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!