11/13/18 Development Update

Hello and welcome back to another development update for my game Hero Soul.

This week's focus was on polishing the forest level of the game. There were many small things that needed to be fixed such as sprite layering and misplaced colliders. Additionally, I began work on the cave level's modified rooms. Here are a few pictures:

Personally I think progress for this level is going well.

Additionally I worked on polishing up combat in the game. It was recently brought to me that the combat is lacking a sort of oompf and I fully agree. It took some fine tuning but I think combat now definitely feels more satisfying. For example when hitting enemies, the screen will shake. I did experiment with slowing down time but it turn out to be barely noticeable. Hit animations have also been enlarged to really show the impact of hitting something.

Moving on to next week, I want to push and finish the cave level's layouts as well as tune the enemies to better fit the new rooms. I also want to continue my work on companions making them smarter and improving pathfinding.

That's it for this week! I'll be back next week for another development update. 

11/6/18 Development Update

Hi everyone and welcome to another development update for my game Hero Soul. I've done quite a bit this week, let's get into it.

This week I focused almost entirely on the idea that, on a granular level, each room in every level can be the vessel of the procedural generated story. On that note, I work specifically on tuning up each room's layout to give the Koros Forest level more varied rooms and shape. So the first thing that has changed was fix of the "Super Blob" that plagued the old level generation code.

On the left is an old example of the level generation script. As you can see, rooms are always connected based on if they border other rooms. On paper, this seemed like a fine concept but in practice, many levels generated created cluster of rooms that were all interconnected, as seen on the left image above. This created a severe lack of definition and I feel was a detriment to the story when generated. So this led me to the fix above on the right. Now, rooms may border each other but do not have to be connected with one another. This created a more maze-like feel and removed the problem of the "Super Blob" cluster of rooms.

As a side effect of this new level generation script I also worked on making rooms feel more unique. Before I was limited in what I could do since every room layout had to accommodate the possibility of being connected on all sides. This led to very cookie cutter rooms of a uniform shape. With this new update I could now design unique rooms without having to worry about that.

Above is an image of one of the new rooms, in which there are around 30 now as of now. Hopefully these new layouts will create a more immersive feeling while in the level as well as making it easier to tell story using them. 

That's it for this week! I will continue to polish up these new rooms!

10/31/18 Development Update

Hello and welcome back to another development update for my game Hero Soul.

This week I've implemented one of the scenarios that will be available for the Koros Forest level.  The outline of the scenario follows. When the player enters the forest the player will get a cut scene which introduces the player tot he event happening. After the cut scene they will receive a quest that details what they need to do in the level for the end room to unlock. When all the required quest objectives are complete, players will then have access to the boss room, in which a themed boss fight will occur based on the level's scenario. After the boss fight the player will then get to make a story decision based on 3 choices, justice, compassion, and strength. Justice decisions will usually have decision based on that characters morality, compassion will be the more based on saving people, and strength will mostly decisions that are difficult to make.

Players will get the UI below. I really liked the tarot card designs for the cards since the determine fates. Anyways player must choose a decision out of the 3. These decisions will have bearing on other procedurally generated content in later levels.

Moving forward I would like to work on the next event the forest and then move on to the other levels.

That's it for this week!

10/23/18 Development Update

Hello and welcome back to another update for my game Hero Soul!

This week's focus has been on a procedurally generating a story. So, I've really been working on the structure of this task. Here's what I've come up with. I chose to work with the framework of the way levels were procedurally generated. This meaning, the story elements will be generated based off of how the map is generated.

Every time a player enters a level, normally what happens is that an algorithm runs and generates a new level. Using that, I am planning to have that algorithm also choose an event to theme the level off of and then generate the level using that theme. For instance, the scenario I am currently working on is a sort of invasion sort of thing. The event if chosen as the theme of the level will require the player to collect a few objects in order to uncover a story that occurred. Using the level generating algorithm a few rooms will be selected to become the level's quest objective rooms. Here's an example below:

Quest rooms will now randomly generate in levels marked with an exclamation mark.

Hopefully this will create a sort of random story that will be different enough to remain fun. :)

I also wanted to introduce a sort of morality system along with the procedural story. It really stemmed from the idea of "I think we're the baddies". The system works like this: With all the procedural quests there will be multiple ways to complete them. Each way to complete conforms to an hero trait archetype. At the end of the game the accumulation of the all the decisions the player has made will affect the ending of the game. So really, if you play your character as an "anti-hero" you will have that realization that you are the bad guy at the end of the game.

Anyways that's what I have for this week. Stay tuned for more progress into this idea!

10/16/18 Development Update

Hello everyone and welcome to another development update for my game Hero Soul.

This week has a major pivot for the game. Before I was mainly focused on finishing up the system of the game. Now moving forward I would also like to focus, instead, more on narrative development for the game.

So what exactly am I planning?

At it's conception Hero Soul was supposed to be a game that combined genres. I really wanted to see if an RPG could mix with a rogue-like and as such I have developed my game so far with that in mind. I've added procedural generated levels as well as progression systems such as talents, deckbuilding, and item collecting all in the attempt to mix the genres. However one thing that has plagued my mind while working on all this stuff was, one, will this even work, and two how the heck was I going to fit a story into the game.

So for this week I focused mainly on planning the story and asset creation. At conception my idea for the story was that it was going to be some-what procedural. Essentially I wanted to create a game in which the exact story experience would vary each time you play. The trouble for me was how exactly I was going to do this.

I've had many interesting ideas thrown at me and for this week I parsed though them and have decided on a direction I wanted to follow. For now, story in the game will be handled in a sort of episodic basis. Every level in the game will be considered and "episode" and within every episode, there will be an overall theme. For example for the Forest level the theme is "The Return of the Slime King" and the overall outcome will remain constant; the player will end up confronting the Slime King at the end. However the path the player can take to reach that confrontation will vary with every play-though and this is where I believe the proper amount of procedural generation can be added.

Going back to the Slime King episode, the procedural generated part of this episode will be the events that lead up to the confrontation. Currently I am brainstorming the events I want to generate but that is the general idea. This solution hopefully will solve or at least alleviate one of the biggest problems I've been facing with proceurally generating a story, the continuity. Hopefully in having a unified overall event and changing minor events will create the story continuity I am looking for.

Anyways I'll keep working and developing this idea out more.

I also began on working on asset creation this week working almost exclusively on adding more NPCs or non-player characters to the game. Here's one I am currently working on. I won't spoil too much about it since they will be used in the story I have brewing

That's it for this week, I'll have more updates on story development next week!

10/9/18 Development Update

Hi welcome back to another development update!

This week is going to be a little shorter that usual, but I guess I have a little treat for you guys? I dunno... Anyways I made a little promotional video for the game. Check it out, I think it turned out pretty well!

Aside from that this week's focus was really on the creation and management of the UI in the game. Along with the save system mentioned last week I really buckled down and tried to make the game feel more like a game. This includes the addition of a basic settings menu where you can adjust sound and resolution, exit game functionality, and much more!

That's it for this week! I hope to get into making the story of the game next week!

10/2/18 Development Update

Hello everyone and welcome to another development update for my game Hero Soul. This has been a pretty landmark week for my game. I finished implementation of some major systems in the game. Let's get started.

Continuing from last week, much of the work this week has went into finishing up the rune forging system of the game. As a reminder, rune forging is the mechanic that allows you to add stats or additional effects to your cards. As of this week most if not all of the milestones for this system have been met. So allow me explain the system in its current state. Right now all cards have 3 rune slots. Each of these slots can house a rune, each of which modify the spell in some way. All cards start with at least 1 of these slots open, with the option of unlocking the others. The starting unlocked slots depends on the rarity with rare cards having 2 slots unlocked by default. Cards and rune effects have been segregated to types and only certain runes can be added to certain cards. Runes are obtained either through exploration or purchased in the shop. While most functionality is now implemented, I still need to do a bit more polish work on this system.

Moving on, I also had the chance of getting save and loading system to work. This was actually a long journey for me as I struggled to organize which data I wanted to store. Understandably this system is not as visually appealing as the rune forging system but this was a real big step for me towards a finished game. Additionally, I've also begun work on implementing the UI and functionality for the options menu. Hopefully this will be more finished by next week!

Finally I also began work implementing the enemy behavior for the 4th level of the game, the Tomb of Galahad. For this set of enemies I really wanted to take a step up increasing the complexity of their patterns as well as making them smarter and more reactive to the player.

That's all for this week!