Hey guys, it's been a while. For the past couple of months I've been working on a new game. The concept is simple, the game would be a wave-based fighter where you have to survive against waves of enemies. That's all there is to it. It's exactly how it sounds, and that's how I want it to be.

Looking back, I think I figured out what went wrong with my previous game. While the basic concept of "Complete objective to win." sound simple, it's not exactly straight forward.

The game I was trying to make was way more complicated than I thought it was. As I grew with experience, I became dissatisfied with how the game was structured. At the pace I'm was going, it probably would've taken years just to finish the game.

I didn't want to be stuck with the same project built on practically legacy code. This was further exacerbated when I participated in a game jam with someone else, and I had to program a 3D dungeon crawler with a turn based battle system within 9 days. I was so burnt out that I lost all interest in continuing development, and I had to take a break from programming for a couple days.

After that, I decided to focus all my attention in learning C++. Y'know, just making small projects for the purpose of learning and experimentation. Eventually I regained that itch, that inspiration to make another game. I think it was in the middle of the night when it happened.

From all the experience I've gained from Errand Run, and the my first two game jams. I decided to not make the same mistakes. I putting my full focus on getting the game done and keeping the scope small. Only then would I consider adding more onto it.

During the planning stages for the game, I've learned something. A game doesn't always have to be ground breaking or original. The reason I'm making this game is because I just wanted to make a wave-based fighter.

Pre-Alpha Footage

The game is gonna be the second entry to the True Human Tribulation series with it's full name being: True Human Tribulation 2: Skirmish. Despite the numbering, both games share zero connection story-wise, and can be played in any order. I tend to focus on the gameplay rather than the story more often than not. Some mechanics from the previous game may return.

Fighting games are one of my favorite genres. I used to play M.U.G.E.N a lot, and made edits of life bars, screen backs, and characters. The game would have some fighting game mechanics, but it wouldn't be as mechanically advanced as the mainstream fighting games. I intend for the controls to be simple enough to fit on an SNES controller.

In the 69 days I've spent working on this game, I managed to get a lot done.  It's hard for me to give an accurate percentage to how finished the game is, so I'll declare it finished when it's finished. As you can see from the video, I got most of the core mechanics working, with almost  all the capabilities and mechanics of the player character finished as well. I think there's only one last thing I have to implement for the player, and if you're familiar with the series and my work, you can guess what that is. (Or if you have looked at the concept art.)

Next, I'll work on the title and menu scenes. After that, I'll put focus into implementing the game's loop. Which is something I already had a detailed plan for how it's going to work, so it should be a breeze.

Links and Contacts

The game is also open-source and hosted on GitHub. You could try out the prototypes there, and track the game's progress. Even though this will most likely be a solo project, I'm willing to accept help.

Github: https://github.com/ProarchwasTaken/tld_skirmish

Discord Server: https://discord.gg/MB75uMs9De

Contact Email: lorenarcdev@gmail.com

Dev Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@lorenarch6226

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Tyler37961642

Hey everyone, it's that time again. Like I said, I've gotten a lot done, and the game is a closer to reaching the Alpha stages! I'll only mention the most notable stuff. That's because something that I've learned with time is that no one really cares if you added a barebones title screen, and main menu.

Like sure, the code behind said systems, and the process of implementing them were fun and interesting, but the average person is never going to know that. I think I've talked about this before in a devlog of my previous project. About the cognitive dissonance of the develop and the end-user playing the game. It's always have been different, and as a developer, I've been on both sides of the spectrum.

Am I gonna expand on this later? Probably not, but there one silver lining with adding a title screen and main menu, the game is a lot more accessible for people to test out. No launching the game with a command line argument required. You could try out this version of the game on GitHub. Feedback is very much appreciated.

Github: https://github.com/ProarchwasTaken/tld_skirmish

Showcase Video

Stages

Let's talk about the important stuff. I laid the groundwork for stages which serve as the backdrop for the scene. They're relatively simple in concept. Only consisting of a background, and an overlay. They're not necessarily a class per say as all the textures for a stage are retrieved using a utility function. Through the usage of Gimp, and Aseprite, I've prepared the first stage, and the template for making more stages in the future

Gameplay Loop

As for the main game loop, I've got it working. At lot faster than last time too. While it is basic, it's exactly how I wanted it to be. With it being easy to understand at first glance.

If you're accustomed to these types of games, you know how it goes. There's a timer that ticks down, and a new wave begin when it hits zero. This continues until the final wave is reached, and the player wins once all the enemies on the final wave is defeated. (Although, I haven't gotten around to implementing that last part yet.)

Another thing is that different thing will happen depend on the current phase of game. Which is determined by the current situation. For example, if there are no enemies active or waiting to be spawned, the player will use a different idle sprite, and slowly regenerate missing health. As of now, this is the only method I have planned for the player could regain health.

What's next?

What's left is to implement one more thing and some miscellaneous changes, and the game would now be the alpha stages. With how simple the game is, I'm starting to have a proper roadmap for the game in mind. So expect some new flowcharts in the "docs" directory in the GitHub repository. With that, I'll see you guys later.

Hey guys, I'm back. The game has finally reached the Alpha stages! In fact, it has already reached that point around two weeks before this posts. The reason why I took so long to post an update is because I was doing some preparations, and cleanup. That will be explained later though.

General Overview

Since this is a special occasion, I've prepared a scripted video that gives a general overview of the game I'm trying to make. This is mostly the reason why it took me so long to post... I'm not exactly passionate about video editing. To me, the process is so time consuming. I hope you enjoy it if you do decide to watch it.

Sub-Weapons and Morale

The main addition in this update is the inclusion of Sub-Weapons and Morale. Both of them are recurring mechanics in the series. Sub-Weapons in this game are meant to act as an extension to the player's base moveset, providing them with two special actions that each cost Morale to use. Right now you could gain Morale through one of three ways: Countering enemy actions, successfully blocking attacks, and chaining  both normal attacks.

In response to all the recent attention I've been getting, I decided to open a discord server to attempt to build a central community. Thanks to webhooks, it also serves as a place to keep track of the game's current progress, and as a place for people to share media they found/created that aligns with series' main idea and themes. It's important to know that the server is protected by Wick, which means you would have to verify if you want to be given permissions such as sending messages. Although, you don't need to do that if you're just here to keep track of game, or to view that shared media.

Invite Link: https://discord.gg/MB75uMs9De

In a way, this is me taking the opportunity to actually fulfill my dream for the series. As something anyone could add on to. I know the whole idea of the series sounds pretty niche. It's fine if you're not interested. If you do know someone who would be, then it would be a big help to let them know of this series' existence!

What's Next?

The image you see below is a road map for what I have planned. I'm pretty much have a good idea on what to do for this game. As it stands with development going so much better than the previous game, I'm confident that I would be able to finish the game by the end of the year. At least by the end of February of next year if not.  

I'm still in the midst of performing cleanup, writing debug tools that will make testing the game a lot easier. After I'm done, I'm gonna focus on adding more Sub-Weapons, enemy types, and waves to add mechanical variety. That's all I have to say, so I'll see you guys later.

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I'm back with another update with the addition of a new Enemy and Sub-Weapon. I've already finished the update like two weeks prior to writing this post. It just that I had to prepare another video, and if it haven't became obvious enough already, I really dislike video editing.

The video gives a general overview of all the major additions. Unfortunately there are no captions, as the update post is way past overdue. I'd much prefer to redirect my focus towards making content for the game more than anything.

I highly suggest trying the alpha version of the game yourself before you continue reading as this post goes into more detail about the aforementioned additions. Like I said before, the game is open-source, and hosted on GitHub. Feedback is very much appreciated, even though this post will most likely receive radio silence like always.

https://github.com/ProarchwasTaken/tld_skirmish

If you wish to keep closer track of the game's progress. The  official True Human Tribulation discord server is probably the best way to go. I regularly post what I'm doing there, and I could but easily answer any questions you might have. It also serves as a place to find media that aligns with the core idea and themes of the series. It wouldn't hurt to check it out for a couple minutes.

https://discord.gg/MB75uMs9De

If you're still here, I would like to thank you for sticking around for so long. That means a lot to me. Without further ado, let's get right into it.

The Wretch

If you're perceptive, you could deduce what the Wretch's behavior would be from the video and the gif above. This is also intentional as I would want the enemy to be easy to understand at a glance, even without debug helpers.  In a way, the Wretch is designed to punish for carelessly rushing ahead, and to prevent the player from cheesing the game by just walking past enemies.

The Wretch inflicts a lot a damage, and she can attack very quicky. If the player were to just run at them, they would get hut before they could even get close enough to perform a normal attack. After attacking, the enemy will "retreat" for a random amount of time. During of which, she will refuse to attack the player, and run away from them. This is here to give the player some breathing room, and make the enemy more harder to defeat. With her only weakness being that she has a long recovery time after attacking.

The Basketball

The Basketball Sub-Weapon is vastly different compared to the Knife. In fact, it may even be harder to use if you became accustomed with the first Sub-Weapon. It certainly was for me... While the Knife's purpose is clear in allowing the player to perform easy combos that are capable of killing a Ghoul in one go, the Basketball is a lot more complicated as to showcase how versatile the Sub-Weapon system could be.

The Light Technique, upon use,  makes the player perform a "juking" maneuver of which they are invulnerable during the active phase. They are freely able to change directions, and cancel into any other action command they have access to. This is clearly meant to be as a way for the player to escape out of any sticky situations they might find themselves in, and it has quite a bit of potential if you're skilled enough.

The Heavy Technique is very unique and simple to understand from the gif below. The player will kick the ball, bouncing off the first enemy it hits.  Upon use, the player sub-weapon will be disabled, completely disallowing the the use of the Light Technique, but the player would still be able to perform a basic kick without any cost to Morale.

The kick inflicts a small amount of damage, but it's main purpose is to allow the player to kick the ball back, causing it to move faster and inflict more damage to the first enemy it hits. This could only be done a certain number of times before the ball won't bounce off the enemy anymore. Instead, it will just pierce through them. You see where I'm going with this right?

The heavy technique has the potential to inflict damage to multiple enemies at once when timed right. A lot more than the heavy attack, or the Knife's light technique.  Although, it requires some set up in order to do that.

What's Next?

All I have to do is implement one more enemy and sub-weapon, and the game would have now reached the Beta stages. I'll be satisfied with that before working on polishing. I can certainly say that the game has reached mid-development hell, something that I failed to get past with my first game. This is possibly one of the biggest challenges I've ever faced so far, but I'll try my best to push through it. I'll see you guys later.