Intro

Hello there! I am Callisto, a game dev working on my first ever proper title, Project: Rogue, a boomer shooter with a focus on movement, parkour, and of course, robots. Some of you may know me as SordGaming, but I changed my username.

I have decided to start a devlog to share my work with you all, but primarily to keep myself motivated. A lot of earlier projects I have tried to make in the past have pretty much all ended in the same way, and it's something like this:

> I start work on a project

> I come across an issue I can't solve

> I lose motivation and stop working on it

Or:

> I start work on a project

> I lose motivation and stop working on it

I don't want this to happen to Project: Rogue at all, that's why I've started this devlog. Anyway, since this is my first devlog, it's going to be a long one. So let's get into it!

Choosing Godot

Earlier this year, I got back into game development. I didn't want to use my first game engine, Scratch, for a number of reasons. I tried Unity, but I ran into a lot of problems. I had some other game engines installed like Game Maker, but from past experiences I knew that Game Maker required a subscription to export games as exe files.

So, I settled on Godot. I discovered Godot years ago from Goodgis, a YouTuber I watched at the time. I had done some experiments in Godot before, but never made any big projects. As I started learning Godot this year, I followed some tutorials, read documentation, and made some basic test projects to get used to the engine.

Starting Work On Project: Rogue

While looking for YouTube tutorials one day, I came across a tutorial by Miziziziz, the creator of Endoparasitic and Voyager 19, on how to make a DOOM clone in Godot.

Thanks to the tutorial, I was able to make the prototype version of Project: Rogue, which looked like this.

*In the image there are no enemies as I hadn't completed the tutorial when I took the screenshot

To make the assets I took photos of objects or things in my room, and drew over them in Aseprite. For example, the T-Bot is actually an action figure I have in my room, but I drew over it and modified it.

Once I had finished following the tutorial, I got attached to the project as it was the closest thing I had ever made in Godot to being a proper game. I always wanted to make a movement shooter about robots called something like Project: Rogue, and I thought I could make that through this little DOOM clone I was making, which is what I ended up doing.

The First Level

After the prototype was done, I decided to start working on the actual game. I made the first room of the first level, I added some enemies, and it was turning out great.

I made a short reveal trailer in DaVinci Resolve (which I now no longer use) and uploaded it to YouTube. I got some good feedback, but I eventually had to take it down due to it ending up outdated. Once you kill all 6 enemies in the first room, a door opens to reveal a large room with 3 pillars.

After I made the room I experimented with some new features such as:

• Lighting

• Volumetric fog

• Better graphics in general

• Pixelation effect

• A new air-based enemy

• Player's hand wearing a glove

• Player's hand having a skin colour that's not green

• Walking animations for the player's hand

• Player healthbar and new UI

• Medkits

• Ammo crates

All of these ended up making it into the final game, and despite being small features that didn't mean much, it made the game look like this.

The feature that went through the most changes was the new enemy, the AA-bot. The AA-Bot was originally meant to be similar to the maurice from Ultrakill. It would be airborne, and charge up a 5 second long high-damage minigun attack that would be aimed at the player's position when the charging was finished. However, I ran into a few issues when trying to make this.

First of all, I didn't know how to use projectiles. I tried raycasting but that didn't work. Second of all, the AA-Bot is a 2D 2-sided sprite, so how could it aim at one position for 5 seconds without the player going behind it and seeing the sprite face the wrong direction when firing? These issues eventually made me settle on the idea that made it in the final game.

When the AA-Bot was finished charging, it could drop a grenade that dealt 50 damage to the player. This ended up working and I even made the explosion instakill all enemies in the radius of the explosion because I thought it would be fun.

To finalise the level, I added a new death screen, a damage vignette, and a mission objective which is to collect a left behind document. I sent a copy of the game so far to my friend, Zelvonic. I got some good feedback and I began work on the next level.

The Second Level

*Please note that as of writing this devlog I have not completed the second level. This is just what I've done so far.

I wanted the second level to have a focus on parkour and movement, so, inspired by Boston Dynamics's robot parkour videos, I thought a fitting setting would be a robot agility testing chamber.

I added wall jumping and wall running (which was suprisingly easy to add) as well as walls the player couldn't wall jump or wall run on (which was surprisingly difficult to add). I also made the chamber have low visibility conditions, forcing the player to use their flashlight (which I added when working on the first level for if I wanted to make a low visibility level). As I added more details the beginning of the level started to look like this.

After the intro to the level I made a massive room with platforms that the player would have to jump on and kill the enemies that were on the platforms. I wanted the largest platform to have a whole bunch of T-Bots, however when I added the T-Bots I forgot to correct their y position so they ended up floating about a metre off the ground, which resulted in some pretty menacing screenshots.

Once the room was finished, I made the area towards the end of the level where the player would complete the objective. The second level is now almost done and should be finished in about a month (maybe).

Outro

Thank you so much for reading! I ended up having to rewrite this devlog after I accidentally deleted it, so if you're reading this on GameJolt for the second time and it's different, that's probably why. I know it's already a long devlog since I started it a bit late in development, but it could've been much, much longer if I decided to go over everything I have done so far. Trust me, I left out main menus, settings, music, etc. I just didn't want the devlog to get too boring. Thank you again for reading, and I hope you have a good day!