- Update - 1 November 2021
Hey there, Kinda hard to say this but going to go on an indefinite hiatus. This month I got hit with sudden sensorineural hearing loss (SSNHL) which is when you suddenly and rapidly lose hearing. For the vast majority of cases, the cause for this is unknown, so you'll just wake up one day with no hearing in one ear. Fortunately, it only happened to my left ear, so I can still with my right and have a regular conversation with people. Unfortunately, the loss in my left ear is classified as "severe" for low frequencies and most likely I'll have at least some permanent hearing loss, and that's even if the treatments are successful. I will say, I was really lucky to have a great ENT doctor that's giving me every chance to recover whatever hearing I can. From the moment the hearing loss occurs, you're basically on a time limit to try and recover and heal. There does seem to be some good impr…
- Monthly Devlog (September 2021) - 1 October 2021
Hey there! For September the weapon drop/pick up is completed, the weapon shop UI was updated to increase readability, and a new room type was added to help mask the loading between floors. Weapon drops were added to the game, which is pretty standard for any FPS haha. So as you get closer to the drop the stats and their difference to your current weapon will display so you can make a quick decision on if you want to swap for it or not. The size of the info UI shrinks as you get closer to it too, so you can see the info no matter how close you are. As mentioned in the previous devlog, I noticed that the weapon shop UI needed so way to compare the stats with your current weapons so you don't have to memorize if the weapon in the shop is better or not. So made the update and you can switch between which of your current weapons you want to compare with now, and the stats difference will ap…
- Monthly Devlog (August 2021) - 1 September 2021
Hey there! For August felt like there needed to be some more variety in the combat so I created the first melee enemy. I also implemented the weapon shop UI. So previously, this FPS game only had ranged units which is the walker mech and the bullet & rocket turrets. But since they were ranged units, making them fast would probably make them too difficult especially for enemies on the first floor. But I wanted there to be some kind of pressure to make you want to move around so that's why this melee enemy was created! The idea with this enemy is that it will chase you and move faster than you can. When you come into range it'll lock onto a position a bit farther back than your current position, wait a bit to give you some visual indication that it's doing an attack, then charge the point. It's not meant to be a hard enemy when alone, but when there's a lot of them and when dealing with r…
- Monthly Devlog (July 2021) - 1 August 2021
Hey there! For July I spent time continuing to work on the FPS game. Specifically, I finished the design and implementation of the hub area, created the dialogue system, updated the room door system, and made changes to try and improve the game feel. I know this is the page for Bright Red Skies, but these devlogs have pretty much turned into a monthly update on any projects I've been working on gamedev-related haha. Anyways, the first thing I did was finish off the hub area. Added in some props to fill in the empty spaces and try to make the area look more believable. The walls were looking really empty so I added some wiring to make the area look more technological and full. Put in some security cameras that periodically rotate and added some temporary characters. Yes, these are BRS character models for anyone that's observant :p With the temporary characters in the room, I started to…
- Monthly Devlog (June 2021) - 2 July 2021
Hey there! For June, as I mentioned in my previous devlog, I would spend my time working on the FPS game instead of Bright Red Skies. So what I did was work on the title screen, improved the damage feedback, and started to create the template for the lobby room. For the title screen, I was thinking about what I wanted to show and decided to show the giant doors leading out of the lobby and into the main part of the game. Since the game is a roguelike, this is probably something that you'll have to see a bunch of times. The scene is pretty static so to add some motion, I just added some camera movement as you move the mouse around. Wanted to also add some better feedback when you get hit, to try improve the game feel. So now there's an effect that appears when you take damage, so it's a weak blue color when taking damage to your shields and when you start getting dealt damage to your hea…
- Monthly Devlog (May 2021) - 1 June 2021
Hey there! For May I worked on the FPS project. There was a list of small to medium level bugs I was putting off for a while so I started working through them. This ranged from things like the weapon HUD not flipping back in some cases, to the jumps being really unresponsive. But I feel like I got it to a point where the core movement is feeling pretty decent. It's nowhere near Apex Legends level, but its at a point that I'm happy with. Speaking of movement, one of the new features I added was wall running. It's honestly hard to say how much of a tactical advantage wall running will have but it just feel cool so added it in the game lol. I can see some rooms having platforms you can wall run between to run away from enemies, but this is something I'm going to need to experiment more with. Another thing I added is the shotgun which made me have to create a new type of weapon that can spa…
- Monthly Devlog (April 2021) - 1 May 2021
Hey guys! For April the final part of Dosero is completed, some work on the enemy AI was done, and I started implementing what I feel is a more sustainable schedule of working on these side projects since I don't have the means the work on them full-time. So for Bright Red Skies, the shooting range area has been made so the layout of Dosero is now completed! The area has a spot where people do target practice a mini command post near one of the entrances. For the FPS game, all of the work done was on the enemies. So now the enemies will spawn in semi-random waves as well as have some kind of spawning animation where they materialize. Also, the AI pathing should be better now. I was getting used to how to set up the pathing but now I feel like I have a better understanding especially when dealing with varying heights and enemies colliding paths. For a little bit more of a personal note,…
- Monthly Devlog (March 2021) - 1 April 2021
Hey there! For March I mostly worked on getting Dosero up and running again by adding in some characters, updating some town UI, and making the camera improvements in dialogue since the camera angle go reworked from last month. With the FPS project, controller support was added and the weapon menus were implemented. So for Bright Red Skies, it really felt empty without any NPCs, so I added some NPCs to make it feel more alive. It's been a while since touching the code related to the town, so I did some refactoring to clean up stuff that doesn't exist anymore like the old camera system and updated the minimap to make better sense for a third-person camera. With the dialogue system, thankfully everything works well so there were no real fixes that I needed to do on that. But I did make an update to how the interaction looks. So I've been playing some Trails of Cold Steel and whenever you…
- Monthly Devlog (February 2021) - 2 March 2021
Hey there! For February work was done on changing the camera view in BRS and Dosero is being updated to reflect the story better. For the FPS project, reward chests were added, a new enemy type was introduced, and there are now explosions! So for Bright Red Skies, the camera was updated from being an arrangement of static cameras to being attached to your character directly. This was a relatively quick update to make there were two main reasons for why this was done. The first is because I think it visually looks a lot better seeing everything much closer haha. The second is because it's not a bird's eye view so fewer objects need to get rendered which will be nice for the performance. Running around the new map I'm getting 600-800 fps compared to the ~150 fps on the previous version. The new map isn't fully complete but those numbers are still nice. As mentioned, Dosero is getting an u…
- Monthly Devlog (January 2021) - 1 February 2021
Hey there! For January I started to work on Bright Red Skies again! I was also working on my other side project which I plan on being my first Steam release. For BRS I worked on setting a framework of the beginning of the story and fleshing out the main characters and the arcs I want them to go through. With this new FPS game, I implemented some of the core gameplay such as basic enemy AI, weak points, item drops/inventory, player menu & equipment UI, and the procedural level generation. So for Bright Red Skies, there isn't much to show visually, but I really needed to work out the beginning sequence of the story and how the main characters and reoccurring side characters are introduced. There were also some important characters that I felt could've been explored more so I started writing some more information about their backstory and personality. For February hopefully, I have somethi…
- On Break (December 2020 Update) - 1 January 2021
Happy New Year! For December I had two full weeks of vacation from my work and was able to reach the goal of completing the smaller side-side project as well as start working on a newer smaller scale Steam game. With the mobile game project completed, as I mentioned in the previous posts, I'm going to spend my free time working on a new Steam game and get back to working on Bright Red Skies! So with the mobile game, I can finally put it on my portfolio as a project that I started and actually saw to completion. In the gamedev community, there's a common trend where developers will start projects, get bored when the going gets tough, and will eventually abandon the project. To be honest, after working on Bright Red Skies for so long, I was starting to feel like I would just end up being like one of these gamedevs that would eventually abandon their projects. No matter how small the game,…
- On Break (November 2020 Update) - 2 December 2020
Hey there! Back to give some more updates on what I've been up to. So if you haven't read any of the recent devlogs, I've put the development of Bright Red Skies on hold as I develop better skills so I can make sure BRS is the best quality game I can possibly make. It's my dream game and I'd love to be able to see my vision come to life instead of creating a mediocre game. To actually develop these skills I've been creating a new side project which is a bullet hell. The game isn't supposed to be a masterpiece, but it serves as a way that I can learn more features in Unity and learn some communications with backend services. So for November, I was able to do a lot near the beginning of the month but in the second half of this month, I had some crunch at work. But the combat system and the levels are mostly complete. There's also the ability to login and have your data saved in the backen…
- On Break (October 2020 Update) - 1 November 2020
Hey there! So just to reiterate what I've been saying for a couple of devlogs, the development of Bright Red Skies is going to be halted for a while so that I can improve on other game development skills I feel are lacking. I like to just keep you guys updated since Bright Red Skies is my dream game, and I just want you to know that at some point it'll get completed, but it's probably going to be a long while from now. I've been trying to plan out how I want to approach my personal growth as a game developer and the development of my side projects (including BRS). So currently, my goal is to release my mobile game project sometime before the end of this year and begin working on a new project that I plan on being more of a commercial game that I would play. The main objective of this new mobile game, was mainly to bolster my game portfolio, learn a bit of backend, and learn better optim…
- On Break (September 2020 Update) - 1 October 2020
Hey there! Here for another update of stuff I've been up to. Since work on Bright Red Skies is going to be halted for a while, I feel like this is going to delve into more of a diary situation. There most likely won't be much news about BRS but if anyone has been reading these devlogs for a long while, I feel like I should just keep it up so that they know what's going on and that I'm still alive. ;) So I ended up reading another book to help me with my knowledge of writing interesting characters. The book I read is called "Characters & Viewpoints" by Orson Scott Card which was a pretty interesting read. It's making me think about not taking the most obvious route when trying to make a character. Like the examples given when trying to craft a story or character are so much more exciting when thinking unconventionally. It should be helpful when I create some new characters or try to make…
- On Break (August 2020 Update) - 2 September 2020
Hey there! Just going to give a quick update on the stuff I've been up to this past month. So, I think this break from working on Bright Red Skies is going to be fairly long. There are just a bunch of gamedev related things I personally want to improve on, and really just want to take time to build a stronger base so building games will be easier. Like I said in the previous devlog, I wanted to improve on my knowledge of story-telling and build a good narrative, so I added two more books to the list of books read: Creating Character Arcs - K.M Weiland The Last Fifty Pages - James Scott Bell As someone with mostly a technical background, I really feel like, "Creating Character Arcs", opened my mind on structuring character arcs. "The Last Fifty Pages" introduced me to some good concepts on creating compelling endings, which is important for a game with multiple endings. Other than that I…
- Taking a Vacation - 1 August 2020
Hey everyone, I'm going to be taking a bit of time off from developing Bright Red Skies. In case you don't know, Bright Red Skies is a personal project I work on in my spare time since I have a full-time job as a developer. This game is my dream project and I can't see a scenario where I completely stop working on it, so rest assured that at some point in my life this game will be released. To be completely transparent, I see that there are gaps in my ability to create this game and I'm looking to improve on these skills such as: Writing (character development, story structure, dialogue) Cinematography (cutscenes and general camera positioning in scenes) Video Editing (trailer, promotional material) The first two points I feel are going to make or break how good the game is going to be, so for the past couple of months, I've been reading books and watching videos on these topics. I stil…
- Monthly Devlog (June 2020) - 1 July 2020
For June, work was done on getting game data loading to work correctly (as well as the associated UI), creating a combat defeat screen where you can make party updates/retry, and updating the dialogue tool to work with the new dialogue system. Loading Game Data As mentioned, there's now functionality in order to save & load a game file. When you save the game, it will take a screenshot of your current screen so that it's a little easier to remember which save file is which. When the data is loaded it takes you back to the exact position where you saved, along with your party data/inventory. Let's Go Again Now there's a proper end screen if you end up losing a fight that lets you either retry straight away, update your party equipment and formation, then retry, or load up a save file. The reason for allowing you retry, as opposed to only being allowed to load a save file that some games…
- Monthly Devlog (May 2020) - 1 June 2020
For May, work was done in improving the way that characters talk and express themselves, as well as optimizing game loading. Specifically, the dialogue box style was updated so that they cover less of the screen, easier to understand character expressions were added, and some tricks were used in order to better hide the transitioning between scenes. New Dialogue Boxes So I've recently played through the first Trails in the Sky arc and something I noticed, was that it was able to create a lot of dynamic cutscenes despite not having current-generation graphics. This made me think more about all of the JRPGs I've played when I was a kid and how they were able to tell stories using small dialogue boxes, so I started to convert my previous dialogue box style to the dialogue bubble style. The major benefits you get with using the smaller dialogue boxes is that more of the screen is visible to…
- Monthly Devlog (April 2020) - 1 May 2020
For April, work was done to improve the combat in terms of gameplay and workflow. Specifically, a new combat map was created, the map size was increased, and two new workflow tools were created to increase the efficiency of map creation. Simulation Map I wanted to create another combat map for the game, so now there's a simulation map. This was created because this allows people to duel one another in a controlled environment that makes some sense in a semi-futuristic apocalyptic world. There are plans to include a tournament arch in the story so something like this needs to be introduced. The Bigger The Better Over the course of Bright Red Skies' development, the map size was something that has been changed multiple times. It's a tactical RPG so positioning needs to be something that's important, but with a smaller map, the amount of opportunities you can give yourself isn't very high.…
- Monthly Devlog (March 2020) - 1 April 2020
For March work was done on the intro cutscene. For most of the game, the cutscenes will be like the old-school Final Fantasy games where characters move statically and dialogue text appears. But I want the important stuff like the intro cutscene to be more cinematic. The Intro Cutscene What's happening in the intro cutscene, is it's a retelling of the story of what lead to the post-apocalyptic world of Claraeth. No one really knows exactly what happens on that day, except that a large group of people rebelled against a powerful ruler. They come storming closer: Sending in the big guns: Trying to fight off the rebellion: The last resort: Behind the Scenes This is a section of the devlog where I like to talk about the parts of the game that were improved but aren't necessarily big enough to have their own section. For March some of the extra things completed were: Created a cutscene scrip…
