2024-10-08T04:00:00Z v0.7 is up!
This update adds new gameplay tweaks:
Ghrelin gat level is now capped at lv. 20 and updates faster, lv.11 and higher replaces one of the 10 per second shots with a double-shot for up to 20.
Metabolism now gives a random chance for a single bonus lipid to drop on every hit on a target, with the odds going up on each level upgraded.
Hormone Spike is now upgradable from 10 seconds to 20 like the other powerups. Jackpot mode now does a single bonus lipid drop on every single shot.
Coenzyme upgrades were reworked, and now make it so that it takes less shots to open enzyme targets.
The Cell Wall has a new graphic and does damage to targets on contact
New shop item: Electrolytes. Basically a lipid magnet, attracts lipids from further away.
[quote=“royaljellysandwich, post:1, topic:45335, full:true”]
Hello, everyone. I’m RoyalJellySandwich. You probably know who I am, but if not, I’m a veteran WG/Fat artist who’s been active for a long time: around 25 years! I spread out into merchandise recently, as well as 3D animation. Now I’m getting into indie game development, as I’m always looking for new things to do with my craft. I’ve spent the last year learning Blender and the past few months learning Godot, and now I have a project far enough along to show off my new skills!
GutBuster is a simple, yet challenging arcade game based on Buster Bros./Pang, starring my fan favorite character, Rebbecca Valentine. Your job is to control her inner cell, or Cellecca, in her stomach in charge of digesting what she eats using her acid blaster. The food objects bounce around the chamber representing her stomach as you run around trying to shoot them until they break up, while not being squashed. The blaster automatically shoots straight up as you run back and forth, and sometimes dodge-roll to keep yourself alive. Special targets that drop 5 different power-ups appear to help you out. When you beat, or fail to beat, a level, you’re treated to a comedy cutscene and access to the shop, where you upgrade your gun, moves and items. The higher you advance, the fatter and hungrier Rebbecca becomes.
The game is far enough in development that I’ve publicly released the first pre-alpha demo on itch.io. (along with my other pre-alpha game but I’ll leave that to another thread) and the latest build is on my Patreon as early access for $3+ subscribers, each build is dropped on Itch for free after a month or so (if I don’t forget to, my memory sucks). The newest Patreon demo is 10 levels, and the animation is incomplete, but a finished demo is in the works and I aim to get it done by the end of the month. The full game will be 30 levels (or 40, I haven’t decided) and have a completed story and animation, I aim to finish it this fall.
The pre-alpha does have the gameplay down, mostly, so I appreciate any feedback.
If you’re having trouble I have tips: keep in mind you’re invincible while using the dash maneuver. Be sure to buy upgrades at the shop. It also has a cheat mode under the options menu.
It’s playable right in the browser or for download (browser version has some graphical issues when it comes to shaders, but I think that’s a Godot thing)
I’ve updated the gameplay so that the food will break up in an upward arc, which makes dodging more manageable.
Fixed the shaders on the targets so now they turn redder as they get closer to bursting.
You can pause now, and I included a pause menu with volume controls and chea–I mean, “accessibility options”, including invincibility mode, auto-powerups mode, and shop pricing options.
Rebalanced shop pricing.
Rebalanced powerups, they now start at 10 seconds instead of 5, upgradeable powers now have 6 levels and each level adds 2 additional seconds instead of 1. Hormone Spike/Jackpot mode now is 20 seconds instead of 15.
Thank you so much for posting this here! I have been wanting to play it, but I keep forgetting cause my memory sucks. I have been watching the dev on your twitter and have been super excited to check this out!!
It’s probably because the animation that’s supposed to be playing there isn’t done. I still have some assets to draw, right now I have the office and the lounge scenes, but there’s also scenes in a hallway outside the office and in an elevator. I’ve actually written the scripts for them a while ago.
One thing that is a little frustrating is that if a big chip splits in two while it is coming down, the two smaller pieces become impossible to dodge because they take up too much space on both sides to go left or right and there’s not enough empty space to weave between them. Usually the solution to that would be to not shoot at a big chip while it’s heading downward but that’s not always possible with the gun always firing. I wonder if, instead of maintaining the big chip’s current velocity after splitting, the two smaller chips should be sent upward from the blast so that they can separate far enough to dodge both of them.
Good suggestion. I agree that it is kind of a pain. The targets work on a pre-made 2D Rigid Body physics system, and I had to turn damping all the way down to zero in order for the targets to bounce to the same height each time. I was able to program them breaking apart in an upward arc, but then they’d only bounce up to around the height where the targets broke in half due to the change in velocity, which made dodging them even harder. Good news is, I just figured out a workaround: I simply set it so the object’s Y-axis velocity is set to the same number every time they touch the floor, and after some tweaks, I got it to bounce reliably back to the top. So that will be in an upcoming patch.
It is a standalone .EXE, so it’s not a surprise that it would be flagged by an antivirus. You should add it to a whitelist. I’m looking into other versions besides just Windows, particularly if Godot can create a reliable HTML5 version that’s playable in a browser, so that downloading it won’t be necessary.
Just getting into v0.7 and something I’ve noticed is that the visual artifacts that started appearing for me in v0.6 are still present. I got lucky and snagged the single-frame snapshot of it.
It’s only for a single frame and then the sprite appears as normal. Strangely the enzyme sprite doesn’t appear to be affected, only the food ones. Also worth noting that the defect only occurs when a food item first enters the stage; splitting with the little explosion effect doesn’t have any artifacts.
Hopefully this is something that you’re already aware of.
Edit: I’ll keep updating the existing post with new bugs to avoid spamming.
Seems with the changes to the Metabolism text descriptions, the description is since missing after the first:
A WILD MISSINGNO APPEARS!
That’s definitely an issue I’m aware of and intend to work on. The food targets are actually 3D models made into a 2D object using Godot’s Viewport node, and it seems to have issues when it loads in. It also uses a lot of shaders for the black outline and the “reddening” damage effect. It’s been that way since I first implemented the 3D models, but it didn’t affect the gameplay so I didn’t really prioritize it. I intend for the completed version to actually have the targets appear by falling in from above the top of the screen, so if I can’t fix the glitch it’ll at least hide it. As for the enzyme, that’s entirely 2D so it doesn’t seem to have that issue.
Yeah, ran into that issue, too. Might have to adjust the particle level once it gets above a certain point.
But, quick update, I already fixed the problems from your last post, so a patch is coming. For the target glitch, spawning the targets above the screen so they fall in made them too hard to predict, so I made a workaround the targets spawn offscreen and then moved onscreen after one frame, which masks the glitch without changing the gameplay.
I also corrected/updated the Stat Box (on the lower left) to show the Hormone time level and the Magnet level, plus a slight change to the look.
Yeah I seems the particles were the problem; I added a bit to the bullet splash code to reduce the amount of particles when the ghrelin level is over 10, and after a stress test it seems to have worked. Patch is definitely coming.
Kinda cool to see the cutscene editor as a reward. Build your own dioramas, Disco Elysium style!
That reminds me, I don’t have a screenshot but the cutscene of them talking about tiny people in organelles and the spin-off gag, Boss has a duplicate arm. I would’ve snagged the screenshot but I didn’t capture it in time.
Any chance for a replay button to be added to the static to repeat the cutscene at all?
