House Cleaner - A top down fast paced slow motion shooter

Hello!

I just wanted to show you guys my latest project, something that I've been tinkering with over the last 2 weeks and is a summary of my ideas that I've been trying to do over the last year (in a bunch of failed projects and prototypes).

House Cleaner is a top down shooter in the vein of Hotline Miami/Nuclear Throne. It's fast paced, demands focus and fast decision making.
You play as this guyhttp://i.imgur.com/L7RsuV4.gifwho gets called in to clean out warehouses with adult-candy making baddies (super deep story I know).
Currently I have two kinds of enemies, your regular meth headhttp://i.imgur.com/IgWoaba.gifand your fat grenadier http://i.imgur.com/OQRyt8s.gif.

The core loop is you pick your shots to build your energy, you trigger slow motion, run in and dodge bullets while clearing enemies and get out before it runs out. The game shifts between being a shooter and at times a bullet hell game.
http://i.imgur.com/JdvvPJj.gif
(big gif right below this, please be patient :) )
http://i.imgur.com/yr903Dm.gif

Everything is based on this slowmotion function since it's the core of the game. when you hit that mouse button everything changes, enemies slow down and move different, bullets group up different, you the player move different. Depending on the amount of energy you have it all changes dynamically (even things as sound effects pitch up and down which I'm really proud of, too bad gifs don't have sound effects).

I've been working a lot on getting the feel of the shooting right, but now that I think I've nailed it I'm going to focus on polishing up it and making it look prettier. Here's what it currently looks like running through one of the levels
http://i.imgur.com/NhUH9Oa.gif

To keep this realistic I'm keeping a small scope and after I release it for free I'll see if there's a interest/inspiration to do a bigger version.
What I currently need for an alpha release is:

-A music track
-Better sound effects
-A third enemy (I might make it so the current enemies have a chance of shooting a different, much harder pattern when in slow motion instead).
-A couple of more levels (currently have 3).
-Polish graphics and add more props and decorations.

Thank you for reading and I hope you give it a spin when I release it (currently aiming end of march) :).

Code:

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One of the reasons I created this thread was to keep a sort of devlog. So I might as well add what I did today just before I  posted this thread

20170226
Added a lot of small things to make the shooting feel better
-Enemies flash
-more blood
-Screen flashes on hit
-Bullet screenshake
-Different effects on walls, floors etc
-Camera scrolls with the cursor instead of being set on the player
-Chance for crit damage.

Changed how the slowmotion works
-Instead of it automatically getting triggered when you shoot enemies, you turn it on manually
-A big effect blasts through the arena to show it
-Background turns into a disco
-You can keep it going by shooting enemies but since the gain is small it forces you to go in, shoot and then have a exit plan in mind.

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Looks fun! I want to play now!

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G928A using Tapatalk

Cool, I really like the effects, and subtle screen shakes :)

Thanks for the kind words maxx and hamstermp!!

Small progress today, I made a mistake of not bringing the rest of the props and assets into the right perspective as the character, gone through and made them proper 3/4 perspective. How do you guys handle collision in this perspective? currently the "front" of the assets are seperate object that dont get pasted as obstacles allowing the player to walk over them.

http://i.imgur.com/JH3vTFb.png

Also changed the crosshair, small detail but apparently it annoyed a few testers for not being accurate enough. It's all in the mind since the the bullets arent pinpoint anyway but it seems to have worked.

http://i.imgur.com/nqiMvUr.png

I released an alpha if anyone wants to try it. It also hit me that the main gif in the first post was over 40mb... so i think I lost some views and people saw the first crappy one lol! Anyway i cut it up in pieces and hopefully it sparks your interest!

http://i.imgur.com/Amr7Hu1.gif
http://i.imgur.com/JdvvPJj.gif
http://i.imgur.com/wkiFAUx.gif

If you want to try it you can get it from the itch.io page right here! https://shotgun-anaconda.itch.io/house-cleaner

Crazy stuff!
Looks over-active and addictive :D
And very smooth-playing.
Also like the unusual setting.

Hope to find a good spot to try the alpha, keep on ;)!

Thank you so much schrodinger, I would love to get your feedback after you played it!

After this weekend i got some good feedback already:
First of all Thank you for everyone that played the Demo

Keypoints to fix:
The acceleration/deacceleration was there to give a bit of skill and punishment but annoyed more than helped. So movement will get tweaked to be more precise and responsive, inertia needs to go.

Enemy attacks need to be more clear especially in a none slowed world..

For certain people the game runs extra fast making especially the mouse camera way too sensitive, it seems to be for people with high end rigs. I'm thinking it's something with the FPS being too high or something with the screen refresh rate? I have to do more research on this. Should have made the whole game in delatime but no i was lazy. If anyone knows anything about this, i would love some info.

Started on the third enemy who's a shotgunner, who will be the final puzzle for the first version of the games game design
http://i.imgur.com/YbvK4SW.gif

The gameloop while handling enemies will be:
Pistol goon - Pushing the player to dodge and stay on the move
Grenedier - Allowing the player to build energy while in a crowd to handle crowd control
Shotgunner - Will force the player to kite enemies to dodge the spread and dispose of efficiently

Next up is adding some pathfinding to the enemies, something I've never been able to do but we'll see how it goes.

Devlog from today

Code:

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-Changed movement, there's no more astroid acc/dec, movement is much more responsive allowing more interactive dodging.
-Enemy bullet speeds slowed down when slowmotion isnt triggered, allowing easier build up of energy
-Enemy grenade enlarged 3x, making them big explosive green balls
-Fixed a bug with the animated HUD
-More screenshake when player takes damage
-Started on enemy 3, a shotgun guy. See giffor shooting animation

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http://i.imgur.com/hzxeC9b.gif

Implemented the Shotgunner. A fat, short guy that chases you down before he fires. Still needs some balancing and tweaks but works well for now :)

Code:

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20170315
Animated shotgunner walk
basic ai of chasing and shooting

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This looks very promising. The slow-motion thing is a great hook, and I can imagine it being marketed as something like a Hotline Miami meets Superhot. Some thoughts:

One of the main things I didn't like about Hotline Miami was the very simple AI (or lack thereof). Every single enemy seemed to have just two modes: (a) be oblivious to you, and (b) kamikaze charge at you. Already, the AI feels more interesting in this game to me. The baddies feel a bit more organic, and a bit less single-minded.

I agree that the movement is a bit too floaty. I think it's good that you've got inertia, but you've got too much. But I wouldn't get rid of it altogether.

I have a decent rig (4770k @ stock, 980ti SLI), and I couldn't see any real difference in speed compared to your GIFs. I also tried running the game with my monitor set at 60hz, 120hz and 144hz, and it didn't seem to make any difference. The FPS was always 60fps. This was even when I forced VSYNC off globally in the nvidia control panel.

For me, the number one issue with your game, apart from the camera is: clarity. There are a lot of elements that feel unclear, misleading, or vaguely signposted. For example, I never really felt I knew 100% what was going on with the blur bar on the left: is it health, is it the slowmo stuff? It has 4 divisions in it - is that significant? If so, how? Also,
the difference between tiles that you can/can't cross is pretty hard to discern sometimes. The black areas look like trenches that you should be able to shoot over. And the purple areas (which are impenetrable walls) can easily be mistaken for purple floor tiles.

Most importantly though, In the several levels that I played, I never once felt the slow-mo mechanic. Even when I look at the GIFs, I can't really tell what the difference is between the slow-mo and the non-slow-mo gameplay. It looks and feels to me like the enemies and protagonist all move at roughly the same speed no matter what. I think is one of those things where it's super-obvious to you, because you've spent so much time immersed in the game. But I think whatever the differences are between the two modes need to be accentuated waaaay more. The main difference I could feel was the flashing colors - but because they flash between such disparately different colors, I felt unsure whether they all represented the same mode, or were in fact different modes - in the end, they did more to distract me and throw me out of my rhythm than anything else. And it doesn't help that one of the color states (grey) looks near-identical to the normal non-slow mode. Overall, I think that everything about this slow-mo mode needs to be communicated to the player much more crisply.

I also found the camera very distracting. It just moved around way too much and way too fast for my comfort (I don't think it was my system - the GIFs look about the same). I the problem is that if I'm shooting at an enemy to the left, and then I see an enemy on the right, I naturally whip around as fast as I can to aim at the guy on the right....but by doing so I've just abruptly whipped the camera around, which disorients me at just the moment I was going to shoot.

Finally, I hope you add gamepad support. This is basically a twin-stick shooter, which kind of begs to be played with a gamepad.

I hope that wasn't too critical for you. I wouldn't have bothered writing it if I didn't think you had the potential for something special here!

Thank you Volnaiskra for such a great feedback post!

Thank you for trying the different settings, i guess it was either a one time thing or the user that complained thought it was too fast in general. Putting this bug in the backlog for now.
I've also updated the movement, i will continue to tweak it to find the balance between the floaty sensation but still being responsive. I'm leaning towards making it really responsive when you are in slowmotion, giving the player even more reasons to maximize their slow motion time.

The slow motion feedback is interesting. I'm guessing a lot of it has to do with the lack of a tutorial (or explanation in general to be honest), the system works like this:
The four different parts give you different amount of slow down when you trigger it. It gradually lowers the effect as the bar runs out. So if you have a maxed energy they should be a lot slower, half way a bit less and if you are at the lowest it's barely noticable. Do you still feel no difference when you max the bar out and then hit right mouse to trigger it? This is another part that I will have to tweak now that the game is shaping up, so any feedback you and others can give is great :)

Camera: Yes, others have complained that it's too sensitive... but I don't know how to fix it, i think it's above my knowledge, right now there's an invisible camera between the crosshair and the player that it's focusing on and I dont know how to make it less responsive since the mouse is the mouse and the sensitivity is on the user end? I'm sure there is a solution i just dont know it.

I know what you mean with hotline Miami, it worked for their game loop, to make the player pull of quick moves and focus on reactions. It did bite them in the butt in the sequel. If I can make it more organic (great word!) i would love to.
It's funny you mention my AI, because it is really simple... they were just bouncing around (in designated areas) and get triggered when you either shoot them or enter their LoS, they would then chase and shoot until they hit a wall at which point they would reset and just patrol their area. Very simple and very stupid.... until now!!

I've been bashing my head into the wall for 5 hours today but finally accomplished something I've never been able to do before which is.... PATHFINDING. See following gif:
http://i.imgur.com/1qb0ymJ.gif

Which now means that the enemies will chase you until you kill them, I will probably expand this for them to have some sort of cooldown so you can hide and let them go away, it's basically triggering a flag on and off plus resetting a value so it shouldn't be too difficult. Probably a simple thing but I'm actually quite proud. Hopefully Fusion3 has some sort of pathfinding built in haha.

Also made a more clear LoS. With this i can have more control of when they enemies e.g. shoot instead of them spamming shots into the wall when they are following you.

http://i.imgur.com/8ckftes.png

Next step I'm probably going to make menus and either making a tutorial or introduction-levels that make all the features clear.

Code:

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20170318
-Tweaks to slowmotion speeds
-Path finding milestone!
-LoS
-Various bug fixes for enemy shooting and movement.

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After playing it again andpaying careful attention to the 4 stages of the bar, I can sort of feel the slowmo now. But it's a case of a subtle change in the first 1 or 2 bars, and then almost no discernible change in the last 2 or 3 bars. Overall, it just doesn't feel gratifying enough. I'd much more enjoy a bar that was much harder to fill up, but that gave you a much bigger payoff (like, 3 or 4 times slower perhaps).

For the camera, you probably just need to use Linear Interpolation (LERP). You can find plenty of info if you google it, or have a look at the MFA I uploaded on another thread (or the ammended version schrodinger posted lower down on that thread). Basically, notice how the camera is comprised of two pieces: the grey target and the blue camera. The target moves abruptly, in line with the player movements. And the camera follows the target, but on a smoothed out delay of sorts. I think that's the sort of thing you could do in your game. Basically, your current camera is like the grey target: it's hard-linked to the player's inputs. You'd just need to add a second layer (ie. the blue camera) that uses LERP to follow that target. I'm actually in the process of making a much more sophisticated and customisable and (hopefully) user-friendly version of that MFA I uploaded, which I expect to put on the Clickstore for a few bucks in a week or two. But really, all the basics you'd need would be in that MFA I already posted.

I figured your AI was simple, especially since you mentioned that you hadn't done pathfinding yet (good job by the way - that seems very impressive for only 5 hours!). But I think the fact that they sometimes laid off you helped make it feel a bit more organic (even if it was only because they hit a wall...which is kinda dumb, you're right, lol) - and also the way their speed seems a bit erratic. But now that you've got pathfinding working, I'm sure you can make the AI feel more organic in other ways. Like you mentioned, you can do a cooldown. Also, you can a bit of randomisation here and there. I imagine it might not be too complicated to give an enemy who spotted you a chance of running away from you....but then if he comes close to a second enemy, he will then run back towards you, with the 2nd enemy in tow...

Thanks for the feedback, I will tweak around the values to make it more clear, i have some ideas on small gameplay tweaks that will enhance the feel too (e.g. removing the initial fixed cost of energy, instead letting it just subtract). Thank you for the LERP example! I will check it out and see what I can apply.

The AI works better than expected right now to be honest, the difficulty really got ramped up since they chase you until oblivion right now so tweaks will have to be done. Cooldown is given but things like running away, hiding spots and some other secrets are a few tweaks i have in my head. Fun times!

For some more shameless promotion, I created a twitter for my dev name so if you got one, hit that follow button and I'll gladly do the favor back! https://twitter.com/ShotgunAnaconda

Ta da! Camera Lerp! Can you guess which is the one with and without?

http://i.imgur.com/WqaRal0.gif

Good work! Left looks way more graceful and easy to see what's going on

Definitely looking better!

You're getting key improvements and results very fast,
congrats on both your game and skills :D

redrew wall and floor tiles. Looks much better imo, what do you guys think?

http://i.imgur.com/9EiqEpS.png

larger

http://i.imgur.com/hkY8Gtg.png

oh, yeah, for sure. Just from an aesthetic perspective, that 'cobblestone' look looks great. But they're also way more 'impenetrable' looking. I had to stick them side by side to be sure, and they most definitely work well. These definitely look like two very separate areas IMO (I believe I've lined them up correctly to your grid):

http://i.imgur.com/7HC0TuZ.png

Havent found a chance to work on the game this week, it's 3am now and ive sat the last 2 hours doing some pixel stuff just to get some progress.

Explosion:
http://i.imgur.com/D9mBPcv.gif
Double Cup powerup pickup:
http://i.imgur.com/zs0kSP6.gif
And also did some new, basic, concrete tiles for a new enviroment.
http://i.imgur.com/yXQtxRy.png

I'm also going to pick apart the pathfinding of the AI and release it for anyone that wants it. It's one of those things that i looked for before i figured it out so it might help others in the clicking. hopefully i can release that early next week.

Implemented the explosion, changed the hud and did an enemy damage bar like Diablo. Captured a small gif to show this. I need more footage...

http://i.imgur.com/JUqrpFj.gif

Code:

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20170408
-New explosion
-Changed the hud
-Enemy damage bar

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2017-04-09

Added loot drops instead of you getting the score instantly. It has a really cool sound effect too... but you are just going to have to imagine that for now since webm isnt supported.
http://i.imgur.com/xa4pJds.gif

Code:

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20170409
-loot drop

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The last couple of dev sessions havent been dedicated to House Cleaner main game. Instead i've worked on a potential feature. I've always wanted to do have a level generator in the game to avoid players playing the same thing over and over. But as we all know this is one of the hardest thing to do. I've done some variations of it before

http://i.imgur.com/JgerH9p.gif

but that's literally carving out the level infront of you with very little polish. Instead the widely done method of Spelunky/Enter the Gungeon is the one i wanted to do for House Cleaner. A generator that builds the world from different premade rooms. I've tried doing this before in very simple ways but the only way i could do it was to split up the frame in equal sized parts and then paste in rooms with no walls. As you hear, that method created very boring and simple rooms.

So this is what ive been trying to do for a while now and... almost success! What I have now is the node generator. It creates a world structure and then populates it with different kinds of rooms. The generation was one part of the headache but then getting the world to create rooms from a random quantity (that gets generated at the start) was harder.

http://i.imgur.com/6t9joTu.gif

But.... Now i have to figure out the important step, take that layout and make it create the rooms. The room creation from arrays shouldnt be hard, the difficult part will be connecting them somehow.

So, how's that end of march release date going? X)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Volnaiskra

So, how's that end of march release date going? X)

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hahaha!

Well! Technically I released an alpha (which got 59 more downloads than i expected) so I didnt lie!
Jokes aside, the feedback from the alpha (here and other places) really gave the confirmation I needed. It just grew in my head and I felt the need to add more features.

We'll see how this ends up.....

Yep, I know how it goes. Spryke was originally meant to come out in 2014 ;)

I'm just glad you continued working on Spryke!

A new gif of a new level, new enemy, new office tiles, more effects and more destructible props!

http://i.imgur.com/WApu9Zu.gif

Code:

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20170415
-New tiles
-New props (laptop, explosive barrel, books, laptop)
-Tweaked lightning

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Made the barrels trigger each other. Have some fun ideas for this later on :).

https://i.redd.it/zt6dsmxpq4sy.gif

Nice! Touches like this are what separate good games from great ones. You know what might be even cooler though? If each exploding barrel made adjacent barrels slide along the floor before they themselves exploded. That would make those chain reactions more spectacular (and with good timing, the player could explode enemies who, initially, weren't even near a barrel)

Great idea!
I will implement that!

Progress has been slow, I've started doing things that doesn't have much to do with the ingame gameplay. Who knew menus took such a long time....
Anyway things like that combined with work hasn't given me much time for the game but i sat this Friday and today and made a working level editor. I've tried doing one for a long time but I could never get it working smoothly, until Clickteam implemented the option to call on objects names. This little feature has made it so easy to create a efficient editor (efficient for me that is). Here's a little gif:
http://i.imgur.com/0rwcHHV.gif

I actually haven't used it to make a real level so we'll see if it makes the game making easier or just more annoying haha.

OH WHAT A GOOD LEVEL EDITOR ! Excellent Zip2kx !!! A good level editor speed up your workflow :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by arthurh

OH WHAT A GOOD LEVEL EDITOR ! Excellent Zip2kx !!! A good level editor speed up your workflow :)

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Thanks man, it still has some kinks i need to work out but i look forward to using it :)

I had a hour today to work on this, but decided to improve the editor with an idea i got when i was trying to sleep. Using a subapp i could easily make a tile viewer/selector. Now i go the list view but a UI to quickly select walls and such. I'll get back to the game... soon.

http://i.imgur.com/yvRtzvL.gif

Releasing a new demo today, get it at https://shotgun-anaconda.itch.io/house-cleaner

Lots of new things compared to the old one, both big and small.

• Two new levels
• New shotgun enemy
• PATHFINDING, enemies will now chase you until death
• Movement is tweaked once again
• Slow-mo is changed to be triggered with mouse button instead of auto
• Proper menu
• Combo system
• Gears of War reloading
• A music track
• Effects, new tiles, sound effects etc

Just today i added a combo system and a gears of war reloading system
http://i.imgur.com/2F25Hmy.gif
http://i.imgur.com/jRGZjmX.gif