Hi, this is my first jam,

I'm not used to doing devlogs but am going to give it a try

Concept:

A shade with a rare gemstone embedded in their stomach wants some friends and goes out looking for them, but an evil corporation wants the gemstone.

It sounds silly out of my head, but to fit the theme it's about healing their solitude

It will be a 3D third-person shooter roguelite

Mechanics:

Fairly simple, go through procedurally generated levels, make it to the boss, defeat boss, go on the the next level

Throughout, can collect additional characters and upgrades

All upgrades through the run will be exclusive to the run

I will be using Unreal Engine 4.25, Blender & Photoshop

I've added two of the four playable characters in-game

I'm going for that ps1 low poly vibe

Shade - first playable character

Junk Mage - unlocked in-game

I still haven't thought of a name for my game yet, hopefully something strikes me in the next couple of days

Day - 4

Been working on the main menu and given a working title of Couree (Not sold on this title - may change)

Need to improve model and textures of the house, but good enough for place holder currently

The characters will "move" into the house once unlocked and will idle around in the background
More items can be added to the house for decorations, purchased with in-game currency

-----

Also been working on the level generation

It's a really simple system that will select a random level from an array and offset from previous once map conditions met (i.e. walking up to the hit box)

Just need to create some more levels, enemies, allies, health system, upgrade system, etc. and I'll have a game

I'm planning, if I get enough time is to set up alternate game modes like - unlimited run where the levels can generate from arrays outside of the themed 'course'.

And a defense mode where you have to protect the house 
Only if I get time

 Until tomorrow

Day - 5

Been a bit of a slow one today

Been working on enemy behaivour and all the issues that come with that

A few quality of life things like projectiles that work and actually collide with the environment. Mostly behind the scenes kind of stuff

1. Progress saving
2. Options - such as full screen and windowed mode
3. Upgrade system - power ups and such (more on that tomorrow)
4. Had a massive bug with infinite loops
5. etc.

What I can show is a new enemy type. It will fly at you and then fire from the sky

And just so the other enemy isn't forgotten

Added a few more levels to the already impressive two so far. Lots more to come

Looking forward to showing some actual gameplay soon

Till tomorrow

Day - 6

Trying to bring things together,

Still have a lot of content to make but the core gameplay loop is down

Upgrades have been implemented

Currently they are really simple billboards - although learnt how to do animated materials - so that's a plus

  

Made the character specific upgrade system so that the upgrades effect different characters differently

No new models to show off today but will upload a video of a short playthrough

No boss battle unfortunately (yet!)

I love the art of this game !

Haven't done any work this weekend.

Thought I'd share some pages of concepts before I started the project

This was my first page on concept, it's evolved a little since then

On characters, I'll share the two I've already shown:

In regards to levels, I've been drawing them out as a tile then using as a reference for modelling in 3D

Thought I'd share a little on how I have been approaching planning and development of whatever my game is called

I'd be happy to share more of my design documents if anyone is interested - just know, if I share more on it, then there would be spoilers for content I haven't shared yet ;p

I'll get back to development tomorrow - only a week to go and so much to do

Day - 10

I've finished the first area I'd say

Added in audio, but to be honest, it's on the meh side

Here's the current state of the game, also don't judge that I lost against the first boss

Still plenty to do - still have a few days to go

Hopefully it'll be fun 

Till tomorrow 

This looks awesome- it's really cool to see everything come together in that gameplay demo. You really nailed the low poly vibes.

Day almost done,

Letting everyone know, I'm still working on it and have landed on a name Cossnock (it doesn't mean anything)

Below is the fully upgraded house and all furniture has to be unlocked, each piece will spawn in an upgrade when each run is started, to help out a bit.

Here is the house with no upgrades

I've had to scale down how many levels can spawn as I seriously underestimated how long it would take to do

It seems like not many but here is all of them

Additionally, the third of four playable character (the fourth won't be present as I don't have the time) - this character will be unlocked by completing the first two levels

Hopefully the game is enjoyable as there is so much stuff I had to cut

So far the project is around 355mb which is on the larger side for a PS1 game (I think) and I have no idea how much bloat UE4 will add once compiled. But it's on track to have a playable game by either tonight, or tomorrow.

Till then

So I compiled the project ready to submit and all the textures were black.

I forgot that I was using a console command that doesn't go across to a packaged product. I should have it fixed in no time and then to submit.

Lots I didn't get around to but learnt a lot

I'll have my project repackaged and hopefully functional soon

It's submitted

Please check it out https://alxinc.itch.io/cessnock

I worked really hard on it and if you unlock everything you can play as a dog

I really love this aesthetic. Looking forward to see where you go in the future.