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@grabbus
Explore, Battle, Loot, Build, Fuse, Grab, and Throw! Do this and more by playing as Morris the rat, and Grabbus, his otherworldly parasite! Discord: https://discord.gg/g5xUQDKmwA Follow for development updates! >--Foxoplasm LLC--<
It occurs to me to ALSO mention that it is running at 39FPS because this is a VM run, not fully-compiled.
Don't worry, we still have 60fps, I didn't add THAT much yet.
Oh wow I can't believe he would say something so specific somehow.
Ignore all the towers, this is a test save file that gets opened and closed a lot, so a lot of them spawn while I'm scrolling or testing other things.
One step closer!
The "Status" mode of the world map will be a place to check an overview of your progress/stats, an overall territory map (if I can figure it out), and buttons to bring you to different features/services.
I feel the need to re-iterate that Grabbus and Foxoplasm LLC will NEVER make use of generative tech to replace human work.
Games are art, and art is made by people, not machines.
No matter how hard it is to make a game, to use these so-called "tools" defeats the purpose.
Just finished the last of the balance bits I wanted to fix before adding the item storage menu! With all these changes I'll go ahead and count this as a major update once the storage is ready! This will be a somewhat involved UI, I planned it out already, but it will take some time! Hold tight!
The upcoming patch notes will be a healthy size for sure!
Made more progress on the balance adjustments. Stun chance adjusted to take damage amount into account, bullet ripening made less intense, size now affects damage for your and your foe's shots.
Also fixed a bug related to spiky enemies no longer choosing to be spiky if they get scared.
To put it another way, I think I'm onto something here and it feels much better already!
It is important that the foundation of this game have some work put into it. Once the item storage UI is complete, I'll release a new update! It will still be some time though, very busy around here!
I've made some progress last night! Four to-do items have been completed! Those being from the recent extended playtest.
I'm excited for this next update! If I adjust things well, Grabbus will be more enjoyable as a simplified slice of the game experience rather than just a testing ground.
I've been doing an extended playtest on a fresh file to get another feel for balance and take notes on things I want to improve. I've come up with at least seven items for the to-do list, all of which are relatively easy and quick to do, but should greatly improve the experience!
Doing another balance playtest! Recently added a diminishing curve to certain difficulty modifiers on enemies, gonna see how it feels.
Taking a quick look at the enemy damage scaling formula. Feels like it goes up a bit harshly with difficulty level...
Last night I worked late and got the tiered pickup items finished and implemented! It will have an affect on balance, especially for healing orbs, so that will be a point of interest later! Fixed some bugs while I was in there too. One step closer to a cooler game!
Bandcamp Friday! I released my new album The Hugur Files in January when there WASN'T a BCF. So if you've been holding out until now to buy my album NOW'S YOUR CHANCE!! 🏃♀️💨
So far, I have the new quantagon(money) sprites animated! Next are the fusion sparks and health orbs. Once those are done, adding them to the loot pool is trivial!
There are still a few smaller items on my list before the item bank- for today...
1. Give the fusion spark its own sprite
2. Make new denomination tiers of pickup-on-touch items like the fusion spark, health orb, and currency, so that large rewards do not lag your game with tons of pickups.
For the next patch, just fixed the bug that made the inventory not show during the inventory tutorial. Oops!
While I'm sat here, I also came up with an easy optimization that will cut down on a number of checks that were being done each frame on all objects. Related to the "time layer" system for UI objects to take over and pause other entities under them. Allows better performance during gameplay!
This, along with the Evolution Grid and other useful functions/services (in the future), will appear on the "Status" section of the world map as its own button. The Status screen is also meant to have some info on the right-hand side related to your current save, like game stats and an overview map!
Had a pipe burst last night, so dealing with that is gonna be a whole thing...
In the meantime, I finally got the layout for the item bank UI put together. With this, I'll be able to program it quickly, knowing where everything goes and how it should work!
Something else that will go along with this too, is the Reward Screen. This is a screen that pops up before you leave a dungeon, shows you some stats of how you did and what you managed to earn, and gives you an option right there to put held items in storage, or shows you what you lost!
The item bank is a foundational feature that allows vendor NPCs and other out-of-dungeon functions related to items to become possible. It allows you to save items for further dungeon attempts and fuse them together at your leisure.
It's not *that* hard to program, so expect it soonish?!
Working on the design for the item bank! Getting all the details and features I want from it written down, then I'll draw a layout of the interface based on those needs.
I want it to be as easy and snappy as possible to organize and manipulate your collection of doodads!
Shout outs to this soundtrack! Very Grabbus... it's got the vibe.
www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...
This image, which metadata indicates is from 2009, is the first drawing of what would become Morris and Grabbus!
Here's a video showing off the improved tiles for the world map in the newest version... if you're curious to see!
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fmnd...
Thinking on boss battles, a far off feature. There's two things I know I want each boss to have.
1. Makes use of weapons, using their aspects in their own way, adding variety to repeated attempts
2. Something that involves using the ability to grab, throw, and/or pull to help defeat the boss.
Top things to enjoy this patch:
-Loot numbers work now, no more 64830% potency items 5 hours in
