A slice of DERELICTION: July 21st progress update news - DROSS

A slice of DERELICTION: July 21st update

So I feel I should update. Here is that update. My little indie game Dereliction has slowly been getting polished up. I would say that’s the best way to describe what I’ve been doing. Polishing. It’s been slow. I get to rediscover all the reasons why I have been avoiding working on elevator art (very fiddly little parts) and why the hallways have holes into the abyss once in a while (I will let you know why once I know)

So my monolithic to do list is turning into a to done list. I have reimplemented the chain gun, replacing 9/10 of all the empty grey box art already. And I am replacing any art that I deem needing it. Mostly as I encounter it.

I start up the game, ignore the fact that I have no front screen or menu, and enter the starting level. Then I try to kick an item box and I notice I cannot without carry a weapon. Fix.

Then I start from the beginning, kick the item box and I notice I cannot kick the same item twice. It turns out that was something to do with a condition I wrote to prevent items from being picked up multiple times. Fixed.

If I’m feeling kind to myself I will sculpt some bug stuff. The nest core still needs its shell to look nightmarish. Tho if I showed the mesh to any 3D artist they’d say it’s already nightmarish.

If I’m having too good of a day, I’ll change that and attempt to fix the hallways. I spent literally the entire day yesterday attempting this. And my solution after all of that was setting the chance for them to appear in the level to 0%. Pretty good fix.

There was an issue of the bugs attacking doors. Not attacking doors. I would lock a door, and the bugs would just camp out in the corridors. Which was great for frame rate, but not for finding or attacking the player.

Fortunately I was able to (as far as I can tell) get the bugs to target a door. Get all the swarm members to attack said door. And once it was destroyed or set to not be targeted, they would resume what they were up to. This whole reworking, as well as not animating while offscreen, really helped improve the frame rate. And as I do, when the frame rate went up so did the bug max Count. Which is over 500 running at once.

More bugs are always welcome, unless you’re the player, so that was great! However, I ran into the issue of congestion in the corridors (no issues in the hallways yet) and they would just jam up the corridors and not be able to move at all. This time it was not good for frames. But that’s also all fixed.

Doors are the toughest things to create in game. There’s so many issues that can happen, and hopefully I’ve discovered them all. Also the doors will open from bugs, and close once there’s no bugs left to pass. However, that’s all sorted out too. Fixed.

All in all, it was a solid chuck of progress this past few weeks. I’m going to keep pushing, and keep getting things done. What I intend to have done is only the start of everything else. A first level, a first taste.
Hopefully it will be ready to try out soon. I need feedback and input on how it’s all going. I look forward to hearing what everyone thinks about it. Till then, I will keep at it.

~Salt_