Hey there!
For June, as I mentioned in my previous devlog, I would spend my time working on the FPS game instead of Bright Red Skies. So what I did was work on the title screen, improved the damage feedback, and started to create the template for the lobby room.
For the title screen, I was thinking about what I wanted to show and decided to show the giant doors leading out of the lobby and into the main part of the game. Since the game is a roguelike, this is probably something that you'll have to see a bunch of times. The scene is pretty static so to add some motion, I just added some camera movement as you move the mouse around.
Wanted to also add some better feedback when you get hit, to try improve the game feel. So now there's an effect that appears when you take damage, so it's a weak blue color when taking damage to your shields and when you start getting dealt damage to your health it will pulse a strong red. There are also pointer indicators to show you which direction you're getting shot from. Also, when you take enough damage and die, you'll get transported back to the beginning, but more into that later on.
To create a hub area, there's a lobby room that will exist on all of the floors. This is where you can use your resources to purchase weapons, armor, and upgrades as well as talk to the other competitors. For now, it's still pretty rough, but most of the parts of the lobby are all there it just needs to be more filled in and the lighting needs some tuning to look better. Here's a sketch of the layout that I drew before starting to work on implementing it in the game:
In-game:
So you may be wondering what the premise of the game is since I haven't mentioned it before. Well, the game is a roguelike FPS with an anime theme so when coming up with the concept I was trying to find a way to merge roguelike, FPS, and anime together. So the idea I came up with is that the game will take place in a tournament since tournament arcs are really common in animes. I took a lot of inspiration from episodes 6 & 7 of Kino's Journey, where a character name Kino is thrown into a coliseum where competitors duel each other in a tournament format. The winner of the duel has the option of letting their opponent surrender so they can leave the battle with their lives and that's something I also want to incorporate into the game. Where killing your opponent will give you a useful item for your run, but sparing your opponent may lead to a better ending. Instead of making it just a couple of boss fights, I added in the procedurally generated rooms to add randomness and these will be the "trials" that you need to get through before you face your opponent.
To make the replayability of the game make sense in this fictional world, there will be a bag that the player owns that connects the multiple dimensions of the universe. So when you die, you begin playing as a version of yourself from a different dimension except some of the items you had in your previous run are shared in this new version of yourself. Yeah, the concept may be strange, but it's a fictional universe so anything goes. :p
Something I want to prioritize though is the gameplay since making a fun game is one of my main goals with developing this game. So there is going to be a dialogue system where you can talk to the different competitors and learn more about them but you can completely skip that part and still play the game no problem. It's more of an extra part of the game if you're interested in the characters or lore.
Anyways, you might have noticed that there wasn't really too much done this month. Unfortunately, I only spent about half of the month working on this game. Real-life is keeping me busy and we were on a bit of a crunch at my day job, I did the GMTK 2021 game jam, and I took the 2nd dose of Moderna that wrecked me for about 5 days. I hate making excuses, and now it's 2 months in a row of not hitting the milestones that I wanted to hit. Trying not to spiral into an unproductive cycle, so will try my best to get back to a better pace for July.
For July what I want to do is:
- Finish the lobby
- Dialogue system
- Better lighting
- Improve game feel (movement and gunplay)
- Change the implementation of the doors connecting the rooms
That's all I got for this devlog! And as some random guy just trying to live the dream of making a game, I really appreciate you guys taking the time to read all the way up to the end. See you for the next one! :D