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In my opinion, games like Nier series or Returnal are pretty good examples of bullet hell working well in three dimensions.

Also, what if game is made with 3D technology (as in, 3D models instead of sprites), but still works like 2D bullet hell (as example, some bosses in Furi)?

Day 17

Reworked walking turret enemy - now they randomly move around and shoot projectile fans.

Also, discovered something new about Unity and quaternions. Apparently, sometimes when you use Quaternion.RotateTowards method, it may produce result with reversed values, so when your target rotation is (0, 0, x, y), you might get (0, 0, -x, -y) instead. Which screwed up some of my comparison logic, producing few funny results. This was fixed by replacing direct quaternion comparison with angle tolerance check.

So far, those are all enemy reworks I wanted to introduce. Tomorrow I guess I will just start moving through my backlog, like, implementing actual victory condition.

Day 16

Decided to improve wall chargers - enemies that stick to walls, and charge forward when player is in their line of sight (if you played Blaster Master, you've seen such enemies). Now they can change direction they are facing.

Tomorrow I will try to change another pretty boring enemy time - walking shooter (enemy that, well, walks and shoots when they can).

Day 15

Since wall turrets can't do pretty much anything to player when player is out of their reach, I've decided to give them possibility to rotate barrel to some extent to target players.

I've also did some experiments with some other enemy types, but nothing ready to be shown yet.

Day 14

So, I've reviewed enemy types I have, and decided I need to rework them to be more interesting. To start with, I've decided to fix existing issues with enemies that would probably remain as they are now in general, so, two fixes today.

First one - noticed that several wall turrets on same wall can basically overlap to extent that you can't tell it is not a single enemy. So I've added some basic collision specifically to prevent them to do that completely (I don't mind if they do so partially). Also, this reveals issue with layering (some sprites of one enemy are shown over sprites of other enemy, while other aren't), which I will fix sometime soon.

Second one - I've reworked binders (enemies that bind player slowing them down). Initially they were bullet-spongy, but slow, so it was really easy for player to evade. Now I've reworked them to be bigger nuissance - they are faster, but have low HP, but as soon as they stick to the player, they get more HP, so it is better to kill them before they have chance to reach the player. Also I think I will remove need to rotate for binders in general (and most likely not only for them).

Not sure what to do tomorrow, but maybe I will rework some other existing enemies (e.g. add wall turrets small angle to rotate their barrels, so they can shoot player not only when player is directly in front of them).

Day 13

Fixed bug with wall turrets to ignore walls.

Since I've scapped my previous prototype, I've decided to switch to my another project - Discharged. It is proper rework of my "I can't draw but I want to make a game" jam entry Discharge.

Small description of the game - it is a roguelite top-down shooter, where single resouce is used for everything - shooting, purchasing stuff, interacting with stuff etc. Check out jam version if you are interested in how gameplay was looking initially.

I've been working on improved version for quite some time, but shelved it due to need to make a bunch of room patterns to make game at least somehow replayable. But for now I've made randomized rooms, so I think it's a good time to implement rest of first actual vertical slice prototype during devtober until I figure out better solution for rooms.

I will start from day 13. For first 12 days of my devtober, you can read my previous thread.

For some starting point, here is GIF of my last progress

https://twitter.com/i/status/1300399726248984583

How is this related to the jam?

Day 12

I'm scrapping the project. After some review of what I have now, I don't see how this gameplay can be interesting to anyone. So I will switch to my another project, which at least had engaging enough prototype. Reviewing backlog for this game today. Future updates (if any) will feature this other game.

Day 11

Rethinking damage system today. Nothing to show really.

Day 10

Turned my game into card battler :D  Each turn player can choose one of 3 cards to use or store to use later (those cards are moved to "hand"; player can use as much cards from hand as they want per turn, as long as they have any). Since cards are consumable, they do not longer use action points, so I've reduced those to 5 rotations per turn. Still have to work on proper UI for cards, as well as proper randomizer for cards (some should be more common and some should be more rare).

Tomorrow (well, today already), I think I will try to rework stats system. Maybe using some existing RPG system to not reinvent bysicle.

Day 9

Another relatively small change. Added indicators for temporary effects, along with temorary regeneration pickup.

I hope to do more high quality change tomorrow, with some serious rework to how player performs actions. I also want to rework stats system (damage, critical hits, evasions, damage reduction etc), as well as redo stats screen to account more data and to show stuff like skills in better manner.

Day 8

Not really interesting day

• Refactored some code for stats panel to reduce duplicated code;
• Hero can now use some items from their inventory (only healing potion for now). I might make some other characters to use some items as well.
• Added locked chests, that require either key item (that hero may carry), or lockpicking skill (for now only goblin has that). So if hero doesn't  have key to open chest, you can have goblin open chest and and then get loot from goblin.

The only gif I've made today is only for third point, and it is quite boring (ghost ignores locked chest, and goblin opens it)

Day 7

Made simple system for items (the only item for now is gold). Also added chest as basic source of gold (another one being monsters). By the way, since monsters can interact with objects, they are able to open chests, and if they do, hero has to defeat them in order to get loot. There will be several other systems related to this in future.

Tomorrow most likely I will implement system for usable items (e.g. potion that hero can use to heal up).

Day 6

Added two player abilties - one moves selected character to the end of queue, and second teleports selected character randomly. Last one required some reworks in existing systems (also fixing some rather dumb bugs), but this will make some stuff easier in future.

Not sure what to do tomorrow. I think I should focus on core mechanics rather than content, so maybe I will start working on items system (gold, healing potions etc). This will also add more interactive objects (e.g. chests), which means bigger need to control area for player. And introduction of gold (which also will be item) will introduce possibility to make shops and stuff.

 Additionally, I'm sure I will rework player actions system. I already have more or less proper idea how to handle this, but this is rather big system, so I will leave this for weekend, so I can implement and show it in one take.

Small update for day 5. Decided to add some abilities for player today, so I've made template for skill, that gives buff to hero character, and made skills for one guaranteed critical hit and one guaranteed evasion. 

This kinda shows that I can't really rely on current actions system, so I'm almost 100% sure I will change this to card battler, leaving some action points for rooms rotation, and making the rest of actions as consumables that player will receive each turn (think of Guild Of Dungeoneering).

Current state of game leaves me with following things I'd like to do next:

• Introduce few more abilities for player (one of those features is random teleport of character, which requires some rework to "combat room locking"* system)
• I think temporary effects should always be visible somewhere on character, so when someone picks up e.g. damage buff, you don't need to check stats of each character to see it
• Actually rework skills system according to idea with cards.

*If you pay attention, you can notice that each time one character attacks another, rooms they are in have red corners. This means rooms are locked - they can't be rotated neither by player nor by characters. This is to prevent cheesing room rotation by player (arranging rooms so enemy always spend their turn rotating, while hero can constantly attack). Usually rooms are unlocked once one of combatants dies, but this is not best idea, e.g. it doesn't work well with mentioned idea of teleport ability, or if I ever want to introduce fleeing mechanics.

Day 5

Expanded stats panel. Now it shows effects on characters. Also, some additions to damage calculation, to enable critical hits and evasion.

Tomorrow I think I will add some more abilities for player to have more control over situation.

Day 4

Decided to rework character stats according to yesterday's idea - changed health to health bar, and moved all detailed info to separate popup. Popup will also work as base for various info, e.g. characters possessions and skills/traits.

In general, I think I should make some sort of backlog with features I wanna see in the game, so I can pick something up from there in case I don't know what to do for a day.

Day 3

You would think that weekend would be great for making a lot of progress. But the thing is that aside of making games, I also really like playing games :D

Anyway, to keep devtober rolling, I had to do at least something today. So, I've added health and damage indicators to the characters. I was hoping to make it appearing on mouse over, but for some reason it randomly refuses to appear, so for now they always are visible.

 Looks pretty ugly, but let's just pretend I keep visuals consistent :D In future I hope to add stats popup, showing various details about characters, so damage will move there, leaving only health indication (possibly healthbar).

I was thinking about introducing cards as possible source of actions for player, however, rotation is pretty much basic move and should be available constantly. Also player can't move - hero moves on their own (they can't however rotate rooms in current concept). I think I will introduce several basic actions that are always available for action points, and more rare consumable cards with more specific actions (e.g. reroll loot in chest or allow hero to do guaranteed critical hit for next few attacks).

In general, this system might be changed several times through development process.

Day 2

Today's change is not really worth separate tweet.

The only thing I've done today is change of how player action points (resource required for any player actions) work. Previously,  player was gaining 3 points per each character turn, accumulating up to 15 points. However, it is possible that player would often constantly has 15 points, just by skipping turns. On the other side, if player requires a lot of points to resolve difficult situation, they need to skip several turns just to accumulate points.

So I've changed system to be opposite - player has 15 action points on start of each turn. However, the more points they spend, the more they need to wait until next turn starts. E.g. by spending 3 or less points, player needs to wait for 1 character to act, for 4-6 points - 2 characters etc. This way, player will be able to perform more actions, but will have to plan accordingly to take into account all extra characters that will act.

@AdamStrange, thanks for kind words! I hope to make at least some scenarios that would be interesting to player.

Day 1

Writing this one a little bit post-factum, but all job (and the tweet) was done yesterday, so I guess it is fair :D

One of main activities of player in my game has to be controlling where characters can go and where they can't. But so far there is no reason for player to do so. There is simply nothing on the level aside of 3 characters. So I've decided to implement some pickups that grant buffs for any characters that pick them up (including enemies). This would motivate player to lead hero to those pickups, while trying to keep enemies of those.

To have a buffs, you need proper "attached effects" system. Which was my goal yesterday. System was implemented, taking into account possibility to make effects that affect player temporarily or permanently, in combat or passively. Additionally I've made example pickup with bonus double damage for next 5 hits.

Small gif showing hero picking up buff before encountering enemy:

I know it doesn't look really exciting, but I hope to fix it in future. Also please note that some sprites are taken from Dragon Quest series purely for prototyping, and will be replaced by some other visuals later.

Twitter seems to be quite limited in regards of how much stuff you can put there, so I'm going to do a little bit more extensive logs here.

Initial idea is scrapped or at least shelved. Since day 12, I will work on another game.

What is Clockwise Dungeon?

Clockwise Dungeon is rework of my 6 years old game Block Temple (probably not playable now). It is roguelite dungeon crawler, where player doesn't control main character, and has to utilize ability to control level layout (as well as some other abilities) to manipulate hero and enemies.

Progress before jam

Development was started before jam, so to make progress assessment easier, I will describe what is done at the moment of jam beginning:

• Level generation with possibility to have custom patterns with different level shapes;
• Basic AI having ability to explore level, attack other characters and interact with interactive objects (no actual interactive objects implemented)
• Queue system for ordering when each character on level acts
• Basic player control with ability to rotate rooms, base template for player abilities with two simple examples (ability to lock room rotation and test ability to add action points to player); player can act once one character has acted;

What I plan to achieve

Well, anything. During last month or so, I was working on this game, like, 1-2 hours per week at best (being programmer at my actual job, sometimes I'm just too much exhausted after work to write more than several lines of code), so maybe devtober will motivate me to add some good stuff.

If you need to capture a short segment of gameplay, I'd suggest making gifs with ScreenToGif - it is pretty lightweight and easy to use.

Hi! Thanks a lot for a comment! Even though game is year old, I'm still working (although really slowly) on its next iteration, so I really appreciate any feedback. I will try out your suggestions (especially one about bloom, as in its current state it still mostly relies on simply colored visuals).