I've been trying to keep myself organized using Trello, a project management software/website. Trello uses 'cards' and columns to keep projects organized. Cards are supposed to represents the various tasks that need to be done to keep the project moving, and columns help categorize the cards. Although this software is supposed to be used for team projects, with the whole point focusing on communicating project status information to other team members, I am still using this even if I am the only one on the team. Laying out tasks in this way helps me keep the bigger picture in mind, and hopefully prevents me from increasing the scope. Besides, maybe I will convince someone to help me out with the game, and if they accept, I can quickly get them up to speed using this site. Constantly shifting tasks toward the 'done' pile also feels nice, and sort of validates my accomplishments, however small. This gives me more motivation to keep hacking away at the game code, as I see tangible progress of what I've accomplished.
The above picture is kind of an 'at-a-glance' screenshot of where my project is right now. I have made 6 separate columns to organize my tasks into. The columns are ordered so that tasks in the leftmost column are essentially 0% complete, and as they keep on moving to the right, they eventually get 100% done. Right now, there are a lot of tasks in the leftmost column, for obvious reasons. I like to list tasks there that eventually need to be done to get an idea of what kind of scope I'm dealing with. This column also reminds me what I need to get done in order to have a complete game, in case I get sidetracked into implementing some obscure feature for weeks on end.
Each task is also labeled using colour to identify what type of task it is. Right now, tasks tagged with blue are programming tasks, and are the most important (as you can see, a lot of blue tasks have already been started on). Art, UI and Design have Red, Yellow and Orange respectively. Some tasks can overlap in terms of type, and therefore can have multiple colours.
Art Style and Direction
As I've mentioned in my last post, I wanted to convey what I want my game to look like in terms of visual appeal. I've been thinking about the art style for this game almost since the beginning of May. I want to avoid the 8-bit pixelated look that a lot of indie games have. With games like Fez, Spelunky, Bit Trip Runner, Super Crate Box and even Minecraft utilizing a retro-pixelated look, this kind of art style seems almost cliche. I understand that it is a visually appealing, and charming look. I also understand that this style is not as time-demanding of the artist as many other styles, and thus offers an opportunity for the dev to focus on gameplay. However, I want to try something that could have a chance to be more unique in terms of visual appeal.
I started thinking about other games that I have enjoyed in the past that had a unique visual style. One game quickly popped into my mind: N+. That was a game I spent many nights on, and despite its very, very simple style, it looks very smooth and sleek. No need to be pixelated here.
The style is very simple, meaning do-able by one person, and visually clean and appealing. I especially like the 'silhouetted' look of both the main character and the world he/she is in. Although, this poses a problem. One of the things Geometry Wars 2 got very right is its expert use of colour/lighting to co-ordinate the player. The neon-like shapes were very bright against the background, and stood out to me at all times, even when things got hectic. But the neon style was more than just for contrast, the over-abudance of particle effects, glowing edges and warping was something amazing to behold. I want to merge the 'silhouetted' style similar to N+ with the neon glowing edges of Geometry Wars.
Luckily for me, another game I played last summer, Outland, does something similar. Their characters are mostly a black silhouette, but they have glowing tron-like edges all around their bodies to emphasize their features. I really like this art style as it creates a very stylistic look and also merges the concepts I talked about above.
I think I can actually pull something like this off. Since I'm not doing a platformer, and therefore don't have to create all sorts of tiles for the world and many other extra details, I can probably get away with having this type of art style in my game. Coupled with the fact that I don't actually have to worry about making realistic textures, I think that this is definitely do-able for me. I still want to create 3D models for my characters as in Outland, but I want to avoid creating humanoid characters. These characters usually take much longer to model, and if I am going to be creating humanoid characters, they have to be rigged and animated. Otherwise they'll just be in one pose the entire game, and that won't make any sense. I want to avoid this in the interest of time, as this will require a pretty hefty investment on my part.
So what kind of characters am I going to have in my game? For reasons that are completely random, I decided that my main enemies in the game are going to be wasps, bees, hornets and other flying insects. Perhaps I was inspired by the current season, as there are many of these flying about in the summer. Regardless, I think this is an interesting theme that ties all the enemies together. In Geometry Wars, it was geometric shapes, in my game, it is going to be ferocious flying insects. Coupled with a silhouetted, tron-like art style, I think this game has the potential to look pretty amazing. I'm hoping I can at least mock-up an example enemy for my next post. This also lets me not worry about animating/rigging the characters, as the only parts that move are the wings, which can be just a simple 'wing buzzing' particle system. Even if I do plan on moving parts of an enemy (like their legs, or antennae) putting in effort to rig an insect will most likely be much less than that of a person. This way I don't have to worry about proper spine rigging, obsessing over painting weights correctly (especially in places like armpits, hips, elbows and knees) and many other nuances that come with rigging a humanoid character. Worst case scenario, I can just model each part separately and move it around in a script.
In terms of the player, I imagined them to be a flying plant of sorts. I don't have a concrete image in my head at the moment, and I'm going to have to flesh it out. The player will follow the same art style though, although they will be more detailed than the enemies.
Progress
I've finished 7 out of the 8 weapons that I need, and re-structured some of my weapon/projectile code to be more robust and generic. Before I was needlessly repeating lots of code in each weapon, and realized that some weapons have a similar functionality underneath the hood. I've made a separate launcher class that inherits from the base weapon class, and with both that and other improvements, I have substantially decreased the amount of time and effort it takes me to implement a weapon.
Below are 7 descriptions of the weapons I have coded so far. I was originally going to upload screenshots, but since there are no visuals yet, it would just be a bunch of spheres and cubes. With that being said, I think they would just confuse more than clarify.
Spine Shooter
This weapon is pretty standard as far as top-down shooting games are concerned. It shoots spines out at a relatively moderate pace (10/sec). The shots are fairly quick and a couple of hits from this weapon would destroy a relatively weak, unarmoured enemy. You could actually see this weapon in action from the screenshot I uploaded in the last post. The alternate fire for this weapon shoots out more spines with a faster rate of fire. This weapon is good for eating away at multiple enemies' health, and for crowd control of weaker enemies.
Spore Shooter
The spore shooter launches a tiny ball that grows in size tremendously after being shot. Once the ball is of a sufficient size, the increased drag from the size will halt movement of the projectile. Once it has grown to full size (takes roughly 0.6 of a second) it can be detonated with an alternate fire at no energy cost. However, this ball is very fragile, and most interactions with anything will destroy it. This is a good weapon for setting up traps, and luring your enemies to an explosive demise.
Laser Beam
As the name suggests, this weapon is a laser beam and for the most part, it is self explanatory. The beam is extremely precise, as there is no travel time and it will hit anything you point it at. However, its major disadvantage is that it has to build up to its full power to do any real damage. The beam starts out very small, and every time you hit a target, it will grow in size. Once up to full size, it devastates its target. The beam can be overloaded with an alternate fire, which will cause an explosion at the current impact point of the beam. The explosion's radius and damage depend on how large the beam is. This weapon is excellent at dealing damage to a single large, well armoured enemy.
Wingblades
This weapon spawns a bunch of blades in a small area in front of the player's shooting direction. These blades will continually slice enemies for a small amount of damage, and also push them back with each slice. This weapon's alternate fire will slice everything in a medium proximity of the player. This is great for 'snow plowing' enemies, and use it as a form of up-close crowd control.
Hive Spawner
This weapon does not work like traditional weapons, rather, the player shoots with the alternate fire. The alternate fire releases a small projectile that can be steered around. All shots fired are steered by the player's shooting direction, so the chosen location for releasing the shot is key. Multiple shots fired at different positions can create a moving 'wall' of projectiles, essentially acting as a moving minefield. Great for getting behind the front line of enemies and flank their weaker enemies from further away or attack around corners.
Spike Shot
This weapon behaves similarly to the spine shooter, but it acts more like a sniper weapon. This weapon fires 1 long projectile that is incredibly fast. This projectile can over-penetrate and hit multiple enemies in one shot. It also has a chance of sticking into an enemy rather than bouncing off when completely deflected by armour. Pressing alternate fire will detonate the projectile, but instead of an explosion, it launches several spines out in all directions. However fire rate is extremely slow, so using it in situations where enemies are in a 'single line' formation is preferred.
Snare Shot
The snare shot is meant to entrap enemies by creating a barrier between the player and the enemies. The snare shot launches webs of semi-rigid material that slows down and damages anyone that tries to pass through. The weapon's alternate fire increases the mass of all current webs so that they are much harder to pass through. This weapon is great for setting up a trap so that you can get a better shot with other weapons.
And with that, I think I've explained 7 out of the 8 weapons I plan on having in the game. Next post will most likely contain the final weapon, and more about the modifiers and how they work.
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