Hey everyone! For this month's public domain asset I made a series of animated hanging vines. These can also double as wires depending on the setting. Included in the zip is the .psd file, as well as gifs of each wire separately.
As always, this is completely free to use in any project. Attribution is not required, but if you do want to include attribution, I would appreciate it!
You can credit as such: MadameBerry; http://madameberry.com
This month I’ve been working hard to finish the final boss fight! And it’s done! (well, aside from some bugs and tuning, but don’t rain on my parade!)
I finally got all the mechanics into the fight, and she’s beatable, albeit a bit hard right now. The remaining changes are easy tweaks, so I’m celebrating the completion of her mechanics. =D
I’m coming up close on my largest-yet testing phase. Patrons will get first access to that, so support my Patreon if you want in on that asap!
I’ve also been streaming work on the title screen menu this month, which is also coming to a close. I still need to link audio volume with the sound effects that are already in-game, and then I need to work on the Load Game menu, but progress on the options menu has gone very quickly and I couldn’t be more pleased.
As always, if you want to read updates as they come in weekly, head over to my Patreon page!
Some really neat things have been happening this month! For one, the Visual Out soundtrack is officially complete! I have the game running in the background right now, and it sounds so great! I'm so hyped for release so you guys can hear it too.
Go check out Ben's other music if you haven't already!
Secondly, I'm still working on the final boss fight. It's taking a bit longer than I would have liked, but the first phase of the fight is at this point complete, aside from a few visual oddities.
As always, if you'd like to support my work and aren't already, consider becoming my Patron! It means a ton to me.
And thank you to everyone who has been my Patron up until now. Without you we wouldn't have an awesome soundtrack!
My current Patreon goal is (and has been for a long time) to commission music from other artists for my games. Though I very briefly reached this goal in November (when I ran a bit of a promo to help me through Steam Greenlight), I quickly dropped below the goal, and my Patreon has stagnated for the past six or seven months.
Hey everyone! Here's what I've been up to this month:
Basically the entire month was spent animating the final cutscene. Patrons have seen a few snippets of that, and there's a shorter version of a snippet in the gif above. I finished that up a few days ago, so I've moved on to the actual final boss fight.
I'm close to wanting to do large-scale testing. If you're interested in testing Visual Out, either become my Patron or sign up for my mailing list to be among the first to hear details about becoming a tester!
Content complete is so close I can taste it (it tastes like anxiety). Here's what I've been doing this past month!
I spent the first half of the month finishing up an expanded tutorial area. The game previously started off by giving the player the first ability, the Tether, right away. I wanted to add a segment of gameplay before the player gets that first ability, to help establish base mechanics and give the player an idea of what the character's baseline capabilities were.
A few extra things I released for Patrons this month were a development timelapse, and a text corruption tool.
Read the full update on Patreon, and become my Patron to access any Patreon-exclusive extras!
This is coming to a day late because I spent all of Tuesday working on the cutscene in the above gif.
This month has been the "Month of Plot" in terms of development. I completed the collectable logs, as well as implemented the text and it's encrypted forms (as I explained in the last monthly recap, players will have to find decryptions of each text before being able to fully read it).
Last month I worked tweaking bosses 1 and 2, and started work on boss3. I also started defining the style of the terrain redesigns I've been wanting to do.
This month I finished Sector 1's terrain redesign and Boss 3. Early Access Patrons got a test build of Boss 3, so if you're one of those people, check that out! (and if you're not one of those people, become one! I would love you forever~)
The rest of this month has been focused on writing. So far I've written the collectible log entries and added the items in game to collect them.
Visual Out is a “cyber-junk” Metroidvania I am developing on my own, aiming for release in 2017. This past year, a lot has happened, and a ton of progress has been made. Here is this year in gamedev:
January - March
I don’t have any blogs before March, but 2015 ended with a short demo that is still up on itch.io. From January to March of 2016, I worked on implementing the remaining mechanics that didn’t make it into the demo, including the Shield and Turret abilities.
April
I finished the level design for Sectors 1 and 4 this month, as well as sketched level design for Sector 2. I also created a wide variety of visual effects, including static and geometric shapes, and a gradient map effect that lets me tweak colors in rooms very easily.
May
I completed Sector 2 level design and started work on Sector 3 level design. I also started preliminary work on puzzle and obstacle implementation.
June
I finished first-pass level design for the game, and began working on obstacle implantation.
July and August
I finished obstacle implementation and began work on enemy implementation. I also began preparing for GDEX, an expo in October in Columbus Ohio. Visual Out also officially “turned one” so to speak.
September and October
I buckled down on GDEX demo content, and also prepared to launch Visual Out’s Steam Greenlight campaign. At this point, the game is at a “gameplay complete” stage, with no story implementation.
GDEX itself went very well! I won a Spotlight award at the expo, which I’m admittedly still waiting on more information about. I wish I had more to say about that.
November and December
Not a lot of real development happened the past few months. After GDEX, I implemented a lot of quality of life feedback, and fixed a ton of bugs that players had discovered in the demo.
Also, during November, Visual Out got Greenlit! It’s officially headed to Steam when it launches!
This year has been one of progress. I still have a lot to wrap up, but look forward to Visual Out in 2017!
If you would like to support Visual Out’s development, become my Patron!
Visual Out is a "cyber-junk" Metroidvania. As a program defying your operating system's wishes, plunge into the depths of a dying computer, and augment yourself with data-scrambling abilities like the Jammer, Current, Turret, and more. Uncover the secrets behind the computer's - and its creator's - demise.
VOTE for Visual Out on Greenlight! http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=783257842
patreon.com/madameberry
madameberry.com
Music: Thirteen is my Favorite Prime - Abstraction Music - http://www.abstractionmusic.com/
Visual Out is made in Construct 2. https://www.scirra.com
As a program defying your operating system's wishes, plunge into the depths of a dying computer, and augment yourself with data-scrambling abilities like the Jammer, Current, Turret, and more. Uncover the secrets behind the computer's - and its creator's - demise.
Here’s the trailer:
You can vote for Visual Out here: http://madameberry.com/greenlight
Or in your browser here: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=783257842
This wouldn’t have been possible without my Patrons. A special thanks to each and every one of them. https://www.patreon.com/madameberry
Currently on Patreon I am working towards the goal of paying Steam Greenlight’s developer fee, and then after that one-time payment, commissioning music for Visual Out. Both of these things are very important to me, and I would very much like to have my Greenlight campaign running during an upcoming expo. In order to hopefully reach this goal on time I’m running a shorter-term goal: If we reach $350/mo on Patreon before October 1st, EVERY patron will be able to play the October demo build of Visual Out!
Let’s make this happen together!
Gamedev Update Visual Out Progress for August 2016
Visual Out is one year old AHHHHHHHH!
Technically more than that, since the idea started during a winter Ludum Dare, but I don’t really count that since it was two days, followed by months of actively not working on the game, and then when I began working on it again I kept the theme, but none of the mechanics.
Anyway, so much progress has been made in the past year!
The first public gif of a debug room in Visual Out, from August 2015
A recent gif from a room in the game
During the last update, I had been working on level design implementation, which was taking much longer than I had anticipated. This month I finished that up, and have been working on enemy design. I have a variety of enemies planned, and I have begun working on in-game art for them. Backers on Patreon are able to see enemy concept art.
An enemy in a debug room.
I hope to have enemies done by mid-September. GDEX, a local expo, is in late October, so I’ll be spending October preparing for that. Patrons will get an updated demo early in October to help playtest.
Crossing my fingers I stay on task!
That’s all for this month!
If you like my work, check out my Patreon where I post weekly updates like this, as well as behind-the-scenes snippets like level design sketches, and more. I really appreciate the support, and it will help me make the game better by adding custom commissioned music and helping Visual Out get on Steam Greenlight. Thank you!
Sometimes when working on a game that isn’t going well, it’s difficult to tell whether or not its in your best interest to scrap the project and move on. Sometimes I put games on a “maybe later” shelf, but sometimes a game just needs to be completely abandoned. Here are some of the times I’ve scrapped a game.
Your heart just isn’t there.
During September of 2015, a game jam ran with the theme “Cooperation.” I spun this into a game about compound words forming together to create new effects. The paper design looked promising, and I was excited to work on something experimental, but as I kept working on it, I realized that my heart was no longer in it. At the time I was feeling very burnt out, and the actual mechanisms of the game (from generating words, effects, and even terrain) were much more complicated than I felt up to at the time. This game is currently very deep in my “maybe later” list, but I don’t think I’ll get back to it at any point soon.
The core gameplay isn’t salvageable.
The core gameplay you’re working on may just be unsalvageable. It can be difficult to determine when this is the case, and it can be tempting to add content in order to try to make the game more enjoyable. Tacking on content to a flimsy core loop is a poor solution, though, and it’s usually best to figure out what isn’t working about your game and fix the core problem, instead of trying to hide it. I can cover this in a future post.
When the core gameplay loop is just unsalvageable, though, that’s a good time to throw a game into the “nope” pile. After graduating college in 2014, I wanted to see if I could expand on what I had learned while making my senior project, and experiment with Construct 2′s abilities to simulate faux-3D. I had this image in my head of a character leaping between layers of platforms, New Super Mario Bros style. When it came down to creating the game, though, the tight platforming I envisioned just wasn’t possible, and while simulating the faux-3D platforms receeding into space was possible, it was difficult and unwieldy in Construct 2. While it was an interesting experiment, I don’t think I’ll be touching this idea again.
The scope is too big.
Sometimes you need to kill a game because its scope is too bloated and massive for the timeframe you have. I talk about this much more in depth in my Tarot Jam Postmortem, and again in my post solely on scope, so check those out if you haven’t read it already.
It’s your precious baby.
I’ve killed a game (or at least put it in my “maybe later” bucket) because it’s my baby. One of the first “real” games I ever worked on was called Blue, and it was based on this weird psychological concept that I don’t even remember the details of. Since then it’s gone through so many itterations, a redesign with one of my best friends, a complete reskinning, and many, MANY years of on-and-off design. Honestly I just need to scrap it, kill it, never think about it again. Will I do that? .... probably not.
It’s good the way it is.
The last reason is probably my favorite. I like my game how it is!
When I made EDDA, my Nordic Slam Poetry game, I had a few people hoping I would expand the game, and one email which “encouraged” me to recreate the game in a mobile app, incorporating poetry styles from other cultures and formatting it in a way in which I knew the charm of my experimental game would be lost. While I made some small gameplay tweaks to EDDA to make it more enjoyable to play, I knew I would never truly expand on the title, because I like my weird experimental poetry generator as it is. I did, however, add the ability to tweet poems you make, so check that out if experimental Nordic slam poetry sounds like something you’re into.
If you want to know more about Visual Out, the game I’m making, please visit my Patreon. Thank you to all my Patrons, who help fund development for this game. Right now I’m working towards the goal of commissioning custom music. So if you like what you see here and want weekly updates, early builds, and more, become my Patron! Any amount helps!
Games by MadameBerry @madameberrygames - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
