~FINAL BROADCAST~

Welp, the time has come to move on to my next blog. If you want to continue to see my gamedev shenanigans, you can get it all at @nitrosodiumfmp. It's even got a monkey on it, so you know it's legit.

Tying Up Loose Ends (and a massive dive into how my mind works in game design)

There's basically one more thing I need to do for the project: create a marquee on PhotoShop. Otherwise, it's finished. Debriefs have been filled in, research processes outlined, files zipped and assignments sent off. My game is ready to be packaged and put on an arcade machine, and it'll run right out of the box. I obviously don't want to come off as prideful, but I think a finished game on this project is something special. At the very least, a polished game - not something that, yeah, it plays, but it's glitchy and scraped together just in time for the deadline. A game where I set out to do a thing and succeeded in considerable capacity. Toxic Waters was a good game, but it wasn't perfect. It was my first proper Unreal project and I overshot what I thought I could accomplish - multiple enemy types, combat with various unique weapons, large non-linear levels, advanced puzzle mechanics and an in-game shop had to be cut. Overdeath was a fine idea with an admittedly bad prototype level attached to it. The core gameplay loop was yet to be implemented, and the final "game" was a mess of poor time allocation and unused assets sitting unseen beneath the Z-kill. Sweat Pursuit could've been this. Another case of NitroSodium thinking he could make something that, in truth, was far above his skill level. But I did it!

I think I've mentioned this before, but this project was more about functionality than immersion. With Toxic Waters, I had a whole world envisioned; the Hydromorph Research Complex, a flooded scientific facility of snaking pipes and wailing sirens. The game was chunky and mechanical, a fine-tuned set of systems waiting to be utilized by the player to escape. With Overdeath, I wanted to create a wacky, vibrant homage to games like Serious Sam, where every shot fired has some effect to the world, blasting apart boxes or inflating them to double size. The key was always Create an experience, but after Overdeath failed to be interesting nor playable, the focus shifted to Make a game, specifically because Sweat Pursuit relies entirely upon its mechanics. Blog-wise, there were no walls of text debating on what weapon would be thematically relevant a la Toxic Waters, no collages of frozen outposts and junked snowcats like in Overdeath. All my thoughts were on the functionality of Sweat Pursuit, because without it, the whole thing collapses. I don't like making games like that. I much prefer the artistic merits of game creation; designing worlds and coming up with interesting ways the player can interact with them. For my next project, the looming, ominous FMP, I want to go back to that Toxic Waters era of design. I want to flesh out a world and build it so that a player can move through it, use all the moving elements that make it tick, jump on its platforms and exist in this deeply-stylized stratification of a real place.

I think the FMP is about lottery tickets? But obviously that'd be altered somehow to fit an idea. Right now I have no clue what I'll do for it. I've got something like three months though, far longer than my other projects, and I am a little intimidated by it. I mean, we're given a whole week for our teachers to explain it. How complex is it gonna be? I think I can add a second pillar to my gamedev formula.

I: Create the bare minimum before everything else. A game needs to be playable and functional as a concept before any more work is done.

II: Doubt is your biggest impediment. Having a solid idea to build off on is key to starting your project correctly.

I think for the rest of this week I'll be relaxed. Today I did crunch pretty hard. As my friends would say, I locked in. Headphones up, Deus Ex Area 51 Combat breakbeat blasting in my ears, not talking to anyone until my evaluations were done. But tomorrow, I'll do a little relaxing PhotoShop work, release my grip on the tight ball of stress that has been the Equilibrium Project for the last month, recuperate and prepare myself for whatever comes next. It's nice to word-vomit like this at the end of the project, archive the various thoughts that played in my head on loop as I connected nodes and playtested, but could never be fit into the work schedule. I'm ready to try something else. To utilise my new ideas and programming knowledge in a brand new, interesting way.

The final product. What else is there to say?

Sweat Pursuit Unreal Edition: Coronary Aftermath: Vengeance Of The Fatman (youtube.com)

There's a YouTube link to the playthrough. I'm pretty proud. I'd say this is better than Toxic Waters, infinitely better than Overdeath. It's beyond functional, it's polished.

PS: Loop the YouTube video. I bet you won't even be able to tell.

Looking at Suda51 Games

This guy makes super vibrant, cartoony games, usually in the hack-n-slash genre. Let's look at some.

Exclusive Lollipop Chainsaw Valentine's Day Trailer (youtube.com)

In Lollipop Chainsaw, you play as Juliet Starling, a chainsaw-wielding cheerleader. There are also a considerable amount of lollipops in the game, hence the name. You'd expect the gameplay to be super fast-paced, given that you're an agile cheerleader, but it's a little clunky. There are long stretches with no combat, and the combat itself is a little slow, requiring you to essentially "bounce" from zombie to zombie - you can occasionally mow through hordes, but you'll always have to finish them off with a quick-time event. In fact, the game uses quick-time events a lot - for platforming, for opening gates, most of the game is segmented between button-mashing screens. The art design is nice though; while Juliet's characterization is somewhat fanservicey, the whole game resembles a comic book, or an 80s grindhouse movie. So, the over-the-top violence and exploitation movie-esque themes are actually part of the style!

No More Heroes – Launch Trailer - Nintendo Switch (youtube.com)

In this game, you play as a random guy who gets a sword, and ends up kickstarting a journey to kill ten elite assassins and assume their high-ranking positions in the assassin agency. That's it, as far as I know. The gameplay is the same sort of slow and impactful combat as Lollipop Chainsaw, but what's interesting is a slot machine mechanics. Each time you kill an enemy, a slot machine spins its wheels, and if you get a jackpot, you're bestowed with a power-up ranging from a laser-beam to a one-hit kill blow for your sword. The enemies this time are katana-toting goons in black suits, but in my opinion, they're basically zombies - slow and unintelligent. I would still consider this a pretty fun game, and I can't imagine what it would look like playing on the original Wii motion controls, especially when you're forced to... rev up (yeah let's call it that) your sword.

Console Controls And More

To make the game actually play on the arcades, I changed all the key triggers to actual events instead of what they were before. These then have their own button shortcuts, which has meant that the names of all the buttons need to also be changed.

I'm also considering making the game easier. A lot of yesterday was editing values to make it harder, but I've seen other people play and they die very quickly. It makes me wonder if I'm just used to the difficulty, and it's actually unfair for other people. On Wednesday I'll probably have a chance to get a final playtest done at the very least. If not, I might alter more values in the Pursuer code. What I've seen in my own playthroughs is what I call "fridge-hoarding", where the player ends up carrying loads of excess food and not needing to use it. This makes the game easier and you never have the same near-death encounters as in the first Sweat Pursuit. I've tried to remedy this, as previously stated in other posts, by changing the rate that food spawns, and altering the speed at which Chubb moves, but my main issue is that there's no noticeable change to his speed. In Sweat Pursuit Scratch (SPS for short), it was very easy to see how Chubb picked up speed. In Sweat Pursuit Unreal (SPU, of course), he only increases his speed very marginally, if at all. He obviously does - the code works, but I feel as if he's not going quick enough.

By the way, the highscore system works now. It functions as I previously described it to, and it can be reset by deleting the .sav file within the actual data. I'm considering adding a sort of debug tool; pressing Backspace deletes the highscore or whatever. Obviously it won't be functional within the game when it goes to the arcade machine, but that's the idea.

"Forget him, there's no time!"

At this point, I'm doubting I'll have time to implement a score feature. My game is functional as is; there's no point sullying the code with broken features, making the final product considerably more unplayable than if I had left it.

The concept of the save system was going to have your Score increase on the side; a function of your Distance multiplied by Coins. When you died, this would check if the High Score (saved in a save game) was smaller, and if so, would change High Score to Score. Issue is, the code I'm partially basing this off comes from an old version involving pressing P to reload, not to mention it was built for a single workshop that only involved one map. What I mean to say is that it doesn't work, and I'm going to need to repair it.

The Game Is Very Close To Completion

As you can see, the game is now audiologically versed! Coins and food make exotic drum sounds when you collect them, and Chubb makes a cartoon gulping sound when you hit him with a burger.

The way I did the music is actually a bit funny. I couldn't figure out how to do an "if x, play this song, if y, play that song" system, so I made a "boombox" actor which is placed just behind the camera on the starting map, which plays the 70s-esque action song.

I also have a logical reason for picking Shiny Tech as the in-game song. For one, it's pretty high-pitched and narrow/metallic sounding in its general sound profile. Meanwhile, in the original Scratch version, I used Defender Of The Castle, a very round and bassy song. It's hard to explain; I'm pretty sure I have synthenesia, which could contribute to hearing songs more visually on my end. But the point is, the deep drum sounds stick out on the high-pitched techno song, just as the typical ba-ding coin pickup sounds were easily noticeable against the lower-pitched bassy song. And, Shiny Tech is just over three minutes, which is the estimated playtime for these games. So people won't be left in near silence after the song ends... unless they're really good.

Newest Code

Yeah, maybe I should be working on implementing a high score, but I want the game to look nice before I add that. And sound nice. The idea is, if it's on the starter map, it'll play There It Is, and if it's on any other map (i.e. third person map) it'll play Shiny Tech. I'm not sure where to put it exactly, so I might run it through the Game Camera or whatever. Thing is, I'm not sure how often it'll need to trigger. Maybe there's an "OnLevelOpening" event block I can use, or some analogue for that? Not sure yet.

Savegames..?

This was the result of one of our many, MANY workshops, to help us create a high score system for our games. The idea is you increase score by jumping, and if it's higher than your high score, it changes to that once you close and restart the game. Because it's saved in a savegame, which exists outside of the game to store data. So it would store playthroughs between someone closing and re-opening the game. Issue is, despite the project in question being created to the letter, it is dysfunctional and doesn't save your score.

I might create a different score system, that operates on a unique widget that overlays on the other widget. Each time you die, it sets Score as Distance x Coins. Then, it checks if that is higher than High Score, and if it is, changes it to that. Obviously, High Score will only remain between playthroughs.

Thoughts on the Score System

Right now, Sweat Pursuit is a good game technically, but there's no drive to play since high scores aren't saved. This means I have to open a previous project... if I can find it.

FINAL DEVELOPMENT DAY: Plans

Make it so the game will quit after being left on the main menu, and add the quit button to the main menu. Probably via that pawn I made.

Add sound effects and music.

Choose a different start button so you don't immediately button-mash and spawn back in the game when you die.

Add score system.

Big Revaluations

The Hunger problem has been solved. When the burger hits, the Hunger also takes a hit.

This is the core of the calculations that makes Chubb tick. It's not a perfect analogue for the Scratch speed formula, but this one works too. It's essentially Hunger divided by Distance, but I might alter some stuff so he goes even quicker.

This has been added to the GameCamera, essentially meaning the UI won't show up on the main menu. The character class has also been tweaked, so the player's car won't spawn in either.

Here's how things are going so far. Everything basically works, but I do feel like it's a bit easy, so I might make Chubb faster. I'd also like to add sound effects, music, and perhaps a high-score system. That'll be for tomorrow, though. Although perhaps I can do some of it today...

More Things To Do

Figure out a way to make the Hunger decrease when hit

Make Chubb's speed a function of Hunger and Distance

Add a loss condition

Add a main menu with instructions and maybe animations

Add an attract screen (just gameplay or?)

A slightly funnier Impasse

So, when you open the beginning map, there's a big flash showing Chubb and the player for a moment, before the title fades in and the characters only appear as silhouettes.

Then they become silhouettes, and everyone who I've talked to says the driver, with his idle animation of frantically bouncing up and down, looks objectively like a penis. So, I might not include the main menu. I have also came up with a name for the player character: the antagonist is Chubb, and this guy is Half-Chubb. I really hope I remember to remove this joke from the draft before I post. In other news, I'm making tracks to fix up the projectiles, make 'em actually take away Hunger and everything else. As I type this, I am about 1 meter from help, so hopefully I get it.

Testing the Game Over screen

Fun fact: if you set a light's intensity ridiculously high in Unreal, you get a lambent flare of light when you start your game. This is what my game over screen will look like ideally, but there is one issue: the HUD. There's gotta be some way to check what level is open, and have it only show up if in ThirdPersonMap, but I haven't cottoned onto that yet. To be fair, I haven't had time to research either.

So far, my primary issue is having Hunger decrease when you hit Chubb with a burger, and then having that affect his speed. My other issue is having a start and end screen; realistically, I would have the player in an invisible box off-screen, and also shut off the widget somehow. And then I'd do the "hit button to play" for the main menu, along with tips on how to play. The game over screen would reroute to the main menu after ten seconds or so.

Pyrrhic Victory

Oh my god, I am so unbelievably stupid. But at the same time, it means my code isn't bad, I just miss a few intricate details.

THERE WAS NO BINDING ON MY HUD!!!!!

HUNGER HAS BEEN INCREASING ALL THIS TIME, I JUST COULDN'T SEE IT!!!!!!!!!!!!

ALL OF MY CODE WAS FUNCTIONAL, BUT I COULDN'T TELL!!!!

This is great but also terrible, since I have one day to do everything. I've been hung up on the Hunger situation for what, a week? That counts as months with a schedule this tight. All because I forgot to bind Hunger to the HUD when I first made the widget.

Well, better knuckle down. One hurdle cleared, like six to go.