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Game Dev - Krystal Gun Staff, Walking, and Other Projects
6 years ago
As I've worked on the Krystal game one thing I've had complaints about is Krystal's staff. People complained that the placeholder versions looked like she had a penis or was impaled on her own staff. But putting at an angle like a modern FPS would look weird in my opinion, because the projectiles come from the bottom middle of the screen. Part of me wants to chalk this up to other similar criticisms like the claim that Call of Duty character would break their nose if they held a gun as they do in the game. Such criticisms works off the assumption that the character is standing straight, square shouldered to the screen with a gopro between their eyes.
Still, another part of me wants to say these criticisms are genuine. I considered swaping out her staff for a magic gun based on her staff. Something like a SMG version of the zat guns from Stargate SG1. My attempts to paint a sprite to that effect ended in failure.
They I played the old Doom engine game Heretic after seeing reviews for Amid Evil. Then I realised that many of the weapons in that game are staffs similar to what I was going for with the Krystal game. At least now I have references and don't have to worry about the criticisms mentioned before.
The "big" update is updated walking system. I know that sounds super boring, but the stiff barebones walking controls has now been replaced with a Quake style momentum system. It makes the game feel much better. I'm trying to tweak the values to get it working as I'd like since the default was too fast, but it's hard to judge when I've got it right since I'm looking so closely at it. It's like video compression in that it's easy to become an obsessed perfectionist when in truth might be no one is really going to notice or care about how how many tenths of a second it takes to go from standing still to full speed.
Since I based the code on someone else's port of the quake code, I'm not 100% sure how it works. There's a couple of lines of code I don't understand the utility of. Even the engine throws up a warning about unused variables. It makes me think that said port might be unfinished, or maybe cutting out the jumping and air control code was a mistake. Though now I'm armed with a little knowledge of how it works I can go back to doom or quake's source code and port it myself if needed.
On a similar note, I started to work on Gun Maidens. Nothing much to show now, but I mention it because I used a fan port of the Quake 3 movement code to Unity as a base to get good movement for Gun Maidens. Hell, I'm tempted to keep using Quake code as inspiration for how to do many things in a FPS properly, like how weapons are coded.
On a more interesting note. I've been putting thought into other projects.
Inspired by YouTube videos about the making of old school games where they'd start with a basic concept, and add stuff they thought was cool until they had a game. I'm thinking of taking a similar approach to my Gun Maidens game.
I've also been thinking about tabletop RPGs recently after another attempt to get a game going fell through. Long story short, I'm considering making a game loosely inspired by the Savage Worlds system. And I do mean loose inspiration, basically keeping the leveling up by getting bigger dice instead of abstract stats plugged into some formula. Outside of that, it'll be mostly a new system built for the game.
And there's about it. There is more stuff I could mention but I'll call it there for now.
Still, another part of me wants to say these criticisms are genuine. I considered swaping out her staff for a magic gun based on her staff. Something like a SMG version of the zat guns from Stargate SG1. My attempts to paint a sprite to that effect ended in failure.
They I played the old Doom engine game Heretic after seeing reviews for Amid Evil. Then I realised that many of the weapons in that game are staffs similar to what I was going for with the Krystal game. At least now I have references and don't have to worry about the criticisms mentioned before.
The "big" update is updated walking system. I know that sounds super boring, but the stiff barebones walking controls has now been replaced with a Quake style momentum system. It makes the game feel much better. I'm trying to tweak the values to get it working as I'd like since the default was too fast, but it's hard to judge when I've got it right since I'm looking so closely at it. It's like video compression in that it's easy to become an obsessed perfectionist when in truth might be no one is really going to notice or care about how how many tenths of a second it takes to go from standing still to full speed.
Since I based the code on someone else's port of the quake code, I'm not 100% sure how it works. There's a couple of lines of code I don't understand the utility of. Even the engine throws up a warning about unused variables. It makes me think that said port might be unfinished, or maybe cutting out the jumping and air control code was a mistake. Though now I'm armed with a little knowledge of how it works I can go back to doom or quake's source code and port it myself if needed.
On a similar note, I started to work on Gun Maidens. Nothing much to show now, but I mention it because I used a fan port of the Quake 3 movement code to Unity as a base to get good movement for Gun Maidens. Hell, I'm tempted to keep using Quake code as inspiration for how to do many things in a FPS properly, like how weapons are coded.
On a more interesting note. I've been putting thought into other projects.
Inspired by YouTube videos about the making of old school games where they'd start with a basic concept, and add stuff they thought was cool until they had a game. I'm thinking of taking a similar approach to my Gun Maidens game.
I've also been thinking about tabletop RPGs recently after another attempt to get a game going fell through. Long story short, I'm considering making a game loosely inspired by the Savage Worlds system. And I do mean loose inspiration, basically keeping the leveling up by getting bigger dice instead of abstract stats plugged into some formula. Outside of that, it'll be mostly a new system built for the game.
And there's about it. There is more stuff I could mention but I'll call it there for now.
