Hello and thanks for reading the first actual Devlog for Almighty Shield! I will try to keep this a weekly thing even if I have barely anything to show! As the title says, I will discuss my design philosophy of the Sewers in Almighty Shield.

New Devlog

Have to be honest with you; I am not the biggest fan of writing long texts so it is tough for me to write something that is enjoyable to read, but I will try. In addition, I have decided to delete previous Devlogs as I wrote them in a hurry and they barely have any content. I will also try to do these weekly, this can be difficult sometimes since I do not have something I can write about.

What is the Sewer? How do I try to teach mechanics?

The Sewer is the first Area in Almighty Shield in which the player can freely roam. It is, obviously, very important that the Player gets introduced to the Mechanics and environment of the game. Therefore, the first few rooms are linear and show you the general idea of the game, the idea of the game being that dashing/shield bashing is your main movement and attacking option.

(Picture from the map editor, not in game.)

The way I teach the player is simple; to show the power of the dash I made a puzzle room. The goal of the puzzle room is to get the key, to use on the gate, in order to proceed. Now what the player can do instead is break the Lock on the gate with dashing. To further solidify this mechanic, the next Map has the same gate but with no key and a prompt showing how to dash. Once the gate is broken, the player is able to proceed to the next puzzle. The next puzzle is also simple; I made the player’s path difficult by a falling trap that the Player cannot avoid if he is not dashing. Now there are better ways than instantly punishing the player for a mistake they did, so that area is still in consideration. Next up is the Guard mechanic, which is able to stagger the opponent if the opponent tries to hit you with an attack. I teach the player the mechanic with a sewer rat that throws trash at the Player. If the trash hits the Player, it slows him/her for a bit but not dealing any actual damage. Once the player passes the room, he gets to test the mechanics he learned on three Sewer rats that that the player has found.

Visual Design of the Sewers

The Visual design of the Sewers is the part that took the longest to figure out. The first iteration of the sewers was extremely simple with Lighting made from tile sets instead of an actual lighting system (Notice the crooked shadow).

(First iteration of the Sewer)

Even though the quality of this version is obviously very low, I still went with it as I could make the base Map design. I sadly do not have any maps from the time that screenshot was made. I have sat down with a friend of mine and tried to figure out how to make the map design interesting and feel “full”.

(Second iteration of the Sewer)

This is how it looks after a few tweaks. Something was wrong and I could feel it. It was too empty, that was it! In addition, I tried figuring out how to fix the emptiness of the Map. First thing was adding variation to the wall themselves. Adding varying bricks, vines etc. this helped to make the map feel a bit fuller. However, it was not perfect it still was a straight wall.

(Near final iteration of the Sewer)

I added these pillars, pipes and variations to the floor and boom that is the design that instantly clicked once I finished it. It kept your eyes “fed” you could say. Now a few months after this, design I switched up some things, I decided not to have a seamless world and have “level based” map design. I added Lighting, grass and dirt to the game and now it looks like this:

(Final Iteration of the Sewers)

The Future

There is still a lot within the Sewers of which I really want to write about but I do not want the first Devlog to be excessively long. Who knows, maybe I don’t have anything to write about tomorrow so I can use that info as a filler ;) 

Anyways, see ya next Devlog.

-Martin.

Discord: https://discord.gg/dmsK93Z6Pq

Twitter: @Kl3XY