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. 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 info / press kit

Re:creation is a hobby gamedev project being made by Elias Daler. Re:creation is an action adventure game inspired by The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past and Earthbound.

You play as an undead knight who can become people he kills and get their abilities to progress in the game and solve various puzzles using unique recreation mechanic which can be summarized in this gif:

Release date: When it’s done

Platforms: Windows, Linux, Mac

Developer: Elias Daler

Links

• Twitter (@EliasDaler)
• Blog
• Dev logs
• SFML forums dev log <- most of the dev progress is here
• TIGSource dev log
• IndieDB
• email: eliasdaler@yandex.ru

Press

• Siliconera: Some Undead Just Want To Stop Being Killed For Loot And Experience
• The Golden Cartridge: Re:creation twists the rules of gaming, forcing players to die in order to succeed but never fails at putting a smile on those who come across this game
• Playm.de: Re:Creation – Beweist der Welt, dass nicht alle Zombies böse sind

re:Creation week #6. Art, gold, dialogues, localization issues and mini-quests

Here’s what I’ve been working on this week:

Art

I’ve decided to return to old graphics style because this is the style I can draw in and because it looks better and more complete. See for yourself:

re:Creation week #5. Improved level format and saving system.

Previous weeks:

• Week #0: Preparation
• Week #1: Things are getting bigger
• Week #2 and #3. AI stuff and vacation
• Week #4. New graphics, chests, doors, screen transitions

Foreword

Last week I’ve posted this screenshot of re:Creation to /r/IndieGaming to know what people think about new graphics. I expected 2 or 3 people tell me something like: “it’s good, keep working” or “that’s bad, keep working”. The thread got lots of upvotes and comments and there was lots of constructive critique which I didn’t expect. Some people said the game looks really great. This was really awesome and now I know in which direction art style should be moving.

And here’s what I’ve been doing this week.

re:Creation week #4. New graphics, chests, doors, screen transitions

Previous weeks:

• Week #0: Preparation
• Week #1: Things are getting bigger
• Week #2 and #3. AI stuff and vacation

This week was totally awesome!
Dmitry has redrawn lots of graphics and the game looks a lot better now.
We’ve also decided to make character proportions more realistic which is also great.
Here’s the graphics comparison