YEAR 3 - BA3b - Evaluation

I'm very happy with the current state of the game. It's still not finished and released like I was hoping for but it's certainly finished enough to take to exhibitions and I'll be taking it to 3 in the next few months. I've learned a lot about how to finish a game and the first few weeks felt like a big learning curve in terms of motivating myself to work on the boring stuff like menus, save systems and UX. Once I made some headway though I started to enjoy doing all the boring stuff too as the game was starting to feel more and more like a finished product. I prefer to work on the systems so I put off working on the character design, which I new needed changing early on in the project. However it payed off as when I started to think about the character in terms of solving a problem, which in this case was displaying the UI, I created a really great design that helped to streamline the rest of development from then on. I would argue though that if I had come up with that character earlier in development, I wouldn't have had to go back and redesign lots of game elements, which would have saved me time.

I feel my programming skill has improved a lot but working solo on every element of the game has improved my understanding of managing a project even more. In the past I would have developed the first solution that came to mind when thinking about something like tracking the number of rounds won, but this project has taught me to take a step back a bit and brain storm ideas in Photoshop first. Some of the best work in the project has been created in this way; I think I've found a new design pipeline. Using Olly Moss's style as a reference has been hugely beneficial to the art direction as it's allowed me to relatively quickly create concepts for areas and immediately implement them in the game as backgrounds.

I've slacked a bit in terms of posting content about my game on social media other than the occasional #screenshotsaturday but I've made up for it with all the connections and feedback I got at EGX and NIGD meetups. I'm confident the new characters, logo and icon I created have improved the cohesion and marketability of the game and I'm looking forward to figuring out more about the world these characters live in. I'd like to do some kind of environmental story telling with the locations and collectable items at some point before release. I'm also very happy with how the business cards have turned out and I'm looking forward to distributing them and the stickers at NGF in a couple of weeks.

I've done my best to create a game that can cater to both new and seasoned gamers in terms of making the game forgiving and immediately fun enough to pickup and play whilst also having the depth and skill ceiling of a competitive game. Also in the sense of art direction; I've made characters that are customizable and likeable at first glance but a world that has the depth and atmosphere that should keep players wanting to learn more. I've even applied this methodology to the marketing of the game with the various clips I've uploaded, business cards and stickers as well as designing a competitive game that people might want to stream/ share footage of online and the [::] motif I've tried to repeat throughout the game and promotional material.

YEAR 3 - BA3b - New Menu Polish & Steam Mockup

The above gif shows recent polish I've made to the menus. The font in the title is now used throughout most of the menus and I've made the pointer move much more smoothly between choices. The pointer now represents the [::] motif and rotates based on what the player is doing too. All of this was actually a huge amount of work to program/ design/ make and has gone through a fair few revisions throughout the development of the game.

Above is a quick steam page mockup I made just to get an idea of what the game might look like with it's current artstyle. The lighting looks quite good in the thumbnails but I've actually been warming towards the non-lighted scenes recently due to their 'clean look' and the lighting system has been giving me some problems with FPS recently.

I actually tried out the decorating style the artist at INOPS told me about at EGX Rezzed where I paint over the top of an image of the game and the paste it back on top of the geometry afterwards.
The image on the left shows the old style and the image on the right shows the paint-over style. I think it looks quite goofy, almost like a crayon drawing. There's something likable about it but I'm not sure it looks as good as the version I've been using up to now. It's possible I'll use it as an unlockable art style at some point though.  I'd like to try a paint over again at some point though because I think I could make it look less goofy.

YEAR 3 - BA3b - Arcade mode & New Bullets

I worry about the marketability of the game given that it only works with 2 players at the moment. I concluded that if I want people to buy the game and not ask for a refund and/or berate me on twitter I should focus on making more content for the individual player. I don't know whether or not I want to go as far as making a full metroidvania again but I might make some more levels in the same style as the tutorial.
Arcade mode is a re-imagining of the very first version of the game, even using the same shooter asset. One of the coolest things about Alien::Qualifier is the ability to navigate around bullets in mid air so for arcade mode I slowed down the speed of the enemies bullets to 1/3 of the normal speed to put the player in the situation you see above where they're jumping around, tracking and calculating their jumps so as to avoid the enemies bullets. It feels really good to pull off.

The bullet knockback affects this game mode interestingly. The player has to be vary careful about shooting in the air when there are lots of bullets because the knockback can make movement difficult to predict but the knockback can also be used by advanced players to move backwards whilst facing in the same direction or to quickly push themselves out the path of a bullet.

This version of the arcade has reflecting turned off because it would make the game much too easy.

I like the design of the encounter because it gives the player the choice of where they want to shoot the enemy but only to a degree as they have to hit all 4 targets before any respawn. This forces the player to make use of all their abilities as they try to reach the highest point to shoot the top target, which is always difficult.

At some point during development I changed the hover bar to recharge slowly on the ground rather than instantly resetting but I forgot to write a post about it (I also made the jumps recharge slowly but removed it again because it was frustrating and difficult to track).

The slow hover bar recharge is really interesting in this game mode because the player is encouraged to spend so much time in the air, managing hover bar charge becomes really important and sometimes the player has to spend time making skillful dodges on the ground in order to recharge the hover as much as possible.

This game is actually one of my favorite things to do in the game and I'd like to add more game modes like this.

Also I changed the bullet design to shapes rather than colors due to the colors being difficult to tell
apart, especially for colorblind people. The new top tier bullet looks really big and threatening; It's clear it cannot be reflected. That said, another mechanic I added was the power reflect, where a frame perfect reflect can actually reflect a top tier bullet and at a higher speed. It's something I borrowed from Super Smash Bros Melee It's ridiculously hard to pull off though and is only intended to create lucky instances for players and as a very high skill more for advanced player.

I really love how it looks like the bullet knocks out the characters teeth when it hits (Also, the red eyes are invincibility frames (i frames) )

YEAR 3 - BA3b - I'm now the director of a company && another round counter

At EGX Rezzed a while ago I spoke to Rami Ismail and he told me to talk to the people at ID@XBOX. They told me that as an indie developer I can apply to get on the XBOX and Windows Marketplace if I set up as a company.

Today I did just that. The conformation has come through that DENDRITE GAMES LTD is an official company that I am now in charge of. This means I can publish my games on the Xbox store and Steam now.

I've updated the round counter again now I've had feedback.

I figured the game needed an intermediate room between rounds to rest where I count up the score for them to clearly see. Above you can see a variety of designs I made.

The 1st one is similar to DuckGame where the two characters are moving horizontally to get to a location. I like the feeling of progression in this one.

The 2nd design is more thematic. I like the idea of the characters being in purgatory and fighting for a chance to go to heaven or hell so the weighing scales was in reference to that. It seems too abstract though and difficult to actually track.

The 3rd was going to be an animated clip of the characters removing health from one another but it seemed too confusing since that's what you do in the game anyway.

In the 4th design I went back to the faces again before running into the same mistake of only 4 rounds.

That's when I came up with the 5th and 6th designs that would just be like elongated faces.

Finally, in the 7th design I settled on a new cheerleader character that would cheer you on between rounds. Similarly to the main character, the face would represent the score but this time it's only horizontal so hopefully it won't confuse players.

This is what it looks like in game. I love the characterization. The width of the head is PROCEEDURALLY GENERATED based on the number of rounds the player has chosen. The character is actually made up of 5 different parts, lots of time and maths to get this working but I did it and I really love the result!

I also have separately themed celebration rooms based on what world the players were fighting in.

YEAR 3 - BA3b - Area variation

I tried to make all the areas in the game distinct both visually and mechanically. The only complete ones at this point in development are The Caves and Molten Core

The caves are designed to be the introductory area so I've kept the level designs as simple as possible without too many new environmental things to learn.
The caves has lots of blue and purple hues because I wanted them to feel cold and remote. They're dark but crystals and fireflies help to light up the space to make the caves an atmospheric first location.

The molten core is deeper into the planet and has larger spaces than the caves. Fireballs will be shooting out the lava vertically whilst the more open plan allows your opponents to rein fire on you from further away horizontally. The molten core is primarily red and orange because I wanted it to feel hot in contrast to the cold caves. The core is dangerous as even the ground itself is moving.

The peaks are lonely and at one of the highest points of the planet. A drop from this height will surely kill you so you better be careful where you step because the ground is covered in ice up here. The peaks has a lot of endless pits and open design so I consider it an advanced area. The peaks is mostly white, blue, and black as it's mostly frozen over.

The belly (organic) is still very much in development. I'm undecided exactly on which direction I want to take it but I intend to have much more rounded shapes, blood splatters and a moving environment. I'd like The Belly to be much more destructible than the other areas with plants growing inside it that release spores upon being shot. The spores affect the environment in a variety of ways, such as slowing down bullets that pass through and infecting walls with bouncy gel.

The environment will include lots of reds, pinks and black. Lot's of squishy sounds as the players walk along the ground and hidden traps in The Belly.

The infested ship will be mostly grey and green with patched of white parasites. It will include bits of machinery such as conveyor belts, and buttons that can open/close doors or switch the direction of conveyor belts. The infested ship is intended to be slightly less hostile than The Belly but just as interactive; an intermediate area with little or no endless pits.

YEAR 3 - BA3b - Count Down, New Reflector && Norwich Indie Game Dev Feedback 2

One of the things mentioned last time I took my game to a NGD meetup was that you could spawn in run into a hole immediately because there's no warning. So in time for the next meetup I made a countdown timer before each round. Again, it uses the [::] motif because I'm trying to make it a consistent thing throughout the game now.

The design also just works perfectly as a timer without any need for localization or anything.

Another thing I changed recently is the reflector now looks more like it belongs to the new character. It works as a short range projectile that takes in to account the players movement, so a fast moving player can move full speed towards a bullet and reflect just in time to shoot their reflector further. The reason they might want to do this is because the reflector can now be used to displace opponents. I love this because it half solves the problem I was having with the highest ground being the most beneficial. This new displacement mechanic now gives the attacking player a much better chance at pressuring the defensive player.


NIGD FEEDBACK:

The game has gone through a huge change since I last showed it off at a NIGD meetup so I brought it again to test out the new tutorial and to see what people think of the new changes made to PvP~

PROBLEM- The countdown timer (the little TV looking things in the top corners) aren't acknowledged.

NOTES - I added these recently but forgot to make a post about them (like lots of things I've added). They track the number of rounds a player has won and count up one by one until they reach 4 and a player is declared victorious. One of the main problems is that they just don't stand out at all. Another is that they look like they can be interacted with but can't. The 3rd major problem with their design is that the count UP, whereas everything else with the [::] design counts down. This may confuse the player.

SOLUTION - What I need to do is, firstly, make them count horizontally rather than like [::] and secondly, I need to make an intermediate room where I focus on the round number actually increasing.


PROBLEM - 5 rounds to win is too much.

SOLUTION - If I make the new horizontal counter variable I can give the player the option to change how many rounds are required for a win.


PROBLEM - In the 2nd tutorial level people can cheat what I'm trying to teach them by dropping down further and exploiting mid-air jumps. Because of this, players get stuck on the final section of tutorial2 because they didn't properly learn the moves I was trying to teach them.

SOLUTION - I need to redesign it to have lava directly below so people can't cheat the tutorial.


PROBLEM - The font in the tutorial is difficult to read, but the button images places around make up for it.

SOLUTION - Find a new font that works well in a low resolution


GENERAL NOTES
- People really really like the new diegetic UI on the characters. Most people found it fairly self explanatory and easy to read. They also like the new character design.
- People like the new countdown timer. "It's really clear what it is despite it looking alien"
- Everyone who tried the tutorial managed to get through it without too much issue or help from me.
- Buddy could do with more characterization in what he says
- There's a bug where the first character slowly slides left and won't turn round but fixes itself after a little while [EDIT, fixed now]

YEAR 3 - BA3b - Business Cards and Stickers!

After lots of back and forth I've finally designed and ordered business cards for NIGF.

This is the front of the final design. It has 3 potential backs.

I followed Sharron and Jess Hiders (UKIE) advise as closely as I could whilst designing it.

Here are all the designs I came up with. The first one I liked but the half black half white thing didn't really fit the game and I was worried the message would get lost. I like the layout of 2 but the writing seemed like it would be a better fit on the left. In 3 the character and logo is too small. 4 is noce and simple but a bit too plain? I really like 5 and 6 but I went with 9 in the end because of Jess Hiders advise to leave blank space on the card for people to write down notes. 8 was close too but again, the writing feels more natural to me on the left. I tried the character facing away from center too but it didn't fill the space as nicely and seemed a bit too absent from the rest of the card.

The website MOO, gave me the option of having multiple backs to my cards, and because the game has a variety of areas I figured I'd make 3 for 3 of the different areas in the game.

I included the logo on this side of the card instead of the front.

The first one is exactly the same image as I use for my NGF submission.

The molten core one is a slightly edited version of the concept art but I added the logo in the middle and redrew the fireball so it didn't overlap the logo. I did some fun stuff with the blobs of lava falling in front of and behind the logo.

For the Ice one I used the white version of the logo on top of a newly painted concept piece. I used a clipping mask and a light blue gradient to give the logo an iced look.

I'm hoping that together these 3 designs will make players excited for the game and advertise me as an artist/developer.

I also ordered some stickers and these are the designs I uploaded to be printed. I wanted to have something to give to children who may not be interested in business cards to advertise the game to (and just people who like stickers).

The icon I've been currently using for the game seemed like a good design to use and with the player color customization now in the game I thought it'd be nice to give people a choice of colors.

YEAR 3 - BA3b - Tutorial Helper design

This image shows the development of 'Buddy', the players tutorial sidekick (and sidekick in the single player adventure?).

I knew I just wanted them to be a small alien looking creature that has a resemblance to the main character.

In the early concepts I tried out just one eye and played with the idea of Buddy having a hover bar too.

You can see from number 4 onward I tried keeping the 4 eye motif before coming up with the skull shape.





In number 8 I tried different sized eyes and that made the 2 upper ones look like eyebrows and Buddy was pulling an impatient face. I really liked the personality this game the character so in number 9 I reduced the eyes down to 2 and made them more expressive. I also added ears, that I could animate a future date to show expression too.

This gif shows the character in game. I animated it's movement similarly to the sin wave squares in the background and made it follow the players position. I also made the ears separately so that they drift behind the character, giving it more life. Buddy's idle animation is just blinking but he looks left and right when the player has stood still for too long; all in the hopes of giving Buddy a bit more life as a character.

I recently reworked the character select room in the game too to allow the players to customize their alien. The players can push left and right to change the hue and up and down to change the saturation.

Hopefully this should allow players to associate more closely with their character and I'd still like to add a cosmetic item unlock system eventually.

YEAR 3 - BA3b - Tutorial

After removing single player mode from the game completely, I've decided to bring it back again to try and teach players how to play.

This first stage is designed to teach the player the basics of movement; jumping, and hovering.
The little black creatures aren't enemies, they're waypoints for the helper which I'll talk about later in this post.

In the left half of the screen you can see I introduce the jump, and air jump. In the second half, the gaps are larger; here I'm trying to encourage the player to hold down the jump key to hover without explicitly telling them. But if they don't get it immediately, the helper will tell them what to do.

I've also included little pictures on the walls (that change based on whether or not a gamepad is connected) telling the player what buttons they need in each situation so even if they don't read the helpers advise, they should at least have an idea of what they need to do.

The second stage is all about teaching the player aerial movement; hovering mid fall, and double jumping out of a hover.

I'm keeping the stages short so as to reduce the punishment time for dying. The first hole just requires hovering mid fall, the second requires hovering strait off a platform and jumping mid-air, and the third requires falling, hovering, moving and jumping all in the same move, which should hopefully teach the player about making the most of their air jumps too.

This third stage is to teach the player how shooting and reflecting works. I reused some enemies from the metroidvania version of the game to make it.

The first challenge just requires that the player press the attack button whilst in a safe space. I use the breakable ground to show that the player can damage things. The first enemy just requires an attack, the second teaches the player that they can shoot in mid-air. The tall enemy shoots at the player and I'm trying to get the player to try and shoot it, accidentally reflect it's bullet and in the process, learn that they can reflect bullets. If they don't get this immediately though, the helper is there to tell them. Finally, the glass block is there to show to players that they can reflect any bullet including their own and that certain ground types require higher tiers of bullet to break.

--  Another major change I made to the game is to reduce the number of bullet tiers from 3 to 2 --

I've concluded that 3 is too complicated to track for most people and tier 1 and 2 operate more or less the same way in 90% of cases, so I removed the middle tier. Also, 3 tiers gives the more defensive player a bigger advantage in that they can shoot whilst being safe from reflected bullets (because they'll get the option to reflect it back again). 2 tiers however means they have to be a lot more careful about when they shoot, which I think will improve the flow of the gameplay.

--- EDIT - 18/05/2017 ---
Adding a video of the most recent version of the tutorial to show how Buddy moves and tells the player what to do.