Hey guys! It's been a little more than a month, but so much has happened in this last dev period that I just delayed this post a little bit. Regardless though, here it is! Development update #9.
This month was a huge month. All sounds are done, the trailer is done, several new items have been added, features have been added to the settings page, tons of bugs have been fixed, and lots of polishing has been done. The best part of all, the game is done, and we have launched our Greenlight campaign. I will address each of these things individually during the course of this post.
So sounds. Sounds have been something that I've been talking about for a while. It was one of those things that I kept pushing to the side and never really took the time to focus on them until this month. This month I added sounds everywhere that I felt they were needed. I've learned that with sounds, sometimes less is more, so I've only added the sounds that I feel really do add something to the game. Needless to say, I'm glad they're complete.
The trailer is completed! Like I said it would be in the last dev update, the trailer was completed this month. It was a gruelling process... it took two days of work to complete but I finished it. It was more because video editing on Linux is damn near impossible :P. Regardless though, I managed to finish it and it came out pretty good I think. Here it is:
A controls menu, and a resolution changer have been added to the settings page. These were last minute additions, but very much needed in any game. It came out well I think.
Items are a big part of Floors of Discomfort, over the course of this last development period all of the usable elite items have been added to the game. By usable I mean they are either passive, or require the player to activate them. Elite items are items dropped by the elite enemies of each level. Here are each of the items and what they do.
Spectral Jaw - Has a chance upon killing an enemy to increase attack speed greatly for two seconds.
Dark Mass - Has a chance upon killing an enemy to spawn a black hole which sucks in enemies around it for 5 seconds.
Leech - Has a change upon killing an enemy to regenerate one bar of the player's health.
Sack of Goo - An item that allows the player to restore his health to full. Has a 5 minute cool down.
Laughing Skull - Give an extra life to the player. Upon death, the player will be resurrected with full health.
Staff - Has a 1% chance upon hitting an enemy to launch that enemy into the air.
Baby Raptor - Spawns a baby raptor to your side that will follow you and assist in attacking enemies. He does very little damage, but he's invincible so he's a nice little extra dps boost.
The chance for an enemy to drop an elite item has also been increased significantly. It's gone from a 10% chance to 45% chance upon killing the enemy. When play testing I found that the enemies just never dropped the items so I realized then that the probability needed to be higher.
That also goes for body parts. Body parts have a greater chance of dropping now, just as a side note.
So bugs. I can go on and on about bugs, but I won't. I'm just going to say that a lot of the major bugs have been fixed, many of which where game breaking so that's good. A much more interesting topic to talk about would probably be the polishing that has been done. A lot of little things have been added to give the game a better feel, and make it more interesting. Just to name a few:
- Jump height now depends on how long the jump button is held.
- The knight now has a medium rage attack when slashing.
- Player can now turn on a dime. There is still deceleration, but not when changing direction.
- The health of the later enemies has been increased to match the difficulty expected out of them.
- The tree boss on floor three is actually a challenge now (more of a bug fix I guess)
There are probably a few more, but those are the most interesting ones for sure.
That about does it for the changes to the game itself. A lot of the other additions/fixes are not really worth talking about, but a lot has been done to make the game feel nicer. It wasn't much of a new feature month.
A large chunk of this month was dedicated to marketing. I've been very active on social media, I did a Reddit AMA, I've talked to bloggers about the game. I've been making a great effort to get the game out there and get exposure. It has worked to some degree, but an official review hasn't been done of the game yet unfortunately. Regardless, we have decided to release the game, and it is the right decision to do so.
Floors of Discomfort is available for purchase on the official website: Threeprongproductions.com for $5.99
We are also trying to get through Steam Greenlight right now, so if you are interested please vote! Steamcommunity.com
We have also submitted the game to Desura, GoG, and Itch.io.
It has been over 10 months of development. It's amazing to see our idea become a reality, and it makes me happy. It started as an idea and blossomed into something I am proud of. There is still a long road ahead of us, but I am confident about the future.
Well, that's about it for this month. Thanks for sticking with me until the end of this long winded post.
Until next time
- Frankie
