What is Squillamorph?
Squillamorph is a challenging action-platformer set in a mysterious mechanical world. Pursued by hordes of brutal enemies, you must use your parasitic ability to 'infest' and take control of them. Fight back, survive, and you might just discover your purpose. Find more information about the game on the About page.
Please consider getting Squillamorph on Steam and leaving a review. It is in Early Access and still very early in development but the more feedback I get now, the more enjoyable the final game will be!
Join the official Squillamorph Discord: Squillamorph Discord Server
Below is the development log for Squillamorph. It is GIF heavy and it might take a while to load them all.
Please consider getting Squillamorph on Steam and leaving a review. It is in Early Access and still very early in development but the more feedback I get now, the more enjoyable the final game will be!
Join the official Squillamorph Discord: Squillamorph Discord Server
Below is the development log for Squillamorph. It is GIF heavy and it might take a while to load them all.
On the Road to Early Access28/10/2019 Hello everyone! It won't be long now before Squillamorph launches on Steam Early Access. I've been working hard over the past week to get the game ready for it. Keep an eye out on social media, as I'll have the Steam page done very soon. Improvements & OptimisationsThe main focus of the past week has been on implementing the feedback I gathered at EGX. A lot of the changes are for balance reasons. One of the most prominent balancing issues was a combination of two mutagen upgrades. The dash cooldown reduction and kill enemy on ejection mutagens allowed players to farm enemies for points, as they spawned in. This meant that not only was there no threat of the player dying, as the enemies had no time to attack, but they could very quickly build up points. While I really enjoyed seeing players discover this, I do not want it to be as powerful as it is. To make it less rewarding, I've decreased the number of points the ejection kills give from 100 to 10. If it turns out that it is still too strong I will tweak it again. There are many other tweaks, and a lot of optimisations. I've removed the preview video/GIF from the main menu, something which was there just for EGX. I find it funny that doing this reduced the size of the build to 1/3rd of its previous size. I also profiled the game, trying to find the most performance taxing elements. I expected it to be the ray-casting done by the physics objects, which I still intend to optimise. To my surprise, it wasn't. The biggest drain on performance is the lighting, which is unfortunate because there is not much I can do to improve it except remove the lights. I will look into more solutions for this a bit later down the line. Maybe some quality setting options are needed. After the optimisations, I tested the game on my old laptop again. The game ran much better on it this time and this means I have an estimated minimum spec that can run the game, which is required for the Steam page. I expect some lower spec systems will be able to run the game but I cannot currently confirm this. I will be working to get the minimum requirements lower, but probably not before the Early Access launch. Save DataSomething I've been meaning to do for a while is work on the way I handle save data. Until now, I have used a method that saves data to JSON text files. This method works really well and I use it for both player saves and the local leaderboard. However, it is incredibly easy to edit the files and cheat the game. So I decided to find a more secure way of saving data. The easiest option was to switch to a binary format, which makes it slightly harder to edit the files. Doing this made me realise how badly I'd implemented the previous saving method. It relied on so many different scripts to function and took ages to unravel. So I've made sure that the new method is much cleaner and easier to alter. It took some iteration, but I got it working nicely. The new method is slightly harder to cheat with. Even so, I knew it wouldn't be too hard to edit the files after a bit of research. This prompted me to look into file encryption. I did not expect this to be quite as complicated as it is. After a ton of research, and confusing myself to no end, I found a simpler method that I understood and implemented. Now it requires much more effort and research to cheat the game, which I hope puts most players off. Other UpdatesAfter tweaking their attack fire rate, I decided it was time for another variation of the Kobold. There is already a tank variation, so I thought a weak variant was needed. The upside of this variant is the fire rate, which is considerably faster than the other two variations. This makes it a harder enemy to deal with but it is fun to infest. I've tweaked a few things to do with the big crushers in the Flopalodon boss room. They were the main source of bugs in the EGX demo. The most visual but bizarre bug was to do with their collision, which caused the player to be crushed when they weren't touching them or near them. Turns out this was because the player was able to move their colliders without visually colliding. A simple changed of a few parameters on the crushers fixed this. I also had to change the way their animation worked as they got stuck in a loop if the player failed to crush the boss. Hopefully, they will work properly now! There is now a particle effect on active vents, similar to the one used for the level exits. This was added mostly because some players couldn't tell if a vent was active. I have also increased the size of the level exit effect as players did not notice it activating before. Fingers crossed that both of these will be more noticeable now! That's it for this post. I hope you are excited for the Early Access launch! This week I will be doing more preparations for it and maybe add some new levels. I might have a solid launch date by next week, so stay tuned!
Follow Squillamorph on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook to stay updated. Join the official Squillamorph Discord server here: Discord Server Don't forget to tell your friends to check out the game too!
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Squillamorph at EGX 201921/10/2019 Hello everyone! Over the past 4 days, I was at EGX with Squillamorph. This was the third event I've taken Squillamorph to and it was fantastic! A big thank you to Andy Bossom, the Games Incubator Studio Director at the University for the Creative Arts, for organising everything once again. If you are interested in studying games development at university, I highly recommend the courses at UCA. Final PreparationsThe final few days before EGX were all about testing and bug fixing the demo build. I'm glad I did because I found and fixed more bugs than I expected! The tests also involved trying out the build on my old laptop, which ran better than I thought it would. I also made some last minute adjustments to some visual aids on the control tutorials, and worked on preventing some unwanted scenarios. All in all, I believed I had found and accommodated for all of the game breaking bugs. I knew that I could not find every bug, and would be proven right during the event, but I was happy with the overall stability of the demo. I also added a preview GIF/video for the main menu so players could see the gameplay before trying it. I was now ready for EGX to begin! The EventI headed up to London on Wednesday for the setup. As I was going to EGX with UCA, I helped setup the university stand after getting the Squillamorph stand sorted. It took the whole afternoon but everything went pretty smoothly, and the demo was working great. I was very excited for the event to begin tomorrow! Getting to the venue on the first day was a tad challenging. There were bad delays on the underground trains I had to catch. I still managed to get there on time though. Overall, the first day was fantastic. The response from players was incredibly positive, which was so rewarding to hear. To find out that I had been developing the game in the right direction since EGX Rezzed earlier this year was amazing. Honestly, I was a tad overwhelmed and immensely pleased by the end of day one. Day 2 went much the same way, only it was busier. Things were going really well and I felt so much excitement. The positive feedback continued, and some players even came back to get higher positions on the leaderboard! The event was open for an extra hour today, which meant more time for new players to discover and play the game! The day ended up flying by and was just as good as the first. Day 3 was another day with longer opening hours. As it was Saturday, it was expected to be the busiest day and I couldn't wait for more people to play Squillamorph. It was the busiest day by far. So many people tried out the game and loved playing it. I couldn't be happier with the player response at this event! Day 4, the final day. I was still hyped up about more players trying out Squillamorph. Being Sunday, it was expected to be quieter today. Even so, there were still loads of people who played and enjoyed the game! I also found time to look around the event. There were so many good games there! At the end of the day, it was time to pack up the stand. This went relatively quickly and I was astonished by how fast the event had flown by. I left the venue feeling excited about the future of Squillamorph! The Next StepsOverall, EGX 2019 was an awesome event. I met so many great people and devs! I've learnt a few more lessons about presenting a game to the public and about what players want in the game. I cannot wait for future events, whether I am there with a stand or not! Thank you to everyone who came by and played the game, and I hope you enjoyed your time at EGX! I know I did! The next stage of Squillamorph's development is the Early Access launch. I am aiming to launch it in the coming weeks and I am doing everything I can to ensure it is out as soon as possible. Keep an eye out on social media or the Discord server to find out when the Steam page goes live! That's it for this post! I hope you enjoyed hearing about EGX. Expect more of the usual progress updates in next week's post!
Follow Squillamorph on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook to stay updated. Join the official Squillamorph Discord server here: Discord Server Don't forget to tell your friends to check out the game too! Squillamorph Is Going to EGX 2019!14/10/2019 Hello everyone! This week I've got a couple of announcements to discuss and some last minute EGX preparations to show! EGX 2019If you didn't already know, Squillamorph will be at EGX this week! If you're going, drop by the stand and play the latest demo! I'll be there all 4 days, so come and say hi! The latest demo features the Flopsharks, the Flopalodon, the Kobolds, and an early version of the Kragon! Both the Kobolds and Kragon have not featured at any previous events, so this is the first opportunity to try them out! Discord ServerI've made an official Squillamorph Discord server! It's a place for all discussion about the game with other fans and me! You can also ask me questions about the development of the game there. I won't be active on it at all times, but I'll do my best to respond to everyone! You can join it here: Discord Server Game ProgressAs EGX takes place this week, I've been busy making last minute improvements. The main visual change I've made is to the Kragon boss room, which now features a big reactor-like machine in the background. I've also added some minor visual aspects to the Kragon boss, such as gun charge-up particles. Talking of bosses, I've made some changes to the music for the Flopalodon and created music for the Kragon. The new music feels much more distinct and makes the boss fights slightly more intense! Most other changes are optimisations and bug fixes. However, I have added a place for players to leave their email when they put in their name for the leaderboard entry (This is optional and only for me to let them know when the game is out). I used a notebook to take people's emails at previous events. Lastly, I've updated the main menu to include a few extra assets to add some more visual interest to it. That's it for this week's post! If you're going to EGX, don't forget to drop by the stand and say hi! One last thing I'll mention is that it shouldn't be too long before I have a date for an Early Access launch. So keep an eye on the Squillamorph social medias!
Follow Squillamorph on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook to stay updated. Join the official Squillamorph Discord server here: Discord Server Don't forget to tell your friends to check out the game too! James BarrowI'm the game developer for Squillamorph! I'll post here on the devlog as often as I can.
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