Concerned Potato

Game Dev Blog

[theconcernedpotato]

Update your game already!

Its been awhile since i did a proper update, so i think its about time i do some actual work while i have time and not only write, but show how the project is going.

i wont lie, with the change in scenery, work has taken a hit. I normally tend to get most my work done between 10 pm and 4 am, but such time doesn’t work well with a partner that keeps busy during the day. and the lack of such amazing creative people working next to me, motivation took a hit.

Not sure where to start, so lets start with the more interesting. 

Particles. Since I didn’t have anything in mind when i started, but knew i would be looking into collision detection at some point, i decided to start there. 

The game was not to be a realistic looking game so i went back to the beginning themes and what the game was about. I had got much inspiration from cartoons like bugs bunny and road runner, and the way they dealt with characters hurting themselves or setting off bombs have this amusing feel to it. this was something i wanted. 

Finding tutorials on YouTube, i set to work.           

Although i have yet to put any explosions in the game currently, the cartoon style got me and i would try to base all other effects along the same line. 

After playing around creating a few different yet similar types, i wish to see them in action.

For this i needed to start work on the collision detection. The idea was -  depending on how hard you hit a surface and where, the type of particles, noise and at what volume would change.

Rather then having everything tied to the character who would collide with everything, i decided to have the ground calculate where it was hit (the white flooring/walls would now detect everything). The thought was that if Stan hit and slid down a wall, the impact dust/smoke would spawn at the point of impact rather then on Stan who might  have moved on from that spot. The result i think worked out quite well.

Once dealing with the actual point of collision and how i would spawn the effects in, i set to work on detecting how hard Stan would hit a surface. This actually wasn’t an issue and was more of a copy and paste with a little modification since the wizard ( https://oiral.tumblr.com/) helped with, and implemented such a thing back near the start of the project (since future mechanics i want would need it). 

Once a few of the effects were done, i tied sound to it all. The sound of Stan hitting a wall at high speed then falling from a height to go splat was very amusing (more then it should have been. So much so i sat back watching and listening to him hit objects for far too long before getting back to work).

One of the criticisms i had when testing was the need to feel more like a stunt man. With that in mind one of a few ideas that came to me and hope to do was having stunts to have more impact and weight. a sense of actual danger. Having Stan hit the ground or wall at high speed would have An ambulance race across the screen when having to repeat a failed attempt.

Although amusing at first, because of the trial and error nature of the game, this might get annoying fast, so i still need to tone it down and call it every other time rather then every time. plus need a siren sound effect.. 

Talking about sound, Greg reached out after reading my last post and looped the track, so guess that takes care of that job (anything i don’t have to do is awesome!). 

 The import of some world assets was great and really brings the game to life. Stan has yet to be done yet but he is coming.

(no lighting or post have been done)

With trying to get the feel for being a stunt man, i tried to think how someone like that gets started. In my head they probably have always done crazy things like jump from the roofs of builds etc. (no i haven't researched that haha just a guess).

i had done a tutorial that would walk you through placement of items and the gameplay, but it wasn’t well implemented or well received. Oddly, even though i had the play button flashing to indicate to push it, people completely glossed over that fact (could be the play testers, but il take it on myself that maybe it way not clear).

To date the above gif is all i have done in re-inventing the tutorial. By removing all buttons but the play button, this would see no confusion in what needs to be pushed. This was to be one of a set of small  tutorials that would walk the players though the play style of the game. In a brain storming meeting with my partner, this didnt seem the best way to go about it, so this too will be replace with something a little more better suited and the above will become part of the earlier levels as to how Stan becomes a stuntman. 

       So i was going to leave the assets all 3D since they are all very low poly, but due to performance testing, i plan on changing all assets into 2D sprites. Because i want it playable on most phone and all are different, getting the best  performance is of the most importance. 

So as you may see, turning the world into sprites made a huge difference. The aim was to get Batches and SetPass calls down as far as i could. 

Running two tests for each, i set one at monitor screen size and the other at phone screen size just to see if that helped at all too. From what i took away was models into 4K sprites were the way to go (will drop the size even more too), dropped both Batches and SetPass calls by roughly 3/4, and this was without any optimization in any other way then switching out assets or Occlusion culling (as i did on the top left, which would see even better results. Occlusion culling = not seen, not calculated). The screen size saw most notably a spike in FPS and less strain on the CPU (not fully sure if this would truly transfer over to the phone yet since phones although small, actually are high res, but interesting to know anyways). 

On the subject of performance, something it seems i will need to do is object pooling.. because the game is trial and error, it has people creating and destroying items constantly.. which is a major hit to the game performance.. this means a complete over haul of what systems are there currently. Not as hard as i thought it would be, but will take some time before i can get to it..

For those that are unsure what that meant, the way i understood it when learning about it was - the current system works like this - 

        I create items, and if i don’t want or need them, i throw the items in the bin, then when i need another item, i create another.  As you might notice this is not really the best system, as the rubbish collection will become a problem, and its a bit of work to always create a new item from scratch.

         Object pooling is more like - I create a new item,  and if i don’t want or need them, i place them in a store room. Then when i need another item, i go pick that item up off the shelf.   

The UI placement is getting an over haul for the next play test too, to see if it works better then the last. Also UI placeholders replaced with actual assets. Although these are still not final as they may not fit the game once it all comes together. 

Test of the new layout and look. ignore the font.. 

i also did a small intro screen for when booting up Stan, needs quite a bit of polish still, but as a first pass i think i can live with it for now.

Now there is probably a lot i have missed and forgotten, but my partner has presented me with a glass of red, so i will leave it there, and hopefully get better with updates and actually working on this. Till next time, Thanks for reading. 

[theconcernedpotato]

The sound of music

With the slow start to the year, i decided to ease back into work with a little music. Having gotten some music from a guy i know only as Greg, i replaced the placeholder with what he? had provided.

The file size was much smaller then the place holder, which is a bonus, but the track doesn’t really loop. I didn’t think it was a problem as il just jump in audacity(free music software) and fix that.

Unfortunately the file type (m4p) was not supported..  Have yet to try other programs, but thought while i was there id carry on with other things.

After exporting out a few sounds effects i got into testing them within game. Although not set up on all game objects within the world, i did make a test area and began playing around. 

The sound/volume/and effects for impacting the ground for example varies depending on the speed of which the player hits it. I did think about posting it up, but the particles have yet to be done, so nothing to actually see. 

Amazed at how much life a little bit of sound adds to the game though. 

[theconcernedpotato]

New Year, New Challenges

Slight update - So its been an interesting few months. Game has not really made any progress over this time unfortunately, but i am happy to say things are now set up to move forward. 

Moving North - So I packed up and moved everything to the beautiful bay. The 14 hour drive was not the highlight of move, but had to be done. Once there set up was made fun with trying to figure out how to use the space i had available. 

Once getting an idea of the layout, a few small speed bumps presented themselves. 

The new work desk was too small to fit anything, and with the space i had, a custom desk had to be built, plus the internet port was set on the other side of the house, so had to get an electrician in to make up and run custom cords. Nothing too major, but doing things over the Christmas period was slow. 

Work space is now done. On top of that, the new phone got in as did the Wacom, so testing will carry on as usual. Small things like hanging items up and making the area nicer to be in still needs doing, but i can now carry on working at least.

As long as i keep away from the beaches in this heat :D 

[theconcernedpotato]

The lies, always with the lies!

Yes i lied, Alpha has yet to reach you.. And instead you get a text wall.

In the mean time check out these small game jam games i helped work on! 

https://dreamwalker002.itch.io/

Coming to the end of the year and with major chances in work and personal life hitting hard, I've had to prioritize certain areas of development and fully hit the brakes in others.

One of the major chances is i’m moving back to my home area, located about a 1000 km away, so certain work items will no longer be at my finger tips. For the most part i have most of the major programs i will need to carry on this project which is part of the reason why i am able to move in the first place. But items such as a decent phone to develop on or a computer to build out on are just some of the small annoyances that i’m faced with. 

Because of that, I've been trying to iron out all issues and bugs that currently keep me up at night while testing is still made easy. And yes getting a cheap phone isn't an issue, its more just a pain since it wont be the same that i am currently using unless i want to spend decent money.   

Plus i broke my draw tablet, which kinda killed my art asset creation just a bit. On the up side insurance to the rescue, but being so close to Christmas, everyone moves at a snail pace, so it just got in on Thursday after many weeks. 

So what have i been up to?

The phone version was still having issues, which is far from good since this is a phone game.. Unsure why, but the two finger panning was spazing out and would now only active the zoom. To combat this i decided to change panning around the game world to a one finger control system (which i think feels nicer anyways), but this came with other problems that needed fixing. 

I had to make sure your finger was not over any UI elements, else the menus would not work and you would fly across the screen, and that the game was not in play (i refer this state to when pushing the play button and Stan jumps). These two issues were not so hard to get over.

One of the main issues was when dragging the items around. Since i changed the system to pan now with one finger, when dragging an item, you would also pan across the screen, making placement of any items impossible.

Now the idea was simple, are you dragging an item. if yes, don’t pan the screen, if no, move the screen. Doing it was something different all together. One version had me thinking i had nailed it, but when you placed down an item and then wanted to move one you had place earlier, panning was enabled.  

Thankfully https://oiral.tumblr.com/ point out what was going on and helped solve this issue.   

With a playable game, i thought id test it out in the environment which i think most people will play this game. On a lazy bus ride home. 

It started off great with no issues at first , until i cleared the level and tried to zoom out to get a good look at the next level. The game completely broke again. Yay.

This issue i will admit killed my motivation almost completely. That feeling where you think you are almost done, then you have to start back from what feels like the start, especially since there was no major issues three weeks earlier. 

i was close to tapping out. Creating and working on two other game prototypes. How can you have more major game breaking bugs now, when the prototype (although it had some issues) worked great and nothing stopped you from playing? 

Being blind and not wanting to break it further, a good friend   https://seanmichael.itch.io/   had a quick look into it for me. Not knowing how i set the game up and its many systems, he couldn’t fully find what was the issue, but did narrow down where and when it was happening which was more then enough for me to track down and destroy this rouge bug.

 Which it seemed was not a bug at all, but was caused by either my own stupidity.. Or as i would like to think, my own brilliance during that late night possession from the coding gods a couple of weeks ago. 

Seems since each level will be different in size (especially in future updates to the game), i had coded the zoom to be a custom clamped variable, which i could change depending on the level you were on. The stupidity of this was that although i had this placed in, i had only actually set the numbers for the test level, leaving the rest all without. 

Crisis averted. I can now sleep. Well not really since there is still much to do, but i am feeling good.

So one of the points of feed back was that the item placement and dragging was pretty rough and really needed to be smoothed. This was because i coded the items to snap to a set grid, so future items would place nicely against each other. The problem was the numbers. So this part might be hard for non-coders to understand but i’ll try to explain.

The items were set to snap to a distance set by int (whole numbers). So i had one of two ways to solve this, each having their own hurdles to over come. 

The first seemed like an easy fix - Increase the size of everything by lets say 10. So the snapping of the items would seem like its now moving every .1 rather then the 1. Seem straightforward right? 

Issues - Since its a physics game, the mass, force and gravity all need to be increased, as so did camera clamping, zoom, panning, and other many other variable. As annoying as this sounds, i set to work on this since all i needed to do was change numbers. The problem hit was when testing the fan item (which uses force). Increasing this by ten was fine, but depending where Stan enters the fan, it chances the amount of force Stan will receive. 

Now i use an animation curve to set this (so at the bottom of the fan, Stan will get 1.5 times the power of the fan, compared to near the top reach of the fan will only be .5 of the power). For some reason the animation curve would no longer work as a multiplier like it was meant to, and i was having to increase its force by 25000 rather then 10, and even then it would not work the way i was happy with. 

What a headache and after spending too long on this and not wanting to kill the game feel of the fan, i set everything back to its normal settings.

The second fix was by far just as much brain power in how to go about it, but i actually enjoyed trying to figure out how to do it.

The idea was to have the snapping of the items set to .2 of an int, which you cant because an int is only whole numbers. Which is where we have a thing call Float. A float is a range that includes decimal places. 

So you prob thinking whats the issue, just change the snapping so it works to a float. Great question. A float is how things normally move about within the game, so without the snapping, the items will move smoothly around. But i want items to be able to snap to a set grid. And Floats don’t just move at a one decimal places like i would like, but many places after (example - 0.0000001). So the challenge here is to take that int, turn it to a float, then clamp it to one decimal place. or get the float to just snap to one decimal place which sounds easier then it is. I had my own way about doing it, but this was causing an offset of the item you dragged around. Not fully sure why, and i want to look into it at some point just to understand whats going on. placing that code aside and with the help of the man in charge, it was done.

Other things i quickly done was change the starting time in which it took Stan to actually jump into action. Feed back was he took too long, and with the trail and error nature of the game, this was needing to be changed. 

I also changed the camera markers away from the white dots, just so people knew to hit them, but change them back until i look at what will be best suited.

So that is most of what i have been up to and where the project is at. There is other things i have played with but the sun is out and looks like its beer o’clock, so i’m going to leave it here. 

Again check out https://dreamwalker002.itch.io/ for a few game jam titles i helped with.

[theconcernedpotato]

Information overload

So today marks the first round of closed alpha tests. i am finally there. The feed back i got already was mostly good, some good points that were made along with some being completely irreverent. But i Get more into that later on within this blog. 

A ton of work has been done just in this last week, which generally means going to bed at four/five in the morning and up at seven for another round, all week long, so here it goes.

  Knocking out a basic Figma ui/ux flow, i set to work trying to get that within the game. For the most part it stayed quite close to what i had within Figma.

After having to steer at a screen for so long, i darkened up the whole game so it was easier on my eyes. 

So the basic Home screen remain the same with only getting an icon swap since everyone understands what a play button is. (Which by the way, everything you see including icons are all placeholders). Here you will see Stan within his house/caravan with all items you have won displayed around his home. With future updates having items you can buy (using in game money made from your stunts) to customize your home and stunt items. 

Both the Movie selection and stunt selection remain untouched from prototyping.

The game screen again mainly remained the same, with small changes here and there. icons would get a a face lift with trying to keep to things people could identify and understand without words. 

The item selection on the right is no longer retractable, although i may add that back for anyone that wants to navigate the level with a much larger screen visible, i mean whats the harm, use it or not?

The pause button has been removed completely since it was just irreverent in a game like this. 

The stunts budget and how much you currently have spent added  and also a working bin

You may have noticed a new button.. Was meant to be highlighted and was within the giff tool but oh well. At the push of this button it it takes your finish point, then once released, returns you to your previous point. 

Also you may have notice an increase in select-able items. i wont show case the crash mat since its just that. Stops Stan going splat. Currently you dont need it since i have yet to place in a payment system, but future updates will see you using them else Stan’s med bills will come directly out of his pay (med insurance can become expensive 😷😰).

The second item is a high powered fan. Self -explanatory really. Been having quite a bit of fun with this item.

The option menu remains a sore point. As it is I think the current one lacks the looks the mock up one did. Unfortunately its not clear the back arrow takes you back to the stunt screen rather then the game. Hopefully i will find a pretty solution.  

So once you finish the stunt, the man in charge looks over the sheet (figuratively speaking) and you are evaluated on how well it went. Now it may not have been clear but all those white dots are camera shots your producer really wanted to get for the movie. So you are evaluated on how many of those shots you got and how well you managed to keep under budget. 

At the end of the day there isn’t really a lose condition. As long as you get to the end point, you’ve completed the level, so its very possible to be way over budget and not get a single asked for shots, cause at the end of the day, no footage is wasted.

Once all the stunts in the movie are complete its released out into the world to be judged, much like this game will D: 

For reasons i wanted to go with having a rotten tomatoes score system within my game, mostly because i think it gives a better over all idea on how you went. You can totally boom the egg score but might kill on the Audience. leaving many options for rewards and different out comes depending on your own play style. 

I decided to condense the reward screen and movie screen in one. Just made sense, plus i was rushed off my feet, so anything that saves me work (like making, setting up or coding another screen is a win in my book).

So what didn’t make it to alpha.. mainly the in game shop. Not only was I crazy rushed off my feet, but i had no items for people to buy for Stan, nor did i have his payment for doing the stunts set up.

This will differently be rectified come the second round of testing (third i guess since you guys weren’t in on the first).

Now i know I’ve been pretty bad at this blog thing on this project, mainly because so much is going on with in-work and out that it's kind of been pushed to the far side of the brain. 

 A few notes that I failed to mention, in my prior posts is i have been corresponding with a musician over discord, who I only no as Greg. 

Things started with a bang, with me having all these grand ideas of themed music for each stunt, and other areas of the game like within Stan’s home. Even ideas of tracks being able to be purchased if you wanted something different to listen to. What I didn't account for was this would increase the file size dramatically and being on mobile, contrary to what you have herd, size is everything.. 

Currently I have placeholder music within the game, one tract that plays throughout the entire game. Passing the bad news to Greg, he came back with a single track will hopefully find a home within my this game. 

Now lets take about development. What a week, had its ups and downs and even learnt some new dance moves this week- I call it pushing alpha. 

 Five forward, seven back, three forward, two back, two forward. Kind of sums up the state of affairs this week, but at least it's moving. 

 Friday I was on fire! Unfortunately in my sleepy slumber I forgot to check off or write down where I was at.. this bit me in the ass I decided to take my little's out into the world for the day, mostly because i needed to step away from work. This landed me laying on the beach half the day looking up at the sky. Later with mind cleared, tea done and little's down, i jumped back into it. 

Unfortunately a large part of Saturday night saw me retracing every job I had done Friday night to see if it was done, set up for, or half completed.. once thinking I knew where I was, I was off again making progress. 

Before getting into the crazy stuff, i looked at the levels i had chucked together. Although not final levels as i had yet to design any, what i did through together needed reordering. turns out the second was way harder then the first four..

Along the way I started working on a job that gathered all the information of each level, then using that information, turned it into a usable score which would tell you how the movie was receive at the end of the last stunt. (Egg and Aud score) but It seemed I had actually wrote such a code the night before, but completely different to the one I had just done. Now I will fully admit I was on that next level shit and may have been possessed by the coding God when I wrote it, because as it stands, I have no idea how it works, but it does, so it's probably best I don't touch it and keep fully away from the Alien code. 

So with my eyes glowing red probably from Rad poisoning being on the computer for the last eight hours straight  #justjokingbutprobilynot, and Saturday resulting in nothing but net.. i went and did something stupid again. Last minute I break my game completely.. Half four and the kids will be up in a fe hours a head to bed in such a foul mood.

 Up a few hours later to make breakfast, as the little’s ate i jump back on. i in my state renamed one script somehow which saw the whole game destroyed.. on the plus side i found it, plus see that it needs to be more robust if one naming convention can do that.   

Wasn’t the first time. earlier in the week i spent two day looking for a bug that stopped play after you finished the first level, one that wasn't throwing up any warnings or stopping any other function. I had paused time at the end of the level and hadn’t turned it back on.. To be fair I’ve had about two hours of sleep every night for the last week. Don’t do it, its not good nor does it help in the long term. seems all these little mistakes caused from being over tied has pushed back the project rather then moved it forward.

Sunday nights I was up hitting all those notes till 5:20 this morning yet again, then up an hour later. Play test day.

So all that work came falling down in a heap on the floor in my time of need. Now i didn't ask for much but i figured when you put work in to something it should pay off.. Built out the game for the test phone i had and boom, I’m holding a seven week turd in my hands. Functions that worked before no longer did for some reason. Panning the camera, so placing items where you wanted them couldn't happen. the bin also no longer worked, nor the restart button. 

Deciding not to shit myself in front of a room full of people really to test the game (along with other dev games), coffee was needed.

So the game works well enough on the computer still which is good. Although not for the computer, i did at least have the functionality in there that aloud it to be tested to an extent, so i built out a computer version. Which is where some of the irreverent feed back comes in.. UI too big,  no exit button, no zoom in or out.. 

I wont go into it fully, as it made me realize a few thing like why not add functionality for the computer? Controls at least at the moment since a computer version will need more items and options etc. But as it stands, as annoyed as i am with a broken mobile game, its coming together. 

Hoping to fix those Mobile issues, and add some computer functionality, then push it out to the world on Wednesday. Till next time, Fingers crossed!

[theconcernedpotato]

This is hard

So i seem to be failing in getting my ass into gear with building my game..

 With several set backs trying to make core systems, and hitting an all time low in creative drive towards this game, the (what i thought it was at the time) well planned timeline to push out an alpha build, is seeming to be pushed back further and further. What was meant for the beginning of last week is more looking like end of next week.. 

Its not like anyone can say i have been sitting around doing nothing either, but taking time to find other creative outlets have sidetracked me in a major way.

 Now slowly making my way through this creative storm, with a little work each day, i’m starting to see the light at the other end. This has by far got to be the most hardest part of this journey by far, and i understand why most devs say the greatest achievement is actually finishing. 

Once all the systems are placed down, i head back into a more artist roll, designing art assets. 

Lets hope this time period is just a normal speed bump and its clear skies from here out.

For anyone interested in just a few things ive gotten sidetracked with over this time, check out -

https://www.instagram.com/dreamwalker002/

Most noticeably Crobus, stylised character and smoke man.

Till next time, i hope all my creative friends keep moving forward. 

[theconcernedpotato]

It is the season

Oh Kay.. So not a lot has been done with the amount of time away from the computer. Another holiday, and working on other projects. 

So the time is coming closer to pushing out that Alpha build, so if anyone is interested in play testing, ill will be posting a link to the download in the next post. Must have an android phone or a computer (still unsure if i will do the computer, but thinking i may as well since its set up for that anyways).

Was meant to be pushing one out this week but with much more to do, i doubt i will make it, so hopefully next week.

Work has progressed enough to tell you about it which is a bonus. Like - With much annoyance, i got the rubbish bin to work. Was more painful then it should have been, but least now when you place down too many items, you can delete them, yay! (much needed). 

Also with the phone i picked up, i can safely say phone controls work, although refinement is needed still as i expected, but baby steps.

I did get into a lot of the systems behind the scenes, like Setting up level scripts and item creation so that once i’m in full swing i can create added content and updates for the game later on without too much issues. (i did think about posting a picture or two but code isn’t that exciting, and id hate for actual programmers to see my work, since its really really bad haha..)  

On top of all that i did start grey boxing out ui and menu scenes. Started pretty rough and it was recommended blocking out the flow in a program called 

Figma  - an interface design tool used for UI design and prototyping. 

Just wow, great tool to use and i can honestly recommend it now myself. With its easy and quick interface, you can grey box the UI and UX flow in no time. And best yet, its weirdly free, well unless you’re a large company, a win for the small guy! (Will Update tomorrow with pictures and a video/GIF).

Oh, i did get a hold of a guy that will do music for me which is neat! Cant say ive had custom music for any of my small projects before!

Really should keep up to date on posting so i can remember what I've done since the last, but sorry i didn’t, and i cant. I can tell tell you what still needs to be done before the alpha push next week. More levels, UI all hooked up, item shop, more items, rotation handle, set up for music, some kind of point system etc, oh and the much needed analytics integration so i can see how you, the play testers, went with testing. 

Yeah.. that’s a bit of a list.. and i did just get red dead 2.. haha well i guess we see how that goes. Fingers crossed and lets hope for the best. 

Sorry for the boring text wall, il try up date so it is a touch better on the eyes. Just thought it was best to post an update while i have some time. 

[theconcernedpotato]

So much work, so little blog..

Between going on a week holiday north where the sun seems to be hiding. Yes like Stan i went north for the winter (I’m in New Zealand), and also with knocking a basic prototype out, I've been ignoring posting updates.. You guys are obviously not worthy XP

From the pitch i went straight into seeing if the basic idea could work and if it is somewhat amusing. 

At first i had no phone to develop on (i have an iPhone and no mac, don’t get me started..) so the basic prototype would be tested on the computer. I now have an android phone and testing on the phone is currently working so yay #winning! 

At first i needed to figure out controls. Well actually item placement but i’l show you basic panning of the camera.

Top screen is the in game screen, based off a mobile size, the bottom is the editor screen

At first it was controlled by mouse, but with a little help from (https://oiral.tumblr.com/) the wizard, phone touch controls works the same.  

With movement down, item placement was next. Had the basics down before movement, but added UI and testing of snapping to vertices, (placement so it lines up clean) so kinda there. Not fully happy but that is within polishing i guess, right?   

With item placement down, i needed to test if they worked as intended.

The player will react differently with each item. For testing purposes only two items were created. Well the same item but different shapes..

 Pushing play and watching was obviously needed. A button was not as simple as just saying “go” either. My mind set was - once you placed the last item down and pressed play, action just couldn't go. It should lag a bit so not to disorientate you from where you left off, plus having the camera instantly snapping to the character also wouldn’t feel nice. Although some refinement is needed. On top of that, character tracking was put in place.

For testing purposes i added a reset button, which will put the character back at the beginning without resetting the level. Although for testing, it soon became apparent it will be needed in game since the game is trial and error.  

The white dots on screen represents the camera shots the director would like for his movie and which you have to move through for them to capture.This will act next to a score system maybe? Although it is possible to finish the level without hitting these. 

Plus it might not be clear here, but the dot within the “building” is the finishing position and where the player must reach to complete the stunt for the movie.

 Sorry again for a lack of updates and a dry balls catch up, minds all over the place and life seems to be lacking in enough hours in the day to nut anything out lately. On top of this project I've been hard at work creating a model not only for 3D printing, but a show case, texturing and all, plus trying to pick up contract work. 

But things are coming together no matter how slow, so suck it up people!  

[theconcernedpotato]

In the beginning there was a chicken!

Or was it the egg.. Something to think about while you play my game i guess.

Any how, this is the beginning of the next project, and like those that came before, there was a pitch.

So this next project is a touch different in the way i approached it. Hoping to go my separate way in the future, i looked towards the actual market place and where i could fit in. 

Without a full team of at least 12+ behind me, i naturally looked towards the casual mobile market. A fully saturated place i am aware, but at least i could have some fun and share the game with my friends if it doesn't go well.

The Pitch 

 Stuntman Stan - a casual puzzle game where you take the role of the stun coordinator, where you plan the stunts Stan will perform, by laying down landing pads, explosions, tricks all within those magical camera shots, all while trying to stay under budget. Don’t forget to give Stan a place to call home that any chicken would be jealous of.    

So if you hadn’t figured, Stan is a chicken. He had dream but like the rest of us, those dream don’t always go the way we planned. 

I had seen Stan as a lovable character, one that people would want to help. Like Pixar and Disney, i wanted to go for a more simplistic cartoon animal character. Since i am aiming for the phone, the colours and design would have to be bold enough to see at a small size. 

I want the game to reach people without issues resulting from my failure with words. so with that in mind, i looked at icons that were known to mean things no matter what language you spoke. Now angry birds does this well i think, so i will try to follow in their foot steps. 

Setting the game out will be done from a side on view. Once given a plan of what your producer wants, you are tasked to bring their vision to life.

So each section of levels i’m thinking will be split up as movie themes. Each movie will have a set number of stuns within. Not only will you be judged on how you performed in each stunt, but also how well the whole movie did as a whole. In this i am hoping to add challenges like sponsors, etc. up grade gear and SFX.

    When all said and done, Stan needs a place to rest. His home away from home where you can upgrade, customize, and hang any and all rewards you collect along the way.

   So with all that said, id like to say - don’t hold me to any of this haha. Currently i am a one man band and it will be loooong hours just trying to getting the base game working since i’m no magician with the coding side, but im not going to let that slow me down. Shoot for the moon and if you miss you’ll hit the stairs.. Actually i don’t think the saying goes like that, but i cant be bothered looking it up so it is what it is.  

Keep watch for updates 

[theconcernedpotato]

Play with me!

Ok the title is obviously click bait but suck it up and play my game!

https://childrenofolympus.itch.io/wrath-of-zeus

Other games ive been apart of 

https://dreamwalker002.itch.io/

https://seanmichael.itch.io/                                                                               

https://twitter.com/xocdarb                                                                                

https://srirachasiriah.tumblr.com/                                                                         Concept artist, 2D artist.

https://oiral.tumblr.com/                                                                                     

https://sampai-gamedev.tumblr.com/                                                                

https://www.instagram.com/dreamwalker002/                                                     Me, the Concerned potato.

[theconcernedpotato]

Why am i so useless..

I do apologize for my lack of posts regarding this project, my mind has been away and it forgot to leave me a todo list. 

Currently our game just hit Itch.oi and to be honest i really like the game we did(not trying to blow our horns or anything, but it even got my daughters approval !).

Few things here and there need a touch to really bring it home, and hopefully by the time you actually can be bothered reading my ramble, theses will have been implemented XD

So in the mean time i may as well distract you with what we have been up to. i myself feel like ive done sweet bugger all, but i did get my work done so maybe im just as much of a pick to myself as i am to others, who knows but lets take a look.

 since the last post i got suck into the female hairstyles and items. first getting into zbrush and quickly knocking out what will become the normal map.

Although its not clear, since the game was to be kids dressing up, i had placed buttons sew’d on to the ends of a girl with dreads like she was dressing as medusa. The olive leaf crown would only be half done since it would be mirrored over to save time.

So the poly count would come to higher then it needed to be, and actually easy to knock down, but without any budget to work with and a total of 6300 tri including medusa who was a pain in the ass being 3100 itself, i don’t think that’s too bad since the game itself takes very little to run (yes i believe your bullshit PC could run this game!). so although not a show in skill, it gets the job done.

While Slapping theses together i had to get done a couple of items for theses characters.

Hera’s crown, Athena's Helmet and an olive leaf crown which would get two textures. 

Again theses items were over done in there poly count but since they were to be one off items, i dont think it was an issue.

texturing was pretty straight forward, keeping to the pastel colours i knock out the textes within substance painter, exported the AO and over layed it over the  Albedo map as i had done before.

Sometime in my random daze i found time to do particles! Which are always quite fun to get into, although having only 24 hrs to slap them together would be less so, but its done. 

So i was given a small list of particles to do, which worked well for me (at the time i was unsure if the game needed more, but my list was my list).

The issues of particles isnt about making something pretty, although that is part of it, but what feels right with what you are trying to convey. 

With the Attack i wanted to illustrate getting hit/taking damage, so two strikes, with a touch of sparks. This seemed like it something was getting hit. Now i dont claim that this is an amazing effect, but with with the time i had, it will do.   

The defend was a little more interesting. I had spoken to the team and the idea of a shield flying out to block a hit is what i took away from the conversation. Prob not what they had in mind, and wasn’t what i had either, but with my limited skill and time, this is was my compromise.

So.. this was the biggest issues i had came across..  without playing the game i had no idea what was meant by freeze.. Dealing with gods it could actually mean turning you to ice! But after talking to the team and actually playing the game, it actually meant bound, unable to move. so the effect i went with here are somewhat boring really, i could have had chains fly out and pin the card down like it cant move! Not that o know how to do that, well guess i could figure it out, but by this time,(wine time) im getting close to calling it a night. so frozen cracks it is. 

Now i kind of cheated with this effect. i kind of heard a mention that i might need to do particles and knocked this out the night before i was asked to do them. the actual effect was longer, with the green pulse timed like a heart beat, but with the speed in which the game moves, i was forced to cut the timing down and this is what was left. 

Now i was, and should show what the others were up to but i don’t think you guys actually understand how lazy i am since ive missed quite abit of my own work, so I’m going to in the next post add links to their preferred sites, as well as a link to the game and if you are interested, you can look them up!! Yay!!

[theconcernedpotato]

Honestly i am Modest

           So this post is all about me! ME me me and me. And since i am a kind god, i would like to dedicate this to my skills that sit way above you mare humans!

            But in all honesty, I’m currently just too lazy to get all the work the others have done sorry haha.. 

                                   With that lets get into it.

            I got stuck into quad drawing (making little square poly faces over a model) all the male hair caps which i had done in the last post. i did go somewhat over the top with its poly count (how many square faces a model has), since the in-game models aren’t that close to the camera, but even so they actually aren’t bad either with all four having a combined total of i think 1000tris (triangles, when we cut a poly in half ready for texturing).   

            Since they aren’t that close to the camera it made sense to place all hair styles on a single 1024 Map ready for texturing (or as my partner says yet again, coloring in). 

           This means the computer will only need to call/ask for the information involving texturing every male hair style in the whole game once, which as you might expect is a good thing.

           With that out of the way it was time to move on to the many other little things on my list.

            Originally i was going to get into the female hair styles, but with time getting on i had to prioritize what was next. If time really started to kick the shit out of me, at least the game would have a full set of characters (although they would have to all use the male hair), so with that in mind i jumped into making the clothing. 

            If any of you like the idea of making clothing i would recommend getting into Marvelous Designer. Its not that hard to get into, and the main issues when using it is knowing how to actually design clothes using a template like you would see a designer use if doing it for real.  

             Now the game is based around Greek gods, so to me it seemed like kids would just grab a sheet, wrap it around themselves and call it a day. 

            So that exactly the direction i went in.

            I didn’t have to get too crazy with what i was doing since they wont be that big in game, plus i planned to touch them up in Zbrush after anyways. The main thought was that i gave the items enough creases and folds that it would be somewhat noticeable from a distance. 

            Once i quickly knocked out the basic look it was straight in to zbrush (well maya first, but i wont go fully in depth about my pipeline unless asked).

            i wasn’t too interested in the details of the belt or how it was held together (since such details wont be seen), but the thought was - the belt might be some kind of rope or ribbon and holding the top of the sheet in place would be a hair tie?..

            Now the Clay model was done, it was back into Maya for quad drawing. 

            The whole process of doing the clothing from start to finish was very quick, just over a day and that included placing it in Substance painter to bake out the maps (burn the details on to the low poly version).

            note - I removed most of the pictures of the “hair tie” since its just a simple ring, so nothing to exciting to show.

            I also layed out the items separately for cleaner baking of the maps.   

            Now i was instructed by my leads that they want the clothing white so they can color in engine, so all i needed was the normal map (gives the illusion of detail and fake 3D)  and the Ambient occlusion (shadows burnt onto the model) which i then took into Photoshop and overlay-ed onto the Albedo map(the coloring in of the item itself) to help add that detail so its noticeable from afar.

Below is just a few maps, of which two are useless for the project, but thought it would be cool to add them here anyways.

                                  Note - Male Clothing Maps

         Now the stress is kind of off since we now actually have people in the game, i can get back to actually doing the female hairstyles and character items.

          On the next post i will put some time in with what the team have been up to since they have been going flat out as well with this being the last week before website,release social media shit. 

[theconcernedpotato]

Where am i?

So I’m back from NZGDC18 and what a week it was! Amazing and recommend going next year if you can, although I’m currently needing to hide and go in to hibernation just to recover, but unfortunately we don’t all get what we want, so.. back to it this week with some major updates so this might be somewhat long.

      Seems in my time away the game has changed course and set sail towards a new distant land. Now i can’t really say how since my brain isn’t up for any new information at the moment, so the only question i asked was “how does this affect my work load” then got into working.

     I will though post an update once i wake up some time next week with its new direction, but in the mean time all i can say is what i was told  -    It’s more Slay the spire, rather than Hearthstone.

    So before leaving i was handed a few hair concepts for the male characters which i got in to. Since i was away for a week and other things need doing, plus i messed up on the first few try’s at doing hair (we just going to pretend they didn’t happen haha), time has only allowed only a select few styles to be complete.

       Well they aren’t completely done but the zbrush side is. So il do the low poly, then move to the females.

       I will admit i had issues trying to bring the concepts to life at first until i had Fortnight hair style pointed out to me.

      So ( https://srirachasiriah.tumblr.com/ ) really found her groove with the next set of concepts, with the female iterations including props and accessories that would show case their role.

            Along with keeping me at work,( https://srirachasiriah.tumblr.com/ ) also knocked out some environment art for the classroom based off a simple 3D model blocked out by ( https://twitter.com/xocdarb ), to show the visual look, feel and layout she had envisioned.

           With that  ( https://twitter.com/xocdarb ) got stuck into it.

            It seemed one major issues with the old build of the game was that there is no challenge to the player. Unfortunately it appeared that you could do almost as well playing random cards than playing seriously.

           So with much balancing needed,  especially with changes being made,( https://oiral.tumblr.com/ ) and ( https://sampai-gamedev.tumblr.com/ ) got into testing new gameplay and systems while trying to figure out how we can make the game more interesting for the player. .

           Working so closely with the cards ( https://sampai-gamedev.tumblr.com/ ) headed up research and concepts for them. First starting with a mood board and looking at how others design.

           With a collection of ideas, she presented a range of card designs based off what they were trying to achieve -  very simplistic and easy to understand/read.

             Following close behind she chose a card based on some elements of the previous concepts looked at colour just to give a rough idea of what these concepts would look like.

         Using placeholder cards taken from hearthstone so there was some visuals to work with while getting the card prefabs setup, (https://oiral.tumblr.com/ ) started creating our systems inside unity and getting some visuals set up, getting the cards drawing and matching up for combat.

(was a gif but tumblr wouldn’t post for some reason.. maybe too large of a post? took photos though so see below)

       In his down time ( https://oiral.tumblr.com/ ) created a hand system which allows you to select a card.

With things still moving forward even when most of the team was away and changes being made, it seems the project is still on track.

[theconcernedpotato]

Walking Zombies

First off I’m going to list the team, their job/role (somewhat loosely), and links to there preferred social account. Note - Time of writing, a few have yet to get back to me as to what to link themselves to, so i guess I’ll just pick. 

https://seanmichael.itch.io/                                                                               Brain child of the idea and game. Co-Project manger, Programming, System and game designer.

https://twitter.com/xocdarb                                                                                Who you might remember from my last game. Co-Project manger, Tech-Artist, Audio.

https://srirachasiriah.tumblr.com/                                                                         Concept artist, 2D artist.

https://oiral.tumblr.com/                                                                                     Who you might also remember from my last game. Lead Programmer, System and game designer. 

https://sampai-gamedev.tumblr.com/                                                                Concept artist, Game designer, Battle system designer

https://www.instagram.com/dreamwalker002/                                                     And me, the Concerned potato. 3D Character modeler (and particle guy, if i get my shit together).

Don’t take the jobs as gospel since working outside of our supposed roles will happen a lot. 

Now with that out of the way, from here on out I’ll just add the links of all members at the bottom of my posts for any of you who want to stalk my fellow team members.

[theconcernedpotato]

Week one

The pitch - So the game the team has chosen is based around an old school RPG battle system, using cards as a one time attack move. 

With a kind of base idea of what we would be trying to make, we began first with finding a theme. Fantasy, sifi, steam-punk etc. The lend whose pitch sparked the idea of the game voiced that he kind of had a fantasy look in mind. With much talk we came up with a playful style on geek mythology, school dress up.

 With that down we looked at how the game might be played, the look and art style. So looking at other card battle games, curious to see how they over came certain game-play issues and if they might be relevant or spark an interesting solution for what we would need.  Games like Pokemon, Yu-gi-ho, magic the gathering, persona, banner saga just to name a few. The art style itself was an interesting issue with having not only 3d artists on the team but 2d. In the end i think we came up with something that works for all.

The game will be played in two areas. The first being set in a 3d environment where you run around form challenger to challenger, and the second being the battle itself in a 2d style.

Note: I will set out a job list and links of the team in my next post, since at the time of writing this i haven't got all the information in front of me.

Part of my job is doing the characters within the 3d world. Without any concept art as of yet but only an art style, Chibi characters, i decided to get to work on a simple base mesh that can be reused for all the characters within the game. 

First issue when looking into the style which i was not really familiar with was sub-styles. from what i saw was some with more of a squashed body large head, and a body more in proportion with itself but again a larger head.   

Talking with the team we settled on the latter of these. 

Since the base is simple, it took little to no time within zbrush to knock out the basic shape which i retop within maya. With the concept artist going full force in all areas, i decided to knock out a more feminine version while i had the time.  

The next issue to finalize these is whether to go with the low poly, or more smoothed look.

Not wanting to waste time in having to come back. i do both in case the team changes the look.

As i finish up, I’m handed a bunch of hair designs. (forgot to grab female designs). So that’s next on my list.

With all the main components looked at, we all got to work base on the list of jobs we all had. even though this is to be a pc game, since the base of the game is the battle system, this could be tested using paper prototyping (as the name suggests, the first pre-alpha stage will be made with physical items rather then code). 

  The programmers and designer set upon this task, using some SushiGo cards to prototype since they already have numbers and items which make testing easy. By Friday a decent battle card game was born.

While testing commences, code is written up for other areas and systems within the game.

The 3d level is blocked out and coded with a simple movement and camera script. Other areas like moving between area are also done.

So this ends week one and it seems everything is moving in the right direction. with half the team away all next week, including me, things will slow down, but we will see   

[theconcernedpotato]

Lets try this again shall we

After a good few weeks off, its time we dust off the knee pads, because we are at it again.

So Monday hit us like a cold coffee. Sure it was nice and is needed to get us moving, but wheres the warm up?!  First day and straight into pitching what game ideas we had come up with over the time off. A daunting task for anyone that cant perform at a moments notice or if public speaking isn’t your strongest.

Considering i’m socially retarded, me speaking to people freaks me out, and i then tend to accidentally put my foot in my mouth or say odd things, but over all it wasn’t that bad. None of my idea found a home with the rest of the team, but oh well.

   So the hard question.. what to do? 

Unfortunately my wants, needs and what is practical are all on different pages. My wants consists of me going off and doing my own thing, but with five weeks to push out this game, and me running off for the week to NZGDC ( https://nzgdc18.lilregie.com/booking/attendees/new ) i know nothing will be done at 100%.

 What i need is a decent job that i can sink my teeth into that will showcase my work..  (https://www.artstation.com/dreamwalker002   ,currently replacing these) 

But what is the Practical thing to do? Well glad you asked. 

Join a team with a decent amount of people, where i can focus on a job and with the time we have, allow it to be of good quality. Plus with everyone playing their part, we should be able to hopefully push out a short but sweet game.

Option three it is!

So we have had a few days now sorting out the team, jobs and idea of what we plan to move ahead on. So with that, i wont hit you with a large text wall for the first blog back. So expect more details by the end of the week where i will also hopefully have something by then to show. 

[theconcernedpotato]

What is done is done

So today the team released the game ( https://dreamwalker002.itch.io/dust-runners ) upon the world. 

            And i say the “team” https://oiral.tumblr.com/ and https://twitter.com/xocdarb , since i didn’t even turn up for the event.

Had to get my kids, so that meant I kind of left the team hanging.

            The last night i did sit up late into the morning trying to redo the game icon and cover page.

Since it really was so hard to read what it was, especially as a small icon, i had no choice but to redo it (confirmed but the feed back from the other members).

              As you can see it is a lot cleaner and more readable then the last, but i am still far from happy..

              I don’t think great work can come from only hours of deadline left.

              And this was definitely a challenge. With the style i went with for the web page and trying to keep with the theme, it just felt no matter what i did for such a small icon it was not going to work.

As you can see, even though I kept with the comic style, it is rather different then what I had been doing.

Although i guess i could have gone with a hover bike which might have been more consistent with the game, and easier to read, for some reason it didn’t feel right. But maybe i am wrong and should have.   

               Now.. i kind of lied in my last post when i said i was going to post a lot within this next segment, and at the time i did mean it. but now the game is out i figure i may as well let it show itself off. 

              This is me - The concerned Potato.

https://www.instagram.com/dreamwalker002/  follow me as i post things often, mostly things im working on.

https://oiral.tumblr.com/  The Wizard 

https://twitter.com/xocdarb  Our fuzzy companion.

Game - https://dreamwalker002.itch.io/dust-runners

          It is only for PC, so if you have one check it out, have a jam, leave you're critique and opinion. 

         Would be much appreciated!  as that the only way we can improve.

For pass game Jam - https://teamabovebelow.itch.io/as-above-so-below

Also check it out. Different type of game. Got links to Other members that although they did not get the chance to jump on board with this project, they do have their own thing going.

So until the next game

Signing out