Brand and Image

I’ve been pondering a logo for the “Doombrowski” name. I started work on it today, and have some headway on a decent looking design. When it’s complete, I’ll be sure to post it up here.

I’m finding, as I play through the currently completed levels in Dess M-8, that I really want to put in hard mode levels. That’s definitely going to be on the agenda. They’re going to be levels that I think are impossible until I play them 30 times and finally figure out the strategy that makes me barely beat it. The rewarding feeling that I got when that was the case in the alpha with some of the levels was pretty sweet.

I’m also purchasing a website…probably tonight. After I finish with this post, I’m going to be dropping my guap on a year of hosting and a url.

Actually, I’m going to go do that now.

Until next time.

_Doombrowski

Time Spent Today: ~1.5 hours

Mobile Game Progress #30 – Alpha as #@!$

I created a tutorial for Dess M-8. It’s pretty simple. I may put more work into it in the future, but I think it’s able to be understood as it is now.

Having trouble with PC builds running on my computer. I can test them with no issues, but for some reason it doesn’t want to run. It works fine on my living room PC. I’ve posted on r/gamemaker to see if anybody else has encountered this issue or may have some guidance.

I’m going to keep this brief as the gif speaks for itself.

Until next time.

_Doombrowski

Time Spent Tonight: 3.5 hours

Mobile Game Progress #29 – Unlockables

I started working on a script for unlockables this morning. The idea is to make the unlockables prompt display whenever the unlockable condition is met, then to never display again. Lots of new variables for the PlayerStats object. Lots of new variables to add into the save and load scripts. It should be an easy system to drop new things into once it’s finished though.

I feel kind of slow motion this morning. My thoughts weren’t really together before I started working. Hopefully I can shake it soon.

This just in, the other tech at my work will be coming in 3 hours late due to his shitty landlord.

Not sure why I put that in here.

Anyhoo…I gotta get to work in the infinitely frustrating world of computer repair.

One day I will escape it. Hopefully before the end of the year.

Until next time.

_Doombrowski

Time Spent Today: ~1 hour

Mobile Game Progress #28 – Alpha Tweaks

I found quite a few little bugs that I fixed over the weekend. I have a PC and android build both ready to be tested by people now.

Pretty soon, I’m going to put in some minor tutorial functions for new players. I’ve been so close to the game, that I’ve nearly forgotten that some of the functionality isn’t black and white. Kind of like how windows switched to Windows 8 style and confused a bunch of old people.

The gun auto equip is fixed.
The gun select now becomes available on first game completion.
Sound queues have been fixed in a couple strange scenarios.
The gun select and gun upgrade menus have been slightly simplified.
Some balancing has been done to a few of the levels.
Gun upgrade menu text fixed for different platforms. (Game Maker doesn’t like scaling this font)

A few upgrade splash screens and tutorial screens are probably next on the docket. After that, I’m considering adding more player skins for unlockables. I also hate to have to do it, but background colors may be desirable also, and I may be doing that….Really not sure on that one.

After that, new game modes.

I’ll probably do a little work on Kale’s game before I get to the game mode additions.

Until next time.

_Doombrowski

Time Spent Yesterday: ~2 hours

Mobile Game Progress #27 – Alpha!

Today I did the final tweaks to make my game, to an extent, complete. It is a full gameplay loop and can stand alone. I would still like to add features, and likely will before considering it a finished product but the foundation is laid. I’m going to send it to a few friends for testing on other devices to make sure that text scaling and performance is alright. Maybe they can find bugs that I haven’t yet come across. I’m sure I’ll get some good feedback. My own eyes are getting a little tired of running the same levels over and over again. I need some fresh perspective.

Soon, I’m going to purchase a website, and get a video edited of gameplay to slap up there. It’s pretty exciting.

Until next time.

_Doombrowski

Time Spent Today: ~6 hours

Mobile Game Progress #26 – More Sounds + Gun Balancing

I figured out what the slicer gun was doing! Bullets were hitting blocks twice before passing through. I gave the blocks a check to make them unable to take damage until 3 steps have passed. This makes the blocks only able to take damage from a bullet once. I should honestly put this check in the blocks for all of the guns. It adds precision, which is definitely something that I want.

The gun level menu has had the sounds changed to change pitch based on the level. It has an ascending pitch and varies from the basic click sample.

I need to get eating this burger now though.

Until next time.

_Doombrowski

Time Spent Today: ~3 hours

Mobile Game Progress #25 – More Lil’ Thangs

Taking a break yesterday definitely helped me feel refreshed today. I distanced myself from thinking about this game, and focused more on playing some games. It was a good idea.

This morning, I fixed an issue with gun stat credit totals being incorrectly positioned on different sized displays. It was a ghetto fix, but it did the trick. Instead of using a font, I created a sprite strip with the totals (since there are only 6) and plopped it into almost identical code to the text display code that I had previously. the only difference was changing the text display code to image_index and subtracting 1 since the index starts at 0. Problem solved. Now the credit total at the top…I’m not sure about that. I feel like Game Maker just doesn’t like the black version of this font that I’m trying to use. Racist ass Game Maker.

I also made some minor changes to some menu arrows. Basically just hid them when the menu isn’t able to be changed. I don’t want it to be confusing for no reason.

Now I just get the levels in order, modify the difficulty on some of them, change the gun equip menu to not show up until the game has been beaten, throw in a few extra sounds and I should be done with the Alpha. Woot.

Until next time.

_Doombrowski

Time Spent Today: 1 hour

Mobile Game Progress #28 – More Reconstruction

Literally spent the last hour remaking levels that I’ve already made. I was able to knock out 30 of them. Only 10 to go. I’ll probably finish those off after work or possibly on my lunch break.

I’m seeing that some serious testing will be necessary to find out how the guns are going to fare on their specific levels. I currently have all unlocked guns available for all levels, so if I get caught up on something, I just jump in with another gun. That’s not the system I plan on having in place. I’m thinking more that each set of 10 levels will only be playable with a single gun until all gun specific levels have been completed. After that, you are awarded the “Gun Select” feature at the beginning of each level. This system is a little convoluted with the gun upgrade system that I have currently…I’ll have to figure something out.

Have to go to my paying job now. Boo.

_Doombrowski

Time Spent Today: 1 hour + ~5 hours

*edit
Ended up working on game stuff pretty much the entire night after work. Not what was originally intended.
I finished the levels, put in the music, made some minor bug fixes. I still have some more little things I need to do before I can release an alpha.
It seems as though adding music created some performance issues on my phone. I’m guessing it’s probably memory related. It appeared to work itself out when I cleared my running processes. My phone only has 1GB of memory, so it’s pretty crappy.

I gotta get to bed. I’m very tempted to skip work tomorrow…Really wish I didn’t need money.

Mobile Game Progress #27 – Doing it All Over Again

So, to fix my levels issue, I had to open a backup that had the original 50 levels in it, screenshot every level to have a layout reference, then open one of the corrupted files, screenshot anything that had changed from the originals, then order the levels to the best of my ability, then delete all of the rooms in my original save and recreate them from scratch with the necessary names. It’s a big pain in the ass.

I got the screenshots, ordering, and 10 levels put in place with the correct names. I saved and reloaded to make sure the levels weren’t fucking up again. Everything is checking out so far. Tomorrow morning, I should be able to throw the last 40 levels into place.

I ended up with more levels than I had before. Lots more. I’ll probably tweak them a little bit and make them the hard mode levels.

I’m having an issue introducing new mechanics with the current level layouts that I have ordered atm. I’ll have to make even more new levels to ease the player into new mechanics without having to spell it out for them. I think it will make for a much more fulfilling experience, since it is kind of a puzzle game after all.

Oh yeah, and I made 2 new bg music tracks this morning…Not sure if I’ll use them though.

Well…I gotta call it a night right now. Until next time.

_Doombrowski

Time Spent Today: ~2.5 hours

Mobile Game “Progress” #26 – YoYo Done Fucked Up

I’ve been ordering the levels to make the game flow better, and make more sense with the gun arrangement that I’ve decided on. It was being quirky, copying names and room contents when I renamed rooms to a name that existed previously. Basically, I arranged 50 rooms, while creating a few new ones and getting rid of a few not-so-good ones. I saved often after I thought I had figured out a way around the quirky Game Maker bug. I reload from my save….and rooms are missing completely. Not only that, but multiple rooms have been duplicated under other names. So my rooms are completely fucked. Since I saved often, my backups through Game Maker’s auto-backup system are all fucked up too. The best backup that I have is before I renamed levels 41-50, so I still have the order and contents of those levels.

So…I’m going to have to recreate all 50 levels likely from scratch after copying all of the layouts from a backup I made on Friday morning before I started arranging levels. Quite fucked if I do say so myself.

I have submitted a bug report to YoYo Games. I lost so much work from this BS.

I made some loops for background music. I’ll probably have to make 1 or 2 more before I have enough that I’m happy with using in the game. Sandra likes them. I’m not 100% on some of them yet.

Tomorrow I’ll have to get on the grind of righting the fucking wrongs that Game Maker has done to me.

Quite bummed out.

_Doombrowski

Time Spent This Weekend: ~6 hours
Time Lost: 3-5 hours
Levels lost: # unknown