Spellcaster Studios

Make it happen…

Category Archives: Game design

Environmental audio effects

FMod is such a simple and effective API, I couldn’t resist in adding some environmental audio effects… So now, on the caves, there’s a small echo effect, and on asteroid areas, we have some sound filtering, which mutes the high frequencies… It’s a small detail, and I think players would only really notice it if […]

Playtesting…

I hurt myself in the foot yesterday, which means I can’t sit on the desk to code or work on the game (without having the foot in a potential harmful way). So I decided to hang my feet up and try playing the game a bit… The balancing is a bit better than in previous […]

Audio work…

Still working on the audio, mostly adjusting volumes to account for the 3d sound system… It’s actually quite impressive the difference 3d sound makes to the game… I’m also compiling a list of audio effects I still need to make for the game, and I’ll have to do that for the cutscenes as well… A […]

Moved tutorials

Today was a pretty calm development day, just moved the tutorials from the Skydancer area to the new “dreamscape” area… It’s not major, but I had to do some rewriting to make it work properly… Now listening to “The Human Contradiction” by “Delain” Link of the Day: Not my sort of game, but pretty!

Story link issues

Today I lost most of my dev time working on a bug… This new area has two things I’ve never used: A cutscene that spans two different areas Two “special areas” right after each other (without passing a planet area before) Both of these resulted in a problem with managing areas with the multi-threaded system… […]

Finished initial cutscene

Finished the initial cutscene, I’m quite proud of it… Well, not really, really proud, but it looks good… Now I just need to wrap up the area (some props, etc), and add the enemies that will be making the player’s life difficult! Now listening to “Legion of Boom” by “The Crystal Method” Link of the […]

Working on the cutscene

Work continues on the start sequence of the game… Most of the work is on the cutscene itself. After all, you want to make a good impression! The gameplay part shouldn’t take long, but moving the tutorial back to here will be a pain! Now listening to “Luna Park Ride” by “Tarja” Link of the […]

New storyline part…

Not much time for game dev today, but I started working on a new story part… Although the storyline components are done, I was unhappy with the way the game starts… It is a bit slow initially (the tutorial, establishing the game world, etc), so I’m afraid some people will lose interest in the game […]

Split mechanic and good ideas on paper…

Today I implemented the split mechanic… I wanted something to beef up some boss fights, and I decided to implement a split mechanic: when some robots explode, they spawn two (or more) versions of himself, at half strength… Visually, it’s not done (it’s too sudden, needs some transition, like an explosion or teleport effect), but […]

Finished shooting…

That’s right, you heard it here first! I’ve finished the new shooting AI system, and the rebalancing of all weapons… There still might be some work there, with feedback from beta testers, but the basic work is done there! Now listening to “The Theory of Everything” by “Ayreon”