hourglasseye's recent activity

  1. Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp

    hourglasseye
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    Hey y'all, I haven't posted in a while. I'm still working on my game. Progress has been very slow these past few months, and a lot of the work that went into it are very... unglamorous? It's...

    Hey y'all, I haven't posted in a while. I'm still working on my game. Progress has been very slow these past few months, and a lot of the work that went into it are very... unglamorous? It's mostly about progression (how the player gets stronger) through a tile-based dungeon building system.

    The way it works is:

    1. The player picks a tile to build a room
    2. The player picks a room to build
    3. Some rooms require the player to pick a monster tribe to live in it, in which case, that happens in this step
    4. The room is built, and depending on what it is, the player can do a few things - upgrade their stats, acquire abilities, acquire effects, re-roll available options, etc.

    To make this more interesting, I spent a large amount of time working on the monster tribe mechanics. Each monster tribe:

    • Offers a different set of upgrades/items, so the monster that lives in a room determines what options the player will have.
    • Affects the atmosphere in the surrounding tile - the temperature, heat, and noise level in the surrounding tiles of a room that a monster moves into.
    • Has likes/dislikes when it comes to the atmosphere of a tile - if there's something about the atmosphere they like, the player gets a bonus. On the flipside, if there's something about the atmosphere they don't like, the player gets a penalty.

    With each room that gets built, and each time the player does something in a room, enemies on the map will advance one tile towards the player's "boss room" (you play as the boss monster of a dungeon). Once an enemy reaches the boss room, the dungeon building phase ends and a combat encounter begins (where all the upgrades you've been working on will come into play).

    I feel like this took me way to long to do... I started working on the monster tribe stuff around the end of March of this year. Finally, as of yesterday, I finally have a prototype build again that I can ask people to play.

    I wanna start working on some more enemy variants - the output would be a lot more shareable (gif-able), and I'm expecting that it'll be more fun that working with mostly UI and systems!

    1 vote

  2. Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp

  3. Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp

    hourglasseye
    Link
    Hey, all! I'm still working on my game. I haven't had the time to participate in this thread in a while, but now that I have some time, I wanted to share some updates: Curse Mixing Mechanic So I...

    Hey, all! I'm still working on my game. I haven't had the time to participate in this thread in a while, but now that I have some time, I wanted to share some updates:

    Curse Mixing Mechanic

    So I have this mechanic where you can apply "curses" on enemies. They don't do anything by themselves (I should probably change that), but when you mix two different curses, you get an effect! I've been working on this for a while, but I've only finally come up with a way to manage them in a sensible way - which is by making each word a keyword (or a curseword, if you will). Here's a little diagram showing the different curses and their combinations:
    https://imgur.com/OqIP2kj

    Prior to coming up with this keyword naming scheme, I was really just making things up as I went and didn't have a good grasp of how to go about pairing curses together.

    Here's some of the effects in action - the last two videos were before I thought to name them by keyword rather than by color:

    Level Editor

    I also have a level editor for a hexagonal grid that I recently updated. The process used to be super tedious, so I updated it in a way that lets me "paint" things into a level. Here's what it looks like:

    There's actually a built-in hexagonal tilemap feature for Unity, but I found it super limiting and didn't jibe with the coordinate system I wanted to use.

    Classical AI Updates

    I'm not talking about LLMs, just good old-fashioned gameplay AI. I recently started creating levels with more enemies in them, and I discovered a few bugs with pathfinding and decision-making.

    Here's one where if an enemy couldn't find a path to you, it would just attack you from afar: https://imgur.com/TyRNeWo

    I came up with a fix about a month after I discovered that bug. Now the enemies would:

    • No longer use melee attacks from afar if they somehow run out of things to do
    • If an enemy doesn't have a path towards you, they will recalculate a path that ignores other enemies on the map, and then follow that path until they run into an obstacle.
      Here's what that looks like: https://imgur.com/Nq2WXtF

    I also found issues with my ranged attackers - they would do nothing if there was no clear path to the player. They were also super simple and naive - they'll just stand where they are and not move unless the player is out of range. I updated them so that:

    • They would try to maintain a distance away from the player - exactly the distance they would need to hit the player from afar
    • They would try to hit the player from afar in spite of obstacles or initial pathfinding failures

    Here's how it looks like now: https://imgur.com/0vKoYZZ

    Personal Task Management Woes

    I hope I'm not alone in this but... when I make one of those checkbox items on Obsidian, I tend to lose track of them, especially when I jot them down on a daily note. I've been trying the Tasks plugin for Obsidian (from here: https://publish.obsidian.md/tasks/Introduction) which has been pretty fun to use. It will try to find all checkboxes in all of the notes of your vault and collect them into a list. It also has support for task schedules, prioritization, and scriptable filtering/sorting among other things. I like it!

    ⚠ A word of warning, you MUST specify a global filter if you don't want your Obsidian to crash on you, if you happen to be someone with a lot of checkboxes littering your vault. I made the mistake of ignoring the global filter (the instructions tell you it's a good idea to use it, I was foolish), and I had to edit a markdown file with another text editor to get rid of the issue haha.

    If you made it this far, thank you for your time!

    6 votes

  4. Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp

    hourglasseye
    Link
    I've been trying my hand at game balancing using Google Sheets. I felt lost for a bit but I think I finally have something I can use for my game. In the process, I've learned: How to make custom...

    I've been trying my hand at game balancing using Google Sheets. I felt lost for a bit but I think I finally have something I can use for my game.

    In the process, I've learned:

    • How to make custom functions for Google Sheets
    • How to import data from Google Sheets and into Unity with service account credentials

    It was a little weird feeling like I didn't have anything visual/entertaining to show off throughout the week. Sometimes I feel like I did something cool using spreadsheet formulas, and I don't know how to effectively share/communicate it to strangers hahahaha.

    I did, however, prepare something for Valentine's day ahead if time (like early this week), before doing spreadsheet stuff. It's a bit of vfx. I'll share it here as well, I hope y'all like it: https://imgur.com/gpdyp7L (it's just short, less than 10 secs)

    2 votes

  5. Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp

    hourglasseye
    Link Parent
    This looks rad! I think it's cool that you have your own scripting language. What made you decide to write your own?

    This looks rad!

    I think it's cool that you have your own scripting language. What made you decide to write your own?

    1 vote

  6. Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp

    hourglasseye
    Link Parent
    The hide and seek game sounds interesting! Mind meld definitely sounds promising as a party game as well. You could try to find some CC0 assets so you won't have to worry about sharing GIFs.

    The hide and seek game sounds interesting! Mind meld definitely sounds promising as a party game as well. You could try to find some CC0 assets so you won't have to worry about sharing GIFs.

    1 vote

  7. Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp

  8. Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp

    hourglasseye
    Link Parent
    Yeah... I crammed too much info, and because I was concerned over the length of the video I had to speed everything up to the point that it all became hard to understand. Thanks for taking the...

    Now I wish I could slow it down to process everything I am seeing

    Yeah... I crammed too much info, and because I was concerned over the length of the video I had to speed everything up to the point that it all became hard to understand. Thanks for taking the time to try and absorb the info in it. I'll try to do better next time and maybe do more bite-sized videos.

    Is the 2d "map" where you are rolling dice and building rooms like an overworld?

    Yes! It's the "dungeon" where the player's character lives. The idea was to drive game progression by building and upgrading rooms... I sometimes feel like I might have a much easier time if I did a simple skill tree instead.

    Rolling/setting stuff up takes time (days?) and enemies can move and then can attack you?

    Yeah, that's right. Each day you spend doing a thing in the dungeon is one tile worth of movement for all adventuring parties that approach your "boss room".

    1 vote

  9. Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp

    hourglasseye
    Link Parent
    Just this! I'm hoping it won't be too bad. It'll be mostly a bag of numbers per character on the scene, and maybe de/buff states. Yay, thanks for the feedback! Re: the colors, I should have...

    Is it strictly all the data necessary to load and start playing from that exact moment

    Just this! I'm hoping it won't be too bad. It'll be mostly a bag of numbers per character on the scene, and maybe de/buff states.

    I like the graphics in your latest gif/video. Are the colors significant?

    Yay, thanks for the feedback! Re: the colors, I should have mentioned that the VFX colors are based on two things:

    1. Damage type - the base types are Red, Green and Blue, then you can combine them to get better type coverage (Blue is good against shields, Green is good against armor and Red is good if the target is unprotected). Red + Green becomes Yellow, it's just mixing colors hehe (light, not pigment).
    2. Curse to be applied - I used to call these "elements" but decided to eventually rebrand then to "curses". One curse doesn't do anything on its own (not sure if that's a good idea). The plan is to apply two different curses on an enemy to produce a sort of reaction (ala Genshin Impact / Gunfire Reborn's elemental reactions). The colors for these are kind of arbitrary so I just went for colors that are distinct enough from secondary colors.

    If the damage type is neutral and there's no curse to apply, the ability would look mostly gray.

    Would the characters take on a bit of the hue to show they have the effect applied?

    For curses, yes :D I have to figure out a good VFX for poison/damage-over-time effects.

    I see you wrote something about the icons but in your example they all seem to be two swords (increased attack?)

    Yeah the sample just includes one effect for everything (deal damage). A poison effect would be a skull, a defense debuff would be a broken shield, etc. I'm planning to do a clip explaining how the player can apply different effects and that should have more icons on 'em.

    Happy to be offended.

    Here you go haha, sorry in advance: https://imgur.com/8QXeSRk, but thank you for being interested in watching it!

    3 votes

  10. Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp

    hourglasseye
    Link
    I am once again here to talk about the progress of my game. Missing Update from Last Week - Save Files I wasn't able to post last week when I was working on setting up save files for my game....

    I am once again here to talk about the progress of my game.

    Missing Update from Last Week - Save Files

    I wasn't able to post last week when I was working on setting up save files for my game. Right now, there's just auto-saves at the end of each battle, then the player can opt to either continue from the latest save file they have, or to load one of the 5 latest auto-saves (I discard the oldest and limit it to 5... it's arbitrary, but also I'm too lazy to implement scrolling right now).

    Eventually, I want the player to be able to save scum to their heart's content, but that's for later (serializing the battle state is intimidating because I didn't plan ahead for that, my bad).

    Failure to Communicate

    I attempted to make a video demonstrating this functionality (along with another one), but I bit off more than I could chew and ended up with a long video with lots of sped-up portions that nobody could understand, so I'm not going to offend your eyeballs with that here. I have to keep my videos bite-sized or no one will want to watch 'em.

    Overwriting Save Files

    From my understanding, the standard practice when dealing with save files seems to be to use atomic operations whenever possible. So... when there's a pre-existing save file that you're overwriting:

    1. Write the new save file on a temp path (like a .tmp)
    2. Move the old save file to a backup path (like turn it into a .bak)
    3. Move the new save file to the correct path (the path you wanted to write to all along)

    Some VFX Work

    This week was more about setting up VFX for a "summon field" ability. The idea is that the player can place fields with customized effects that get applied on characters that stay on them at the end of the turn. Here's what it looks like so far (just 11 secs): https://imgur.com/qJGEvoK. The icons that float around in the field indicate what effect gets applied (or at least, I'm hoping players would understand it that way).

    8 votes

  11. Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp

    hourglasseye
    Link Parent
    This is very informative, thank you! This keyboard looks nice. I wonder what those Playstation-like keys are on the top right. Re: the switches, did you get the red switches? If you have the hot...

    This is very informative, thank you!

    This keyboard looks nice. I wonder what those Playstation-like keys are on the top right. Re: the switches, did you get the red switches? If you have the hot swappable version, you could give gateron browns a whirl, which I think has a low-profile version, which could pair nicely with low-profile keycaps... except that would be another expense.

  12. Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp

    hourglasseye
    Link Parent
    How much of Copilot's output do you typically have to adjust? Also what keyboard did you get if you don't mind me asking?

    How much of Copilot's output do you typically have to adjust? Also what keyboard did you get if you don't mind me asking?

  13. Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp

    hourglasseye
    Link Parent
    Woot, that's good to hear. Got it! The text was added on post... mostly to draw attention on Bluesky. Maybe I shouldn't include it for posts here. I have been thinking of making the enemies do a...

    I think the change to the grass looks great.

    Woot, that's good to hear.

    The text on attack seems fine although might be too much on every attack.

    Got it! The text was added on post... mostly to draw attention on Bluesky. Maybe I shouldn't include it for posts here. I have been thinking of making the enemies do a little quip sometimes whenever they attack the player, but now I'm wondering if I should do that for the player's character as well

    Maybe you could have the text appear when a critical hit happens or something?

    like this!

    As far as the name, I'm not sure it's that important now. You could give it a placeholder but it's hard not to get attached to one once you start using it.

    I do have a working title (for the repo name, project name), but I'm not sure if it's what I should go with so I don't use it. I'm not sure if it's okay to use either heh.

    Do you already have some kind of plotline? Will it flow battle to battle or will there be an over world or cut scenes?

    Not really! I have some ideas but haven't written anything down. I'm thinking of having dialogues in both in and out of combat.

  14. Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp

    hourglasseye
    Link Parent
    Thanks! That's reassuring. It's supposed to be a swan hehe, but as long as people think its some kind of bird I think it'll be okay. That's an interesting suggestion. The player is supposed to be...

    I'm not much of a gamer, but it looks okay to me. I think the animations of the attack effects looks good.

    Thanks! That's reassuring.

    Is the third loadout a pigeon?

    It's supposed to be a swan hehe, but as long as people think its some kind of bird I think it'll be okay.

    How about S.A.P. (Slime Antelope Pigeon)?

    That's an interesting suggestion. The player is supposed to be able to swap out what kinda creatures they can transform into, so maybe I should lean more into the transformation bit as an inspiration for a title 🤔

    1 vote

  15. Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp

    hourglasseye
    Link
    This week, I've been working on loadouts for my game. I wanted players to have 3 loadouts/kits they can bring with them to a fight, and then be able to swap between them during battle. Here's what...

    This week, I've been working on loadouts for my game. I wanted players to have 3 loadouts/kits they can bring with them to a fight, and then be able to swap between them during battle.

    Here's what it looks like:

    It was a little intimidating putting this together, since I had to scoop out some of my project's guts to get multiple loadouts working. I wanted to do this before working on save files or any other thing that would need refactoring if I did this later.

    I also changed the placeholder environment tiles to from "dirt" to "grass" - I have this suspicion that the dirt background wasn't very easy on the eyes.

    If y'all watched the clips above and have time to respond:

    1. Is the text on the "In battle" clip okay? Is it cringey?
    2. My game doesn't actually have a name yet. Should I get on that already? I was thinking of waiting until I was sure about the scope that I wanted.
    7 votes

  16. Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp

    hourglasseye
    Link Parent
    It does sound very interesting. Maybe there's a way to scope it down to a manageable size without making it bland?

    It does sound very interesting. Maybe there's a way to scope it down to a manageable size without making it bland?

    1 vote

  17. Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp

    hourglasseye
    Link Parent
    Thanks! I'm working on a progression mechanic that I'm not 100% on yet... So I haven't really shared it anywhere. But to answer your question about the transformations, the player will have to...

    Very nice! UI looks responsive and polished. The transformation mechanic is neat.

    Thanks!

    Are those unlockable or do you find/learn them?

    I'm working on a progression mechanic that I'm not 100% on yet... So I haven't really shared it anywhere. But to answer your question about the transformations, the player will have to invest in a thing that will let them roll for it (the same goes for effects, executions, and elements)... I'm sometimes tempted to just use a simple skill tree but I wanna get the progression mechanic playtested first.

    What platforms are you developing for and what engine(s) are you using to develop it?

    I'm using Unity. I'm focusing on just PC, but making a point of having gamepad/controller support.

    As I said before, happy to give it a go even in an early stage or give feedback over a video call or something. I also have game I have been working I could share.

    I'll make sure to reach out to you once I get to the point where there's a prototype I can share! There's a bit more I want to set up before I can ask for playtests again. I would be happy to check your game out, though, just let me know!

  18. Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp

    hourglasseye
    Link Parent
    This one? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juCwXMDO9e0. There's this interesting bit there when they click some small hexes for a "Sniper" and a "Hit Count" goes down but I can't figure out what...

    This one? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juCwXMDO9e0. There's this interesting bit there when they click some small hexes for a "Sniper" and a "Hit Count" goes down but I can't figure out what it's for exactly hehe.

    The tree tiles along the edges of the map look great.

    1 vote

  19. Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp

    hourglasseye
    Link Parent
    I made a post with more information about what I've been working on, with some gifs: https://tildes.net/~comp/1lct/what_programming_technical_projects_have_you_been_working_on#comment-enjj I get...

    I made a post with more information about what I've been working on, with some gifs: https://tildes.net/~comp/1lct/what_programming_technical_projects_have_you_been_working_on#comment-enjj

    I’m thinking of playing around in Godot just to make something “visual” with code outside of work, since most of my work right but has been infrastructure stuff which I am not enjoying.

    I get you. This is how I was feeling during my first job as a web developer (backend, PHP). I really enjoyed making interactive and responsive media, so I gravitated towards game development.

    2 votes

  20. Comment on What programming/technical projects have you been working on? in ~comp