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!