it alone. It will explode a couple of seconds after contacting a surface. Well, you can also kick the dynamite like WMBOmB, and it will behave the same way: fly towards the crosshair and explode on contact with a surface. Overall, the revolver turned out to be extremely interesting and functional, however, it still needs attention. At the very least, I need to figure out a system for reloading the dynamite. For now, I'm leaning towards the dynamite being usable once every 5 seconds, and it will passively recharge, but I might change that.
AK-72 is Now in the Game!
I didn't limit myself to just the revolver when updating the arsenal. So, I finally fully implemented the AK-72 assault rifle, which I also talked about in the last seasonal report. The only thing is, I changed the mechanic: hitting enemies charges the cores for the railgun. There are 3 cores total, and the more cores charged - the more powerful the railgun shot will be, both in damage and explosion radius. Yes, all railgun shots create an explosion, the size of which depends on the charge level of the core. The system is quite smart because if you have, say, 2.5 cores charged, only 2 cores will be spent, and 0.5 will be saved, so you'll only need to charge another half to fire the railgun. By the way, the AK-72 is currently the only weapon that has spread. I didn't add spread to other weapons to make the game less dependent on RNG, and also because the weapons up to this point were only semi-automatic. If the AK-72 had no spread - it would be a dumb laser gun that would be too easy to shoot. So, there is spread, but it's not constant. It gradually expands depending on how long the weapon has been firing non-stop. And if you stop firing even for half a second - the spread will gradually return to its original state, and you can continue accurate fire. For exactly the same reason, because it's an automatic rifle - I added a slight distortion to the firing sound when the magazine is low on ammo. This is done so the player can determine the remaining ammo by sound without looking at the interface. I liked this feature so much that I also added it to pistols that fire fast enough, making it sometimes hard to keep track of the ammo count. I think the AK-72, thanks to its railgun, has very good potential for interaction with other weapons, for example with BBHML rockets and the revolver's dynamite. Besides that, there might be potential for movement, as explosions created by the player don't damage them, and you could use the railgun explosion to gain speed.
Game Optimization
For the most part, that's all the new stuff that was added, but there's one more thing... Game optimization. I started noticing that the average FPS in the game began to drop, and stutters became more frequent, which are quite annoying. I already have some assumptions about why this is happening and a rough idea of how to fix it, even though it will take quite a lot of time. I won't go into technical details here, I'll just say that game optimization is an extremely important task, and I will try to make it as good as possible within my capabilities.
Game Funding
There's also another piece of good news: the project has received quite stable funding! It's all thanks to my media profiles on social networks; I got advertisers there, and the revenue from them provides me with the necessary minimum to fund my game. This means I can now devote all my free time to working on the game and its content, which is very encouraging.
What's Next?
The plans for the autumn season are Napoleonic (ambitious). We need to consider that I only have 2 out of 3 months free, as I have university exams in November, which will take a significant amount of energy and time. So, during September and October, I need to try to complete as many of the following tasks as possible:
Music System
Full implementation of WMPv2
Redesign/Rework of the shotgun, BBHML, and katana for the new animation system
Enemy spawn/respawn system, spawners
Reduce the number of dependencies between objects in the game for the sake of optimization
Add more weapons
Add more enemies besides WMPv2
Start designing levels for the story campaign
Main character model (for promo + cutscenes)
Fully write the game's story
Weapon and skills merchant model
Create a skill upgrade system
Rework the shop from a terminal to a weapon merchant's stall
Hub location that will be between levels
Cutscene system
Dialogue and subtitle system
Obviously, I won't do all of this in 2 months; these are plans for the next 2-3 seasons. However, these are the plans that need to be accomplished to bring the game to the early access stage and start sales of that early access. The highlighted items are the priority items; after their implementation, it will be possible, in principle, to start open free playtests of the game on Steam. That's why I will start with the highlighted items and then move on to the others.
Wishlists
By tradition, wishlists! And they are as follows: the game is on the wishlist of 6,610 (-34) people! I didn't do any wishlist marketing this season, so a small decline happened, but it's not critical.
Thank you for continuing to follow the project's development and for reading this article! See you at the beginning of winter!
