Hi everyone, I'm HoroBunny, a game dev hobbyist and I’m going to be making a game inspired by the Gauntlet series (especially Dark Legacy).

I’ve tried making this game before but never really felt the drive to go through with it and I didn’t know where to take it.

It’s going to be a level based game where you need to collect enough of a certain item to unlock the next areas, each area containing a number of levels (including a boss).

You will be controlling a character that gains experience, increasing its stats as it levels up, and you’ll be able to pick up different weapons (although only use one) that you find.

Although I want the levels to feel different, I will be using modular assets to speed the level building process. I did this for my previous game and I was able to do a lot more thanks to it.

Right now I’m using placeholder models for my player and enemies, which I will replace when I make new ones.

Speaking of models, for the graphics I’m going to go with low poly models and pixelated style texturing. This is because I had a ton of fun making this style of models for my last game jam game and I wanted to do it again.

For my schedule, I plan on working on this game 3 hours max at the end of the day. This is also one of the reasons as to why I want to make things as modular and reusable as possible.

Thank you for reading all of this! 

Here's some progress I made today:

Defeating an enemy

Enemies can wander

Enemies detect and chase the player

Update time!

Yesterday I spent my time learning an asset from the Unity Store called AI Behaviours. It's really useful and while there's still things I need to learn about it, I was able to make the foundation for most of my different enemies. All of this took yesterday and today but it the future it should be faster to make more enemy types if needed.

Enemy that explodes when in range

Basic melee enemy that chases after you

Enemy that spawns more when killed

Enemy that shoots and moves away

While not really visual, I worked a bit on the player controls to be smoother and added a simple dodge/dash mechanic. I made it so it could be tweaked without breaking any other system.

And finally I finished a simple gate system where you either have to hit all the targets or touch all levers (currently just tall cylinders). 

Gate with targets

Gate with levers

With all this, I'm getting closer to having all the building blocks for making as many levels as I want without needing to make specific code for them.

Tomorrow I want to work on barrel/destructible objects that can contain an item for the player or are explosive and make a mock up level selection area.

Update Time!

Since the last devlog, I worked more on the player, created a boss and added destructible objects.

The Player

I smoothed the camera movement when the player shoots and moves. Although the smoothing on movement was accidental because I didn't intend for it to happen ^^" The way it works is the camera is constantly looking at a target that moves to a designated position (halfway between the mouse and player when attacking and to the player otherwise). However, I made it that the target doesn't snap to the player and instead chases after it, creating the delayed camera movement.

Movement

Firing

The Destructible Objects

I created two types of objects. An exploding type and a normal object that has a chance to drop an item when destroyed. All explosions destroy these objects so exploding objects can cause chain reactions! The way I programmed it allows me to use any model and any loot table (an array of items) without worrying about what items can be destroyed from bullets and explosions.

Exploding cylinders barrels!

The Boss

The first boss of the game was something that I had in mind for a bit. I didn't want to make it too hard but also not something that you can just spam attacks and defeat easily. I made three attacks: A basic shooting attack that fires at the player at regular intervals; A beam attack that the player must dodge through (That stills some fixing); A circular patterned attack that fires sets of bullets at the player at regular intervals. 

Basic attack

Circle Attack

Basic attack when the boss reaches half health.

I used AI Behaviours to make the boss keep a certain distance from the player while being able to still fire.

I don't know if I'm going to keep the attacks like this or change them but until I do some play-testing and get feedback, I don't think it's worth changing.

End of Update!

Finally, I finally know what the game's story and name is going to be! Since this game is very similar to a vertical slice I made, I decided to just use the name and story of that game. In the end, I ended up working on it without even thinking about it!

So say hello to Miriam's Madness! I'm also going to change the title of this topic to fit this update.

Thank you for reading!