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gamedev 

Key and shield icons are now dark when they player doesn't have them, but light up when the player has them, instead of just appearing on the HUD when the player has them. The sword icon now indicates whether you have the wooden or white sword.

gamedev 

I got the credits implemented. Right now, it's literally the same as the credits in Distant Ruins because I used the same source files along with the credits.txt file from that game.

gamedev 

Adding the difficulty curve to the game by making it so that certain enemies only appear in certain levels. For example, for the first four levels, only the slimes and skeletons appear.

gamedev 

I'm now in the process of replacing the copyrighted assets with free-to-use assets or my own. So far, I only replaced the graphics for one enemy.

gamedev 

Replaced the BS Zelda skeleton sprite with one from Open Game Art, but it looks to small. I tried to look everywhere for 16x16 skeleton sprites and I can't draw my own, but this was the only one I could find.

gamedev 

I tried to make crudely drawn skeleton sprites based on this 16x16 character base sprite.

opengameart.org/content/base-c

It turns out that I can't draw a skull from the side so it ends up looking weird from the profile view. It still looks small compared to the player sprite, but I plan on using the same base sprite for the player.

gamedev 

Added the first and possible only boss, which will appear in the final floor. It's basically just like the Ghoma in the Zelda games except you attack it with the sword as it's the only weapon in the game.

Though given the limited window to attack and the fact that it takes more time to charge at the boss than it is to strike it with a projectile, I don't know how this boss battle will pan out, but I feel like without a proper final boss, the game would end anti-climatically. Also, due to the fact that levels are randomly generated, there is also an issue that the final boss room can be entered from the south, meaning that you will end up behind the boss when the battle starts. Maybe, the final floor can be just a single corridor that leads to the boss, instead of a randomly generated dungeon like the rest of the levels.

Anyway, I just want to get this over with and move on. After working on this project, I can clearly see why Nintendo never considered making a Zelda game with random dungeons. Not saying that it's impossible, but there are so many things you need to take into account (lock and key placement, metroidvania elements, etc) and they are much harder to implement in a randomly generated dungeon compared to a simple roguelike dungeon.

After this, I plan on creating a simple adventure game to practice things like event flags and dialogue trees.

gamedev 

Made it so that the final boss level is just two rooms. Though I haven't made it so that the store doesn't spawn in the boss room. I've also disabled the staircase for the boss fight until it's defeated.

gamedev 

The final boss now shoots projectiles at the player. I tried adjusting the timing of when the boss shoots the projectiles, but I either have the boss fight being to easy or it being borderline impossible. I should probably accept that the game will have an anti-climatic boss fight.

I thought about having the boss drop some McGuffin item that will end the game, instead of just opening the staircase, but I don't know what kind of item it should be.

gamedev 

Replaced the copyrighted placeholders of many of the game's items with sprites of my own.

gamedev 

Made the boss drop an item upon defeat. The leaf is just a placeholder. I don't know what it should be in the final game.

gamedev 

Finally starting to replace the copyrighted placeholder sound effects with either effects of my own or stock sound effects. Though, I couldn't find a good enough sound effect that goes well with the sword attack. The player merely thrusts it (like in Zelda 1), and all the sound effects I could find are more fit for a swinging of a sword.

I tried to take a knife-sharpening sound effect and edit it in Audacity to try to make it sound more "SNES-like" (lower the sample rate) and changing it to a 16-bit PCM, but I don't think it turned out to well. I also need to take into account that there is both a wooden sword and a metal sword.

gamedev 

Worked on the credits screen. I switched to a completely different format for the file. I also included my "company" logo at the end.

gamedev 

Changed the sword sound to a "swing" sound and replaced the door sound with a free asset.

gamedev 

Replaced the BS Zelda "hit" sound effect with a stock asset. It kind of reminds me of Terraria.

gamedev 

Boss now drops the key which leads to the room with the MacGuffin item. I think it's slightly more climatic that way instead of it just ending abruptly.

gamedev 

Decided to bite the bullet and add bombs because I feel like I need at least one more boss fight in the game. If I can't make bombable walls, then I can just have enemies that can only be killed by bombs instead. The game is too boring with just a sword.

gamedev 

Finally added something that I should've added at the start: a debug menu. I don't know why I keep on putting off doing this. Debug menus are so useful, but up until now, I was debugging levels by modifying save files instead.

gamedev 

The blue Dark Nut-like enemy can now only be attacked via bombs, finally giving the bombs a practical use.

gamedev 

Created a second boss. This one is like the Dark Nut-like enemy, but you have to bomb it once, then it turns yellow, then you can strike it.

The screen goes black in the video because the game crashed due to a segment fault.

gamedev 

Added a trap door to prevent the player from escaping the boss fight. It's currently using the regular door sprite as a placeholder. The final sprite won't have a keyhole.

gamedev 

Trap door now has it's own sprite and sound effect for when it closes. The McGuffin sprite is now a mirror. (shout out to @Mr_NutterButter for the idea)

gamedev 

Working on the end text for the game. It's obviously in a rough state right now. I need to implement proper word-wrapping (the current text is wrapped manually), and have it better timed before the credits.

gamedev 

Added a third boss, which can be hit anywhere except head-on.

You may notice a glitch around 00:35. I have no idea how that happened. The sword is still in it's place after the last thrust but it sets the "active" flag to false when not in use, so it shouldn't be detecting collision.

gamedev 

Started creating a prologue for when you start the game. The White rectangles appear presumably because the font I'm using apparently doesn't support apostrophes.

gamedev 

Apparently, the recording was corrupted. Here is a better video.

gamedev 

Added the fourth (and second to final) boss. I plan on having it teleport after shooting.

gamedev 

Decided to call my game Refactored Depths. The name is a mirror reference and a reference to the randomly generated levels.

gamedev 

CC: @Mr_NutterButter, would you like to make the logo?

gamedev 

The levels are now bigger the deeper you go. It was something that I realized that I haven't implemented yet. This is the second to last level and the video demonstrates how it's bigger than usual.

re: gamedev 

@xianc78 two solutions:
find another font
drop the apostrophes completely

re: gamedev 

@lina There aren't that many TTF fonts on OpenGameArt.org and implementing bitmap fonts would be difficult in SFML. Though, I don't like this font anyway because no matter what strings you display, the text will always be in all caps.

re: gamedev 

@xianc78 then just drop apostrophes, from what i see most of these can be just replaced with "they are" and "can not" and the likes

re: gamedev 

@lina Might as well. I tried another font, this time from 1001fonts and the same problem persisted, though I have no idea why it's showing three squares instead of one.

The prologue text was AI generated because up until recently, this game didn't have a story at all (it's just a practice game for something bigger). I decided that the end game item should be a mirror after someone suggested it, so I had ChatGPT write a quick prologue to give a backstory.

re: gamedev 

@lina And it worked (obviously). Thanks, but this problem will eventually come back, when I inevitably write text talking about ownership.

re: gamedev 

@xianc78 yea but until you it comes to that you can naturally spend more time looking for fonts if you absolutely need apostrophes, i think even there you can avoid them, even if the text ends up looking archaic as hell
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