Catapult building!

This new building provides AOE physical damage, making it very effective against small critter and such, however it also costs a lot and has a very slow firing speed making it suitable only in certain circumstances. The catapult didn’t actually take a super long time to make since most of it’s code could be copied from that of the alchemist. What I spent most of this time on instead was trying to create a lava shader instead of these very obviously tiling lava tiles, however it ended up looking really bad as I have barely any experience in shader creation so i decided to scrap that. Maybe in the future I’ll give it another attempt.

Now I will add more upgrades to the buildings, I have a few ideas already like tripple shot for the archer and a slow effect for the alchemist. Also I think I need to change some of the level parsing code since I implemented it in a REALLY stupid way :|

Added Camera Movement, a Jump Animation, and (tried) to redo the enemy system

Finally added some overdue camera control so the camera is not just statically centered on the player and you can now see more clearly where you’re going! The camera in the y axis also only updates when you are on the ground as to keep you from failing on those precise jumps! I also tried to change the enemy system to use a struct instead of trait objects, but I haven’t managed to convert them yet. I haven’t worked on this code in a month and this was my first programming project of even small scale, so many of the systems are, let’s say… sub optimal. Therefore I think I will make some hopefully quick changes to that as well.

Playback controls, UI, and animated tiles support

Added controls for beginning the next wave and fast forwarding. If you begin a wave whilst one is still ongoing you get a some gold for it to encourage you to challenge yourself more if you feel your build i strong enough. Additionally I added animated tiles that lookup from the tile id the corresponding animation file and displays that! With those I drew this lava and I also drew some stony underground tiles and a bridge, I’m not sure if I’ll stick with that aesthetic or not, we’ll see. I also added UI for when you don’t have enough money to purchase a building or an upgrade. Lastly i added a lives counter to the top right so you can keep track of all of em lives!

Now I think I will add another building, the last one. Which I do believe will be the catapult that provide physical AOE damage, and also a stun effect to stop enemies in place a short while.

Now presenting to thee: the alchemist!

The alchemist throws potions at his foes that apply poison which deals ticking damage to those affected, as well as drastically altering their pigment, no worries though it will turn back again, at least for those who survive. This makes the alchemist the perfect resource for dealing which a large band of enemies. Combo it with the friendly soldiers and the enemies literally can’t stop standing in the poison!

Not quite sure what to do next, I still need to add: a new building, upgrades, enemies, lives counter, playback control, and visuals so the game is not just yk… green. I don’t yet have any ideas for the last building, yet so I think I’m going to do some of the other stuff, we’ll see.

Bug Fixes, a New Enemy, and Debug Flags

Made improvements to the behaviour of the friendly entities, they now spread out among the available enemies like they should and targets them appropriately.
I also added these new rat like creatures that are fast and come in droves, but have very little hp and armour thus making them dangerous only in groups.
Additionally I added a system for for debug flags as command line arguments like “infhp” that allows me to test different aspects of the game easily and swiftly.
Lastly enemies now actually die when they reach the end of their path and decreases the (thus far invisible) amount of lives you have, which is a nice treat!

Now I am going to add a new building, the alchemist, which will throw lingering potions on the map that poisons enemies and applies some sort of debuff as well as dealing magic damage.

Started working on the project! I really wanted to learn C because it seemed really fun and a very basic programming language seemed like a fun way to get started(I was right btw even though I didn’t make great progress for like 8 hours I still had a blast). Since I had no experience in C before the first few hours or so were spent constantly looking stuff up on stack overflow. But after some time and a whole lot of segementation faults and incorrect pointer artihmetic (spent like 1 hour debugging a sigsev and it turned out i was using a char ptr instead of a char ptr ptr. Anyway I think I got the basic system of a stack structure using a double file linked list implementation (which i think is how one could implement scopes? idk i’ve never designed a programming language before). I also wrote the code for parsing functions which I hope works(untested).
Lastly I set up some goals for the project, as I said I want to keep this project small scope so I just want: functions, variables, for/while loops and that’s it!
Also here is an image of glorp

Added a new building!

For this devlog I added a new building for my game! It consists of three friendly entities which are supposed to halt the incoming enemies letting the other buildings take jabs at them!They also deal varying damage themselves, it all depends on how you wish to upgrade them! The player clicks on the building and then on a point within its range to command the friendlies to move to that point and wait for enemies, a little flag also gets put down at that point. Because of these friendly entities I also needed to implement attacks for both them and the enemies and it’s not working perfectly just yet.

In addition to that I also added switched os and made the game linux compatible, added some gold on enemy kill and lastly I redesigned the path the enemies are walking on, idk art is hard af, hope this looks better.

Next thing to do is to iron out some bugs I’ve encountered and to make friendly entities behave the way I want them to, after that I will probably add a new building. I’m thinking something like an alchemist that throws poison that applies a debuff on the enemies

Added a few hud elements!

Firstly I added hp bars to enemies that displays using a fragment shader their current health. Then I also added a visual for how much gold one currently has in the top right corner. Moreover I added an on click menu so you can view their exact health and other stats that haven’t come into action yet, like armour, magic resist and range.

In addition to that I also fixed a bug which caused the enemies to not being able to walk left. And lastly I also added some clouds and trees, I’m not sure how well they turned out so we’ll see if I’ll keep them or not.

Next devlog I want to add another building, I’m thinking one that spawns out friendly units that will hinder and battle the enemies!

Added archer attack to my game

Now archers can actually fire arrows that inflict damage upon the enemies! This took a while since i’m not the best at math, and i wanted to calculate the quadratic function the arrows follow in order to reach their targets. I spent a long time even after i figured out the function debugging why the arrows jagged back and forth, I figured this was caused by floating point precision, which turned out was correct! The issue was due to me accidentally multiplying the frame time twice leading to really small numbers, but it took a while to figure out.
I also added some blood for when enemies get hit, right now it’s just one texture, but I think I will add more some time.

Going forward I will continue to add upgrades, enemies, and buildings, and in the future make some UI for health bars, gold income and displaying information about enemies on click

Added visuals to upgrades!

Now each upgrade can have an associated texture that can either be additive or transformative and it can either provide a texture for the building or a new animation for the friendly shooter at the building. Building visuals can either be additive or transformative, for instance these archers I want at their first upgrade to get some bow and arrow training equipment and quivers that i later want to disappear when they get upgraded into gunmen.

This devlog I also changed the level/camera code to support negative coordinates from the tile editor. I also changed the range indicator to use the built in ellipse function in macroquad instead of just scaling a low res image, which looks better.

Next devlog I will make it so buildings actually can attack the enemies!

Added buildings to my game!

Now one can click on an empty build slot and get a menyu showing them what they can build from it. Each building also has its own set of upgrades which can later be built after the initial building is constructed! Each building and upgrade comes with a price however… it’s just gold, differing amounts of gold.
Although right now the purchased upgrades aren’t shown visually to the player, they only provide stat boosts. I want to change that, so that is what I will be doing for next devlog!

Added Wave System!

Now I can simply write in a file goblin or 20 goblin or however many goblins one needs. It breaks it up into different waves at each newline and each space for each enemy per wave. In this example I wrote “5 goblin”

Now enemies can follow a path drawn in the map editor! In addition to that I imported the code for getting and drawing animations from aseprite from a previous project. I also drew a goblin and path tile although I think I’m going to have to change them since they kinda blend into each other and you can’t see the goblin all too clearly, I don’t really know I suck at art 😭
What’s next is probably implementing a wave system so i can specify in a file which enemies will appear in what wave, I also of course need to add more enemies and adding towers!

Set up project and wrote the code for the parsing of tiles from the “tiled” tile editor. Next thing I will do is to make the code for enemies to walk on the path!

Continued working on the boss

This devlog I fixed the catapult so that the enemies actually fall down and land safe and sound on the floor, instead of just floating mid air. I also added rockets that the boss shoots towards the player that the player must dodge in order to survive. Accompanied by the rockets are a new death animation that features the player exploding to pieces.

I also made this cannon which is how the player should damage the boss cannon that shoots the boss that the player can activate by pressing a button underneath it, while simultaneously dodging enemies and rockets. Although i don’t think it is very fun having to always circulate around the cannon in order to but that button so i think i will make it so that a floor button appears somewhere in the arena and the player must stomp on it in order to activate the cannon.
In addition to that I added a trigger system for changing the map depending on where the player has been and not.
Lastly I drew a few tiles and tweaked some values for screen size and player movement.

Going forward I will finish what’s left of the boss, and I want to change the way the camera and movement works cause it just doesn’t feel very good having the screen flop around when you jump. I also still haven’t made a jump animation so will probably do that!

Worked on a boss battle for my game, he is this giant big red fella that shoots swirls around in the background and shoots rockets. He also pulls his minions from his naughty bag and catapults them into the arena. I still haven’t made it so he can be killed. But I’m thinking after the player has survived a certain amount of time he travels down towards the bottom of the arena. Much of the time spent here were me struggling to redo the enemies system, i made them all to be trait objects in the beginning, which now I think was a mistake since they all have share some common parameters such as position and size. It also took me too long to figure out the animation of the enemy getting pulled out of the bag. I’m still feeling very new to this game making + programming stuff.
Next thing I’ll do is to finish the boss!

Added dying with different death animations for different death causes and a red die effect. Also changed the way animations are loaded and stored as to make it easier to access and less repetitive work. Next thing I want to do is to create a boss that I’m thinking could be a guy in a spaceship that you fight in a hangar and he could throw down his minions on you and shoot rockets or something along those lines.

Added these blue eel/fish like creatures that lurk around in the depths of the acid and lunges at anyone who they can come across. I also changed the code that stores tiledata to store a tile id rather than some coordinates to a spritesheet, that way its way easier to identify certain tiles like i needed to do for both the jetpacker pathing and this fish creature figuring out where it can and can’t go. I also drew a few tiles.

For this devlog I added platforms with one way collision so you can jump through them and land on them, pretty standard stuff. I also added objects that the player can pickup, right now there is only the lemon object with ends the level and takes you to the next with a little animation I made where you eat a lemon and drink some rum and then black out, and later you wake up at the next level. I also added some blood effects to when you jump on enemies.

I added a background for the map which the player can view through windows in the spaceship and I also might add outdoors levels later, and there you will be able to get a better view of the background. It consists of some space objects I drew and stars that move in the background. It took a bit longer than I expected to get the timings as good as possible and to make it look natural with some stars being farther away than others, I’m not quite sure I succeed. I also fixed some more bugs in the level parser.

Added projectile knockback so you get launched away when you get hit, i thought that’d make for more fun gameplay!
Additionally I added 2 different enemies.

1. A small cart with a head that opens its mouth whenever one comes close to it to breath fire upon those that it deems are unfit for this world.
2. Added a bomb on a chain, pretty self explanatory, bomb go boom whenever you touch it, and you then go zoom.
   I’m not super happy with how they turned out honestly but we’ll see if i can find good situations for them, I guess the bomb could be useful maybe?
   Lastly I needed to do some minor bugfixes to the tilemap translator, previously it would always assume that the world started at 0,0 which is not always the case!
   I have few more ideas for enemies but I should really start to think about levels right about now, and I still haven’t drawn barely any tiles so that needs to get done!

For this devlog I did a few things. Firstly, I made an hp bar that consists of some lemons i drew and it uses a simple fragment shader to determine which parts should be blacked out and not. Secondly I made Iframes using another fragment shader that just makes the player blink white like in games such as mario. I also added collision to the side of enemies so you get bounced away and take damage should you walk into them. Lastly I redesigned the machine gunner since the first one looked ugly af hope this one looks better. However I’m thinking of making him into some other enemy since a bunch of small low dmg projectiles aren’t really compatible with the iframes concept, that or just making an excpetion for his bullets.

Refactored the particle system. Added support for animated tiles. Added support for tiles that generates particles. Tweaked the movement a little. Added this acid tile utilizing those things. Going forward I will draw some more tiles and maybe make some more enemies, I was thinking maybe a ninja would be kinda cool? Are there ninjas in space?

Added jumping on enemies to kill them(groundbreaking ik) . Drew a couple of basic tiles. Also I added a little red guy that screams on TV cause I thought it would make for a cool background aesthetic, I’m pretty happy with it. Still haven’t gotten around to creating some actual levels, as I still need to draw a bunch more in order to create something not awful.

I Added some particle effect for when projectiles collide. Spent like 90 minutes trying to fix rust lifetimes (Solution: git stash and just do everything again, it took like 3 min that time around lol) I’ve only worked on some very small scale projects before and I’m still not entirely comfortable with the language . I also added some shooting mechanics and I wrote a basic fragment shader for the bullet trail! I’m thinking bullets shouldn’t kill the enemies but rather impact them in some other way like the Jetpacker falling to the ground.
That was the last thing that i did, making the Jetpacker bullet interaction.
Next up I’m going to add bullet interactions for the spike ball enemy and the machine gunner.
I realise this probably shouldn’t have taken 6.5 hours, but what can i say, still learning :P.

Added a machine gun enemy who shoots lasers at anyone unlucky enough to be in his way. Added variable flight heights for the jetpackers via indication(red lines ) in the tiled editor. Also projectiles actually collide with the player and decreases their (invisible thus far) health.

I added 2 different enemies.
Firstly a jetpacker that flies with his… well his jetpack. He also shoots scary energy balls that deals damage to the player. Secondly a spikeball that follows the player and deals damage on contact. Right now all jetpackers are hard coded to fly up to a certain distance, but i will add so that you can change in the tilemap to where they shall fly. I might also add pathfinding to the spikeballs. Next thing to do apart from already mentioned is to add additional enemies and draw a few (hopefully nicer looking) tiles.

Added collision and movement (TOOK FOREVER). I also added some code for handling animations. In addition I drew this pirate I think he looks decent and some tiles that are kinda meh i might redraw them later. Next thing to do is probably adding enemies and some gameplay. I have some rough ideas like maybe a jetpacker or machinegunner. I still haven’t figured out how each level should end so I should probably do that, but first enemies I’m thinking.

Implemented a “start” tile which is just an indicator as to where the player is spawned into the level, but should not be drawn like the others. That went fairly quickly the rest the time is me struggling with implementing movement and collision. I’m very much a beginner when it comes to game design and this was harder than i anticipated :P.

These first 2 hours were just setting up the basics in the project, like loading a tilemap from the tiled map editor into the game from different layers and rendering them correctly. Next thing to do is creating basic collision and physics.