1 MAY 2020:

Is it me or are the weeks just zooming by? Seems like Friday is coming around faster and faster.

- Continued adjusting and experimenting with the "waves of enemies" system.

2 MAY 2020:

- Experimenting with setting the rapid laser as the default weapon. The single laser is slow, but much more powerful -- and looks better when fully upgraded. Only problem is that for some reason the rapid laser isn't wanting to work properly so I'm busy troubleshooting that.

- The download count for Scrapship seems to have plateaued. It's interesting to think about what could be the causes:

1) Am I posting certain content (demos, Devlog tab updates) on days where Itch doesn't have a lot of traffic? 

2) Are people just not interested in top-down shooters? (Realistically speaking, it is a very over-saturated genre).

3) Are my thumbnails and summary descriptions not "eye-catching" enough? 

Anybody else have interest in their game level out? What did you do to re-engage your audience? 

4 MAY 2020:

- I signed up for my first Game Jam today! It's the Finish It Jam and I'll be using this time to get the "arcade mode" of Scrapship finished. The jam doesn't start for another 4 days and ends on 24 May. So basically the monthly demo of Scrapship will be released a week earlier than anticipated.

https://itch.io/jam/finish-it-jam

- Spent more time condensing the code. At one point I was at 3600 lines and now I've shrunken it down to just under 3000. Also fixed a few other minor bugs.

- Final version of Scrapship will have a soundtrack! I've enlisted the help of Tyson Cazier to create 5 tracks for the game. I just received the first 2 today And. They. Sound. Awesome!

https://www.tysoncaziermusic.com/video-game-music/

- The vast majority of my focus this month and during the game jam is going to be mostly stuff that won't translate well into screenshots and gifs or are things I'd rather leave as a surprise. So for that reason I'm deciding to refrain from my daily Scrapship updates and resume them on 24 May when the Game Jam is over.

But don't worry! I'll still be around on Itch and I'm still working on my game daily!

In the meantime, if you haven't given the third demo of Scrapship a spin, you can do so here:

https://40wattstudio.itch.io/scrapship-demo

Thanks to everyone following this devlog and I'll see you all around 24 May with an update and a new demo!

27 MAY 2020:

It took a long time, but I finally found a good Youtube tutorial (by DevilFX Lasse F) for making a model of the Earth in Blender using the  free hi-res NASA textures. As a result, I was able to render out 40 frames of animation and put it in the game in place of the pixelated planet I was using earlier.
So what do you think?

In other news, Scrapship Demo 4 tied for a fitting 4th in the Finish It Game Jam. Although there were about 22 participants there were only 4 other entries, so participation in the Jam was rather low. Still, I got a lot of good feedback which will go towards making the next demo even better!

And what about the next demo?
Not sure if I can entirely pull it off, but the next demo should see the game pretty close to done in terms of the "Arcade Mode".
"Story Mode" which will only be for the paid version will take considerably longer to finish, but aiming to have that done by the end of the year.

As far as these devlogs go, sometimes several days pass without any major updates. So for that reason I'm going to experiment with weekly devlog updates, every Wednesday. I'm hoping a whole week should give me enough time to have something interesting to report, maybe even a screenshot or gif.

For those that have already tried out the 4th demo, Thanks! and for those that would like to try it out please click the link below:
https://40wattstudio.itch.io/scrapship-demo

17 JUNE 2020:

Supposedly the "average" lifespan of a laptop is about 3 years and I unfortunately got to experience that firsthand when my Windows laptop died while on a business trip. RIP Asus gaming laptop!

Thank God I was wise enough to back up all of my important files about a week or two prior, so this should have minimal impact on the development of Scrapship.

In the meantime, I still have a Mac Mini 2018 -- but it doesn't have the development tools I use.  So while I wait for my new ***desktop*** to arrive in about a month I've been honing my Blender skills and other things pertaining to game development.

So have no fear fellow gamedevs and players, Scrapship is still in production, it's just temporarily delayed. 

Meanwhile, feel free to check out my Instagram (@40wattstudio) to see what other projects I'm working on.

29 JUNE 2020:

Scrapship Demo 4 is now available for Mac!

https://40wattstudio.itch.io/scrapship-demo

It took a while, but I finally figured out how to get QB64 to display properly in OS X.

Yes . . . yes, there probably are not that many Mac gamers out there . . . but who knows! I'm just glad I know how to publish it for two different platforms now!

Woot!

In other news . . . my new Desktop is still in "Confirmed" status so it's just a matter of waiting for it to ship . . . hopefully by the middle of next month . . .

25 JULY 2020:

https://40wattstudio.itch.io/scrapship-demo

My desktop finally arrived about a week ago -- an Alienware Aurora R8! Unfortunately I wasn't able to spend much time with it as I had to work 12 hour days for a good stretch. But now that another weekend has arrived, I got it configured to my workflow and liking and have started working on Scrapship again!

As I type, my Mac Mini is busy rendering a background scene for the full version of Scrapship. About one and a half hours to go! It's  a giant scene -- about 1000 x 3000 pixels -- so it's going to take a while.

During this in-between time, I have been learning lots more about Blender and recently used my latest knowledge to make this new titlescreen text: 

I imported my desired font into Blender and then used the Text Extrude feature to give the letters a 3D look!

Finally, a preemptive Q&A:
Q: Will I be posting daily Devlogs here on Itch.io?    
A: Probably not. Most of the work at this stage is going to be coding which doesn't translate well into devlog material (in my opinion). If you feel differently just let me know! In the meantime, feel free to check out my daily updates on Instagram (@40wattstudio) or my website https://www.40wattstudio.com/.

Q: When will the next Scrapship demo come out?
A: Late-August.

Thanks for reading and I'll see you next post!

Dude, the new title screen looks awesome! I very happy to hear about scrapship again! So about a month until the next demo, that's not a long time fortunately. I'll be waiting as always!

1 AUG 2020:

https://40wattstudio.itch.io/scrapship-demo

This week's updates:

1) Graphics. Previously I was using paint programs to create transparent sections in the ship models. Now I'm utilizing a similar concept with Blender to give the spaceships 3D damage and then using the 2D images in the game. Boolean modifiers allow me to make more unique "subtractions" from the original model.

2) A new Title Screen Menu!

I finally hunkered down and got working on a feature that has been very much requested -- a difficulty level setting! 

Right now it's just a menu option, but in the near future I'll be coding the logic behind it. In general I think the difficulty is going to be determined by the number of enemy ships on screen.  How about you, what do you think is the best way to change difficulty in a game? 

3) Finally, some news:

Scrapship is just my side hobby, but my real work has me going on a business trip for the last half of August and the first half of September (4 weeks). During that time, I won't have access to any of my computers -- no Blender for modeling, no QB64 for programming.

But! 

My current plan is to try and put out a new demo mid-August. It will have all of the previously mentioned improvements and however many more I can finish in the next two weeks.

So what about those 4 weeks at work? 

I know this sounds crazy, but I'm going to try and do some Gamedev on my iPad mini! I found this program called Hyperpad that uses a drag and drop interface to make games. Not the most ideal setup, but better than nothing. I saw that one person was able to make a 2D Grand Theft Auto clone with it, so that sounds promising.

Have you used Hyperpad? I'd love to hear what you think about it!

Thanks for reading and I'll see you next post!

8 AUG 2020:

https://40wattstudio.itch.io/scrapship-demo

This week I fixed a few bugs like . . .

. . . the one where the player ship would sometimes explode at the top of screen after colliding with an unseen ship. 

. . . the one where enemy ships sometimes couldn't steal dropped icons.

. . . the one where sound would still play even if the sound was turned off.

Some of these bugs have been around for a while, so I'm glad I finally got some of them fixed. Right now I'm at the point where I'm slowing adding things back in and testing as I go so the next release will be as bug-free as possible. 

As for new features, I'm working on a "Warning System" which will simply inform the player what direction to expect attacks from. It would suck to be flying around the right side of the screen, only to get side-swiped by an enemy ship that you weren't expecting.

Look for the newest demo sometime next week!

15 AUG 2020:

https://40wattstudio.itch.io/scrapship-demo

Proud to say that I finally got a new demo of Scrapship released!

There are some key differences compared to the last demo:

-- I added the much-requested Difficulty Level. You can now play on Easy, Normal or Hard modes.

-- More variety in gameplay -- random numbers and types of enemies spawn from random origins.

-- This is the first version of Scrapship to feature the original soundtrack by Tyson Cazier.

-- A new power-up system that includes a Repair icon so you can fix your ship mid-battle.

-- Lots of graphical improvements.

The last 48 hours leading up to release were pretty hectic -- it seemed that I would fix something and then something else would break. Never a good thing! 

Fortunately I got most of the bugs fixed. Balance seems to be the tricky thing due to the randomization. For example, if you don't upgrade your main weapon at all, the boss ship is extremely difficult to destroy (but possible). On the other hand, if you get an upgrade then the boss ship becomes rather easy (I think).

So what's the roadmap for the rest of Scrapship? 

I see this as being the second-to-last demo of Scrapship. I'd like for the next demo to be "The final demo". After that I'll be working hard on Story Mode.

If at all possible, I'm aiming to have Scrapship completely done by the end of the year.

But we'll see about that because as I mentioned in a previous post, I have a business trip starting next Monday and lasting for 3-4 weeks. During this time I won't have access to my gamedev setup so I'll have to find something else to work on. Then after that there are other business trips I may have to go on. 

So I'll just take it in stride and see what I can do.

Play the latest demo here . . .

https://40wattstudio.itch.io/scrapship-demo

. . . or if you're curious what Hard mode looks like, I've uploaded one of my playthroughs.

As always, thanks for reading and I look forward to your feedback!

6 SEP 2020:

Finally back from my NY business trip! 

I watched a lot of game design videos which led me to one major conclusion:

Scrapship needs a LOT of work!

In particular I hadn't even bothered with taking color palette's into consideration. Check out these two screenshots:

On the left we have the very first demo. Very primitive . . . but the colors really stand out because there are so few of them. 

On the right is the latest demo (5). Looks fancier, but the spaceships don't stand out as much as they should. There is also a severe lack of consistency: Why are the fighters red and the cruiser blue? Why is the player almost purple? Why are some projectiles red, purple or white? The earth background further complicates the image.

So with that being said, here are some of the things I'll be focusing on:

-- Color Color COLOR! Going to work hard to find combinations that work together and really stand out.

-- The player only has 3 weapons (because I only have 3 sound effects for them). Nothing inherently wrong with only having 3 weapons, but they each need to have more purpose than simply "this one does more damage". I'll be working on balancing these 3 out. 

-- Hit detection has always been a sore spot in Scrapship. Ideally I'd like "pixel-perfect" hit detection, so I'm going to see if that's possible or not. 

Lots more on my mind, but that's the main gist of my thoughts. Stay posted for more updates!

The latest demo can always be played here:

https://40wattstudio.itch.io/scrapship-demo

Ah yes, I learnt that color pallet lesson the hard way as well, when I had to redo every sprite in Roopit and Boopit!  xD

Good to see you're still going man!  :D

There are a lot of pre-made color palettes online. I think changing the colors of your game to match different color palettes is a great practice to understand color theory better. After trying a couple of pre-made palettes you can create your own palette by chosing the colors that work best together for your game. Anyway, I think you have a very solid gameplay and scrapship is super fun to play, so I think trying out new colors at this point is a great idea! Cant wait to see the results!