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xianc78

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.

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xianc78

gamedev 

Replaced the BS Zelda Darknut sprites with my own.

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xianc78

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.

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xianc78

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.

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xianc78

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.

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xianc78

gamedev 

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

1
xianc78

gamedev 

Implemented a dungeon map.

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xianc78

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.

1
xianc78

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.

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xianc78

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.

1
xianc78

gamedev 

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

1
xianc78

gamedev 

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

1
xianc78

gamedev 

Boss now explodes on death.

1
xianc78

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.

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xianc78

gamedev 

Music now stops after defeating the final boss.

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xianc78

gamedev 

Placed the end-game item on a pedestal.

1
xianc78

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.

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xianc78

gamedev 

Explosions now kill enemies.

1
xianc78

gamedev 

Increased the size of the explosions.

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xianc78

gamedev 

Key now only appears after killing all of the enemies in the room.

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xianc78

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.

1
xianc78

gamedev 

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

1
xianc78

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.

1
xianc78

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.

1
xianc78

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)

1
xianc78

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.

1
xianc78

gamedev 

End text is now word-wrapped and appears letter-by-letter.

1
xianc78

gamedev 

There is now a freeze frame when a boss is killed.

1
xianc78

gamedev 

There is now a spark where your sword strikes during the boss kill freeze-frame.

1
xianc78

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.

1
xianc78

gamedev 

Fixed the bug from the last video.

1
xianc78

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.

1+
xianc78

gamedev 

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

1
xianc78

gamedev 

Boss now teleports.

1
xianc78

gamedev 

Boss now faces the player (within the constraints of 4 cardinal directions).

1
xianc78

gamedev 

Boss now has sound effects when shooting energy balls.

1
xianc78

gamedev 

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

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xianc78

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.

1
xianc78

gamedev 

Title screen finally has a logo.

Shoutout to @Mr_NutterButter for designing it.

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xianc78
Follow

gamedev 

Title screen's typo has been fixed.

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xianc78

gamedev 

Created the last boss. (Last boss created, not the last boss that appears in the game.)

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xianc78

gamedev 

Created a new room layout. Zelda 1 had water-maze rooms, and I realized that mine didn't so I created one. Though I am kind of limited because the key will always be placed in a random room and the room coordinates for the key (in tiles) is always (10, 5), so I have to accommodate that when designing rooms like this.

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xianc78

gamedev 

Added a blue sword, which is even stronger than the white sword. There is no shop item for it yet, and as you can see in the video, there is no HUD icon for the blue sword either.

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xianc78

gamedev 

You can now purchase bombs which will increase your maximum bomb count.

1
xianc78

gamedev 

Octorok-like enemies now shoot after walking a certain distance instead of being timer-based. SFML's built-in timers run with no way to pause which is why you often see them shooting when the player enters a room. This is honestly a better approach to this.

1
xianc78

gamedev 

Main menu now has a background. It honestly looks like the most professional thing I have ever made.

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xianc78

gamedev 

Boss now only appears after the player is out of the doorway and the trap-door closes. This prevents the player from leaving before the shutting of the trap-door.

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xianc78

gamedev 

Ending and credits now have a background too. I was inspired by early fantasy RPGs like Final Fantasy 1-7 and the first two Ys games which featured a space background, despite none of those games (except FF4) taking place in space.

Space backgrounds are often associated with deep philosophical thought or the meaning of existence. Or maybe the protagonist is transferred to another world after starring into the mirror. I don't know. I just felt like the ending and credits screen needs a background too.

1
xianc78

gamedev 

There is finally boss music. It was hard to find a good track because I don't want anything too epic as I might use that for a better game.

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xianc78

gamedev 

Title screen now has music.

Title music is "RPG Lost In Time" by Hitctrl. (Released under CC-BY 3.0)

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xianc78

gamedev 

Rewrote (or had AI rewrite) the ending text to better fit the situation and the background.

1
xianc78

gamedev 

One of the bosses (the one that you are supposed to bomb) now has an original sprite. Previously, it was just a large version of the blue, darknut-like sprite which changed to yellow when bombed. Instead I made it a skeleton with armor and the armor disappears after being bombed, but reappears after being stabbed.

1
xianc78

gamedev 

Replaced some of the copyrighted placeholder sound effects for items with stock sound effects. It's really hard to find any good ones, and these are the best I could find. The heart sound is a bubble sound effect because that's the closest thing I could find. The hearts in the Zelda games always made what sounds like bubbles or liquid, so I guess it fits.

1
xianc78

gamedev 

Replaced the sprite for the teleporting wizard boss with a sprite of my own. Just one more to go!

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xianc78

gamedev (help needed) 

Okay, I need a "level complete" fanfare along with a more extended version for obtaining the mirror. I'll promise to give credit.

1
xianc78

gamedev (help needed) 

CC: @beardalaxy

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xianc78

gamedev 

Replaced the sprite of the bug boss with a sprite of my own. Now every boss is using original sprites.

1
xianc78

gamedev 

Added a "death animation" for bosses (actually for all enemies but I don't think it works well with them when I tested it) instead of just a single frame. There is supposed to be an additional frame but it doesn't appear in game.

1
xianc78

gamedev 

Decided to get rid of the penalty of taking half of your coins when you die. I realized that this game is brutally difficult and losing money on top of your equipment just seemed way too harsh, so I decided to just have it reset your equipment to level 1 and leave it at that.

1
xianc78

gamedev 

Added red coins after realizing that a lot of the shop items are too expensive. They are worth 10 coins each. I hope it helps.

1
xianc78

gamedev 

Finally found a "death whirl" sound effect for when the player gets killed. It took me forever to find one because I didn't know what it was called. Obviously it's not in sync because it's a stock sound effect that I just downloaded, but I plan to sync it in due time.

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binkle

re: gamedev 

@xianc78 hey that looks pretty nice :hapyday: it's funny how it's the little things that really bring it to life. You may consider moving the start/continue/exit up slightly just to give that copyright text room to breathe
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xianc78

re: gamedev 

@binkle That's what I plan to do. Thanks.

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cool_boy_mew

re: gamedev 

@xianc78 I like the pre-boss music
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xianc78

re: gamedev 

@coolboymew Thanks. But I didn't compose any of it. That music was composed by Beau Buckley on OpenGameArt (repository site for stock game assets).

opengameart.org/content/desert

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beard :meru_dab:

gamedev (help needed) 

@xianc78 ye I saw it I'll see if I can spin up something, got a bit of work on my hands with the game and the demo releasing soon

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xianc78

gamedev (help needed) 

@beardalaxy It's fine. Take your time, and thanks for the offer.

0
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