Yet Another Update on Future Logs

 Hi All!

Sorry for such the long wait, but I'm happy to announce all projects I've been working on have now been completed and I can finally start dedicating time back to this project!

I also want to say I will no longer be posting update logs on Wednesday or Thursday, and will instead be doing it on Sunday. Mainly because it was hard to keep consistent on either days deadlines.

Again, I apologise for the lack of content this month, but hopefully in these next few weeks I can really start nailing all this spritework and coding! Especially now that I have a new computer I can use to multitask... tasks with!

That's all now. Take it easy out there! 

Update on Future Dev Logs

 Hi all. Just wanted to let you know that I'll be skipping some weeks. Mainly due to a bunch of other projects clashing with each other, giving me barely any time to work on this. Hopefully, I will be able to make up for this by having many more things included in next weeks log, but we will see...

If I ever cancel this project, it will be after the demo gets released. No matter how terrible doing spritework is, I will not let it get in the way of creating this game! 

Week 4 - Progress?

 I'll get straight into the bad news (no, the game is not getting cancelled or put on hold or anything).Not much work was done this week, sadly. Mainly due to me spending way too much time on other games (thank you Toby Fox for releasing Deltarune! (I don't regret wasting the time, go spend those bucks and support the guy!)) But hey, at least something did happen!

 

Was it effect-ive?

Sadly, diagonal shooting has yet again been delayed. Mainly because I want to spend next week working on remaking ALL the movement sprites. Mainly because of how inconsistent they are between themselves (look at the skirts and tendrils on the third eye and you'll see). This caused some issues when I wanted to create the diagonal sprites, due to the fact that, for example, some sprites had more room for me to paint the arm than the other. Even having an extra pixel would cause everything to go into shambles. And so, I have made this decision. Hopefully I can implement diagonal shooting this next update, but I honestly don't know. I've stated this to death and I'll say it again, spritework is my kryptonite and something I suck at. 

but hey, at least we have cool epic effects for running now, right?

Dev Talk

Soo... last week you might remember me talking about brainstorming ideas. Well! I decided to ask the only place where someone with a small audience can get ideas... asking r/touhou! I would ask twitter (X if you're that type of person) or ideas but uh... it's kinda hard. Especially with 12 followers. And no blue checkmark. And you're kinda at the mercy of the algorithm. And... well, you get the idea.

So, I sent the post on Reddit and went to sleep. What did I get? About 25 replies! Praise the Reddit algorithm!

I'll go over some of the ideas posted and give my opinions on them.

So, Teleportation... This could be cool idea to implement. While in the lore, Koishi... doesn't really teleport (moreso makes people not see her), it would be cool to bend the rules a bit and have this sort of feature!

About the thinking move, I really want to implement this but don't really see how I can do this... Maybe things around her surroundings could affect it? Or have some sort of keybind to hold while doing an attack to store it for later? No idea.

We don't need to discuss the last one.

Ok, granted I have to play through Symphony of the Night, but having an attack when you can backstab an enemy would be pretty cool! Also gives more of an incentive to use the knife, as the range is somewhat lacking...

Pretty sure I mentioned wanting to stray away from using double jumps, as the concept while it does allow for better maneuverability, is kinda overused. And I think I said I wanted to use grappling hooks, so here we are! No idea whether these will be restricted to specific blocks or if it could be used anywhere. Just think of how much we could milk this for upgrades... An upgrade to swing you further, one to reel you towards the tip of  the tendril... Or you could, you know. Include them in the base upgrade?

Well that's it. I've read all the lovely comments, these were just some random ones I've picked! These comments have inspired me with more ideas for abilities! That's it for this weeks Dev Talk, so be sure to take it easy out there until next time!

Conclusion

Again, I apologize for the lacking updates, but with so much peak releasing these past few weeks, it's hard for me to stay motivated on this! Hopefully I can get those sprites and shootings done soon...

Until next time! Here's to another month and longer!

Week 3 - Slashing Through the Code

Well, it's that time again! Welcome to Week 3 of the development log! We're almost at the month mark, which is crazy! It only felt like last week when I first started this blog!

So, what's been done? Let's have a look!

Slice and Dice!

Yet again, I had to cut down on a feature (diagonal shooting, sorry!)... I guess playing Balatro and Monster Hunter really does do wonders... And sprite design. Assuming I didn't talk about it in the previous week, the way I implemented the sprites requires me to basically redo the entire sprite sheet, however this time I had to add a Knife to Koishi! Wonderful! Anyway, I think I'll have to do something similar when implementing shooting sprites, so maybe it was good I left diagonal shooting out?

The way the knife is implemented... isn't really how I want it to be in the final game. To make it quick, I want to make it so that you kind of gradually upgrade the knife as you use it more. So you can go from doing a basic slice, to eventually being able to string a triple slice, to even being able to do stronger, more powerful moves with the knife! Also, shooting and using the knife both have their own inputs, so you don't need to go from using - for example - hearts to knifes to roses! 

Hitboxes are also kinda wack, so I'll definitely see how I can increase the range of it. Or change enemy hitboxes. Whichever works out the best.

Dev Talk

So, in this Dev Talk I want to go over brainstorming movesets for Koishi! Y'know, the thought process I had when coming up with moves!

When thinking of what I initially wanted as her moveset, of course you have to do research on Koishi herself! As well as this, I began thinking of how other touhous (official and fanmade) and metroidvanias implement their abilities into their games. Of course, you have the basics like movement, attacks and whatnot. It's when we start to get to thinking about what powerups or upgrades to implement where things get interesting...

So far, it's pretty evident there has been lots of inspiration from Metroid, especially with the shots. While I do want to try and create more... creative shot types, I don't really know how I could make them work for Koishi. Maybe I could try and create something different, as I'm pretty sure I've exhausted all the shots types I could use that Koishi uses in the base games. As for other upgrades, I think I'm doing a good job and giving somewhat different options to what you'd see normally (except speed shoes, literally just speed booster from Metroid -_-)

Also, no, there will be no double jumps. Sorry to all my cloud in a bottle enthusiasts, but it's kinda overused as a movement method. And I want to challenge myself to make better level design with this in mind!

Well, I hope this Dev Talk explained a bit more about the process I went through to give us some of the power ups we have now. Of course, who knows? Maybe we will have a very different Heart Shot that isn't just a large Basic Bullet! Be sure to take it easy now, let's not think that big right now... Let's focus on the present!

Conclusion

That about wraps up this weeks Development Log! Again, I apologise for such the small updates, it's already hard enough when you've got all these epic games you want to play! Next week though, diagonal shooting?

Now if you'll excuse me, Deltarune Today!

Week 2 - A Fairy-ly Small Update!

 What's cooking everyone? Time for another week in review of what's been going on behind the scenes!

Well uh, sadly this week has been more of a burnout. While I did get some of the fairy stuff working, the new weapon I wanted to give Koishi? Uh... Let's just say it was going to be a bunch of sprite work. Like, I would have had to copy a bunch of the sprites I made. And the way I wanted to implement it... probably would be better as its own standalone showcase! But! We have a filler weapon to show, so let's get on with the video showcase!

Fairs and Roses

I'll be honest, these fairies were quite the pain to program, despite the state they're in... Maybe with some more animations they'd be MUCH better, and the gap they take to shoot wouldn't be so awkward, but alas we're stuck with this. Maybe later I'll touch up on them, add some sort of idle animation to them. Currently, we have fairies that stand still and do nothing (dumb fairies!), ones that move around, but still do nothing (still dumb!) and ones that move AND shoot! (but still dumb!). Probably will reduce the arc of the triple shooting ones, cause the top and bottom bullets probably won't hit you normally!

But how is Koishi going to deal with this (small) problem? We've got a new weapon for you! The Rose Shot! Works kinda like a Basic Shot, but it pierces through enemies! Genius! Charged version... still does it! But with more damage! Good base to work with I guess. At some point, I might program in a way to combine different beams, but currently it would only work with Heart and Rose... And those are all I plan to implement for the Demo! Still could be cool to do though, just to show that I can!

Dev Talk - Why Koishi?

So, in this Dev Talk, I want to talk about a question you (probably not) want to know:

Why make a Metroidvania about Koishi in the first place?

Well uh, this date back a while ago.

Another fangame I played had this lovely update, surrounding Koishi. Touhou Hero of Ice Fairy made a really damn good DLC (which you should totally play, both game and DLC!) which I really enjoyed playing. It made me more uh, interested in the character. Couple of weeks after that, I'm sitting on my chair, and I remember an image about Koishi and fishing rods. 

I type it down on the lovely search engine Google. And uh

I spent the rest of the day binge watching Koishi Komeiji's Heart Throbbing Adventure. 

Surprised I spent the whole day watching it tbh. Normally I watch a few episodes of a series and call it a day, then forget to watch it... 

Probably said this in an earlier blog post, but a comment inspired me to make a game (loosely) based on KKHTA. So uh, thank you to whoever posted it! You made this guy waste countless hours on a project they're (hopefully not!) going to abandon!

But Sunshroom! What about the Metroidvania aspect?

Uh, before I yap more, I played through Metroid Fusion and Zero Mission, randomizers and rom hacks and all a bunch recently. Somewhat inspired by Luna Nights to create my own metroidvania as well! It's an alright game, plays with the story very safely though, and I wish the time mechanic was used a bit better (instead of small puzzles and combat...)

tl;dr a yt comment and i like metroidvanias.

That's a lot of paragraphs! Anyway, see you next Dev Talk, where do talk about... something. Take it easy out there!

Conclusion

Well uh that's it for this weeks post! Come back next week where Koishi will (hopefully) get that shiny new weapon of hers and actually learn how to shoot!

Week 1 - Powerups and Plans!

 Hiya! It's already been a week and here we are again! 

This weeks been a bit of a doozy, mainly because of my final exams and whatnot, so the progress I've made has been a bit... smaller than I had anticipated. Some features I wanted to get done, like basic enemy patrolling and shooting, had to be cut from this weeks showcase because of it. But I have some basic frameworks done for next weeks showcase, so stay tuned for it! With school over as well for now, I have more time to implement some cool features! So let's have a look at what's been done! 

Powerful Powerups!

So here's what I've been doing! First, I tweaked the movement a bit so its a bit more uh... flowy? There's a new powerup that I  still haven't properly implemented yet! You know how in Metroid you get the Speed Booster? Well now we have it here! Speed Boots are your way of moving quicker around the world! Only we can't shine spark like Samus... sadly. Don't plan on making it a thing here, otherwise we'll be copying and pasting way too much! So, because of this, I'd like to introduce our second powerup, the Exo Boots!

Originally, I wanted to use Koishi's tendrils(? String? No idea what its called but I like to call them tendrils.) as a way to double jump, but I felt like I would be restricting myself a bit with it. Plus, why does she have boots if she's only going to use them to roll around and run fast? So here we have high jumping boots! The longer you charge the boots, the higher you go! (there's a limit, you can't just go to the moon silly :p)

Pairing the Speed and Exo Boots, you can charge your Exo Boots, gain the super speed from the Speed Boots and jump higher than you can, breaking those Speed Blocks along the way! Now that sounds... kinda convoluted. Should have just made it a shinespark smh smh...

Anywho, I guess I could tell you what the plans are for the demo and whatnot, as this weeks Dev Talk, where every week I will discuss stuff other than programming! So stuff like cool concepts for one talk, the story for another and whatnot will be shared here! 

Dev Talk

This weeks Dev Talk is going to be about the plans for the future of these development logs! No, the project is not cancelled! It's just me outlining how the next few months will (hopefully) go. 

From now until late July/ Early August, I plan on working towards completing all the programming for the game. Powerups, enemies, bosses, mechanics, everything like that will hopefully be completed then. This is to make way for the far more tedious task of creating music and assets for the game! While yes, I will still need to make sprites for new features I want to program, there will be more effort (hopefully x2) put into these sprites I will make. This should hopefully lead to sometime Late September/ Early October for me to release the demo and take a bit of a rest!

After the demo? That's more of the part I'm not so sure about. While yes, I want to keep working on this, I have no idea what University is going to bring onto the table, so I might have to call it there for now. But at least with the demo complete, I'll have some sort of game released! (plus, it is where i think KKHTA should have ended, there was no need for all the other stuff to happen, but hey! That could be a Dev Talk! (please dont)) 

And that's the end of the Dev Talk! Be sure to take it easy out there!

Conclusion

Well, that's it for this weeks post! Tune in next week where we will hopefully see some fairies duking it out against Koishi, and a sweet new way to attack!

It begins...

 If you're reading this, then I applaud you! You're showing some sort of interest in my little project here, and I thank you for this! This week's post is going to be more of an introduction as to the whats, whens and whys of this project.

Now then, you are probably thinking what is going to become of this project. What could a game with everyone's favorite clueless satori girl have in it? Well uh... let's just say this was somewhat inspired by THAT Koishi animation. Yes. THAT ONE. Just look at the name of this project! Whole reason this is happening is because of a random youtube comment I saw on one of the parts, wondering what the story would be like in a game. But! I'm not going to be recreating the plot one on one. I feel like a platformer wouldn't really fit the whole story of KKHTA, let alone a metroidvania. Considering Koishi is the main subject for a handful of episodes before it starts jumping to every character but her, it wouldn't be the best. If I were to make a game based on it, definitely would make it a fighter, kinda like Mortal Kombat. So uh if you were expecting me to go deep into Lunarian lore and whatnot... yeah sorry. This isn't the game for you. 

So then... what's it actually going to be about then? Well uh... I do have a rough story written, but nothing is really set in stone yet. I do know what I want to do for the demo (more on this later), and what I want roughly happening in the game, just need to tighten some areas that are a bit loose and that's the story! All I'm going to say is the beginning is quite similar to KKHTA's, with some changes to how I feel the story should go. After the first day, the story is VERY different. Oh hey! Also, Koishi isn't a happy go lucky psychopath in this game!  It's just... a lot of bad stuff is going to happen around her to make her seem like a psycho! Still find it funny how in KKHTA, Koishi never actually kills anyone, yet we have this image of her around the internet... Poor Koishi!

Yap yap yap... I want to play this NOW! Hold your horse right there sir and/or madam! This game
is still very early in development! Only started working on this... 2 weeks ago? Yep. Art, learning how to use a new engine, all that done in a couple of weeks. Making that... interesting... pixel art took about 5-6 days? The tileset I found online. Mhm. And I want to do ALL the art myself... Plus music. You wanna know something cool?

I have no experience with using music software.

I chose to make this game a 16 bit styled game because uh... I can't draw. At least with pixel art it doesn't require TOO much effort (watch me eat those words). At least I can somewhat code! Putting those lessons in Computer Science to good work! 

Before I start waffling more, I plan to release a demo sometime in Late September/ Early October, which is conveniently when I start University! Mhm. This thing is a whole summer project. As for the whole game, I have no idea when this will be completed. Who knows? Maybe I'll get someone more competent at doing music and art to help me and get this project done quicker! But for the demo, it'll be me alone probs. Demo will (hopefully) contain all of Day 1. What will Day 1 include? We'll get to that in a future blog post! Although from everything I wrote down, it wouldn't be too hard to put the pieces together...

Welp uh that's all I have to say for now, I think. If you have any questions or even ideas on what you want added, just leave a comment or directly message me and I'll reply! 

See you next week!

A demo video showcasing everything I've worked on so far!