Song: Ascendam Theme

Around one week ago (or two?) I was working on some sprites for Ascendam when I realized I still needed to define a little more the "look and feel" I want this game to have, so I decided to give another try to compose a song that would reflect the dynamic gameplay I want to create.

I did a little search and found this awesome music app for Android called Caustic 3 (I think it also exists for iOS). It is not free but it really worth its price (actually I didn't find any good free music app). Anyway, maybe I could write about the app later, today I want to share this song that I composed for Ascendam's title screen. It took a little more time than normal because I was still learning the app, and I had little idea of what kind of song I wanted to compose, but after some tries it started to emerge by itself.

I was thinking in a style similar to the music in Mega Man X3. However as I have said, I'm not a born musician so I'm still pretty far to compose something that awesome. Anyway I believe it's good enough and now I can imagine a little more how dynamic the gameplay should be, as well as the movements I want Anz (the main character) to perform.

I uploaded two versions, one is just the song, the other is the looped version. I uploaded both because the loop is not expected to start at the beginning of the song, so I pasted the song 3 times as I want to make the loop to sound in game. I'm sharing here the looped version, the original one can be found in my soundcloud profile.

I hope you like it!

Doing some sprites with Pixly

Lately I have been very busy and it has been a little difficult to spend time in Ascendam, however I have a few new Anz sprites and have been tuning (in my mind) the game mechanics.

The first sprites I created for Ascendam (the ones in my previous post) I drew them using an Android app called IsoPix. It is a nice not too basic pixel art app and I thought it was quite good actually. I was planning to purchase the Pro version but the problem was that it doesn't support animations. Is that big deal? well, yes. If you want to make the different facing directions of a character, they will probably look weird if you don't test how the transition between the main frames looks (I will try to write a post about that in the future).

So when I was really close to purchase IsoPix Pro y found this great free app called Pixly, and believe me, nobody told me to write this, but Pixly is far FAR superior than any other apps I found in the Play Store, I don't know why it is not the first app that shows up when you search for "pixel art".

What is so good about Pixly? well, if I would need to say it in once sentence it would be: it satisfies a game developer's needs. I'm not planning to make a full review because I actually haven't used all its features yet, but you can take a look to its website, there are short and concrete examples of its features.

The things I like most of this app are:

1. It supports layers, so you can draw the movable parts of your sprite in individual layers, and later animate them easily.
2. It supports frames, so you can make animations and export them as animated GIFs (or as a PNG sprite sheet).
• This is really useful because instead of make a huge sprite sheet that contain all your frames, you create a single frame, let's say 128×128 px, and you can navigate between frames using the timeline menu, and reorder, copy, delete them if you need.
• It still can improve in this side, being able to select the frames and save multiple animations would be really useful for complex characters. Also the animated GIF I exported didn't display the colors correctly, but maybe I did something wrong (I have only tried a couple times). Anyway you should check if the latest version coincide with what I said.
3. It supports configurable grids.
4. It supports to load and save color palettes.
5. It supports two techniques for rotation which is very useful.
6. It can export your work to a sprite sheet, and it will only export the layers you have selected as visible, so if I want a sprite sheet with only the heads of Anz, I can export it easily.
7. Zoom in/out is smooth and not limited (other apps support some specific zoom levels only)
8. It has a lot of undo/redo steps (I'm not sure how many, but they have been enough so far)
9. It has mini view window, i.e. when you are working with zoom in a specific part of you sprite you can see in real time how it looks in another zoom level.
10. It has have mirror transformations, magic wand, color replacement, and so on...

Oh, and almost forgot, one thing Pixly does NOT have:

1. Annoying ads ;) ... it only shows an ad when you save.

I don't want to insist too much in how good this app is, but I feel really happy with it because I can have some progress in my game while going on the bus, or waiting for any reason, and for free! If you are looking to make sprites for a game I highly recommend this app.

Here is a side view of Anz I drew in Pixly. You can see the layers at the right side, that menu can be hidden so you have most of the screen available to draw.

About the sprite, maybe I will change a little its legs but I'm still not sure, I prefer to make some other positions required to start programming and experimenting the gameplay.)

I will be working on sprites for a while, I hope to have time to update my progress here.

See you!

Ascendam - Characters concept art

Last entry I was talking about making games that fit your personal style, so after a little more than a week rethinking my "mysterious" game, I finally got to the point I think I really like it :), I decided to call this game "Ascendam".

I have been working mainly in the conceptual art for the characters (back to the pixel art :D), the game story, and a little of game mechanics.

This is Anz, the main character:

I want this character to be an avatar for the player, I mean, I want Anz to be a representation of the player in the game in a personal level. Because of that I don't want to create a deep detailed description of Anz's personality. Later if I have time I will make a female version, but for now the male character should be enough.

Anz will use a spear as its main weapon, later in the game you will get bombs as well. Those are his weapons so far, but I'm not sure if I will add any other in the future.

Well maybe it would be good to explain briefly the gameplay now so the enemies make sense to you.

The main idea is to "fall" through tunnels in a labyrinth, Anz will be hanging of a kind of rope so you will be able to control how much you want to go up or down, you will be able to grasp the walls and climb faster than climbing by using the rope only. Also you will be able to move down faster by running down on the wall (ninja style!).

I'm planning to have 4 enemy types. Probably I'm going to add different difficulty levels for each of them, but that's not yet clearly defined.

First the basic enemies, you will find this little guys climbing on the walls of the labyrinths, they are harmless if you keep away from the wall. I call them Walldos.

The Guardians, you will find this guys flying through the tunnels. At the beginning they won't attack you if you grasp a wall, but in future levels they will use their flexible arms as whips.

Cloud Crowds, you will fear this creepy enemies. They will be flying through the tunnels as well, but you won't be able to attack them. They will be moving in a rhythmic way opening their eyes from time to time. You won't want them to see you.

Smiley Gear, this will be a fundamental enemy in the game mechanics, those will be static enemies that you will need to destroy in order to progress through the maze.

I hope they intrigue you a little :). I will be working on the scenarios (I need to experiment some ideas to have scenarios that I can realistically create) and programming the basic mechanics, so I can know how fun they actually are.

See you later!

Style checklist

After a very busy month I took a few weeks for relaxing, now I think it's time to return to game development!

I had a kind of weird (new) experience about game design in the previous weeks. I have been thinking in the "mysterious" game I'm planning to do (I swear I will decide soon a provisional name!), but while I started to think about the game and the universe where it unfolds I often ended up thinking on an old game I used to make; an adventure game, with heroes, magic, fights against monsters, and so on, a kind of classic game that really inspires me.

The plan for the game I'm working on right now is different, I was thinking on making a deep psychological game, with a kind of weak and vulnerable main character. If you read my previous post I had the main music theme for the game, and I was looking to make a sad and unpleasing song with just a little light of hope. The problem is that I was having a hard time to imagine the universe for this game because I just couldn't concentrate very much on it.

This days off helped me to realize the reason why I couldn't concentrate in my new game and why I often ended up dreaming about my previous game. It seems obvious for me now: depressing games are just not my style!
Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I never will make a deep psychological game, and that I will always going to make games about magical heroes and adventures, I just need to find my way to make the games, if they are deep and psychological, or simple and funny, it doesn't matter, there should be a way to make them on my way.

It's cool, because some artists use to look for a style - their style, and I feel I'm starting to develop a better perception of what my style is. I have decided that, even if I'm looking to create some simple games to grind some game-dev exp. points, I won't start any games that don't match with my style, at the end of the day, that is the greatest thing of being an indie game developer!

I developed this small checklist to analyze before starting any projects, I put it here for my own reference, but maybe it could help you too if you are a gave developer. From now on, I will ask myself the following things about the game to make:

1. Do you like how the game would look in your personal portfolio? Would you feel proud of showing it to other people?
2. Does the game inspires you? Do you find yourself imagining some cool scenes about your game?
3. Is the game compatible with you? The idea could be cool, but maybe what you want for you as a game developer is not really going in that way.
4. Are you eager to play your game? (If you are not, then who?)
5. Would you find interesting the experience your game provides? (think that interesting could be the feeling you want to transmit, for example fun, suspense, etc)

Probably there are a lot of other points you could check, but for now I'm going to focus in these 5 points. Even when those 5 points seem to be very basic things, somehow I was just missing MOST OF THEM!

Let's see what I can think and create for this new game, hopefully my next post would show some results!

Title song - version 2.0

I continued working on my song "Opening Mystery" which I think I'm gonna rename because it is not a mysterious song, and it's not for an Opening either :P. The song now has 3 parts (forgive my lack of musical vocabulary).

The first part is an introduction with an arpeggio, a background chorus, and a bass, which is used in most of the song. The second part has a kind of darker/sadder style which I wanted to add because the game I'm planning to make with it is supposed to transmit a kind of uncomfortable feeling (but let's talk about that later). The third part has a different feeling, it is supposed to transmit a little more inspiring feeling, like raising from a moment of sadness. The final is a little abrupt because the song is supposed to work as a loop, however I think it is enough "final" to close the song when played once.

Based on the previous version, some of the changes I made are:

1. I modified most of the melody
2. Extended the song by adding the "second part" mentioned above
3. Added a chorus
4. Reinforced the arpeggio instrument
5. Added a "second voice" for the melody.
6. Modified some of the base instruments.

I think I'm gonna use this song as the main theme for the game I'm planning now, it is already helping me to define the look and feel that could work with it and with the game story. I want to reuse this song a lot in the game, I have noticed that some games do this very often, for example you can check Super Smash Bros. Brawl, it is obvious that they took the song from the opening scene and reused it in different ways, in the menus, in the one-player mode, and for some battle scenarios, actually they reuse it that much that I started to dislike it. However the good part of doing this is that you can make sure that all you music harmonizes with the game's general feeling.

I'm going to stop doing music for now, I need to start programming the game mechanics because I need to experiment with them, currently I don't know other games with similar mechanic so I need to figure out how to make it interesting, fun, playable, and engaging. But well, I think I won't have any free time the following month so I'm not sure how much progress I will be able to make.

For now, here is the song:

First composed song - Opening Mystery 1

Lately I started to think about create my own video game's music. I already do a little of everything when talking about video games, but music was not something I had done before. I know I don't have the natural talent for composing music, however I decided to give it a try due that I have some general idea about music and I think some acceptable songs can be created by following some tips and tricks anyone can find in YouTube.

So here is it, the song is called Opening Mystery 1, it is thought for a small game I have in mind now. It is version 1 because I haven't completed the PxTone guide I'm following :P. I was about to start the complex part (chapter 3) so I thought I would understand it better by doing a first song and then polish it by using all those "pro tips".

The song is thought to be the music for the title screen of a video game I'm planning to do with a kind of mysterious and mystical atmosphere. Let's see if I can actually make it better once I complete the PxTone guide :)

I hope you like it!

Random Maze Generation Methodology

Some weeks with no chance to post anything around here, however they were really productive weeks for me in game development. I have been working in a couple projects that are not games, but are tools for game creation.

Inspired from BARKH, Lal0l and I worked in this "methodology" for maze generation that is supposed to work for a very specific kind of games. The idea is not just to create random mazes, but to create playable mazes with different difficulty levels.

How to make sure a maze is playable? Well, we need to define some basic game rules. The kind of games this methodology is intended for, have the following characteristics:

1. The objective for each level is to move your avatar from point A to point B in the maze. This implies that the maze’s entrance and exit are not necessarily at the border of the maze but rather at any point inside of it.
2. The player has a limited set of resources that are consumed as the maze gets discovered. Examples of resources can be: fuel, time, characters, health points.
3. Along the maze the player can find beneficial zones or items and use them to recover or save resources. We called these 1ups.
4. We called 1downs harmful areas or enemies which can reduce the player’s resources.
5. The maze is generated automatically each time the game is played. Optionally, the player can have a limited number of chances to complete a given maze, this depends on game design decisions.

We called this kind of games Cost Based Maze games (CBM games).

Our methodology has 2 main parts, the first part generates the maze's topology, i.e. the corridors and walls. The second part, spreads 1ups and 1downs randomly over the maze, then it uses the difficulty level to find the correct positions for them. The amount of 1ups and 1downs depends on the difficulty level as well.

After implement this in Unity I realized it has good potential. I'm thinking some game ideas to use this, however I haven't decided yet, maybe I will post later about that.

For now here is a detailed (formal) document about this methodology. It is focused on the algorithms, not in Unity. I hope you find it interesting!