Development Update #3

Hello everyone!

Welcome to the third development update for Haunted: Attack of the Dead Men. This month has been surprisingly productive despite the festivities, and I hope you all had a good Christmas too. This update will be a bit longer than usual as I wanted to cover how far the game has come over the course of the year, as well as talk a bit about what will happen next - both in the next few months, as well as longer term. With that out of the way, let's get started!

From Tech Demo To, Well, Actual Demo

2022 has been a big year for Haunted: Attack of the Dead Men. At the start of the year, the game was little more than a simple tech demo, one of a number of projects I'd started and not really done anything with. At the beginning of the year, it looked like this...

This title screen doesn't actually do anything. The only buttons that work are "New Game" and "Quit"!


Where are his hands!??


It was somehow even harder to see what was going on back then!


The machine gun has since had a much needed update...

As you can see from these screenshots, it's a bit rough(er) around the edges. There are several things that the screenshots can't show though:

• The sound effects for the weapons are borderline placeholder assets
  
• The music sounds a bit off
  
• It was so dark I had to make some edits to take these screenshots!
  
• The performance was horrible. Map 2, seen in the last screenshot, was lagging even though almost nothing was in it!
  
• No scores at the end of each level. It just abruptly switches to the next level
  
• No pause menu, so taking these screenshots was quite annoying...
  
• Etc.
  

This old build only had one functioning level - Map 2 was almost empty. There was also only one enemy, which is using older sprites that I made as more of a proof-of-concept than anything else. He does make an appearance in the current demo though, see if you can find him!

So what has changed since then? Well, there have been roughly 1000 commits in the version control since this time last year, which brings the total commit count to about 1200. That means over 80% of the work done on the game so far has been done this year, even though I started it almost 4 years ago now. Needless to say, I'm taking it a bit more seriously now!

New Enemy, New Weapon

Now that's out of the way, it's time to talk about what I was doing this month. As I hinted at last month, the only things left to add to Map 8 were some new enemies. I had originally intended to make both of them this month, but I will explain why I changed my mind on that later. Anyway, it's time to introduce the new guy:


He is just referred to as Machine Gun Guy in the code because I haven't found a better name for him yet. As you can probably tell, that extra weight he's packing slows him down a bit. You can also hear him coming. But that extra padding is good for one thing - absorbing the recoil from those machine guns...


He's pretty devastating at close range, but also quite dangerous at a distance too. Oh, and he'll lay down some suppressive fire if you run and hide, as if it wasn't difficult enough.

If you let him pin you behind cover, you'll be easy pickings for the other enemies...

Now onto the new weapon. If you've read the manual, or looked through the key bindings menu, you've probably noticed references to a "sabre" of some kind. This was to be the last weapon in the arsenal, to provide a melee option for when ammo is running low. I had originally intended it to be some kind of cavalry sabre, since World War One had cavalry in it right? Well, I did a bit more research and had a better idea - it looks like this:



This is a Cossack Shashka - it was issued to Cossack regiments in both World Wars. Here is a Cossack carrying one:


If you hadn't guessed yet, the other enemy I was planning to add to Map 8 is a Cossack. He'll definitely have that fancy hat too! But, back to the weapon. Here is what it looks like in-game.


It doesn't do as much damage as the guns, but it benefits from very fast attacks (and not requiring ammo).

He doesn't know what hit him!

And with that, all 8 weapons are in the game at last.

What's Next?

Finally, it's time to talk about where I will go from here. In February, there will be a Steam Next Fest event, which focuses on promoting demos for upcoming games. I've decided to participate in this event, which will (hopefully) help the game reach a broader audience.

There is still time to make some improvements to the demo in time for this event, so the game will be the best it can be for new players. This means that version 1.1.0 of the demo will be out soon - but what will it contain?

Well, I had some ideas while making the Shashka. I realised that if I was going to have a melee weapon, and a melee-focussed enemy, it would be nice to be able to block attacks. This meant adding a new button for it, but why should this button only work for one weapon?

In 1.1.0, I will be introducing a new feature - alternate fire modes. The general gist of it is, most weapons will have a secondary "attack" - these will be specific to the weapon. This is still a work-in-progress, but I will cover it in more detail in next month's update (along with more details on the additions in 1.1.0). For now though, here is a preview:

Can you work out what's about to happen?

Longer term, I know I have set a provisional release date for the game as Q4 2023. This means one more year of development time. It has yet to be determined if this was too ambitious, but I will give it my best shot. Rest assured, I will make an announcement later in the year if it becomes clear that more time is needed.

That's all for this update. Thanks for reading, and I hope everyone has a wonderful New Year!