Welcome to June’s monthly update for Akuto: Mad World. This month I completed most of the singleplayer mode research and testing. Hopefully, by the end of next month, I will have a working version of the singleplayer mode.
You can read on to see what progress I have made with the singleplayer mode in June. At the bottom of this post, you will find what I am planning for next month. And remember, if you like the game, recommend it to your friends or leave us a nice review.
Akuto: Mad World is now available from Steam or Humble Store.
Singleplayer Mode
In the first week, I was researching in what direction to take the singleplayer mode. I was leaning on using procedural generation to create levels, which would be bigger than any level currently in the game! But, I was still not 100% on this idea yet, as the level generation had to fit the core gameplay of Akuto: Mad World. I decided not to mention what the goal of the singleplayer mode would be as that would spoil the surprise for players. I planned to continue researching for one more week.
I completed the research on the second week and decided on what direction to take the singleplayer mode. Singleplayer mode will be a time trial mode with procedural-generated arenas. The goal will be to complete the arenas as fast as possible whilst trying to kill all the enemies to gain a high score. To keep it fair, I will create two separate leaderboards, one for players who complete singleplayer mode the fastest and one for players who complete singleplayer mode with the highest score. After this, I made a list of all the tasks I have to do to complete singleplayer mode, and estimated that I would be complete and releasing the singleplayer mode at the end August. That is only less than three months away, so I best start working.
The following week I got the level generation working as I wanted. It looked great. Not sure how it played at this stage though.
After this, I added the player movement. Players could now technically complete the singleplayer mode, even though there are no enemies, traps, or goals in it. The camera worked great though.
I did find at this stage that some of the larger generated levels would provide difficulty to players finding the exit. To solve this problem, I created a short animation of an arrow that points in the direction of the level exit. Hopefully this should keep players going in the right direction.
To make sure that players didn’t just linger around on a level, I decided on creating ‘ghost’ bots. These bots keep spawning after a certain length of time a player is on a level. And they don’t stop spawning. Players can kill them, but they will keep coming back. This should provide enough motivation for players to complete the levels quickly.
In the last week of the month, I created a plan of all the assets I needed to create for the singleplayer mode. To do make this plan, I split the singleplayer mode levels into four distinct areas: Wasteland, Jungle, City, and Temple. Players will have to complete each area twice, eight levels in total, to complete singleplayer mode. All these levels will play the same, but will have their own theme to the assets. By assets, I mean the ground, level props, etc. Another thing that will be different on these levels is that each area will have their own set of unique enemies. I have currently around twelve enemies planned, three for each distinct area.
Plans for July
For the first two weeks in July, I will be focusing on modelling, animating, and coding the levels, level props, level traps, and the enemies. After this, I will start working on importing the assets into the levels and having a working version of the singleplayer mode before the end of July.
And remember, if you like the game, recommend it to your friends or leave us a nice review.