First Minigame Going In

I've decided to improve the gameplay of The Lucky Hive by adding in fun minigames with challenge modes to increase the PvP aspect of the game. I'm thinking of adding in 5-8 minigames on release, maybe 2-3 for the demo. These games are designed so that you can verse someone to gain chips, steal their hand, force them to fold or to get back into the game once eliminated (there's a waiting period for eliminated players, then perma-eliminated if you get ousted twice (I'm also thinking of making you get about 25% of the starting amount back once you get eliminated)).

All Demo Maps Done

Got 4 maps coming on the release of the demo. I rewrote the codebase so that everything wasn't bundled into one map, but instead is self-contained, so the environment and cutscene cameras can be scene specific. This enables for better containment of code, but also re-use in different maps. Working on an old school PS2-style game map selector with a little video preview to show you what the map is like. I'm pretty happy with 2 of them, one feels a little bland but I think that's just because of the fact there's little geometry outside of the skybox and planet in the distance.

These added maps also let me learn and experiment with new mechanics (namely day/night cycles, lighting, Godot's limit for large scenes (such as drawing shadows at extremely long distances) and more optimisation stuff.

Polish & Rush For June 4th

Just trying to cram in as much content as I can for the demo. Steam gave me some feedback about the build and the demo store page, which definitely needs a full overhaul, particularly once one or two of these minigames are completed. There's so many little things that I need to capture for the store page that games do, like UI-less shots of gameplay etc.

Anyway, here's some screenshots of those maps and a little WIP demo I had tonight learning IK stuff within Godot (also learned how badly I've handled animation libraries and animation mixing in the game so far, practically have to rewrite the whole thing before demo launch).

I haven't posted an update in almost a month, but the gameplay trailer has been released and I've submitted the demo for review for Steam's NextFest!

Super keen to keep making updates to The Lucky Hive, expanding the gameplay in particular. I am placing a ton of focus on getting emotes, more AI character dialogue, events, multiple maps and character customisation options in before the demo is released in about a month's time. If I can hit all of these targets, the game will be almost fully complete, which would be unbelievably amazing.

Wishlists have stagnated, which is kind of sad, but I'm not super fussed over it since I'm mainly focused on just making a game that I am proud of. It doesn't really matter if people buy it or not, just that the people who play it like it and I am proud of it.

Here's the link to the trailer as well, hope you like it!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-akp9v4lIAg

So we have a new game intro, new features in The Lucky Hive (like game chat, some new animations and cutscenes) and a slew of bug fixes. Alongside this comes more and more playtesting from our close friends, which is all gearing up for a demo release, trailer and participation in NextFest this June.

Here's a teaser of our new game intro cutscene

It's been a while since my last post, so here are some updates regarding The Lucky Hive's developments. These include:

1. Lots of new multiplayer features and quality-of-life improvements for latency and animations

2. A whole new Showdown system (v4)

3. New UI components, generic functionality for notifications and other system-level information players might need to know about

4. New animations and sound effects for different events, mainly relating to the Showdown and gameplay

5. A new winner's podium cutscene with facts about the gameplay, best hands of the game and other cool stuff

6. Mid-joining of games and leaving

The game is in a really good spot now. It's nice and stable, performing really well on my Steam Deck, the game feels smooth, which means I can now focus on more gameplay ideas at improving the aspect of Poker and adding in more mechanics.

New winner's podium is going into the game. This is the room where, when players have won, they will be taken here with a cutscene or two playing before their stats, podium finishes and other fun facts are handed out by the dealer. This is supposed to be a really joyous occasion, considering I would imagine the average game going for at least 15-20 minutes, if not longer in some cases (especially with really large starting chip amounts).

Overall the game has been going really well, I've finished the new Showdown V4 system that I rewrote from scratch again, so that was fun. The game is in a really healthy spot now and I'm super happy with how things have been progressing. Very keen to get a demo out on Steam in the next month and get onto marketing the game!

Poker Night at the Inventory was just re-released on Steam again after being off for years and years. What a great game. I've been watching a lot of old footage of old Poker Night games and have been really impressed at how much fun they are. It's given me a lot of inspiration in improving The Lucky Hive's animations and general world interactions between players and NPCs. It's also made me want to challenge myself to replicate the level of polish that those games have.

Multiplayer

Multiplayer is almost done. I have been making tremendous strides in understanding how Steam's relay networking system works vs a true P2P experience, so that has been a lot of late nights debugging and learning the hard way. Syncing has been a massive issue, alongside coordinating what data/decisions/actions peers can own vs what the host takes control of (things like timers, money amounts, animation emitting, handling of player data in general).

I believe the only thing that is needed now is handling sudden disconnects, players quitting mid session (and during their decision), host lag for receiving decisions and just unplanned/undefinable behaviour at the network level.

Player Eliminated Logic

One big thing that is important is what happens when a player gets eliminated. Obviously that player cannot play the next hand, but do we offer buy ins? Do we allow them to queue up their buy in for the following hand? What about just quitting the game straight away? All questions that need to be answered very soon.

The screenshot I've attached is part of the Slugman's nonchalant response to being eliminated.

Animation System Revamp

There's a lot to do in terms of improving the animations in the game. Not only do a lot of animations generally need some tuning, but the way that animations get played in game need much improvement. I started putting in animations by just playing the animation directly through its animation player. If you know anything you'll understand why that's a terrible idea. The dealer and other worldly objects with animations all use state machines and blend trees, but not the characters. So this is something that is definitely getting some focus over the coming weeks.

New Ideas

I've had a flurry of new ideas for The Lucky Hive over the past couple of weeks. New game modes, cutscenes, character selection methods, multiplayer mechanics and other things that improve the fun and flow state for the game.

These changes will definitely be implemented in the game, especially the things that improve the worldbuilding and gameplay within the Hive.

Demo Release Planning and Trailers

Once I've finished this round of development (by round I mean large sweeping changes of the end-to-end experience, I'll probably look at making a trailer and getting a demo of the game setup. Will have to learn how to market a game because I've never done this before, let alone been any good at selling).

I will be making a dev log video on YouTube about this probably today or tomorrow, but essentially I'm learning the hard way that you should absolutely build multiplayer games with multiplayer logic first. Making the entire game work with dummy AI characters first and then trying to retrofit it with MP-oriented code will not work well.

Essentially I'm going to have to rewrite the entire codebase for The Lucky Hive to work with multiplayer by mirroring file names for things like singletons and scripts, then implementing it with RPCs, then attaching that new script to the scene to take over. Once that's done, we should be good haha.

Always build multiplayer games with multiplayer-focused code FIRST.

Spent a weekend in Sydney learning Remote Procedure Calls and getting a working demo for The Lucky Hive up and working (just lobby wise), building upon the video demo in my last post.

Now that it's up and running, I've built the new lobby 3D assets and am working on getting it all scripted and running. Sound effects are, funnily enough, probably going to be the hardest thing to get right since I've got the visual design for the game well defined now.

Will post more updates when things are ready. Once MP is done and I can start playtesting, I'll issue some beta keys to some friends, we'll see if the game is fun and then the announcement trailer shall commence.

Below is a screenshot of the WIP new game lobby (before cutscenes are hooked up and UI elements are made).

I have finished what I consider to be the E2E experience for The Lucky Hive (at least in its current state). I have folding, play, showdown logic, elimination logic (barring the WIP player eliminated stuff on the executable/client side), sound effects and a general visual upgrade to lighting, shadows, shaders etc. I'd say the game is in a playable singleplayer state. What needs to happen now is multiplayer.

I've kinda dug myself a hole doing all the game logic before even starting MP work, because my computer science degree taught me that it wouldn't be that hard. Well uh yeah it's not really that hard, it's just very arduous having to go through each file that touches the game and setup MultiplayerSynchroniser scenes/nodes within it and retrofitting each file to be capable of working within a multiplayer environment. What a challenge!

Once I've got the MP working, I'm going to work on a lobby system for pre-game lobbies (with some more 3D models and whatnot) and then getting onto the player victory/endgame scene. Once the MP stuff is done for the core game loop, it's going to be absolutely incredible to have that logic working and interacting with other players within The Lucky Hive.

I've also been playing Balatro a lot lately. I can't believe I used to bag out on this game and diss it because it's a card game. An absolutely amazing indie game and super fun. It just goes to show how a simple game with a simple premise can be so enjoyable.

Anyway, here's a clip of what I managed to get working today (ignore the network jitter, our router's wifi is scuffed and I was just setting the rotation directly, not using a Quaternion.slerp() function for physics interpolation).

Been working on some really cool character select animations. I have been in absolute tears laughing making these. They're so perfect for each character and I think are an absolute highlight of The Lucky Hive. I cannot wait to see people's reactions to this when they fire up the game for the first time and see. I am so proud of these and think it really adds a level of fun to the game.

I've attached some screenshots of how they're gonna look in Blender/Godot (keep in mind these are just animations, not camera work, VFX or sounds obviously).