Re:creation dev log. March-June 2016. Part one. Game stuff and and some awesome Lua scripting

The last few months I was very busy finishing my bachelor’s degree (it’s over, I got an “A”!). But still, I’ve managed to do some cool stuff and improve the engine structure and tools in the last couple of months.

This dev log will be released in two parts. In this part I’m going to talk about game stuff I did and stuff I changed about Lua/C++ integration. In the second part I’ll talk about engine tools I’ve made with ImGui and different refactoring I’ve done.

Game stuff

Here’s one of the latest screenshots of the game. Houses were previously just big sprites, but right now they’re composed out of tiles which lets me reuse them for other houses and build new buildings more quickly.

Re:creation dev log. January-February 2016. Better art, sounds, cutscenes and more!

Just a short info for those who have never heard about my game.
Hello, my name is Elias Daler and I’m a solo developer who is making Re:creation in my free time. It’s done in C++ with SFML and Lua!

Re:creation is an action adventure game about the undead knight who wants to free undeads from the humans who use undeads as slaves or practice dummies. The unique mechanic of the game is called recreation which allows you to control dead people with your ghost gaining their abilities to solve various puzzles. Here’s an example of this puzzle.

Read more about the game here.

 

Back to the dev log…

Two months have passed since the last dev log. I had lots of time to work on the game and here’s what I’ve  managed to work on.

Better art

Yet again, another graphics improvements! Change of the perspective was quite an improvement, but I’ve also realized that I can improve other stuff too.

There’s more depth to characters and surroundings, the colors are used better, etc.
There are more graphics improvements which I’ve done recently (for example, I’ve improved main hero’s sprite a lot), but I’ll show it off a bit later.

Here are some comparison screenshots!

There are also subtle things that made game look better!

Re:creation dev log. 2015. The most productive year yet.

It’s time to summarize what I’ve done during this year with Re:creation. It has been very good year, I’ve managed to do and learn lots of stuff.

Before I write about the stuff I’ve done I want to thank everyone who followed my progress and provided feedback. This stuff is really important for me and always keeps me motivated. With your support I never feel doubt about my game, I never want to stop making it. Thank you.

Special thanks to SFML community. It turned my dev log thread into a very cool discussion and helped me out with lots of stuff. This level of support is much more than I’ve ever expected and it’s very heartwarming.

I’ll show the most interesting stuff I’ve done and then explain some in more detail.
Some screenshots are taken at different parts of the year, so they may differ a lot!

Some gameplay gifs to get you started:

This one is my favorite gif so far. It really shows a lot of stuff I’ve made this year.

Re:creation dev log. June – October 2015. I’ve made lots of stuff.

Almost five months passed since the last dev log on this blog.
Why? That’s because I created SFML forums thread and TIGSource thread and wrote most of the stuff about the game here! But I’ve realized that a monthly summary about what’s going on would be pretty helpful for those who don’t want to read long threads and search the most awesome stuff that’s been happening. Another plus is that I don’t have to write lots of in-depth style here. I will write in-depth stuff in SFML forums and TIGSource threads and link to those posts here, so you don’t have to scroll through stuff that you don’t want to read lots about.

Here’s the best screenshot I can show you at the moment to show where the things are right now.

Okay, let’s start.

Re:creation dev log. April-May 2015. Recreation mechanic, archers, event system and more!

Last two months were pretty awesome. I had lots of free time and was able to implement lots of new stuff!

Recreation mechanic

Let’s start with a gameplay gif:

It’s another example of recreation mechanic.
For those who don’t know, recreation mechanic is the main mechanic in my game. When undead hero kills people, he can leave his body and control dead people with his ghost. He gains their abilities to progress through the game and solve various puzzles. But he can’t leave his body behind for a long time because he can’t carry the hammer while controlling other people. The hammer can do some stuff which normal weapons can’t. (break some floors, for example)
This hammer is very heavy so he can’t carry other weapons. So, for example, in order to shoot arrows, you need to kill archers and control them with your ghost.
He can also use his ghost to reach inaccessible areas. But this won’t be very useful if there are no corpses lying there because he won’t be able to interact with the world this way. But it has another use: you can look around and see what you have to deal with next. This will be very helpful when solving complex puzzles.

Re:creation dev log. March 2015. Graphics improvements, entity inheritance, improved state machines and more!

This month was great. I finally got in the flow of development and managed to get lots of things done. I worked hard to make game look better and here’s the result. Compare old screens with new screens:

October 2014

 

March 2015

Re:creation dev log. December 2014 – February 2015. Bigger levels, boss and heavy attack

A long time has passed since I’ve written the last dev log! Is Re:creation dead? Is it stagnating? No, not at all. It’s more alive than ever now!
I haven’t written a new part of dev log because I had to study a lot in December and January. I had some time to develop some stuff during these month and had a lot of stuff done in February.
I’ve decided to write the dev log in two forms

• First one will be about the features I’ve implemented recently and it will have a lot of pretty screenshots and gifs. (You’re reading this part right now).
• Second one will be more specific and I’ll focus more on technical parts of the game and implementation details of some interesting features. This part is a lot harder to write so it’ll be less frequent than the first one.
  If you’re wondering about how I’ve implemented one or another feature of the game or its engine, feel free to write an email and ask about it! I’m always glad to answer.

Well, let’s start.

Re:creation dev log. November 2014. Core game mechanic explained and more.

Re:creation info/press kit | Previous dev log

 

I did a lot of stuff this month and I’ll start with the most important thing.
I’m ready to present the core game mechanic in the game!

Recreation

I call this mechanic “recreation“. Here’s how it works.

First, you kill someone

Then you can become a ghost and travel around the screen without taking any damage and colliding with anything

You can’t get too far away from your body though!

When you are in the ghost form you can become the enemy you just killed

It gets revived in the zombie form. You don’t have many health in this form so you can’t complete an entire level like that, you’re most likely to die. When you die, you return to your original body.

This mechanic is used to solve puzzles and progress forward. Each enemy will have unique skills which will help you on your way.
Here’s an example of solving a simple puzzle.

I have some other puzzles but I can’t show them right now because they need to be polished! I also don’t want to spoil too much for people who read my dev logs.
There are lots of puzzles which can be invented with this mechanic and I’m really excited to work on puzzles involved it!

And now I’ll tell you about other things I’ve done

Re:creation dev log. October 2014. Halloween, ghosts and scripts!

Happy Halloween, everybody! Re:creation is about undeads and I think its theme fits well with Halloween. It fits even more if I add some pumpkins and scarecrows!

Re:creation dev log. September 2014. Drawing art, being a solo dev, fixing bugs.

Lots of time passed since the last dev log. How’s the game? It’s doing pretty well.

Some things changed, the most notable thing is that I’ve become a solo gamedev now, because the artist abandoned the project. Every sprite you see in the latest screenshots was drawn by me.

Being solo dev is hard, very hard. I spend lots of time practicing art, drawing sprites, animating them and trying to make them as good-looking as possible without spending too much time. And I still have to do programming, scripting, designing and story writing!