Check out these 4 things we did to help Mina navigate precarious platforms precisely in Tenebrous Isle. 😱 We are taking jumping mechanics to the next level making the experience fun for players and mice!🐁 🎮What are some of your favorite top down game mechanics?

Sometimes I put little easter eggs out of bounds to make it more fun to look at a level in the editor #gamedev #indiedev #Burgertale

Things have been a bit quiet about #Burgertale development lately since I've mostly been doing boring behind-the-scenes stuff. But uh, you can now turn into a werewolf. #gamedev #indiedev

Mina the Hollower has officially gone GOLD! The game is complete and has begun the submissions process with our first-party partners. We’ll know the final release date soon and as soon as we can share it, you’ll know it. Thank you for sticking with us. We can’t wait for you to play!

Instant death attacks didn't feel impactful enough so I added this cool silhouette thing when you trigger one #gamedev #indiedev #JRPG

Finally got around to making the part of the skill tree menu that actually lets you UNLOCK skills! Even if most skills are inert placeholders for now it's pretty addicting to unlock them and watch a build form. #gamedev #indiedev #JRPG

Set up character portraits to be able to use the palette swapping shader. It's going to be useful for character customization but it also means everyone's portrait outfit colors can vaguely approximate the active job's outfit. #gamedev #indiedev #pixelart #JRPG

Made the item generation add random skills to higher-rarity items, and then I realized I'd forgotten to actually SHOW skill changes in the equipment preview menu (which is kinda important when an item can give 4+ skills). So I had to go back and code that... #gamedev #indiedev #JRPG

Still a lot of work left for the skill trees (notably the skills themselves) but now the class change menu is in place! Including previews of how your stats change + unique outfits for each class. #gamedev #indiedev #JRPG

I decided to double down on skill trees being interesting shapes by having weapon skilltrees be SHAPED like that weapon, here's what the Sword and Spellbook ones will look like #gamedev #indiedev #JRPG

My day job rolled out that Gitlab AI assistant to everyone so I was like "okay FINE i'll try it" Every single request except one failed with an error code, and the successful one gave me a reply along the lines of "I can't read this information, do it yourself" Not terribly impressed at Teh Future

i made tubes that let you go fast, they're functionally the same thing as doors but less boring and predictable #gamedev #indiedev #Burgertale

Here are Dave and David's full unedited comments for those interested:

COPIES ARE MONOCHROME BUT THEY CAST THE SAME SHADOW #UTDR #oc #lineart #papercraft

Oh dang, $60K developer grants seems cool. Will have to read up on the implementation and the rules but if you're indie in Japan, check out the sources. automaton-media.com/en/news/japa...

For some reason I completely forgot about spells being cast from the pause menu and tied a lot of behavior to the battle state machine, so the easiest way to allow for pause menu casting was to... create a bunch of battle player entities that can be targeted, ON the menu. #gamedev #indiedev #JRPG

#Burgertale version 1.32 is released! Tons of bugfixes and quality-of-life stuff, all "red herring" Crystal Burgers that you couldn't actually get before are in place in new accompanying levels, and there's SEVEN new bosses! #gamedev #indiedev #metroidvania yaru.itch.io/burgertale/d...

I had the horrifying relization that I'd not considered the screen space when designing my skill trees so I needed to go through them all and figure out how to puzzle the branches into the 5x7 grid while minimizing overlap and keeping progression as right/down as possible. Graph paper my beloved.

Knocked out another part of the GIANT pause menu task, the Items menu. If you 'drop' an item you literally drop it on the ground, so you can pick it up again if you change your mind. (Loot also will get scattered like this) The color/size corresponds to item rarity. #gamedev #indiedev #JRPG

Working on level gimmicks for the #Burgertale cyberpunk world! Finished glowy neon signs that hurt you when you touch them and inflict an ailment relevant to the product advertised (e.g. the maths quiz inflicts Confused) and started work on hovercar platforms (placeholder art atm) #gamedev #indiedev

I was so happy with that shield design I just HAD to make it in real life.

Finally got around to finishing up the battle win animation, including all the auxiliary stuff like earning EXP which is converted to levels when you hit the "next level" amount, which in turn increases stats. (Most of the work was the stats updating shenanigans, actually) #gamedev #indiedev #JRPG

#GameMaker tip of the day: when you name assets, make sure to pick a prefix that isn't also the prefix of tons of built-in functions because are listed first in the autocomplete results making it a pain to find assets. So e.g. I use "fnt_" for fonts and "rm_" for rooms. #gamedev #indiedev

I'm gonna bring back one of my super old game balance ideas: you're guaranteed every 10th, 100th (and so on) item drop has the "1 in 10", "1 in 100", etc quality. But you also get the completely random chances on top of that, to keep it from getting too predictable. #gamedesign #JRPG

For some stupid reason I decided that the miniboss fight against The Seven Cowboys needed 7 unique sprites so I've been drawing all evening. I went for having them be monsters that currently only show up as NPCs, like Doories, to blur the "designated friend/foe" line. #gamedev #indiedev #Burgertale

I haven't really showed off the recursive level design of my #JRPG project in a while but rest assured it's still an important part of the game. E.g., I've been planning out how early areas connect (which gets weird when they're literally inside each other several levels deep) #gamedev #indiedev

I know at least two games where the shopkeeper goes "all those crystals you sold me? I'm gonna use them for evil purposes, I'm the final boss now!!" and it makes no sense because there was never a reason to sell them anything so I didn't ever do that (not gonna spoil 'em by telling you WHICH games)

Oh yeah, and I'm back from my #Burgertale development break as well! Got tons of bug reports from a friend and I'm slowly dipping my proverbial toes into the final two worlds. The backgrounds for Cowloon are the most detailed ones in the game so far. #gamedev #indiedev #pixelart

I saw some opinion that "the 'make it exist first, you can make it look good later'" meme doesn't apply to code, only graphical art, but I really feel like I need to keep it in mind when making all these menus. Because they do NOT look good when I test run the first draft... #gamedev #indiedev

More menu work, this time the skill tree menu. I wasn't sure if the skill prerequisites were readable enough (so a player can tell WHY they can't unlock a skill yet) so I made those lines pulse white to stand out better. #gamedev #indiedev #JRPG

Wasn't expecting to spend ANOTHER evening just on the status screen but it took tons of iterations to polish it. One little tweak I made is that equipped gear type(s) are highlighted blue in the gear EXP section (others are grey) so you can tell what you're levelling. #gamedev #indiedev #JRPG

Keeping up with today's "number" theme, I chipped away some more on pause menu code, making the Status menu. Between 12 weapon classes, the job system, and every stat levelling up separately, there's a LOT of stats you can minmax if you want to optimize your build. #gamedev #indiedev #JRPG

Discovered some balance issues so bad I needed to simulate 800 data points in a spreadsheet to figure out what's wrong and hone in on parameters that "feels right". Now I feel like a REAL developer lol #gamedev #indiedev #JRPG (protip: logarithms are weird)

I'm not really into Loneliness Shame Day so here's your yearly reminder that Saint Valentine is also the protector of beekeepers. If you do something bee-related it's also a valid way to celebrate Valentine's Day.

The first part of the looting menu is in place, a preview of the hovered item! Equipment can have different rarities (rarer = higher stats) but also a prefix that modifies it in a more interesting way, like Brittle lowering defense and Freezing boosting frost magic. #gamedev #indiedev #JRPG

The menus are not entirely functional yet (no info on what item you're hovering over for instance, you can't switch between the windows, etc) but the game's slowly approaching the point where Tons Of Cool Loot is happening... #gamedev #indiedev #JRPG

Somebody suggested adding support for giving regular NPCs dialogue faces for Epsilon Engraving Engine, so I did~ (it's just 3 lines of code if you wanna add it to a project you already started on) #gamedev #indiedev #pixelart

Finally got around to replace the horrendous placeholder graphics for the overworld party. Everyone's overworld sprites are made from modular pieces so e.g. they can change outfits to match their current job/class, generic NPCs can use the same sprites, etc. #gamedev #indiedev #pixelart #JRPG

Slowly chipping away at a lot of boring menu stuff, it's pretty neat when it starts coming together visually though! Once the inventory system is done it's finally time for finding cool loot... #gamedev #indiedev #JRPG

I noticed an interesting thing in the #deltarune soundtrack - the same motif with a repeated note shows up a bunch of times... but the later in the game, the fewer the number of repeats (5, 4, 3). Since a "countdown to the world expiring" is mentioned, I wonder if this is a way to represent that...

The Nioh 3 demo is completely BONKERS big. You get a continent the size of Limgrave! I was already sold on the game after playing the heck outta Nioh 2 but I got so addicted I couldn't stop until I finished the demo. It took basically the entire day lol (this was ONE SESSION) #gaming

Fun fact: if an enemy follows you when you shrink into a sub-map, it keeps its original size. (It doesn't actually get stronger in battle, though. So far.) #gamedev #indiedev #GameMaker

Did a lot of behind-the-scenes work with menus and chipping away at the inventory system. The "attack" menu displays currently equipped weapons from character's inventory, and there's now dual-wielding which makes you use both the weapons' basic attacks in succession. #gamedev #indiedev #JRPG

Put the real enemy graphics into the game and gave them stat blocks, suddenly the game got like 100 times more engaging! ...and also considerably more difficult now when you're fighting balanced parties with proper moves instead of the placeholder smileys with ONE attack. #gamedev #indiedev #JRPG

Spent the evening cleaning up and coloring some portraits and enemy sprites. Ember's gonna be a potential party member! (Without having to edit the source code this time) #indiedev #furryart #art

Did a bunch of visual effect stuff, like making menus go from size 0 to full size as they slide into view. But most importantly, having big text splash on the screen during a battle transition if you hit the enemy first or vice versa so it FEELS meaningful. #gamedev #indiedev #JRPG

I kept feeling the target preview was too visually noisy (especially when targeting a large group), so I rewrote it to bundle up all name tags into one blob, only show 1 cursor (on the actual cursor location) and flash affected enemies red instead. Better or worse? #gamedev #indiedev #gamedesign

Added a system for summoning new entities mid-battle. The enemies can use it for reinforcements, players for summoning - basically the same as spawning an enemy, but it's set to fight on YOUR side. You'll need every friend you can get when there's this many foes! #gamedev #indiedev #JRPG

Got the planet system working! You now loop around the world seamlessly because there's a 3x3 grid of references to the same map, with only the center one being its ACTUAL location. (So you can't walk off the edge of the planet to enter the space layer, you need a rocket) #gamedev #indiedev #JRPG

One of the biggest obstacles for letting the player expand ANY tile into a full map is that there's weird edge cases. Like here, where you can clip through a wall because the movement check scales up speeds 256x due to trying to move over a seam with a 4 size levels difference. #gamedev #indiedev