dash & dot game studio's blog

[dash-and-dot]

Hello! I'm back with new monthly post. It's a first post in 2017 and first post since November 2016. Sorry guys, it was busy winter!

First of all, we finally came up with new name for the game! Please welcome, Oddinary Highway!

Since November 2016, we've made large amount of updates, so I would like to cover following main things in this post:

Elite enemies behavior has been completely changed.

New location has been added to the game – City. It's very important location, I will cover it below.

Changes in Elite enemy

As I've mentioned in previous posts, Elite enemy is crumble stone of the game. Player should encounter this type of enemies to get new weapon.

Before change, we were making special waves that includes one Elite enemy surrounded by different infinite waves of enemies. Such waves could occur only one per level. When elite enemy is spawned, it was flying around the screen and following some patterns of shooting and moving. One of the downsides of this approach was that duration of wave was unpredictable and player could be stuck facing Elite for a while.

Other thing that was bothering us is that we were creating unqiue behaviors for each level. And everything started to look like we are overdoing things and elite looks'n'feels like mini-boss.

After discussion, we decided to make following changes on how Elite should work:

Elite still appears only one per level.

Elite doesn't shoot to player, until it receives some amount of damage

Elite is surrounded by some guards at first, but later on following enemies waves start to spawn. So, you will encounter Elite together with ordinary enemies waves.

Overall Elite behavior is simplified.

New location – The City

During the winter season we wanted to move forward and apply to Greenlight somewhere during the spring (it was before Steam Direct news). One of the things that the game is still missing it's a complete game loop. In Oddinary Highway level is "looped": once player completes first loop, he will proceed to beginning of the game. And new loop has an increased difficulty. The end point of each loop will be the same location is the gorgeous  City.

Like other locations in Oddinary Highway, the City has its own mechanics that is used in enemies design. One of selected game mechanics is based on summoning other types of enemies. Main advantage of this mechanics is that it allows us to reuse already created enemies from previous locations (Sand and Ocean worlds). And it means we can create gameplay slice pretty fast for new location.

To make level more engaging, Arseniy proposed to use additional mechanics. It came from game lore:

the City was once a capital of  Universe. But when father of main protogonist lost it to head of the Debt Syndicate, everything is changed. Now, the City is threatened by robots mafia gangs.

So, some waves of enemies will consist of mafia gangs on hover cars.

Other thing to mention is a light system. During the work on concept art for the City, Ksenia asked if we can "colorize" background objects more interestingly. After short research, we decided to use lighting together with normal maps. There are some other doubts regarding usage of normal maps for other game objects, e.g. player's ship or weapons, because it will require extra art-related work.

Besides of these main updates, we were polishing, improving, creating new content during last months.

[dash-and-dot]

November 2016 Review

Helloooo! November has passed too fast and it's time for new monthly post. :)

This month was intense for our team and we started it with submission to Indie MEGABOOTH @ PAX East 2017. It required from us to make new build, so Ksenia prepared juicy improvements for Sand World backgrounds and I spent couple of days adding new images to project.

After we’d submitted game to Indie MEGABOOTH, we started to design from scratch final boss for Sand World. During prototype iteration we already design boss for this stage, but unfortunately it doesn't feel and play good after all changes we've made during the summer. Together with boss behavior, we had to change how boss looks. I don't want to spoile any details about boss, one thing that I can tell is that it will be with rockets and HUUUGE! ;)

As I mentioned in September post, we have changed weapons system in game and now it consist of primary weapon and secondary item. Player gets new secondary item after gaining required "damage" points. In parallel with new boss, we started to add new secondary items, for example Ping Pong gun. I believe everyone will love how it works :D

Also, Ksenia is iterating enemies graphics and she has updated explosive dummy enemies from Sand World. New visuals is inpired by retro JVC Videosphere and includes more animations.

Here is complete changelog for November: • New 3 secondary items • New graphics for explosive enemies from Sand World • Improved glitch animation for primary weapons for following Glitches (affixes):     - Item locks primary weapon     - Change primary weapon after delay • [WIP] New final boss for Sand World • A lot of improvements in code, including bugfixes and new features for enemies behavior scripting

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August/September 2016

Hey there! Slightly late September reveiew post has arrived! :)

In this post, I would like to share how development of our upcoming retrofuturistic shoot'em up was going for last two months (because everyone was lazy and we skipped Augusut post).

During these two months we've made HUUUUGE changes in game mechanics. These changes should make game more fun and player-friendly. We completely changed weapons paradigm in game, which includes Primary, Secondary and Ultimate weapons.

First of all, we completely  changed what Secondary weapon is and how player gets and controls it. Before these changes, player got new random Secondary weapon each time, when current weapon is out of ammo. Secondary weapon was also controlled by player and you had to use fire button constantly. This was hard to do on gamepad, because Primary and Secondary weapons usually have different firerates and firemods.

From now, player will received random single use Items instead of  Secondary weapon. It could be active Items (e.g. drone with auto-turret) or passive Items, e.g.  special force field that changes enemy bullets and rockets trajectory.

Also, we merged existing Ultimate weapon with new Items. Previously, player had to gain required amount of damage-scores to receive new Ultimate weapon. Each Primary has its own Ultimate weapon. Each time player gets Ultimate weapon, he can activate it only once (sounds familiar, right?).  It was obvious to make this change and to include Ultimate weapon into list of Items. We've added one meta-Ultimate Item and game picks proper Ultimate at activation time.

Because new Items system couldn't use "out of ammo" rule, we adopted damage-scores system. Once player gains required amount of damage-scores, he get new random Item from pool.

So, new weapon system is following: • Primary weapon, player collects it from drop on stage (one drop per stage). • Single use Items, active and passive items including Ultimate. Player gets randomly picked new Item when he gains required amount of damage-scores.

Next important changes are related to "glitches", that were introduced in previous months. We added more glitches during September and it became clear, that we should make changes. Everything started to be too random in game. New rules, how glitches work: • New glitch is replaces active glitch, when player gets to next stage • All glitches are separated to "positive" and "negative". • There could be special event during stage. After event, player gets extra glitches – one positive or negative and one special "event" glitch

Talking about changes. We've been working on graphics, too. Major updates include new skins for enemies (Elite enemy) and new iteration on updating Sand World.

We have several types of enemies, who appears on all game locations. Some of them were already updated in the beginning of summer (all bullet enemies). But we skipped for a while one type of enemies with very special role. It's Elite enemy, who drops new Primary weapon on death. We decided to make Elite enemy visuals independent from location, Because it should appear on all locations, but remain familiar to player. Still, there are  several skins for this enemy, but we pick skin at runtime. So, Elite will look different each time.

From early days, background objects were randomly spawned from pool of objects. This lead to issue with feel of progress. To resolve this, we decided to make each stage unique. But still stage is filled with random objects plus unique objects. All stages will have similar generic pyramids, but each stage will have its own decor for them.

Over the last two months we've been working with A.Fruit on first batch of sounds for weapons and tracks for game worlds. Tracks turned out great, so I hope we will be able to share sneak peak in following month.

Overall, team has completed more then 100 tasks code, graphics and other content, including: • Pixel perfect rotation – required for all weapons that can follow target • Elite enemy skins and weapons • Started work on first boss in Sand World • New Elite enemy waves and new bosses for Ocean world • Tuning and polishing of glitches • Tons of bug fixes and improvements.

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July 2016 Review

Heyho! July has ended and here is a review of progress we've made on Glitch Jam: Bill & Caddy Luck during this month.

As I mentioned in June post, we started to add "glitch" mechanics to the game. These "glitches" are affecting gameplay and making it fun. To trigger any of them, you need to win boss fight and complete stage. Arseniy has written down approx. 50 "glitches" in our design doc. Of course we couldn't put in place all of them and we've added 4 "glitches" to the game for today. Game still has lack of visuals for these mechanics. But it's already fun when "glitch" occurs and gameplay changes the way you don't expect.

Also, Arseniy spent a lot of time creating and polishing new bosses for Sand World. For today we have completed mechanics for all bosses and elite enemies in Sand World.

Returning to visuals, Ksenia created first animated explosions and we had added them to thegame. Currently we are using scaled down animation, but we are going to update all explosions to be drawn for proper size in future updates. Also, drawn by hand smoke will be replaced with paricles system.

Explosion should have flying around parts of exploded thing, right? Here you go, we've added flying parts of exploded enemies (only one type of enemies), too! :)

A lot of work have been done on weapons visuals. Several weapons gained proper animations, including Shotgun, Revolver, Missiles and Torpedo Launchers. Also, several drones were updated with new graphics. Togehter with animations, Kirill and I have updated how animations are triggered from code for different types of fire.

And major news! We have started to work with A.Fruit to deliver amazing music and perfect sounds within game. First sounds for weapon animation are already in game and they are wonderful! We are looking forward to add more sounds.

Overall, team made great job during July and  we are looking forward to do more in August. Stay tuned!

[dash-and-dot]

June 2016 Review

Hi there, fellow reader! :) June went so fast for our team, here are main highlights from this month.

As you may know, we are working on retrofuturistic rogue-lite glitch'em up Glitch Jam: Bill & Caddy Luck (working title). During April we were preparing to showcase it on our favorite conference DevGAMM. After DevGAMM Moscow 2016 our team returned a bit drained out, so we had to take short brake. 

During the brake I visited Unite Europe 2016 where I met with Adriaan de Jongh, who made a lot of great games and created contract(). He was showcasing his latest project Hidden Folks. You definitely should check it, if you haven't done it yet!

Once Unite Europe was over, we all set together virtually and made plan for  summer. To gain momentum with game progress, we decided to make internal "builds" each week.

First major change was related to graphics. Originaly we wanted to have some kind of "main" antagonists in the game and "basic" enemies should belong to this group. Unfortunately, it turned out that player sees similar enemies across all locations in game. So, we decided to change how antagonists will be presented in game. I will not share how for now.

Also, each location has its own "basic" enemies with similar weapon, but different visuals. Once Ksenia created new skins enemies, we've updated Unity project with them. Thanks to integration with Google Spreadsheets, we performed it pretty easy and fast. When enemy is about to be added on scene, script takes list of all available skins for current location. This also allows us to reuse same waves of enemies for different locations without any change.

Next, we started to work on "glitch" mechanics in game. I will not write in details, but with this changes game became super fun! :D

Meanwhile, Ksenia begun draw different effects for projectiles like explosions. Every shooting game becames great once you add explosion, right? :) And screen shake, definitely screen shake! Which was added for each weapon we already have in game. When you shoot shotgun it feels like shotgun, now!

Don't want to bother you and mention every task we completed, so that's all for now.

Stay tuned for future updates, subscribe to our Twitter and Instagram!

[dash-and-dot]

Heeeey! We are back from DevGAMM Moscow 2016. It was a blast in all terms and we spent great time at conference!

First of all, our whole team finally met IRL after remote work for 6 months.

Secondary, showcase was great, we received tons of useful feedback for Glitch Jam. This year we decided to record showcase session in short time-lapse video. It’s only first two hours of showcase in 45 seconds video! I hope you’ll enjoy it! :)

And I couldn’t leave awards section without any comments! It was HUGE success this year! 

Also, it was super nice to see Rami again in Moscow! He is cool as usual!

Thanks everyone who we’ve met at conference! See you @ next DevGAMM!

[dash-and-dot]

Dash & Dot updates

Hey!

We are back with our team and game in development updates.

Major update is related to the Lusfoder project. Unfortunately, it was closed back in September 2015. We decided not to continue project in that kind it was showcased at DevGAMM Hamburg 2015.

Anyway, long live king! We are making rogue-lite shoot'em up game with retrofuturistic pixel art and glitches! Well, it's kind of related to Lusfoder, but we started almost everything from scratch: new setting, new story, new mechanics.

Work title is 'Glitch Jam: Bill and Caddy Luck' and I will not spoiler who is Bill and who is Caddy Luck at this moment. ;) All I can tell, that we have cool story created by John Grey. He is narrative designer in OVIVO game and you definitely should check it! :)

Also, we have new member in our humble team – welcome our game designer Arseniy Shved. Believe me, Glitch Jam will be hardcore as hell because of him! :D

Oh, and we will be showcasing Glitch Jam at DevGAMM Moscow 2016! If you will be at conference, come say "Hi" to us! :)

[dash-and-dot]

DevGAMM is over. We had a great time there, collected some feedback and played games of other indie developers at showcase. Thank you organizers for such event! Now our team is back to work on Lusfoder with some fresh ideas. Updates are coming soon, stay tuned! ;)

[dash-and-dot]

Hi there!

This week the whole team is assembled in our HQ in Vilnius and we’re working hard on Lusfoder to make new version for upcoming showcase at DevGAMM in Hamburg. The conference will take place 10-11 of September.

There will be a lot of awesome speakers, such as Stan Just (note “Creating amazing art in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt”), Grzegorz Mazur (note «The art of prototyping. Case study: This War of Mine»), and others.

DevGAMM’s GAMM:Play showcase is already filled up and we’re going to show Lusfoder there together with fellow developers from Vilnius - Egis Bachur and Alexey Davydov (Flazm Interactive Entertainment) with two games - Train Valley and Scrap Garden, Raman Ułasaŭ (JetCat games) with Heliborne.

So if you’re around these days in Hamburg, don’t be shy to come and play! ;)

[dash-and-dot]

Hi there!

Right after Unite conference we moved to Saint Petersburg to show Lusfoder the second time. Sergei Babaev from Nekki kindly offered a table at developer exhibition at WNconf, so we spent two days at showcase there.

It was great to meet Lerika Mallayeva (DevGAMM), Karina (Kitchen Riots), Gabriel Sonderegger (Sunnyside games), Raman Ułasaū (JetCat Games) and other fellow indie developers! At after party on the boat we meet another Lithuanian developer, which was nice surprise. :)

Now we’re back home and working hard on Lusfoder (so hard, that almost forgot to write a report about WNconf) and preparing for the next showcase!

Stay tuned!

[dash-and-dot]

Hey! Yesterday we’ve been at Unite conference in Amsterdam. There were a lot of useful sessions from Unity, Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft, Intel and others. It was great to meet Joanna Codyte and Andy Touch (Unity), Michael Rose (tinyBuild), Oleg Priduik (GI), Stepan Stulov and Lukas Lang (Ravensburger). Now we’re on our way to Saint Petersburg. Hope to see you at White Nights pre-party today! ;)

[indiecade]

Indie Game #ScreenshotSaturday Showcase

Lusfoder by Dash & Dot game studio.

“Lusfoder is a remastered endless runner game Lusfod. Main character is a spaceship pilot, who travels between mystery glitchy worlds after bumping with space pirates. This ability is not stable and he sees everything glitching around him.”

Get featured in our showcase! Send us a screenshot from your indie game: [Submit Screenshots Here]

See more indie game screenshots: [IndieCade #ScreenshotSaturday Collection]

[dash-and-dot]

DevGAMM Moscow is over. It was great!

We were showing current version of Lusfoder on the first day of GAMM:Play showcase and gathered a lot of feedback from people who played our game. Among them was Unity evangelist Andy Touch. Thank you all for testing the game!

The whole conference level has increased this year! There were interesting sessions from Unity, Microsoft, DICE, Wargaming, Zeptolab and many others.  

DevGAMM was traditionally ended by Game Lynch and Awards Ceremony.

One guy even won a return ticket to Vilnius (thanks Invest Lithuania for that).

During the conference we meet a lot of great guys:

Daniel Rosenfeld - C418 - Minecraft composer and sound designer;

Adriel Wallick - organizer of Train Jam. YAY!!! The latest Train Jam was unforgettable! And it was great to see Adriel in Moscow! <3

Wolf Lang - creator of awesome game Beatbuddy;

Rami Ismail - 1/2 part of Vlambeer;

Alex Nichiporchik and Michael Rose - guys from tinyBuild;

Maria Chyrvonaya - PR manager at DevGAMM;

Ressa Schwarzwald - sound designer and composer;

Alexzander Protasenya - narrative designer of great pixel art game “The Tribe”;

Bogdan Sereda - working on awesome games - “Isles of Umbra”, “Breached”;

Marina Nechaeva - concept artist and illustrator, working on “Isles of Umbra” game;

and a lot of other awesome guys!

Thank you Lerika Mallayeva and Maria Chyrvonaya for organizing DevGAMM in Moscow! You’re the best <3

Now we are back to work on Lusfoder and fixing issues based on players feedback. Updates are coming soon. Stay tuned!

[dash-and-dot]

Good news everyone! We’ve been approved to show alpha version of Lusfoder at GAMM:Play showcase at DevGAMM conference in Moscow!

We’ll be at A7 section on May, 15 from 10:00 to 13:00.

So, if you like pixel art and glitch aesthetics, don’t be shy to come and play! :)

[dash-and-dot]

Hi guys! Are you excited like we are? No? You should! For last couple of months we are working hard on new game called Lusfoder.

Back in 2014 I found out that my cousin is working on games (check his page). I was surprised and we met to have friendly chat about our ongoing projects.

Among his published games was one with extremely interesting setting and we decided to make new version of it together. That's how we started Lusfoder.

Lusfoder is a remastered flash game Lusfod (check it here). New version has revisited visuals, and we are rebalancing gameplay and improving upgrade system as well.

Also, we decided to create some background story. Player in game is a donuts delivery spaceship pilot. After bumping with legendary space pirates his space ship gained ability to travel between mystery glitchy worlds. This ability is not stable and he sees everything glitching around him.

Currently, we have implemented first playable level based on original game setting with bigger amount of content. Check out these amazing screenshots from test builds! :)

Totally in game we are planning to create up to 5 new worlds, each with its own visual style for environment and enemies. Sand World has two type of enemies – jet camel rider and Ra on flying jet boat.

To make it better on level, you can collect bonuses – magnetic donut, wealth cake and destructive cupcake. Also, player should collect special bonus object Coffee Tumbler. When you collect 5 Coffee Tumblers you get to special bonus level and next world afte it.

We are still polishing gameplay and technical part on old devices like iPad 2. Here is current gameplay video for you.

Are you excited now? Subrscribe to our blog, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram accounts!

[dash-and-dot]

Hey!

Have you missed the Train Jam this year? You've missed A LOT. It was so awesome, that we're happy to write about it again! :)

Anyway, here's the tiny game we've made with Alic in 52 hours in a train - Two On The Track:

http://bit.ly/TwoOnTheTrack

This is a game about an old man and a young guy, who are riding a handcar near the ocean trying to get back home.

They are so different, they don't like each other, but have to move forward together.

Stay tuned here or on fb https://www.facebook.com/dash.and.dot.game.studio

Cheers!

[dash-and-dot]

Hey! The coolest event of the year #trainjam2015 is over. That was AMAZING!

About 100 indies (or more?) travelled via train 52 hours from Chicago to San Francisco and were creating games.

The theme of jam was "on track" for this time. Alic @aszecsei joined Anton&me and we made a game about two guys, who tried to get back home on the handcar. Here's a link to the game:

http://bit.ly/TwoOnTheTrack

We've met a lot of awesome indies, played their great games and had fun. Thanks Adriel @MsMinotaur and John @fightstrife for organization!