Story goes as such. You're a nameless child who suffers from 'Night terrors'. A few hours into your sleep, your worst nightmares take shape, and you must drive them out of your mind(as an iron-clad knight).

It's a turn-based game where enemies spawn in a random cell in a chessboard-like arena. Each enemy contributes some amount every turn to FEAR. When your FEAR gets too high, it's game over. The longer you survive and the more enemies you kill, the higher your score. The knight can move to any square and attack once (will probably require tweaking) before more enemies spawn. He/she has a sword(for striking 3 adjacent blocks at once) and a crossbow(infinite range, horizontal or vertical line projectile) as weapons. Enemies can not directly harm the knight(might change).

Essentially, you have to dispose off maximum enemies in each turn, with either a sword slash or crossbow shot(sword slash can be free?). Enemy spawn points could be shown 1 or 2 turns before actual spawn(to promote some planning, maybe?).

So, I'm a complete beginner. Never made a game before, but always thought about it. I'm a university student taking a Computer Science course, so I can code alright. I've tried learning a little bit of Unity, made a few basic models in Blender and know enough GIMP to make basic(but rather shoddy) pixel art. But these never quite came together. This is the farthest I've ever gotten to making a game.

25/7/2017

I've decided to go with the Open Source Godot Game Engine. Since my objective is to learn as much as I can about game development, I won't be disappointed if I can't finish this in time. That said, I am taking this seriously. I've started going through a tutorial series. (For those of you who'd like to know: http://www.gamefromscratch.com/page/Godot-Game-Engine-tutorial-series.aspx)

26/7/2017

I've gone through enough tutorials to get an idea of what I can create. Today is when I finalised the gameplay concept. But I need a little break from programming. Time to make some art. A knight with a cape sounds good in theory, but I wonder what I'll come up with. Then there's the enemies. 

26/7/2017

The basic player idle art is done. I also got basic player grid-like movement working.

Now to do background art, enemy art, enemy spawn, and the rest of the game mechanics. :P

28/7/2017

The game is taking shape faster than I imagined.

There's basic  attack, enemy spawn, basic FEAR system, action point based movement.

The action point system needs tweaking, but basically you can conserve action points and get more movement next turn.

Here's what I have right now:

Next up is background art, sword slash anim., crossbow mechanic, a main menu and some more GUI overlay.

Still got work to do...

30/7/2017

Made the basic background design. It's a sort of dark-forest theme, with the cells randomly choosing between 3 textures.

The move overlay has been fixed. Earlier, enemies didn't block the player's movable tiles. Now, the game searches for a valid path to those tiles.

I'm also in the process of implementing the FEAR bar graphically.

Not too shabby, if I can say so myself :P

The longer enemies stay on board, the more they contribute to FEAR (red box)

Also working on movement modifiers and crossbow system, to make gameplay more entertaining.

Still no sound. Should probably see to that.

31/7/2017

The Basic game is ready. I've ticked almost everything off of my checklist.

We now have attack animations(except crossbow) and sound effects. I found some soundtrack that would fit the game perfectly on Audionautix. Thank you, Jason Shaw!

As for mechanics, the sword and crossbow attacks are ready. Just need some animation sprites for the crossbow.

Menu art is pending, but that can wait.

The GUI has been updated. A font was imported(Avara). There's now a score board on the right.

The meter on the left is FEAR. When it fills, game over! The highlighted green spider indicates I have a clear, unobstructed shot at it with the crossbow. The crossbow shots don't end the turn, but the bolts are limited in number, so save them!

Now that I mention it, there isn't a visual bolt counter!

Alpha 1.0 is up! My first ever video game!

Download it here: https://ataciturngamer.itch.io/knight-terrors

Feedback is immensely appreciated!

Working on some fixes and changes for Alpha 1.1.

Earlier, enemies would show the same sprite, regardless of how much they promote to fear.

On the first turn, they give no FEAR. Then 1 FEAR/turn. After 5 turns or so on board, they give 2 FEAR/turn. But they all looked the same, so it was difficult to prioritize. But now...

Enemies spawn as eggs. After 1 turn on board, they turn to Brown Spiders and promote 1 to FEAR.

After 5 turns, they turn into Red Spiders.

These simple changes actually boosted my average score by about 30! So, that's proof of atleast some thinking involved!

Also, and I don't know if you noticed, but I changed the board art. Looks much better in my opinion, but I need shadows from the creatures.

Still no crossbow animation :P

BTW, if you haven't played it yet, please give Alpha 1.0 a try and tell me what you think. https://ataciturngamer.itch.io/knight-terrors Linux version will be up by tomorrow.

Found a tool called JPixel on itch. Can't believe I worked without this! Makes pixel art so much easier to create! Thank you, Emad.

Here it is, if you're interested: https://emad.itch.io/jpixel

I've been thinking up some ideas for Alpha 1.5. Crossbow pickups and movement modifiers will be there, but it'll take some time. More maps and enemy types in the long run.

I need a break after this jam. It's been pretty taxing, and I've been quite ill all the while.

Alpha 1.1 is live!

There are some notable changes, mostly to the UI.

The Full Screen button now toggles fullscreen mode.

I've also added the much needed 'How to Play' option. It provides a basic overview of the game's systems and method of play.

The 'Back', 'Prev' and 'Next' were hastily put together, but the rest of it is pretty good, I feel.

There's a crossbow animation now. Finally!

I was having problems with the Algorithm to find accessible tiles, but a bounded Djikstra came to the rescue :)

This is also my last log on this forum, since the Jam is almost over.

Well, what are you waiting for? Go Play it Now!

Knight Terrors - A Post Mortem

So this was my first time designing and developing a video game, and it was awesome! A brilliant learning experience. I didn't I could release a prototype within the deadline, but I did! And I learnt a lot about the game development process along the way.

So what went wrong?

To my utter surprise, nothing much! The game felt very much like how I'd initially imagined it. I had a problem with displaying movable cells depending on remaining Action Points and Enemy positions, but I figured it out in the end. My one current issue is that the code is a mess. It works, but if I'm to build on this, I'll need to clean it up. 

There was the art work, though. I wasn't experienced at making pixel art, let alone any kind of art. So, my character ended up with a different perspective than my board and the enemies. I shrugged it off as the sprite being just a symbolic representation of the player, but it still naggs me when I look at it. Maybe, I'll fix it sometime. Maybe, I won't, and call it the game's character.

What didn't go wrong?

Pretty much everything else. Turn based action, enemy spawns and art, the sound, the FEAR system, everything went according to plan. I ticked everything off of my Alpha build checklist, and am extremely pleased with it.

Well, this is probably my last post on this forum. I will join the next Jam in winter, too, if the situation permits.

Till then, see ya!