Project Channeler

Another update for whoever might stumble across this:

I have abandoned this project. I’ve since been found fit to work despite my health issues by the government agency tasked with this, and as such now have to work full-time because I don’t qualify for any kind of stimulus any more. With that in mind, this project is far, far too ambitious to pursue between my work schedule and lack of energy and focus.

I did learn a lot, and had a ton of fun creating this. It may not look like much but the vision in my mind’s eye was so clear, and it was amazing. It was the best game I’ve never played. Thank you all for the support, and I hope to once be able to pursue this project again.

It’s been a while since the last update, but there’s finally something to report again.

I’ve been struggling quite a bit with my health lately, and as such I haven’t been very productive. I also haven’t been sleeping well, on top of already not being sharp. This was compounded by the fact that I’m now venturing into territory with my project that is unfamiliar for me. It therefore requires a lot of studying, in a time where I have a big shortage of focus.

That being said, I still carried on with the project but it felt like I hit a wall. I’m getting into UI stuff which I have no experience with and studying and learning it was really taking a lot out of me. However, I’m happy to say I persevered! I banged my head against a wall for about two weeks, and I couldn’t find an angle of approach. However, I finally cracked it and once I did, I fixed it in 2 days!

Here’s a gif of swapping out active abilities from an Ability inventory (currently containing two abilities), and the player’s Action bar in the bottom right!

Week 4 update time!

I was so well on course last week, I didn’t see how I could mess it up. And I didn’t!

I had the whole plan in my mind. Last week, I completed nearly all of the individual systems. However, as usual, bringing them all together was more difficult than anticipated. Especially because I’m going to continue with this project, I wanted to set up everything to be future-proof. So both the Creature system and the Ability system were set up in a fashion that allows for easier addition of new Creatures and Abilities.

Here’s what I came up with!

First of all, here’s my finished logo for the brand I made!

And here’s the prototype of my game at work!

It meets all the criteria I set in one form or another:

• A basic player and camera controller

Completed - player can move and rotate the camera.

• Stationary targets representing the monsters with basic attributes such as hp, armor, resistances, and move sets

Completed - three different monsters with different HP’s, and different elemental weaknesses/defenses.

• A system in place allowing the ‘capture’ of these monsters

Completed - in a rudimentary way. Right now, reducing a creature’s hp to 0 will reset it to 100, and give the player a random skill from its move set.

• The ability to equip and switch out moves based on the monsters acquired

Completed - sort of. I bungled this in with the previous statement. For now, reducing a monster’s HP to 0 will replace your one active ability with a random one from the creature that was defeated.

• A UI indicating player stats, equipped moves, as well as hp bars for monsters

Completed - again, sort of. No HP bars for monsters, just a text indicating the HP. Player has an icon to indicate the one active move.

This may seem like I haven’t really completed my goals. However, the systems I put in place allow for easy implementation of more creatures, more abilities, more active abilities on the player. All that needs is some populating.

Next step is to create a system that registers which abilities the player has captured, and allow for the abilities to be switched out at will rather than on defeating a monster.

It is worth noting that meanwhile, I’ve changed a little thing to how capturing a Creature works. Rather than capturing the Creature itself, you capture the Abilities individually. This allows me to make some Abilities rarer and harder to capture than other. So the database of caught Creatures will be a database of acquired Abilities.

In conjunction with that, I will need to make the system that adds variance and difficulty to capturing these abilities.

Even though the DK30 has been finished, and I achieved the goals I set, I will continue working on this project.

If you’re interested in following my progress, follow me on https://twitter.com/FoxgloveStudios, or watch me game dev live over at https://twitch.tv/FoxgloveStudios.

Thank you all for your wonderful support during this month! It has been a journey, but the real journey has only just begun!

Week 3 update!

Week 3 has been a bit of an anti-climax, and not in the sense you might expect. Whereas I was slightly behind schedule at the end of last week, I actually managed to get caught up and am now slightly further than I thought I’d be. As a matter of fact, I’m almost done I think. I just need to fix the mechanics that allow the player to capture the creatures and ‘steal’ an ability off them. Actually, that might end up being very complicated. Then again, I thought the progress I made last week was going to be complicated. I think I can conclude that I don’t know where I’m at. We will see where we end up next week!

Have a nice gif of where the project is currently at:

As you can see, there are three different creatures. Here I’ve tried to emulate an Arcane Explosion-style ability from World of Warcraft. The creatures have different elements, brown being rock, white is paper and metallic is scissors. The explosion is set to ‘paper’, so it deals reduced damage to scissors, normal damage to paper and increased damage to rock.

I can’t wait to continue next week!

Week 2 Progress Update!

So two weeks in, I’ve gotten quite a bit done. I am pretty much on schedule. The logo took longer than expected, but the writing went a lot quicker so I’m now almost back on pace. Today, I’ve set my first foot in Unity and started working on the actual code. I’ve got a character controller that takes care of player movement and camera control working in about an hour. While a competent programmer would knock this out in 5 minutes, for me it’s a huge improvement of my personal record.

I’ve been streaming most days, although often not as long as I’d like due to exhaustion, losing focus, appointments and having to study up on certain subjects to continue. I don’t think people want to see me go back to my own course notes to learn how to progress. I save that for after the stream.

All in all, I am satisfied with where the project is at the moment and confident I can hit the targets I set for myself this DK30. Here’s the finished logo by the way!

Week 1 ‘Completed’!

First things first: I did not quite achieve my first week goal of finishing a logo for my brand. However, the logo I am creating came out much better than I had expected, this being my first attempt at pixel art and all. So less quantity, but more quality. That’s a trade-off I can live with.

In general, it has been a rough week with a hospital visit on Monday, and a dentist’s appointment on Friday. This combined with a new exercise regimen for my illness has left me physically destroyed. I am in a lot of pain from my exercise, but hopefully it will be worth it. Mentally it’s also been draining. Streaming definitely takes a toll on my mental capacities. However, having a fixed streaming schedule gives me some consistency, and streaming means I am forced to focus on the job at hand and can’t get distracted by YouTube or some such.

All in all, it’s been an exceptionally rough week due to outside circumstances. I am somewhat behind on schedule. The main question is though, am I enjoying all of this? Hell yes, absolutely. It’s a huge learning experience and I can’t wait to continue next week!

Here’s the logo design so far: