(also formerly known as the Zortch expansion pack)

in the previous game Zortch has escaped from the planet of the Brainsuckers
and after a short trip in her new spaceship she falls onto a desert planet
due to an accident with microwave popcorn

she now finds herself in a conflict between the natives of the planet
the human settlers and a bizzare cybernetic cult that worships mites

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Links:
devlog of the first game
the first game
youtube version of the devlog

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a lot has happened since the release of the first game (about a year ago)
things got crazy, the game got a lot of fans it featured in many yt channels 😵
(of course compared to the big players like HROT or Ultrakill, Zortch is still just a speck 🤭)
I made a lot of patches and drunk on confidence started working on an expansion pack..
it only meant to be a map pack with a few new things
and then I realised that the engine is not up for it
so I rewrote a few things to make it extendable
and then things got out of hand 😓

I still insist on calling it an expansion pack however
as I don't have any better ideas (let's just settle with sequel)

most of the devlog has already started in a short youtube video format this time
but as the original had it's devlog on itch.io I felt bad not having one here as well
I'm much less organized nowadays and sometimes just end up posting devlogs
to friends or any poor soul that comes across 😓

so I've been trying to write a postmortem for the first Zortch game
turns out writing a postmortem is not my forte
here is a very short one

Things learned:

• people insist on 60+ fps for their games now 
• it's not a good idea to make a game single threaded (vsync is unreliable)
• if you have your own engine you need to plan for multi threaded from day one - as windows doesn't like multithreaded opengl (unlike linux)
• people are all about the PS1 nowadays (low poly, unfiltered textures and so on)
• a game that is always on sale is probably not a good model (seems to confuse people, low price associated with low value)
• people will eventually demand gamepad support - might as well add it on day one
• you cannot make a level simple enough where people not get lost
• if your game is not on Steam it might as well not exist 😓
• if you publish your game on Steam either add achievements on release or don't bother later (unless you want to start fights)

here are some new features that were added (that were not in the first game)

and a few more screenshots (I kind of ran out of space on the previous one)

originally I used a very old tech by reading the depth pixel out to see if a flare is visible
turns out there is an extension in opengl - originally meant to see if objects get rendered but just counts pixels drawn
that could be used for this - so what is happening here is that if the center of your flare is visible
you draw it over geometry that is close to you - for the most part it works just as well with regular sprites 🤔

you can now play through as if it was a cheap 3rd person game
the Zortch model is now much better (but still very cheap, it's all programmer graphics after all)

as you might have noticed the style is a little different
in the original game I made lowpoly models and tried my best to paint them up by hand (with various results)
the new models are all started as high poly models and baked into lower poly counterparts

I accidently discovered that todays modelling tools are perfectly capable of replicating Shiny's Messiah tech (circa 2001)
of course they were early adopters - nowadays all non lowpoly modelling techniques involve creating a high res model
and then somewhat making a lower one with better topology and baking the textures onto it
of course modern games bake the layers seperately (diffuse map, normal map, specular map, who knows what else map)
in this case all the lighting is baked into one single diffuse map

so I do a high poly version of the model using various primitives then make a voxelised version (Sculpting->Remesh in Blender)
then I throw some decimation on it and clean it up as much as I can and do the dreaded UV map
one downside of this technique that the models look awful with vertex lighting
and upside is that this means I don't have to calculate the model normals for animation

I started working on the bosses
thing is they really bring the game together
back in the day of arcades bosses used to take quarters off kids (as a form of early digital bullying)
some see them as exams for checking you are familiar with game mechanics (nintendo seems to insist on this)
and some see it as some sort of extra challenge just for difficultys sake (fromsoftware's schtick)
but in reality they are just for showing off
a sort of extra entertainment factor
and the story of the game can be planned around them
and of course they look good on screenshots and trailers 🤔

anyway here we got the stargazer
inspired by a fish that bears the same name
which got it's name for looking up
not so much gazing at stars but at potential prey
of course with no prey around they might gaze at the stars

now the idea here is that the ocean might be gone
but the show must go on
and many animals just adapt and get on with their business


often learning new tricks in the process


I often envy people who can afford concept artists or to make
elaborate plans about the games themselves
my little ms paint scribbles pale in comparison 😔

I upgraded from making models all day to working on boss code all day
I'm making the clear mistake of trying to work on all bosses at once

so far the stargazer boss is turning out well

then we have the bandit behemot who somehow got himself a military grade gatling
and proudly strutting around with it

his aim could be improved though 🤔

turns out that making a convincing tornado effect is not easy
I either should drop the 3D model or the particles
both turned out well but have a disagreement about how this effect should work
on the other hand I thought making the player fly up and swim around in the air
will be the hard task but it was working in like 5 minutes  🤔

overall things seem to be going well but slowly
so far only one boss idea was cut
it was seemed to be easy but .. well it wasn't
no need to panic yet

I got sidetracked a little trying to make the car work..
now the engine still has no physics engine whatsoever
(I tried out bullet was so disapointed I don't even plan on adding one anymore)

long story short I had this idea of making the car the old way
from simple distance springs
there is no verlet, it's simple euler stuff
running at 750 fps

it's made out of 6 spheres and about 18 springs
literally a car held together by glue and prayer

adding a mesh kind of hides the jank - but not by much

the prototype was really promising

ingame there were troubles 😓

turns out getting the basics to work is just start of the journey
one thing I was worried about is how to flip the car back
(you don't have a gravity gun after all)
but then just kicking it and it magically flips
not only worked but it was the easiest part

overall I'm not sure what to do about it now
it's good enough to keep it in the game
but not good enough to build serious gameplay on it 🤔

and of course I still only have the test interior 😓

things are getting a bit hectic - so much I tend to forget to update this devlog 😓

even though the stakes are pretty high

there are many areas under development - I make the mistake of trying to work on all of them


I cannot help it - I got the game all in my head - it's just difficult to get it onto the PC 😓


but when I can I go too far - some maps are getting way bigger than they should be
it's hard to get in the zone but once you are in it's even harder to stop 🤔


the problem goes double for the mines - but before we continue remember



here is a screenshot of the mine level in the editor


now you see that little yellow truck on the bottom? here is it for scale

of course this might not tell the full story .. here it is again


as you can see it's a cute little thing
so there are plenty of ideas for areas
but connecting them together and figuring out where it all should go is tricky
so far the only way I have to fix this is to iteratively play through the map again and again
and eventually reach at something comfortable
I had the same problem with the first game - I felt the maps are a mess
in the end people didn't mind the mess
they hated the maps that were too complex and liked the more linear ones 🤔
one thing I know for sure that mapping is still my weakest point
and I'm not sure what to do to improve 😓
I got more confident modelling them but cannot tell you what would make
an enjoyable map  - for me I can tell - but for players I have no clue 🤔

and now it's time for more isometric goodness

one of the maps is a giant dam - and it's the biggest level pushing the engine to it's limits
so I decided to make it larger for some reason

also hit a huge milestone: the mines are the first level finished
as far as geometry and player route goes
still need to place items, enemies and test the thing

some of the maps got so big they break the editor view
originally I wanted a lot of small levels
but it seems like there will be a few but gargantuan levels instead

ironically I have the most trouble with the warehouse level
this is about its fifth redesign

the first map is planned to be a little western town
one of the only maps  where I' m not sure if I should make it bigger

and here we have the badlands that are indeed looking bad so far
there is a single gas station - and the map design philosophy was
that when in doubt just keep adding trucks

I'm getting doozy from all this mapping work
at least I'm not being watched..

even though the game is slowly shaping up there are still things that giving me trouble
most of all the mapping

silly ideas and characters seem to work well - but the main problem is still the same
what to do on the level?

now people stated they hate keyhunting
they also hate maps that are too short
and also maps that are too big and there is nothing to do

this is giving me some trouble
I'm toying with the idea of at least bringing the blue key back
after all you have an automap now that shows you where it is

still after much iteration the ruins map is more or less finished

in the end I settled with a much smaller map
even back on Zortch1 the comfortable size of a map was identified (based on old fps maps)
and the central area pretty much takes all space for that
in the end the fact I can now make bigger and more convoluted maps
doesn't mean much as they tend to not  work that well

in my disappointment with these events I added 3 new soda flavours and machines
also now all soda brands give different amount of hp

things are not getting easier
for now one thing is sure

so once again I realised that I need to change my methods.. and worrying about the maps will get me nowhere
as you can see what I have no trouble with is making more characters - there are about a truckload of npcs now
(only about 5-6 were planned but I couldn't help myself)

also there are tricks used to make it look like there are more of them

so right now I will be focusing what I'm good at and just keep adding characters..
until I feel there is enough
and the maps themselves will be kept simple (not going beyond the first games quality)

as far as the NPCs concerned there is enough of them now
there are about 15 unique ones
which is quite a high number from the previous games 0  🤔
there are two more planned
but they are optional to the story

and as far as the enemies go things are getting out of hand   🤔

once again I forgot about this devlog
the good news is because I work so much on the game it makes me exhausted
the bad news is of course the game is far from ready
I was hoping to have a demo this year
but it looks I won't make it 😔

still plenty was done - here are some highlights:


added some new textures - the trains are still bad looking but not that bad

in the first game many maps were built around little gags - here is one of the new ones



modelled some everyday objects like a fridge
these are more like little feelies that make the world more believable


as the game takes place in the desert it seemed appropriate to make a parody of vegas
of course it's an scifi game and in the future you can do even crazier things with neons


I somehow improved in modelling skills - this toilet is a clear step up from the ones in the first game

but when it comes to furniture I'm still hopeless 😔