This is part 3 of the final overhaul of the game. This is part 3 of 4 (3/4).
In this update I focused on changing the sprites to be clearer by changing the colors, or updating assets that were literally from my "I made this in a month" build.
Here is the change log listed out:
Updates/Changes:
- All level selection images.
- The hit box of every enemy to feel better.
- Bullets look, feel, and speed for each weapon. (Feels better, still arcadey).
- Player looks a lot more visually appealing (changed the body, and skin colors)
- Various level backgrounds to make the player/enemies look a little clearer (I can only do so much without just re-doing all the art (though a lot of it ended up getting recolored)
- Recolored a lot of Assets....
- The weapon holding sprites are a little different.
- Walking Sound Effect
- Default Gunshot Sound Effect
- Music On/Off option
- X, not > for exit.
- Reorganized all folder structures for open-source release.
- Redid all item common item sprites, and buy station sprites.
- "Hedge" level and leaderboard.
Tweaks/Bug Fixes:
- Pausing properly pauses all enemies. Sorry this was not there before, I basically never pause the game, and only recently added the proper options menu.
- Fixed Studio Start-up Crash
- Removed a lot of redundant code/old images/old objects to prepare for open-source publish.
- Tweaked startup screen button colors/text
- Seeing despawn.
- Hearing despawn.
- Random Player2-4 deaths on some maps causing loud bit noise.
- Audio Mixing for Music
- Resized all Buy Text
- Correct Levels sometimes showing incorrect leaderboard
Future Information as of 11/29/2023 1amish
Realistically, DEAD 2 will be great and I am not worried about that.
I am currently spending 3-4 hours a day when I have the time/will to actually work on this. I usually listen to PKA, but this time I was listening to "The Making of an Internet Monster" by Art, or TheGamerFromMars. I've never really looked into Chris Chan aside form know of him and various happenings by him for the last 7 years.
I am enjoying revamping DEAD 1 for the final update and I did a lot in the last few days like re doing all of the coloring to be a lot clearer. I wonder how people will react, if at all. I know this game isn't anything huge but to me: finishing what you have started matters. Quitting when you could do better is what losers do, but knowing when you should move on is important. Sunk Cost Fallacy is very real in the world we live in.
Luckily, I do not make money off this game and enjoy spending my time making this and many other games. Over the last 4 years, my life has been very much a learning experience, but it has also been incredibly depressing in terms of my personal life and past as well as how I have been personally treated by people I thought close, including friends and family members. Treat people well, or have them out of your life.
It is such a pain in the ass to make maps for this game, a very big reason why I am moving onto DEAD 2, that, and having new AI. Part of me (like right now) thinks I should keep DEAD as a singular game and have maps in different categories considering how much this game has evolved on it's own over the years but I am not sure that makes any sense long-term when I could realistically just remake any fan favorites from this game but in a new format.
Call of Duty, and everyone involved are lazy, and have no work ethic. It is not hard to design things, it's actually incredibly easy. It's also easy to make maps, tweak weapons, change IDs, edit anything in your game in general. Those impressed with the very tiny are the reason we have bad games where people are impressed by audio bouncing off walls when if I wanted to have a gritty experience I could very easily have enemy a.i. detect you based off of sound alone and it would take me (took me) about 2 hours to do. "Oh but George, you aren't making Call of Duty!!" it's the same principles, design does not change at it's core, it's not hard to know what is fun, it's not hard to listen to your community, it's not hard to change the price of your 15 year old game, it's not hard to tweak some weapons, it's not hard to add new weapon skins, it's not hard to keep the game not an anime/rapper/invislbe skin fest. It's purely bad management, and bad design.
I fully plan to release this as an open-source thing people can dig through. This is one of the only GameMaker Studio 1, GameMaker Studio 2, and GameMaker Studio 2.3 games that has been not only released on Steam, but consistently updated over a period of many years. I hope that the open source of this project will help people learn the engine if that's what they want to do, or help them in them see what to/not to do for their own projects. Maybe someone will learn something, maybe it'll be universally hated.. at least I tried.