Bionic Blue Devlog

[KennedyRichard]

Warning

Bionic Blue is in active development, but this devlog post ins't used anymore. Instead, to keep up with Bionic Blue's development, check my monthly work reports. In other words, this whole discussion is outdated.

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Hello, everyone,

Since I got back into regularly developing the game, I'll be using this post as a devlog, so people following the project can stay updated on its progress.

A copy of my posts here will also be posted on pygame-ce's discord server in the gamedev- 🕹️ channel.

[KennedyRichard]

This week I worked on the options screen of the game, which is almost ready.

Now users can finally change the volume of music and sounds and change whether the game must be played in full screen or not.

Here's a video showing it:

bionic_blue_options_screen.mp4

Of course, I intend to stylize the text/controls, but this is not a priority for now.

The option to enable playtest data to be saved is not working yet. It will serve to allow users to opt-in to have their gameplay saved (as a plain text file containing the inputs/events), so they can share it for playtesting (only if they want). I also plan to hold playtesting sessions with close friends and family. When enabled, this options will cause a timestamped file to be saved in the user's home folder every time a level ends (by clearing the level or by the character dying).

The gameplay recording subsystem is mostly done and I already managed to make it work. I just need to add final touches and increment its functionality depending on requirements of the levels to be implemented.

Once the changes are finished, I'll merge them into the main branch and upload the new version to PyPI.

[KennedyRichard]

Couldn't do any development work this week because most of my time was allocated to wrapping up the final changes for Nodezator 1.5 release (released it yesterday). However, I managed to work on some animations, like this punch animation for the exoskeleton:

wip_punch_animation.mp4

The final animation will probably not include the claw in the last frame because I intend for the claw to be instantiated in the level and act as an independent object that will fly from the exoskeleton arm, attached to it only by chains.

[KennedyRichard]

I wanted the exoskeleton to look imposing in comparison to standard enemies in the game, and it did look imposing when I created it in my in-house pixel animation editor, as you can see:

However, it turns out that when seen in-game, it doesn't look imposing at all next to the standard enemies:

(environment is made of placeholder tiles and doesn't represent the final product)

This illustrates a painful lesson I had to learn: every time I create sprites, I must make sure they look good not only on the art software, but also in-game, in order to avoid producing sprites that don't have the intended look in-game, thus avoiding having to redo the sprites.

The interesting thing is that I already knew this from my personal gamedev (and pixel art) studies, but it seems this is one of those things we only firmly learn once experiencing it for ourselves.

Because of that, I've been redoing the animation using a more imposing size. This time I learned my lesson and checked its appearance in-game:

Now the exoskeleton looks like I intended next to the standard enemies.

It also required me to make additional changes in the pixel animation editor so it is more flexible with sprite sizes (before it could only handle sizes that were powers of 2, a needless limitation I imposed naively due to my lack of experience).

[KennedyRichard]

I didn't post about it here before, but I got back to working on the game regularly since the end of January.

This is being done in accordance to one of the goals of the Indie Smiths project for this year, the goal of releasing the first level of Bionic Blue as soon as possible, at the beginning of 2025, as announced in our plans for the Indie Smiths project in 2025. I was hoping to launch it at the beginning of April, but now I can see that I'll need a few more months to make a proper release.

I actually have been reporting my work on it on my monthly work reports: https://github.com/orgs/IndieSmiths/discussions/10

I apologize for not posting it here as well, as this is actually the official devlog for the project. Not posting here also prevented people checking this page to be properly updated on my work and maybe even think that I might not be working on the game as regularly as I am.

Of course, even without my updates here people can always check activity on the project via the commits, including in the other branches, or in the more convenient activity view that can be accessed on any repository in this spot:

I think this is a nice and proper place to have everything documented, so from now on I'll be more careful and update you all properly here as well, specially since the monthly work reports are meant as a summary of my work, not as detailed updates. Such detailed updates belong here, in the actual devlog of the project.

In addition to that, I'll write and post a summary of all work done since the end of January next (likely in a few days), including video/image demonstrations as needed. Then I'll keep posting normally here as I work on the project.

Thank you all for your patience and for following this project.

[KennedyRichard]

So, to summarize my development work on the Bionic Blue game since January:

I worked on the game repository finishing the implementation of the options menu and its underlying services; most of the feature was complete by them, but I still made a few changes before merging to main (the commit is from 2024, but I only finished the development task this January).

I then proceeded to work on the content and code for the introductory level, hoping to be able to finish and publish it as soon as possible, but had to pause my work on it at the beginning of March because the level manager was missing a crucial feature to allow me to create levels as large as I wanted: a chunk management system that would divide the level in chunks and manage them individually, thus avoiding having to handle all the geometry of the level all at once in each frame.

I implemented level chunk management in the level editor app first, where it was also needed in order to display larger levels. Also, the level editor system is simpler than the level manager system from the game repository, so implementing the feature in the level editor first made more sense as a first attempt. I finished the implementation of level chunk management in the level editor at the very beginning of April and published it as a GitHub repository as well: https://github.com/IndieSmiths/bblueleveleditor

After that I proceeded to implement the feature in the game itself, finishing the implementation in the middle of May. After that I worked back and forth between the game and the level editor fixing a few bugs in level chunk management and improving the level editor with some extra features needed for me to keep working on the introductory level.

Once all the systems were good enough I finally managed to work more regularly on finishing the introductory level in the past couple of months or so and currently I'm at a point where I mostly only need to create the missing art for the boss and its moveset (there's still more work after, but it should take less time).

Here are more video demos showing new features/content:

First, here you can see the level chunk management system in action, how it allows us to only work with a few chunks of the level at all times, rather than the entire level at once:

level_chunk_management_demo.mp4

An explanation of the video: I added a quick makeshift feature to my level editor just for the purpose of that demonstration, it is not an actual feature (at least not for now). First, you see the level in SCALED mode, which is how the game plays it and how I normally edit the level layout. In the second view I reset the display mode so it produces a screen of the same size but higher resolution, effectively creating a zoomed out view. The rectangle outlined in yellow at the center is the screen view, that is, how people see the level in their screens. The larger rectangles outlined in purple are the level chunks. What isn't visible but happens under the hood in the demonstration is that at all times the system is only checking the nearby chunks for the geometry they contain to see what to draw on the screen, rather than checking the whole level.

Here are also new enemies, elements and hazards added (moving platforms, climbable chains, spike hazards and a peek at the boss):

intro_level_june_report.mp4

The rabbit enemy and the floating round robots that fire at the player were added on May and the other elements were added this month of June.

If you are curious, here's the entire level exported as an image (since it may spoil the content of the level to some, you have to click it to expand the content, showing the image):

Entire layout of the introductory level of the Bionic Blue game

That's it for a summary. I don't know when I'll finish the first level exactly, but hopefully in a month or two or so.

[KennedyRichard]

Hello, everyone, the development work for the Bionic Blue game will be reported here from now on: monthly work reports. That is, in my monthly work reports.

As much as I'd like to keep reporting the development of Bionic Blue here, I already do a lot of work on the whole Indie Smiths project, including the work reports I produce each month. If I were to produce an extra devlog for the Bionic Blue game as well as for the other projects I work on it would take even more time. Time that could instead be used to develop the projects further.

I already posted an alert (warning) in the top post of this discussion so people visiting it for the first time will see it also. In other words, this whole discussion is outdated now.

Using the monthly reports instead of a dedicated develog like this won't harm the experience for those who follow the development of the Bionic Blue project, because the monthly work reports are already very detailed, including not only descriptions, but also media demonstrations.

Quite the contrary, now that I have a central spot wherein to report all my work, I can focus on producing reports of higher quality and with more detail (as well as editing the content so that it isn't boring to read, always presenting the main facts first and the details later, so it is easier for people to read of interests them and skim over the other stuff.