Project Rafflesia

[MetalPetal]

The Rafflesia flower, or sorta family of flowers are a flowering parasite that are notable for their size and their wretched smell. They didn't earn the term of Carrion Flower for not going above and beyond after all. Now why do I mention this?

Simply put, my big game Project Arnica is something I want to continue working on. It shows real promise but my overall skills as a developer are not at the point where I will be able to put that project to rights. So instead, I am taking a detour to make a throwaway game. The same way that the Rafflesia takes root and sucks away the life from its host, I will be spending my time and energy from Project Arnica in order to put this thing in order.

Whatever this game ends up as by the end doesn't matter to me. The entire point of its existence is just to act as a punching bag that eats up my unknowingly poor decisions, to give me the knowledge to create something far more complex.

With all of that said, here is what I have for Project Rafflesia so far.

This game is a straight up platformer, with no RPG elements or anything. This is likely my best feeling one yet, as I have spent about 3 days just ruthlessly opening it up, running around, and tweaking small things to make it feel great. The character here is heavy and slippery, with an incredible sense of power behind their moves. I am not a fan of games with weak movement personally, and that has manifested with this monster hopper who can clear gaps like this:

Thankfully as this is a straight up platformer, the moveset is more or less done. I don't have much else to add, so I can move on to beginning other things like level gimmicks and how the game's progression will work. I'll keep this place posted as always.

[Jess]

honestly creating a simple game first and then moving on from there is something I wish I had done in the beginning lmao (though I had messed with game dev before, just never made anything proper) which is why shield cat's on hiatus and I'm making cosmogelica lmao

[MetalPetal]

honestly creating a simple game first and then moving on from there is something I wish I had done in the beginning lmao (though I had messed with game dev before, just never made anything proper) which is why shield cat's on hiatus and I'm making cosmogelica lmao

I would like to do this, but my imitable enemy Scope Creep preys on my every move.

[Jess]

what I've found really helps is making a list of things you wont put in the game. I have all kinds of stuff I'd love to put in each one of my games, but they have decidedly ended up on the "that's not happening lmao" list. It's very handy

[MetalPetal]

Time for some updates.

Something interesting I've decided to try with this game that I haven't ever done before is a minimalist HUD. Basically, all of the HUD elements in this game only appear when they are needed. After a few seconds they are tweened right off the screen, and as a result the game has a really nice clear aesthetic to it.

I have gotten basic enemies working. Thankfully unlike Project Arnica, enemies in this game work like a classic platformer. They deal contact damage, and just kinda exist most of the time. I'm actually not a fan of contact damage generally, but with my goal of simplification for this project it will have to do.

Got the health system working. The player can take damage, and if they lose all of their health they go right off the screen.

With all of this stuff done, this project kind of actually plays like a game. I've got much more stuff to do, but it's nice seeing the basics come together.

Oh right, I also made a video dev log for the project:

This devlog doesn't have all the new stuff I showed in this post, but it does give some context for some of the decisions I have been making regarding the basic movement of the game.

[MetalPetal]

Level Gimmicks! You know them, you love them (or hate them). I've more or less finished the core of Rafflesia, since it's not super complicated anyways, so I now get to move onto populating my levels with things.

I think my proudest and most complicated accomplishment is these very creative and unique floating oil drums. You have never seen a single game with anything like these. They can shoot you around, and can be set to autofire the player, move around, rotate in 8 directions, and even smaller things like limiting the directions of rotation and choosing if it's clockwise or counterclockwise. These took about 3 hours to program, which is kind of absurd for just how versatile they are.

Another thing I am working on currently is these slimeballs.

Basically they get chucked out and the player has to avoid them or destroy them. They can also be electrified by touching an electrical floor hazard, and if this happens they can no longer be destroyed at all.

With all of these little things being done, I've also started the task of making 2 actual levels that can be fully played through. One of these is already done, and the other has just been started. Something interesting to note is that I ran into a pretty crippling issue with Godot during this project. You see, my art assets are large and I am not scaling them. As a result, an average level can take up 70000+ units. Around the 30k mark however, Godot begins experiencing Floating Point Precision Loss. Unfortunately, this immediately begins to affect the project by breaking slope collisions.

This issue, as I asked the Godot Discord wasn't really avoidable. Which is fair, I was familiar with the idea of FPPL, but never actually had it affect a project until now. With the size of my levels, even moving the level around the origin point wouldn't suffice, and I am very afraid of the potential quality loss from scaling down my art assets. So what is there left to do?

Simple, enable Double Point Precision, which will allow very accurate numbers far into the millions of coordinates, let alone 70k. One problem though, this option is not available in the official build of Godot by default. To obtain DPP, you have to recompile the engine yourself. Which is exactly what I did. I went and actually learned how to compile Godot from the source code, just so I could enable DPP. Was this avoidable? Probably. Do I feel like a baller for have my own custom build of Godot that has no FPPL? You don't even know.

Overall, pretty eventful week I'd say.

[Jess]

that's really weird they dont let you enable doubles unless you build it yourself. meanwhile I think all numbers in gamemaker are doubles by default

[MetalPetal]

that's really weird they dont let you enable doubles unless you build it yourself. meanwhile I think all numbers in gamemaker are doubles by default

Yeah it's apparently a performance thing. They say that enabling DPP has a good sized performance overhead, especially on 32bit hardware. Though being honest, that doesn't matter to me at all. I'm not making a game for phones, and I am not targeting Windows XP lmao.

[MetalPetal]

Level Gimmicks!

I'm very smart at resource allocation, and very good at making a realistic workload for myself as a single developer who is making all art, programming, sound, design, advertising, and other elements for this project. This is why I have made the decision to give nearly every level a unique gimmick, or multiple!

This is the level that has received the greatest amount of work so far. While I'm keeping the main mechanic of this level under wraps for now, I am beyond ecstatic that I am able to make a level of this style at all. Godot is a pretty cool engine

This homing torpedo is going to be the star of what will likely be the most difficult level of this version of the game. No matter how fast you move, it's never very far away.

Finally, something a little more fun. I'm definitely going to add lots of pointless little objects the player can obliterate while they're tearing up a level.

Music! Did you know I attempt to produce music as well?

level_rolypoly_1_wip1.mp3

(682.71 KiB) Downloaded 1902 times

This track is planned for a level in which the player will be ascending and descending pretty constantly. To match that, I've decided to make a track that oscillates between House and Deep House because that seems like it'd be a fun challenge.

level_heatseeker_2_wip2.mp3

(2.2 MiB) Downloaded 1913 times

For that hard level I spoke of before, I've got this piece cooking up. To match what is likely going to be a very stressful level I am putting together a piece that sort of simmers in the background, before coming through with a layered chorus.

Finally, one thing left to mention. I sent out a very early build of this game for two people to playtest about a week and a half ago. However, I am currently working on the second playtest build for this game, and at this time my plan is to get this version in a state where it will receive a public release. This is probably a bad idea, but I think it'd be cool to see a lot of people who have been watching this game come together get a chance to check out what I'm cooking. Though that likely won't be for a few weeks, as the second playtest build is currently aiming for 6 full levels to be in it.

[Jess]

those songs are you were really in the studio with those