Catching UP!!!

HI

Welcome to the first Invasion Developer Log!
I am here to introduce the project to its target audience. If you have read the project's main page here on itch.io, this game is a classic boomer shooter type of game, inspired by classics like DOOM, QUAKE II, and its setting is inspired by MGS1. I am here to talk about the game’s development, my goals for this project, and its developer. Currently, I am the only one working on this project, so most of the things are made by me, and I am using a few made assets, such as some of the textures used in the game.

ABOUT ME

I am a software developer. I used to work in web development but was introduced to programming by creating games in the Unity game engine.
I am a big fan of FPS games, especially boomer shooters like Quake, Half-Life, Doom, etc.
As a solo developer, I thought the genre was appealing because of the low-poly art styles, mission-to-mission structure, and simple and fun game mechanics.
I tried to make a boomer shooter a couple of times before but failed. However, I have not given up on this project. Whenever I learn something new in game development, I give it another try. This is the first time I am actually creating a devlog for the game.

ABOUT THIS DEV LOG!

Game development is no easy task, especially if you're the only one working on the game.
Let's be honest — in order for the project to be achievable, we need to set a scope for it. Here it is:

Scope of Project:
game development is no easy task specially if your the only one working on the game. let's be honest in order for the project to be achievable we need to set a scope for it. here are them :

KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID

As I said in the intro, the game is inspired by DOOM and QUAKE II in terms of gameplay.
So in this regard, I am going to use the simple structures of these games: doors that open with colored keys (red, blue, yellow), mission-to-mission structure, simple enemy AI, LOTS OF GUNS, fairly complex levels — and all the things these games do.
The good news is that I have developed most of these systems.

USING LOW POLY GRAPHICS

Game graphics are important. Most AAA studios go for a more realistic look, but since it is a hard task to do — especially if the game engine you're using isn't exactly known for great graphics — I decided to go with a low-poly look with simple, low-res textures for my game, which is closer to the source material that I am inspired from.

With these things out of the way, here are the things that I did during the development of this project:

1 - Player Controller and Camera Control:

In Quake, the player uses a fast movement speed.
When the player is moving left or right, the camera tilts a little bit toward that direction.
The player has the ability to jump fairly high and look up and down, left and right.
You shoot by clicking the left mouse button and change weapons with the mouse scroll wheel (fairly standard stuff for modern FPS games).
These are all implemented.
In addition, the player can slide using the left shift button and aim with some weapons like the shotgun and machine gun.
The speed of the game is fairly high compared to the small environment of most missions.
Most of the weapons are animated with animations for each action the player is currently doing.

2 - Items and Power Ups

In the old-school shooters (which I have mentioned several times now), the games have these sets of items: Weapons, Ammo, Health, Armor, Keys, Power-Ups.

Currently, 4 of these are implemented: Weapons, Ammo, Health, and Armor.
For weapons, I created a total of 5 in Blender but animated them inside the Godot game engine, which I currently use as my primary tool for creating this game.
I also created a weapon node for the game which controls the basic logic of how a weapon should work — it turned out fairly good.

I used GDScript for the game code. It turned out a little bit like spaghetti code, but it's fairly good currently, and it has all the functionalities I needed for the game, such as aiming, fire rate, etc.

As for Health Items, there are 3 health items now: a Big Health Pack, a First Aid Kit, and a Medical Potion, which go from powerful to weak, scattered around the level for the player to find.

Big Health Pack:

First Aid Kit:

Medical Potion:

There are only two ammo types currently: one for Machine Guns and one for Shotguns.
In this game, weapons' ammo is shared — so if two weapons are in the same category, they use the same type of ammo, just like in DOOM games.

Machine Gun Ammo:

Shotgun Ammo:

Currently, there are no single bullets in the game, just ammo packs with a number of bullets inside them.
And lastly, armor: there are three types — Armor Piece, Blue Armor, and Green Armor, which I will discuss later.

The keys are also very simple.
Currently, there are three colored keys and one special key.
The key items emit an event once they are taken by the player, so they are quite flexible in terms of how they work.

Blue Key:

Yellow Key:

Red Key:

Battery (Special Key):

There are no power-ups yet, but there will be.

There is also a grenade item, which you can find and throw at enemies.

Grenade:

3 - Armor and Health

Armor and health are a shared component between the player and the enemies.
You start the game with no armor, but later you can find armor inside levels.
There are three types of armor: Green, Blue, and Armor Piece.

• Green Armor reduces 25% of damage.
• Blue Armor reduces 50% of damage.
• Armor Piece is not really armor — if you find an Armor Piece, one point will be added to the current armor you are using, whether it's Green or Blue.

Green Armor:

Blue Armor:

Armor Piece:

The health component controls both armor and health at the same time.
For both armor and health, there is a max allowed value, usually 100.
These values decrease as you receive damage from enemies (or the other way around) until they reach zero.
If your health drops to zero, it means you're dead and have to try again.
If your armor reaches zero, there is no protection.

5 - Weapons 

As I said before, there are 5 weapons.
They are animated and controlled using a weapon component attached to each of them.
There are weapon types which determine which weapon uses what type of ammo.

In total, there are:

• Shotgun

• Pistol

• Machine Gun

• Rocket Launcher

The actual weapons in-game are:

• Shotgun

The shotgun is the first weapon you get in the game (currently! That might change in the future).
It shares ammunition with the Super Shotgun.
This weapon has fairly good damage and a slow fire rate.

• Machine Gun

The Machine Gun is a fast-firing weapon with low damage, created for getting basic mobs out of the way.
It shares its ammunition with the Chain Gun.

• Super Shotgun

The Super Shotgun is a high-damage weapon with a low firing speed, made for tough enemies.
It shares ammo with the normal Shotgun.

• Chain Gun

The Chain Gun is a very fast-firing weapon with high damage, designed to create carnage and kill everyone.
It shares ammo with the normal Machine Gun.

• Rocket Launcher

The Rocket Launcher is a high-damage weapon designed to take down groups of enemies and deal massive damage to tough ones.

As you can see, there is no pistol weapon yet, which might be added in the future as a starting weapon instead of the basic shotgun.
All these weapons are animated and have different characteristics.

6 - Enemies 

The enemies are going to be simple in most cases.
They use basic code to move — a raycast checks if the distance the character is moving is less than a certain allowed distance; then it changes directions.
Or, if anything comes in front of the player, the player changes directions.
For attacking, enemies chain their attacks based on parameters provided to them.
There is also an attack cooldown for enemies, which varies between two attacks — sometimes short, sometimes long.
Enemies can also decide if they want to retaliate against the player or not if they are attacked.

Enemies are just like the original DOOM enemies, but with a little bit of extra features to make them less basic.

Enemies use health and armor just like the player.

There are two enemies in the game currently, but there will be more:

Normal Guard:

Senior Guard (Elite Guard):

7 - Levels

In terms of levels, there is not much to talk about yet.
There are currently two completed levels and a third one in the making.
This is the most challenging part for me because I don't really have much experience in level design, and I have always struggled to make them in my projects.

8 - Art Style

The game aims for a low-poly aesthetic, since it is much easier for me to create and takes less time, so I can focus on other things too.
I also made some low-resolution textures and downloaded a bunch of others for game objects and used them inside the game.
Enemy animations are currently a bit strange, but I have an idea of how to fix them.

Final Thoughts

Thanks for reading this first devlog!
I'm very excited to keep working on Invasion and sharing more updates as I move forward.

Stay tuned for more, and thank you for your support!