Tag: game development

Enemy spawner in Skullkeys – Game dev blog

Skullkeys – enemy spawner

Hey fellow gamers / developers and music lovers!

Here’s another sneak peak video from the gameplay of Skullkeys. Nothing is carved in stone yet, but we are designing game assets and events which will later be used to create the final levels. So consider all this as WIP…you know the drill during game dev. 😋

New features in Skullkeys game engine?

Some new features in the Skullkeys game which will be seen in the video:

  • Main menu (rough idea)
  • Enemy spawner asset (spits out bats…max 2 out at a time)
  • The bats can now go into a “found player”-state and a hunting-state which makes them feel more alive and dangerous.
  • Bomb collectible.

In the new demo the camera is a bit wacky (zooming out way too much) in this latest video, but that’s because we have experimented with the camera in our multiplayer mode. We will fix the camera asap.

Enemy spawner asset

We’ve created an enemy spawn asset to the game engine. At the moment (as seen in the video) the enemy spawner spits out bats to hunt the player. Furthermore, the spawner can be used (alternatively) instead of placing individual enemies on the level. A quick helper to throw enemies into a level.

The enemy spawner is customizable with the follwing parameters:

  • Sprite – the graphics of the spawner. It’s currently a kind of “cage” / hive. 😉
  • Entities (list) – a list of objects (monsters) that the spawner can create.
  • TimeBeforeSpawn (int) – how many secs between each new entity will spawn. The type of entity to spawn is randomly selected from the list.
  • MaxEntitiesOut (int) – So we can limit the amount of entities the spawner will spit out. When this limit is reached at least one of the enemies need to be defeated before new ones will spawn.
  • TotalEntitiesToSpawn (int) – a max amount of entities the spawner can spit out during it’s lifetime.
  • CanBeKilled (bool) – Can the spawner be defeated?
  • IsAlive (bool) – only spawns when it’s alive
  • Health (int) – how much damage can the spawner take before it’s killed?

There’s obviously more rules and parameters on the spawner asset. But these are a few rules to show the flexibility of this asset.

We can basically throw in any kind of monster into it, or a variety of monsters and the spawner will start to spit out these during gameplay. Fun isn’t it?

We also started to dress the levels with some more foley like spider-web, chains, pillars etc. to suite the dungeon theme.

Until next game dev update! Have a good one!

// Mattias

Skullkeys gameplay video teaser

Skullkeys in-game video teaser #1

We can finally reveal a little bit of gameplay teaser of Skullkeys! Hope you enjoy the clip! The level is not finished by all means. This is all work in progress as we develop game functionality, logic and content!

But you get to see some blocks blown away by bombs, enemies killed, skeleton bones flying all over the place and some bats. 😉

Until next vlog, blog! See ya!

// Mattias

Another teaser clip…just for you. 😉

Skullkeys gameplay video teaser #2

Early access of Skullkeys!

Hi, me and Nicklas begun the development of Skullkeys in april 2021 with the vision to make an awesome metroidvania / dungeon crawler game. We wanted to build the kind of game we grew up with. You know like; Castlevania, Metroid, Faxanadu, Blaster Master etc.

Skullkeys is in very early development, but we aim to release early access releases VERY SOON as we want to get input from the community and get the word going.

We are talking about setting up a build server and let users download the latest test builds from our website to try out. All while we develop the game for a full official release…in the future. 🥳

The tools we are using to reach our game development goal is mostly free / open source solutions:

GODOT – game engine. It’s such a wonderful game engine. In my opinion it’s up there with the mighty Unity / UE in many ways. Godot is lightweight, accessible and supports both 2D and 3D in intuitive ways. For us it’s a great collaborative tool.

Blender – for overall 3d graphics and some image processing. I made the Skullkeys logo, and sculpt the skulls in Blender app. Blender is free / open source and is so smooth for general modelling, shading. The accessible nodebased system can quickly create powerful graphical setups.

Affinity Designer – pixel & vector graphics / image processing. Affinity makes the best graphic tools on the market and while it is a payed product, the price (subscription free!!!) is just a bargain – $24.99 on Mac/Win….and only 9.99 on iPad! Highly recommended app!

TexturePacker – for packing sprites into neat spritesheets.

Bitbucket / GIT – for source code version control. Our safety and collaboration environment.

Logic Pro – Digital Audio Workstation (DAW) is used to create the music and sound effects you hear in SkullKeys. We use a mixture of real world (recorded) foley sounds with synthesized sound effects to create the atmosphere of Skullkeys.

Bitwig Studio – another DAW which Mattias use to create the music of Skullkeys.

FL Studio – yet another DAW which is used to create music and sound effects. FL has a very intuitive sound editor (Edison) which is great for overall noise cleanup and audio file processing.

Both me and Nicklas are avid codes and game designers so we are splitting the development work between us to make the most of our skills where needed.

Today I (Mattias) animated the logo with some dramatic lighting and subtle movement to make the skulls feel more hostile and eerie. Yes, it’s a simple Blender scene with a 1 logo, 3 skulls, 2 light-sources (yellow key-light, and a blue light from the bottom). Dramatic!

Nicklas have been implementing destructible tiles so you can blow up some of the blocks in the world and it looks smashing! He is also working on some of the traps in the game. We love to play with physics so there will be plenty of bones breaking in Skullkeys. And many objects will interact in intuitive ways to make the world come alive!

We are aiming for accessible game objects, enemies and traps which can easily be placed while designing levels.

Here are some very early screenshots.

skullkeys_screenshot_02
Bombs away, yes there will be bombs and many pickups in Skullkeys!
skullkeys_screenshot_01
Bats, oh how lovely they bite…in swarms!

Make sure to bookmark skullkeys.com so you get the latest news. Very soon we will add some videos of the actual gameplay in action.

…to be continued…