Bubble Time is finally finished, I hope you enjoy it.

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I said I wanted to post 4 times every month this year and for the first two months I did a good job, but I haven’t posted since then so I have fallen a bit behind. I didn’t do it intentionally, it just kinda happened. The problem is that this is mostly a development blog and I haven’t really been developing anything so I don’t have anything to talk about. I know I previously mentioned a new project that I started, but my motivation quickly died on that project. After about a month and a half break I am rejuvenated and ready to start working on it again. I’m also going to go into some more details here and post some screenshots.

Introducing…. InfiniteArena, or at least that is a work in progress name that I am giving it. It’s kinda of mix of several different elements. It is primarily a dual stick shooter with many roguelike elements mixed in. Basically the game is a series of randomly generated rooms that must be cleared to advance. The player will navigate from room to room (clearing each one as he goes) trying to find which one contains a staircase to a deeper dungeon level, with each level getting progressively more difficult. Along the way the player will gain experience and be rewarded with all kinds of loot to boost his survivability. The game has a pretty simple dynamic, there are two resources, health and ammo, and if you run out of either you’re screwed (dead). The point of the game is to see how far you can progress into the dungeon and to get very far you are going to have to manage your resources well. This can be accomplished by your choice of weapons, style of play, skill level, and probably most importantly luck. The game is meant to be fast paced, somewhat frustrating, and slightly addictive. Another huge feature that will be supported will be the up to 4 player local multiplayer. If the game ends up being similar to what it I intend, then it will be a blast to roll through the dungeon minions with some friends and see how far into its eternal depths you can make it.

I worked on it for about a month before I decided to take a break and here are the results of that work. I have a lot of the basic system design complete, the main UI designed and mostly coded, and all major game play elements planned. Here is a view of what the current build looks like.

This screenshot shows a typical room with a few remaining enemies. You can also see the player panels on the left (there is only one player, so I should really only display one, but I draw them all currently). They give an indication of the players health, ammo, experience, and current charge of their special power. Here is a mockup of the weapon inventory panel.

A series of panels similar to this will popup for all players after a room has been cleared allowing them to view, equip, and scrap their loot in preparation for the next room.

After a month where I posted 8 times I follow it up with a month where I hardly post at all. I apologize about that but there is actually a reason behind it. It seems my motivation for working on Xploration was completely depleted and I decided to start on a new project. I’m not giving up on Xploration, but there is no point on working on a game that for whatever reason has become unenjoyable to me. I would really like to finish Xploration, but It will probably be a while before I start working on it again.

Now onto talking about the new project I am working on. I’m not going to specifically say what it is yet, I would prefer wait until I have some actual gameplay that can be shown. I am approaching this game differently than anything else that I have ever programmed. I actually sat down before I even wrote a line of code and wrote a 15 page design document. I also completely mocked up the UI for the game (I’ve got it mostly implemented now). I also have outlined a flexible schedule and think that this game can be completed in 5 months. Needless to say, this game has me really excited and I think it will be really fun.

There are a couple things I would like to note. The design document that I wrote will help me key in on a couple things. Hopefully it will cut down on any feature creep that would typically occur. In Xploration I had no set goals, so I spent almost all my time adding features that weren’t needed. That shouldn’t happen in this game. Also, the part of Xploration’s development that really seemed to slow me down was the content development. This game has significantly less content so I should be able to avoid that issue. Hopefully I have something to show from the game before the end of the month. I’ll leave you with this simple font that I am making for this game.

In the post below this I mentioned that I was working on a new tileset. I have since finished the base tiles for that tileset and I’m really happy with the way it turned out. Here is a screenshot of it.

Xploration Rocky Tileset

There now is seemingly a big style/quality difference between the first tilesets that I made and the more recent ones. It’s not that I don’t like the first few, they just aren’t as good as they could be. So last night I spent a couple hours redoing the purple tileset. I still need to work on a couple things with it, but overall I’m pleased with the new look of it. It also wasn’t very difficult to make since it was mostly just a palette swap with the blue tileset. (I like how I refer to tilesets exclusivly by the main color used in them) Here is a screenshot with the updated tileset.

Updated Purple Tileset

The only real Xploration work that I managed to get done this weekend was adding a new sector. I also went through a couple older sectors and updated them with some newer tiles. When I first make sectors, I typically just focus on making them functional and I don’t put a whole lot of effort into making them look good. So after a while, the sectors typically get a second pass where I will put down background and foreground decoration layers. These layers usually consist of plants, blocks, random artifacts, really just anything that gives the world a little depth and makes it seem more real.

I also started working on another tileset this weekend. It will probably be the last complete tileset that I will do for Xploration (bringing the total up to 5). While most of the other tilesets have a lot of flora/plant life, this tileset will be encountered much deeper into the planet and is much more desolate and rocky, at least that’s what I’m going for. Right now I’m still working on the base tiles, but I’m really liking it so far. Here is little preview of what it looks like so far.

Rocky Xploration Tileset Preview