Hi folks and welcome to my first Gun Soul devlog!

If you've seen the game page then you'll already know that this is a 16bit inspired platform action game like Turrican (remember the Amiga and Atari ST?) with a limited loot system like Diablo/Destiny. I first had the idea of creating Gun Soul after I played Destiny 2 a few years ago and quickly made a very rough prototype in GameMaker Studio 1.4. I thought it would be cool to have a 2D version of Destiny with local co-op play which is a game mode in short supply in recent times as most games went online. That prototype then sat around unfinished until I dusted it off about 18 months ago and decided to work on it some more.

Tools:

• GameMaker Studio 2.x : in the time since I made my prototype a newer version of GMS was released with a much improved IDE so I upgraded to that. If you want to know what all the new IDE features are then I'll leave you to go and look at the YoYo Games website rather than go through it all here. Other 2D game making tools are available but I already had some familiarity with GMS so I stuck with what I know.

• Paint Shop Pro 6: I bought this sometime around the turn of the millennium and I still use it today. Yes, there are more modern programs with more features but it's fine for pixel art. And, as with GMS, I do like to stick with what I know!

• Krita: this is a free piece of art software which I used to create the title screen, character drawings and anything which isn't 'pixel art'. Why didn't I use Paint Shop Pro? Well, it's so old it doesn't support my Huion 640p graphics tablet. So I looked for a free alternative to Adobe Photoshop and chose Krita. If you see what I've done with it then you'll realise I'm far from being a competent artist but I'm not going to blame my tools. It's pretty good!

Platforms: my GMS license enables me to create versions for :

• Windows - this is the obvious one as it's the default option with GMS. So I'll put a downloadable executable or installer on itch.io
• Amazon FireTv - I think Gun Soul will look best on a big screen (although the game resolution isn't HD but we'll get to those kind of details in my next devlog!) and is best played with a gamepad. So the FireTv is an obvious choice as Amazon has managed to sell a zillion of them all over the world.
• Google Play - this is usually the first choice for Android but I'm not convinced that Gun Soul is going to work well on mobile. However it's not going to cost me anything so why not?
• Apple App Store - unfortunately this option won't be happening. The reason is that, although the GMS license enables me to create an iOS version, there is a requirement that the final compilation is done on an Apple device like a Mac. And I don't have one.

I'll stop there as I don't want to bore you with too much detail straight away. If you want to see a video version of this first devlog then you can see it here:

(Apologies for the amateurish quality - I'll practice more for devlog video 2. I might even prepare a script!)

Thanks for reading/watching and I'll see you in the next one!

Regards,

BarrowBloke