For the past few weeks I’ve been chipping away at quite a few different elements across the entire game.
Here's a rundown of what I've been working on:
Progress on complete UI Overhaul
One of the largest improvements that we’re working on, is a complete overhaul of the UI and UX across the entire game. Our main goal is to make everything look better aesthetically, to be more functional and generally just more cohesive and polished overall. We’re also trying to inject some of the game’s charm and character wherever possible. I started reworking and improving the existing character select portraits, and I’m also working on win/loss variations to REALLY let you know how your run went :P (Very rough WIP art shown below)
Lots of other UI improvements are more behind-the-scenes type changes right now, but I’ll be sharing more progress in the coming weeks.
Here Comes a New Challenger!
I’ve always wanted to develop a more varied and fleshed out roster of playable characters, and this month I was finally able to make a start on the first new addition to the gang!
Meet Larcen Gable, an infamous cat burglar with a hefty price on his head, hoping to make amends by fighting off the hordes of evil. He’s one of many new characters that I’ll be bringing to life for the finished game.
Traps, Traps, and More Traps!
This month, we’ve also been systematically working our way through each of the zones, designing and integrating new traps to make each one feel a bit more interesting and distinct than they are right now (I’m looking at you spike traps <_<). This will also give me a lot more to work with when I start fleshing out the room variety for each of the zones.
That’s everything from the past few weeks. Thank you for reading, and we’ll See you all next time! :D
Craig
Progress Update - March - June 2020
Hi everyone.
Apologies for falling behind a bit with these updates the past few months, but rest-assured that I've still been making progress on the various elements of the factory zone during that time.
Here's what I've been working on:
Factory Boss - Initial Ideas and Sprite Design
I spent some time brainstorming ideas for a fun and interesting boss to round out the factory zone. I settled on the “Scrap Golem,” a decommissioned mining bot that finds itself cobbled back together and reanimated by a mischievous gremlin pilot.
It has a nasty retractable chain-claw and a scorching flamethrower up it's sleeve...literally!! I’m looking forward to fleshing out potential attacks and behaviors as it comes to life.
Factory Zone - Final Touches and Animated Tiles
As the factory started coming together, I felt fairly happy with the core tileset, but felt that it was just all a bit too static given the fact it’s supposed to be built around the idea of this free-flowing molten metal-filled victorian factory. With that in mind, I began experimenting with adding a lot more animated tile variants to help bring it all to life a little more
I still need to clean things up a bit, and also work on the wall tiles, but pretty happy with how it’s progressing, and it’s definitely something I’d like to incorporate into the other existing zones at some point down the line.
Alongside the things above, I've also been working on the various props and enemies that round out a complete zone.
That’s everything for now. Thank you for reading, stay safe, and we’ll See you all next time! :)
Craig
Progress Update - February 2020
Hi everyone!
After weeks of hard work, we're finally getting close to wrapping up the Mansion's Lord Skullington boss! We're super happy with how it's all shaping up, so I wanted to share a quick sneak peek at some WIP gameplay:
[previewyoutube="22uH7ZWvyEg;full"] *Capturing in-editor video on my Mac isn't as great as I would like, but rest assured that it all runs at the usual buttery smooth 60fps
We still need to polish up a few things and keep tuning the different attacks and phases, but it feels great to finally inject him with some of the extra character and personality that's been floating around in my head for so long :)
Aside from the mansion boss, I've also been chipping away at reworking the airship HUB. My main goal right now is to get a feel for it's layout, size, and range of NPCS we need to really flesh it out and best serve the game structure-wise. We don't have anything too interesting to share just yet, but stay tuned for more updates in the future.
That’s everything for this month. Thank you for reading, and we’ll See you all next time! :D
Craig
Progress Update - January 2020
Hi everyone!
As we all kick-off a brand new year, it’s time for our very first progress update of 2020. Let’s jump right in!
The lion’s share of our time this past month has been spent further developing the mansion’s boss. The main elements we’re working on are new art/animations to better illustrate his various attack tells and wind-ups. Experimenting with and Implementing the actual attacks themselves, and also exploring ways to better utilize the arena in interesting ways.
The above example shows the newly added “hat toot” animation for when the boss fires off a volley of seeker orbs to chase the player. Since the bosses are the largest sprites in the game by far, they’re quite time consuming and challenging to work on, but I’ve been making good progress towards my goal of a complete art pass.
We’ve also been working on the addition of fun and unique little intro scenes for each boss battle. These quick little animations really help add a lot of charm and personality to each encounter as you prepare to take them on. Here’s a quick peek at Lord Skullington’s intro - Not all door knockers should be knocked… o.O
Once all of the art and various attack behaviors are in place, the next step is a full tuning pass across all of the phases, with lots and lots of playtesting across both single player and MP modes.
That’s everything for this month. Thank you for reading, and we’ll See you all next time! :D
Craig
Progress Update - December 2019
Hi everyone!
As the year draws to a close, here’s a rundown of what we’ve been up to this past month.
Factory Zone Enemies
To complement the industrial nature of the factory itself, I wanted to really lean into the steampunk element of the game. Furnace Face (far-right) is a heavy hitter with potential for nasty fire-based attacks. The Gear heads (center) could be a fast moving, projectile spraying spinning top of death. Lastly, the Gremlin (far left) are literal gremlins in the machine that may throw the odd spanner in the works...or at unsuspecting players :P
We still have a ton of zone work left to do before we implement this gallery of rogues, but I look forward to seeing each of them offer new challenges in the factory zone.
Zone Traps
The game’s existing traps are an aspect of the game that we’ve been wanting to improve and flesh out for a long time. The spike traps in particular are too frequent, and not readable enough during more intense moments. Along with improvements to the spike traps, we also started developing a few zone-specific traps to help offer greater variety and challenge. The flame vent trap below is one example, but we’ve also been developing a more variants for the other zones to help them feel more distinct.
Traps are very challenging to implement due to how much potential network latency/syncing factors into their timings for online multiplayer, so we still have plenty to work on before we're ready to push them live.
Mansion Boss/General Boss Foundation Work
We recently started taking a proper look at how we would like the game's bosses to be implemented. This encompasses everything from generating their floors as lockable arenas, playing boss-specific intro animations, and also how and where loot is generated. With all this in mind, we decided to use Lord Skullington's battle as a test bed, which can then be applied to the game's other bosses.
Gavin has been making some great process on this front, while I've been roughing out and developing his attack animations and supporting art. Here's a VERY rough WIP of his full beam spin attack.
That's everything for this month. We hope you have a great holidays, and we'll see you all in 2020!
Craig & Gavin
Progress Update - November 2019
Hi everyone.
In an effort to keep you all up to speed with what we’re currently working on, I’m aiming to put together an update post each month. Let’s jump right in!
Combat Arenas
We felt that the transition into/out of the locked combat rooms was one of the weakest interactions in the game. Snapping players into rooms was jarring, lacked any kind of clear transition, and was something we wanted to address. The first step was to add animations to the barriers themselves as they appear/disappear.
With the game’s local and online multiplayer modes allowing players to split up and potentially be in different rooms when an arena is triggered, the barrier teleportation pads allow other players to join the battle when ready (or not if you have those type of friends :P). The game currently lacks a visual representation of this, so we integrated a “player turns into floating ectoplasm” teleport animation, along with a small period of invincibility as they enter the arena.
As with any major changes or additions that touch single player, local multiplayer, and online multiplayer, there are a ton of potential issues and edge-cases to test and fix. The online mode is especially challenging as various player state and position changes are involved, so we’re still a little way off pushing these changes live as we continue to tweak and play test.
New Factory Zone
As Gavin works on integrating the arena assets, I’ve also been fleshing out the fifth and final main zone, the abandoned Victorian steelworks. It’s an industrial-type area featuring molten lava pits and heavy machinery, topped with a layer of steampunkiness.
The above screengrab is a current WIP as I continue to refine and polish up certain aspects. Once the tiles for both floors are nailed down, I need to work on props (large and small), and also some enemies unique, zone-specific enemies to bring it all together.
That’s about everything for this month. See you next time, and thank you for reading!
Craig
Making Progress
Hi everyone,
It's been a while since our last update, so I wanted to offer a quick rundown of what we've been up to since then.
We're still in the process of working through a pretty massive team member transition, as Gavin, the game's new programmer gets up to speed with 5+ years worth of someone else's codebase.
With this in mind, we felt that it was wise to initially focus on a broad range of general QOL improvements, polish and fixes across the entire game as he finds his feet, rather than dive into more complex aspects right off the bat.
Rest assured that we're actively working towards another fully-fledged update, which will be set live as soon as it's ready.
We thank you once again for all of your continual patience, it really means a lot :)
Craig
We’re Still Alive!
Firstly, I wanted to offer a massive thank you to everyone for your continued patience and understanding over the past few months. We didn’t intend to have such an extended period of radio silence, but rest assured that the game is still very much in development, and will only leave early access once we feel like it’s a game that you’re happy with, and that we’re proud of.
Towards the end of last year, we had to part ways with Ryan, the game’s programmer to date. This role will be passed on to Gavin, my business partner, and Retro Dreamer co-founder. There will obviously be a period of adjustment, but Ryan will still be on hand when needed to help ease the transition.
We will be sure to keep you all up-to-date when we have things mapped out in more detail going forward.
Thanks again,
The Monsters & Monocles Team
Content Update 13: In the Zone!
Hi everyone!
Lots of cool new stuff this update, so let’s dive right in!
This update is all about moving forward with our goal of adapting all of the existing zones to use the new room-based generation system. It’s taken a lot of work to get there, but we’re super happy to finally have both the city and forest zones be a step closer to where we want them to be. The forest zone still maintains its more organic shape and scattered tree cover, and be on the lookout for hidden pathways and shortcuts that cut through the treeline. For the city zone, we’ve built upon its mix of narrow side streets, branching paths, and open town squares. When things get dicey, look out for the various alleyways that can provide a quick escape route when you’re in a pickle!
As with the tomb rework from the last update, the current state of these zones is very much an initial rough pass. Our priority was to get them up and running and playable with the new system, and to give them a much needed visual overhaul. We’ll be working on adding more room variety, enemy behaviors/types, and overall polish in future updates.
Alongside the city and forest zone reworks, we also added a range of new chest/treasure room variants. There are now three separate weapon chests, with each corresponding to their appropriate level of weapon rarity. The skull-adorned monster caches are fairly rare, and offer two guaranteed weapon drops. These are great for when you want to overhaul your loadout. The ornate relic chests are very rare, and offer either a relic, or a single soul gem (the persistent currency used to purchase and upgrade relics). The final treasure room variant is a large decorative teapot, that spawns a host of tea/health pickups when opened.
In terms of actual room types, you may also come across a few new variants as you explore each zone. Portal rooms are currently a very rough pass towards reintegrating them back into the game. Things like positioning, terms of when/where they spawn, art/polish, and enemy types spawned are all things that will be tuned and developed as we go. The mansion now has a dedicated exit room that leads to the zone boss. This idea will eventually be incorporated into all of the other zones. Although not currently functional just yet, we also added support for dedicated miniboss rooms. These will be explored further in a future update. Finally, the mysterious, glowing statue rooms are an exciting first step towards developing stronger narrative threads and context that will run through all of the zones. That’s all I want to say about those for now...I’ve already said too much! <_<’ >_>
Thank you for reading, and for the continued support and encouragement. Please leave any feedback or suggestions you may have in the forums :)
Cheers,
Craig & Ryan
Content Update 12: Time to Get Active!
Hi everyone!
This update ended up being one of our largest to date, as we added new things, polished some old things, and generally made some big core changes.
The primary focus on this update was to improve all of the elements relating to items & relics, as well as finally adding active items! Players now have a single active item slot that can be triggered during key moments using ‘F’ on the keyboard, or the ‘X’ button on XBox controllers. We felt that providing players with powerful one-off, or limited use abilities was a good way to compliment their weapon and passive item selections.
Right now, there currently 2 active items for testing - The holy hand grenade (applies set damage to all enemies on screen with 3 minute cooldown), and the coolant flush (resets cooldown on carried weapons with 3 uses). As this is just the initial pass, they both lack clear HUD indicators, final effects, and general balancing, but those are all things we’ll be addressing in future updates as we roll more active items into the mix. The holy hand grenade does have a red overlay as it recharges, to at least show when it’s usable/unusable in the short term.
Alongside the active items, we also added animations, and general visual polish to all of the existing items, relics, and treasure chests. Our goal was to make collectible items both more satisfying to collect, and to improve their readability during gameplay. The last big addition on this front, are the new soul gems, which act as second, relic-specific currency. These gems are used to purchase and upgrade relics, and are persistent across runs, meaning that you can gradually work towards upgrading specific relics, without the fear of losing a large amount of regular coins upon death before reaching the airship. Right now they’re only a guaranteed drop from bosses, and upgrade amounts aren’t tuned, but we’ll be working into things in subsequent updates.
Aside from items, we also felt like it was a good time to make a couple of more fundamental changes to the core gameplay. The two largest being the removal of both lives and objectives. As we tuned enemy behaviors, damage, and overall challenge, we began to feel like the concept of lives was diminishing the sense of tension/reward, as all lives prior to the final one felt somewhat inconsequential. Having just one life in single player now means that health is much more precious and rewarding when found, and items like the ankh (which offers a single-use revive upon death), and relics relating to HP feel much more important. We also carried this concept over to multiplayer, with players able to revive one another indefinitely, as long as at least one player is alive. Although the shared pool of lives was interesting, we felt it was much too unforgiving at times, as it often forced players to sit-out and be unable to play for long stretches. As this is such a large change, we would love to hear your feedback on this front across both single player and multiplayer. The tuning and balancing of health drops etc is still ongoing, and your input on this front would be a massive help :)
Similarly to lives, we also took a good look at the current objective system, and asked ourselves whether or not they truly benefited the core gameplay. Although we’re happy with the fundamental ideas behind some of the objectives, we felt like having them be a mandatory requirement to complete the floor, often meant backtracking, and aimless searching for specific things that didn’t add to the core gameplay in a meaningful way. With that said, we hope to experiment with reincorporating certain aspects like the key gun and minibosses back into the new map generation system as optional elements in future updates.
The final major addition for this update, is the inclusion of the new room-based tomb zone! Although it’s a very rough pass as we still develop room shapes, enemy art/behaviors, and overall variety, it represents a nice step towards expanding out and applying all of the work we’ve done in the mansion, to the remaining zones. The ‘new’ tomb should start to take shape and begin moving closer to completion in future updates as we work towards bringing all of the existing zones up to the same level of polish as the mansion.
Thank you for reading, and as always, please leave any feedback you may have in the forums :)
Cheers,
Craig & Ryan
2018/05/10 - 1.14.6704 (Content Update 12)
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What's New:
* The digsite has been reworked with the lessons learned from the mansion changes over the past several updates.
* Added an initial set of 10 digsite room configurations (6 combat, 3 trap, 1 treasure)
* Added initial digsite enemy waves and challenge waves
* Reworked digsite props to have rounded corner colliders for better pathing around them
* Fully reworked tile art for digsite levels
* Lives have been removed as a resource. In single player you now have a single life. In multiplayer revives are now free and the game ends when no one is left to revive downed players.
* Added 'active' items - they are items that you trigger with a button press and either have limited uses or a cooldown.
* Active item: holy hand grenade (explosion damage to all enemies in room, 3min cooldown)
* Active item: coolant (instantly resets gun heat state, 3 charges before item is consumed)
* Small red treasure chests now only contain coins and health
* Added 'soul gems' a currency for relic purchases and upgrades
* All bosses now drop a soul gem on death
* All items and relic art was reworked and given idle animations
* Coin sprites and animations have been reworked
* Reworked selection of 'special' rooms to be per-zone instead of per floor, increases variance between runs
* Damage flash has been switched from red to white to improve overall visibility/readability
* Active items can now be rewards from a challenge room
* Active items can now be a rare drop from item chests
* Added ability to require certain rooms to appear on a floor in the map generator. Each floor in mansion and digsite will always have at least one treasure room
* Updated to Unity 2017.4.2f2LTS
* Removed per-floor objectives from game, investigating reworking some of the elements for optional/secondary zone content
* Fixed several map generator bugs that could cause hangs on loading
* Fixed several map generator bugs that could cause invalid rooms to be selected for combat arenas
* Reworked all of the pickup/collection effects for items
* Added upgrade code to input bindings to auto-assign new functionality (e.g. active items) to default keybindings
* Reworked fragments and soul gems so a single pickup will add to all players in a network game (instead of only the player who picks it up)
* Reduced room count of mansion levels to improve overall flow
* Reworked plaement phase of 'special' rooms to try and improve chances of them being scattered throughout the map more
* Items that can be picked up now have a bounce tween to help with visiblity on busy maps
* Updated art and animations for all treasure chests
* Treasure chests now leave a debris remain after opening
* Fixed issue with colliders in challenge rooms where sometimes you could not pick up the item from one side of the podium
