2023-06-21

  1. Firm up goals for recurse center
  2. Do some chores
  3. Do things I’ve been putting off so that they’re done pre-RC

2023-06-20

  • I was so excited about RC that I did almost nothing other than read about RC
  • I guess that’s a good thing :)

2023-06-19

  • Short days until recurse center next week
  • Drew art for maslow
  • Prototyped interaction between two characters in maslow
    • Laughed out loud at how goofy it looked

2023-06-18

  • Day off!
  • I’m going to recurse center :)

2023-06-17

  • Day mostly off
  • Recurse center prep
  • Prototyped a bit of climbing in the game

2023-06-17

  • Day off, visiting with friends

2023-06-15

  1. Prototype some parts of PigS game
  2. Life admin
  • Did a tiny bit of art and prototyping but very little else
  • Unproductive day. Tomorrow will be better

2023-06-14

  1. Actually commit to PiGS gamejam theme
  2. One more easy day, maybe a little code / art / game design
  3. Life admin
  • Did some coworking and generated a theme
  • “We must climb Maslow’s Pyramid” / “Self Actualize”
  • Idle game about evolving and climbing the pyramid
  • Probably about climbing a literal pyramid
  • Management elements, maybe launcher elements? Maybe the launcher is just a simulation

2023-06-13

  1. Post the blog
  2. Sketch out an idea for PiGS gamejam
    • Two week gamejam where you make an idle game with the theme “mutation”
    • Mutation sure comes up a lot in gamejams huh
  3. Take it easy
  • Blog posted
  • Picked Crosscode back up!
    • Really lovely. One thing I forgot is how nice their “trade” system is for weapons (have to get specific items for them)
    • Whole lot of games see a problem with just trading for gold
  • Came up with some gamejam ideas but didn’t commit
  • Fine to relax, I worked through the whole weekend

2023-06-12

  1. Wahoo the game is done
  2. Write most or all of the game blog
  3. Come up with a plan for the PiGs idle gamejam (theme “mutation”)
  4. Take it easy for today
  • Did RC conversational interview
  • Passed RC conversational interview!
  • Submitted RC code sample for pairing interview
  • Finished a draft of the ReShape blog!!
  • Did not succeed at taking it easy for today but this was a high productivity day.

2023-06-11

WHAT IS LEFT

  1. Damage test at the end
  2. Show hotkeys at pause screen
  3. Get up to at least 40 waves, maybe 45 or 50
  4. Final balance pass
  • I DID everything it’s done i am so tired omg

2023-06-10

  1. Wrap up the game!!
  2. Creep changes:
    • Add “Many” creeps that reward AOE
    • Pump creep health SCALING because we have so much AOE
    • Pump Thick health 2x at least
    • Minimum speed
    • Prevent permastun
    • Get to 50 waves
    • Reduce gold gain a little bit
    • Damaage test at the end
  3. UI Changes:
    • Remove reshape button at bottom, add back hotkey
    • Right click to clear building state
    • Pause menu should show hotkeys
    • Maybe the upgrade buttons can pulse to call attention to them
  4. Tower Changes:
    • Slightly increase level 4 and 5 cost?
    • Tower should have a wait time and upgrade animation for upgrading
    • Animation for selling too
    • Force through one free tower upgrade at the start?
    • Rework powerful to be “crit”
  5. Other balance:
    • Reduce starting gold by 40 or 50
  6. Other polish:
    • Sound for creep death?
    • Red number for crit
    • Sound for creep escaping
    • Sound for wave sending
  • Added sell animation
  • Added upgrade animation
  • Reduced starting gold
  • Increased upgrade costs
  • Increased creep health
  • Added chill speed cap, permastun prevention
  • Reworked powerful to be crit
  • Added crit text
  • Fixed poison bug
  • Added pack creeps
  • Added sound effects for creeps escaping and waves starting
  • Fixed some bugs around wave display
  • Made upgrade button flash if you aren’t using it

2023-06-09

  1. Healthbars
  2. Try tower upgrade cost being cubic or less formulaic
    • Fully upgraded towers should be powerful
  3. Balance powerful vs poison
  4. Change “generous” to be towers in range
  5. More principled way of deciding which creeps belong to which wave?
    • Maybe add flying creeps?
  6. Modulate for chill, poison, stun
  7. Label hovertext?
  8. Add up to 50 waves
  9. Sounds
  10. Timer and effect for sell and upgrade
  11. Towers should have an STATUS_MULTIPLIER stat!!
  12. ANIMATION for shooting
  13. Right click to clear building state
  14. Replace powerful with a critical strike
  15. Regular creep waves should get powerful a bit faster - we have too much AOE. Boss waves are fine
  16. Thick creep waves need substantiall more health to make up for their slowness
    • need a min move speed
  17. Level 4 and 5 cost shoudl be higher
  18. After stun you’re invuln for 0.4 seconds?
  19. ADD DAMAGE TEST: option to send damage test after winning
  20. Reduce starting gold to maybe 100?
  21. Also creeps in general need more health
  • FIX TWO BUGS:
    • ReShape animation should only play if the reshape matches the tower
    • We need two animation players so that the white thing can flash separately?
  • Added healthbar
  • Added modulation for status effects
  • Added status multiplier for towers, adjusted powerful bonus
  • Changed tower upgrade cost and damage again
  • Reworked generous
  • EVERYTHING should feel imbalanced
  • Free upgrade at the start and a warning if you haven’t used it
  • Got balance to an ok state?
  • Explosion sound done
  • Added shooting sounds
  • Added animations for tower shooting and tower being reshaped

2023-06-08

  1. Finish UI tweaking
    • Settle on SOMETHING for top view
    • Nicer single creep / tower viewer on the bottom
    • Tower selection should un-toggle after building unless you are holding shift
  2. Polish
    • Make towers flash when they’re upgraded
    • Add a wait time for ReShape, tower upgrade, tower sell
    • Sounds (shooting, explosion, creep death, creep free)
    • Screen shake when a creep leaves?
    • Particles when a wave launches?
    • MAYBE add “sniper” and “generous” towers
  3. Balance
    • Tweak all the numbers
  • Another mega productive day
  • Helped a friend with interview prep
  • Roughly completed the UI, it’s not embarrassing anymore
  • Added hotkeys for everything and buttons for everything
  • Added “generous” and “farshot” mechanics
  • Added reset / pause mechanics
  • Added win / lose screen
  • Added logic to prevent blocking!!!
  • Many other small visual tweaks

  • Did a first round of balance tweaking

  • Need to add health bars
  • Need to change generous to only be towers in range
  • Timer for upgrades and selling, some kind of effect
  • Sounds
  • Modulate for poison and chill and stun
  • Animation for shooting: squish inside of tower

2023-06-07

  1. Add current wave, next wave, score
  2. Add “pick one of three” system for upgrades
    • Debug option for “pick any upgrade for free”
  3. Finish UI tweaking
    • Make ‘current selection’ look nicer, at least
  • Extremely productive day - the game is now playable!
  • UI looks awful but is almost fully functional
    • Missing “next wave” “pause” and “reset” buttons and a few hotkeys
    • Right sidebar doesn’t look right yet
  • Added a wave viewer just like DesktopTD + score
  • Added “pick one of three upgrades” system
  • Learned a bunch of stuff about buttons, how to make easy nice flat buttons with rounded corners, etc
  • Learned enough shader stuff to fade the background when the game is paused
  • Game balance is pretty far off, needs serious tweaking
  • Would be nice to have one or two more tower kinds?

  • Game needs sound

  • Rank 99 neon white I’M FREE

2023-06-06

  1. Subclass creeps
    • quick creep - normal health, fast
    • resistant creep - half as likely to be afflicted
    • thicc creep - double health, slow
    • boss creep - 10x health, 10x gold, normal speed
  2. Wave display: Current wave, next wave, etc
  3. Add a debug option for “select any upgrade”
  4. Move to “choice of 3 random upgrades for this tower” otherwise
  5. Replace buttons with my own buttons
  6. Make the UI look a little nicer
  • Finished creep subclassing
  • Added much nicer wave spawning - creeps are delayed, less geometric less likely to overlap

  • Figured out how to theme buttons so that they look a little better, UI looks better

  • Rank 102 Neon White

2023-06-05

  1. Implement all upgrades
  2. Add gold
  3. Subclass creeps
  4. Wave display
  5. Make it look nicer, particle background effects
  • Good productivity day
  • Implemented all upgrades except burning ground, which I may ignore
  • Added gold and lives
  • Some visual tweaks

2023-06-04

  • Weekend day off
  • Rank 121 in neon white tho

2023-06-03

  • Weekend day off

2023-06-02

  1. Move to real art
  2. Implement all upgrades
  3. Subclass creeps
  4. Add gold
  5. Wave display?
  6. Particle background effect?
  • Really late start oops
  • Mostly reworked art, it doesn’t feel too bad anymore
  • Global top 150 Neon White

2023-06-01

  1. “Pick an upgrade” workflow to test out upgrades
  2. Can select towers to view their range + stats and upgrade them
  3. Can select creeps
  4. Move to wave-spawn for creeps
  5. Think about creep collision?
  • Very high productivity day
  • Added upgrade picking, implementing several upgrades
  • Added individual tower upgrades + selling
  • Added tower selection, creep selection, tower range viewing, etc
  • Adding creep wave spawning

  • Dealt with collision by just disabling it lol

  • Game is very close to playable
  • Need to settle on art to visualize what it’s going to look like
  • Hit top 200 on global Neon White leaderboards :)

2023-05-31

  • DAY OFF hung out with friends
  • Finished all gifts in Neon White
  • Hit top 500 on global Neon White leaderboards

2023-05-30

  1. Toggle between towers via numkeys
  2. Teach towers to have different range, etc
    • Maybe toggle show range?
    • Longer range
    • Bullet split
    • Bullet Pierce?
  3. Wave spawn instead of individual creep
  4. Can select tower?
  • Really late start because I’m not an adult and can’t go to bed on time
  • Moved to viewport and shrunk bullets, game looks better
    • I had forgotten how viewport works
  • Added system for tracking upgrades on a per-tower and per-tower-kind basis
  • Sat down and figured out how the game should actually work since it was fuzzy
  • Started implementing complex upgrades
  • Went to Wonderville playtest, played RAGBALL by https://twitter.com/PlasticBagHand
    • Wonderville is good
  • Creeps can still block each other
  • Art needs updating - should look more like CCT
  • Need a UI for picking upgrades so that we can test them

2023-05-29

  1. move ColorTD to new project, remove grid hacks
  2. generic-ize towers + add upgrades
  3. maybe draw background dynamically
  • Rewrote as ReShapeTD, much less hacky / nicer to work with
    • Components directly tell pathing grid what points are in them, no hardcoding
    • Only place we multiply by cell size is right before creating grid ids
    • Everything else functions in global snapped to grid positions
    • Everything relevant is a child of battlefield, so don’t have to think about positions much except mouse
  • Feature parity with old code
  • Creeps can block each other - try making them bounce?
  • Weird re-connected signal bug

  • Art is bad

  • Need to add dynamic calculation of range, fire rate, and bullet splitting / pierce / etc
    • Then settle on an upgrade system
    • Maybe you socket your “gems” globally but can upgrade individual towers as well?
  • Add wave spawning
  • Add gold

2023-05-28

  • Break day, no programming
  • Played TotK
    • Tutorials still heavy-handed
  • Finished Neon White
    • Final boss fights not super fun, kinda like Celeste A-sides
    • Not interested in re-running exactly one boss fight, bummer