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It’s been a while. A long while. Anyways, I felt like updating the blog. Here’s some stuff about the just released canyon & workshop update.
Here’s the trailer, which turned out pretty cool:
So yeah, GunHero has Steam Workshop support now and the update also adds 25 new canyon-themed challenging levels to the campaign.
Anyways, instead of repeating what I’ve said elsewhere, I’ll just drop two links. The Steam announcement includes a more detailed description about the changes, while the IndieDB post describes the development process of the update:
Yeahyeah, I missed last week’s post. My finals started last week and the week before that I was very focused on studying for them, so I didn’t do a whole lot of dev stuff. I didn’t do a whole lot this week, but I do have some fixes and patches that I thought I’d list out in the bottom of the post as usual. I did start to do some preliminary work on a trailer...
Read MoreI have nothing fancy or new to show this week. I spent some time working on a press kit for the website and that is coming along quite nicely actually. Besides that, I did some fixes and patched a thing here and there. I guess it’s a good thing that there’s not a whole lot to do anymore? I got a really weird bug report: if the player jumped just in the right way on...
Read MoreThis week I improved the tutorial, did some playtesting and patched a bunch of random things, and did some work towards the Steam Store page of the game. I felt that the old tutorial level didn’t make a whole lot of sense story-wise. The tutorial happened before the intro cutscene, and once the actual gameplay started, it wasn’t really apparent why the player had a weapon. The new tutorial starts in a prison where the...
Read MoreThis week was the last week of school for Finnish high school seniors, so it involved some partying which did cut down my development time a little. Anyways, I did manage to do some work on the intro cutscene of the game. The old cutscene wasn’t very good at all. While it did set the baseline for the story, it didn’t do it very well and the evil Count Blackcape was not nearly evil enough....
Read MoreThis week I got some nice progress done! Let’s get right into it! In the beginning of the week I split up the soundtrack of the game and made it so that each level of the game campaign has a song dedicated to it. I think this nicely splits up the game progress and displays campaign advancing with the background music. The implementation required some minor tweaks in the campaign management but for the most...
Read MoreThis going to be quite a boring update but let’s get to it anyways! I spent some time polishing and finishing off the new world map. It works really smoothly now and I added even a cool new transition for selecting levels. I’m super happy about the rework and it really improves the game a lot. I also composed a short background music loop for the map which I think turned out really well: A...
Read MoreSorry for missing last week’s post, I was super busy with school stuff. Anyways, I’ve been working on some cool stuff the past week! First of all, I got started with mastering the tracks in the game. There’s still a lot to do but I did already manage to get some of the tracks to sound better. Then onto the actual cool progress I have to show. I realized that the old world map was...
Read MoreI don’t feel like writing an intro paragraph, so right into the action: Each weapon in the game now has an unique bubble. I received feedback about how the weapons aren’t really distictive enough, and given my very limited weapon sprite resolution, I thought I’d make it easier to spot which weapon you’re about to pick up with a bubble sprite! I also composed a new song, an alternative winter theme. The names of the...
Read MoreIt’s been a few weeks since my last weekly update. I did manage to get a bunch of stuff done during the winter break and overall I’m quite happy with my progress! I’ll write about some stuff in more detail, but I also feel like there has just been a lot of systems-level work, so the changelist is probably going to be quite long this time. First I improved the tutorial of the game. The...
Read MoreChristmas break is approaching fast, so I was extremely busy with school work this week. I did however manage to do some Steamworks integration at the end of the week. As a nice and small introduction to the Steam API I decided to implement cloud syncing to the game. After figuring out how the Steam Remote Cloud system works the implementation was quite straight forward. Basically, I just download the content from the cloud and...
Read MoreThis wasn’t my most productive week ever, but some substantial stuff did happen! First of all, I finally just got to it and signed the Steam contracts. It wasn’t easy, but I was able to fill in the quite complex forms. Even the tax interview passed, which was the part of which I was most nervous about. On Saturday I even got my first build uploaded to Steam and I was able to initialize Steamworks...
Read MoreThis week I spent most of my time fixing bugs. I also added a bunch of sound effects to the game. This means that there’s nothing visual to show, sorry about that. My sound “engine” needed a rework. The old system had two modes: play a sound at the player’s position or play a sound at a specific position. Sounds with specific position took in a distance, over which the volume of the sound would...
Read MoreI had a very productive week! I reworked the powerup system and fixed a ton of bugs. The old powerup system was quite awful: the player was awarded immunity to damage and explosive bullets when the powerup point bar filled up. This meant that the player had no control over when the powerup would be activated. In the new system, the player gets powerup points the exact same way: from killing enemies and releasing prisoners....
Read MoreThis week I finally got an inspiration for the final boss fight of the game! I also made a few new levels for the final base environment. I themed blades for the base environment and made them a little smaller, which allowed me to make really hard platforming sections. Combining those with some enemies creates some really cool levels! Then I finally got an idea for the final boss fight: a huge tank that shoots...
Read MoreThis week I started working on the final environment of the game. While I still haven’t been able to figure out how I want the final boss fight to turn out, I was able to add some new level obstacles to the game. The villain’s base has this purple space-theme going on, so I thought that some sort of electricity beams would be a good fit for the environment. So, I coded these shaky light-emitting...
Read MoreThis week I was able to finish off the desert environment! First, I added toggle platforms. These platforms become solid and non-solid periodically. I used the platforms in a few interesting patterns to create really cool levels. After completing all the 24 normal desert levels I got to work on the boss. It took a few days to come up with the boss concept, but once I had that figured out it was mostly just...
Read MoreThis week I worked on more level elements for the desert environment. I added two new obstacles/traps and made over ten new levels using them. First, I added vertical crush traps. These blocks detect when the player walks above them and move towards the player with the purpose to crush the player. The movement isn’t instant and that’s what makes these traps quite devious: you quite easily forget the traps. I made a bunch of...
Read MoreThis week was autumn break, so I was able to do a lot of work. I finished both the jungle environment and the winter environment. Both now have 25 levels, one of which is a boss level. Jungle environment was only missing 8 regular levels, and the winter environment was missing 9 regular levels and one boss level. I was able to make the jungle levels just using the existing level elements. However, for the...
Read MoreI had a pretty productive week. I both polished an old feature and added new stuff to make levels with. Let’s start with the polishing: I reimplemented rain to the game. The old particles were just blue pixels that I moved trough the screen and killed once they went off-screen. The new rain particles use a new type of a line renderer, and just looks a lot better than the old version. I’m super happy...
Read MoreI don’t have a ton of new awesome stuff to show this week, but there are some things that got done. First of all, you are reading this post on an updated blog site for the game! The new site uses Jekyll to build the site from markdown post-files. This is a big improvement; the old site had all the posts hardcoded into two HTML files. It took a good few days to set everything...
Read MoreOnce again I had a really productive week. I added new features to the game, polished old ones and designed new levels. Last Sunday I started working on lasers for the prison environment! While getting the laser beams positioned correctly required hours of fighting with the unit circle, it was super fun to work on the laser wheel, and I think it turned out awesome. I had a blast making levels with the laser beams,...
Read MoreI had a pretty productive week, and now that my Swedish final is over I have more time to spend on the game! First off all, I have some new desert stuff to show. I made a new level in the beginning of the week, and today I added rising platforms that will allow me to make some small jumping challenges. Here you can see a screenshot of the new level and the rising platforms...
Read MoreI didn’t add any features to the game this week. I did however fix a bunch of bugs. First of all, I fixed all the resolution-positioning related bugs I was aware of. There weren’t that many, but it was nice to go around and just make the game feel a lot more polished. I also had to tweak the level editor layout a little, so that it could be viewed on a monitor that’s only...
Read MoreThis week wasn’t the most productive, but I do have some new stuff to show. Mainly, features got added to the desert environment. The first thing I worked on this week was lava. I had wanted to add lava to the game for a while already, and now finally I thought that it would be a good fit for the desert environment. It took some time to get the lava animation looking good, but I...
Read MoreI was sick the beginning of the week, but luckily I was able to work on the game quite productively at the end of the week. I have some cool stuff to show, so let’s go! I added spinning blades to the game. The entity simply uses a static blade, and spins that around in a circle while the spinner arm rotates behind the blade. All in all the implementation was quite easy. However, I...
Read MoreI didn’t add any new features to the game this week, but I do have a few other things to show. Let’s go! I spent the beginning of the week working on a proper front page for this website. I think it turned out quite nicely, and I feel like I also improved in HTML and CSS while developing the page. You can see the page here . I made some new levels for the...
Read MoreI’ve had a quite productive week, both in terms of game content and bug fixes. Let’s got to all of it! The winter environment uses blades a lot as environment hazards, and I spent some time tweaking the blades. Mainly, now the blades turn red if the player hits them. The effect isn’t perfect, but I think it looks quite nice, and makes the blades look cooler and more dangerous. While working on the big...
Read MoreAs you’ve probably read already, GunHero was Greenlit on Tuesday! Also, school started on Thursday. I do however have a few things to show from this week. Let’s get to it! Probably the coolest feature added this week is the ice shards. These shards are randomly positioned to the areas wanted, and they drop down in a deadly manner once the player walks past them. It was not very tricky to implement them, however due...
Read MoreI had a pretty productive week, so there’s some cool stuff to show! Let’s get to it! I continued working on the decals, and I got those looking pretty awesome. They definitely add more depth to the environments. Currently I spawn decals for blood and explosions, but I’m still looking for other uses. I’ve also toyed around with the idea of making the blood decals drip. Here’s a screenshot with the decals in place. Next...
Read MoreSome nice stuff got added to the game this week, so I’m really happy to wrap it all up! Let’s go! First and probably the biggest new feature that got added is the cannon entity. These cannon entities are built to fire different kinds of projectiles, however currently they only fire burning fireballs. Perhaps not the most realistic scenario, but pretty cool looking! I got my level design flow on with these new mechanics and...
Read MoreLast week wasn’t very productive, but I still have some stuff to show. I posted last week’s update also to IndieDB, and got a frontpage article spot over there, which was really awesome. As this week’s update isn’t very impressive, I won’t be copyng this update to other platforms. This week I finished off the jungle environment with a boss fight. The fight isn’t anything extremely clever, but it does the job of a boss...
Read MoreThere aren’t a ton of new awesome gameplay features to show this week, but I got some nice progress done this week in terms of making actual playable content for the game. So let’s see what got done this week! I added a red tint to the game screen when the player’s health is low and added a flashing effect to the HUD’s health label. I really like this addition as it makes you actually...
Read MoreIt’s been a while since the last weekly update, mainly because I haven’t done a lot of progress on the game. A few weeks ago I launched the game’s Greenlight campaign. The first few days went really well, but after a couple of days, new visitors stopped appearing and the game’s progress trough Greenlight has been on a decrease ever since. I’m not sure if the game will get lit, but what I’ve heard is...
Read MoreI had an awesomely productive week, both in terms of visual content and bugs fixed, so let’s get straight to it! The first big gameplay addition I made is the elevator crushing. Elevators now squish poor characters that get in between solid terrain and an elevator. Blood is everywhere and the character sprite is squished down. This is really makes the game feel more immersive and the interaction was definitely required. Here you can see...
Read MoreIt’s time for another weekly update! It was the first week of summer holiday, and I think I got some nice progress done. Plenty of bugs got fixed, and the look of levels got improved by a lot. Let’s roll! Last week I showed content from the new bomb level mode. I continued to work on the bomb mode in the beginning of the week, and I recorded some footage from the bomb level. Check...
Read MoreI had my last exams last week, and I got some small progress made during the week. I don’t have many gameplay features to show, but I made some other improvements. I also want to apologize for being one day late, yesterday just went by so quickly. In the beginning of the week I changed the multiplayer game mode scheme of the game. Multiplayer used to be enabled only in the arcade game mode, where...
Read MoreExams started this week, so I finally had some time to spend developing GunHero. I did a bunch of small tweaks and additions this week, so let’s roll! The boss now has a health bar! This makes the boss fight feel better, as you can see the boss take damage and slowly die. I also added speech bubbles to characters in cutscene dialogues. The implementation was really simple, dialog message instructions now simply allow the...
Read MoreI don’t have a lot to show from this week. I was super busy with school in the beginning of the week, and I caught a spring flu on the end of the week, so I really wasn’t very productive this week. I’m going to be swamped with school stuff the beginning of the next week too, but then it’s all exams so I should have more time to work on the game. The next...
Read MoreI had a pretty productive week, so I’m really exited about this update! Let’s go! The first gameplay addition I made this week is the case boxes. These boxes hide enemies or prisoners. These add more randomness to the gameplay and add a nice element of surprise to the levels. Here’s a gif showing an enemy spawning. The second gameplay addition is the missile trap I added. These traps detect targets (currently players and prisoners)...
Read MoreI have some cool stuff to show this week, so let’s get to it! The biggest gameplay additions this week are the doors. I added doors that fit the jungle and the bunker environments, but I can also easily add more sprite styles in the future. The doors can be locked, and if they are, the player has to activate a switch by either touching it or shooting it to unlock the door. This nicely...
Read MoreIt’s already the 10th weekly update! Wow! I got some nice visual progress done this week, at least compared to last week’s. So let’s dive into it! I added a new enemy type to the game. The new general enemy wears a cool big hat and he calls for backup when he notices the player. The general holds a pistol. When the general sees the player, a parachute enemy is spawned right outside the view....
Read MoreI have absolutely nothing visual to show from this week. I spent the whole day making sounds with SFXR and adding those to the game. There’s still a lot that needs to be added, but the world of the sounds in GunHero is slowly starting to form. I’m really happy with the way it’s sounding. I have no idea what the music in GunHero will sound like, but that’s something I need to come up...
Read MoreI’m really happy with the progress this week. Tons of new features were added that are really tying the game design together and bringing the game closer to a point where it design and feature wise could be promoted properly. So, let’s get straight to the changes. First thing I did this week was adding the grenadier enemy. The AI could use a little improvement, but the basic mechanics were added to the game. The...
Read MoreI was really busy with exams this week, so this week’s progress isn’t great. However, I fixed some bugs and made some small tweaks along with some preparations for a demo release in the coming weeks. The coolest improvement I made was definitely the panic mode I added to the enemy AI. Now, when a grenade latches on an enemy, the enemy freaks out and starts running in panic, often times into other enemies, creating...
Read MoreI spent most of the week trying to locate a performance issue that was bringing the FPS down by a lot. I was checking for collisions in the gun entities, which was not necessary. All characters have a weapon, so removing the checking was quite an improvement. I’m currently focusing on putting out a demo build, so the rest of the week was spent adding levels and improving the tutorial cutscene. So I will share...
Read MoreI got a little sick over the weekend, so the progress this week was definitely not what I personally was looking for. However, I did manage to get some stuff done before losing my energy to work due to the little spring flu I caught. In the beginning of the week I managed to make grenades stick to boxes and characters. You can see that below. The feature makes grenades easier to use as they...
Read MoreIt’s Sunday again, and Sunday means that it’s time to write another weekly update. I don’t have much to show as I was super busy with school work this week, and I will be busy the beginning of the next week too, but then I have a five-day holiday to spend on the game. The biggest and most awesome new feature this week is the consumable item system: grenades. That’s right. You can kill enemies...
Read MoreHere we go again! In the previous update I mentioned the issues I had with the player movement on the elevator. Luckily I got that fixed already on Monday, so not too much time was lost on that glitchy movement. Here’s the player happily taking a lift: Last week I finally got a round to adding a new enemy that I’ve been planning to add for a long time. The new enemy is slower, tankier,...
Read MoreA week has passed and it’s time for another weekly update. As this week was school again, the progress is not as impressive as last week’s, but I think I still made some very nice progress on the game. In the beginning of the week I worked on improving the prison theme. I added new structure and dirt tiles for the terrain, and I also added some prop tiles, such as fences and a new...
Read MoreThis is the first weekly update on the GunHero site! Let’s get straight into business: the first thing I worked on this week was animated tiles. This feature was long due, and in the end it wasn’t too hard to implement into the engine. In the following picture you can see the animated water tiles in action. While I was working on water, I also ended up adding water splash particles. The implementation for those...
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