Got tilemaps working with the dual grid system. The tilemap is an existing asset which had to be broken down and rearranged to make the dual grid system work, but this meant fewer unique tiles were required.
Player Movement
Player character and movement. Copying across the jetpack behaviour from an old prototype helped speed things up. The movement still needs some refinement
Death Line
Created the death line and got it to move properly. Very “developer art” but it works
Lessons Learned
Pulled a late night and burned out the next day. Lesson learned. Respect my working hours and screen time limits.
State of the Game
Possible to play a level all the way through while being chased by the death line.
Map resets on player death
Map can be scaled up but some concerns over performance when size approaches 32x256 tiles
All seeds appear to be playable
Bridges and ledges are placed properly
It’s fun being chased across a large and unknown map
Hey!
I would recommend making a “Megathread” if you want to stay a bit more organized with your posts. I myself have a Megathread where I post about all the new updates to my templates.
This way, all of your Dev Logs would be in one spot!
Yeah, I couldn’t find anything I could judge the local etiquette from. I tried to change the title of the first post and it was fixed so I couldn’t easily convert it. TBH, this is my first time dev logging so your advice is appreciated.
Looks like I can edit the text, but not the title? If I’m missing something then let me know, I’m knee deep in data modelling and version control setup so I’m a bit frazzled!
I managed to completely rework the pickup placement. It is now easily extensible as it is data independent, looping over all values present and not requiring any static conditions or events. Hopefully this same technique should carry through the placement of enemies (on the roadmap)
Small Art Progress
The deathline animations are now a bit more interesting. There are now tilemaps and layers for the map background, and player fore, middle and background. This makes it easier to put the player “in” the map and to add visual elements. Some minor tweaks to the tilemaps to test this out.
Data Loading Approach
I want to be able to manage all of the game data in a spreadsheet as this is an easy place to make changes and understand what is going on. It seems that GDevelop doesn’t really have the native tools to make bulk data editing possible so here’s my new workflow:
Player dynamics have been moved to a specific Finite State Machine with external events. Gives much more control over the more complex parts of the player behaviour around the jetpack and cuts a bunch of code out of the main gameplay scene. It should also make the entrance, exit and death processes easier to manage.
Importing of the core data, copying it the the player profile and then using the player data to create a run specific data set. This allows for locked items to be excluded from a run.
Workshop Rough Pass
The Workshop is where the player will purchase upgrades between runs. It can now generate equipment and gacha cards, select their type and rarity and place them in the correct areas of the screen. The equipment will respect rules around not showing duplicates of existing equipment.
If your events are getting more and more complex it is probably a sign that you have missed something obvious. It’s worth working through the mess to get to a better and simpler solution.
Don’t be afraid to spend time drawing things out. It’s tempting to be 100% in the code but you need that helicopter view from time to time. Even 5 minutes with a pencil and paper can be valuable.
State of the Game
A lot of background progress with not much new appearing on the front end. Annoyingly the Player FSM was 3 days of work to be visually identical to before. On the plus side, the game is now far more solid on the back end.
