itch.io

just a quick update
there is nothing interesting to make a devlog about right now
just raw work
I've been making textures mostly


only wanted to make new light textures first but things got out of hand  🤔

but this proved to be a good idea - turns out the more textures you got the easier it is to experiment and make new areas

my new approach is to play around with lights


here is my "new invention" - the light crate 
sometimes you have no other ideas but to place a crate at areas - so why not pretend they belong? 🤔



night areas are super easy to get right with lightmaps



and with the new textures I experimented around with some new setpieces

so there you have it .. I'm trying to find a new direction for the levels
because the demo released highlighted plenty of shortcomings with my approach
turns out just adding an automap won't solve things
I still need to figure out a way to hold the hand of players.. without them catching on 🤔

I see you with more silliness next time 👋

it's tricky because they both come with tradeoffs 🤔
with a physics based one interaction with physics objects is easier 
with a kinematic one you get more freedom but all the physics interactions are hacks 

both can be responsive and snappy thought that is only about how input is processed
in that case a very snappy one is easier with kinematic
as with a physics based one the physics take care of deceleration and inertia  🤔
so this may be a strange answer but both is possible and the only difference is which part of the code is hacky and cheats 🤔

another late update
it's getting increasingly hard to post on itch
there seem to be many outages lately

good news is that one big milestone is ready

all the guns are complete!

plus by popular demand this gun wheel was added for quick select
more like a gun ellipse as there were so many of them they didn't all fit 

the latest new weapon is the railgun - after weeks on weeks of modelling and experimenting
I ended up with this very generic looking sci-fi gun

these guns are very challenging - in the end the most important thing is how they look in the fps view 

other guns got redesigns too - this is the new flamethrower
the alt fire was changed to shoot fireballs making it a bit overpowered

some other guns only got their design altered a bit
the citrus juicer (or acid shooting shotgun if you prefer)
now has three barrels on it's end (I simply removed the triangular cap from the old design)

the grenade launcher is more sleek now - almost as if it got a hd update

and finally let me show you the rejected railgun designs:

as you can see unlike many people who work smarter I just work harder   🤔

and now with all the guns finished and all enemy models done it's finally time to concentrate on the levels
so more working hard for me will commence  🤔

until next time 👋

I'm glad you liked them  👍
Nekkrobox was indeed a game jam game  
(for the bad lovecraft themed games jam  🤭)

oh I want to share things with everyone - I just find code to be harder to share (to be useful for others) 😅

that is a good question as I'm not that familiar with unity myself 🤔

usually the character and animations on top is just another object linked to it somehow
i'm not sure what is the best way to set that up in unity though 😓
in the end you are probably better off with one of the bought ones as this was never fully finished  🤔

you would be surprised but this is often the easier route  🙂
but a character controller is always tricky 🤔
this lara is just a sphere floating above the surface  🤫

I tried recently to bring a similar movement to unity :
https://mutantleg.itch.io/otto-takes-on-unity
among other things, I was helping out my friend FreeHawk with his game
and made various experiments - so the code is a bit crude but it might inspire you
I don't really use unity for my own projects
as it just feels so inconvenient to me 🤔

I'm glad you liked it 👍
yes, it was the engine's debut and a complete catastrophe  😓
and it led to me rolling my own level editor later in Nekkrobox
and that was further developed into Zortch
so not all was lost - but this game highlighted the shortcomings very fast 🤔

that was actually the intention but I screwed up 😓

the dinos get placed but their ai attacks anything non-dino before you get to meet them 😭
and get invisibly slaughtered offscreen - greatly reducing enemy count in the last area 🤔

and we are at 3 weeks since the last update
I mostly spent the time tightening up stuff

so I figured I should replace the old shotgun sound and this led to a bunch of other changes
and I remodelled some of the guns

now the rocket launcher feels like it got a hd udpdate - yet its the same high res model 🤔

also I did some optimising this time by only baking and modelling the visible parts 
turns out being lazy and optimising goes hand in hand  👀

the shotgun looks much more neat now

and the machine gun now looks like it means business  🤔

on problem with baking these characters is the lighting
I lost count how many times I rebaked this gal
problem with monochrome is they look very flat from far
this is a problem if you want players to notice them easily  
up close is fine but turns out you only see them up close very rarely
as these gals are always on the move 🤔

the solution was to go for the old trick  or orange-blue  lightning  - this really brings out the shapes of black stuff
and this was inspired by checking how people light up their alien toys - which being full black usually have the same problem 🤔

now I have to rebake all characters though
this new wall head was remodelled recently
and already in for a rebake

I'm being more lazy with lava and other damaging floors
but they still give me a lot of work 
for these mouths I had to write a tool from scratch to generate the animated texture 👀

and finally here is a puzzle that got cut from zortch 1 involving getting large balls to a goal
so far I got one area where I want to use them - and that is why they look like giant billiard balls 🤔

until next time! 👋 

I just find spheres easier to use for slopes and stairs (and the math is simpler)
for player movement they are perfect
I only got problems with the enemy code because they insist getting inside little holes 
- so for first person I found sphere to be better but  for third person capsule would be probably better 🤔 

sure, it's rather simple (in concept 😉):
- first you linetest against the plane the triangle is on (any point on the triangle and the triangles normal)
- then you have the point where you hit the plane
- and you need to find  the closest point on the triangle   to this point
- and then you measure the distance between these two points and if it's below the radius it's a hit

of course it can be done in a more sophisticated way by also doing a linetest for each vertex as if they were spheres etc.
and less sophisticated: just using more than one raycast to check for the floor

what tools are you using btw? would you like example code? 🤔

i'm glad you like them 😎

thank you! ☺️

apart from that they are both rts games not really 🤔
the title is just a wordplay based on it
(as in this one the commanders are staying put
and the game is really just a warcraft clone)

drat I thought I was only gone for a week - turns out it was almost 3 😮
no wonder development takes so long 🤔

I set out to finally get things together and update the maps with the new lighting from level one
and naturally ended up working on ninjas instead

the ninja model was what I'd like to call an insomnia model - sometimes when I cannot sleep I just model away for fun
the idea is that they are blindfolded and rely on their senses to fight  - and thus you cannot sneak up on them

originally it was just going to be a novelty enemy  to have more midboss level enemies
but after implementing them they seemed to be a lot of fun to play against - so now they have this whole fortress/monastery thing in the works
and I also made plenty of new textures for it

here is a dojo area - for the most part they just run about doing acrobatics and slap you around

I also added color variants and a very expensive ghosting effect (the model is redrawn 5 times total  😬)

a new npc is the ninja master - she explains you being beaten up are just trials and tests - turns out the ninjas didn't become evil after their transformation - as they couldn't get any crazier 🤔

now this new area seems to work well overall and there is plenty of room for gags and fights
the challenge now is to figure out how to add it to the story as none of this was planned 🤔

until next time!  🥷

I feel tired lately and sometimes making a devlog is just too tiring 🤔

but at least most of the tiredness is coming from making the game 🤔
let me show you what have I been up to:

The ruins area is slowly shaping up - I made a new new textures and came up with these mummies

here we see a former emperor who is grumpy for being awakened so early

overall most of the crowd around doesn't take well to your presence

probably the most cliche looking mummy ever - I kind of feel bad about it 🤔

I also managed to finish up the sphinx model 
rumor has it that originally it was a giant locust that was reshaped to be a wasp 👀

here is the low poly version in the editor - with additional statues

of course these are supposed to be ruins so I made a few broken versions of the statues

and for last here is an amusing wallpaper thing
I swear that kid always gets in trouble somehow 🤔

see you next time! 👋

it's tricky - as from side and other views it looks ok - it's that damn fps view where all these guns fall apart 😔

thank you for your feedback 👍
indeed steam works in mysterious ways 😓
I guess until there is a full release there is no way to add reviews 🤔

the movement was indeed rewritten from the ground up - for better or worse
I tried to make it feel as close as possible but only somewhat succeeded 🤔
(the old physics were tied to 60fps and these new ones run at 250fps)

I guess with the better graphics some of the charm was lost
but it's not intentional they are just made with a a different technique 🤔
(main difference is that the 3D models are not hand painted this time)

just a short update - i'm busy making characters
and as you might know itch.io got a lot busy lately
due to unfortunate events  🤔
it's kind of nice to see some activity around here but
I wish it had happened in some other way 🤔

but I digress, once again I updated the demo (build 2072)
https://mutantleg.itch.io/zortch-2-test
this has fixes for the map that make the zoom better
and various small bugfixes
once again I'd like to thank everyone who reported them 👍

and here is the latest devlog stuff:

my new lightmap fixes are giving me a lot of trouble when it comes to making ambient lights
on the other hand it did wonders for the lowpoly model
this previously made train model now looks decent thanks for the lighting
the fixes for the normal calculation brings out it's shape much better

I made new textures for box cars and also made a new model for the wheels
they are also now placed in the correct position at the sides of the box

here is an attempt at a passenger car - strangely enough real railroad cars are twice as long as these
but at that size they feel too long - it's hard to get scale in a game to feel right - realistic measurements often don't feel realistic 🤔
irl a passenger car this size was only found in britain in the early days of trains and was considered the smallest 🤔

overall I have much more luck with characters - I decided to split the baseball player into two creatures

and the design of this propeller headed gal was finalized too - coding her will be a bit more difficult though 🤔

and finally a sum up of all the characters so far
there is also one for Zortch1: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3540307407

turns out I've been a lot busier than I thought 🤔
if only I had the same luck making levels 😓

oh well..

see you next time! 👋

alas these are the two major complaints about movement:
too much momentum or  too much inertia  🤔
some people feel your feet is glued - some feel you are sliding on ice
I think I balanced it out just well enough to make everyone mad  😓

ahh that is interesting 🤔 ( and good to know)
(people seem to gravitate towards this game for different reasons 🤔)

I'm not sure how to feel about all this - as I have a friend who left 10 or so years ago because he was disturbed
by his games appearing next to all the naughty stuff - a flood of them came out of nowhere from seemingly nowhere back then 🤔
Personally I didn't mind the site going fully erotic over the time - but mostly because I only see itch as free hosting
and imho it could have been all solved long ago by rethinking the categories a bit  🤔
The only thing that really bothers me about all of this is the lack of communication and radio silence
they should have given people at least a heads up 🤔

so you mean with the pixel art style .. or also the flat levels? 🤔

well, Zortch was supposed to be a spiritual sequel in a way 🤔
so the question is if you mean similar in spirit or in tech 🤔

bonus points for finding the forklift 🤭👍

after a text heavy update here is an image heavy one

one thing I found out from this demo is that I need more mid bosses to place 🤔
of course people feel that the existing enemies are spongy enough already (have too much hp) 
so things are tricky 🤔

still, I feel a few more new faces might help things 🤔
(when in doubt just design more characters)

here is a redesign of the berserker enemy - I figured the weapon could be added later - perhaps there could be variants wielding different things?
so they meant to be elite soldiers - that are not just glass cannons but true cannons

this amusing figure is the sick-o-phant
and just a regular tank - an elephant like thing that sneezes at you 
(because he is sick and an elephant 👀 )

I have no idea how this guy will attack I just had the design in my head and had to do it 🤔 

another variant of the head bomb enemies - the baseball players meant to bat their heads at you
but their design is still in progress  - this time the idea is down but adjusting the character to it is the challenge 🤔

these propeller headed ones are not just difficult to model but will be also difficult to code - 
they meant to fly, walk and use their propeller to blow you away and/or potentially slice you up 🤔

and even I have no idea what this thing is supposed to be 🤔 

see you next time! 👋

this one is going to be quite a boring one - mostly text 🤔

there were several major bugs found during and after testing
one thing is sure: the fight against os problems and gpu driver shenanigans will never end 🤔

- one of the major new things I added to the engine is to make it run on two thread: one for update and one for rendering
but the game still stutters on some pretty powerful hardware - in the end no matter what you do this cannot be perfect
- because the window is using the render thread I attempted to use the windows function GetKeyboardState to read keyboard input
this randomly fails on some machines 🤔
there is fallback to use the regular keyboard input when it fails - so far nobody noticed a difference 🤔
- hiding the cursor is also hard - I had to use both WM_SETCURSOR and ShowCursor 🤔

there were several bugs that were caused by me and my poor coding though:
- you could fall through the floor by crouching in the wrong place
this was because I didn't use velocity to move the player when it gets into a crouch position
and it's important to move the position otherwise you hit your head in the wall during a quick slide
- not all guns were saved - I only saved the first 16 of the possible 32 slots - having defines for it didn't help
- grabbing onto ladders was broken when you looked up or down:
I didn't cancel out the y axis and  normalise the vectorused for checking
if you are facing the ladder
- I simply forgot to implement reaction time changes for higher difficulty making things too easy
- there were some race condition shenanigans with changing music 
music runs yet on other thread and even minimal race conditions cause trouble
the good thing about multi threaded coding is that it's difficult to debug and causes exotic bugs all over the place 

there were a few things that went well though
- now that I discovered dxt1 textures I use them everywhere
the lightmaps now use 4096x4096 resolution and still just use 16mb ram
(1 big lightmap for render (4096) and 1 smaller one (1024) for software lookup 12mb + 4mb)
- the menu navigation with gamepad works well - at least there were no complaints
the whole menu had to be rewritten - turns out an immediate gui doesn't do well with keyboard navigation
and turns out neither with gamepad one
- there were no major complaints about driving the forklift - but that may be  because many people dismissed it as decoration 🤔

overall it's nice that so many bugs got fixed long before release time
but I was surprised by how many were there 🤔

nice! 👍

I plan on modding in the future - but engine is not quite there yet 🤔
I'm not into weapon attributes myself so I won't be adding any of that 🤔

it feels like the dotcom boom all over again 🤔
right now there is an investor frenzy (which is kind of like a piranha frenzy ) 
 people are not sure how to make a lot of money with AI
but convinced themselves that it will be figured out any day now 👀
in practice it's seems to be just a cost saving tool - speeding up everyday things
but it's also a fad - many people are already tired of it  😓

and the demo is now ready 👀

is the game on the right track?  🤔
or are there major flaws? 😨

judge for yourself:
https://mutantleg.itch.io/zortch-2-test

the early bird gets the first 👀

I'd like to once again thank everyone who helped with testing! 😊

Let me shill some of their projects:

First of all Dom and his beloved thugs: