Unnamed Infinite Runner Game

I started working on an infinite runner game a couple of weeks ago. I wound up spending almost all of my time working on the game-over animations, though.

Most of this work involved of creating those Good Vore Bulges. The new system is a lot more exciting than what I’d been using in Predatory Pursuit.

You can see some of the results here, here, and here.

I could barely motivate myself to work on the actual infinite runner part of the infinite runner game, though. It just wasn’t all that interesting to me.

I originally planned to work on the 7DFPS game jam this week. I started prototyping a parkour game, but I kind of lost interest after a day or two. Fortunately, this rekinled another interest. Hence…

Predatory Pursuit

Yeah, I’m thinking I’m back.

Settings and Stats

Working on Boss Buffet and Synth/Resize helped me to figure out a settings system that’s a lot less…scuffed than Pursuit’s. The old system was a real mess. Renaming anything would completely break your stored settings, and adding new choices to a setting would switch which one you had selected. Everything was defined in long C# scripts with tons of copy-paste going on.

The new system doesn’t have any of those issues, and is also a lot easier to localize.

I brought the settings UI over from Synth/Resize. Check it out:

As a comparison, here’s how it looked before:

I think it’s an upgrade!

Stats are getting a similar treatment. My first stab at them was basically just a list of stat names (which I could never change, or the values would be lost). They also had no way to be tracked per level, per character, etcetera.

This wasn’t a huge issue when you always played as the gryphon, and Fen was always the computer-controlled enemy. It sure is one now, though!

I am still working on the UI to display them, but the new system can track things like “how many times Fen has digested you” or “how many times you’ve played the Basement level”.

Also, the credits look nicer now.

The code that generated them was pretty ugly, so that was fixed up. I’ve learned a lot in the year since I started working on this thing!

Game Modes

Currently, game modes are pretty bare-bones – the options in the main menu just decide whether you spawn as Fen or as a gryphon. I’ve just started working on a replacement.

Each game mode will be pretty distinct. I’m expecting to have:

• A mode where prey completes map objectives to escape
• A mode where prey just survives as long as possible
• A sandbox mode with no objectives or pre-defined spawns

You’ll be able to play either side in the first two modes.

This still needs some more thought, though.

Customization

One thing that isn’t in the new settings system is stuff like:

• Monster size
• Monster hearing
• Digestion speed

These no longer make sense as global game settings. There isn’t a clearly-defined “monster” anymore – there’s just an entity named Fen that happens to know how to eat you.

Instead, I’m going to let you customize each character individually. For each thing a character can do, there’ll be a little menu to mess with it.

I haven’t even started implementing this one yet, but I’ve got a pretty clear picture in my head how it’ll work.

What’s Next

I’m not quite ready to push a new experimental build. You can expect one next week, though, with:

• Some kind of customization for Fen and the gryphon
• Those Good Vore Bulges
• A game mode, or maybe several game modes