Operation Spitfire Devlog

#41

Hey everyone. I’m back, and this time with a video :sunglasses:

the video below showcases the first boss of the game and its behaviors. Its still a work in progress and I have to iron out some kinks, but its in a stage where I can happily show it to you all.

(apologies for the trash sound effects, I’m thinking of making new ones soon :pensive:)

Aside from that I tweaked and nerfed the SMG a decent bit, and finally fixed the distanced enemy script so it doesn’t jitter or break, which I’m pretty happy about. 3rd level progress is going decently as well, though its not done yet.

That’s all the news I have for now and I’ll probably post another thing within this month or early September, so here’s to that!

#42

Hey everyone, another status update, focusing mainly on the Boss NPC.

Another video this time, showcasing the finished 3rd portion of the fight and some minor tweaks to the 1st portion. First portion has been toned down a bit, especially on the rotation phase. bullets on this phase are also slower now so it doesn’t feel too hectic for a first boss.

And in the video there’s a few obvious tweaks I made to picking up consumables, that I’ll apply to everything soon. Instead of pressing E to pickup items, and generally not having any control on what is picked up, now it is much more precise, highlights items within range, and requires right clicking on the item to pick it up.

Boss NPC now has a firing delay between each new phase, along with an indication to when a new phase starts, instead of getting blasted immediately.

Grenades also got their blast radius unfucked.

That’s all for now :smiley:

#43

Great news, 3rd Level is done, after I had to redo it a bit so I’m moving on with the creation of the 4th level!

for changes:

  • I’ve switched all pickups to the new pick up option, and changed the use key to E for convivence.
  • went through and made the enemies have primitive path finding, so no more getting stuck on walls :sunglasses: (mostly).

technical issues were a pain in the ass and consumed a bit too much time. Game maker’s latest build duplicates sprites and objects and fucks everything up. Nothing serious happened but I had to re-add some dummy objects.

bug fixing was fine.

  • Infinite reload bug is no more
  • fixed a glitch where you could hold two of the same weapon which broke reloading and ammo amount.
  • fixed an issue with enemies chasing the player and immediately de-aggroing when they are behind a wall.
  • (went out of my way to make sure the fix applied to both weapon slots, and it does now).
  • ( related to first bullet point) Squashed an annoying oversight where reloading one weapon would lock up the other.

Computer isn’t doing too well currently, but it should be fine, maybe, possibly.

Its not

don’t worry though I made backups for spitfire so everything is fine on that front

#44

just a question. have you ever thought of releasing a demo?

#45

I have actually, multiple times. I decided against it however as the game during that time wasn’t finished and polished enough for me to be comfortable releasing a demo.

currently, it’s still not in a spot to be released in that way, but its much closer than it was before.

Gameplay is very closed to being how I want it to be, on top of polish. Sprites/UI need work still, not much since I’m a terrible spriter but enough so they don’t look placeholder. Sound/music need complete remakes, for obvious reasons.

When this is all out of the way It will be more or less ready for demo release.

#46

that’s understandable, i’ll just wait in the meantime.

keep up the good work.

#47

WIP teaser :sunglasses:

079

#48

After 6+ hours a day of work, a Late September update :smile:

Detailed Version with images

Many graphcal changes for this one, I completely redid most of the sprites in game and gave them a fresh coat of paint. As seen below

I also went back to polish up the existing levels for consistency, adding shadows, extending the scenery for less jarring imagery, etc .

Environment

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As for the UI, it got a much needed make over, and I’m very pleased with how it turned out.
Everything is more or less in the same place, but made much more compact and pleasing to the eye

User Interface

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Of course I didn’t forget about status effects (this time). They have also been remade and more accurately represent their effects.
(Huge thanks to @Ludfru and @HeimoIi (The True Book) for helping me get the sprite centering right!

Status Effects

The specific effects here are in sequential order:
Accuracy Up, Move Speed Up, Damage Up, Accuracy Down

image

Player Screen

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For gameplay changes I’ve taken the time to merge two of the “kits” together, and change another to regenerate armor. lowered damage from enemies a bit and in turn made invincibility frames lower, made movement speed slightly faster. updated sounds for the SMG weapon, Flame Thrower, enemy hit, player hit, explosion, menu select and confirm.

TL;DR Version without images 
* Complete remake of almost all sprites in game
* Further Polish to existing levels
* UI made more compact and easy to read
* implementation of status effects (Thanks @Ludfru and @HeimoIi!)  
* Damage and speed "kit" merged
* Armor Regen "kit" added
* Lower enemy damage and player invincibility frames
* Player Movement speed increased
* Updated sounds for some in game items

aside from that not much else, Very satisfied either way.

#49

Are you beginning to appreciate the work that goes even into crumby little games? :wink:
Good work so far!

(Also:

Hah :upside_down_face:)

#50

Very much so :sunglasses:

#51

What game engine are you using for the project?

#52

I use Game Maker Studio 2 to construct this abomination :sunglasses:

Overall really good engine, even with the few kinks it has.

#53

Status Update time:

Two whole levels done so far! getting closer to the boss being implemented, woo!

I took the time to play through the existing levels and I’m satisfied with the gameplay overall, except for gunplay. Clip size needs to be amped up a bit across the board, with mag reload time, adjusted accordingly. And enemy speed will, again, get tweaked, cuz everything moves at the pace of a snail. Average game time I’ll discuss later once everything is actually finished.

I’m thinking of also reworking the menu, as its one of the few remaining sections of the game that’s very bare bones, along with heavy tweaking needed (seriously, you can’t even adjust your volume with a slider, its just percents from 0-150 lmao),

#54

Another status update :slight_smile:

Menu is done! changing the font really made a difference.

Menu

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obviously still cluttered with 2ish redundant options but its looking very good.

After a couple hours of trying to make sense of my nonsense coding, I condensed the two options into a single screen for music and SFX volume. While it doesn’t really show it, pressing enter will lock/unlock on the SFX/Music and pressing A and D will move it accordingly.

Sound Options

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Misc changes was I spent another couple hours working on the Molotov spriting and now it looks good, instead of being a red circle. Weapon clips have been increased with not much done to the reload times. And I made piercing with the Semi Rifle less OP and gave the Sniper Rifle the ability to do the same, because its sucks without it.

Not much left to rework endlessly, except music, but I’ll get to that last, because musical linguistics is not my specialty, level making takes priority now.

(I went back through this thread and its insane with how far I’ve come and at the same time not feeling like much was done lmao)

#55

Can i make some menu art ? Like this for example :

Gladiator%20Banner
Gladiator Banner.png967x464 305 KB

What is above is a banner i made for raremeat’s forum game, this is just an example and won’t be THIS dark.

DM me at Sir Cultison#4806 with some enemy sprites if interessed

#56

dead game

#57

what no

#58

Thank you!

I’ll see about that as I’m happy with how the menu looks for now.

and I dont have enough sprites to work with :pensive:

#59

Does that mean you’re done for now, or entirely? That last round looked like it was destroying all of us.

#60

no