How I design skill trees

I cut up a bunch of 3x5 notecards and write down every skill/upgrade idea I have on them. Then I set them up the way I want on a piece of paper. When I finally get something that looks right, I put some tape on the backs of the cards and stick them in place. This technique really helps me, because (believe it or not) designing good skill trees is pretty hard.

I still have to do at least one more tree -- a big one for the character. The skill trees I've done so far are for the weapons. Yes, the weapons have skill trees.

There might be as little as 3 weapons in the game. I know that doesn't sound like a lot, but the weapons are the player's trusty friends, and they grow with him. They will be pretty innocuous at first, but they will get more and more powerful. And unreal.

The game's design document is getting pretty big.

Shielding and HUD Design

The player now has a shield that cuts a percentage off the damage he normally would have taken.

The HUD is still a work in progress, but I think the overall design is pretty good.

Main menu, death, and epic new weapon art

Say hello to the Stinger. I can draw on the computer if I take the time to do it. This gun took at least 45 minutes to make. It's the game's default submachine gun with infinite ammo, but it will fire slower if it gets too hot. It can be upgraded to a powerful ice variant. 

I fixed that glitch with the charging gun and the pause menu. I fixed a skill tree bug. I made some more placeholder graphics. The weapons now have draw and fire animations.

I made a primitive main menu. I really like the buttons. The roll over and roll out animations look awesome. I still need to design a roll over sound for them.

And now it's possible to die. The game is getting more interesting.

Making progress.

I am flying

The skill tree is working perfectly. I ended up coding the bar differently, because the way I had planned to do it was taking too long. It wasn't worth it when I could get the same result an easier way ... I used frames, haha. Works perfectly.

I made some new sounds. They're pretty good. But Audacity is starting to get annoying. It's not good enough. The audio quality is too low.

I can now animate a decent walk cycle. The legs anyway. It's really not that hard, once you know what the extremes should be.

Skill Tree is Coming Along

It's ugly at the moment, but it works. The skills actually do stuff, hooray! The big red box behind the skills scales down as skills are upgraded, like in Borderlands 2 (but it looks like garbage at the moment).

I am now a big fan of for loops. They are extremely useful.

The Animator's Survival Kit is really good, by the way. I look forward to doing the graphics for this game; hopefully I can do a decent job.

I know this is off-topic, but I did 3600 jump ropes tonight. New record. I am taking a break from Halo 4. I got a new CD -- Invincible by Two Steps From Hell. It is awesome. Yeah, I still use CDs.

Skill Tree is Operational

Last night, I spent a good hour and half planning on paper how I would go about coding it. That made the programming go a lot smoother. The skill doesn't actually do anything yet, but it's all ready to go. Well, actually, I still need to code the tree structure part of the skill tree. Right now the skills can be upgraded in any order. (Except there's one skill.) But I have a plan for coding the tree structure.

I have one of the skill trees mapped out. I halfheartedly tried to balance the skills, but that's silly at this point.

I also added a pause menu. Boring, but necessary. There's a glitch with the charging gun and the pause menu -- sometimes it's possible to fire when the game is paused. It's because the charging gun is set up differently than the other weapons. I'll have to fix that. Later. Coding pause menus isn't my favorite part of game development.

My other animation books arrived: Cartoon Animation by Preston Blair and The Animator's Survival Kit by Richard Williams. Jay Armstrong told me the latter was good a while ago, but I never actually got it until now.

Argh, I still have to do my daily Essential ActionScript 3.0 lesson. I really don't mind though. It's kind of fun. I read the book out loud, because I learn better by hearing.

XP and Leveling

This is getting harder now, mainly because I'm having a bad day. It took me a half hour to get the save file working because I forgot to capitalize the S in "SharedObject. Then I accidentally put an underscore in front of a variable I was trying to save. These dumb mistakes are so frustrating.

I've started working on XP, leveling, and the skill tree. Well, at this point the skill tree is basically a skill that does absolutely nothing when you click on it. Working on it.

I have been doing a lot of work on the story. I think it will be pretty good. I had a random good idea for the final boss at 1:35 A.M., and I had to get up and jot it down.

I've been doing a little Essential AS3 everyday. So far I understand it all. I'm on page 44 out of 890. I am flying.

I had to do this sooner or later

I honestly don't know why I dreaded it. I had forgotten how much I enjoy this part of game development -- the phase where I make the buttons, preloader, and start laying out the game screens on the timeline.

The buttons are really nice. They have cool roll over and roll out animations. And they are complete with a nice click sound I made several months ago. It sounds professional. But click sounds are easy. They can be made a million different ways. For this one, I think I used those metal things in the garage.

I actually went back in time to an earlier version of the game files, rather than delete all the area stuff I added on Thursday, since I won't be using it anyway. I decided to make the levels separate. No back-tracking. I always have a good archive of older versions of my files. Not only do I have my files backed up on USB memory sticks, I have them backed up in my Dropbox. So far, I've never lost anything important. 

I remember when I lost my Star Wars: Pit Droids data when I was 8. That was traumatic. Our old Windows XP computer was so bad. Programs always crashed, and sometimes the computer would even randomly restart itself. But this is getting off-topic.

Oh -- by the way, did I mention I will be hiring Neil Davidge to do the music for this game? Just kidding. Unfortunately, I probably cannot afford that. On a side note, a few days ago I did 2500 jump ropes, which is my new record. At 2200, I got a second wind and it got way easier. The Halo 4 soundtrack is so motivating.

And if you stare at a screen for long periods of time, here's a tip -- the 20/20/20 Rule. Every 20 minutes, look at something at least 20 ft away for 20 seconds. It helps me a lot. I used to get headaches and my eyes would burn.

I got one of the animation books I ordered, by the way. It's called The Illusion of Life, and it's about Disney animation. I read it for an hour and a half or so. It's interesting, but a little overwhelming.

I didn't post yesterday

But just because I didn't actually do any programming doesn't mean I didn't work on the game.

I present the desk. At this desk all of my dreams become realities. If I know how to program them.

Halo 4 soundtrack in upper right corner, Windows 98 laptop (amazingly, it still works; it's good for old games like RollerCoaster Tycoon, Age of Empires, and Unreal) in the upper left corner, huge stack of papers (drawings, diagrams, design documents) in lower left corner, and my trusty Deck of Lenses in the lower right corner.

I did quite a bit of design work last night. I have decided I will not be combining this game with that massive game I designed several months ago. This game will be totally different, even though I'm trying to make it feel a little like Unreal.

I've come up with a few designs for the HUD. I'm still undecided about which one to use. I might design a few more. I want the HUD to be good. Plus, I enjoy designing them. Since I was little, I was always intrigued by HUDs.

I think I can make the plot pretty good, considering how much I've been working on writing fiction.

And this blog now has >60,000 views.

Areas

This is getting tricky for a few reasons. The camera makes it pretty annoying. But the main problem is I'd have to keep track of the enemies in each area, so that if the player leaves an area with some enemies still living, those enemies would still be alive if he goes back to that area. It could be done, but I think it would be too messy, at least the way I'd do it.

I'm debating what to do. I could have separate levels connected via a missions/levels screen. Or I could do what Unreal does -- when you complete a level there's no going back. That would work fine, except the levels would have to be really big and I wouldn't want there to be any lag. It might work. I'll have to see. It's probably my best option. But I really liked the idea of backtracking, so there could be a key in area 2 and a locked door in area 1, and stuff like that. I did manage to get an areas system that allows backtracking working, but the enemies... I could make it impossible to leave an area until all the enemies are dead, but that would probably be lame.

But it's not just enemies actually. Stuff like items, too. I can't place ammo around the map without keeping track of what the player picked up.

I'll have to think about this.

Oh, and I drew some nice crates. At least, I think they look decent. If I do the levels the Unreal way, I can make the crates explode and contain items. Wait ... I just remembered Unreal has stuff like that. But that is a good thing.

By the way, my AS3 books arrived. I'm reading Essential AS3, following along. I also talked to my cousin about animation books, and I ordered the ones he recommended. If I do a little everyday, I know I'll get a lot better. Plus, my cousin can give me advice, so that will really help. I'm trying to improve in as many areas as possible.