Gamedev - Blog Posts

We use Trello for our dev work organisation. It's not perfect, but it gets the job done. Each card is a task, broken down via checklists into steps. It helps us keep track with what the other is doing. When only my face is on a task, I know I can just get stuck in. And if it turns out I can't do it on my own, I just put CodingDino's face on it, make a note, and move on. The cards are useful, but in a great mass they can be overwhelming. Sometimes it's easier to just look at the game and see what's missing. However, a place like this is necessary to write down things you know you should get done sometime, but just not now.

Will all the tasks get done? Heck no! That's realistically impossible; the goal is to HAVE a goal, written down and visible. Otherwise you're just shooting in the dark.

Most recent character for Stardust Survivors : M.R.! A space-enthusiast who can call down rolling, flaming meteors. From Space™! These meteors can be upgraded to split into shrapnel, cause impact explosions, or leave a burn!

This makes... five characters so far. Once we've got her working in Unity, there'll be only one more to complete our first set of characters. After that, I'll be focusing on level design.

Rediscovered this treasure. My bible circa 2009; discovered I still use most of the tricks I learned from this book today. Animating waves using masks, proper gradients, animation principles, etc. Its advice is still relevant even after Flash's demise.

I had a lot of game ideas I wanted to make in Flash, most of which never escaped their notepad concept. Had a few successes, a Tetris-blackjack combo called DiceJack, and Rawrysaurus, a kaiju game where you escaped from a tidal wave. My first forays into game dev.

Thanks Chris Georgenes.

Let’s start with what I’m actually working on. Stardust Survivors is a “Survivors” game, a sub-genre made popular by 2022’s Vampire Survivors. If you don’t know what that is, it’s like a twin-stick shooter, except you only have the one stick. The goal of the game is to outlast an infinitely-spawning series of enemy waves by destroying them to level up, gaining new abilities and attacks, most of which auto-fire without your direct input.

At this point, we’d barely touched Armoured Engines in over a year, and we figured a new project would be just the thing to get us out of our rut. Stardust Survivors takes that original concept and puts it into a magical space setting reminiscent of Moon Dreamers and Sailor Moon. The Stardust Survivors are a group of magical girls and boys who protect the energy of planets from the insatiable and unending tide of Constellar creatures.

It’s still early days; we’re mostly working on adding playable characters and abilities. However, we intend to streamline the survivors gameplay with short, 5-minute runs that extend down a rogue-like track. You can try out an early demo that we prepared for a local games showcase on our itch.io page here: https://boundergames.itch.io/stardust-survivors. Can YOU beat the boss!??

Hello GameDevs! I'm Roy from Scotland, an indie dev working as one half of Bounder Games (alongside CodingDino)! You might have seen us at DevCom, Insomnia, and EGX Rezzed.

Currently working on three titles; "Stardust Survivors", a survivors game set in a bizarre space land, "Gobbos, Hunt!", a monster hunting card game, and "Armoured Engines", a wacky side-scrolling tower defense in the wild west!

I'll be posting some of my work here in the future, hope to see all the wonderful things people share here! <3

Here's a quick screenshot from The Hate Show - an interlude to the Travel Devil story. Development hit a couple of roadblocks but things are back on track and I'm feeling fiendishly hopeful!

The next devlog will follow soon.

Take care of yourselves... and each other.

Just feeling to post this little thing. Enjoy it!

When Glowdust and I put down Peace Day we immediately began work on Unstable Scientific. You'll play as a physicist with a group of colleagues who are exploring a mysterious island while running an interdimensional portal laboratory! It's going to have the base-building mechanics of Peace Walker with a metroidvania-lite style of platforming. I'm still sorry that we had to stop work on Peace Day. But we're putting the spirit of everything we wanted to put in that game, into this one.

War & Economy beta 0.0 released!

But initially i wanted to release my game on Google Play or Steam as well but it turned out that i can't create a dev account there because they doesn't accept bank cards from my country

Then i decided to create a buymeacoffee account but it turned out that all payment services that it uses are blocked for my country

And yes, itch.io also doesn't accept my card

So there's no way to get money for selling my game

This world is so fair 🥰

PS: of course, i can sell my game in rustore but i think no one uses it

Hi

I've not posted anything for 2 weeks because i've been optimizing the game and making some small additions and changes

The biggest changes:

New description for defense line:

And new background for the main menu:

I also added new soundtracks and noticed that for some reason the quality of all music has deteriorated. I tried to fix it but i couldn't. So i decided not to fix it because i don't think anyone listens to the soundtracks

And today i'll be releasing the pre-1 version on my discord server

Hi

I added little more info to the debug menu and changed its font. Also added info how to undo and redo actions to the tutorial and changed the cursor image in its screenshots

I finally added a convenient color select menu to the customization window instead of rgb scales

Today i'll release the last interim to my discord server, the next one will be a pre-release

PS: i thought i would be developing this interim for 3 weeks but due to illness i did it in just one

Hi!

Now if a tool/attack isn't selected, the description displays info about building built on the selected cell. Also added a description for empty cell. I think it's very informative...

Today, after 1,5 months after the last one, i release a new interim release on my discord server

PS: yes, the description of empty cell is the longest description...

Hi!

Added a full screen mode and an ability to sync the speeds of "wave" animations and bots' work

Also now, as it was before, the pause button doesn't pause the game. I had to delete this feature because it was pausing WHOLE the game (for example, the cursors in entry fields were also pausing)

Hi!

Added an interface tab in the settings menu. There are checkboxes for large interface and blocking end turn button. Also moved there are the tool deselection checkboxes and the default menu radio buttons deleted

And yes, now the end turn button has a timer that shows the remaining time

Also, the pause menu finally pauses animations

I improved scrollbar and now it works just like scrollbars in browsers. Also added a reset button to the bots tab in the settings menu

Hi

I created the remaining "wave" animation variants. Also now different variants have different time lengths. I did this so that their speeds would be the same and look nice

PS: yes, there are some bugs with determining which animation variant should be played

I created the most of "wave" animation variants. Also decided to make them round

Hi

Drew animations for shelling and bombing, shelling animation have 4 variants for 4 sides. Decided to experiment and added a "wave" animation for conquering attacks (storm, tank battle and landing)

Also now when it's bot's turn, you can't select cells, tools and attacks, use undo and redo buttons

And yes, i added price tags to the attacks menu

And also...

this is my 100th post!

Hi

Now bots can visualize their work (show which cell they select) and take breaks between actions. Also added new settings for bots

I'll post this release (interim-2) on my discord server

Happy New Year!

Added the bots section to the settings menu and the randomness factor option

If this option is selected, bots will choose a random cell when choosing between two identical ones (which one to build on or which one to attack). This makes games little more varied

Need your help

Hi, as you know i'm going to release current version (beta 0.0) on Play Market or Steam so i want it be as good as possible

So i'm asking for your help with translations and maybe music and art. I need people who are interested in my game and who can at least be testers

Currently i don't know if i can make any money from my game so maybe your work won't be paid (and mine too)

I know i'm more likely writing this post in vain but i hope i'm wrong

Thank you for reading

I added the ability to block player type change. Also i decided to redraw the demolition animation because i thought it looked little weird

Hi! Sorry for the delay, i didn't have much time to develop the game last week

I decided it's not necessary to teach bots to build defense lines because them are not always effective. But i taught bots to "invest" money in building factories at the beginning of game.

I also decided to delete the cooperation page in the settings menu because i think it's not nice to ask for help directly in my game. At the moment this page is just hidden but i'm going to delete it completely in the future.

I'll publish the 1st interim on my discord server within an hour

Hi! I haven't been developing the game for a couple of days due to illness but now i feel better and i'm able to continue developing

Now bots can bomb each other. I think bots attacks are done so all i have to do is to teach them build defense lines and fix some issues. Then, more likely, i'll publish the 1st interim

War & Economy's birthday

Hi there!

I forgot to tell you that on november 6th my game and blog turned 1 year old! Year ago i published 2 posts: short one with 1 screenshot and long one with game's background and concept. But i decided to make the long post private because i thought it contained too many spoilers.

Now you know my game's concept so these are no longer spoilers. So today i made this post public! So you can read it right now!

For this year i published 91 posts and gained 32 followers:

For this year my game has passed alpha testing, was released on itch.io and now i'm developing beta 0.0 version that will be released on PlayMarket and/or Steam

Goodluck to everyone who read this post! Luck is a one of the most useful things in life... Unfortunately, i'm not always lucky...

Now bots can win back their cells after they have been conquered by enemy and use shelling on adjacent enemy cells

Also bots build less air defense but this is not visible in the video because bots just don't reach the stage of building airports. To test this change, i had to help bots a little.

Now bots can attacks each other (more precisely, use shellings and tank battles). They decide what cell to attack based on the importance of cells (the cyaner or yellower cell color is, the more important it is (but the color changes non-linearly to make it easier to see the difference))

Bots decide how to attack building (use shelling and then tank battle or tank battle only) depending on what variant is cheaper

But they can't storm because i myself don't use this type of attack. The same situation is with landings (i don't use them too). So i ask you: when should bots storm buildings and use landings? I really don't, so please help me.

Hi there!

Now bots can build airports and air defenses, and demolish their own buildings if they have not money to pay for their maintenance

I decided to put off constructing defense lines for later, so the next step is to teach bots attack (WOW!)

PS: i removed the disable end button to play test games faster. don't worry, i'm going to add this feature for you in this update :-)

I created a simple algorithm for constructing buildings. It can construct factories, military plants and military units on the safest cells.

Also fixed bugs in the algorithm for calculating cell safety (distance from border)

Today i forced myself to work on the game on friday evening, and now i'll show you results of this work:

Now the bot can calculate distance from border diagonally too. This means the work on this algorithm is complete and tomorrow i'll work on building construction algorithm. Hopefully, i'll have its first version by the end of the weekend so i can publish a second post this weekends

PS: yes, there is a bug with an uncalculated green cell. But let's pretend the bot isn't very smart and it also take mistakes 🙏. So it's not a bug, it's a feature!