Blog - SSLTS Postmortem

Imagine it’s your birthday. You’re a fan of video games so logically, you receive one for your birthday. Now imagine that game you receive was specifically made for you. Wouldn’t that be amazing? That’s exactly what I did for my friend Shane, not once but twice.

This is the first ever post-mortem I wrote, looking into the development of Shane STILL likes to Shoot and its predecessor a year before, giving insights into its creation and showing what I’ve learned from developing both of those games.

The Original Shane Likes to Shoot

Part 1: How Development Started

Anyways before we talk about how Shane STILL likes to shoot was made; we must first look at Shane likes to Shoot. For those who don’t know, the idea of both games is that you play as Shane. How you control him is by shooting with his gun. When he shoots, the recoil makes him move in the opposite direction you shot at. Also when you shoot, you have a one in ten chance of your normal shot being a shot gun blast, shooting eight bullets at once but sends you flying across the screen.

From Left to right: Shane, Lukizade and Bombs

The first game had you combating an endless wave of personified off-brand energy drinks named Lookiezade. When one touches you, the game ends and you’re scored based on the number of enemies defeated.

The idea for energy drinks as enemies was a suggestion from my friend when I asked him what the enemies should be. He said energy drinks and I hate the idea to make the off-brand because it made more sense for the game.

Through playtesting the deliberately unwieldy and abnormal controls made it hard to get far in the game, so I added a consumable bomb item which when used, creates forty-eight damaging projectiles around you. In addition, I added a one in ten chance for enemies to drop the consumable bomb items.

The first Shane likes to Shoot was made within the span of two hours and made the day before Shane’s birthday. The game made it really happy and he said it was one of the best gifts I received.
Other people also praised the game. But there was a few reoccurring problems that people pointed out.
Those issues were the following:

Shane tended to get stuck in the edges and corners (when you go through one of the ends of the screen go looped to the parrel side).
Enemies had a chance to appear way to close to you, giving you no time to react or sometime outright appearing on top of you making so that you died instantly with no way to have stopped that.
Enemies were unbalanced, some having high health and speed and some having the opposite stats.

I didn’t intend on making an update to the game. However, earlier this year the opportunity interested me because it seemed fun to improve upon the game, also it would make a convenient gift for Shane for his birthday this year. So that’s the context for how development of this game started.

Part 2: Early Development

Even though I was keenly aware of these issues. I didn’t want to jump straight into programming. I took a few days to plan out and do some sketches of what I want to do. I drew up ideas for new enemies, bosses and possible new game mechanics (e.g, new power ups or alternate play style).

First Sketches

I think originally I was gonna import the dice from Conjecture Adventure as a joke. Also the Harrison Creature was a character we made up and he was originally going to be the main antagonist.

All the skins

The Blue Legends fanboy was scrapped not only because I wasn't sure how to program it but also because it might have gone against the terms of service of Opera GX or Itch. The Lukezade skin was also scrapped

Boss Sketches

the dvd logo was changed into Public_Domain_Fish.png

Tony Easter Egg!

pretty much it

Mister Uni Cycle

He died for your sins.

Moving on, I use the Game Engine (software created to develop video games) called GameMaker made by YoYoGames. They release beta versions of GameMaker to test out features in a separate environment so that way the features can be polished and safe to use when they bring them out into the default version. One of the features in the most recent beta caught my eye, Online multiplayer. I knew it was something I needed to add to the next version of Shane likes to Shoot.

Earliest multiplayer footage I could find. this is after the artstyle change.

With the multiplayer features, I considered naming this version of the game Shane likes to Shoot Others, but the name Shane STILL likes Shoot ended up being more accurate to the final product. I got a multiplayer prototype working late in February. I don’t have any footage of that version, but it was basically just two Shanes shooting at each other with no end.

It was after that prototype I decided to overhaul the visuals. It was too simple, and I wanted to make it look like a clear upgrade from the original. So I made new versions of Shane and added three more colors of Shane so that the multiplayer is more readable.

Part 3: Lessons Learned

Learning Netcode:
The current features of GameMaker Beta's rollback multiplayer leave a lot to be desired. It's really cool and easy to use for a small project but really impractical for a full game. If you're using GameMaker and want to make an online multiplayer, don't wait on this and just learn how netcoding for GameMaker works. As the built in rollback is moreso in a proof of concept stage.
Have a more thorough playtest:
The launch version has some bugs that I'm not eager to fix. But an update will come out at some point.

In conclusion

This was a fun project to make, I'll probably may or may not make updating this into an annual tradition. I'm also really glad I got to make my first online multiplayer game.
Thank you so much for reading through this. I hope you had fun getting some insight into how this was made and stick around for other projects.
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Written by: Ronan/April ; Programmer, Artist.

Shane STILL likes to shoot: Postmortem