Shardpunk News

We all agree that 2020 was special in one way or another. Nevertheless, I made some progress with Shardpunk throughout the year, and I'd like to review the ways game evolved during that time.

Quasi-dynamic levels

I first implemented that feature at the beginning of 2020. Every combat level is put together from predefined pieces to achieve a quasi-random nature.

Some of the level visuals are then randomly placed (lights, wall/floor decoration) to make it look even more unique:



Later on, I expanded this mechanism to handle closed locations (e.g. sewers) - I had to make sure that such levels are passable from start to the end, so proper level metadata had to be added.

The tactical layer

This went through a total overhaul during 2020. It started as an airship management thing (as back then the idea was that your team would be drifting above the destroyed Capitol in an airship), with production slots and other stuff:





This approach had few major issues (too heavy UI, not supporting the "hopeless" vibe of the game) so I changed it to a shelter layer. Here's the latest shot:

Note that there is a common action points pool on this screenshot instead of individual ones. I am testing this approach right now.

Experience and leveling

This is strictly bound to available character types and I will surely write more about it in a separate entry. Long story short, I was experimenting with different approaches to leveling and I believe I will go with a similar approach that Pathway game had (number of unique characters, each having unique skills).

Handling loot

I'm fond of simplifying the inventory management phase and getting rid of the encumbrance mechanism that allowed me to reduce this bulky UI:



Into this one:



Map travel

This is the thing that - when finished - will make the core gameplay loop complete. It is already possible to enter shelters, selecting the next mission, gathering resources and crafting some basic combat items (grenades, stimpaks). There's no final chapter mission present yet, but there is enough stuff available to test whether the gameplay loop is finished.

Summary

The development in 2020 progressed in a similar way to 2019 - using an iterative approach and trial-and-error way of choosing which feature is fun and which isn't. There were two demos released, both of which provided me with valuable feedback on the game.

The main thing that was different in 2020 was the development speed in November, as I temporarily made Shardpunk my full-time job during that month. This allowed me to do some significant progress AND helped me to create a development plan for the rest of the game.

Does it mean I have a clear roadmap for Shardpunk? Well, kind of. We all know that planning in software development can be difficult. Too many moving parts, too many situations in which you need to get back to the drawing board and rethink something.

Was the roadmap helpful in some way? I believe so! I made some nice progress with finding a publisher; nothing is official yet, but do give me a month or so and hopefully I'll be able to share some nice information with you.

I wish you all the best in this new year! Take care!

Let's quickly discuss the core gameplay loop of Shardpunk, shall we?

We start with the "combat" phase. Characters need to reach the end of the map, avoid getting killed and try to find stuff along the way. The "stuff" includes resources necessary to craft items that can help in combat and food supplies that are necessary to, well, survive.



After the exit is reached, characters enter a safe place (if they have a Fusion Core - I described it in my previous entry) or simply they quickly rest. Entering a safe place allows them to perform some extra stuff (like healing, recovering stress, possibly upgrading their weapons as well).



After a mission, characters need to select the next location, and the loop starts from the beginning.



However, there's still that food feature thing. The trick is that characters need to eat after each mission. If they don't, they suffer penalties.

Now, in my previous entry I said I introduced a hunger bar.


The hunger bar was going down with every mission, and the player was suffering from penalties. It turned out however that this is not working well - or should I say, it was not really fun.

You see, I have introduced another stat to take care of (like HPs or Stress). What was more, there was no clear indication of where a character would start becoming hungry, then Starving. Sure, a nice UI design could take care of that - but I started to think that this stuff was too complex.

I considered dropping the food feature completely. Characters would not be gathering food and there wouldn't be any food-related penalties. This sounded tempting, but I wanted to give this one more try.

Right now I am busy changing this system into a simpler one. Food will still stay in the game. There will still be a food distribution phase after each mission. However, not eating would simply deal damage to characters.

As simple as that. No "hungry" statuses that reduce your aim (which can become very frustrated).

There is one issue with this approach: even if we assume that not eating deals you 1 HP of damage, there is a possibility that not eating will kill your character. This might become too punishing so I'll have to keep an eye on that feature.

Anyway, we will see how it goes.

Oh, and I need to find a different name for "missions". When you're travelling through the city overrun by vermin and trying to get from point A to point B, you don't really want to have a "mission completed" text displayed. It sounds too military-ish...? It's not an "expedition" nor a "quest" as well... I'll keep looking!

Take care, everyone! My next entry should be out on 1st of January, so I should prepare some yearly summary post, I guess.

December has arrived! It means that after one month of full-time (well, kind of, due to all the crazy stuff that hit in November) game development I am back in my day job.

Does it mean that my development speed will decrease again? Yes.

However, the work I did in November included creating a development plan and a more detailed game description. I also have the whole backlog for graphical assets ready. All of this will help me out with my search for a publisher. Man, I would love to get back to full-time game development.

Anyway, I want to write more about one gameplay feature that I had a problem with: using Fusion Cores.

Basically, a Fusion Core is an item that you can find during your journeys. Its main purpose was to unlock entrances to shelters which were present at the end of every level.

You spend a Fusion Core, and the shelter becomes active.

So Fusion Cores were somewhat similar to fuel in FTL or in Pathway.

The main unanswered question was: what should happen if the player does not have a Fusion Core to unlock the shelter?

There were several ways to approach this. First, the most interesting one: getting rid of Fusion Cores.
I mean, that would surely solve the issue! The player would be able to enter every shelter as they will.

Another approach - and one that would not be about ripping a feature out - would be to introduce some kind of a penalty for the player. In Pathway, if the player runs out of fuel, they can decide to continue their travel on foot. It does damages the health of your characters though.

Now, this wouldn't work in Shardpunk, as the characters already travel on foot. And the whole thing is different, as I need these Fusion Cores to unlock the exit, not to move around the map.

I decided to make shelters optional, so I've added an alternate way to end a level. Each combat level will have a "regular" escape route that does not require unlocking any doors; the characters simply leave the zone and the player proceeds to select the next travel destination. You don't enter a shelter, so the punishment is that you don't get to heal up or recover stress.

Now, this introduced new problems (or should I say "challenges"). After each combat - even if you don't reach a shelter - the characters are getting more hungry. However, what stops them from eating food rations even if they are not inside a shelter? Surely they are able to find a moment - even when they're running away from rats - to grab a bite of something, right? So I've made sure that a feeding phase is present after every combat, even if no shelter has been reached.

What is more, a character can eat more than one food ration at a time, to better replenish their hunger.



Also, the hunger meter is being displayed as a bar now. You lose one hunger point after each combat. Previously it had three states (not hungry - hungry - starving).

What is more, some characters might acquire a quirk that requires them to consume more food.



Lastly, to make this stuff more real, I made sure that each day is divided into parts. So instead of a whole day passing, only a part of it does.



That's it for this entry. Take care, and thanks for reading!

Two weeks have passed; the show must go on. Here's the latest update on how things are going.

I took unpaid monthly leave in my day job for the whole of November. The goal was to see how fast I'll be able to progress with the game when working full-time hours; I needed this data to create reasonable estimates for creating Shardpunk.

You can imagine that I was pretty excited for November! And then, on November the 1st, my Mom died of COVID. This sucks, a lot.

Most of my full-time November enthusiasm was quickly gone. Still, I managed to work on Shardpunk - I had no day job anyway - and I have to say that I've seen a gigantic development speed bust when compared to my previous, "hobby" working hours. I mean it's a no-brainer - I literally am treating gamedev as a day job until the end of November.

Man, it might be difficult to go back to my old day job afterward - although I do love it as well.

Anyway, I managed to develop some new in-game systems, although most of them are not ready to be presented due to missing graphics. I decided to focus on this particular screenshot instead, as it is carrying lots of information about the progress:



Here's what we got here:

Map travel

This one is pretty obvious, as you can see the map. The player can select the next travel target which starts up a new mission. Map locations may come in different environment types (sewers, open/closed industrial locations). I am planning on adding map modifiers as well, which will increase the variety of levels.

What is more, you can see that only a limited number of locations has a shelter (the ones with a door icon) - it means that shelters will become more scarce. I am still playtesting how this change affects the general experience (as some actions - like curing Stress - were only available in Shelters, so more tweaks might be necessary).

Reduced inventory management

Initially (well, it is still present in v0.3) each character had an “inventory” with a max capacity. They could fit all different kinds of items there. There were two major issues with this approach:

1. The overburdened mechanics. If a character was carrying too much, they would be unable to move. The player had to shuffle the inventory - by dropping some unused items on the floor, and them passing them to another character. That was cumbersome and unnecessary.



2. Combat preparation screen was huge and it was another unnecessary thing. The player had to distribute the inventory between characters (as you cannot leave stuff in the shelter) before leaving the shelter, which simply resulted in distributing the stuff evenly anyway. It was an unnecessary chore:

Note that this screenshot only has 4 characters displayed. Imagine how cluttered the UI might get with 5 characters.

I decided to sacrifice some realism to make the gameplay more fluent: right now, only stuff usable during combat is a part of the character's inventory (so stimpaks and grenades). Other things became a part of a common inventory.

What is more, I removed the overburden mechanism. There is no limit of how many combat-related items can a character have. If you want to overuse grenades, you will be facing more enemies. If you abuse stimpaks, your stress will go up.

I've also merged the mission loadout screen with the map screen - which can be seen on the first screenshot.

New UI

The content of the UI was constantly changing, due to new features being added or old ones being altered/removed. This was resulting in the in-progress UI not looking very good - I was just putting stuff randomly, knowing that it is not possible to set up the final layout until all the features are there.

However, ugly temporary UI was reducing my morale, so I decided to create more simplistic one. Something inspired by the office applications I am working on in my spare time, but also by games like Star Renegades, Crying Suns or the upcoming Death Trash. They all are combining pixel art in-game graphics with higher-res (or simplistic) UI:



I ended up with the current simple UI and I am starting to like it. Here's how it looks in combat:


Weapons and add-ons

OK, this one cannot be seen on that initial map travel screenshot. However, I spent a lot of time developing this, so here's a glimpse of this new feature:

It will be possible to find weapons during your missions. Weapons will vary in stats, and will have upgrade slots that will allow you to adjust them even further. Still, character "classes" will be only limited to a certain weapon type.



Now, this feature will be a challenge as I want to visualize every different weapon model during combat. I already see a lot of fun in mechanic though - I believe it will be worth the effort!

That's it for this entry. The next one will appear in December, so after I'm back to my day job.

Hello - due to a major loss in my family due to COVID, I'm not feeling good about writing about new things and ideas for the game.

I did some development and playtesting lately though, and I'm attaching few nice screenshots - enjoy!

Glitchy death animations (character falling on water):



Character being surrounded pretty badly:



Ranger, shooting:



Another glitch: missing shelter door:



Rogue, shooting: