Hello! Yes, another dev log so soon, I'm just catching up on some things I've been meaning to share but haven't had the time until now.

Today I'd like to share how leveling up and game progress will work. In the original game, you would earn XP from killing enemies and would level up to unlock a random weapon you didn't own.

The rewrite will be featuring this again, but with some changes to keep things under control. I think unlocking new weapons in the middle of a match was a big draw for the game and I would like to recapture that magic.



So, once again, killing enemies will grant you XP, up until you reach level 100. Once you are level 100 or more, XP from kills will be disabled and there will only be time-based ways to earn XP so you can focus on playing the game instead of trying to find weird shit to do to grind. There will also be a couple restrictions made so grinding isn't super easy, but not too many because I think it's kind of fun to use mutators and stuff to make your own XP grind set up.

Anyways, the only way to earn XP post-level 100 is by completing matches, but I will be finding other ways that are time-based. When you complete a match, your XP gain will be a certain percentage of how much you need to level up. So you don't really need to worry about being too high of a level to earn level ups at a steady pace. The longer the match goes on, the larger this percantage becomes. It maxes out after about 30 minutes of game time.

Like I mentioned waayyyy before I started development on the rewrite, your current save file will not transfer to the rewrite, so you will need to start over. Or do you? I am also introducing a new feature for "veteran" players. The game will take a look at your profile and determine when you first started playing. If you started playing before a certain time, then you will unlock the ability to unlock all the weapons from the start and skip straight to level 100. You choose to do this yourself anytime you want, so if you want to start over from level 1 you're welcome to.

Why is leveling up so important when there are a finite amount of weapons to unlock? Well I'm glad you asked, today I'd like to introduce the thing I've been working pretty hard on...



Weapon skins! Some of you guessed it already, but I'm excited to share this none the less.

Weapon skins are new items that make your guns look different, but have no stat altering effects, they are merely for show. After you reach level 100, every time you level up you have a 20% chance to unlock a random weapon skin that you don't own yet. Gold tickets are making a return as well, you can still find a golden ticket instead of a random golden weapon and use the ticket on a weapon of your choice.



Weapon skins have different qualities, and the better weapon skin quality the cooler it looks! For example, common quality weapon skins are just boring solid colors and patterns, while more rare skins have a more exciting look and can even feature special effects and changes to the weapon's sound effects, look or even special death animations for enemy players!



So, how many weapon skins will there be? 10? 15? 30?

How about..



1,706! 1,706 weapon skins are currently in the game right now. Wowzers! How can little old me make so many gosh darn weapon skins?

The weapon skin system features a colorized pattern system, similar to how the ship customization works in Tunnel Divers. I can draw up to 3 different patterns on a weapon, and give them any color I want.



Additionally, I can assign them special effects and make them glow different colors too. I can also completely change the look of the weapon to an entirely different sprite.

Basically, when I make a weapon skin, I can assign its properties to EVERY weapon in the game. So when I want to make a white and green striped skin, this skin can be applied to every weapon in the game in only a couple of lines of code. This makes adding a bunch of new skins really easy.





I have generated 1,706 weapon skins myself, but for the rest of the skins that are added I want the community to make. Theres a little weapon skin creator in the game any player can access, every player is welcome to use it but for right now the only way to share your is to generate a JSON string on your clipboard.



I won't be taking weapon skins from players at this time, but thats because I want it to be done through Steam Workshop. It's not implemented yet, but the community could vote up their favorite weapon skins and I can add the top most Workshop submissions to the game. When a set of weapon skins are added, the author is granted credit for every one of them and the player will be able to click their name on the weapon skin selection menu and visit their Workshop page.

So with that exciting new feature finally out in the open, I'd also like to introduce the new DLC for the game, two new DLCs in fact! You have already probably guessed they are weapon skins. I have made their Steam store pages visible today and you're welcome to check them out below:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1018760/

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1018761/

Each DLC will give you the entire weapon skin set for $2 each. So if you buy the Platinum weapon skins, you will automatically unlock the skin for every weapon in the game (and every weapon added in the future). Even if you're not level 100 yet, you will still be able to equip them. I may add more DLC skins in the future.

These weapon skins are only available through the DLC, you won't be able to randomly unlock them. Even owning the Tunnel Divers DLC will get you a special weapon skin! For the love of God please give me money.

As a side note, B-Man will NEVER feature loot boxes. When you purchase a weapon skin DLC, you will get what you are shown. All other weapon skins must be randomly unlocked by leveling up and cannot be paid for.



Weapon skin usage is totally free, you won't need to own any DLC to unlock weapon skins. So you can not spend a single dime on this game and still have a chance to sport yourself a super rare weapon skin to show off!

B-Man will also not be implemented into the Steam Inventory. Weapon skin unlocks will be handled by my cloud saving. This will allow me to release the game on different platforms, and not just Steam. Also the Steam Marketplace is sketchy as fuck and I don't want B-Man to mix with the wrong people.

The purpose of the weapon skins is to increase the replayability of the game. While I would like to use them to generate income, this is the main reason why I added them. I'm not sure how long it'd take to unlock every skin in the game or if it's even possible, but I think I like it like that. Maybe it doesn't take as long as you think.

So, all thats exciting but I do have some sad news. I have decided to cut two weapons from the game, the Old Pistol and the Old Shotgun.

These weapons were mostly jokes and I think most players can agree they're mostly useless. They're also not very good for the weapon skin system, however I'm not deleting them entirely, they will be "retired" as super rare weapon skins, also known as "Artifacts".





Artifacts are extremely rare weapon skins that are unique to the weapon they're assigned to. For example, the Old Pistol is a Pistol skin that changes the sound effects and even brings back the death animation you get when you killed someone with an Old weapon. The Old shotgun is for the Pump Action.



Artifacts will usually have a unique effect for them that make them stand out from other skins just like this. So, the plan is to have at least 1 Artifact skin for every weapon in the game. I can't promise I will achieve that goal but I'm gonna try. There are about 5 Artifacts in the game so far.

So, my apologies if you were a big Old weapon fan, but they just weren't a good fit anymore as fully featured weapons. There is 1 more weapon I might cut from the game but I'd like to avoid it if possible.

So, when can you play the beta? I am thinking March 8th, since thats when I have a long weekend and can work on making sure the game has basic functionality when problems arise.

The beta will be available to players who own ANY of my DLC. This includes, Premium, the new weapon skin DLCs and even the Tunnel Divers DLC. All of it will grant you access to the beta on March 8th, instantly. It will only be available on Steam for now, when the rewrite takes over the current version then it will continue to be F2P as always. The new DLC will be available for purchase on March 8th as well and you will be able to use the skins immediately.

That's all I have today! Thanks for reading. -S

Happy Friday! Today I'd like to share the finer details of how dual-wielding in the rewrite works.

Dual-wielding is something I've wanted in B-Man in a very long time but couldn't write a system well enough to implement. This time I have, and it's in full swing.

Dual-wielding allows the player to carry and use a one-handed gun in each hand. The design is based on Halo 2, a game a lot of people (or at least old people like me) think of when you think of dual-wielding in video games.

There are some up sides and down sides to dual-wielding, and I can happily break it down for you.

So! When you want to dual-wield, the most obvious way to get started would be from the loadout menu. Select two dual-wieldable weapons, and then click the checkbox to indicate you'd like to spawn dual-wielding them. The checkbox will not appear if the two weapons you select aren't compatible for dual-wielding. You will also be able to indicate dual-wielding when creating saved loadouts.



You can pick up a weapon to dual-wield out on the field as well. Simply walk over the weapon you want to pick up normally, but instead of tapping E to pick up the weapon (or whatever key binding you have), you hold E for a short while instead and you'll pick the weapon up off the ground and into your "off hand" slot. When dropping weapons, you will always drop your off hand weapon first.

When I say your "off hand slot", I am referring to the weapon your character considers your less dominant weapon, which is the one you would pick up off the ground. The secondary weapon slot on the loadout menu will also always be considered your off hand when enabled for dual-wielding.



You are able to tell if the weapon you are holding and the weapon on the ground are compatible for dual-wielding when you get the dual-wield text prompt while standing over the weapon as seen here:



So, you're packing a cannon in each hand, this is great, but whats the downside?

When you are dual-wielding, both weapons will take an accuracy penalty. In the GIF below, I am dual-wielding two Sawn-Off shotguns. I am using the Infinite Ammo mutator to help demonstrate.

Notice how this penalty effects where your character shoots the weapon, but not the cone spread of the shotgun. This is to simulate how the character is having a hard time pointing the shotguns perfectly since he is holding two of them, and not necessarily an accuracy problem with the gun itself. This penalty is the same across all weapons.



Both weapons will also take a 50% reload speed penalty. The reload speed for the Sawn Off while dual wielding and not is compared in the GIF below.



While the spin reload animation is cool looking (and keeps it easy for me on reload animations), it's much slower then if you had both hands readily available.

Carrying an off hand weapon isn't very convenient either. When you change weapons or throw a grenade, you will drop your off hand weapon to do so. See below.



Originally rolling, climbing ladders and even double jumps would force you to drop the off hand weapon, but I figured that was all too much so it's just throwing grenades and changing weapons.

I can always remove penalties or introduce new ones, but we won't know how overpowered or underpowered dual-wielding will be until we test. Right now before releasing the beta, all of this is just throwing a handful of spaghetti straight at the wall.

"Ahh ammo management is gonna be a nightmare!" You might say as a potential dual-wielding user. But it's a lot more flexible then you think. For example, when you dual-wield two of the same weapon, the ammo pool will stack and each weapon hand will use each others ammo.

In the GIF below, I pick up the second Sawn-Off to dual wield it with another. The current ammo pool for each shotgun combines, and the player is able to seamlessly use both ammo pools while dual-wielding, making ammo management a non-issue.



Additionally, when you drop your off hand weapon, it will automatically give your main hand weapon as much ammo as it can, so you don't need to worry about losing ammo when you want to get rid of your off hand or do it by accident.

Again, these ammo management comforts only work when dual-wielding two of the same weapon, obviously combining the Revolver ammo pool with the Sawn-off wouldn't make much sense.

As development goes along, I will always listen to feedback and look for what makes dual-wielding frustrating or under powered due to inconvenience. I would like to see dual-wielding to be used in load outs, but also as an improvisational thing during combat.

And of course, you can turn off dual-wielding on your server via a mutator. There is also an extra mutator setting for it that will let you dual-wield more weapons, but not all of them. Anyone order a quadbarrel?



"BUT SPASMAN... I AM DIE HARD DUAL PISTOLS/SMGS FAN! WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO MY PRECIOUS IMPRACTICAL WEAPONS?"

For a while I was concerned the best thing to do was to remove them from the game..

But it turns out I don't have to. While I had to refactor a lot of code, I managed to find a way to fix this awkward situation, and I would like to re-introduce these two weapons today.



First, the dual weapons have been renamed to "Compact Pistol" and "Compact Uzi" but they still have the same sounds and similar design.

To make them good weapons in a dual-wielding Boring Man universe, these weapons have the special ability to be stored like a secondary weapon. You can also throw grenades with them without dropping your off hand. Demonstrated below.



Please note though, they will still suffer from the reload and accuracy penalties.

Compact weapons are also organic, individual weapons. They can be used by themselves, and their benefits can be used by any other dual-wieldable weapons, so if you're dual-wielding a Revolver and a Compact Pistol, you can still put both of them away without dropping the off hand weapon. It doesn't matter what hand the compact weapon is equipped with, it will still let you put them away.

That's great! But in the original game, you always spawned with two pistols or two SMGs, not one. And to make these weapons individual weapons, I had to cut some of their stats in half.

To circumvent this nerf, an additional bonus to compact weapons is another unique ability which will allow you to spawn with 2 of them when they are a part of your loadout. This will allow you to equip 2 compact weapon and an additional weapons of your choice, just like in the original game.



By default, you will always spawn with two Compact Pistols/Uzis, but if you enable dual-wielding on your loadout, it will switch back to just providing 1 compact weapon so it can be paired with another weapon of your choice.



So, with all that flexibility introduced, the dual weapons have been rescued from the cutting room floor. I'm pretty proud of this system, I think its simple and easy to understand at face value, but I still wanted to go into detail with it.

That's all I have for today, thanks for reading. If you want to follow development, follow me on Twitter here. I also make bad tweets.

Edit: In the future, I would also like to make holding down Q (Change Weapon) to make you equip your holstered weapon as a dual-wield weapon.

Hey folks, so I've been hammering away at the netcode on the rewrite, and one experimental feature I'm excited about is the UDP hole punching.

In short, hole punching will allow some, but not all players to be able to host servers without portforwarding. I'll say again, some but not all. Most players who play straight from home with a typical residential connection will be able to host without portforwarding, but if you play from a school, work, coffee shop, etc basically anywhere with public internet or where a lot of people will be using it at once, you will probably still need to portforward.

This is because there is heightened security across your local network due to so many strangers using it at once. This all might sound familiar to those who have ever had problems with services such as Xbox Live, which heavily depend on your network's NAT configuration to work correctly.

With a strict NAT, not only will you be unable to host but you may be unable to join some open NAT servers as well, unless they port forward. So even with an open NAT, its probably still a good idea to port forward your server so that all players would be able to join it.

If you're an aspiring networking nerd, you can read a more in-depth explanation on how it works here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UDP_hole_punching

Anyhow, I need to get a good idea of how many of you will see the benefits of this new feature just to see if it's something that will have an impact on the server hosting aspect of community. And I'm gonna need your help.

First, you will need to download this small tool I made. It will determine if your network is an open or strict NAT, and record your IP address on my server so I can get an idea of how many of you have open or strict NATs. This will be pretty helpful for me. You can download it below.

The NAT Survey is over. Thanks for your help!

And in case you think this tool is gonna hack your computer or something, I have also made the source code available for this tool. It's packed into a GMZ file, which can be opened with Game Maker Studio (1.4 specifically cause I made this on my laptop but it should work in GMS2 too)

The NAT Survey is over. Thanks for your help!

Once you have the EXE downloaded, run it and you should see a small black window. Press 1 to send your NAT Type to my server and it will be recorded. Once it says "Thank you" then you're done and can close and delete the program. If you can't connect, then you may need to allow the tool past any firewalls you have.

Yes, it can be unnerving to see a strict NAT type, but I will still be hosting my own servers for this case, and hopefully you'll still be able to connect to some other servers that haven't bothered to port forward. There is no real way to "fix" a strict NAT type, unless you have it in good with your local network administrator who could configure your internet to an open NAT. Maybe bake them cookies or something?

The more people that do this, the better idea I'll have as to how many people can host a game and I can adjust the rewrite's course accordingly. There are an infinite amount of different network configurations, and while it's impossible to write the game to make it all work perfectly, I'm exhausting every source of information I have to make server hosting easy for as many people as possible.

That's it. Thanks for your support!

- S

FYI regarding the last post I'm probably not gonna let you pre-order the second DLC, stupid idea. I will probably put up the first beta soon, available to anyone who already owns Premium, but I'm not sure when yet.

Vote here: Poll closed, 75% Yes, 25% No

I don't know what the DLC will be yet (I have ideas though), and won't put it up for sale without a good description for it



After a few months of testing, I would open up the beta to Premium owners, then when the rewrite is near "completion" then it would become free-to-play and release as an update for the original game.

If you've been living under a rock the past month, check out some Boring Man rewrite footage I released here: https://twitter.com/SpasmanGames/status/1035969330226163712



Theres also a bunch of a other GIFs on my Twitter like above, feel free to scroll

I've been meaning to type up something more official for this, but work has been bad lately, life in general I guess. so its been hard to do anything.

- S

https://twitter.com/SpasmanGames/status/1035969330226163712

follow my twitter if you want to see more rewrite development

i will probably write something more professional soon explaining everything

You can check it out here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/569720/TUNNEL_DIVERS/

I appreciate any and all who take the time to download and try it. Thank you all for your continued support of my games. The game's DLC will be free for the weekend, if you want to try out the level editor and stuff.

I'd also like to thank Gergely Kovács for the soundtrack for the game, and all the voice actors who offered their beautiful voice acting for free to me. Please check them out in the credits.

I'm moving tommorrow morning 7AM MST so my server that runs the bman servers will be offline. The server list will continue to work, so if you know how to host a game nows your chance.

Transfering my internet service is my top priority so as long as nothing goes wrong it should only last a couple of hours

Hey folks,

It turns out this game's popularity is lasting a lot longer then I anticipated, and I've been feeling irresponsible in neglecting it. So I'd like to return to updating this game when I think Tunnel Divers is complete, which will be sometime this summer.

However, what I have in mind is rewriting the game, from scratch. This is pretty much the only way to get me to update the game again. When I first started developing, it was just something to do with my free time and I had no idea anyone was gonna play it, so a lot of the code is messy and frustrating, which was a large contributor as to why I wanted to stop updating it.

This is a chance for the community to take part in development instead of just me and a few friends, and to reshape the game's original design with it's fans providing valuable feedback for me. A nicer codebase for me would also guarantee I update this game for a long time after the rewrite is finished.

If I do rewrite the game, there will be problems though:

• The game would not come out the same. I'd recycle a lot of assets but the movement and guns would feel different, some bugs you use in your play style may no longer be there, etc. I'd try my best to make it as accurate to the original as I can, but it's going to feel different no matter what. I'd also remove some features I don't like, such as useless mutators nobody really plays with.
  
  
• Global save wipe, new code means a new save file format probably. I'd also add cloud saving support, and locally saved files wouldn't transition well for that.
  
  
• New technical issues, if the game is working perfectly for you now, I can't guarantee it'll work perfectly for you when it's rewritten.
  
  
• I'd have to shut down the current version, at the very most allow that version to be played on a separate branch with only the server list running. I can't support many multiplayer games by myself, so my goal with the rewrite is to make it so much better that not many will miss the old version.
  
  
• To make it feel more financially viable, I've decided I would add a second DLC. What that DLC would be, I'm not sure yet. The Premium DLC existing now would still work for the rewrite with all the existing features, obviously.

I could write a novel about the improvements the game would receive because of a rewrite, but I want you to focus on the things that might upset you for now. It may be exciting to hear the game is being updated again, but as a gamer myself I've noticed games that receive makeovers usually get an angry response from dedicated players and I want the community to be aware that I'm paranoid of that, but can't guarantee you'll be 100% pleased with the outcome.

My plan would be to keep the rewrite build in another Steam branch, which would receive updates normally as if it were an Early Access game. The original version would remain in the main download, and continue on as it always has been. The build would only be accessible if you own Premium, up until it goes to replace the current version and becomes free to play. This would help keep quality feedback, as Premium owners usually have more care for B-Man then the average F2P steam user. And an increase in sales for the game, maybe. Once the rewrite is completed, it would replace the original version as an "update" and the old version can be placed into it's own branch for historic/accuracy purposes.

For those wondering why I won't make it a sequel, I already mentioned how I can't support too many multiplayer games by myself, with limited funding. On top of that, this version of B-Man is the game receiving any attention at all. A sequel would require a new store page, a new title, a new everything. For example, Markiplier's video links to this game's store page. So If I shut down this game to make room for a sequel, Markiplier's fans would come to a dead store page, and the average person's attention span these days wouldn't last long enough to notice a sequel was made, and it could be a death sentence for the B-Man community in general. I'm not a big and famous developer, so I have to be very careful that I don't castrate the word-of-mouth advertising B-Man has graciously received.

So with that all being said, I can't say I've decided I want to do this just yet, but your opinion may help. Please click the strawpoll below and vote either yes or no for the rewrite.

https://www.strawpoll.me/15517946

When I feel like I've made my decision, I will make another post and explain some of the big improvements I'd have planned if I'm going with it. Thanks for reading.

- S

Today, I updated B-Man to work on GameJolt, so you may start seeing a handful of new players.

About a year ago I had to discontinue updating the GameJolt version because of cheaters using it to evade their bans, but that should be a little bit harder now because I implemented the GameJolt API to require a GameJolt account to play.

Obviously that won't stop ban evasion entirely but I'm satisfied with the hurdle it puts into place.

I updated the Steam version with these changes (it won't be any different) so please keep an eye out for any new crashes.

Keep in mind I was able to do this because of Tunnel Divers, Tunnel Divers is a new project that's teaching me a lot of new things, so it has been very beneficial to me as a developer all around.

Thanks for playing!

-S

Today, I updated B-Man to work on GameJolt, so you may start seeing a handful of new players.

About a year ago I had to discontinue updating the GameJolt version because of cheaters using it to evade their bans, but that should be a little bit harder now because I implemented the GameJolt API to require a GameJolt account to play.

Obviously that won't stop ban evasion entirely but I'm satisfied with the hurdle it puts into place.

I updated the Steam version with these changes (it won't be any different) so please keep an eye out for any new crashes.

Keep in mind I was able to do this because of Tunnel Divers, Tunnel Divers is a new project that's teaching me a lot of new things, so it has been very beneficial to me as a developer all around.

Thanks for playing!

-S