The Ballad of Boomstick McCrakin

DEV LOG 10 — LATEST

Testing Quest Flow

Here we start to test the quest flow of the shooter vertical slice. Lots of bugs, lots of placeholders. I added billboard text over a lot of the items so I didn't lose track of what was what in the world. Most of the items I needed to collect (like the trash for the dumpster) are right next to it. Getting the bolt cutters from the homeless man can be completed either before or after talking to the gas station attendant and the quest chain updates accordingly. Even if one bypasses the ladder puzzle, bolt cutters are still required to access the attendant through the roof access.

DEV LOG 09

Shrink Ray

It's no secret that games like Duke Nukem, DOOM, Unreal Tournament and like are a huge inspiration on this game. Now the shrink ray has always been a cool weapon. Then I thought... how could I couple that with my grappling hook. Well, shrink enemy... grapple... grapple again to fire enemy into enemy for ragdoll fun.

DEV LOG 08

Walkman & Middle Finger

I decided I wanted to give the player more agency over the music mechanic. Not necessarily like an ultimate, but more like a buff. Enter the Walkman mechanic. Instead of having the music constantly on like in games like Hi-Fi Rush or Metal: Hellsinger, I thought it would be more interesting to have it be a needle drop. Have it FEEL like those epic moments in films like Guardians of the Galaxy.

The mechanic works where you can slot "tracks" into your walkman, pop them with 'C', cycle through with the arrow keys, but YOU choose when to engage the BPM mechanic. Never punished for not being able to hit the beat. It's only additive.

Now the Middle Finger is just flavor. Hit G, flip off the enemies for Emotional Damage.

DEV LOG 07

Chum Bucket

This one is fun. You throw the chum at your enemy and a shark jumps out and eats them. First test launched me in the air. Second let me see the shark "pop out of the water".

DEV LOG 06

Spiteful Potato

This item is an AOE damage dealer. It hurts you by hurting your feelings. Constantly smack talking you. Warning about language near the end of video.

DEV LOG 05

Boombox

I know some people might just call this an AOE boogie bomb but the inspiration for this came from a short film I shot back in film school many years ago. The concept was our heroes were being attacked by zombies and the only thing that would pacify them was a boombox on the ground that started playing Thriller, thus rendering the zombies inert in their Thriller dance. Though best we could do was a free YMCA animation here.

DEV LOG 04

Combat Movement Test

Here we test some of our combat mechanics. We took the quintessential "boomer shooter" mechanics (jump pads, platforms) and gave them to the player in the form of "deployable mechanics". Couple that with a grapple and it makes for some pretty fun traversal around the map.

DEV LOG 03

Codec & Quest System

I wanted to start building out a robust quest system. One that had a master document that, when you talked to an NPC, that NPC checked "Hey is Jerry dead?" against said document, similar to games like Kingdom Come: Deliverance or Skyrim. But I wanted a layer on top like a Codec system from Metal Gear Solid. So enter Colonel Glasses. He's the voice in your ear and we're trying to get him to dynamically react to your quest here — killing 3 Skamurais (Ska Samurais); while you were getting laid, they were learning the blade.

This is the initial test of that system.

DEV LOG 02

Adding Music to the BPM System

We use Gemini to AI-generate a couple tracks with two distinct BPMs and make a couple music "pickups" to test the "Groove" damage multiplier.

DEV LOG 01 — WHERE IT STARTED

BPM System

Here we test how the gunfire interacts with the beats per minute. Orange line trace means we shoot with the BPM. Blue means we don't. No sound is to be expected. This is simply a metronome test. Walking over the other static mesh in the world changes the BPM but you have to keep an eye on how the metronome changes its bounce.

The basic idea here is shooting to the beat should give you a damage multiplier.