Meet Holdeman

Here he is. This is the man who is responsible from The Blast. Your aim is to kill him.

Holdeman with a badass gun and a nuke going off in the background

This image was drawn by Samppu, the same guy who filmed the commentary and created the trailer. Should you want to see more of his work, click here. The page is in Finnish, but even if you for some reason lack the knownledge of Finnish, you can still check out the art ;)

What do you guys think, mean looking dude this Holdeman, eh? He even dares to stand in front of a nuclear explosion.

More redesigns + annoying bug fixed

I did it once again. I redesigned the inventory categories for weapons and equipment. Now the screens are easier to use and look much better.

The new weapons screen

Now it is not possible to change the equiped weapon via the inventory screen.  The weapon inventory is now only for showing your arsenal of guns and the amount of ammo you are carrying.

The new equipment screen

Te equipment screen has moved from horizontal pattern into a vertical one and is now more like the other inventory screens. It also shows more information about the armors you have.

New challenge system

It's time to reveal yet another overhaul. This time it's the challenge system. The previous challenge system was a bit clunky and didn't really work that well, since it required the one-save system. Now with the new savesystem I could make a new challenge system which for the time being supports 112 challenges. The new challenge interface looks like this:

The new challenge interface with a bit more graphical approach

Completeing challenges will reward the player with experience points. I've also planned to add some bonus content which will get unlocked when the player fulfills a certain amount of challenges.

More clever looking enemies

I've changed the way the enemies move. They used to walk between certain points with a stupid-looking pattern which was easily detected even by an infant. But from now on, the enemies are not as scripted anymore. They change their beahavior all the time, so when they move they might stop for a while, change direction or even do both.

This makes the enemy movement look more "realistic" and it's now much easier and more fun to perform sneak kills!

New map

A known fact: the old map system sucks ass. That's why I made a new one with a more graphical approach:

The new map system, which actually shows the terrain!

The new map shows the terrain and all the important stuff you need to see, including area names, settlements, merchant and medical station locations, waypoints etc. It also shows your exact position instead of just highlighting the screen you are in. As you can see the map is hidden and will open gradually as you explore new areas.

Enemy spawning

Hi again fellas! One of the most asked features to be made in Devastated is now up and running: controlled enemy spawning. This means that dead enemies won't immediately respawn when the screen changes. The enemy spawning is now controlled with a timer, so the enemies only spawn after a small amount of time. This prevents annoying enemy surprise attacks when the player exits a screen and then immediately returns.

Brand new save system and SCS!

It's been really quiet in the blog, but let me assure you that it hasn't been that quiet with the development of the game! A lot of stuff has been made, for instance a new save system which allows players to use their save files also in the future releases instead of having to create a new one for each updated version of  Devastated. The new system is much more developer-friendly, too.

The SCS computer has been rebuilt also. The new SCS is easier to use and contains games, take a look here:

The message screen of the new SCS

An SCS minigame!

More information about other overhauls coming soon, so stay tuned!

Hotfixes

The version 0.3.0 of Devastated was buggy as shit. I have already released 2 hotfix updates to fix some major bugs that could ruin the game experience. Because of the updates, the current version number is 0.3.2.

Let's pray everything works now :)

Update!

Devastated version 0.3.0 is finally here! The new version features a lot of new stuff to do, including new areas, quests, somekind of an arena, new enemies, challenges, new scenery, an another boss battle and much more!

Visit the main website to download the game: www.simp-pelit.co.nr/devastated

Back to 8.0

So it seems like they won't be able to fix the font problem. Darn. I also found out other issues with the new Game Maker: the save system and the update checker of Devastated refuse to work. - sigh -

That was the last straw. I'm tired of waiting for these things to get fixed. In the worst case scenario the issues will never be fixed... So I will use GM 8.0 to make Devastated. It may lack the small speed improvement, but hey, atleast it works!

New Game Maker

Hi everyone! A new version of Game Maker just got released and the project will be moved into the new program. The translation went really smoothly but one problem appeared: The new GM doesn't support bitmap fonts, which are used by Devastated. So I either have to convert the font files into game sprites, which takes time and the game's text will look slightly different or find an another font. Luckily the new Game Maker contains an auto-updater and the font problem will probably get fixed soon.

This shouldn't cause much delay with the game making. I won't be able to test the game properly though, since I can't see any of the text. Otherwise the new GM is way better than the old.

Let's hope the font issue gets fixed soon!

Agility is no more

A major game design aspect has been modified. I ditched the idea of skill level limits and instead of it I decided to remove the agility skill and replace it with endurance.

Basically endurance is the same as agility. It affects your moving speed and jump height. But in addition it also affects your maximum ammo capacity. That's right, from now on you'll have a limited ammo carrying capacity which increases when you upgrade your endurance level.

Better to end with a bang

In the previus versions when the player died the game just froze and the screen started to "melt". This looked very dull and death came as a surprise for the player. But not anymore! Now when the player's health reaches zero, the self-destruct of Edward's tech suit activates. This means an explosion as powerful as a dynamite. Why this happens will be told to the player in the game itself when he/she finds a certain character in a certain place.

And oh, the death-explosion hurts enemies too. When you die, you might take some enemies with you. It's always better to end with a bang, eh?

Boom. It seems like I died, but hey, atleast I took some mutants with me!

Storyline quests done!

Hi everyone! I'm happy to announce that all the main storyline quests for version 0.3.0 are done. The story quests include exploring new areas, kicking some devastator butt and a boss battle! I couldn't resist adding even more areas into the game because they were needed in the last current story quest.

Another cool feature I just added is screen shaking. So whenever there's an explosion in the screen, the whole screen vibrates. Neat, eh?

Now I have to finish with the side quests, do some fixes and make all kinds of little stuff. Then it's 0.3.0 version time!

Screenshot time!

Hi guys! It's time to reveal one of the areas of the upcoming version 0.3.0. In the enclosed screenshot you can see Edge Point, the town in the very edge of the gameplay area of the upcoming update. This is not the end of the final game world though, in future releases the wasteland will expand even further.

The town is at the moment very empty with only the nurse and the shopkeeper. The town will of course get populated before the upcoming relase.

The currently very empty town of Edge Point

The large image actually consists of three screenshots put together, so in the game the town is split into three screens. The ladder in the middle naturally leads to the railway station of the town.

Blog update & Simp-pelit logo

I changed the blog so that everyone should now be able to post comments without registration/Google account. I had accidently left the default setting which required registration enabled. Now that you can, feel free to post your thoughts in the comment section!

Besides main progress with the game, I designed a new logo for my game developer name, Simp-pelit. The new logo will replace the ugly flashing "SP" -text in the startup of Devastated. What do you guys think?

Let there be boss battles!

After a while of planning, I decided to add a boss battle to 0.3.0. I won't reveal you what kind of boss it will be, but I will guarantee a hectic battle against devastators.

I have enclosed a map of the new areas of the upcoming version. With the new areas, the wasteland will nearly double its size. The game area now consists of a whopping amount of screens, 172 in total.

A crappy paint-scetch of the new areas

All new areas finished!

The release of version 0.3.0 is getting closer and closer! I just finished making the new areas of the game. In total there is now 172 screens in the game. The new areas have more variety than the old ones, so the player gets to see different kinds of scenery.

The next thing to do is add new quests in the world, and there are lots of them to add. Stay tuned for more blog entries!

Dev blog started!

Hi there and welcome to Devastated development blog! In this blog I will (or atleast try to) post status updates about the game development progress. I will also post screenshots, maybe even gameplay videos so people can get sneak peeks of the ucoming releases.

Stay tuned for posts!