2 MAR 2024:

- I have a business trip the next two weeks, so I challenged myself to finish the carriers before I have to go. 

- Carriers are done! I made some pretty significant changes to them this time around.  The up and down carriers were being problematic so I removed them completely. For at least one of them, I would have had to rework the original Blender files to fix some issues and that would have taken who-knows-how-long.

- Carrier fighters can attack from up to 4 different directions. I wasn't entirely pleased with the old carrier fighter logic, so I created this new attack method for them which is much less math-intensive. And in my opinion it's a lot more interesting and fun.

- Scrapship is currently up to 11000 lines of code. There is only about 3000 lines of code left to transfer over and reintegrate. 

- As for my sticky note on my monitor, the only things I have left are "Cargo Boss", "Final Boss", "AI" and "Other". 

- 12 of the 16 sticky note tasks have been completed, so I'm about 75% done.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK:

"That's what games are, in the end. Teachers." -- Ralph Koster

Thanks for reading and have a great rest of your week!

9 MAR 2024:

Still on my business trip so no Scrapship updates, but I am looking forward to getting back so I can finish it up. 

I’ll be changing jobs in the near future, but this shouldn’t affect development of Scrapship as I only need an hour a day to work on it.  If I’m unemployed I’ll probably work on it even more — it’d be a nice break from job hunting and studying for IT certifications.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK:

“Excuses are the nails used to build a house of failure.” — Jim Rohn

Thanks for reading and have a great rest of your week!

16 MAR 2024:

Got back from my business trip a little bit early! Saw the winter weather in the forecast for Colorado Springs  and said "nope!" Apparently a lot of other people had the same idea. 

- This allowed me to get a little bit of work done on my return. I've started putting the Cargo Ship boss back into the game. So far it's mostly a matter of copy and paste, but there are a few minor glitches I need to iron out. If all goes well I should have it done by next week.

- Ever wonder who 40wattstudio is? Well wonder no more because I made a version of myself in Dragon's Dogma 2 Character Creator (free on Steam!)

Even with all the customizability, I'd say it's about 80% accurate. Needs to look about 10-20 years older and slightly less hair on top. And there was no option for glasses (or any other accessories).

Anybody else play around with the DD2CC? I think it's pretty cool and a great way to get people into the game before it comes out.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK:

"Create with the heart. Build with the mind." -- Criss Jami

Thanks for reading and have a great rest of your week!

23 MAR 2024:

- Cargo boss is pretty much done but needs testing to make sure the scaling works on different screen resolutions. After this I'll be able to start work on getting the final boss added back into the game!

QUOTE OF THE WEEK:

"A game for everyone is a game for no one." -- Arrowhead Game Studios

Thanks for reading and have a great rest of your week!

30 MAR 2024:

- Cargo boss is done! This includes scaling. 

- Final boss can be drawn to screen, take damage and shoot lasers. Currently working on the bomb attack it has.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK:

"Finding opportunity is a matter of believing it's there." -- Barbara Corcoran

Thanks for reading and have a great rest of your week!

6 APR 2024:

- Final boss is done! I also managed to improve some of the hit detection.

- The single laser has some new functionality! It is the only weapon in the game that can be used to shoot down bombs, whether they're fired from bombers or even the final boss! 

- Now that the enemies are done I can start working on the AI!

QUOTE OF THE WEEK:

Your focus determines your reality.

Thanks for reading and have a great rest of your week!

13 APR 2024:

- Started working on the movement/AI! 

• Shield fighters spawn in a variety of formations
• Bombers swoop in and spawn in a variety of formations
• Cruisers spawn in a variety of formations (in progress)

QUOTE OF THE WEEK:

"The most valuable thing you can make is a mistake -- you can't learn anything from being perfect." -- Adam Osborne

Thanks for reading and have a great rest of your week!

20 APR 2024:

- Cruisers can spawn in a variety of formations (down, left to right, right to left and cross pattern)

- Battleships can spawn in a variety of formations. 

- Also tested scaling works properly by running the game on a 7" display.

- Tried out Geogen to see what it was capable of in regards to creating planet graphics, but it's still very primitive (only version 0.2). There was a very promising program called Space Fabricator by Imphenzia, but it appears that the software is no longer available. 

QUOTE OF THE WEEK:

"Success has many fathers, but failure is an orphan." -- Tim Cain

Thanks for reading and have a great rest of your week!

27 APR 2024:

- Carriers can spawn in a variety of formations.

- Cargo boss AI is done. Also fixed some bugs:

•  Explosions were in the background instead of the foreground.
• Cargo boss "jittered" after becoming active.

- Final boss AI is done. Right now I'm making some changes to HP values and how different weapons react to different segments.

IN OTHER NEWS:

When doing a long project like a video game, it's a good idea to have smaller goals to work towards. For example, earlier this year I learned about this  Conqueror app (non-affiliated) and I've found that it's really good for motivating me to get outside more and exercise. I started the Great Wall of China virtual challenge in late January and just finished yesterday -- 161 miles in 90 days. Besides the health benefits of walking regularly, working towards short-term goals like this help you to stay consistent and remind you what success feels like. 

I also noticed that walking regularly helped clear my mind and gave me great opportunities to think about problems encountered while working on Scrapship. 

Some good ideas for other short-term goals: Reading a book, watching all the videos of a certain YT series,  getting a certification or degree -- anything whose completion can give you a great sense of accomplishment can help you stay motivated  on longer projects. 

QUOTE OF THE WEEK:

"The fears you don't face become your limits."

Thanks for reading and have a great rest of your week!

4 MAY 2024:

- Almost done implementing a new way for explosions to be handled in the game. Previously, each enemy type could only show one type of explosion. Now, each enemy  can explode up to 7 different ways, along with rotation and scaling variations. Makes the space combat look much more dynamic! Also, explosions have some logic to them so that weapons like the more powerful scrap cannon will always show larger explosions than weaker weapons. As you can see in the gif above, I still need to work on the hit detection a little so that explosions show up directly over the object instead of at the very edge of it.

- Reduced game load time to about 9 seconds (was 12 previously.) Because I can now scale explosion animations, I reduced the default size of some of the larger ones and also removed empty and excessive frames. 

- Trimmed some of the level backgrounds. Some of these were originally 3k pixels by 2k pixels or larger, so making some of these smaller by removing extra black space has also helped give a performance increase.

IN OTHER NEWS:

The BASIC programming language turns 60!  For those of you new to this devlog, one of the oddities of this project is that it is being written entirely in a modern version of BASIC called QB64PE. As you can tell by the 4+ years I've been working on this project, writing your own code is quite the challenge, but you end up learning so much more about actual game development than if you had just used a game engine. While most people associate BASIC with primitive text adventures and ugly pixel graphics, one of my goals with Scrapship has been to show how awesome the language can be for game development.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK:

"Don't count the days. Make the days count."

Thanks for reading and have a great rest of your week!

11 MAY 2024:

- Simplified the explosion animation function and fixed a bug that was causing the game to crash when 2 different explosions were on screen simultaneously.

- Trimmed the rest of the level backgrounds. This brings the initial load time down from ~9 seconds to ~7 seconds.

- Adjusted the explosion animation coordinates for the satellite and shield fighters.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK:

"An essential aspect of creativity is not being afraid to fail." -- Edwin H. Land

Thanks for reading and have a great rest of your week!

18 MAY 2024: 

- This week saw a lot of minor refinements across the board, with the big end result being that I'm now in a "good enough" place to start working on levels. Maybe a minor bug here and there -- but that I'm aware of -- nothing game-crashing. There are always improvements that can be made, so I'm doing my best to squash my perfectionistic tendencies.

- Minor hit box adjustments for all enemies  -- mostly for animation purposes. 

- Fixed a long-standing bug where some of the shield fighters would overlap when in formation. 

- Shield fighters now have 5 different formation types.

- Started placing enemies in their respective levels.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK:

"You not believing in yourself is a tragedy. Stop that."

Thanks for reading and have a great rest of your week!

25 MAY 2024:

- Added a spawn timer for enemies. What's unique about this is that it adjusts based on player performance. If the player is doing really well (not taking damage, destroying lots of enemies, etc), then enemies will spawn sooner. But if the player is doing poorly (taking damage) then the enemies will spawn less frequently. This mechanic essentially gets rid of the need for "difficulty levels" since they are adjusted in-game automatically. Still need to work on refining this.

- Fixed a bug where the carriers had a missing frame of animation causing the game to glitch out.

- Fixed a bug where the cruisers caused the game to get stuck in an endless loop. Thank God for log files or I would have never figured this one out!

QUOTE OF THE WEEK:

"A negative mind will never give you a positive life."

Thanks for reading and have a great rest of your week!

1 JUN 2024:

- Made some good progress on the AI this week. In the picture above you can see the player engaging a bunch of different enemies, including a battleship. There is a nice sense of unpredictability as to which enemy will show up next. 

The game handles the smaller enemies well enough, but I am noticing lag once the battleship (or any larger enemy) goes active. So to fix that, I'll have to find ways to trim down image sizes (most likely the level backgrounds) and/or spawn larger enemies when there isn't much activity going on. It's a balancing act between fps and difficulty.

Right now the logic goes something like this: Every time an enemy goes active, the spawn timer increases. Every time an enemy goes inactive by being destroyed or going off screen, the spawn timer decreases. Then on top of this there is a calculation based on how much damage the player has sustained. The game gets a little easier the more damage you take.

- I changed the outline of the scrap to red instead of green. My reasoning for this is because scrap can damage you and green almost invites the player to fly into it! So instead I tried a red outline, which communicates the dangerous aspect of the scrap better, but admittedly doesn't have quite the color contrast as green did. I probably just need to thicken the outline a little and it should be ok.

- Battleships can now flank the player if there is more than one. This also prevents the battleships from spawning on top of or too close to each other. 

- Fixed some more game freezing bugs involving shield fighters and bombers. Every now and then I'll see some other bugs but I'm not going to worry about them too much unless they actually cause the game to freeze or crash.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK:

"Challenge yourself; it's the only path which leads to growth." -- Morgan Freeman

Thanks for reading and have a great rest of your week!