There’s a new demo! I also made a video about it!

You can play the new demo in your browser here:

I’m not going to go into details about all the new features; both the video and the dev log on the page do that already.

But the project is in a good state. It’s nearing pre-alpha, I would say. The main cornerstones of the game’s design are in place and functional. Those aspects being battles, stamina and survival systems, camping, shops, and the most recent addition, recruiting new party members.

The game is still lacking in the fun department. Battles are a bit monotonous; the repetitive music doesn’t help, and the movement is quite sluggish. The game is also lacking in variety of gameplay and random nonsense that breaks up the repetition.

I’m thinking of adding some risk-reward type of mechanics. Like a pseudo-gambling mechanic. Like an NPC who facilitates a Wheel Of Fortune type of mini-game that can reward or punish the player. The problems with that come from both implementation and also the balance of positive to negative effects. It should seem like it’s fair, even if I want to skew the balance a bit.

The map screen is also next to get revamped. Bigger maps and whatnot. With the new status screen, I’m able to remove the UI on the left of the screen. I’ve come to realise that there’s no need to have that information on the screen at all times, as you only lose health and mana in battle. You can heal outside of battle, but it doesn’t warrant the screen real estate to display the number going up. So with that gone, and the stamina bar stuck on screen using screen parallax set to 0, I could potentially have larger, scrollable maps.

This is purely hypothetical at the moment. There is one issue, and that’s the movement being stuck inside of a loop. This loop exists to limit the player’s movement to one tile at a time, making it easier to calculate stamina use. However, I don’t know if camera tracking will continue to work while inside the loop. Several elements of GB Studio do not function properly when the player movement is stuck inside a loop. As previously mentioned in my last Tur video, triggers don’t work, so I have to look at the precise tile location of the player to trigger events.

I am still experimenting with changing how the input system works, so perhaps I will get around this should issues arise. But I would like the use of triggers back.

Anyway, the rest of the year is likely going to be focused on Cybersurfer. It really needs to get into its full production stage at this point. It needs to get to an early access state this year, or it’s just not going to be finished. Working on multiple projects is not helping, plus all the Twitch and YouTube stuff that I want to do as well.

On the subject of YouTube, I am considering moving the game development streams to my game dev YouTube channel. Currently, archiving stuff from the Twitch channel to the YouTube channel is a pain, as I have to swap the account the Twitch channel is linked to. So, doing it there would mean I don’t have to swap stuff around. But I haven’t solidified this decision yet, so just take it as cautionary for now.

Right, as usual, here’s the updated plan for the rest of the year.

Hopefully the video projects don’t eat into my development time like they did last year. I’ve changed the production pipeline to speed up the voice recording stuff. I wish I could spend more time on fancy effects, but I neither have the time nor the motivation to really learn DaVinci Resolve’s visual effects stuff.

That’s enough for now. See you in the next one.

-Adam