DEAD News

Normally, this would be the "introduction" of the post followed by a list of changes. Though there has been many changes, that list is not the focus of this post.

(you can read a decent amount of the changes at the bottom of the post)

Almost every month I try to inform you all of what is new with the game. This month I decided to spend my time polishing what was there for future improvements, but mainly additions.

With polish comes tough choices, and one of those choices was to reset every leaderboard currently in the game. Why? The game is meant to be a fun, arcade shooter to play with your friends, or as a highscore killer. It always has had this vision aside from the core idea of "make a game that supports controllers". To let this idea come to light, I decided to update the game to be entirely score based rather than based how many enemies you killed. It has lead to an overall more quality experience and I hope you find this to be true.

At the bottom of the page is every level that is/was in the game and who the top players were over the last 4 years. With this is also a video from myself thanking and naming the top players for each level. It's about 10 minutes long.


The next update, Novembers Update, will be a bunch of map overhauls and obviously: more polish.
-Enemies: New, and Morphed Enemies.
-Items: Lots and Lots of new items, powerups, etc.
-New Music: Jesus dude, we need more/better music.
-More Focus on the Splitscreen, and the improvements that need to come.
-Lighting


I spent all a bunch of time agonizing over the sandbox game I showed a bit ago. Development is Hell sometimes. This game helps me focus on something far easier to deal with, the problem is that this game is sometimes also it's own development Hell and I end up being annoyed at how messy some aspects of the project is due to it's age, and my original lack of caring to organize anything. At least it is fun to improve this game, and it's not like anything is counting on whatever outcome I come up with considering it is released, and out (technically).

Most of the month was spent upgrading this game, and as you read above: the leaderboards were reset.

I really do not have more to elaborate on than just to say "I did it to make this game better".

I paid good money for DEAD+/MAP PACK DLC
I have completely removed Round Based Levels for now, this will come back. Everything is free. For those of you who bought the map pack/dead+ please note that content will be reintroduced specifically for those players and that the price will go to $5 (and be worth $5) instead of being $1. It is still $1, anyone can take advantage of that right now as I plan to leave that up. The DLC description has been updated to reflect this post and my feelings. This change/improvement will happen by January of 2025.

If there are any specifics you would like to see out of DEAD+ when it comes back, let me know. I have, for 4 years, been open to feedback of any kind and many people message me about this game every month. It's really hard to bother me.

Some of the Changes and Improvements
*SCORE is now entirely score based. All scores have been reset for the infinite round base, it will not happen again.
*Singleplayer now displays ammo, hp, and score differently.
*Colored Blockade visuals have been fixed.
*Optimized some achievements to not be being called every second.
*Bombers speed towards you visual has been changed
*You are no longer able to fire or use a weapon while n the pause menu (i just never tried)
*The time no longer ticks up when you are "paused"
*The hitbox of enemies is now different to feel more responsive.
*The door block buy code has been optimized down to 10 lines instead of like... 100 copy/pasted nonsense.
*Optimized shooting to be more optimized (less lines of code doing the same things)
*Re-added screenshake, will be changed later.
*Updated Box Expanded to have less visual issues. I will revisit this map to redo its flow.
*Updated Box to have less problems. I will potentially revisit this map to re make it.
*The color of wood has changed.
*The Absorber not being in the game means I removed the achievement. It was barely an achievement, but it was one that you could earn.
*I changed some of the skin colored heads. Anyone other than the whitest white guy is hard to make not "hard to look at" for pixel art. I've kept these 6 variations in the game for years and do not plan to remove them, the challenge of keeping the color of the skin of a pixel art character to be visually pleasing is fun. There are 50 variations and tones of every main "type" of skin color. White guy 1 wont be the same as white guy 2, etc. The 6 I chose a while ago were basically the main 6 types of people from super white to the darkest black, I felt these 6 were a pretty solid representation of the generality of people. Your skin color is chosen at random as God intended. The challenge for me is to make sure it isn't impossible to play as your skin type. I mention any of this because I changed the body sprite once again. I wanted it to be more visible and my hope is it will make the darkest skin type easier to look at as before it was sort of a blur of dark orange and grey. (everyone in the universe is a shade of orange btw, nobody is "black" or "white")
*There are now 10 skins for the "skincolor" variable.
*Besides wood, various ground objects like "brick" and "mud/dirt" sprites were changed.
*The Hedge map has had a minor art overhaul.
*changed bomber size.
*so much more.... i mean, just play it. the game has been overhauled haha.



Thank you for reading, if you thought this was a decent enough read please react to the post.

[h3]Infinite Levels[/h3]


[h3]Round Based Levels[/h3]



[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

INDTRODUCTION
I decided to update the game how I used to this month. This resulted in a few errors so I will probably not do that again. Errors like "Levels going to the wrong levels" after rearranging the main menu was not the goal lol.
Overall, I think the game feels nicer to play. It's a more "well-done" game now. My work over the last year has definitely paid off.
..so this is everything new, fixed, or changed this month.

At the end of the change list is a bit more to read for those interested in the development of the game.

NEW MAP
Grand Hall Compressed was added by accident haha. This is a great take on the make "Grand Hall", it is a new Horde level for people who own the Map Pack.

NEW STUFF AND CHANGES LIST
* Starting with Quad, every map has been updated to fix spawning issues.
* Fixed the Depth of various objects not complying with Flood Depth.
* Slime have been fixed, (you know what I mean)
* Changed the visual effect for blood over buy stations.
* The Cursor is now green.
* Added Mouse Assist for fun. Also changes the mouse back to white when off (on by default)
* Fixed an issue with "Auto Aim" was not being saved.
* The mouse now is at the angle of your aim. Not that this was overlooked, it just looks better now.
* Hedge has had it's secret achievement fixed.
* Big Bois now have a death body. (Oversight)
* Flood speeds have been changed. Both Horde and Round based modes have better speed progression.
* Removed the stupid puzzle from Introdux because it was obnoxious.
* Changed the Absorber Noise.
* "Grand Hall" Map has had slight alterations.
* Fixed a spawn issue with Bombers that kills FPS.
* Potentially fixed an issue with over-spawning of Bombers which also killed FPS.
* Changed Money Colors.
* Changed the Drops of ALL enemies.
* Fixed Hedge scores not uploading!
* Fixed enemy-kill border for outside of the map on every level.
* Added a new Horde map that will also be a round map. It's just Grand Hall, but changed up because I was testing it to fix some stuff while fixing all maps for various reasons and thought it would be more fun if it was smaller. This is a DEAD+ map like all future maps will be. DEAD+ is $1 as it has been. Someone told me it was a good idea to change it to $5 because it will make it look "more credible".
* Updated the way music is done.
* The level menu has been rearranged to better suit the majority of players who probably like Horde mode more than Round levels. I also did this because the round based levels aren't even really done and I was tired of being taunted by the fact that I've had these levels out for 8 months and I couldn't get much done with them.
* Added "Stats" to the bottom of the options/esc menu.
* Changed "off" options color.
* Optimized the "Bomber" enemy a bit.
* Added a small art detail to the "Bomber" enemy where when they get close to instant-kill you they get "lower".
* Bombers now speed up to fuck up your shit.
* Potentially fixed shotguns interacting with explosions.
* Blue Flood Health has been altered to not be 1 shot kills with base level weapons.
* Removed the "Box" black border (looks cleaner ngl).
* Slater: Fixed the Blockade from crashing your game.
* Slater: Wrote the story for Slater and the basis for subsequent levels.
* Changed the coloring of some enemies.
* Fixed some exploits with Grand Hall (you sneaky sneaks).
* Added some hedges to Box.
* It is now more obvious what you need to do on Hedge.
* Fixed a ease-of-use issue when using a controller to buy items.
* The hitbox of "Health" is now bigger to easily buy-and-go.
* Fixed "Lava" over-hurting enemies and causing lag holds.





Why I do any of this
I make this game for the challenge. I think it is fun to work on. I believe in the community, however small, and I like making the game for those people.

Personal
I hope y'all are alright, I know I sure ain't.

DEADs Future
I have tried for a very long time to get other people on the project to help me with things like music, or advanced programming concepts I simply do not understand/do not have time to understand. This effort has just not worked out in my favor. I have a friend of mine who helps occasionally but he, as I, do not have the time.

I may try and fix performance issues with the game by removing features like "co-op" by changing co-op to all be on one screen, removing it all-together, or having it be a separate but equal build similar to how there is a "Bedrock" and "Java" version of Minecraft. I may also make a standalone camera that is just better in singleplayer and keep the poopmess that is the co-op camera for co-op.

I am actively disappointed in the round based mode of the game. I may remove the mode for a month at some point when I get the chance and re-do every level. I think I have mentioned this before. This would also come with a revamp to how the round-based mode is done, and new music.
The music part of getting someone to do it is such a painful experience as a lot of "musicians" are using a.i., are sad about a.i. and therefor lazy because they think it'll take their job (but that thinking will make it take the job), or they want to charge me 1000 dollars per track (I cannot afford that). Hopefully, one day, I will meet another musician that will do the tracks for a reasonable price. I am unsure why people think I have 1000 dollars. I would use FMA, or even find a licensed track I can buy but I prefer music made for this game rather than random music made for no reason.

Recently I have been playing Quake. I have never played Quake before because when I first was learning about the series when I was younger the only way to play was in a poor state, and over time I didn't care to play it.
In 2020 a ?remake? was put out on Steam, so I've been playing that with the recent Quake-Con sale that happened. It is a bit inspiring.
Why I mention this is because I, for a long time, have been trying to think of ways to make the round based levels stand out in their puzzle design but the only puzzle games I've ever really enjoyed were Mario, and LittleBigPlanet. Two Side-Scroller games that have puzzles that do not exactly apply to a top-down game.
The way that puzzles are done in Quake are very cool.
Doom is terrible btw, just throwing that out there again, sucky mf game. Duke Nukem is better (another game i've been playing and being inspired by).

I am wondering how to get the community more involved in the game. I want more discussions to take place in the Steam Discussions tab. No idea how prompt that.

Map Pack Rename and what even am I doing with it.
This Month, I renamed DEAD+ to "Map Pack" on the Steam Store pages DLC section.
The reason I did this is now unknown because I did it pretty early in the month with no write-up on why, and then a bunch of personal life stuff happened so... yeah. It's renamed for no known reason. Let me know how you feel about it.

I am thinking I may go further and either remove it and making all levels free, or having all Horde Levels Free, while removing the round based levels until I can remaster them with the new format I want to do and having the DLC be buying the round based mode for 5 dollars. (Obviously everyone who already bought DEAD+/Map Pack would not be charged as it would be under the same DLC)



Thank you for reading, if you thought this was a decent enough read please react to the post.

I have no idea what I am doing :)

The Slater Map has been added in a test phase. You must have DEAD+. This is the first round based map added to the game for DEAD+. It represents what round based maps will go towards and be replaced by. It is not complete, do not expect complete for another month (life + gigastructure). If anyone has a theme idea for the map let me know, I am thinking lone farmer.


Additional New Stuff and Changes
* I fixed the weird animation bug with enemy legs.
* Hedge has had visual bugs fixed.
* Hedge Weapon Upgrade area has been modified.
* Hedge Flood and Bomber Spawns have been modified.
* Studio intensive lag has now been fixed. There are thousands of spike traps and none of them were being disabled out of range.
* Studio Space Suits on Flood were not proper. This has been fixed.
* Finally fixed the main menu mouse being hidden. This was not fixed both from laziness, but primarily it made sense to me to have it hide behind the images. I should have changed this sooner.
* Fixed the inability to click the big level images on the main menu for DEAD+.
* Fixed the inability to click the individual level images for DEAD+ (Dumb)
* Fixed the wrong mouse displaying under DEAD+ menus. (Ugh)
* Fixed Dead+ Levels under "Horde" going to an Empty Room when clicking he big button.
* Horde Levels have been rearranged to better suit an "order" to levels.
* Opera and OperaGX is still evil. I urge you not to download these softwares onto your computer. A browser based on the idea that it is "for gamers" shouldn't be a sell you buy. It's just RGB.
* Levels in the round based mode now require you to actually unlock them.
* Slater Map for those who own DEAD+. It is the first round-based map. It is a prototype.



DEADs Future
Again, the levels that are coming are coming slow due to my new schedule, and my focus on gigastructure. DEAD, as continued to be promised, will continue to live on so... do not worry.

I still have no word on new music for this game. I want to get more Quake 1999 type music in the game.

I have had 3 random people, with 1 promising person, message me about doing more with this game in the last month.. so that's nice.

The overhaul of the round based levels will come. I think it will be neat to do but it will literally change how all of the current round based levels work. It will be cool, but new.



Gigastructure
For 5 years I've been working on the idea of GIGASTRUCTURE. Conceptually, it has always been on my mind. With various prototypes, I, and others I recruit towards the project are working towards a final mvp to be pushed as an Alpha to grow on Steam, and eventually Xbox, PSX, and Phone devices.

A new few new screenshots can be seen below.


Depending on when you read this, there should be an additional announcement of a Steam Playtest access application. I strongly want to note that it is not a game yet, it is "open application, break said application, tell me what you hate about said application in the discussions, close said application". I am opinion fishing to make sure the game is nice and fun to be clear.

To clarify the plan for launch: This is pre-alpha play-testing. Once the Alpha MVP is met, there will be a publish to Steam by my birthday. From launch, we will be going from Alpha in EA for about a year, and then developing with a schedule.

From End of June to End of July, there have been minimally 21 pushes on Github for various features, visuals, and fixes to make sure the game feels nice.

The more I type the word GIGASTRUCTURE the more 50/50 I am on the name, the problem lies within what it represents and how accurate the word is.



Personally
I tried DOOM 1 and DOOM 2 recently after years of not. These games are incredibly easy, and low-key boring/cringey. I always loved the core idea of DOOM, but it's really nothing. Quake is better. Duke Nukem is far better than DOOM could ever be. You do need to acknowledge the "first" in DOOM, but it's still not great.



Steam
Please give the post a like so it will show up somewhere.

If anyone out there knows #GameMaker (the thing this is made in) and is a fan of this game and wants to work on stuff with me, hmu.

INTRODUCTION
My life has been wild the last month, but you do not care about that so here is some stuff I did rq:

NEW STUFF AND CHANGES
(Fun note, this list is basically what is added in it's order)
*Github said 300+ so, I probably did other stuff.
*The Main menu background has been changed once again, but I think my monitor is dimming so I dont think I actually know if it looks good anymore.
*I added a new secret achievement that took less than 2 minutes to add.
*I've changed the main menu lobby and quit button color
*The DEAD+ levels for horde had bad images due to an oversight, it is now fixed.
*GameMaker is terrible in terms of support, Opera is evil and was malware (if not still is). Anyways, they messed up my animations so maybe it's fixed maybe it's not but GameMaker is going downhill.


NOTES
I have no idea why the studio level is so slow. I blame the engine. I haven't changed it in years and it's all of a sudden the slowest map.

FUTURE PLAN UPDATE
if you have been reading these for a while, gigastructure, my sandbox survival game that I have been dealing with delays for years is finally at a place where it will come out on Steam.
The plan is to roll things out slowly, as it from 0, to keep the game updates going, and to let people play while we make it because we will be doing some dramatic things I think will be dope.
I think there also might be potential for a multiplayer addition to this game later this year, or early next year once we have a few months of gigastructure out... or we need a break.

The levels that are coming are coming slow due to my new schedule, and my focus on gigastructure. DEAD, as continued to be promised, will continue to live on so... do not worry.

I still have no word on new music. L.

The overhaul of the round based levels will come.

Anyways, have a great day.

Please give the post a like so it will show up somewhere.

If anyone out there knows #GameMaker (the thing this is made in) and is a fan of this game and wants to work on stuff with me, hmu.



Here is a crappy image that hints at how to do the newest achievement