This was my personal site about video game development, I shared here what I created, some thoughts, tips, and so on. Now we have moved to a different format, checkout forestindiegames.com!
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:
I modified most of the melody
Extended the song by adding the "second part" mentioned above
Added a chorus
Reinforced the arpeggio instrument
Added a "second voice" for the melody.
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.
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 :)
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:
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.
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.
Along the maze the player can find beneficial zones or items and use them to recover or save resources. We called these 1ups.
We called 1downs harmful areas or enemies which can reduce the player’s resources.
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.
Well, I got some feedback for Defender Blender from Reddit and Unity forum. I must admit I thought more people was going to provide some feedback, however even with some few opinions it was a really enriching experience!
First of all, some really nice guy recorded himself playing the game! It is just great, even when his voice is sometimes almost impossible to hear, it was a really good test because I could see exactly how he played and the video recording eliminates the pressure of having the developer watching you playing his game (i.e. people tries to be nice when you -the developer- are present in order to avoid offend you).
Here is the video:
I notice a lot of things about this test. In summary:
Difficulty in controlling the character (this actually encompasses a lot of changes).
Pressing space for regenerating is not good, people ends jumping involuntarily and is hit by enemies, this causes frustration.
Level design feel unfair, sometimes the enemies seem to be unreachable, even when originally I thought people was going to understand that they were doing something wrong, they don't, I need to tune the level design in order to avoid that feeling of unfairness (which is one of the worst impressions you want to make to your players).
I need to make it more clear in multiple points.
On the other hand I had a couple comments in Unity forum, they were quite different:
TonyLi gave me an overall positive feedback, he was satisfied with the game and understood very well why I'm using Mega Man resources - in order to go and test the game mechanics right away. However he didn't completed the game, so I think that indirectly tells that something in the difficulty and fun was not right for him.
On the other hand Asvarduil gave me a very detailed and specific feedback, in short words he summarizes: "You've got a good concept for a refreshing take on the platformer, but you've got a lot of opportunities for improvement in both presentation and tuning."
Some interesting things about his feedback:
The good:
The overall game mechanic idea was somewhat refreshing for him. I'm glad he thinks so because honestly I'm using a new mechanic in here that I haven't see in other game so far.
He thought I was using some ideas for game design from ExtraCreditz, but I actually designed the level by myself, which I think is good because somewhat shows that I understand the idea behind the design, I'm not just doing whatever someone else told me to do :).
The bad (not bad :P, just opportunities for improvement):
This blog somehow captures the space bar button and makes difficult for people to start playing, this is a horrible mistake, I will put a workaround in the game's page until I have a definite solution.
The audio balance was not good for him. He recommends offer to the user audio adjustable options, however I think that those kind of options only works for experienced gamers or developers, I will try instead to find a good balance, maybe the music is just too loud.
He didn't like the text in the air, i.e. the texts must be part of the game universe. I agree, however I would integrate them to the game once I have my own graphics.
He said my grammar made my game look really inexpert. Well, as you might have noticed I'm not native English speaker, however is good to know how bad impression I can make due to that :(
Again, I need to tune up the character's controller, also he recommended some useful tips about the tiles and the height the character can jump (use the tiles as measurement unit, the players seem to understand that easily and identify how high they can jump).
He also found the game kind of unfair, this is again related with the level design.
Finally there were 3 points for which I think it would be more complicated to explain them than just copy/paste his opinion and my answer:
"In previous versions some people told me that the attack was kind of small ranged, also I found necessary to expand the attack area in order to make the gameplay work because sometimes you need to attack enemies that are above you. I think I will address that fixing the animation, however I still need to analyze it, probably the fixes I'm planning to do in the jumping will help."
"I have seen a few persons playing this game and when they run out of energy they seem to be pretty clear about being speeding up the regeneration process by pressing those keys. I think that maybe the problem is that it's not quite clear how much regeneration comes from the automatic increment and how much from the player input, I will look into that."
"Well, I actually like that you need to hit the bubbles because it forces the player to take decisions: should I jeopardize the cannon's health in order to get some pow? should I let those enemies to continue walking or attack them and loose that health bubble? should I hit those enemies even when I will push the bubble in the opposite side? In other words, I think it is a fun factor I want to keep, anyway you're not the first person that expected the bubbles to be picked up automatically by the cannon. I will think about how to make clear that you actually need to hit them."
Well, all this feedback gives me a lot to think of, I will work on that soon, however I'm also planning to work in some other projects I have. Let's see how following weeks go.
Defender Blender v0.3 is finally here :), I made this looking for feedback about the How-to-Play level. I also tweaked some stuff and fixed a few bugs.
Please take a look, I really appreciate your feedback!.
I really got inspired when writing the Reddit one and wrote this, a little dramatic but I hope it will grab some attention: Defend the secret Laser Cannon while it traverses the land to protect you people from an imminent attack!! Your willpower and hope to survive this challenge have converted you in a immortal killing machine, were you be able to use all your power to defend your people?! Don't be afraid, you are not alone! With your help, the Laser Cannon can gather power and destroy all the enemies in screen with a single powerful laser beam!! Will it work? We will see :P
This week I had a little time to design my How to Play level.
The idea behind make a How to Play level is to make the player to understand the basics of the game, in this case these are the basics I wanted to cover:
1. Attack and jump. A very Mario starting I would say.
2. Get down of thin platforms. Additionally I put another enemy in order to remind the player how to attack the enemies.
3. Recover energy. This is a weird one, you basically make a suicidal jump. The idea is to teach the player that you actually don't die when your run out of health.
4. Items and health behavior. After attacking a bunch of enemies, hopefully the player will notice that the health points are also lost when attacking. Here I put an item to recover health and provide a little more explanation.
5. Jump attack. In this one I decided to not put any explanatory text, I believe it would be kind of obvious for the player that the jump attack exists.
Hopefully next week I will have a playable version and share it in Reddit looking for feedback.
I started to write this telling how busy my week was and the problems I was having to make the walls work, then I thought that it would be much better to spend a little time trying to fix them rather than write a big post here, so I did it and I managed to make my walls work :)
I'm not going to go into many details this time. As I said in my previous entry the difficulty in make my walls was that I'm doing all my characters movement kinematic, i.e. not affected by the physics engine, instead I write how all the collisions should work, it gives me more control as developer but more headaches too.
Well, this is my results for this week:
The walls stop my character if touched from the sides (i.e. it can't go through the walls)
The character interrupts its jumping if hit a wall from below
The character can walk on the wall as with other platforms
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Next week will work on the how-to-play level design using this walls. Maybe I will need some other new elements but I'm not sure yet.
