Hey hey hey folks!

Last post of this week before the trip, I'm tweaking everything with what I like calling "Worsening of Life" features (or WoL). I've added my favorite one so far: dropping like a sack of potatoes towards the ground if you don't jump before reaching the edge of a platform :D

Did I mention how lovely the stairs work now? I can stack them, make them longer, shorter,... It's simply amazing what can you get using LERPs. I know you teleport towards them and for the love of me I can't seem to find a way to make the Player move towards them before actually getting on them. But hey, I didn't have any clue about how to make the drop thingy before and now look at me! Still, I'd like to finish adding the final minor enemies so I can work on the bosses.

Oh and I'm making knockback a bit stronger than I already have it simply because I want to let players use NES Castlevania speedrun techniques. I don't really know who's going to want to play this willingly with the amount of outdated mechanics I'm adding aside from me but hey, I'm still proud of what I'm making.

Have a great week and see you when I'm back!

-Ray

Hey there folks!

Hope the week began nicely for y'all. As of me, BsB development is going swift and swell as hell, I managed to add the custom stairs event and everything works as intended (you kinda teleport towards the stairs and I really can't find a solution that doesn't destroy my mental sanity more than it has already been obliterated, so I'll leave it as such meanwhile).

Now, next week I won't post or do anything around here for one simple reason: I'll be in the US of A! I'm going to spend my time there with my best friend checking if I'd like to make a living in the States (because honestly Spain ain't offering much in terms of what I like doing right now). If you live around NY and you see one day a bald bearded guy just scream DON'T TRUST STAIRS and I'll be happy to say hi to you :D

And that's pretty much it! I'll keep working on the game for the rest of this week and see how much I can manage to put together before the trip.

Enjoy the week!

-Ray

I'M CRYING, IT TOOK ME THREE DAYS BUT I DID IT!!! CASTLEVANIA STAIRS ARE HERE TO STAY BABYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!

Thanks to the wonderful folks at the Construct forums for the help, without them I couldn't have learned about the lerp and unlerp thingy that allowed me to do it. WE ARE COOKING WITH OLIVE OIL AGAIN Y'ALL (don't worry, I'll make sure to speed up the movement a bit more so you don't spend a year on a staircase and only half a month)!!!!!!

WOOOOOOOOOO SUNDAY'S LEAVING WITH A BANG

-Ray

I have to rework the stairs AGAIN since the current events and instances are anything but efficient when it comes to making levels with them. Turns out that I've been banging my head all over the place about how to make stairs when the truth was that there are no stairs.

No, for real, Classicvanias don't have stairs.

Average Megamind cosplayer realizing how stupid he's been all this time

Next post will hopefully be me showing the same type of stairs I've showed in previous posts but with code behind it so different and wild that my beard will have grown 4 times its current size.

Don't trust stairs anymore folks,

-Ray

Hey everyone, quick small update:

So there's this game I really love called Vigil The Longest Night that released a while ago (I even made the concept art for a hat, it wiggles around) that would definitely benefit for some support if you enjoy dark metroidvanias. You see, Glass Heart Studios stopped from posting and updating the game with frequent and very good add-ons out of nowhere, and the reason for it was revealed last year on a post they made on the official Twitter account of the game. The TL;DR version is that they had to fight for the right to get back the game's ownership from their former publisher, Neon Doctrine.

Good news is that they actually won the lawsuit, as the game's now back on Steam! Bad news is that they are now self publishing, and they sure as hell need some help getting back on their feet. The game used to be available on Switch, but as of now the only place you can get it is Steam. I'm not getting anything out of this since I don't work with them, but after the whole shitshow they went through they deserve some folks spreading the word about the game and the studio (which they are both great, btw).

So go get Vigil! Support indie devs that fight and win against shitty publishers and you'll make this industry a bit better with a small gesture. Here's the Steam page.

The Glimpse Catcher (bottom image). They definitely made it WAY better looking in the actual game.

Sorry for the odd post, felt like talking about something I missed a lot rising from the ashes.

-Ray

Definitely starting to look like a proper game now! Boy am I happy about making this game.

-Ray

Hi there folks!

Back again with a small update: Baldomero's Ballad logo! I'm very happy how it turned out, and obviously nobody won't be able to tell the inspiration behind it, no sir.

In terms of non-logo news the main mechanics of Baldomero are all done and implemented without any remarkable issues (there's a very odd bug that helps the player more than anything, I'll let people try it out once I have a demo ready) and I'm in the last stage of putting the code for the basic enemies. I'm slowly but surely getting there, so no point stopping now!

Have a nice one,

-Ray

Lately I've been thinking a lot (not much else I can do since I'm still unemployed) about why people create things, and how time and time again things driven only by money end up being a waste of talent and time. And since I'm making a Castlevania inspired game, I was obviously going to do my research about the original creator of the franchise, Hitoshi Akamatsu.

And now that I've done my homework, I'm sad as hell.

Who is Hitoshi Akamatsu?

Source: Hitoshi Akamatsu, Castlevania Wiki

Akamatsu seems to have been the creative mind behind the original Castlevania trilogy, putting a lot of effort into making every input, every mechanic and every single detail feel important to the player. His love and passion for western cinematography lead him to approach the original game as well as its following entries like a movie, adding the iconic Hollywood monsters and having the brilliant idea of making the whip the Belmont family signature weapon (because we all know that whips are objectively cool). But ah, you might have noticed I said "seems to" as if I wasn't really sure about what I'm saying, so allow me to explain it.

The part that made me sad

Up until very recently (around 2019 or so), nobody knew about the person behind the original Castlevania. This is mostly because back in the day developers were not allowed to add their real names to the games they worked on (something common among companies like Konami and SEGA), so they had to work with nicknames or puns like what you can see in the original NES Castlevania:

Source: Rings and Coins

It wasn't until an interview released by Shmuplations that we knew the true identity of one of the thinking folks behind one of the most iconic series of all time. But why so much mystery behind one person? Well...

You see, Konami wasn't really that fond about Castlevania. If something doesn't sells and you want revenue, why would you care about something that doesn't offer instant sales? As the interview states:

"According to Akamatsu, Konami placed profits above all else, and developers who weren’t creating games that made lots of money were all eventually axed one-by-one."

Akamatsu left the industry of its entirety after being demoted to one of Konami's game centers, and he disappeared from the video game scene. Pictures of him are rare aside from these few, as he wasn't much of a public figure. And considering the fact he never came out to the light, chances are he quit for good. But hey, things have changed, developers are no longer cogs in a machine that wants to grab money over everything else, now their talents can shine and allow people to know the great things they are doing for the industry, right?

Right?

Akamatsu is only one example out of many developers forgotten by time by corporations getting so greedy to the point of erasing the names of those that put them on the spot to begin with. Think about all those games you love, the big ones, the small ones, the bad ones. Each and every one of those games had someone putting effort behind it. Each and every one of those games deserves to at least have the name of the people behind them attached to it.

Be creative. Make things. Be proud of what you made. Think for a second about all the people and creations lost and forgotten just because "it didn't make money at that moment" and fight against it by preaching to everyone about how happy you are of creating something that gives you joy. Don't let money be a barrier to your voice.

-Ray

Happy April folks!

I know it's April 1st but this is not a joke: thanks a lot for the feedback! Since I managed to learn how to do it, I just decided to straight up adding all the features I addressed in the previous post.

Good thing about the menu looking bare and ugly is that it will prevent people from staying inside of it longer than they need to. The subweapon toggle was also quite easy to add as well, thank you me past me for putting everything nicely labeled and divided.

Right now I'm reworking he subweapon booster events that allow the player to spawn more than one projectile at a time (something something Ray's trying to sound like he knows something about making games that is not turning everything into bullets). I'm aiming at finishing the game this year just to prove to myself that I can do it without crunching or adding pointless mechanics or features just for the sake of bloating the game. Baldomero's Ballad was, is and will be a short game. No minigames, no Riddler trophies to collect in order to get the true ending, and no grinding up to rank 35 to unlock a new character that you can also get by paying 10 bucks for it.

Like I said, thanks for sharing your thoughts to everyone who decided to do so, and stay tuned for more as per usual!

-Ray

Hi there folks, me again!

So now that I see more people paying attention to Baldomero's Ballad I'd like to ask some stuff just to see if I should bother implementing these features or not into the game. Feel free to share your answers in the comments!

• Fullscreen toggle
• Subweapon classic/button toggle (classic input being the usual UP + ATTACK)
• Sound and Music toggle OR Sound and Music numeric selector
• Screenshake toggle

Now I know most of those features feel like very basic things to implement, but keep in mind that I'm doing this completely by my own (still looking for a musician though!) and certain toggles may require a while to add and test so they don't break the game. Buuuuut I still want people to enjoy the game as much as they can without being pestered with things that might annoy them so I'm willing to do it if people want those features added.

If you want to support the game you can also donate to my Ko-Fi page, that would help a lot.

And that's it, see you next time and have a good one!

-Ray