Welcome to the Positron Dev Log!

This is the first post for what I plan to be a weekly log describing the progress and documenting the process of making this game. I will be discussing every element I work on. Since I am a solo developer, themes will range from design to programming, from art to music, and I hope that this record will one day be useful to anyone interested on this journey.

Since this is the first post, I will be presenting the concept behind this game and tools I'm using.

Concept

The concept of this game was conceived during a game jam (LudumDare 35), which theme was Shape Shifting. I came up with the idea of having 3 different shapes that would react according to electrical forces law (though not just positive and negative, but it considered if two were the same or different shapes), and the player would have to navigate through the level, permuting between those 3 shapes, without colliding with anything, until reaching the end of it. The project name was "Shape Magnet" and it's still available here, if you want to check it out.

Fast forward 2 years, and I finally feel less embarrassed about my overall skills, so I decided to finally work on the post-jam version of it, but with some modifications on the concept. The player will now be able to change into 2 forms, positive/light/angled and negative/dark/round. This change was made to facilitate level design, and creates a duality for the overall design of the game, besides, having 3 different forms doesn’t seem to add anything to the concept, other than challenge the control of the player, but of course this is open to changes. The original version only had one type of "enemy", so I plan to expand that, but that will be for another post.

Tools

To make this game I am prioritizing the usage of free open-source software, since this is really an amateur work. One day I wish to be able to contribute to those software, but for now I only have enough time to work on this project.

• Engine: Godot Engine

The jam version of the game used Unity, but I decided to change to the open-source option, and Godot seemed interesting and on the rise.

• Graphics: Inkscape

I will be using vector art as I liked the previous neon style, but most of the visual will be changed, like the main colors and effects (previously arranged in Inkscape, most of them I will be doing through shaders).

• Music: LMMS

The previous version didn't have music, but for the post-jam I will be using LMMS alongside with the numerous synths available.

• Sound Effect: ChipTone

I usually used bfxr, but one time I found ChipTone and I was found of it's UI, so I changed to it.

• Managing stuffs: Trello & Git

Conclusion

With this post, we basically brushed through what I want to achieve and with which weapons I hope to do it. The next one I will be dealing with the how, and something on the actual development of the game. Today's release is fairly basic, but I want to start focusing on the foundations of the game, since I believe if the basics are not good, the game will never feel good, and it's better for the long run. I hope you all have a great week and see you in the next one!