Hey there!
It's been 5 years, since my last attempt in game development. The debut title "A Trip to Yugoslavia" was a great success. One that led to many great events and made a lot of good memories. I was 17 when it all happened. Then came the "Director's Cut", which kept the entire team on the high horse.
That's when we've decided to create "Purgatorium: A Family Torn Apart" - the ambitious project that simply overwhelmed equally ambitious team.
This brings us to today. An idea for One Rotten Oath came to me without a warning. One day, I was just driving home, thinking about how fun the game dev was from my perspective and how much we all gave to make these experiences possible. Then came the realization. Would I be able to create an engaging, interactive experience just like half a decade ago, all by myself?
I guess time will tell, if you guys are gonna like what's cooking here. This time, I'm working with a great composer - Olga Lewińska. She created all the soundtrack that you'll hear in the game. Mutants are played by me and my brother - Paweł. I'm also tackling screenwriting, coding and FMV recordings.
Since I'm getting a lot of questions about this, I decided to show you how I've implemented actors into the game.
I recorded the videos on greenscreen, rendered them into image sequences, resized them and cut characters out from photos frame by frame.
Before:
After (before clearing out the greenscreen remains and using a red outline):
Each enemy has its own 4 animations - walking, getting shot, attacking and dying.
To keep the illusion of the video being played on engine, I never skipped a frame from the original video. This in turn left me with A LOT of sprites and time spent in photo editing software, because GDevelop doesn't support multiple video clips on a scene. For example, basic enemy (such as The Masked Mutant) is made out of 237 frames in total.
I'm slowly making my way towards the full version. This means implementing new dangers and mechanics. As a sneak peak, here's a new type of mutant that I'm working on. Meet the Office Rat!
Some of you that played the Public Preview version on Itch have noticed that there was something crucial missing. If you run out of ammo, you either had to run away or take the hit to keep enemies in your sight. Since melee combat was requested throughout various streams and videos, I decided to implent kicking!
Kicking acts as a parry. In order to use it efficiently, you have to wait until the enemy starts its attack animation. This will let you kick them away for a few meters, thus buying precious time for reloading or saving those no-hit runs. You can also kick while running, hoping to hit the enemy blindly. Using kick that way will slow you down almost to a complete halt. It's up to you to choose your strategy. Kicking regenerates after a few seconds. Shoe icon informs you when you're ready to counter.
In the full game, you'll be able to heal once per level by using pills. Healing has a negative effect though. You will experience tunnel vision and the survivor will lose track of his surroundings. This means that you'll be automatically turning around after a few seconds. Use pills with caution!
That about covers the entire development so far. Thanks for reading this through to the end and remember to add One Rotten Oath to your wishlists <3
Have a good one!
PB