Decided to bite the bullet and add bombs because I feel like I need at least one more boss fight in the game. If I can't make bombable walls, then I can just have enemies that can only be killed by bombs instead. The game is too boring with just a sword.

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Placed the end-game item on a pedestal.

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Music now stops after defeating the final boss.

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Boss now drops the key which leads to the room with the MacGuffin item. I think it's slightly more climatic that way instead of it just ending abruptly.

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Boss now explodes on death.

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Replaced the BS Zelda "hit" sound effect with a stock asset. It kind of reminds me of Terraria.

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Changed the sword sound to a "swing" sound and replaced the door sound with a free asset.

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Worked on the credits screen. I switched to a completely different format for the file. I also included my "company" logo at the end.

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Finally starting to replace the copyrighted placeholder sound effects with either effects of my own or stock sound effects. Though, I couldn't find a good enough sound effect that goes well with the sword attack. The player merely thrusts it (like in Zelda 1), and all the sound effects I could find are more fit for a swinging of a sword.

I tried to take a knife-sharpening sound effect and edit it in Audacity to try to make it sound more "SNES-like" (lower the sample rate) and changing it to a 16-bit PCM, but I don't think it turned out to well. I also need to take into account that there is both a wooden sword and a metal sword.

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Made the boss drop an item upon defeat. The leaf is just a placeholder. I don't know what it should be in the final game.

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Implemented a dungeon map.

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Replaced the copyrighted placeholders of many of the game's items with sprites of my own.

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The final boss now shoots projectiles at the player. I tried adjusting the timing of when the boss shoots the projectiles, but I either have the boss fight being to easy or it being borderline impossible. I should probably accept that the game will have an anti-climatic boss fight.

I thought about having the boss drop some McGuffin item that will end the game, instead of just opening the staircase, but I don't know what kind of item it should be.

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Made it so that the final boss level is just two rooms. Though I haven't made it so that the store doesn't spawn in the boss room. I've also disabled the staircase for the boss fight until it's defeated.

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Added the first and possible only boss, which will appear in the final floor. It's basically just like the Ghoma in the Zelda games except you attack it with the sword as it's the only weapon in the game.

Though given the limited window to attack and the fact that it takes more time to charge at the boss than it is to strike it with a projectile, I don't know how this boss battle will pan out, but I feel like without a proper final boss, the game would end anti-climatically. Also, due to the fact that levels are randomly generated, there is also an issue that the final boss room can be entered from the south, meaning that you will end up behind the boss when the battle starts. Maybe, the final floor can be just a single corridor that leads to the boss, instead of a randomly generated dungeon like the rest of the levels.

Anyway, I just want to get this over with and move on. After working on this project, I can clearly see why Nintendo never considered making a Zelda game with random dungeons. Not saying that it's impossible, but there are so many things you need to take into account (lock and key placement, metroidvania elements, etc) and they are much harder to implement in a randomly generated dungeon compared to a simple roguelike dungeon.

After this, I plan on creating a simple adventure game to practice things like event flags and dialogue trees.

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Replaced the BS Zelda Darknut sprites with my own.

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I tried to make crudely drawn skeleton sprites based on this 16x16 character base sprite.

opengameart.org/content/base-c…

It turns out that I can't draw a skull from the side so it ends up looking weird from the profile view. It still looks small compared to the player sprite, but I plan on using the same base sprite for the player.

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Replaced the BS Zelda skeleton sprite with one from Open Game Art, but it looks to small. I tried to look everywhere for 16x16 skeleton sprites and I can't draw my own, but this was the only one I could find.

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Replaced the sprite for the blue octorok-like enemy with one of my own.

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Replaced the BS Zelda slime sprites with my own.

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I'm now in the process of replacing the copyrighted assets with free-to-use assets or my own. So far, I only replaced the graphics for one enemy.

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Added a "game over" jingle.

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Adding the difficulty curve to the game by making it so that certain enemies only appear in certain levels. For example, for the first four levels, only the slimes and skeletons appear.

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And I forgot to upload the video.

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Key and shield icons are now dark when they player doesn't have them, but light up when the player has them, instead of just appearing on the HUD when the player has them. The sword icon now indicates whether you have the wooden or white sword.

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Added text on the health bar to represent the HP and maximum HP.

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Added a slime enemy that takes one hit to kill.

I plan on balancing the enemy placement, having the stronger enemies appear in later levels because right now there is no change in difficulty whatsoever.

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Well, I did add one enemy, but it is just a stronger variant of a previous one.

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I'm thinking about what else to add. I could add more enemies, but I need to come up with enemy behaviors that don't require major reconstruction of the base Enemy class.

I don't know if I will add bosses because the player only equips a sword, which severely limits the potential for boss battles. Originally, I planned on having the player equip bombs for bomb-able walls, but placing such walls would've been difficult for the dungeon generation algorithm. Arrows and other projectiles seem kind of pointless. Either I limit the amount of arrows that can be shot/thrown, or I give the player unlimited arrows. The former would make it frustrating if the player was in the middle of a boss battle that required arrows and he/she ran out. The latter would effectively make the sword useless. That leaves only the boomerang as a possible second weapon.

Anyway, I don't plan on making this game grand or anything. This is really just a "practice game" for something I plan on making later on. That future game will have a much better dungeon generation algorithm.

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Implemented saving and loading. Game saves automatically every time you enter a new floor, but you loose your save file if you run out of lives.

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Finally added text on the game over screen. It's weird that I always neglect details like these.

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Created a texture for the extra life item. It looks kind of weird. I tried to make it look like a stick figure with a plus sign, indicating an "extra life", but it turned out kind of odd.

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Finally, the key is no longer using the coin sprite as a placeholder and now has it's own texture.

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Added lives, including an extra life item that sometimes appears in the dungeon shops. I even plan on going so far as to delete your save file if you run out of lives.

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Created a sand tileset. That appears in-between the snow tileset and purple tileset.

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Added a locked door that appears before each exit room.

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Added the fourth tileset. I have know idea what this is supposed to be.

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Added an "ice level" tileset along with an accompanying track.

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Dungeon now has alternate tracks for different floors.

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Added an alternate tileset. I plan on having the tilesets change, the deeper you go.

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HUD now includes icons to indicated the items you have.

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Implemented pausing (something I have neglected for a while).

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Rearranging the HUD.

(No video this time because I only need a screenshot to demonstrate)

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Dungeon shops are fully functional. Though I will most likely move them to the center of their rooms and maybe add a merchant.

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Added a shield item which reduces the damage the player takes by half.

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Created a third enemy that shoots projectiles.

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Now, keys (using the coin sprite as a placeholder) are required to exit each floor.

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Improved the wall tiles. It looks SO much better now. It's actually starting to look like a game.

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Added the Ioncom logo and the main menu.

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Replaced the copyrighted, placeholder tiles with my own.

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Decided to add more rooms in the procedurally generated dungeons to add more variety. Sand rooms can now appear but they are functionally no different than floor tiles.

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Added blue coins. They are worth 5 coins each.

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Purchasable items have now been implemented.

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Fixed the animation with the red shield sprites too, but the attack animation still shows the green shield.

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Red shield sprites now have proper attack frames.

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Red shield sprites now have proper death animation.

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Finally added a victory fanfare after completing a floor. I just used the fanfare I used in my previous games (which was a CC0, 8-bit fanfare from OpenGameArt), put it in NeuralNote and changed the instruments.

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Certain items will now disappear if you don't collect them in time.

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Added a fanfare for collecting the mirror. I also just realized that two of the bosses are broken and I need to investigate the problem.

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Fixed the boss bug. Although I didn't record the bug, the bug was that some bosses would just hang upon death. Turns out they aren't calling the animation method.

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Water tiles are now animated.

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Did the same with the other tilesets. Though I don't think lava flows like water. Maybe I should have it bubble up instead.

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Player can now pick up items with his sword.

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Changed the lava tiles to make it look like it's bubbling, but it ended up looking weird. Judging from other games, lava tiles tend to have 4 frames of animation instead of three, but if I add an extra frame then I need to add an extra frame to the water tilesets.

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Decided to change the death whirl sound effect to make it sound less 8-bit. I don't know how it turned out. Should I play with the instruments more? Is it fine just 8-bit? Or should I keep it like it is in this video?

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