Box Party [Demo v1.5]

[catoidi]

Box Party Demo Update v1.1 is out now on Steam and Itch. This update adds Side Quests to Level 1, and some smaller stuff too.

All old saves are incompatible. Your hats and settings will be fine, though.

New Features:
-Added 3 Side Quests to Level 1. Each quest will grant you 1500 points, and getting all 3 will grant you a hat.
(Disclaimer: Quests for Level 2 and 3 will be added in a future update.)
-You can now check your side quests by pressing "C". Only works in levels with side quests available.
-Added 8 new paintings, plus 5 extra paintings made by some cool people.
-Added a couple easter eggs.

Fixes/Changes:
-Speedrun Clock is now more precise.
-Fixed HUD shake being broken if you have more than 200 health. (not possible without cheating)
-You can now change the ":)" in the advanced box settings.

Edit: This update allows you to unlock this specific hat.

[catoidi]

update v1.1.1 is out now. this is just a minor update to fix a bug that i accidentally caused in v1.1 that prevented the pepper hat from being unlocked.

also 4 of the new paintings added in v1.1 have been redone. be on the lookout for those

[catoidi]

update v1.1.3 is out and stuff.

there's now a new message that appears when you die.
also, i've been told that the game is too dark, so i've bumped the default gamma to 1.15. this will only affect new players, though, so you'll need to manually bump up the gamma yourself if you've played already.

i've also added a new "secret hat" mechanic, where the hat doesn't get shown in the hat menu if you haven't unlocked it yet. i've also added 1 new hat to demonstrate this mechanic. you'll find out more about this one soon enough.

currently working on the v1.2 update. here's a sneak peek of that:

[catoidi]

Happy Holidays, everyone. If you check out the hat menu today (or if you just set your system's clock to December 25th), you'll unlock a neat little secret hat.

[Captain J]

Oh hey, Demo's out! So i played it, beat all the maps and dear goodness it's so much cuter than i expected! And it actually has sharp teeth into it. Has some fair challenge and arcade-y feel into it, you know? I also love the simple art style of it as well.

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- Enemies rather deal so much damage and i can't stop dying in silly situations. Mostly Melons and Jalapenos are like that. And considering i beat the game in normal difficulty, i say this is quite of an overkill.

- I often had the ammo shortage problem. Some enemy types and bosses do drop ammo but i do often get such problem because it still gives me few ammo.

- Hope the NPCs give you more about hint related to gameplay. Exploding Pies, Hams' dropped Sledge and Melons' ludicrous melee range is something got me by surprise.

- Side quests are not really specific and have to guess which one's the right way. For instance, i couldn't complete the trash bag quest since it lacked the info where should i take it out.

Overall it was neat. And i can't wait what kind of soundtrack you'll put into your project as well. Keep up the good work!

[catoidi]

words

Glad you enjoyed Box Party! Now unfortunately I haven't started work on making a soundtrack for Box Party yet, but after experimenting with making music for the demo trailer, it's something I definitely want to try.

Now for the feedback you gave:

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1. Now personally I do think the difficulty of box party is good as is, but that's most likely because I've spent like 100+ hours in just the 3 demo levels alone. I want to add more difficulty customization options in the future, like being able to manually adjust player/enemy damage multipliers, or adding more delay between enemy/boss attacks, or giving the player more ammo, but I'm not sure of the best way to implement those yet.

2. Enemies are guaranteed to drop 1 random ammo if you're completely out of ammo. You can actually use this to farm ammo drops by killing multiple weaker enemies at once with the last of your ammo. For bosses, you should have enough ammo to defeat them after they enter their "Tired" state at least once or twice.

3. I'm not sure about adding that kind of dialogue to the NPCs. What I'll probably do instead is add some pages for specific enemies and level hazards in the guidebook, so you can access this info anywhere in the game. In case you haven't seen it already, you can access it by clicking the "READ THIS!" option in the main menu.

4. I'll see what I can do for side quests. I know I could maybe like add markers to the automap for stuff related to side quests, so I'll look into that soon. I should also add some dialogue to the NPCs for some hints about the quests too.

Thanks for the feedback. I'm still working on the v1.2 update, so be on the lookout for that

[Captain J]

I do aware of bosses and enemies dropping random ammo except the part when i'm actually out of ammo... Nice to know, but frankly i think they still give me a few ammo to spend. I feel well prepared with packing them up because each boss does some serious amount of damage.

Also one more question: Why cheat is disabled in all difficulties? Even in easy difficulty it locks up.

[catoidi]

Also one more question: Why cheat is disabled in all difficulties? Even in easy difficulty it locks up.

The reason is the Hats. When cheats are enabled, unlocking any hat in the game is as simple as typing something like "box_hat_unlock_09 true" in the console. I figured that the nuisance of enabling sv_cheats would be worth it to try to prevent the average player from easily cheating in all of the hats.

Pro Tip: If you have cheats enabled, you can type "box_hat_cheat true" in the console to see every hat currently in the game.

[catoidi]

Almost finished with v1.2. This update is definitely on the larger side, I think you'll enjoy the new stuff in level 2.

Here's a teeny tiny sneak peak:

[catoidi]

Update v1.2 is out now on Steam and Itch! This update adds 3 new side quests to do in level 2, some new hats, and a bunch of quality of life changes!

All previous saves are incompatible. Your hats and settings are fine, though.

New Features:
-Added 3 new side quests to level 2.
-Added the ability to get the level 2 side quest hat.
-Added 4 new secret hats.
-Added an option to hide locked hats in the hat menu.
-Added some new dialogue to some NPC's to help out with quests in level 1 and 2.
-Keys and Quests will now leave markers on the Automap.
-Bosses will now drop 50% more ammo if the player has no ammo left.
-Added a new optional area to level 2.
-Added a marshmallow.
-Added a metal detector.

Fixes/Changes:
-"Speedrun Clock" and "Show Exhaust Meter" are now enabled by default. Old players will need to manually change these 2 options.
-Finding secrets and getting keys now give 500 points, instead of 250.
-Picking up weapon or ammo pickups (not including those from enemies) are now marked as "items" and will now give 5 points each.
-Fixed the elevator in level 1 getting broken, causing a softlock.
-Fixed a plate spawner in level 3 being activated multiple times.
-"Dead" glowsticks on the ground are now more visually distinct from glowstick ammo pickups.
-Secret hats will now appear after all normal hats, thus preventing the placement of normal hats being disorganized.
-Streamlined the system time detection code in the hat menu.
-Removed some unused dialogue/items.
-Increased Level 1 Boss's health by 200 points.
-Level 1 Boss takes longer to get exhausted.
-Level 2 Bosses get exhausted faster.
-Fixed "dead" gibs not properly sticking to the ground on moving platforms.

[catoidi]

Hello, it's been a second since the last Box Party update. I was gonna have this update be for adding new content to Level 3, but I've had to push that back to the next update cuz I got sick.
Instead, this v1.3 update is mainly focused on adding new rotation sprites for every enemy in the game. (Before, all the enemies would always face the player.)
This doesn't include rotations for the bosses, as there's never really any point where the bosses aren't looking at you.

I won't go into more detail about the demo update here, if you wanna see more about it just check out this dev log here:
https://idiotbitz.itch.io/box-party/dev ... update-v13

But that's not everything I've been working on.

I'm adding a "Challenge Mode" to the full version of Box Party. This mode will just contain a buncha small challenge levels that take ~2-3 minutes to complete.
Some of the challenges will be like "Kill 100 melons", "Survive 1 minute in a room full of enemies with no weapons", or "Complete this parkour level as this specific character".
There's a hub level where you can easily keep track of every challenge you've already completed, and which ones you need to do next.

Got some other really cool stuff in the works for the full version, but it's too early to talk about that right now.

Hopefully all of this stuff for the full version will be worth the wait. Still currently aiming for the "somewhere in 2022" date for the full release, but it's too early into the year to tell.

[catoidi]

Hello again, it's been almost a month now since my last post here so I'm just catching yall up to speed on what's happening.

Haven't worked on Box Party much this past few weeks, thanks to some other things outside of Box Party I've been dealing with.
Most of the "tangible" work I've done in Box Party is for full version stuff, so I won't be showing that off just yet.

Right now I'm currently trying to get multiplayer fixed. Thanks to someone smarter than me on Github, quite a few bugs and desyncs in multiplayer have already been fixed.
But the main cause of desyncs right now lies within the hat menu. Simply opening the menu is enough to desync the game.

Thankfully, changing your hat via console commands doesn't cause desyncs.

Once the hat menu is fixed, I'll upload all the fixes and changes and release v1.3.1.

After that, I'll work on v1.4, which will include new content to check out in level 3.

Here's a screenshot of the current state of multiplayer:


edit: i've also gone and spruced up the original post a bit.

[catoidi]

Box Party Demo v1.3.1 is out now on Steam and itch.io. This version includes working multiplayer, 8 new secret hats to unlock, and some other smaller stuff too.


Read more about the update here:
https://idiotbitz.itch.io/box-party/dev ... pdate-v131


Next update will be including some QOL changes for multiplayer.

[catoidi]

Box Party Demo v1.3.2 is out now on all platforms. This includes important bug fixes, like preventing the player from getting softlocked inside of a fridge.

Here's the patch notes:

Code: Select all

-You can now type "secret" into the console to get hints for how to find secrets and secret hats in the current level. 
-Fixed side quest UI bugging out in multiplayer again, but in a different new fun way.
-Fixed Boss Melon getting stuck in falling animation if an invincible entity gets under the boss while it is jumping.
-Fixed hat unlock script sometimes not giving hats to players under certain conditions.
-Fixed getting softlocked inside of the Fridge of Death in level 2.
-Fixed some texture misalignments in the difficulty select level and level 1.
-Improved compatibility with the Corruption Cards mod.

[catoidi]

Hello again. I took a bit of a break from Box Party in April, but I'm back now.

Update v1.4 is not out yet, but the biggest piece of content for the update was completed today, so I'm hoping I can get this update finally out the door soon enough.

This is going to be the biggest update to Box Party Demo so far.

Here's a lil' video to tide you over for now: