Devlog 1

Hello,

this is my first devlog on the roguelite/platformer i've been working on. Github says my first upload was september 2nd, I thought it was earlier to be honest. This devlog will answer whats in the game, what would I like to add, what are my future plans? Sorry in advance for the wall of text.

My intention here has been to create a vampire survivors like experience but with a platforming/combat twist. Does it work so far? Not really. But thats ok! A lot of the stuff i'm implementing, i'm doing it for the first time so the fact i've managed to get anywhere is more progress than i've ever done, and the code will be reusable. Doing individual powerups with different mechanical abilities has been fun to do and again, the code for that will be transferable. Why doesnt a vampire survivors platformer work (or at least the one i'm making)? Platforming is a skill based activity with usually little room for error. Theres also usually fun obstacles to try to surmount. Usually you reach a platform or you dont, and thus you have to restart a sequence. This doesnt work so well in my game so far as when you miss a platform, you dont get brought back up to restart the sequence with HP damage. It's something I could/should add. In hindsight, this project would have made way more sense as a top down game but I wanted to avoid making just another vampire survivors clone. I thought having an active dash/double jump and active combat would have helped the transition into 2d platformer. It doesnt help that all of the enemies are either damage on contact or fire projectiles. Gameplay thats fine if theres no platforming challenge but alas, here we are. I really want to make a few enemy types with specific mechanics etc, dodge this or stay out of the way of that etc. I wanted to have some cool movement tech (think sonic with grappling hooks) but it doesnt seem like it will work. Current powerups implemented have been a mix of on hit/kill along with vampire survivors autofire attacks.

Power ups so far:

1. speed increase - numeric
2. shrinking particles - (decrease character size) - mechanic (scrapped)
3. extra jump - numeric
4. monocle for crit chance - numeric
5. max health increase - numeric
6. projectile - crescent dart - periodically fires l/r - mechanic
7. extra projectiles for any projectile based item - numeric
8. ebony blade - lower health equals higher damage - numeric
9. reflective shield - chance to reflect any projectile - mechanic
10. qray - player projectiles spawn on jump - mechanic
11. bloodstone ring - healing orbs drop from enemies - mechanic
12. laser visor - on melee crit fire laser - mechanic
13. vibranium plating - chance to block damage - numeric)
14. armour - flat incoming damage reduction - numeric
15. kings fork - on kill create a high power blast wave - mechanic
16. power cosmic - autofires short range proj on timer - mechanic
17. aoe size increase (numeric)
18. attack speed increase (numeric)
19. stormbreaker - weapon that hovers in front of player damaging enemies and destroying enemy projectiles that increases damage significantly based on speed mods (mechanic)
20. defensive drone controller - works - destroys a projectile every few seconds (mechanic)
21. mjolnir - autofire weapon that increases damage significantly based on total power ups equipped (mechanic) bonus
22. lightning strike every few seconds on random enemy (mechanic)
23. strange eye - increase player magic missile chain count (numeric)

Powerups to add

1. increase duration effects (does anything even use this?)
2. decrease cooldown effects
3. some kind of life steal/vampiric effect (players take damage far too easily with only 1 source of healing)
4. retaliation power (on hit damage close enemies, but i'd like to combine this with shader graph)
5. on attack fire some kind of projectile (this would be an active ability)
6. all attacks explode (hehe)
7. some kind of player orbiting attack (based on attack speed?)
8. bleed effect on enemies
9. on kill chance to create homing ally
10. on kill chance for enemy to explode

I'm trying to be conservative with the list as I have a very long line of ideas and I could probably hit 100 or more. Would that be good however? No.

Current gameplay features:

1. you can slowdown time
2. you can dash through enemies damaging them.
3. killing an enemy via sword/dash in mid air resets your jumps
4. sword/dash damaging an enemy gives a magic missile charge, which when used creates a projectile that chains X number of times against other enemies (this is kinda fun ngl)
5. powerups stack infinitely
6. Powerup spawns every 15 seconds
7. world level increases every roughly 20 seconds increasing all enemy health slightly

what other features would I like to add?

1. Item conga lines
2. Shop/vending machine
3. UI
4. Shader Graph
5. Score System
6. Move the item spawning onto enemies killed.
7. some basic audio
8. some more animations

So i've been coding this for about 4/5 months now and everything in it is probably not the best/most optimized version of itself, but I can only do stuff I know.

Major hurdles i've overcome:

1. Having one script affect a variable on another
2. Find the closest enemy to a specific object
3. find all enemies close to a specific object
4. Getting null exception errors like they're candy. I've managed mostly get around this with !=  null checks but its not perfect
5. When going into slowmo, some enemies and and projectiles would adhere to the updated world speed being either too fast or slow. This is now fixed.

Once the project is close to completion, i'll make it public. I'm hoping I can get this finished in the next few months. I've given up making music for the time being but i'm having a lot of fun doing this right now. I would like to make a follow up project of sorts but I want to avoid doing something thats been done before, so no vampire survivors clone from me.

take care.

Lukasz/Returntospace/arkham sound