Jono's game dev blog

 After many years away from this project I've returned, hopefully I will get a lot further this time. I decided to switch from Construct 2 to Godot, because Construct has a lot of limitations, a tiny community, and a lack of development. Godot on the other hand is pretty widely used, despite being newer, and since it is code first and based on a variant of Python, programming principles are easier to translate to it. This doesn't mean it is struggle free, but I've managed to learn a lot already. Anway, I've started working on Super Mansion Quest again, since I now have a better idea of what I want the gameplay to be like,   I made the decision that instead of having endless rooms, the maps will be contiguous, which means the architecture will also be more logical In order to support this properly I had to come up with a way to transition the camera between spaces and hide rooms when they aren't active, as shown in the gif below. I'm posting more about this on my...

It's been a long time coming but here's an official announcement: Super Mansion Quest is on hold again. There's many reasons behind this but the main ones are: I was meant to be working on only one feature (making the guns feel good) and I got sidetracked I don't really know how to create proper enemies that would suit the gameplay The progress I was making felt really slow and I didn't have much enthusiasm for it At the bottom of the post I have a partial list of what I achieved while working on it again. What I actually want to talk about is what I've been up to in between putting the game on hold and now. It started off with wanting to make a platformer that's smaller in scope than Super Mansion Quest. So I worked on a recreation of Super Mario Bros. World 1-1. I actually managed to get a fair amount done because there's not too much going on in that first level. I didn't make an exact clone because the movement in Super Mario Bro...

Over the last few weeks I've been working on Super Mansion Quest, just so I could play around with making some guns in it. So far it's gone pretty well, I'm really enjoying working on it again. Added two new guns in the form of a machine pistol and a rifle Simplified the weapon creation process temporarily so I don't have to manage so many events for a single weapon Worked out how to convert Rounds Per Minute to the interval for each bullet (60 divided by RPM) Created a guide for creating new weapon types Created a room for target practice Added a recoil feature which makes the bullet spread of a weapon worse the longer it is fired Added dotted lines to measure the bullet spread Created a central dotted line to allow the player to line up long distance shoots easier Created a simple bullet firing noise Adjusted the pistol stats The machine pistol works really well because of the fast rate of fire and the bullet spread indicator. The rifle is cool because o...

It's been a few weeks since the last update on Super Mansion Quest, I've made progress and am way past the Stencyl version in terms of content and features at this point. Current tasks I'm currently trying to get a inventory system working. Half of it is done so far, the x and z buttons can now call functions for different weapons, before that I had weapons linked to a single button. After that I'll either get the saving/loading menu working or start work on the first boss. Additions I made a temporary title screen and a main menu that's half finished. Rockets and homing missiles are implemented, they work pretty well and the missile launcher is a lot of fun to use, it needs to be more balanced but it's going to be a late game weapon anyway. The skeleton head has newer art now because I felt like redrawing it There's also explosions and death effects now which make it more satisfying to kill the skeleton heads and fire rockets. Other notes ...

The game now has a working title of Super Mansion Quest and is being rebuilt in Construct 2 after I hit some walls in Stencyl a few weeks ago. Here's a screenshot of Super Mansion Quest in Construct 2. Construct 2 is really cool because making it do some things is simpler than it was to do in Stencyl and that has made getting the game back to where it was fast in some respects. I had written a part about the lack of a tile based map editor but the latest beta has fixed that (along with an inbuilt TMX importer), so now I don't need to worry about that part at all. The only real downside so far is how tied into the HTML5 system it is, I think that causes the desktop export of the game to be 54MB as opposed to the web version which is 354KB. I've managed to get most of the old systems implemented so far and along the way I put in some new ones like enemy and player knockback, an ammo counter, reloading and a spin attack. There's a few things I need to rebuild b...

So it's been a few weeks and I've managed to make some progress, not as much as I had hoped but at least I didn't stop completely. 2 extra coloured floor tilesets to make different rooms look a bit more distinct open doors so I don't need so many switches a directional dagger attack keys for opening various doors added a health system for enemies and the character animations and poses for the character to make the movement look and feel more natural lots of small tweaks and additions that I've probably forgotten about I still haven't come up with a proper name for the game or the character so the working title is Mansion. The major bug that's holding up a lot of progress is the player being duplicated when I switch rooms, If I can't fix this in a reasonable amount of time I'm definitely moving away from Stencyl because it's a rather problematic bug. The only other bugs I know of right now are some collision issues for movement, t...

Over the last few weeks I've been working on a top down action adventure game, inspired by games like The Legend of Zelda. If you follow me on twitter and missed the original few tweets and the few screenshots I've posted you've probably been wondering what the hell I've been talking about. The main character is a maid because I like the look of the outfits, so I decided to build the story and character around that. She's mainly inspired by characters from various anime series and Sakuya Izayoi from the Touhou series. She'll be able to use a variety of melee and gun based weapons along with a few cleaning tools for puzzles and boss fights. The story isn't really a priority at the moment and is subject to change but it currently involves the main character fighting demons and the undead to rescue her master who is at the top of the mansion in some room. I'm currently working towards making a small representation of the game which I'll hop...