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Category: Umbraseal

After Umbraseal finished

After Umbraseal finished

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We recently finished《Umbraseal》game flow update. Although we cannot keep adding new features, because of budget issue. We found this game has marketing and planing issue rather than development issue. According to player feedback, 《Umbraseal》is playable but missing some feedback. More importantly, we don’t know how to show what unique experience this game provided to player. However, we still gain a lots of feedback and experience from making this game. And we have ability to ship a game from design to…

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Prepare to finish Umbraseal

Prepare to finish Umbraseal

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After Steam Early Access and few times of update. We find special bullet is not as fun as we expected. On the other hand, we also realize our budget cannot afford scenario material of story. Current material already consume our last budget, but the quality still under excepted. So instead of presenting roughly made story, we decide to reorder game flow for change the game style. We want to adjust difficulty and game flow. We tend to make Umbraseal more…

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Revisit Danmaku made by Haxe

Revisit Danmaku made by Haxe

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Almost one year ago. I decide to implement a Danmaku System which follows Touhou Danmakufu(th_dnh for short)’s API and make many bullet patterns for our Early Access game 《Umbraseal》. Now th_dnh becomes open source software, I want to learn the design decision from original version for improving our work. Before we diving this topic, I have to declare that I don’t mean to judge th_dnh’s design. Like we discussed in previous article, this software creates the most bullet pattern in…

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Umbraseal is now on Steam Early Access!

Umbraseal is now on Steam Early Access!

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After months of working, Umbraseal finally joins Steam Early Access! All enemy shoot bullets like crazy! 《Umbraseal》is a bullet-hell dungeon crawler top-down shooter. On the first week after early access, we will focus on bug fixing and roadmap planning. We already mention some features on our early access Q&A. However, it is still need some plan about task scheduling and communication with our players. Because as an early access game, we believe listening player’s feedback is very important. You can…

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Prepare for Early Access

Prepare for Early Access

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This month we decide to add shadow ability, new level theme and traps. BTW, Umbraseal becomes pre-beta on itch.io . To meet game title, our heroine now has shadow ability. Shadow ability contains two phase: Right click to release Umbra : Umbra is a shadow entity that attack with player Each hit from Umbra increases shadow charge Right click again to release Penumbra: Penumbra is a shadow entity that release shadow power. The effect of shadow power is decided by…

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Custom bullet mechanic

Custom bullet mechanic

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This month we added custom bullet and boss stage seal mechanic. By default, player has 3-way shot pattern with round bullet. Now you can change what you shot by looting different shape and property of bullet from enemies. We are still trying other bullet pattern shape and bullet property. Although shooting lots of random things is very fun, but the goal is to make bullet pattern become crazy. 😛 For connecting middle stage and boss stage, we introduce seal mechanic….

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Umbraseal First Pass Demo

Umbraseal First Pass Demo

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In the last month of 2018, we finally finished the first pass demo and start to design polished version features. https://fnaith.files.wordpress.com/2018/12/ezgif.com-video-to-gif.gif?w=825 Fortunately, there are people would play first pass demo even graphics and UI are bit rough now. According to their precious advice, we find what players expected in this genre. Primary feedback as following: Guidance – tutorial for goal and skill, mini map Balance – enemies are too easy, need more AI behavior Aesthetics – every area looks same,…

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Decoration and furnishing for dungeon

Decoration and furnishing for dungeon

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This month, we focus on adding enemy ability and decorating generated dungeon. As Cogmind’s author mentioned, most traditional roguelike has pretty barren environment. In our game, Umbraseal, we use two process to make dungeon more interesting: Decoration for building structure Placing furnishing by area For decorating building structure, we define stage theme config by Tiled editor. Currently, each layer in tiled map present different part of dungeon skin. For wide space like wall or floor, their config layer allow multiple…

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Danmaku made by Haxe

Danmaku made by Haxe

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To build a bullet hell / roguelike game we need both dungeon generator and bullet pattern engine. In Tunneling Maze Generator, we build a framework for dungeon generator. Now we need to decide what kind of bullet pattern engine to use. AFAIK, there are many types of bullet pattern engine. BulletML which is used by Enter the Gungeon; Touhou Danmakufu which can make Touhou Project-style game; and other engines like STGBuilder, LuaSTG, DanmakU .etc has their own followers. In some way, all these engines use fire-subfire model. In this model, each shot is usually…

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