I know it’s been a long time since my last post, but don’t worry; I’ve been steadily working on the game as much as my free time has allowed. I’m still confidently aiming to have the game available on Steam before the end of 2019!
I’m happy to announce that super-important features, such as the item creator and the combat system, are practically complete and only lack some minor features and polishing. Aside from that, here’s a brief list of notable things I’ve implemented:
1. The character setup screen is now waaaaay more sleek and easy-to-use than in the first game. The items for each equipment slot (head, upper body, lower body, left-hand weapon, and right-hand weapon) are now neatly organized into lists, making it easy to gear up your character. And if you have a favorite outfit, you can quickly save and load entire equipment sets:
2. As mentioned above, the item creator has most of its features implemented. After designing your item using the built-in voxel editor, you can customize various aspects. This includes basic stuff like stats (ie. health, mass, damage) as well as fancier things like being able to fire projectiles (and customizing those too). You can even modify how a character holds the weapon by simply tweaking a few sliders:
3. One of the smaller nuisances of the first game was the default Unity settings window that popped up every time you launched the game. This window was too basic to be helpful, and got in the way of achieving full controller support. This time around I’ve disabled the launch window and opted to code my own in-game settings menu:
4. Another related nuisance was that managing multiple controllers was a bit of a headache since the game sort of just automatically assigned them, and you had to remember to manually set the controller number for each character before each battle. Not anymore! Now you and your friends can easily set up who controls what, even in the middle of battle:
5. Titans are back!
Long story short, things are coming together really well! With a huge percentage of the coding done, soon I’ll be able to focus entirely on content creation. And as you can probably tell by the screenshots, I really need to start focusing on adding more stages and equipment variety soon.
-Rimply
I love the progress, still excited for this game. Titans, item creator ingame, menus, character customization overhaul… heck yeah this is super cool!
About the item creator, I was wondering about a couple of things:
1. When I messed with the Floppy Hero 1’s modding, I noticed that the onus on balancing the weapons was entirely on me.
I could easily make a one handed super long blade / sickle / saber thing that would be incredibly overpowered compared to everything else in the game in many ways; range, shape, one-handed, reload speed, projectile count etc. There was no cost tied to anything tangible that would limit and advise what type of item I could make and how I could make it behave.
I could even make an item that is a circle/cage around my character, effectively making them immune to incoming damage. I could make a rapid fire spray machinegun with exploding projectiles with minimal reload time. Unless I was a trained developer, I would find myself freely creating nonsensical items that are funny for the first 5 seconds, but soon realize they’re not that fun to play with as they break balance and immersion.
I was thinking if there could be something in the item editor / game universe that nudges players to design their items sensibly, like if;
-an item is very long and thin, it would do less damage.
-if an item is very large, wide and thick, it would have more mass, therefore slow the character.
-if an item fires a projectile with high damage, high speed or high shrapnel, then it would affect its reload.
Basically looking at the XYZ dimensions of the voxel item (width, height, depth, voxel count) and looking at certain stats like reload speed, projectile velocity, shrapnel count and so on, the game would automatically calculate the appropriate damage, mass/slowness/mobility value for that item, instead of allowing the player to directly define them.
2. Will there be support in the item creator for creating level objects and hazards? Like the bar level in the original Floppy Heroes had the lanterns and table. There was also that cauldron spewing potions. That kind of stuff is cool. Maybe even things like circular saws, spike walls to whack people into or launch pads to toss players around the level might be interesting to make levels even more exciting.
3. Will there be more level geometry / terrain instead of just open spaces? I think even a simple few rectangles to make spaces different would add a whole new dimension to the gameplay. Making terrain demolishable through damage could also result in exciting levels too. Sort of combining angry birds style structures into levels and doing a battle around them would be rad as hell.
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Hi reactorcoregames, thank you for the continued support!
You’re definitely correct that the current system does little to discourage everyone from having overpowered custom items with no downside. So far the only limitation is that custom items can’t be used in singleplayer mode.
I’ll definitely experiment with automatically generating stats based on the item’s properties such as voxel volume, material, etc.
At the moment I don’t have any plans for user level creation. However, I’m absolutely going to create a variety of level types and sizes, including levels with interactive elements and hazards. I’m also planning on re-creating the first game’s bar and cauldron levels 🙂
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“So far the only limitation is that custom items can’t be used in singleplayer mode.”
Whaat? Thats one of the biggest things I hoped would be different in FH2!
Please at least add a newgame plus mode to the singleplayer that allows all the custom made items to be included into the pool of content for both the player and the opponents to use.
I believe with a damage/mass/reload calculation done by the game rather than be the author’s responsibility would automatically have things made in the item creator balanced and sensible.
In terms of replayability, I was strongly hoping that creating virtually infinite custom items by the player would be a cornerstone of the game experience when doing a randomized singleplayer campaign. I loved that about FH1, where although the opponents (amount and size) was same, the equipment they carried was always a surprise and I’d be challenged to adapt to whatever situation the game threw me in. That was the most fun and engaging part of the game for me in FH1.
I’m sad to hear about level creation not being a thing, but perhaps as a future expansion or sequel.
It would be cool if levels could spawn a random items that were built with the voxel editor the game has, creating things like crates, fruits, ropes, tree logs, furniture and treasure as physics objects that can be scooped up and used defensively mid-air or work as dynamic obstacles that can be pushed around to occupy the opponent or block their projectiles. Having this as a randomized element in the singleplayer would make be cool.
Still, I’m super happy to hear that stage hazards and interactive elements are a serious consideration in FH2. Looking forward to it!
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To be fair, the reason I planned to have custom items disallowed in singleplayer was due to the ability of the author to give the item whatever stats they wished (balanced or not). If I tweak the item creator to automatically generate relatively balanced item stats, then I suppose I could allow them in singleplayer. This change could actually be really nice, as it would further automate the item creation process and allow players to focus on building rather than balancing.
The lack of an in-game level creator (at least for the foreseeable future) is primarily due to the time investment required. The item creator itself took a lot of time and code to create, and adding a level creator may take nearly as long. For now, my goal is just to create some fun built-in levels. As you said, perhaps I can include a level editor in a future expansion.
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About the custom content SP restriction, I do see the concern for a first time playthrough to be designed in a way that it has a certain standard for balance and difficulty, however I’d raise these points:
*Most players are likely to try mods _after_ playing through the game once in vanilla.
*Not all content is poorly designed or overpowered.
*Ultimately the player is the one who decides whether to install/keep/remove a mod, them being the best judge for their own game experience.
*Restricting custom content arbitrarily violates player choice and freedom to enjoy the game the way they would find it best for themselves.
*Without custom content, the singleplayer will be greatly limited in terms of replayability. With custom content included however, the potential combinations of vanilla and player content can bolster the game’s replayability exponentially.
If anything, you could at least make it so that winning a singleplayer campaign would unlock a New Game+ version of the singleplayer campaign that includes all player installed/created custom content.
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Interesting.
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