Gunkid 99 - Released!

PKTORA6 years ago(+1)

Really cool! I love the pixel art animations!

Thanks! glad you like it :)

Hello again!
Today's post will be a showcase of some of the weapons you can unlock in 99999.

First off - the Blaster, the first weapon you'd get.
The Blaster is weak but relatively fast. Zero recoil which makes for good control. High ammo cap and a fast reload means the Blaster is consistent and reliable.

You can consider the Blaster as the basic weapon for which all other weapons are compared to. Obviously you'd unlock better/stronger weapons as you progress but I don't want the Blaster to become completely obsolete either. That means other weapons will behave differently or might have certain drawbacks and the Blaster may still be the preferred weapon of choice in certain situations.

Revolver
It can fire as quickly as you can spam the shoot button and is quite powerful to boot. Slight recoil. Some of its power is mitigated by the lower ammo cap. I particularly like the reload animation on this one (just wanted to point it out :p)

Mini-Cannon
Powerful but has a slow rate of fire. One-shot the vast majority of enemies.The low ammo cap means you’d have to reload often. The recoil is pretty noticeable too and will slightly hinder movement

Shotgun
A monster at close-range. With its wide arch of fire you can get away with being less accurate. However its reach is pretty short. If you look at the bullets they disappeared before even hitting the wall. The recoil is also pretty significant.

Bounce-gun
Bullets from the Bounce-gun bounces (duh :D). This can be extremely useful because you can shoot round corners and hit enemies where they can't reach you. Its one drawback is that direct shots are incredibly weak. The bullets only gain their true strength after they bounced off a wall(If you notice, the bullet lights up after it touches a wall).

These are just some of the earlier weapons you'll encounter. As you progress further into the game, you'd also start to unlock more varied/weirder weapons. Weapons that may be very powerful, but also difficult to handle and master.

Hello!
I'm proud to say I finally have the first trailer for my game, 99999!

And also, I HAVE A STEAM PAGE!!

As you may have heard, following the recent changes to Steam's 'Popular Upcoming' tab, wishlist is now more valuable than ever. So, wishlisting is greatly appreciated! (If you're interested)

Following feedback gathered from the initial release of the demo, I've made some changes (especially the tutorial) to the demo.

Download version_2.0 of the demo here!

Hi all!
I'd like to show some of the enemies you can find in the game. Today's post will be about the enemies of World-1.

There are only 4 enemy types to be found in World 1. Subsequent "Worlds" will follow the same pattern. Since the game is fast-paced and each run only lasts a couple of minutes at most, I thought reducing the amount of enemy types will allow players to quickly recognize each enemy for what it is and react to their attack patterns accordingly.

Also, because this being the first World, I've decided the very first enemies you'd see will be one of the most common monsters found in games - Slimes.

First up is the Big Slime. Nothing much to say here as you can see. It moves along and turns when it meets with solid obstacles. The very first enemy you'd see. It is slow-moving and has a decent amount of health (you can see it takes 4 hits to destroy the Slime. That is considered the upper range. All enemies have low health to keep the action fast and to avoid bullet-sponge situations).

Baby Slimes. Its behaviour is identical to its larger counter-part. Small and extremely squishy it can be dealt with in a one single shot from most weapons. What it lacks in size it makes up for in speed. Its small size can make it surprisingly tricky to hit in the heat of action.

My intention is for each World to have only one single enemy type that shoots projectiles. This is so as to prevent the game from becoming "bullet-helly". Not that there's anything wrong with bullet-hell but I think it will be too difficult to navigate in a side-scroller platformer setting. So that is the Shooter Slime's purpose: to shoot projectiles. It remains static at the spot from where it spawned, shooting at the player near or far.

So far the Shooter slime is the only enemy type that will actively engage the player. The big and baby slimes just move about irregardless of what players do. And thus I added the last enemy type: Winged Slime. It constantly seeks and follows the player around. The intention is to force players to move and not be able to bunker down in a safe spot.

Being the very first World, the enemies found here are more stereotypical and do not have much special characteristics. As players acclimatize and progress through the game, enemies in later Worlds would provide more of a challenge.

Hello! The Demo for 99999 has been updated! (and is also finally out on Steam!)

The previous versions of the Demo has been really useful not only for drawing some attention to my game, but also for the feedback received. Opening up your game to public scrutiny can be scary but the pros far outweigh the cons. For one you'd get much more honest feedback from internet strangers.

Onto the changes.

Hit sprites

Amid the chaos, it can sometimes be hard to tell when you get hit. Hurt sprites and animation is now a lot more obvious. Because of the longer animation, recovery time(you can tell by the player sprite fading in and out) is also extended for balance.

Movement

Pressing the down button meant the Player-avatar would get stuck in the kneeling position even if Left/Right was also being pressed, this was an especially common problem when using a controller(moving with analogue stick). Now, Left and Right directional press take precedence over the Down button. Your avatar now continues to move so long as Left/Right is being pressed.

Going down Platforms Previously pressing Down + Jump allows you to pass through platforms one at a time. Now you can speed through them so long as you hold down both Down + Jump buttons. You can even do so while in mid-air to speed up the action (previously you can only do so while grounded).

Dodge-roll and wall-cling Previously doing a dodge-roll while next to a wall meant that you'll lose the wall-cling and fall quickly down. Now you'll continue to wall-cling even while doing a dodge-roll (should you not want to stick to the wall, going the opposite direction will make you lose the stickiness).

Screenshake

I have gotten plenty of comments, both good and bad, about my implementation of screenshakes. I get that screenshake is very subjective, and personal tastes vary greatly. The default screenshake is now toned down from before. But more importantly, you have the option to turn it off completely if you want to (or put it to max, if that's your thing).

Difficulty

The feedback I've received regarding difficulty tend to be that it is too difficult in the beginning, and actually becomes easier by the end instead of harder(at least to those who didn't give up immediately). That also led to some players feeling a lack of progression because while they got better, the game's challenges did not keep up.

The difficulty has been adjusted and it is now much easier in the beginning to give players the time to learn and get used to the game's controls. The difficult gradually ramps up to give more of a challenge as one progresses.

Shop

Items and weapons costs have been greatly reduced. Since my intention is to encourage the use of new items/weapons and experimenting with different combinations, it makes a lot of sense to reduce their costs. Hopefully this will also help those who are struggling to adopt different strategies with the use of various item abilities.

Future updates

The first thing on the to-do-list is to add global leaderboards!(for Steam) Since the whole point of the game is to challenge yourself to obtain a higher score (hence 99999? no?), I think it'd be cool to know how you compared to other players.

Thank you for reading. Please do try the demo and let me know what you think. Feedback is always appreciated!

Yongjustyong6 years ago (1 edit)

Hi guys!
Today's post will about the enemies found in World-2!

As I've mentioned before, there are only 4 enemy types in each World. World 2's theme is lava, so I've tried to make the enemies fit in with the world/environment. After the introductory "vanilla" enemies of World 1, the enemies in World 2 will begin to have more varied behaviors and attack patterns.

First off, the Lava Blob.
The blob might be relatively weak but its small size combined with its speed and jumping pattern can make it rather tricky to hit. I also did a little something extra for its death animation to show its "fire-y" nature.

Next up, the Lava Bat. The only projectile-type enemy in World 2.
Unlike the static shooting-Slime from World 1, the lava bat flies about in a random direction when it is not actively shooting you. That makes it a slightly more annoying target. That it can fly also means it can target the player from practically any position. If not quickly dealt with and left to loiter in the stage, just a few of them can quickly overwhelm any player.

The Wall-climber has the ability to climb walls obviously.
It can round a corner and even climb upside down. Its climbing ability can hinder the player when you want to say, wall jump or traverse the map. Also, shooting it will make it drop at once so shooting at it while it is directly overhead is perhaps not the smartest move.

The Blue flame is probably the most dangerous enemy in all of World 2. It "dives" straight at the player, and as you can see in the gif above, dodging it requires good timing. Make the mistake of doing a dodge-roll while close to a wall and the Blue flame will still manage to hit you when it "rebounces". Probably the number one priority target whenever it makes an appearance.

Introducing the Enemies in World-3.

World-3 is horror/halloween themed and is reflected in the enemies’ design. The enemies have also gotten more difficult to deal with. World-3 is already pretty far into the game after all, it only makes sense that the difficulty would ramp up.

First up, the jumping Pumpkin, it throws up 3 projectiles into the air upon death. The Pumpkin might seem easy to deal with because of its relatively slow movement speed, but those projectiles can often hurt you if you’re not paying close attention.

The Bat. Once it sees the player, it will not stop giving chase. It also has the fastest movement speed (thus far) among all enemies, making it an immediately threat that must be quickly dealt with.

Ghost. The Ghost reacts much like a certain character in a mario game. Come face-to-face with it and it will turn transparent, making it impossible to hit. The Ghost is also the only enemy type that can pass through solid wall.

Floating Skull. The Skull shoots the fastest(and biggest) projectile yet. To balance the difficulty, it also takes slightly longer to charge up its shot compared to previous projectile-shooting enemies.

99999 is now renamed as Gunkid 99

Why the name change? Well, I'm sure a fair number of you have thought that 99999 was a bad idea for a name. And you'd be right.

Let's first put aside things such as a sense of identity, 'catchy-ness' and other more subjective aspects of a name. For most indiedevs, we simply to not possess the marketing capabilities to "make a name ours". That means if the name of your game is generic, you'd risk being drown out by similar words/term from other search results.

Take my game for example, if you search 99999 in youtube, you'd likely end up with a whole list of videos of other games with 99999 in their titles (with a particular Plants vs Zombies being especially popular). Even if you intentionally search for my game by pairing '99999' with 'game', it'd be useless as the other popular videos with 99999 in their titles are already that of games (just not my game). That means the few play-throughs that I got from releasing my demo are already lost in the sea of youtube videos (sorry guys). You might do ok with a generic name if the name doesn't appear often with the word 'game'. Take for example, the game Bleed. Bleed, on its own, has terrible SEO. But it is mitigated by the fact that if you search for 'Bleed game', it becomes a more unique title, and most gamers are smart enough to do just that.

Googling Gunkid on the other hand, gives you near zero hits on anything videogame-related, so it has a higher possibility of standing out from the get-go. The 99 is mostly a remnant of the previous name, but by pairing it as Gunkid 99 it will hopefully be more easily searchable. I guess I'd find out soon enough.

So to fellow indies out there, spend more time to mull over your game's name. Do some basic research by seeing what comes up in your google searches. Don't be like me (lol).

*if you already have a Steam-page, you can still change the name of your game easily enough. BUT if you've already released a demo, you'd have to contact Steamworks developer support to change the name of your demo.

On to some updates for the game:

I've made some changes to the Training room! Along with unlocked weapons, weapons that are ready for sale in the Shop will also appear in the Training room with a little note above them.

This will allow players to have a taste of the weapons before deciding if they wanna buy em. Makes a lot of sense to me!

Health UI has also been tweaked to make it less cluttered.

I've also recently added Steam Achievements into the game. But I know achievements by themselves are rather meaningless to some players (I'm one of them). So I added actual in-game rewards for said Achievements!

Some of the more quirky Achievements add real tangible effect to the game by unlocking unique Ability Items. There's only 3 now, but there will be more to come.

That's it for this update. If you interested in Gunkid 99 it'd help a lot if you can wishlist!

Steam-page!

You can also find me on:
Twitter
Tumblr
Itch.io

I’ve been hard at work making more (unusual) weapons!

Some weapons are familiar projectile types with a twist whereas others are more…interesting. Hopefully the variety will encourage players to experiment with more weapon types and find the ones that suit their play-styles.

99999 85

Popper
The Popper fires bullets that explode into smaller bullets upon reloading of the gun. It makes for an effective (if albeit chaotic) crowd control weapon.

99999 73

Void-gun
The Void-gun functions in a similar fashion to the aforementioned Popper. It shoots ‘bullets’ that explode into a black-hole like vortex upon reloading. The resulting explosive blast will instantly kill any enemy (unless your damage has been significantly reduced from equipping certain items) but will also damage the player as well. Incredibly powerful, but also incredibly tricky to use.

gun 9

Fireball
Inspired by Mario’s flower powerup. Although not especially powerful, the Fireball’s ability to bounce a few times before it extinguishes means that it demands less accuracy from the player while ensuring maximum chaos.

99999 8

Ring-of-Fire
One of the most unusual weapons in the game in terms of control, because the player's control of the Ring-of-Fire is rather limited. The ring spins entirely by itself, but holding the ‘shoot’ button will increase its range and speed and releasing the button will it to its default state. The Fireball extinguishes itself upon hitting an enemy and do not replenish until all 3 are gone. Very powerful when all 3 fireballs are present, a lot less so when left with only one.

99999 72

Wheel-blade
The counterpart of the Ring-of-Fire. Unlike the Ring, the Wheel-blade does not extinguish, it trades the Ring-of-Fire's coverage with consistency and reliability.

99999 67

Boomerang
The Boomerang is powerful but can be quite tricky to use. Only throw the Boomerang at the right moment or you'll find yourself defenceless without a weapon on hand. To compensate for its vulnerabilities, the Boomerang will destroy any enemy projectile it touches.

That’s it for today’s weapons update, if you’re interested, please WISHLIST on Steam, that’ll help a lot :)

Cheers!

Today's post will be a technical one: fixing the mouse issue.

Or more specifically, the issue of disabling the game when you click outside of the game-window. It is almost bound to happen when playing in windowed mode (especially for action-heavy games), but can also happen even in full-screen if there is more than one monitor.

This is an especially common feedback I've received from my game's demo. It is very disruptive when it happens in the middle of the action. Definitely can get annoying real quick, so I fixed it!

Crosshair can no longer go beyond the game-window. Pause and you'll regain control of the mouse:

The following is what I came up with. (Disclaimer: I'm not entirely sure if this is a good solution so if anyone has any better implementation please enlighten me!)

*language is in gml. engine is gamemaker studio(1.4)
Code:
var cursor_x = window_mouse_get_x() - window_get_width()/2;
var cursor_y = window_mouse_get_y() - window_get_height()/2;
//Keep mouse to Screen's center
window_mouse_set(window_get_width()/2,window_get_height()/2);

//Mouse.x relative to camera
view_x += cursor_x / global.mouse_offset;
x = view_xview + view_x;
//Limit x to screen
if (x < view_xview) {
x = view_xview;
//Cut back view_x's value
view_x = 0;
}
if (x > view_xview + view_wview[0]) {
x = view_xview + view_wview[0];
//Clamp view_x's value
view_x = view_wview[0];
}

//Mouse.y relative to camera
view_y += cursor_y / global.mouse_offset;
y = view_yview + view_y;
//Limit y to screen
if (y < view_yview) {
y = view_yview;
//Cut back view_y's value
view_y = 0;
}
if (y > view_yview + view_hview[0]) {
y = view_yview + view_hview[0];
//Clamp view_x's value
view_y = view_hview[0];
}

So basically what happens is that the actual mouse will be locked to the center of the screen with:
window_mouse_set(window_get_width()/2,window_get_height()/2)

Any movement of the mouse will then be calculated and the mouse object will be moved accordingly instead of the actual mouse. The x and y position of the mouse object is also relative to the camera so it'd work even with a moving camera. Because the game's base resolution is 640x360 and scaled up approximately to the monitor's resolution, global.mouse_offset is used for calculating the actual movement of the mouse. If there is no offset, moving 100 pixels to the left would translate to moving 200 pixels if the monitor's resolution is at 1280x720 (twice the base resolution).

Hope someone finds this useful!

https://yongjustyong.itch.io/gunkid99

Gunkid 99 is now available exclusively on Itch.io for FIRST ACCESS!

What is First Access? It's functionally the same as Early Access, except that it's only available here on Itch.io.

So why not have early access on Steam then? Well, early access is not what it once used to be, these days an early access release on Steam is more comparable to a full release. If I release the game on Steam now as is it will very likely be buried immediately.

If you get Gunkid 99 on Itch now, you WILL still receive a Steam key once the game is ready for release on Steam! (you can wishlist it on Steam to be notified of full release)

The game is available now for USD$4.99, with a 10% discount until 21st Oct.

I also just made a discord channel, come chat!

Social Media Discord: https://discord.gg/XCVew3K
Twitter: https://twitter.com/yongjustyong
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gunkid_99/
Tumblr: https://yongjustyong.tumblr.com/

Minor Patch
- Fixed an issue where keyboard is locked whenever a controller/gamepad is detected as being connected, even if you are not actually using said controller. Now the controls will automatically switch to either controller or mouse+keyboard depending on which you last use.

[IMG]

Today's update is all making the controller/gamepad more precise and intuitive.

Patch notes

- Performing a jump from a platform might have made you drop down from it instead because of pressing ever-so-slightly down on the analogue-stick. That is fixed now, only more obvious down-push will be registered by the left analogue stick.

- Aim-assist is now more precise and snaps easily from one target to another.

- Engaging in Free-aim gives you a slower but finer control over the Crosshair.

- Aim-assist can now also be turned off if you so chooses!

Today's update has mostly to do with the movement system, particularly when it comes to falling through platforms. I've made it almost effortless to drop down from platforms, and as a result I think the movement flows much better now.

Patch Note:
- Pressing down will now let you drop down from platforms. A new checkbox called 'Down Lock' has been added in the Key-bindings menu, enabling this will stop you from being able to drop down from platforms with just the down button. You'd have to press 'Down + Jump' (the previous method) or double-tap 'Down' instead.

- You can now also drop down from platforms while doing a dodge-roll by pressing down. (or the other buttons combination mentioned above) Basically anything to do with moving through platforms is now smoother than before.

- Camera issue for certain monitor resolutions have been fixed. (If you still have problems, please feedback to me!)

- Minor hit-box adjustments.

- Slightly better path-finding for Flying Slime.
[IMG]

[IMG]

The flying Slime's path-finding is a simple mp_potential_step_object* function and thankfully tweaking the mp_potential_settings* led to a much better overall result.
(gamemaker functions)

- Fixed a bug where the game icon doesn't appear on the taskbar when you ctrl-tap out of the game.
This is I think a known bug in Studio 1.4 that happens only when a game launches straight into fullscreen. A simple fix is just to run the game in windowed mode for a step or two before going into fullscreen. Once the game icon can be seen on the taskbar it won't disappear again, so you can safely enter and exit fullscreen as and when you want to.

Fine-tuned some numbers to get a smoother, more natural variable jump height. I have to say the movement system has improved quite a bit the past few weeks following players' feedback. Shows the importance of having others play your game.

[IMG]

Made some changes to the Crosshair so that you can tell at a glance when you're out of ammo. Also makes it less likely to lose sight of the crosshair amidst the chaos.

Update v0.1.4

- Added sound effects to Spikes trap.

- Added sound effects when countdown timer goes below 3.

- Added a little segment to the tutorial stage. Hopefully this will make people more aware of the usefulness of dodge-roll.

[IMG]

I have been hard at work on making new content. Here's a sneak peek at World 4:

[IMG]

[IMG]

World 4 is not quite done yet as there are still lot of things left to do (new weapons and items unlock etc). Hopefully I'd be able to get this big content update out in the middle of December so stay tuned!

P.S. consider joining Gunkid 99's Discord server if you want to follow along with the development process.

Minor Uodate v0.1.5

Patch notes:

- Getting injured is now a LOT more obvious. New hit sound has been added, injured animation is also slightly longer. An error which used to cancel out the injured animation if the player gets hit while in the air has been fixed.

- The Bazooka will still one-hit-kill all enemy types but its damage has been lowered. The previous damage figure was so high that even if you equipped multiple items that lower damage, it will still decimate everything.

- The Item, "First-Aid" now takes 40 seconds to activate instead of the previous 90.

- The Item, "Health gain" now takes 100 seconds to activate instead of the previous 120.

Update v0.2.0 - World 4 is here!

[IMG]

World 4 is robot/tech themed. Expect a much higher difficulty, even the environment is out to get you! Some stages can be rather tricky(but fun!) to navigate, like the bouncing pad below:

[IMG]

Make use of the pad to overcome the height and traverse the stage quicker. Your survival might depend on it. Even the enemies of World 4 have a few tricks up their sleeves.

[IMG]

The happy flying-bot looks deceptively slow at first glance, but with each hit it takes, it becomes faster (and angrier). You can't really tell from this gif but at its fastest the flying-bot is even faster than the player, making it the fastest enemy in the game.

[IMG]

The Shield-bot has a sturdy shield that makes it difficult to deal with head-on. However it is pretty weak if you can bypass its shield.

And of course, with a new World comes new weapons!

[IMG]

A big ass weapon that is both melee and long-ranged.

[IMG]

These bubble bullets may be weak, but they can linger around the stage and act as traps for approaching enemies. Set them up properly and they can easily overwhelm any enemy.

And many more weapons I shall leave to you to discover yourself ;)
As always, feedback will be greatly appreciated! You can reach me here or on Discord.