Progoster Devlog - Week 6

Sunday

Sunday was probably the most fun that I've had in weeks! I started today with absolutely no idea of what to do next. There weren't any bugs that I was aware of, I'd decided that I'd rather make all of the enemies, obstacles, and features before designing the level, and I couldn't think of anything new. After a while of the game developer's most valuable weapon (Pacing around) I thought of it!

That's right baby, a cloche and silver platter! Any doubt in my mind that a silver platter didn't fit the café theme was demolished by that name. Cloche. So remarkably French!

The cloches aren't enemies per say, but they do fit the theme and spice up the gameplay, so I'm including them in my five enemies goal. 

Remember that vase breaking minigame in Plants vs. Zombies? The cloche works a lot like those! Here's a video.

When you open the cloche, there is a fifty percent chance that the cloche will reveal a health pick-up and a fifty percent chance that it will reveal an enemy. I made the health pick-ups just for the cloche! That's two major features in one day!  Not to mention three brand new sound effects!

I still have a lot of problems and questions with this feature. But they're all fun game design questions!

• Should I make certain enemies more likely to appear than others?
• Should you be able to walk through the cloche?
  • If not, how would I program that?
• Is 50/50 the best health/enemy spawn chance?
  • Could I have items, stats, or even different playable characters who influence this?
• Should cloches be required, or should they be an optional risk/reward mechanic?
• What other goodies could spawn from the cloche? 
• Will I have these appear in every level or just this one?
• If I add rewards for killing enemies besides progression, would that make getting an enemy more valuable than getting a health pick-up? How would that effect possible luck features?

Let's tackle these problems together. The first step is to determine what kind of game we're making. The Progoster will be a relatively easy game.  Young kids should be able to beat it if they really concentrate. (The younger demographic I'm aiming for is also why I've avoided swearing in these devlogs). However, the game should not be so easy that it's boring.  Let me demonstrate.

This is the flow chart. That "flow" state going diagonally through the middle is an optimal experience where a player is challenged just enough to be engaged, but not enough to be frustrated or anxious. As the player progresses, their skills will improve. Therefore, we must increase the game's difficulty with their skills to remain within the flow state. Here's an example of how different genres of games do this:

I see you're impressed by my MS Paint skills, but try to focus on what the graph's conveying. While very rough (It's debatable whether games like Super Meat Boy should be inside or outside of the Flow area), it does get my general point across. Here's what I want from The Progoster:

I want The Progoster to be just barely hard enough to engage players of all ages. Young players should be concentrating with all of their might as they carefully make their way through the levels. More experienced players should be able to breeze through the game, feeling powerful and engaged the entire time. 

So with all of that in mind, let's solve some of these design questions.

Q: Should I make certain enemies more likely to appear than others?

A: Probably. Unless you're shooting the cloche as you run by,  shooting the cloche can instantly activate a coffee cup. Less experienced players may receive a guaranteed hit here.  So all enemies that can instantly, and quickly, attack the player upon being spawned will have their spawn chance reduced.

Q: Should you be able to walk through the cloche?

A: Probably not. Having the cloche restrict the player's movement would make the game more challenging in a way that could be very frustrating. While I will probably add some walls inside of the room, they will be a lot easier to see, and shooting them doesn't have a 50% chance to spawn another enemy.  If cloches could stop the player's movement, they would be an incredibly annoying object that would cause players to groan when they see it in a room.

Q: Is 50/50 the best health-up/enemy spawn chance?

A: Honestly...It seems alright! Health-ups are already pretty common as they are. If we assume that a player will take about one point of damage per enemy spawned by a cloche, then the two chances balance each other out. I feel like having even more health-ups spawn would put us into that boredom area of the chart.

Q: Should there be objects, effects, or even new characters that influence your luck at the cloche?

A: That really doesn't seem to affect the game's core difficulty. Besides, that's just a content question. It all depends on how much energy I have left near the end of the project.

Q: Should cloches be required, or optional?

A: I'm going to go with optional. In fact, I pretty much did before I even started writing this devlog. A sneaky little detail I added was that when you open a cloche for the first time, it is guaranteed to spawn a health-up. If a player opens their first cloche to find an enemy that attacks them without warning, they may decide that all cloches are bad and that they need to avoid them. Starting them off with a health-up makes sure that the player is aware that cloches can contain both good and bad objects. If they were required, I probably wouldn't have added this feature. Why make them optional? Because every game, no matter how difficult or easy, is improved by adding impactful decisions. Deciding whether or not to risk opening a cloche is an engaging decision that makes the game more interesting. The choice also makes the game easier, as players won't have to take major risks if they don't want to.

Q:  What other goodies could spawn from the cloche?

A: I'm really not sure. Maybe I could have bombs spawn sometimes, but I'm still not sure whether or not I want the player to have an unlimited amount of bombs. It could help with balance a lot. The player already starts able to take ten hits. The game would be almost impossible to lose if every other room gave you even more health. So adding extra good objects that don't increase health could make the game more fair without depowering the player.

Q: Will I have these appear in every level or just this one?

A: This is a genuinely difficult question. On one hand, it would be super weird of The Legend of Zelda or The Binding of Isaac only had items spawn on the first level. Having random items very consistently drop is a core expectation for this genre of game. On the other hand, a cloche is very particular to this level.  So here's my idea: All enemies will have a chance to drop a good item after dying. This chance will be much, much smaller, like maybe 10%.  So even though the cloche might not come back, pick-ups are still a consistent element throughout the game. Also, cloches could help to make this the easiest level in the game, which is very nice, as it would be the first level. It would also be balanced by giving every other level its own risk-reward mechanic that mostly benefits the player.  So, I think that they'll appear in just this one, as long as I make more tweaks to balance this out. They would also probably appear in the final level if I decide to make it so that the final level is a remix of the preceding levels' enemies.

Q:  If I add rewards for killing enemies besides progression, would that make getting an enemy more valuable than getting a health pick-up? How would that effect possible luck features?

A: This question has become rather redundant. While giving each enemy a 10% item drop technically gives cloches a 55% chance of giving a good item, it is still pretty well balanced. Besides, this is still an easy game for kids.  And unless I add something incredibly useful that you only get by killing enemies, I feel like it's safe to say that more luck = more pick-ups and less enemies.

Whew! I sure did ramble on that one! Today was a reminder that I don't just like game design, I LOVE it! Bouncing ideas off myself and thinking up cool new mechanics is an incredibly fun process, and I am very thankful that I get to share it with you!

Monday

Once again, today was very productive! Don't worry, I don't have a game design raving for today.

The first thing I did was add the 10% item drop chance when killing an enemy.

I have added yet another enemy while making some important bug fixes!

The baguette is a rather simple enemy. It points and moves towards the player as it floats around. I like this, because it lets me add a chase enemy while still letting me procrastinate on learning pathfinding!

The baguette has a sound for being destroyed (but not one for being hit, which I'll probably add) and a sprite for being destroyed as well.

For some reason, adding this enemy had a lot of roadblocks when it came to laws that all of the other enemies abide by. Like:

• Not attempting to attack the player if your not on screen.
• Being damaged by explosions.
• Being spawned by cloches.
• Being spawned by the random enemy object.

The interesting part is that, while fixing all of this for the baguette, I discovered a ton of problems that I was able to fix!

• Before, Hank could still be attacked when he died. When Hank dies, he simply becomes immobile and invisible after setting a short timer that will reset the level. Every previous enemy either A, got destroyed upon hitting Hank, or B, didn't follow Hank incredibly closely. But with the baguette, the screen would still shake and the hurt sound effect would keep playing even after you die. This has been fixed for every possible way of getting damaged.
• When the doors opened, it would always make a sound effect, regardless of whether or not they were enabled in the options menu.
• The baguette and the coffee stains had rectangular hit boxes, even though their sprites were blob shaped or (sometimes) diagonal. This would cause some unfair hits.
• Several enemies (I haven't even checked all of them for this problem yet) would still destroy bullets that hit them if you shoot them during their death animation. As of now, I can say that this has been fixed for the spirit and the baguette.
• Explosions actually have a damage value of ten. Before, every enemy would just die if they hit an explosion, so it didn't really have an exact value. 
• I added a sound effect for when an enemy drops a pick-up. 
• Whether or not  the camera would be a good fit for the room was entirely dependent on where I placed it in the game engine's room edit menu. Now, it will always snap in a good spot when you start the game.

Today was wonderful and satisfying. I'm very excited for this week's summary list.

Tuesday

Today, I forgot to set my alarm last night, I had a terrible headache from extended sugar withdraw, it was New Year's Eve, and I had a dentist's appointment. I was highly considering just calling it a day, but I was able to make my three changes.

• There was a very bizarre bug where if a mug enemy chased you to the bottom wall and then immediately tried to chase you to the left or the right, it would instead sink further into the bottom wall and move in the opposite direction of you. This has been fixed.
• I realized that the baguettes could just merge locations since they don't interact with each other in any way. After a bit of fiddling, I realized that I had not idea how to fix this, at least not on a "bad" day like this. So I got around it with a wonderfully absurd solution: The baguettes now power up like a helicopter and start spinning after the player. It's easier, and it's way more interesting. It's a keeper.
• I really liked how the cake and the pitcher leave marks. It makes the screen look like a war torn battlefield. I've decided that I'll give most enemies some kind of post death mark. Today, I added some left over crumbs after the baguette is defeated.

Wednesday

• I have changed the crumb sprite a bit. It looks a lot better now.
• The baguettes would wind up when you entered a new room, they would already be spinning at full speed. That has been fixed.
• I added an ectoplasm stain for when the spirit is killed.

Thursday

On Wednesday night, I had a wonderful time which lasted until about 1:30 am. So my Thursday morning was both later than usual, and in a different spot than usual. Just like the last time this happened, this convinced me that I couldn't do any work for that day. I've decided that from now on, I won't let nonsense like that stop me.  The less I feel like I can do it, the more I have to do it. Being so dependent on this schedule isn't good for my productivity, as is borderline OCD.

Friday

• The doors now have a short delay after beating the last enemy before opening. It was weird when you were up against the wall as you killed the last enemy and you were taken to the next room without wanting to.
• I have finally toggled with the sound effects so that they aren't all at maximum volume! Not only does this make the game much less annoying, but it also allows me to make certain sounds more prominent than others!
• I realized that the sound that plays when you destroy the coffee pitcher sounds nothing like the sound of a coffee pitcher breaking. I have replaced it with a more fitting sound.
• The spirits were incredibly annoying to fight, as they would constantly move in completely unpredictable directions. I have added a stun so that whenever you hit a spirit, it will lock up for a fifth of a second.

Summary

This week, I have:

• Added cloches.
• Added health ups.
• 6 new sound effects.
• Fixed post-death-damage bug.
• Fixed door-sound bug.
• Fixed hit boxes.
• Fixed post-death-bullet-destruction bug.
• Added an explosion damage value.
• Made the game a little easier to work on.
• Fixed mug bug.
• Invented helicopter baguettes.
• I added two new marks after enemies are defeated.
• Begun carefully examining my dependence on schedules.
• Added a short delay to the doors opening.
• Changed the volume of most sound effects.
• Made spirits less annoying.
• Added baguette enemy.

Will next week be as incredible? Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure that it won't. But you never know!

Thank you oh so much for reading this, and have a good week.