Adding an Ability Wheel to My Gladiator Roguelite | Playdate Devlog 4

[@barpg4582]

Really smart considerations being made as a developer and as a player. Excellent work, as usual. This is looking more and more like a game I NEED to play on Playdate!

[@SquidGodDev]

Thanks!

[@griffinbrooks6748]

So excited for the game it looks super epic!

[@jamesderaja]

You can also make a finisher attack where you crank your wheel to load for a few sec then launch the attack with the cranked up force

[@WormManKnoxville]

An ability I think would be cool and funny is if you can throw steel balls at enemys and it would come back kinda like a boomerang. Also, this is looking really cool and I cant wait to see more :)

[@stevemcwin]

Great progress, love how it's coming along!

[@SquidGodDev]

Thank you!!

[@ELV13S]

now the combat is more engaging since u can switch skills. amazing job as ever. wonder what the lore of the player characterr and his motivations are...but i guess gameplay first over story is always the best approach with game dev

[@DaydreamStudios_Official]

I Love How Simple And Elegant This Game Is

[@Eutrofication]

love the videos! I hope making the videos doesn't take away too much from your time to make the game, but I really wanted to understand the reasons behind your decisions in a little more detail!

[@SquidGodDev]

Thanks! Having a weekly schedule gives me really good accountability, so I think the motivation I get from that offsets the time it takes to make the video. I'll try to put more about my decision making process!

[@eboatwright_]

Super awesome! Looks like it's going to be alot of fun!

[@sergio_henrique]

Looks great! Well done!

[@richxps]

Wow simply amazing , I can’t even image what your next game could be . They are just great ..

[@CitrusArchitect]

More depth to the combat, I love it! Keep it up!

[@RiederProductions]

Pressing up on the D-Pad could activate a throw of sorts. Maybe daggers you could buy in the shop? Or maybe even some kind of magic?

[@_pluto42_]

Love your videos!!!!

[@SquidGodDev]

Thanks!!

[@jamesderaja]

For the shot UI you can make the edge of the selected square outside of the square and scale them up and down.

[@SquidGodDev]

Hm yeah that does seem like it'll make it pop more. I'll look into that when I go back and fix the UI

[@jamesderaja]

@@SquidGodDev I’m amazed that you understood my vague description😂(TBH I don’t know how to explain it better though)

[@13Sins]

I dont know if its already been implemented or not, but if you've seen the game "have a nice death", they have this ability to upgrade their main attack which in the case of your game would be the sword attack, and once you upgrade it you unlock a different weapon or same weapon with different weapon animation, and once you change the weapon animation the older one wouldn't be played giving players a sense of drawbacks of an upgrade. Maybe you could add a bigger sword that has higher damage and splash damage, but the animation would be slow to feel the heft of the weapon, and it would make the spin to either cost more stamina or happen slower as well while having a higher reach.

[@EonsAway]

Would be fun to have some question mark nodes on the map. Could be teasure, could be a trap

[@illuc_]

You could put like a smeared paint ring around the selected level

[@anotherrio9375]

How about make debuff system like when you get some powerful upgrade or enter new stage to make more challenging I always thinking dizzy effect when i see that spinning attack... like if they spinning to long, but you already have spin meter to limit it

[@woqwoq.512]

You definitely should add some structures to the levels. Also you could make them spawn randomly. At the moment terrain looks like super-flat world in Minecraft lol. Love your game!

[@SquidGodDev]

Thanks! I'll put some thought into how I can address that

[@simmerdbeans3555]

you should add more details to the level select maybe tears in the paper and stuff like that

[@brahillms1374]

For the items in the shop, could you consider items/modifiers that make the game harder and more challenging? Modifiers could have their own menu, but it might be more satisfying to buy them in the shop.

[@NKCubed]

I feel like the spin-meter should *very slowly* recharge by default, just to keep it moving also, not sure if this is outside of the scope, but the thing that makes roguelikes so much fun for me is the synergies that you can get over the course of the run; always feels good to feel like you've outsmarted the game (it's why I keep coming back to hades/dead cells/slay the spire)

[@NKCubed]

to add some context for having the bar still move, I feel like it would act as a sort of grace to help the player out while also making the spin points you get from hitting enemies feel more rewarding since you're trained to think you have to wait a really long time to get them back. It would add a bit more that needed to be balanced for difficulty, but I think it'd still have enough of a positive effect to be worth it.

[@SquidGodDev]

Yeah that's not a bad idea for the spin-meter loading. Also good point about Roguelike synergies. Definitely important, but sounds hard to design for. I'll try and see what I can do

[@NKCubed]

@@SquidGodDev it can be simple as designing two items that are made to work together, but that you won't necessarily get every run, but yeah it takes a lot of work and balancing to get it all just right

[@AdudenamedKemp]

Lookin' dope

[@octo_dev]

I cant wait to buy/download for free this game

[@_pluto42_]

Same

[@elizabethbarwise9966]

He’s previously mentioned this game will not be free. His previous play date games weren’t fleshed out enough to justify putting a price on them, but THIS game he’s working hard on to justify a price tag. I love freebies but this shouldn’t be free - this time and effort deserves some money.

[@Twice_Tess]

Comment for the algorithm!

[@zackattack5414]

hey it looks like the player character and the enemy's too are more dense it pixels then the normal 8x8 characters how do you do this?

[@SquidGodDev]

The 8x8 characters isn't actually normal, it's an artificial limitation placed on games made using Pulp. I'm making a game with the Playdate SDK sdk.play.date

[@anitadjunetchinda6791]

I love the game keep up

[@1--2--]

how about having other characters with different weapons and skills?

[@SquidGodDev]

That would be awesome, but setting up the animation and states would take too much time unfortunately

[@1--2--]

yeah this would be too much work. i just thought that having other characters with different skills will give variation if the player will get bored of the default character. nice updates by the way

[@simmerdbeans3555]

yo sorry to bother you but ive been trying all day and i haven't found a clear way to make save files even on the documentation do you think you could help me

[@SquidGodDev]

Create two functions: function pd.gameWillTerminate() and function pd.gameWillSleep(). Inside them, create a table with all the data you want to save and call pd.datastore.write and pass in that table as the argument. At the start of your code, write "local gameData = pd.datastore.read()". If you saved something, the gameData should be the table that you saved with pd.datastore.write. If it's the first time you loaded up the game, gameData will be nil, so you need to check that. Then, you can take the data from the table and store it in the code wherever you need it.

[@SquidGodDev]

sdk.play.date/1.12.2/Inside%20Playdate.html#saving-state Link to where it talks about this in the documentation

[@simmerdbeans3555]

@@SquidGodDev thank you so much im sorry if i keep asking about stuff

[@simmerdbeans3555]

@@SquidGodDev omg i forgot im working with pulp not the sdk sorry

[@SquidGodDev]

@@simmerdbeans3555 Oh, just use "store" with the name of any variable you want to save (e.g. player score or position or something), and in the "load" event in the game script, just call "restore" and anything you stored with be in the variables you saved. You can then check if the variable has any data and do stuff with it.

[@sevafinogenov]

Good change for a map, but seems like colors should be inverted: future levels should be bright and already beaten ones - dim. It could help with accents since future levels are more important than previous.

[@SquidGodDev]

I'm not sure if I agree with this, since to me how it is right now highlights the exploration of new levels, but I'll try it out and see how it feels.

[@sergio_henrique]

@@SquidGodDev In my opinion and experience with games, I think the idea of what levels should be greyd out or not depends on what focus the game puts on backtracking. I mean, if you can only play each level once, it makes sense to have those greyed out once beaten, and the following ones are normal. But if you are expected to replay levels, then the following "locked" levels should be greyed out.

[@SquidGodDev]

@@sergio_henrique hm that makes sense. Since you can't backtrack I suppose it is confusing that the previous levels aren't faded out. I'll put some thought into it

[@wisemysticaltree4799]

Are we gonna get bosses anytime soon?

[@SquidGodDev]

Yes! In a few weeks I think

[@findot777]

A amazing way to get the combat even better without over complicating things is better ai such as the wolf jumping towards you also I think the game needs way more stuff on the y axis

[@SquidGodDev]

Yeah y axis stuff would be good, but I would say it does actually complicate stuff a lot with how my game is set up right now 😅

[@_pluto42_]

Idea- you should make more like areas like not just pillars

[@SquidGodDev]

I will! In the couple weeks I'll be adding 2 new areas

[@_pluto42_]

Cool!

[@dallas1908]

Did you convert that frog (shop keeper) to 1bit manually?

[@SquidGodDev]

Nope. Used something called OneBitDitherTool from Tim Hei github.com/timheigames/onebitdithertool

[@dallas1908]

@@SquidGodDev ayo thanks. Game's looking fancy btw, nice work

[@strongmouz1555]

is your game going to have a story/narrative?

[@SquidGodDev]

Maybe? Probably should, but I'm a bit overwhelmed with how much actual gameplay stuff there is left to do, so I'll see

[@strongmouz1555]

@@SquidGodDev i see but if you do implement a story there's no denying that you have to put roman gods in this

[@HugoWasHereAndDidAMasterpiece]

HOW DO YOU HAVE THE PLAYDATE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[@SquidGodDev]

I preordered it within the first few minutes as soon as they opened up in July 2021. They started shipping out in April and have shipped out around ~20k units so far.

[@HugoWasHereAndDidAMasterpiece]

@@SquidGodDev thanks is because when i go on the pre order list my country isn't in there.

[@isaiahhonor991]

As painful as it would be too add, adding a time slow down like BoTW when the item wheel is up would make the game easier to play and less frantic.

[@SquidGodDev]

Yeah that would be awesome. Sounds difficult though 😂

[@elizabethbarwise9966]

I hate to say it because you sound so pleased with him…but it’s hard to make out what Mr Frogman is. I don’t think most people would recognise he’s a frog.

[@SquidGodDev]

LOL haha whatever don't really care that much I don't think it's a very important detail

[@thetexanshurtme]

Emcg

[@SquidGodDev]

EMCG

[@andrewhamel1]

Looks good! Now squid, DON'T love this comment!

[@SquidGodDev]

I can do what I want 😎