Deadeye Gold: Designer Blog: 2

Howdy Everybody!

This is Cameron Smith, Game Designer and Senior Programmer on Deadeye Desperado.

We're nearing the end of our second sprint here on Deadeye Desperado: Gold Semester and with that in mind, i wanted to talk about some of the design decisions i was making along the way this sprint.

My biggest goal this sprint was to get the movement to a fun state, and integrate everything that we had already completed to work with the new controller. This new controller includes mantling, ledge grabbing, and ladder climbing. In addition, it has Interpolation to make sure the player moves nice and smoothly. I think this turned out quite well, but our levels don't quite accommodate for it yet, which is going to be very big moving forward. 

Additionally, I wanted to focus on the feel of the game as a western with magical flair. This is supposed to be magic, so i wanted everything we did to have that feel for magic. We can see this in our new 2D and 3D asset examples, as well as the concept art produced so far.

The place i wanted this feel accentuated most was in the creations of this world. Things like the player's weapon and the enemies they face should look and feel foreign and magical. You can see the world's influence on the gun below and the new 'Balloon' enemy we've concepted out, in addition to the new concept art for the freeze area.

I've also been thinking about the bullets we have in the game, as well as the two new ones we plan to add in the coming weeks. Currently, there are four; Blast, Freeze, Incendiary, and Healing. These correspond to Red, Blue, Yellow and Green respectively. Some people found the blast and incendiary bullets to be too similar, and we are considering a change to one of them, but haven't fully decided as of yet. In addition we plan to add two new bullet types, Shock and Void, corresponding to originally black and white, but now being cyan and purple to keep the colors vibrant.

Otherwise I've done a lot of programming prep for the introduction of these new bullets. Changing our variables and statements to be able to handle the two new ones, and streamline the system for the old ones. I think this has come out stellar, but i'm sure there will be more minor tweaks to come on the gun front before my time with them is done.

Overall we've had a super successful sprint, and i'm overjoyed with the way the game is looking and feeling. Moving forward we will be getting new arms and a new weapon for the player, and will be adding legs to give them a feeling for verisimilitude, as well as new levels to accommodate the new movement options.

Until next time, 

Cameron Smith