This forum thread has most of the devblog info. However, there’s a devblog located at indieDB as well and consolidates a lot of info into a single briefing. It also includes some technical info which i’ll mention here as well.
Summary / TLDR:
the vertical oscillation in the original concept didn’t synergize very well with combat as a commercially viable game.
transitioning to a twin-stick shooter helped preserve the theme, and allowed me to explore adding a new dimension to combat that is uncommon in shmups
it was a great opportunity to study genre precedents
this project saw a migration from Unreal Engine 4.1 to 4.21
adding the ground plane for z-based combat adds a nice twist to gameplay where timing plays a critical role with each bomb type
multiplayer coop gameplay evokes some great social-conflict resolution since resources are shared
one of the biggest gameplay challenges outside of balancing was designing the dynamic camera movement that accommodated for players traveling in a downward direction
Thanks again, and looking forward to throwing myself to the wolves launch this friday
Marketing the game now.
Using UE4 to build the mini comedy sketch using the concept of dropping F-bombs to promote Flutter Bombs.
Nothing like droppin’ some f-bombs to kill some time.
Always fun to drop f-bombs in-between games.
Do you remember your first f-bomb?
Will continue to sketch more ideas with these characters as the marketing campaign grows.
PS4 port almost available, and recently approved for Switch.
Will scour the forums for optimization strategies on switch, but open to any ideas if anyone has built this sort of game for switch.
latest patch has been pushed on all platforms except discord. actually sorta putting discord build on the backburner and leaving things at Steam/Xbox/PS4. (would love to get into the epic store at some point as well).
still looking into Switch optimization, but first tests had really really slow framerate, so i’ll need to figure out how to profile on that device. The switch is probably my favorite console, so really want to get this game working on it.
the latest patch includes an adjustment to the game cam which makes a major difference. because this is a depth-biases shmup, downward movement would normally create difficult gameplay scenarios since players don’t have enough time to react to obstacles from the bottom of the screen. to mitigate this, i created a dynamic camera that follows the player and adjusts itself based on player positioning. by reducing the lag time and travel distance of the camera, downward movement is not impacted by the depth-biased nature of the game.
also created more consistency between level mechanics. for example, wagtail’s swamp had some inconsistency with the obstacles during normal gameplay vs the obstacles during the boss fight. this has been coordinated now to better inform the player of what to expect.
here’s some footage:
