Devlog: Cogito Colony, a Sci-Fi metroidvania with some unique mechanics

[Thalanor]

Current work on the game is quite soundtrack-heavy, and as a matter of fact currently busy with a boss theme for a faster paced fight (these of course also exist):
https://soundcloud.com/thalanor/ergo-sum-10

[Jubal]

I'm really liking how the music's coming along, look forward to seeing more!

[Thalanor]

Some animation work again this time!

https://gfycat.com/RightVelvetyGarpike

https://gfycat.com/PrestigiousWillingKatydid

https://gfycat.com/TautHandyDrongo

https://gfycat.com/AffectionateIgnorantGerbil

As you can see I want to make player animations available to all humanoid NPCs too - that allows for quite some neat possibilities in the future!

[Tusky]

Looks great. If all NPC's have the same abilities as the player you can do some great boss fights. Like the classic "mirror match" boss fight where the enemy has the exact same powers as the player 

[Thalanor]

It has been almost a year! What happened? In short: fulltime work (my fate from now on). After completing uni, I have so much less time than before. However, I still haven't given up hobbyist gamedev - one thing that did eventually strike me was that I will have to rewrite the entire engine from the ground up, as I would not be able to maintain it longterm. The reason is that the first engine, as much as I liked it, was developed alongside the design refinement process of the game, and as such had tons of technical debt. That of course means progress will be slow as I have to code from scratch again, and can only do so one day per week at maximum...

However, the plan for the game will stay the same, except that a new engine will also allow me to revise some decisions I was not happy with, such as the skeletal animation system which was great for exchanging player models and fluent combat, but otherwise not flexible enough and highly performance intensive.

As such I'm learning aseprite now to switch to hand-drawn animations. Here's a preview:

https://twitter.com/Thalanor/status/1096545986221101057


Meanwhile, progress on the soundtrack actually continues to be fast. Almost 1.5h of gamemusic done! You can always check the current status here:

https://soundcloud.com/thalanor/sets/cogito-colony-soundtrack


Hope to be able to post some smaller updates in intervals again in the future, freeing up some geek time once in a while as I try to survive in the adult world!

[Jubal]

Good to see you back! The new anim looks nicely swishy.

And yeah, surviving adulthood is a tricky tricky business. I'm not really sure how or if I'm managing at the moment...

[Thalanor]

As a matter of fact it is. The hardest part is having SO LITTLE sparetime after work and responsibilities. I feel like getting even a medium sized project done is easily estimated at half a decade at this point. But "the path is the goal", for me. The primary aspect is having fun and staying young by doing it, not the release.

Having fun learning handdrawn animations so far. Newest update: https://twitter.com/Thalanor/status/1119505819261964288
Of course this will mean a lot of effort, but regular enemies won't of course receive the same investment as the player character in terms of fluidity. So far the light attack combination has been mostly drawn (clocking in at 44 frames), next up is probably heavy attacks, walk cycle and the sort.

The engine itself is still in R&D stage. Basically had zero time to really dive into coding between christmas and now easter. Life happens! But it is fun to come back to things. This is also why the soundtrack progresses much faster, since I code for work, so doing the artsy/creative stuff feels more like regeneration on regular short weekends.

[Jubal]

Yeah, I really need to give up some projects, I'm just stressing over them all at a snail's pace lately :/

I'm really liking the new graphics stuff, it looks very nice and fluid.

[bigosaur]

I like some metroidvanias (Axiom Verge, Guacamelee) and some not that much (Ori, Hollow Knight).

I have an update on this. Played through HK and Ori recently and have changed my view on those games significantly. Axiom Verge is still on top, but Hollow Knight is second now (once you start drawing your own map, the game is awesome, and some stuff like the Bank plot twist and the Arena are simply amazing). Ori comes third. I didn't like the combat at first, but once I got used to it, it's actually an awesome game. So, Guacamelee drops to 4th place. I also played Owl Boy, Shantae and Dust in the meantime and they come 5th, 6th and 7th respectively. Of course, this ranking stays if you don't count Salt&Sanctuary as metroidvania. If you do, then it takes the 3rd spot and others move down. And a honourable mention for Xeodrifter which is too short to call it a full game, but is awesome metroidvania as well.

Anyway, I'm really hoping to see your game finished one day as it shows a lot of promise.

[Thalanor]

I too hope to make it one day. Snail's pace with the little time I got really is a bummer 

But tackling the little steps! Small update, not warranting a billboard but here we go. First of all, more animation work. The basic attack combo will be so common that all the effort to make 1:1 frames is hopefully worth it, and now it includes 5 attacks before it cycles back:
https://twitter.com/Thalanor/status/1157745690698768384

Also two new OST tracks (all soundtrack pieces are more or less getting improved over time, thats why everything has version numbers):
https://soundcloud.com/thalanor/plaza-20?in=thalanor/sets/cogito-colony-soundtrack
https://soundcloud.com/thalanor/bridge-09?in=thalanor/sets/cogito-colony-soundtrack

Hope to actually get some coding done. The engine can't even render pixels yet! (But it now does have a completely custom script language that supports higher order functions and lambdas... because I am a nerd and fail to prioritize)

[Jubal]

I love the soundtrack work as ever Really evocative, it works super well!