Notes from Hell

Draining the Lifeblood of the Wasteland

Jul 13, 2025

Day 17: Draining the Lifeblood of the Wasteland

Today we turned your empire from a simple death-machine into an industrial juggernaut by slapping down Resource Extraction Buildings. These grim contraptions—mining rigs, oil pumps, and scrap harvesters—now siphon raw materials straight from the earth’s corpse. Each structure spawns workers or drones that gnaw away at resource nodes, converting rocky veins into the currency of conquest.

Of course, you can’t hoard what you can’t see, so we bolted a Resource UI onto the HUD. Now your HUD flickers with icons for resources—each with its own snarling little counter.

Erecting Monuments of Mayhem (and Letting Them Bleed)

Jul 8, 2025

Day 16: Erecting Monuments of Mayhem (and Letting Them Bleed)

Today we taught our blasted blueprints to crawl off the page and scream for mercy—welcome to Building Construction Mechanics. Click your sinister structure icon, plant the ghostly outline. No more insta-spawn fortresses—every turret, every barracks, every infernal furnace must be painstakingly forged.

But you can’t just stare at numbers ticking down—that would be boring. Enter Construction Visuals and Timing. Each site sprouts a construction visual. Faster builds? Maybe later. For now, savor the anticipation as your enemies skulk around half-finished walls, licking their chops at your momentary vulnerability.

Shadows That Remember… and Then Betray You

Jul 6, 2025

Day 15: Shadows That Remember… and Then Betray You

Welcome to Day 15, where we turned your map into a living nightmare of half-truths and second-guesses. First up, we locked in Persistent Fog of War—meaning once you’ve exposed that chunk of wasteland, it stays etched in memory like a childhood trauma. No more re-scouting every time you blink; your mental map glows with every path you’ve trekked.

But don’t get cocky. We layered on a Shroud of War that snatches clarity back into darkness whenever your enemy creeps outside your vision cones. Their units and dastardly fortresses vanish like smoke in a wind tunnel—gone until you dare to peek again. It’s like trusting your ex: one moment you see them clearly, the next they ghost you without a trace.

Shrouding the Battlefield in Unseen Terror

Jul 5, 2025

Day 14: Shrouding the Battlefield in Unseen Terror

Day 14 was all about turning our playfield into a minefield of uncertainty—because nothing says “heart-pounding dread” like not knowing what’s lurking just beyond your vision.

First, we dropped the initial Fog of War implementation. We baked a dynamic mask over the map using a render texture that updates every frame, carving away darkness in real time. Think of it like pouring ink over your world and then blasting it with spotlights wherever your units tread. Only the paths they’ve worn stay illuminated; the rest remains an abyss of potential ambushes.

Multiple Flow Fields – Rivers of Chaos & Counter-Chaos

Jul 3, 2025

Day 13: Multiple Flow Fields – Rivers of Chaos & Counter-Chaos

Today we supercharged our pathing heart with multiple Flow Fields, because one current of doom is so last week. Now there’s a dedicated vector network guiding your minions and a separate one for enemy hordes, so both sides flow toward their grim objectives without tripping over each other’s footprints. It’s like giving each army its own blood-red GPS—no more accidental cross-traffic or glorious misroutes.

Pathing Predators on a Grid of Doom

Jun 30, 2025

Day 12: Pathing Predators on a Grid of Doom

Day 12 was all about teaching our little murder machines how to actually navigate a labyrinth of steel and rock instead of face-planting against every wall. We bolted in Flow Field Obstacles so walls, water pits, and those satanic rock spires now carve no-go zones into the vector map. Each arrow around an obstacle bends or vanishes entirely, forcing your hordes to treat barriers like the blazing chasms they are.

Forging the Digital Bloodstream of Domination

Jun 29, 2025

Day 11: Forging the Digital Bloodstream of Domination

Today we turned our playfield into a tactical chessboard of doom with the initial grid system. Every tile now snaps into place like iron plates on a warship’s deck, giving our units a carcass to crawl over. It’s the silent framework where all your horrors will unfold—no grid, no grit, no glory.

Next, we infused that grid with a base Flow Field—a vector field of whispered commands guiding your minions toward their prey. Think of it as the dark currents in a river of despair: each arrow points toward the next juicy target, so your hordes flow like blood through veins without you micromanaging every step.

Sealing Fates & Smoothing the View

Jun 26, 2025

Day 10: Sealing Fates & Smoothing the View

Today we crowned your war machine with the Main Building (HQ)—the beating black heart of your nightmarish empire. It’s no mere structure; it’s the altar where all your atrocities converge.

Naturally, if that fortress crumbles, it’s curtains. We implemented the game-over trigger on HQ destruction, so when your foes—or your own misclicks—reduce it to rubble, the world stops, the engines sputter, and the screen goes cold. There’s no second chance in a realm this merciless.

Planting the Seeds of Your Empire of Ash

Jun 25, 2025

Day 9: Planting the Seeds of Your Empire of Ash

Today we gave you the power to carve your dominion into the scorched earth with a full Building Placement System. Pick your sinister structure, and watch as a ghostly silhouette follows your cursor—ready to turn barren ground into a factory of nightmares. It free-places for you chaotic maniacs, so you can drop fortresses exactly where they’ll choke the life out of your enemies.

Supercharging Your Dark Citadels

Jun 22, 2025

Day 8: Supercharging Your Dark Citadels

Our blood-forges just got a power-up—because one flavor of doom is never enough.

First off, buildings can now vomit multiple unit types. Pick from a buffet of brutes, skirmishers, and artillery drones right from the same spawn hall. Want a mixed squad of tanky meatshields and sniper cultists? Done. Each structure flexes its spawn roster, so your enemies never know what twisted horrors will crawl out next.

Erecting Engines of Carnage and Unleashing New Horrors

Jun 19, 2025

Day 7: Erecting Engines of Carnage and Unleashing New Horrors

Today we raised the stakes—or rather, we raised buildings that vomit death squads onto your unsuspecting foes. First up, the generic unit spawner building got its spawn points locked in place. Think of it like a crypt cracking open: units burst forth at preordained markers, ready to lay waste. No more aimless wanderers—these hellish factories pump out fresh cannon fodder on your command.

Obliterating the Player Loop’s CPU Footprint

Jun 18, 2025

Day 6: Obliterating the Player Loop’s CPU Footprint

Today we went full-on code assassin on our player loop—because in this grimdark grinder, every millisecond shaved is another soul crushed under your iron heel. After profiling, we discovered our poor loop was choking on a hefty 9 ms per frame—an eternity in code. So we tore into it with ruthless efficiency and scoured every branch, cache miss, and allocation.

• Branchless brutality: We refactored conditionals into lookup tables and bitwise ops, turning unpredictable branches into predictable math.
• Data locality war: Arrays got re-ordered, structs packed tight, and we swapped out random memory hops for contiguous buffers that the CPU actually loves.
• Loop unrolling & inlining: We manually unrolled hot loops and inlined tiny functions, erasing call overhead like a pitiless editor.
• Job system tease: By offloading some per-player prep into lightweight jobs (sans heavy sync), we let the main thread breathe easier than a victory smoke.

Result? That beastly 9 ms loop now purrs at 1.5 ms, giving us enough headroom for fancy particles, extra AIs, or literally anything else without tanking frame rates.

Peering into the Abyss with Zoom and the All-Seeing Minimap

Jun 13, 2025

Day 5: Peering into the Abyss with Zoom and the All-Seeing Minimap

Day 5 was all about giving you godlike perspective—because nothing screams “domination” like watching your enemies scramble in microscopic detail.

We started by wiring in camera zoom. Roll your scroll wheel and your view tightens like a magnifying glass over fresh entrails. Need to inspect that one lone turret or gawk at a bloated boss’s weak spot? Zoom in. Want the full-scale panorama of your empire’s ruins? Zoom out. It’s the difference between being a foot soldier and being the puppet master who laughs at every futile rebellion.

Commanding Your Dark Domain with a Deadly View

Jun 12, 2025

Day 4: Commanding Your Dark Domain with a Deadly View

Alright, generals of gloom, this one is all about giving you omnipotent vision—because if you can’t see the battlefield, you might as well be fighting ghosts. We wired in WASD & arrow controls for smooth-as-blood camera motion. Now you can glide your view across the wasteland like a renegade drone, mapping every crater and corpse with precision.

Holding Shift cranks the speed up to “blitzkrieg” mode. Your camera zooms across the map faster than rumors of the apocalypse, so you can dart from one hellhole to the next without missing a beat. Smack that shift key and feel the adrenaline—or at least the illusion of it—as you survey the carnage.

Polishing the Machinery of Mayhem

Jun 11, 2025

Day 3: Polishing the Machinery of Mayhem

Today we’re buffing the bite of our death-dealing minions—because in a grimdark idler-strategy hellscape, half-assed is a sin.

First up, we prioritized attack LookAt over movement LookAt. No more awkward shimmying as your unit pauses mid-sprint to face the wrong way; now the moment they swing, their eyes (and blades) lock dead-center on the target, even if they’re still sliding across the map. Feels way more predatory and infinitely less like a glitchy indie project.

Sharpening the Teeth of Our Mechanical Menagerie

Jun 10, 2025

Day 2: Sharpening the Teeth of Our Mechanical Menagerie

Welcome back to the pit, where we teach our sorry little units how to actually throw a punch instead of wandering aimlessly like last night’s failed TikTok challenge. First thing’s first: we’ve rigged every attacker to face their target, mildly important I know. The soldiers now lock eyes on doom and gloom before they gut it.

Next, we unleashed the Melee Attack System. It’s crude, it’s visceral, it’s exactly what you want when you’re staging an undead dogpile. Each swing has weight, each hit feels like punching through someone’s ribcage… in code, at least. We’ll worry about animations later; right now, we just want that sweet sweet impact.

Forging the Foundations of Endless Conflict

Jun 9, 2025

Day 1: Forging the Foundations of Endless Conflict

Welcome to the dark cradle of our untitled idler-strategy nightmare. We dropped into a barren sample scene, a bleak sandbox where hope goes to die (and where you’ll soon carve your empire in blood). It’s empty now, but soon it’ll teem with the relentless grind of gears, guns, and grudges. Think of it as the womb of despair—cold lighting, jagged shadows, and just enough space to march your units straight into oblivion.

Food Fight 404 - Alpha Update

May 31, 2025

Hello fellow crust-slingers! It’s been a whirlwind of cutting code, juggling ADHD-driven rewrites, and squeezing out that sweet, sweet wave-shooter action. Here’s what’s fresh out of the oven since our last update:

🎯 Core Gameplay Overhaul

• Rewritten Game Flow The week before our alpha release, we realized the original loop didn’t quite capture that frantic wave-shooter vibe. After an ADHD-powered all-nighter, I tore out the old system and rebuilt it from scratch. Now you’ll experience:

Food Fight 404 - Alpha

May 16, 2025

Guts Glory Games invites you to a culinary battlefield where sentient pizza slices lock weapons with rampaging produce. This is no bake-off—it’s Food Fight 404.

🍕 What Is Food Fight 404?

Food Fight 404 is a single-player wave-shooter in which you control a living pizza slice armed to the crust. Your adversaries? Legions of cabbage, cucumber, pepper—and who knows what healthy monstrosities hell-bent on turning your cheesy goodness into salad dressing.

Start of the Food Fight 404

May 1, 2025

From the blackened ovens of Guts Glory Games comes our latest tale of culinary carnage: Food Fight 404. Strap in, this isn’t your grandmother’s baking show.

🩸 Dawn of the Dough Wars

We started with one brutal question: “What if the world’s most irresistible junk food rose up and crushed every leafy green in its path?” Out of that madness was born a wave-shooter where you, a sentient slice of pizza, stand your crust against the onslaught of kale, broccoli, and their nutrient-dense hordes.

Teaching the Machine to Build Mayhem

Apr 14, 2025

Every level in our upcoming game is a handcrafted masterpiece. Except, well, it’s not crafted by a hand. It’s built by algorithms with questionable ethics and a flair for chaos.

So… How do you teach a game to make levels?

Glad you asked. We started with something elegant: Voronoi diagrams. These divide space based on a bunch of randomly scattered points (called “sites”). Like cells in a petri dish getting into turf wars, each site claims a chunk of space that it’s closest to. And if you’ve played Unexplored 2, you’ve seen how Voronoi-based worlds can feel weirdly… alive.

Why I Started Guts Glory Games

Apr 9, 2025

So here we are.

This is Guts Glory Games: an indie dev studio run by exactly one human (me), fueled entirely by energy drinks, sarcasm, and the deep-seated belief that boring games are a crime against humanity. No boardrooms, no buzzwords, and absolutely no quarterly projections; just code, chaos, and a dream. I didn’t start this because I wanted to be a millionaire. I started it because I’m sick of soulless titles with 14 pre-order editions and a roadmap that’s basically a PDF full of lies. If I wanted to be lied to with fancy graphics, I’d just watch political ads.

Jan 1, 0001

Food Fight 404 – Alpha Devlog (May 2025)

Hey crust-slingers! The Food Fight 404 alpha is live on itch.io, and I’m pumped to share what’s been cooking behind the scenes. Between ADHD-powered all-nighters and last-minute rewrites, we’ve completely overhauled the core loop to deliver that frantic, wave-shooter chaos you deserve. Here’s what’s fresh out of the oven since our last update:

🎯 Core Gameplay Overhaul

• Rewritten Game Flow The week before alpha, I realized the original loop wasn’t delivering the relentless push of a true wave shooter. So I scrapped it and rebuilt from scratch. Now you’ll experience: