Next up: The big Square Trail update!

So summer has pretty much started and the Lone and Prologue mini-updates have hit, here are some of my goals for this summer.

1. Get the next Square Trail update, version 2, pushed out in the coming weeks.
2. Get some levels done for Prologue, revise gifting system.
3. I doubt I'll be able to get Outskirts part 2 for Lone this summer, SO I'M MAKING IT A 4 PART UPDATE WOOO. parts 2 and 3 will probably come out next month. Finishing the forest area and adding more to the Pier. Actual ferry would be in part 4.

Pretty much: Big updates for all 3 games. But Square Trail will be my main focus. I had to revise my goals for it a bit, but here's what I want as of now:

• Complete UI overhaul, big enough to fit...
• New customization tools!
• Credit system, points are aggregated with bonuses to create Coins each round.
• Coins are spent on items and skins for your Square.
• Items give small "mini-abilities" such as a bomb. They are not limited to your ability choice. You can use Ghost as your ability and carry a few Bomb items. Items are ALWAYS weaker than Abilities.
• Abilities will most likely not be locked out. You won't have to buy them with Coins.
• Skins are different, completely cosmetic designs for your Square. They always have the same size and speed.

A while back I talked about a Ranking system, where you can level up and such. While this seems like a good idea and all, I fear it's a bit overused. Leveling puts interesting RPG aspects into non-RPG games nowadays. Look at Call of Duty (4 and up) and Battlefield 3. Square Trail is not supposed to be an RPG, and I will leave this out until I can come up with an idea better than simple Levels. For now, it'll play similar to Prologue's "MyPro". Collect credits -> buy items for new gameplay -> earn more credits.

Minor lone update!

Here's the update!
Now, the changelog.

• Sound-related bug fixes.
• Sound files compressed to take up less space.
• A few changes to the interface, specifically startup.

1.4 is a pain. (ToT 2/29/12)

Well, Square Trail 1.4 is huge if I want to fulfill as many of my expectations as possible. So I plan on breaking it up into two updates, 1.4 and 1.5 so I can divide the work up a bit. There's a lot of new graphics and programming work going into this, but it'll be worth it!

Today I put in a death screen, Coin collection system... 

score+(kills*2)

And a frame of the new main menu. A lot has to be done, ohhhh boy. In the coming days I'll be working on UI stuff. A lot of UI stuff.

Square trail 1.4, balance issues, and a Prologue hiatus (ToT 2/14/12)

Okay, so 1.31 of Square Trail is out, with it some performance tweaks and balancing... however it didn't end up well, and is worse off than before! Shield is now really weak, and Ghost is too strong... so 1.32 will be out tonight fixing those issues.

BUT ONTO 1.4 WOO!
This introduces too 2 main new things: Coins, and Skins. You earn coins from your Score + Square Kills, then you can buy new Square Skins with these coins. It might also have a Hardcore mode... but that might come even earlier... or later, I don't know yet. Hardcore mode will bring faster Red Square spawns, and faster movement.

Prologue? Development is on break due to the success of Square Trail. One at a time, one at a time. I'm really happy with PR2 so it can stay this way for a while.

Square Trail 1.3, and a new host!

Square Trail is now on Kongregate!

Now, probably Friday or Thursday, SqTr on DeviantArt, Kongregate (and soon Newgrounds) will be updated to 1.3, this is whats in the new version!

• Wave gets a big buff. It's larger and works correctly.
• New Ability: Laser! It works like a small, continuous Wave.
• New Ability: Shield! Quicker drain than Ghost, but surrounds you with spikes that kill Squares you touch.
• Bigger playing area!
• Some framework for the next patch, v1.4...

1.4 will bring one big thing with it: Skins. You'll be able to change your Square skin, and maybe the background too - with Coins earned by collection or destroying Squares.

Mission accomplished!

Alright, awesome news!

• ProShop is IN! So far you can buy the Turret, Rifle, or Quick Heals.
• Inventory is IN! From MyPro you can see all the Gear, Equiptment, or Weapons you've purchased.
• New interface is IN! It looks and works great, too.

Also...

• Improved saving - you have to do it manually by opening up the "In-Game Menu", but it works much better.
• A new gadget like the Turret might be added before Saturday/Sunday.
• ProShop Gift Codes will be added. I'll post some on my blog and in physical cases, giving you some free PP. Eventually, Code purchasing will be added - for a PP price you can get a code to transfer PP to someone else.
• Earn more points in Survival mode, making it on par with Legacy.

Big changes with PR2.

ProShop is implemented. Potential purchases are sorted by "Badges" "Equipment" and "Items".

Badges all part of the ProShop series, just expensive things you can buy to collect and finish your Wall.
 
Equipment: There are two classes to this, gadgets like the Turret, used with X and Z - one can only be equipped at any time, your Inventory in MyPro is used for selecting your Equipment. There's also Gear like your main weapons - Pistol, SMG, Rifle.

Items like equipment, re used in-game, with the V key. They're one-time use, sometimes stackable items with a specific use, like the Quick Heal that fully restores your health, but you can only have 5 at any given time.


Oh, and uh... Equipment in PR2

• Turret will become the first piece of equipment you can buy, for 100,000 ProPoints.
• The Rifle might be the first purchasable piece of Gear. Meaning you start with just the Pistol and SMG, but have to buy the Rifle for 250,000 PP

Items... only the Quick Heal.

Baadges... might not be in PR2.

Tuesday Progress Update (1/31)

So far, the new Interface is functional. Just need to re-size and move some boxes, and it's done.
Which means today, I'm starting on putting the store in. Here's what it'll feature!

Badge Series: Plenty of Points

• [Back to Square One]: 1,000,000 points.
• [That's it?] 1,500,000 points.
• [You win?] 2,000,000 points.

The cost is so huge for these just to be long term goals, versus the just "collect points" series (Over 9000-My Little Million) since you're spending the points and have to collect it all over again. My goal is for at least a few hours of playtime to get 100% in the game -- all badges, all briefcases.

Items 

• [Quick Heal]: 250,000 points. 1 time use, can hold 5 at once. Press F to fully restore your health.

Equipment / Upgrades

• [Gun Turret]: 500,000 points. Unlocks the Turret ability (same as before, tap X.) permanently.
  I wanted at least one ability unlock... so this is it. You can get this many points in like 2 runs of the East Gate chain.

Now for some stuff about Story Mode:
Scene 2 is awesome. It's very cinematic, compared to all of my previous games. First few seconds are calm, but then you're sent running away, and you have to run fast. You don't have any of your guns here either, but you can pull off Stealth Kills. You'll be running away trying to escape a huge house, and taking down the enemies in your way. There'll also be a badge you can earn in this level from SK'ing enough of the enemies, as well as a hidden briefcase.

Awesome news in 3, 2, 1...

In my last post, the new iteration of the Main Menu was shown off. Well it's evolving forward a bit more, you see...

I got ideas for the Shop!


First of all, the "Badges" tab you see in the picture will be renamed to something more universal, currently I'm thinking "MyLog", "MyPro" or something along those lines. In that tab, you'll be able to go to the Badge Wall, see some stats, and access the ProShop.

Inside the ProShop you'll be able to buy stuff like...

• Buy a new set of Badges (Meant to be earned after My Little Million)
• Buy a new medkit to be placed in Survival Mode.
• My favorite so far... Purchase a Quick Heal, for 500,000 ProPoints you can tap "F" to use it and instantly fill your health, it's a one time use thing, so you should buy one in preparation for a hard level or long Survival run.

With the introduction of the new Quick Heal item, I'm adding tougher death penalties for Legacy Mode (when you tagged a checkpoint), you'll lose 10,000 of your points in that current stage each time you die.

You'll be able to carry multiple Quick Heals. You can track your inventory in "MyLog", and with this new feature introduction, I might go for more Items in the future - I'm even thinking about making it so you have to buy Ammo, or at least ammo boosts.

Another idea I'm thinking of is a "Extended Mag" upgrade. You'll be able to use it to boost your current clip by 15.

With all these upgrades and items though - I'm starting to think about adding an in-game Inventory screen, but this is looking a bit too far ahead.

CSIP: New Menu Interface

Here's a concept of the new interface I'll try to put into Prerelease 2.

Quick note: The right area will be vertically aligned and not low like it is here!

Clicking "Badges" might bring up  new tab, with stats such as how many briefcases you found - and later on, possibly your highest score achieved in any stage - and of course access to the Badge Wall.

It'll work like the current one, just better.

With this, badges are a bit more obvious thanks to the glow, and there's a lot more room for text, stats, and future game modes. Plus, with the black borders it's consistent with the Badge Wall, I'm going to shoot for putting this in-game today so it's ready for PR2.

Progress - and my first deadline.

Okay, deadline for Prerelease 2 is superbowl sunday, Feb 5th. I gotta have a good build ready to show my cousins.

Here's a bit of a checklist of what's been done so far, keep in mind I've had a lot of schoolwork since Thursday! If it's not on the list, it's not in this build.

• Story Mode Scenes 1 and 2 complete (2 is in progress)
• Legacy tweaks.
• More badges, working Legacy Badges
• Fixes from PR1
• Foundations of a storefront for spending points.
• Hubs for Story, Survival, and an improved Legacy hub.
• ProPoint income toned down.

Pre Release 2 and CSI:P Menu UI

First thing: The Live Hub concept I wanted to put in PR2 will not be in that version, the ActiveX Microsoft Web Browser extension is a glitchy P.O.S. so maybe later on.

Now to the real article... I'm not happy with the UI design for CSI:P, it's not at all consistent from menu to the Badge Wall - so I'll be toying around with a redesign to make it fit in with the Badge Wall. I'm not a fan of overzealous hand-holding in games ("You can move with WSAD!") But this game is designed with my younger cousins in mind, so I'll see if I can put a guide similar to Revelations travel guide.

Now, small side projects:
While I don't want to work on lone (too big a project and distraction from CSIP) I do want to toy around with some side projects as a refreshing activity. Both I want to work on are revamps/sequels of old games from my past. Quarantine 2 and Minisports 3.

ProPoints, patches, and prerelease 2 stuff

Alright, so we have a primitive save system in place, we have a 'currency' system, and we have some bugfixes from Prerelease 1 prepped for PR2, besides the Maximize/resize crash and graphics bug.

First I want to talk about  use for PP. There will be a shop, but I don't have many ideas for what to put in it.
Idea time!

• [Unlikely] Lock content off so you need to unlock story missions/legacy phases with PP
• [Highly Likely] A badge series that can only be bought through the shop, pretty much harder to get than the pure PP series (Over 9000, ML Million)
• [Maybe] Minor player improvements, like faster running speed. I want to be able to keep the game balanced so this is an issue.
• [Likely] Minor changes to the game itself, like Menu screen backgrounds.

I'm still thinking of ideas and I'm not happy with what's here, expect some more ideas later on.

Next topic: Patching the game.
Big thing I'm going to be working on before I release Prerelease 2 is a patching system, now that the game has save files I don't want people to lose them every update, you can, however - backup your points.ini and it will still read in future versions.

So here's my current set of goals before I release PR2:

• Patch system, game updater.
• Story mode scenes 1 and 2 complete.
• Legacy tweaks.
• More badges, working Legacy badges.
• Fixes from PR1 (no progress on the mximize/resize crash sadly)
• Foundation of a storefront at least, probably no content.
• Hubs for Story and Survival, improved Legacy hub.
• A skip-able opening tutorial.
• "Live Hub", more on it later today.

This is Prologue.

This is the Prologue menu as of today. Here's what I just spent hours over two days working on.

First of all, here's a walkthrough the menu.

1. In-Game Menu - This is accessible at all times and lets you leave a scene/level and head back to this menu, go to Full Screen, or just turn off sound.

2. PP (ProPoints) count. Shows you your total combined Score across your entire campaign, on the right you can Load your last game saved, or wipe it and start a new one.

3. You'll get notifications for Badge unlocks when you head back to the Main Menu from whatever you were doing. Check your Badge Wall and the notification disappears.

• "ProPoints" consistent data. Every level you complete, every attempt at Horde mode. All of your progress of earning points is saved, and can be accessed the next time you start up. It's going to be usable to unlock some gameplay related things, so I'm going to keep it saved in an open, accessible through notepad ".ini". You can change the score to your liking since it isn't really meant for serious competition.

• The next thing? I call it Badge Wall. Badges you earn will be viewable here, as well as ones you haven't achieved yet, and how to get them. Grey background like the ones you see here mean locked, you haven't gotten them yet. If they're golden, you got it.

On save files in future games (Well, CSI P) and badges!

So I tried a bit of file saving yesterday, didn't work out too well. But here's something I'll probably be able to do before a complete version releases: The most recent score.

This  should definitely be possible and doable, but saving Story Mode states is a bit different. I don't want the story to drag on. I want it to be content worth revisiting to explore  level or try for a better score, so saving might not even be necessary for that.

Anyways, each mode in CSI:P will have  "Hub". You choose the mode in the main menu and it brings you to the hub. You'll get information on what is you'll be doing, go back to the main menu, or start the mode.This gives space for at least the most recent score to be displayed.

Remember taeConnect Badges in the attempted Revelations revamp? Well those went away... for now at least. I think I can get them back in to an extent. It should be something I can get done, even with a full badge viewer interface in the menus, imagine stuff like:

[Over 9000]- Get over 9000 points for your first time.
[Treasure Hunter 1] - Find your first hidden case of money.
[Treasure Hunter 2] - Find five hidden cases.
[Treasure Hunter 3] - Find all 10 hidden cases.
[Crazy Points] - Get over 50,000 points.

[Addicted] - Get over 100,000 points in one level.
[Destroyer of Hordes] - Survive wave 10 in Survival
[East Gate Champion] - Complete East Gates in Legacy.
[Back Room Wrecker] - Complete Back Rooms in Legacy.

Of course it all would be persistent, something meta to work on even after beating the main story.

CSI P: New content?

So CSI: Prologue will have two modes of admittedly recycled content, Survival and Legacy modes.

The good thing is that both of these modes have received tweaks (not rehashes) with the Prologue transition. 

Part of this is balance. I 'nerfed' sprint points (I call it "Chaining", because you should sprint between melee kills) to the ground. Tweaked the SMG to be more efficient as a primary weapon.

I am revisiting the old content (Legacy and the main Survival map) with some new stuff, like the Rifle to make aiming more precise. Next up, I'm adding a traverse ability. You'll be able to climb over marked objects.

After Story Mode is done, I really, really want to introduce some more stuff to the game, maybe a second Survival Map, maybe some sort of Multiplayer, or something entirely different. I have a few ideas up my sleeve, I really want to make this game as content packed as possible.

Small Update: Worked on a new mode, Codename: Escape. It's pretty much just time trial. You have to run through a map in as low a time as possible, it doesn't have shooting elements, but it gives you something else to do! So far it is pretty neat. Time records correctly and it even has "3 2 1" sounds.

By the way... I'm still working on Lone!

I just added Night to the main menus, sometimes it's the subtle little things. :D

Some stuff I got done - also, Nations... (Long post!)

So, I'm still working on the first scene of the story mode, but I've gotten a few notable things done.
Remember the Vignette you see around pretty much all taeHD games? (Lone and Revelations)
Now it looks a lot better, giving off a blurring effect. The main reason it's still implemented is to limit your line of sight a little bit more than just being top-down.

"Legacy" and "Survival" modes are available. You can go to Wave 13 in Survival, it might not be a big number but it can be hard.


"Story" mode levels ("Scenes") will work like this:

• Objective 1 
• Exploration opportunities (bonus content)
• Objective 2
• Objective 3
• Scene Complete

It seems very "Main Goal, Main Goal, Secondary Goal", but the Exploration Opportunities are more optional then that. When you are in a part of the level Exploration could lead to something, it'll just say "Explore", rather than "Kill optional guy XYZ". These Opportunities are mainly for Tutorials or chances to boost your score in that level. Depending on how the rest of development goes, it might lead to alternate endings or variations in dialogue.

Imagine having the main goal of catching a crook. You can head straight and do what the main objective says, but it'd end in losing your target. But you had a chance to Explore the area, if you did that you could find a second route to him, and end up catching him. The story would change according to how you performed.

Here's the current rendition of the Main Menu (If you click "PLAY.")

It's very simple, meant to throw you into doing something rather than messing with something else, or going through a sheet of controls.

The Story Mode is the best way to start. The opening teaches you what you need to know by actually doing it. Movement, Weapon Switching, Turret Controls, and how active reloading works.

Of course it leaves some stuff for you to discover on your own, such as maximizing your score through Combo Kills (Having both "Nice Kill" and "Stealth Kill" up at once gives you tons of points per second)

Now to talk a little about Nations.
Nations will be a even bigger project than Prologue, so I want to save it for even later, Revelations and Lone are great practice but this should really get me prepared. I know how to manage a big open world (from Lone) and handle weapons in a way I can be proud of (Revelations and Prologue) and now how to make a good, full game with Prologue.

Moving on...

Here's the first status update for CSI: Prologue!

1. The current Revelations levels will survive, and live on in the "Legacy" mode.
2. New menu interface is pretty much complete, it's very simple and works well, screenshots coming.
3. We have progress on the save system! Currently it's just saving and reading a score, not positions and levels yet. More on this after this section.

So this is how saving will hopefully work... In all of the game's modes.

• STORY MODE

You'll be able to save from the menu, you will have to restart whatever scene you are in though if you load. 

• SURVIVAL MODE

Either your top score or most recent score will be saved depending on what I can pull off here, you'll be able to see it before you start Survival.

• LEGACY MODE

There's a chance of saving in this mode not being implemented, since Revelations in it's last update was only around 15 minutes long. We might get score saving per level, so if you're a score fiend, Legacy and Survival modes are for you.

I'm baackkkkk.

I RETURNNN! Yup, I've been on break from gamedev-ing for a while. Mostly due to my laptop needing to be sent back for repairs and school.

I'll be getting back to work on Lone: Outskirts Expansion pretty soon! I also want to see what I can do with Revelations. I also have a new ideas for the future of taeHD (tae3D just isn't viable for being done in Multimedia Fusion 2, the app I use for my game development) including a way to manage seamless "Frame" transitions, future Open World games will switch between areas much better than ever before, this hasn't been necessary for  any of the current set of games, though. Revelations or Lone. Nations will probably use this, as well another game concept I'm still thinking about. I'll say this much, I want to try making an RPG. I'll post about it later on.