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40wattstudio
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24 AUG 2024:
SCRAPSHIP
IS
DONE!
Whew! What to say? It's always been one of my "bucket-list" goals to make my own game. Thankfully technology has gotten to the point where it is completely viable to make a video game on your home computer. But what really got me started was finding a thumbstick with some of my old QBasic programs I made in High School . . . nearly 20 years ago. Then I found that there was a newer version of QBasic, called QB64, that allowed one to run their old code on newer machines. That was a game changer! After that, I found an excellent Youtube QBasic series by SchoolFreeware that covered all the new QB64 features. The final project in that series? A Space Invaders clone. That was enough to get me thinking about the capabilities of QB64 . . . and what I could potentially do with it.
Development started early 2020, just before the pandemic. Released a couple demos where I was just toying around with different ideas. Started the whole project over once or twice. It took over 4 years -- but keep in mind I was only working on it an hour a day unless I was sick, on vacation or on one of my many business trips.
Scrapship is far from a perfect game . . . and there are LOTS of things that could be improved on, but I am proud of what I was able to accomplish. Some of which I would deem rather complex (for QBasic at least). For me, the most remarkable thing is that I even finished it, because the truth is that Scrapship was never my dream game. A cool game, sure, but not my dream game. The secret to staying dedicated to a project for such a long time is consistency. Small doses of it, in my case. Motivational sticky quotes help.
But now that it's done, I'm super excited about the future of 40wattstudio. For one, I just got accepted to WGU (Western Governor's University) where I will be pursuing my bachelor's in Software Engineering (C# path). This is mostly to increase my employment chances as I'm currently unemployed. In my spare time, I'm looking forward to working on some "dream game" projects I have in mind. I won't share too much, but I've always liked Skyrim (and its incredible mod support) and I've poured countless hours into various versions of Civilization. So something along those lines.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK:
"Dreams are watered by hard work."
Thanks to everyone for their support over the past few years and for making this one of the most-viewed Devlogs here on Itch.io! Have a great rest of your week!
17 AUG 2024:
- Adjusted final boss so that it needs to have both guns destroyed before it can take damage. This makes it a little more challenging because it was way too easy to beat earlier.
- Added a brief animation when the final boss appears (it warps in the same way that some of the cruisers do).
- Improved battleship and carrier spawning/despawning.
- FIxed an issue with the galaxy background not scaling properly.
- Added difficulty settings -- Easy, normal and hard. This is based on the strength of your weapons. Easy = 2x more powerful. Normal = 1x power, Hard = 1/2 power.
- Biggest milestone this week though was going through all 13,000+ lines of code and adding/removing comments. Was also able to find ways to simplify some of the code by consolidating several IF . . . THEN statements.
- Game will be released sometime this August!
- The full game will be 100% free. No ads and no microtransactions.
- Apart from the initial download, no internet connection is required to play Scrapship. I love offline games.
- No AI was used in making Scrapship . Everything is made by humans.
- Full source code will be available for purchase for people interested in modding or programming. Apart from donations, this is the only way the game will be monetized. Let me reiterate again that the full game is 100% free.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK:
"We don't stop playing because we get old . . . we get old because we stop playing!"
Thanks for reading and have a great rest of your week!
10 AUG 2024:
- Got some good feedback this week from one of my early playtesters. Good to hear that Scrapship seems to be working fine on other computers and -- most importantly -- no game-crashing bugs.
- Game will be released sometime this August!
- The full game will be 100% free. No ads and no microtransactions.
- Apart from the initial download, no internet connection is required to play Scrapship. I love offline games.
- No AI was used in making Scrapship . Everything is made by humans.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK:
"There is no hard way around hard work. Embrace it." -- Roger Federer
Thanks for reading and have a great rest of your week!
If the end goal is a Skyrim clone, then I would recommend that all subsequent clones also be in the same vein. Super Mario Bros is a "simpler" project, but doesn't have much in common. I would suggest a classic Text Adventure as that would give you practice with the branching paths and complex dialogue trees.
3 AUG 2024:
Playtesting continues. Expecting to release the game sometime this August!
- The full game will be 100% free. No ads and no microtransactions.
- Apart from the initial download, no internet connection is required to play Scrapship. I love offline games.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK:
“Consistency is what transforms average into excellence.”
Thanks for reading and have a great rest of your week!
27 JUL 2024:
- Not much to report on my end, just minor changes and tweaks here and there. For the most part I’m just waiting for feedback from early playtesters to see if there are any last-minute bugs or changes that need to be implemented. So I don’t exactly want to call Scrapship done, but it pretty much is. Unless some major game-breaking bug pops up or something you can expect to see it by the end of August!
QUOTE OF THE WEEK:
“If people are not laughing at your goals, your goals are too small.” — Azim Premji
Thanks for reading and have a great rest of your week!
20 JUL 2024:
- Made quite a few last-minute fixes to the game. Some of the levels were noticeably laggy and the level transitions themselves weren't my favorite. But in the end I think it's better to have a smooth and consistent gameplay experience -- even if it means removing pretty graphics. So I removed the skybox backgrounds and the performance is vastly improved -- no more lag! There are still background objects (stars, asteroids, planets). I might add a couple more small objects in for variety.
- The asteroid field in particular got a complete overhaul. Instead of using an asteroid skybox, I procedurally created my own and the final result looks very good!
- Reworked all the level transitions so that one level seamlessly blends into the next.
- I'm finally happy with the AI.
- The game is more fun than I thought it was last week. You can stay around and shoot down the enemies or almost play it like an endless runner and avoid most of them.
- Added voiceovers.
- As far as running the game on my PC is concerned, the game is probably 99% complete -- a couple bug fixes and maybe some more background objects, but that's all.
- Tested Scrapship on my son's laptop and the experience is the same for the most part -- there are some bugs that need addressing, but nothing game-breaking.
- Scrubbed the code to fix some inconsistencies and bugs.
- Looking forward to finishing this thing!!!
QUOTE OF THE WEEK:
"Find radical joy in the hardest of pursuits." -- Eva zu Beck
Thanks for reading and have a great rest of your week!
13 JUL 2024:
- Battleships and carriers deactivate if off-screen for a certain amount of time. This also fixed a bug where level 5 never triggered.
- Continued working on AI system. It's getting closer to where I want it to be.
- Fixed game-freezing bugs and glitches related to the pause screen. The game could only be paused by stopping all the code that made things move. A truckload of boolean checks took care of this, but was causing all kinds of weird graphical glitches. Next I tried a different approach and made a special subroutine that would only display the objects, but even that experiment was all kinds of buggy. Ultimately I went with a much simpler pause screen to avoid getting rid of it altogether.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK:
"Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence." -- Vince Lombardi
Thanks for reading and have a great rest of your week!
6 JULY 2024:
Lots of progress on a variety of things. Also doing lots of playtesting to see if anything is broken or needs adjusting.
ADDITIONS:
- New galaxy backgrounds to level 4 to make it feel less empty (see screenshot above).
- Galaxy scrolls in and out during level transitions.
CHANGES:
- Only one carrier spawns at a time now to prevent overlap and lag.
- Reorganized hit detection code based on current level.
- Black hole speeds away faster when final boss destroyed.
OTHER:
- Copied the contents of this entire devlog (minus comments) to Word so that there is an offline version.
BUG FIXES:
- Shield down animation restart glitch when hit with single laser.
- Battleship 225 image misalignment between the top and bottom segments.
- Objects not pausing on pause screen.
A big thanks to everyone for helping this devlog to reach 20,000 views!!! As I was copying the devlog to Word I was also moved by all the supportive comments over the past 4 years.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK:
"You only fail when you stop trying."
Thanks for reading and have a great rest of your week!
29 JUNE 2024:
Lots of minor additions and fixes this week as the game is very near completion:
- After beating the game, player will get to see a stat screen showing how many enemies they destroyed.
- Battleships deactivate if they are a certain distance off-screen.
- Carrier fighters are slightly brighter for better color contrast.
- Cargo boss can scroll down the screen faster if the player flies forward.
- Deleted about 400 lines of code by simplifying types and removing unused variables.
- Fixed bugs where objects kept moving when the game was paused.
- Fixed bug where stars were not scrolling properly.
Still the occasional graphical glitch here and there, but so far haven't encountered anything game-breaking or that would cause an unfair player death. AI still needs some work and I need to verify the game still works at different resolutions.
I happened to see that Space Engine Pro (what I've been using for my space backgrounds) just got a new update where you take high resolution screenshots. Although it's tempting to take advantage of this I know it's just going to cause lag because I've already had to scale down or use lower resolution versions of some of the graphics.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK:
"Don't wait for the right opportunity, create it."
Thanks for reading and have a great rest of your week!
22 JUNE 2024:
- Finished level transitions.
- Cargo boss stays in bounds when scrolling on screen.
- Added a timer that determines how long each level is.
- The entire game can be played from start to finish with the exception of some sort of transition to the credits roll and a few other minor things to fix. I certainly don't plan on adding anything new at this point, just adjusting things as they are.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK:
"Challenges are what make life interesting, and overcoming them is what makes like meaningful." -- Joshua J. Marine
Thanks for reading and have a great rest of your week!
Afraid that typos and grammar errors are scaring people away from your Visual Novel or RPG?
Need help making your story more concise so players don't get bored?
I love to see games improve and I would love for yours to be one of them!
Idle-clicker Numeric Demon Cat and action RPG Echo are two of the most recent projects I've worked on.
If the project is small enough, I will probably do it for free.
Payment for larger projects is negotiable -- I'm an indie dev too so I know that your budget may be limited to what you can find under the couch cushions. I will work with you to find a fee that's fair. If I really like your game, a free copy may be sufficient.
Currently unemployed so I'll have plenty of time to focus on your editing/localization needs!
Contact me at: 40wattstudio@gmail.com
![](https://img.itch.zone/aW1nLzE2NTg5NTc1LnBuZw==/original/UXoXAs.png)
15 JUNE 2024:
- The game now keeps track of how much scrap you've destroyed. Added a scrap counter to the stats screen.
- Levels only transition when X amount of enemies have been destroyed and all scrap is off screen.
- Enemies now reset between levels.
- Cargo boss only appears when X amount of enemies have been destroyed. After this, it slowly scrolls down the screen and limits player movement to the X axis. When the Cargo boss is entirely on-screen there is now a slight pause before triggering the animation that starts the boss fight.
- Fixed bug where Cargo boss was being destroyed prematurely.
- Fixed bug where player damage wasn't being persisted between levels.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK:
"Seek what sets your soul on fire."
Thanks for reading and have a great rest of your week!
8 JUNE 2024:
- Lots of progress this week, probably bringing Scrapship the closest it’s ever been to being released! I’m actually taking it to a friend’s house this weekend to have him try an early version of it.
- Fixed the load issues by scaling down some of the background images to 1/4 of their original size. Load times are now consistently between 6 and 10 seconds.
- Infinite foreground asteroids in level 3.
- Added a new star background to the 4th level. This will allow me to spawn larger enemies without causing lag.
- Increased final boss health to make it more difficult.
- Cargo boss now scrolls down the screen when triggered.
- Lots of bug fixes (and thankfully none of these were game-crashing ones).
QUOTE OF THE WEEK:
“The only way to do great work is to love what you do.” — Steve Jobs
Thanks for reading and have a great rest of your week!
1 JUN 2024:
- Made some good progress on the AI this week. In the picture above you can see the player engaging a bunch of different enemies, including a battleship. There is a nice sense of unpredictability as to which enemy will show up next.
The game handles the smaller enemies well enough, but I am noticing lag once the battleship (or any larger enemy) goes active. So to fix that, I'll have to find ways to trim down image sizes (most likely the level backgrounds) and/or spawn larger enemies when there isn't much activity going on. It's a balancing act between fps and difficulty.
Right now the logic goes something like this: Every time an enemy goes active, the spawn timer increases. Every time an enemy goes inactive by being destroyed or going off screen, the spawn timer decreases. Then on top of this there is a calculation based on how much damage the player has sustained. The game gets a little easier the more damage you take.
- I changed the outline of the scrap to red instead of green. My reasoning for this is because scrap can damage you and green almost invites the player to fly into it! So instead I tried a red outline, which communicates the dangerous aspect of the scrap better, but admittedly doesn't have quite the color contrast as green did. I probably just need to thicken the outline a little and it should be ok.
- Battleships can now flank the player if there is more than one. This also prevents the battleships from spawning on top of or too close to each other.
- Fixed some more game freezing bugs involving shield fighters and bombers. Every now and then I'll see some other bugs but I'm not going to worry about them too much unless they actually cause the game to freeze or crash.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK:
"Challenge yourself; it's the only path which leads to growth." -- Morgan Freeman
Thanks for reading and have a great rest of your week!
25 MAY 2024:
- Added a spawn timer for enemies. What's unique about this is that it adjusts based on player performance. If the player is doing really well (not taking damage, destroying lots of enemies, etc), then enemies will spawn sooner. But if the player is doing poorly (taking damage) then the enemies will spawn less frequently. This mechanic essentially gets rid of the need for "difficulty levels" since they are adjusted in-game automatically. Still need to work on refining this.
- Fixed a bug where the carriers had a missing frame of animation causing the game to glitch out.
- Fixed a bug where the cruisers caused the game to get stuck in an endless loop. Thank God for log files or I would have never figured this one out!
QUOTE OF THE WEEK:
"A negative mind will never give you a positive life."
Thanks for reading and have a great rest of your week!
18 MAY 2024:
- This week saw a lot of minor refinements across the board, with the big end result being that I'm now in a "good enough" place to start working on levels. Maybe a minor bug here and there -- but that I'm aware of -- nothing game-crashing. There are always improvements that can be made, so I'm doing my best to squash my perfectionistic tendencies.
- Minor hit box adjustments for all enemies -- mostly for animation purposes.
- Fixed a long-standing bug where some of the shield fighters would overlap when in formation.
- Shield fighters now have 5 different formation types.
- Started placing enemies in their respective levels.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK:
"You not believing in yourself is a tragedy. Stop that."
Thanks for reading and have a great rest of your week!
11 MAY 2024:
- Simplified the explosion animation function and fixed a bug that was causing the game to crash when 2 different explosions were on screen simultaneously.
- Trimmed the rest of the level backgrounds. This brings the initial load time down from ~9 seconds to ~7 seconds.
- Adjusted the explosion animation coordinates for the satellite and shield fighters.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK:
"An essential aspect of creativity is not being afraid to fail." -- Edwin H. Land
Thanks for reading and have a great rest of your week!
4 MAY 2024:
- Almost done implementing a new way for explosions to be handled in the game. Previously, each enemy type could only show one type of explosion. Now, each enemy can explode up to 7 different ways, along with rotation and scaling variations. Makes the space combat look much more dynamic! Also, explosions have some logic to them so that weapons like the more powerful scrap cannon will always show larger explosions than weaker weapons. As you can see in the gif above, I still need to work on the hit detection a little so that explosions show up directly over the object instead of at the very edge of it.
- Reduced game load time to about 9 seconds (was 12 previously.) Because I can now scale explosion animations, I reduced the default size of some of the larger ones and also removed empty and excessive frames.
- Trimmed some of the level backgrounds. Some of these were originally 3k pixels by 2k pixels or larger, so making some of these smaller by removing extra black space has also helped give a performance increase.
IN OTHER NEWS:
The BASIC programming language turns 60! For those of you new to this devlog, one of the oddities of this project is that it is being written entirely in a modern version of BASIC called QB64PE. As you can tell by the 4+ years I've been working on this project, writing your own code is quite the challenge, but you end up learning so much more about actual game development than if you had just used a game engine. While most people associate BASIC with primitive text adventures and ugly pixel graphics, one of my goals with Scrapship has been to show how awesome the language can be for game development.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK:
"Don't count the days. Make the days count."
Thanks for reading and have a great rest of your week!
27 APR 2024:
- Carriers can spawn in a variety of formations.
- Cargo boss AI is done. Also fixed some bugs:
- Explosions were in the background instead of the foreground.
- Cargo boss "jittered" after becoming active.
- Final boss AI is done. Right now I'm making some changes to HP values and how different weapons react to different segments.
IN OTHER NEWS:
When doing a long project like a video game, it's a good idea to have smaller goals to work towards. For example, earlier this year I learned about this Conqueror app (non-affiliated) and I've found that it's really good for motivating me to get outside more and exercise. I started the Great Wall of China virtual challenge in late January and just finished yesterday -- 161 miles in 90 days. Besides the health benefits of walking regularly, working towards short-term goals like this help you to stay consistent and remind you what success feels like.
I also noticed that walking regularly helped clear my mind and gave me great opportunities to think about problems encountered while working on Scrapship.
Some good ideas for other short-term goals: Reading a book, watching all the videos of a certain YT series, getting a certification or degree -- anything whose completion can give you a great sense of accomplishment can help you stay motivated on longer projects.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK:
"The fears you don't face become your limits."
Thanks for reading and have a great rest of your week!
20 APR 2024:
- Cruisers can spawn in a variety of formations (down, left to right, right to left and cross pattern)
- Battleships can spawn in a variety of formations.
- Also tested scaling works properly by running the game on a 7" display.
- Tried out Geogen to see what it was capable of in regards to creating planet graphics, but it's still very primitive (only version 0.2). There was a very promising program called Space Fabricator by Imphenzia, but it appears that the software is no longer available.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK:
"Success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan." -- Tim Cain
Thanks for reading and have a great rest of your week!
13 APR 2024:
- Started working on the movement/AI!
- Shield fighters spawn in a variety of formations
- Bombers swoop in and spawn in a variety of formations
- Cruisers spawn in a variety of formations (in progress)
QUOTE OF THE WEEK:
"The most valuable thing you can make is a mistake -- you can't learn anything from being perfect." -- Adam Osborne
Thanks for reading and have a great rest of your week!
6 APR 2024:
- Final boss is done! I also managed to improve some of the hit detection.
- The single laser has some new functionality! It is the only weapon in the game that can be used to shoot down bombs, whether they're fired from bombers or even the final boss!
- Now that the enemies are done I can start working on the AI!
QUOTE OF THE WEEK:
Your focus determines your reality.
Thanks for reading and have a great rest of your week!
30 MAR 2024:
- Cargo boss is done! This includes scaling.
- Final boss can be drawn to screen, take damage and shoot lasers. Currently working on the bomb attack it has.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK:
"Finding opportunity is a matter of believing it's there." -- Barbara Corcoran
Thanks for reading and have a great rest of your week!
Hey kotofey124 . . . Getting dumped is one of the worst feelings in the world. Take some time to process it all and hold off on making any important decisions (especially new relationships) until a good while after. When you're feeling better you can try a different approach to what you're trying to do with your game/channel.
If you get really down make sure to dial 988.
23 MAR 2024:
- Cargo boss is pretty much done but needs testing to make sure the scaling works on different screen resolutions. After this I'll be able to start work on getting the final boss added back into the game!
QUOTE OF THE WEEK:
"A game for everyone is a game for no one." -- Arrowhead Game Studios
Thanks for reading and have a great rest of your week!
16 MAR 2024:
Got back from my business trip a little bit early! Saw the winter weather in the forecast for Colorado Springs and said "nope!" Apparently a lot of other people had the same idea.
- This allowed me to get a little bit of work done on my return. I've started putting the Cargo Ship boss back into the game. So far it's mostly a matter of copy and paste, but there are a few minor glitches I need to iron out. If all goes well I should have it done by next week.
- Ever wonder who 40wattstudio is? Well wonder no more because I made a version of myself in Dragon's Dogma 2 Character Creator (free on Steam!)
![](https://img.itch.zone/aW1nLzE1NDA1NjgwLmpwZw==/original/b1ScaF.jpg)
Even with all the customizability, I'd say it's about 80% accurate. Needs to look about 10-20 years older and slightly less hair on top. And there was no option for glasses (or any other accessories).
Anybody else play around with the DD2CC? I think it's pretty cool and a great way to get people into the game before it comes out.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK:
"Create with the heart. Build with the mind." -- Criss Jami
Thanks for reading and have a great rest of your week!
9 MAR 2024:
Still on my business trip so no Scrapship updates, but I am looking forward to getting back so I can finish it up.
I’ll be changing jobs in the near future, but this shouldn’t affect development of Scrapship as I only need an hour a day to work on it. If I’m unemployed I’ll probably work on it even more — it’d be a nice break from job hunting and studying for IT certifications.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK:
“Excuses are the nails used to build a house of failure.” — Jim Rohn
Thanks for reading and have a great rest of your week!
2 MAR 2024:
- I have a business trip the next two weeks, so I challenged myself to finish the carriers before I have to go.
- Carriers are done! I made some pretty significant changes to them this time around. The up and down carriers were being problematic so I removed them completely. For at least one of them, I would have had to rework the original Blender files to fix some issues and that would have taken who-knows-how-long.
- Carrier fighters can attack from up to 4 different directions. I wasn't entirely pleased with the old carrier fighter logic, so I created this new attack method for them which is much less math-intensive. And in my opinion it's a lot more interesting and fun.
- Scrapship is currently up to 11000 lines of code. There is only about 3000 lines of code left to transfer over and reintegrate.
- As for my sticky note on my monitor, the only things I have left are "Cargo Boss", "Final Boss", "AI" and "Other".
- 12 of the 16 sticky note tasks have been completed, so I'm about 75% done.
QUOTE OF THE WEEK:
"That's what games are, in the end. Teachers." -- Ralph Koster
Thanks for reading and have a great rest of your week!
Hi FearCode! I'm admittedly inexperienced when it comes to benchmarking programming languages so thanks for the insights! Not exactly sure how I would implement an MD5 solver, but I saw on YT that another benchmark method is to see how many "passes" a programming language can make in 5 seconds when solving for all prime numbers.
According to its creator, "The QB64 compiler converts BASIC code into C++ code, and then uses a third-party C++ compiler (GCC) to compile the C++ code into an executable file."
For now I'm pretty happy with QB64, mostly because it's what I'm familiar with and pretty easy to work with. But if I need something blazing fast I'll definitely be checking out those low-level languages. I've played around with C++ a little bit, but I'd have to really dedicate some time to get to a point where I can work with it.
24 FEB 2024
- Two of the four carriers are now back in the game.
- Restructuring the carrier code so all 4 types can use it.
SIDE NOTES:
This week I found some interesting YT videos about programming language speed, like Assembly vs C++ vs Python. It's amazing how much slower some high-level languages can be when tasked to run a "simple" task like counting to a billion. There were no "speed test" videos for QB64 (QBasic) though, so I made a little program to see how long it would take QB64 to count to 1 billion:
If I run it without printing to the screen, QB64 can finish it in 2.197 seconds. But if I uncomment my PRINT statement it takes considerably longer: 7.6 minutes!
I think speed tests like these are good for understanding what your programming language is capable of so you can pick the right language for the right project. Imagine programming a complex game like Dwarf Fortress in Python!
QUOTE OF THE WEEK:
"A comfort zone is a beautiful place, but nothing ever grows there."
Thanks for reading and have a great rest of your week!
17 FEB 2024:
- The first of 4 types of carriers is now back in the game. So far it looks like I'll be able to use trimmed carrier graphics for a slight performance boost.
- Tested the battleships on my son's laptop and ensured that scaling works properly.
- Scrapship enters its 4th year of development! I never would have thought I'd be working on a "simple shmup" this long! But to keep things in perspective, I only do an hour of gamedev a day, excluding vacations, illness and business trips. Regardless, it is still a challenge to stay dedicated to a single project for so long. You might be wondering, does he ever feel like this?
And the answer would be "Yes, quite often!" I have a "dream game" idea that's been in my head for a while now that I'm eager to get started on. But besides all the motivational quotes I surround myself with, there is a particular meme that has been very helpful in staying focused . . .
QUOTE MEME OF THE WEEK: (One of my favorites)
Thanks for reading and have a great rest of your week!