Flow Below - Development Blog

0 | Greetings

(This is a repost of the blog, as it has now been ported over to itch.io from "Blogger")

Uh hi, Is this thing on?

Well THIS is something, I did not know was still relevant, blogs to me have always been something that I've viewed as simply less relevant as time goes on, something that is left in the past with the CRT's and DVR's. BUT, I feel as though, running a blog to document my game's development would be something that I would personally find enjoyable, being able to show some fun quirks and features that I have so far, as well as go into some of the technical aspects of how the game works.

I'm not too sure if i want to advertise this blog, as I know at some point, that someone will accidently find this page, and if your that person: Hi! Hopefully you'll have some interest in this game, and if so, then feel free to stick around for this game, I'm sure you'll have a blast when it releases at some point.

So, I've talked about this "game" for a bit now, but haven't actually told you about what this "game" actually is, so without further ado.

Hi, my name is Joe, and I'm developing a game called: "Flow Below". It's a fast paced platformer set underground, that focuses on speed and fluidity as the player races through levels at a fast speed. The game itself is inspired by games like Undertale, Celeste, and recently Pizza Tower.

Phew, that was a lot, I hope it didn't tire you out too much reading that. I pretty much have that whole paragraph memorized as I recite that to friends or family that are interested in what I'm currently doing. I'm sure it would be much easier to just say that I have a REAL JOB like everyone else, working a regular 9-5 as all young adults do nowadays, but I'm loving making this game, but it gives me so little time to commit to anything currently, that its best not to get involved in something else.

Anyways back to the game, I'm sure you want to see what it actually looks like, so heres a screenshot of what the game FIRST looked like, when I finished the first demo of the game.

I must warn you, it ain't pretty.

WHEW BOY! This takes me back! I remember making this, around 1 year ago now,

I remember it started with me wanting to make a game all my life, being surrounded by hundreds of games growing up, which mean't that I would eventually become facinated by how they work. I still remember making poorly written Scratch Games on the family computer, which you can still play the only game that I ever released on there, here:

I'm not going to rant too much about that game, cause I'm sure there are lots of questions that you have about it. I'll make a seperate blog post about myself and growing up making terrible games on there...

Back to that image! That version of Flow Below started out as a simple 2D Platformer, with no real stand out features. The reason I wanted to make it was to act as a way of showing off to my future college friends, that I would meet as the summer holidays ended. (Fun fact: The games original title was: "Game to prove to my college mates that I am better than anyone else".)

And thats all the game was to me back then, just a simple way to keep me occupied, and to prevent me from spending ANOTHER SUMMER just sat inside, doing bugger all! The game engine that I used, and still use today: Godot, was still fairly new and unheard of, with the latest release being 3.4. I remember the way that I coded it being so shoddy, with everytime I wanted to make an enemy, I would make it INSIDE OF THE LEVEL, then just duplicate it everytime i wanted another one, instead of using Godot's instancing of scenes.

However, as time went on, and the summer days got hotter and hotter in the UK, I began to see more potential in the game, I started getting ideas, mechanics and characters that I thought that people might like, and SLOWLY, I got better at utilizing all of Godot's features, and made the demo that is shown in the image, you can actually play it here! Link

Back then, I was very satisfied and proud of the game and what I had made, I remember in the first week of college, downloading the game and booting it up on the college's REALLY SLOW computer, and showing it off to the friends that I knew at that time. They were impressed!

I remember spending whole lessons just using Godot on those computers, due to the engines portability, and asking for ideas from my friends during those lessons. However, eventually I got tired of working on the game, so I left it, to focus on the course that I'm taking and to also learn new aspects of Computer Science. However, since I'm writing this blog, it's safe to say that I didnt stay idle for long!

During that short time that I took from working on the first version of Flow Below, I made a small survival RPG, which I used as a way to learn more about Godot, I'll go into the game in detail in later blogs, but I'm still impressed today that I was able to make a small charming game in around 3 weeks, all the while not knowing much about Godot.

However, as time passed, the potential that Flow Below had slowly ate away at me. I kept thinking about what I could do, and what was bad about the game. All this got to a point where I had to do something about it.

I restarted development.

YUP. The game was THAT BAD TECHNICALLY, that I thought it would be easier to just start a WHOLE NEW PROJECT.

In the end, it was worth it, as my code was far cleaner, and I could utilize all of Godot's features that I had learnt with that small survival game, However, I never released this demo, and the only documented versions of this game that I have, were about a month into development, but its better than nothing I guess. 

 Wait, this was an "UPGRADE" IN MY EYES?!

Looking back, I REALLY don't like how this version turned out. But again, I'll talk about all these different things in their own specific blogs, but YIKES, this was pretty poor looking. One thing that I do still like, was the lighting on the player. The use of Godot's normal maps that could be used on sprites, and the crappy auto generated normal maps, does give the player a cool look to them, which would be something that I would like to add to the final game if I could.

Ok, this blog is starting to bloat a bit, so I'm going to fast forward to about a month ago now, and showcase what the game looked like, I'll showcase what the game currently looks like afterwards

Reddit Video link: link

This version, is the closest to what I currently have so far, and there is A LOT that is different, it is also the same project file as the previous photo! It's also still internally called 'Flow Below Remake' as in my eyes, it was a remake. But now I just see it as 'Flow Below' and what I would have made back then, if I knew everything that I know now.

This post, was HUGELY beneficial in gathering a bit of feedback from people other than my friends, and gave me a confidence boost, that this game would be fun and has a fighting chance!

And that's it! Heres another screenshot, from what the game currently looks like. 

Again, I'll go into more detail about the differences and the process to get there later, with gameplay too. But I definitely have dragged this out a bit long, Especially for something that was mean't to be a simple "Hello" post.

So thats it! I hope you've enjoyed reading this. I would love to make a blog post every other week or so, just so that people can learn some game design and programming tricks that i have learned over the year that I have made this game. 

 Think similar to Masahiro Sakurai's "Making Games" series that he has on Youtube.

Mind you, I'm still busy on making this game, and also not failing my course, so posts may be infrequent at times, but hey ho!

Thanks for reading this! I'll see you in the next one!

- Joe