Righto. Progress.

Basically, I spent the week 'fixing' my game, and designing the basic elements. I have decided on the basic backstory, game style, and overall 'feel' I want.

I managed to add:

> Rats, with a more-complex-than-usual AI

> The Dark Hunter armor, with melee orientated abilities

> Some visual effects

In the overhaul department:

> Began re-working the original player sprite to match the new animation quality.

> Started sketching out ideas for levels, events and bosses.

The game's direction:

Originally, this was going to be a 'Metroidvania' style game, but I've decided that what I really want to make, and what really fits the gameplay I have at this point, is a Megaman style game.

So basically, a platformer.

I do have a driving backstory; this is going to be presented in-game in a relatively simplistic form; I also have the necessary concepts for my main antagonist and a sub-antagonist.

I'm very pleased with this work so far.

I spent my first week flip-flopping between Credence Filter and that other game that I originally decided to do. I have attention problems. Or motivation problems. Also I spent more time playing Penumbra than working on games.

I've made considerable progress in my game, with seven enemies programmed in each with unique behaviours. I've also managed to add in two death animations to the game because I ran out of ideas for enemies at the time.

The game overall is going fine. I haven't built any real levels yet. I'll be doing that once I get everything working properly. Get ready to see a lot of that little test area, as this won't be going away anytime soon.

I don't have anything to show yet, because the vast majority of what I've done has been bugfixes and feature additions/modifications. I'm strictly avoiding the graphical department for now, but I should have something next week.

What I've done:

- Changed the way damage is calculated. Now you'll always deal at least 1 damage and enemy defense won't so disproportionally offset your ability to deal damage.

- Drastically reduced ability cooldowns for all classes. I realized people weren't using abilities and were relying on basic attacks. That's nice to do for one class, but I've decided to encourage the player to use their abilities more often.

- Revamped some of the Cardinal Band's graphics. Now with more glow!

- Major bugfixes to reduce crashing.

- Created an intensified version of the "Eventide" track for a rebattle with the initial Eventide guardian.

What I'm doing:

- Adding party AI. Your party members are now useful and help you in combat. The first party member will fight with you while the others occasionally pop in for assists.

- Adding co-op. For bosses only, you'll be able to host or connect to a game, taking the place of their party members. You'll be able to play as said party member, which gives an alternate gameplay style for those who want a break from their own games. Limited to two-player co-op.

- Ramping up boss length and difficulty. To support the above changes, the bosses will be longer and more complex. Basically I want to give a sense of achievement when you finish a boss, not unlike Dark Souls or Monster Hunter.

- Reworking some ability functionality. Basically, I want abilities to be fun, not just little buffs.

In the near future:

- Adding three new stages. One will be regular like the others, one will be a revisitation of the Cardinal Band, and one will be an extra stage that you unlock only by achieving the best ending.

- With the above change, you'll see at least three new party members.

- Return of all the abilities removed due to time constraints. These included each class's ultimate abilities.

- Considering adding a difficulty selector that modifies bullet density, but I have no ideas as to how this should reward or penalize the player.

To be honest, this has been an extremely unproductive week for me, and I hope things pick up soon. Working with this game again literally brings tears to my eyes, and I'm excited to see it become the game I intended for it to be.

Progress

- I've fixed all of the collision bugs with enemies

-started work on the rest of the soundtrack.

-Thinking of ways to implement a combo system that rates your performance on a scale from "Placid" to "WILEY!"

-Some of the in-game environments will be ready by next update. At first I wanted to have areas that had an organic feel to them like what you see here> This image here

But it would take up all of my time to even get half of that done by deadline, so I'm opting for a traditional tile based RPG look.

"What are you trying to make even?!!?!?

Wiley Gear is an action rpg about a Steampunk Cyborg Named Wiley who is apparently on the run from the british police for his augmentations which have been declared illegal by the crown. But actually, Wiley knows about a terrible secret that would ruin the monarchy if the people knew the truth.

I want the story to be of a "Show me, don't tell me" sort. so I'll be delivering events through real time actions and NPCs.

Got the menu upgraded a bit. Texture artist's been out, and I've had stuff for school, so there's only so much I can work on.

My progress, taken from my comments on the other blog.

My progress has mainly been in terms of improving the sprites and animations I already had, putting what I had into my improved platform engine and creating a few more animations.

I've sketched out a map of the areas, the story-line and the different groups that exist in the game.

Tomorrow I'll be writing up a proper game design document which will flesh everything out a bit more. Then I'll be working on spriting some other characters in the game and things.

Progress has been slow due to job hunting, flat hunting, money hunting, etc, but I'm quite excited about what I have planned for the game and I'm enjoying working on it. :)

(it looks a lot better in motion)

NPCs now hunt and kill each other correctly and the pathfinding doesn't hug walls quite as much as it used to.

My main barriers to progress right now are the eight essays on middle eastern history I have to finish by Monday.