This is the first in a series of devlogs meant to update you on development of BATTLEMENTS, a 2.5D top-down shooter that we're making in Godot. Development for BATTLEMENTS began on October 30th, 2022, and we've been working on the game for around 7 months since then, please keep in mind that the game is in a very early stage in development right now, and alot of ideas and concepts need to be finalized. 

Anyway, during those 7 months, we've developed a very basic prototype which will serve as a framework to build on-top of, right now it’s pretty simple, only including basic player movement, two weapons, and an enemy (the Visualizer).

With the introduction out of the way, what exactly is this game?

Well, in summary BATTLEMENTS is a 2.5D top down shooter centered around building vending machines that grant you perks, keeping said machines powered up and making sure no enemies destroy them utilizing weapons, sentries, and perks! All of these can also be upgraded to increase their strength.

At the start of a round, players will need to place down 4 vending machines in order to proceed. If all your vending machines are destroyed it's game over, which means that one of your primary objectives is to defend them at all costs. To get a perk from a vending machine, simply walk up to it and buy the perk with tokens, once the perk is activated it’ll remain permanently on you until you die or until the machine is destroyed, perk prices also rise when you upgrade the vending machine's efficiency. 

If you want to protect your machines, you'll need to equip yourself with weapons and sentries, both of which can be obtained from wall buys spread throughout the map. These weapons can be upgraded at the Quick Shot station, where you can upgrade their stats individually.

Once a wave starts, the Mutants will begin their assault! Mutants will drop tokens and some ammo on death, but some have a slim chance of dropping junk. Junk can be used to repair any damage delt to vending machines and sentries, but it can also be used to build barricades. 

To win a match, you need to progress deeper into the map by unlocking new rooms with tokens until you reach the end. However, opening new rooms doesn’t just reveal new wall buys, it also opens up gateways from which Mutants can attack from, so it’s key to cover them up with barricades to keep them at bay.  Sentries can also help guard specific areas or defend vending machines directly, so they can prove to be a really helpful tool if used correctly!

Every 5 rounds a random event will happen. These random events can make the Mutants more powerful, spawn in entirely new enemies, give the mutants random buffs, and very rarely, unleash a mini-boss into the battlefield. If you survive this wave with all your current vending machines intact, you’ll receive a special bonus in the form of a temporary Quick Shot discount or a temporary token and junk bonus (among other effects). You win a match once you reach the end of a map, where you’ll face off against a boss or survive a special encounter!

I think that summarizes the core gameplay loop so far. There’s obviously other additional mechanics, but those aren’t really crucial and I didn’t wanna pad out the summary more than it already was. With that out of the way, let’s touch on some more specific stuff!

PERKS-A-PLENTY!

One of your main methods of defense against the Mutant hordes are perks! Right now, we only have 9 perks planned, which we haven't added in-game for balancing yet. Please keep that in mind if any of these abilities seem overpowered or anything, hopefully they all sound balanced enough though, as I've put some effort into making them semi-equal in power.

The 9 perks we have planned so far are:

 Grave Up: Makes it so that when you're killed, you'll revive like usual but keep all your previous perks! The catch is you loose -80 health upon revive (player has 150 by default). Grave Up has a limit of 1 revive per 5 rounds, so once you use it up you'll need to wait for it to re-charge.

 Napalm Sauce: Causes all of your equipped weapons to deal double the damage, but eat up double the ammo! Also visibly changes your muzzle flash to display flames (cause its cool).

 Crafty Brew: Will shorten the time it takes for you to build and repair sentries. Also gives you a small discount on how much JUNK it costs to repair sentries and vending machines, at the cost of making them more vulnerable.

 Lightning Cola: Increases your base running speed by 40%. Also increases reload speed, and the time it takes to rebuild barriers by the same amount. Stacks with weapon firing speed upgrades, which can be pretty crazy if used right.

 Manic Munitions: Heavily increase the chance of ammo dropping from enemies.

 War Profiteer: Whenever you kill an enemy, have a high random chance of getting double the profits and getting extra JUNK.

 Crystal Clear: When manually triggered, it temporarily makes you invisible to all enemies for 10 seconds, and can be used twice before entering cooldown. After use, you won’t be able to activate it again until 4 rounds have passed.

 Frostbite Freeze: When an enemy is shot, decrease their walking speed by 40%. Once you shoot one enemy, their walking speed can't be decreased further if shot again. If your currently held weapon runs out of ammo, the perk won't be able to be used until next round.

 Titanium Gum: Will encase your trooper in a protective bubble gum shield. The shield will eventually break when its health pool (315 HP) is depleted, and it’ll deal -70 damage once broken. 

Keep in mind that the player will only be able to equip 4 perks at a time. Once we've added more, there will be a lot of room for experimentation and customizability. I'm considering making these perks upgradable too, so that you can increase their efficiency and strength. However, because we still haven't been able to balance them properly in-game, we haven't made up our minds about this. Plus, I have a strong feeling that this would make them a bit TOO powerful.

FEAR THE MARVELOUS MUTANTS!

The Marvelous Mutants are the primary antagonists of BATTLEMENTS. I won't touch on the game's story in this devlog too much, however, their primary goals are to eliminate every Plastic Platoon action figure on earth, and obtain the second half of the ALPHA BOARD, a mysterious floppy disk supposedly containing instructions for "the ultimate action-figure" and top-secret market data that could make their manufacturer the most powerful toy company ever!

The Marvelous Mutant army is in the millions, and they've managed to take over nearly every household in America! Replacing their spiritual predecessor, the Plastic Platoon, as the United State's most popular toy. Commanded by the twisted Marauder, nicknamed "battery-head" by the Platoon, the Mutants are a nigh unstoppable force hellbent on serving their creators.

So far, I've fully rigged and designed 3 Mutants. I had done 2D character rigs in the past, but these are some of the most complicated and expressive ones I've ever made, and I'm pretty proud of them! Making their top-down rigs was a challenge as well, as I'd never made top-down characters until now, but I think they turned out all right.

The first enemy I designed was the Visualizer, and he was actually the first character I created in general.

His design is inspired by G1 Transformers, LEGO Ice Planet 2002, and the Kooky Space Kook from Scooby-Doo. A real grab-bag of inspiration, but it all sorta comes together harmoniously in the final design. The Visualizer lay the groundwork for all Mutant designs going forward, and helped establish some basic design rules in terms of what I wanted the game to look like.

The second enemy I designed was the Rampager. A massive tanky goliath, capable of dealing powerful blows but not exactly equipped to deal with long-range.

His accent color was swapped from bright red to light orange not only because it looked better, but also because highlight colors serve to identify the attack type of the Mutant itself. Orange will be used if they only use melee, yellow will be used if they only use ranged, and red will be used if they do both.

The latest enemy I designed is the Martian. A maniacal invader hailing from the red giant itself! They'll pilot a flying saucer that the player must destroy before battling them face-to-face on the ground.

His design was influenced by the Martians from Mars Attacks (who would've guessed!). His concept sketches where actually pretty different from the final design as oppose to the Visualizer and Rampager, who stayed relatively the same throughout their design processes, take a look! I'm not sure how to feel about his imp-ish proportions, but I liked his head design enough to keep it in:

Currently I'm working on creating the Martian's UFO and on modeling a fourth enemy, the Mutant Trooper! Here's a concept sketch I did some weeks ago:

GUNS N' SENTRIES GALORE!

As of now we've only created 5 fully modeled weapons, those being the Glock, Shotgun, Pulverizer, Flamethrower and the Atom Gun. Only two of those have actually been added in for testing though (the Glock and Pulverizer), however, we hope to add more once we’re done coding a couple of enemies.

I do have stats planned for each of these, I just won’t talk about them here because they could drastically change once we actually test them properly.

With that being said, how will BATTLEMENTS combat work?

Like mentioned before, you'll need to purchase weapons from wall buys throughout the map. New rooms you unlock will always have weapons and sentries inside them for you to purchase, and each map will contain a specific selection of weapons that never changes.

Firing weapons works like you'd expect it to, M1 to fire and M2 for an alt fire. Placing sentries is a bit more complicated though, as when you purchase one it'll get added to the Quick Shot menu where you'll be able to click a button to place it down. Sentries can also be moved by pressing M2 next to them, and can be repaired by holding down M1. Sentries will automatically shoot at any Mutant they see, and different types of sentries will deal different effects.

To upgrade your weapons, you'll need to open up the Quick Shot menu again. Each weapon and sentry currently in use will show up here ready to be upgraded! To upgrade a weapon simply click on it to bring up a list of individually upgradable stats:

• Damage
• Spread
• Reload (Speed)
• Shooting (Speed)
• Ammo

Sentries will also have another category called Durability, which improves their resistance to damage.

WRAPPING UP.

Thanks for reading this devlog! There's still a handful of things we didn't touch on here, but I think I'll leave those for devlog 2. I'm extremely satisfied with the progress we've made so far, and while we may not be working at the most ideal pace, we're still making tangible progress (almost) every month or so. Me and Faraway have pretty busy schedules, but we try to make room for BATTLEMENTS and Slime Slayer (our second project) whenever we can.

If you wanna follow development on BATTLEMENTS closer, I'd advise following our Twitter and YouTube for "daily" updates and news! Check out our site too.