As we continue to polish ChainStaff
for the April 8th release date, I've got cool news.
After loads of
playtesting I realized we needed just a little bit of extra polish in the game.
Behold--the "Vault Ability"!
This is a new, automatic move that happens to the player in the game.
Any time you are next to a ledge, and you press towards it (left/right),
you will automatically try to climb it just a little bit.
You don't climb all the way up walls.But you do kick off of them twice, giving you a tiny boost.
You
do not do a full ledge grab. That I feel would slow down the pace of
the game. But you quickly do a small wall-hop and it lets you over loads
of tiny spots you'd fall normally.
Want to try it out? It's in the free demo on Steam right now! Is it better than a ledge-grab? Let me know what you think.
Final Playtesting
If you are interested in playtesting the game before its release this April 8th, join my discord and ask around and I'll hook you up.
The game is 90-95% complete and I am now smoothing out rough edges and looking for more bugs.
We are getting close and I could use all the help I can get to find bugs in the game. Thanks!
And while I finished Bumpy Grumpy and a few contract jobs in between, it's been a lot of good iteration and learning along the way to make a better platformer.
One of the most important parts of a platformer for me is a good camera! And for me a good camera is one that you don't even notice. Check out my recent video here about how the camera works in ChainStaff.
If you'd rather read than watch, then please read on!
Vistas
There a several special things I'm trying to do with the camera in ChainStaff. One of them is to create exciting fights and beautiful moments.
Each level opens with a gorgeous vista of the new level.
Level 4: Moss Islands
You get to soak it all in, the alien world, blowing leaves, lighting, nasty clouds, and creepy tongues swaying in the wind. Then when the player starts moving the camera picks up and starts following you.
Another special camera I use is to have a vista combined with a big fight. The opening of level 2, the Dragon's Bridge has you launch straight into an epic battle with the Jet Dragon on a thin rock bridge. As you get closer to the dragon, the camera zooms into the action. If you run away, the camera backs up to capture you and the dragon in view. I like this a lot, but it's a bit unusual for 2D action games to pull back quite this far. I carefully designed several fights in the game to take advantage of these huge views, while still remaining fun and fair.
The Dragon's Bridge: Look how tiny you are!
Less Is More
For most of the action of the game, the direction I give the camera is "only move if necessary".
Basically I follow the Miyamoto method developed as far back as Super Mario World.
There's some great videos on how he designed the camera there. I use similar direction in ChainStaff. If you are jumping up, the camera only moves up with you, if you actually jump up to a new platform. If you are simply hopping up and down, I don't follow the player up and down. If you make the game like that, the camera is really spazzy and it's hard to see what platforms or enemies you're going to land on! It's much better to keep it still unless you land on new ground.
Swing Town
One tricky area for ChainStaff is making something that works with the wildly swinging grappling hook.
You are attached to a grappling hook, and swinging left and right fast. If I simply follow the player, it's very hard to play.
The direction I use instead for the camera is to follow the attached point of the grappling hook. This works because its in between of where the player wants to be. The player can swing left/right fast, and its easy to focus on the action. As soon as they let go, the camera smoothly transitions to then following the player again.
These are the three main areas and methods I use to make for a smooth camera experience for the platforming and shooting action in ChainStaff. Check out the video for more details, but also check and see how Miyamoto did it for Super Mario World. As usual, he's a master!
Thanks for reading and please wishlist ChainStaff, thank you!.
Yes, I meant to write "contract", instead of "contact" :D
The past few months have had me spending time on two new secret projects! They are quality, original, action Mommy's Best Games productions and I'm super excited to share them! Sadly, I've decided to not share them prematurely. They must remain in secret for the time being. Which means, for November, December, as I worked on them, I couldn't find a way to do a blog post, without sharing information about those games.
But in the meantime, I've taken on another contract game design job. I've worked with Girls Make Games for several years now. They are a good company which helps get teenage girls into game development. The girl teams create an idea, and as a bonus, GMG contracts out the final development to finish their concept and release it! It's a pretty neat thing to be a part of.
Previously I've finished several games with Girls Make Games. Most recently we released "Find Me" onto Steam and consoles. It was great to see that project come to life on my own PS4! And it's gotten some great reviews as well.
Find Me has remarkably tight and responsive controls and some of the most intuitive jumping physics I’ve seen. That double jump? Perfect. One of the best I’ve ever seen, indie or otherwise. I’ve played games by seasoned pros who couldn’t get the movement, speed, and precision as fine-tuned as Find Me has. Sublime effort, everyone. The best thing I can say about Find Me is the controller will vanish in your hands. It’s a total non-issue, as it should be.
I'm pretty thrilled with that review of the gameplay controls! I feel proud about that.
My current contract project is for "What They Don't Sea". It's a new Girls Make Games fully funded project. I'm heading up programming and design again for that. I can't reveal the new look of the game, but it's shaping up great. The game is about a young girl that is exploring the ocean and looking for renewable resources.
But rest assured I am also still working on completely insane Mommy's Best Games original games! I plan to reveal some news bits of them in the next few months.
Way back in 2008, we released our very first indie game Weapon of Choice on Xbox 360 to great acclaim. And I'm excited to announce it's now being remastered as "Weapon of Choice DX"!
The game will release on September 2nd on Nintendo Switch, both PS4 and PS5, and both on the Xbox One and the Xbox One Series X. I've been working on this one for the past few months with my game dev friends at Super Soul, to port it to all the consoles.
If you've missed my other DX releases, check out my blog posts on the development of Shoot 1UP DX and Explosionade DX.
Innovations of Choice
As a reminder of what makes the game so special, Weapon of Choice DX is a riff on the"run and gun" sub-genre similar to games like Contra and Mega Man. There are many innovations in the design including "death-brushing" which causes all time to slow down if you are about to be killed, thus giving you a chance to escape your brush with death.
Another big change is the ability to find new players. You start with 3 "lives" like a traditional shooting game, but here all 3 lives are unique characters. And if you die, you can actually rescue the downed person, and get them out of the level (thus getting your "life" back). Each of these characters has their own special "weapon of choice" for players the learn how to use. Players can also find entirely new characters that have fallen in battle. If you rescue this new character, they permanently stay in your group, ready to fight and add to your total life count.
The level design is also unique. While the game is short to beat, there are many branching paths and 4 possible endings. This encourages replaying the game multiple times, and with different characters.
Deluxe Treatment
Remastering Weapon of Choice DX focused on several technical issues. The game has high-res textures, and large expansive levels. It was difficult and took substantial optimizations from the Super Soul team, to get the game running at 60 frames a second on all consoles. The hand-held mode for the Nintendo Switch is sadly slower and less powerful than most of the other consoles and layouts, so it took extra work to get the game up to par there.
The hand-drawn was also all up-rezzed to 4K and looks extra nice on a big TV. Full button remapping was added, per console layout, as well.
For gameplay content, the game does remain similar to the Steam release back in 2015. There are "Mommy's Best Games pies" hidden throughout the game. Progress is tracked and recorded and encourages the player to find all the pies for an unlockable Achievement/Trophy! The original Xbox 360 release had 3 difficulty settings, but there are now 7 difficulty settings adding plenty of challenge.
I also took time to tweak the 'death-brushing' effect. Now the game darkens the background entirely to make it easier to see you and the dangerous threat, which is better than the earlier versions of the game.
Deluxe Challenge
The DX version has also been made a bit tougher than any other version! With the game now running well at 60 fps, some bosses were going down too easily. I personally worked on rebalancing the game (testing on console hardware), and I tweaked all boss health, and some smaller enemy fights to keep things challenging and satisfying. The player speed and movement has been increased making the feel of the game much snappier than the original release.
Pre-Order Power
Weapon of Choice DX is currently available to pre-order on Xbox One here.
The Nintendo Switch pre-order starts on July 21st.
We tried to get as long a pre-order as possible as that seems to help sales. I think this is because the pre-order sits in a special section of the digital stores, basically sectioned off from the giant warehouse of "released games".
We'll also the have the pre-order in both the Europe and North America Nintendo Switch store pretty early, which we've struggled to get approved as quickly before. This is our 3rd DX game, so at this point, we're finally getting pretty good at the store approval process. It is a lot of work, but clearly important.
In the meantime, grab the pre-order please, tell your friends, and stay tuned for release on September 2nd!
As with Shoot 1UP DX from a few months ago, this is a remaster of one of my older shooting games. Though we added 2 new levels to Shoot 1UP, I feel like we did even more to improve Explosionade for the 'deluxe edition'.
Discovering the Horronyms surprisingly organized culture is a subtle part of the fun.
Explosionade DX is a run 'n' gun mech game, in which you gleefully blast walls, and squish poor, little critters to gooey bits. I've always enjoyed the game, but one thing felt lacking--the difficulty was always a bit low. The final levels never really challenged you until the literal last areas.
To address that, I managed to get the original level design program working again! I couldn't believe it, but the program Richard Rosenthal made for me, over 10 years ago, still worked, with a bit of help. The original version of the game had 40 levels. We basically scrapped about 35 of those levels, and created 55 new ones!
All levels are hand-balanced for Easy, Medium, and Hard difficulty.
The most exciting part, is I got to work with my kids on it. Specifically my 10 year old son really took to making new levels. It was a great division of work. He loved making extremely hard levels. I strove to make varied levels. Often I would make new enemies and write new code, to create some original situations, such as the two "all dark" levels, or the new "barf bag" enemies.
On the right side, is the result of the concrete-like sludge that comes from the "barf bags".
Not surprisingly my son's level designs did need some polish, but it was fun to have him block in the level, with ridiculous challenges. Then I would work with him and show him how to smooth it out just a bit, to make it more enjoyable over all, but still preserve the great challenge.
In the "all dark" levels you'll have to "feel your way" through by destroying walls.
The end result now has at least 5 very tough levels (probably more depending on how you grade them) but these levels are spaced out later in the 60 total levels. I like these difficulty spikes, as you can enjoyably blast your way through several short levels in a row, but then hit a "wall" where you'll have to step back and actually think about how to proceed. These levels aren't that tough, but they offer a good bump in the challenge here and there.
Cris-crossed by the laser-shooting Bruiser Horrornyms can make for some tricky fights.
In addition to level design, we've added many new enemies, uprezzed the graphics to 4K, locked the framerate to 60fps, added Trophies/Achievements, and online leaderboards!
It's only $5.99 on all systems, so if you enjoy shooting up some baddies, give it a go this weekend!
And do yourself a favor, if you've ever played through a Contra game, go ahead and pick the "Serious" difficulty for Explosionade DX. You'll have more fun.
With the end of the year approaching I wanted to share two of the contract games I helped ship this year. They are not the normal "Mommy's Best" insane action games, but still very cool on their own.
Both games were made for Girls Make Games, an organization that works with young girls to encourage them to get into game development. These two games were made based on very popular Kickstarter campaigns to fund their development. (No I didn't get paid all that money, lol.) I charged a fairly low, Midwestern rate for the very nice GMG team! Today I'll talk about the first game we finished.
Shredded Secrets is a story-based platformer with 4 interconnected stories about 3 students and a teacher living their lives and struggling in school. Each character has their own troubles, and some of the stories even intertwine. The original girl team came up with the concept and the characters and Girls Make Games people produced the game. I helped form the gameplay for each characters. I'm proud that we created some new gameplay--new action moves for a platformer!
The first character Isabella is being bullied by the other kids in school. This is shown by visible insults flying through the air at her. The art was created by Katie Longua and it is adorable.
Isabella can "block insults" by holding the action button. And she can even "reflect insults" back at the bullies if you tap the button just before being hit. I came up with that one. Isabella can jump and explore through each school level, and it plays like a platformer, but feels a little different, as you interact with the school kids some. You also find lost items that relate to your character. As you find new items, and visit checkpoints more of the story is revealed, and most of it is fully voice-acted!
The sounds, music, and voice acting is by Team Audio and is well done and helps elevate the game.
There are 4 levels for each of the 4 characters.
The next character is Oakley the bully who is meanest to Isabella! You get to discover his secret, and some of the reasons he feels compelled to be so mean. His action is to shoot insults at other kids! I helped push that idea. It's fun, in a cruel way, because you can make regular non-bullies cry. But you can also attack bullies with insults.
The big twist with Oakley is you can eventually evolve into getting
to pick between insults or compliments! Eventually you learn you can
tame your demons by actually helping, not hurting.
Next up is Taylor, a smart kid tortured by less than perfect grades. He's obsessed with grades and tests, and eventually his mind distorts his perception of the school, so he sees evil grades attacking him! His ability is to throw a school book like a boomerang. I borrowed this gameplay from Ninja Gaiden, the yellow boomerang powerup. It's very fun. You can even jump over the book and keep it swinging around you, attacking the evil grades.
The final and fourth character is a teacher, named London. She is feeling overwhelmed at work, and has some troubles at home. Her interesting ability is to offer praise and help on people in the form of flying, arcing happy projectiles. But if you overdo it, and give too much of yourself, she gets tired and you have to calm down for a bit.
I did the level design and most of the code for the game. The level layouts is basic platforming stuff, pretty fun, and has some nice secrets. There are even some bosses in the game, and the team managed to sneak a shoot-em up level in there! (Taylor, level 3).
It was a short project, but it is pretty good as a story-platformer, as you keep wanting to read more and find out how all the characters turn out. And if you play to the end, I finished with a final level that references the "Zombies Ate My Neighbors" credits level (if you remember that one!)
Check it out on Steam. I don't make any more money from it (I was paid to work on it at the time, no royalties). But it good to see an example of story used in a platformer, giving some fun retro gameplay, not too hard, but challenging enough, that is connected by interested characters.
With Pig Eat Ball I tried a very open development process. I showed the game from an early state, but the game art and design changed a lot along the way.
A very early, public view of Pig Eat Ball from 2013
Now granted the Pig Eat Ball started as a 'game jam' project, and I really enjoyed making it, but I think some of the early impressions stuck with people.
That meant for the average person scrolling through social media and looking at new games, my "new big game" didn't look great. Oh no! I don't want that to happen!
Because the action-puzzle gameplay was so unusual to design and figure out, I spent a long time getting that just right. But I did wait till near the end of the project to improve the art and visuals.
Which is kind of bad as they are VIDEO games.
Now that looks pretty cool! Two screenshots from the end of the project.
The good news is, the game finished with great reviews. Super! But honestly we did not get a lot of press coverage. While it is always tough to get attention from press (or streamers), I think the game could have turned more heads, if I had worked harder on the art/visuals from the start. I still would have had problems, because the design itself was changing a lot, but simply put: visuals get people's attention.
That brings me to our NEW SECRET PROJECT! Yes, I am working on a new MBG title! And yes, it's a 2D, shooting, action game! And the real MBG part: it will have a crazy new gameplay mechanic to compliment all the shooting!
I love making shooting games. Contra, R-Type, Gradius, Metal Warriors... I love playing those games and others! I know how to make cool, shooting games, but I always like to innovate--to add something to genre.
My plan is to keep the project a secret until it plays AND looks great. Then I'll do an announcement and try to get some attention for it.
It already looks super cool, but I don't want to take any chances this time.
Thanks for your patience and support for when I finally get to show you this new crazy project!
I hope everyone is able to stay safe and healthy and had some time to play some fun games!
I've been playing Castlevania: Rondo of Blood on my PS4. I never got to play this when it was first released, and I'm enjoying it immensely. The branching level design of Weapon of Choice was inspired by this game--but only from me reading about it! It's great to play the game first hand and uncover all sorts of secrets and hidden paths organically (rather than the way a lot of games do it like 'collect 10 stars and unlock an extra level').
Rondo of Blood is *quite* difficult, and I've already run in to some bosses I have no idea how to beat, but so far, I've made it to 'Stage 5' without resorting to any walkthroughs, so I'm feeling pretty good.
In development news, after having shipped Pig Eat Ball to all major consoles, I am secretly working on a new Mommy's Best Games action project. But that is super secret and far off!
I can't wait to reveal it, but I have to. See Pig Eat Ball, while I love it to pieces, didn't make a ton of money. Maybe it still will over time! But in the meantime, I need to keep making extra money.
And to that end, I've been fortunate enough to land a contract job with Metamorphosis Games, the team behind the beautiful new pixel art Metroidvania called "Gestalt: Steam and Cinder".
Take a look and consider adding it to your Wishlist!
Steam Page: Gestalt: Steam and Cinder
Gestalt is a Metroidvania game with a 'steam punk' aesthetic and absolutely rockin' art, as you can see. It's got an interesting story and the main character Aletheia has troubled past that slowly revealed over time that upends the entire story and characters within. There's some very inspired areas to visit all strung together by excellent, tight gameplay.
I've been tasked to help design and arrange the overall world structure, but also design and build individual rooms and levels. The team has been carefully dissecting games including Castlevania Symphony of the Night, Hollow Knight, Dead Cells, and Mega Man X series, to name a few, and are meticulously creating new levels and designs to make an all-new Metroidvania for you!
Winding corridors, tricky jumps, loads of secrets tucked here and there, and loads of wild enemies all amazingly detailed in their animations await you. The boss art is incredible, just check out the "MEGA M.E.S.S" boss up above.
For the forseeable future, I'm lending my design skills to the team to help them make an amazing new adventure. It's really fun to work on a project in which I'm not in charge of the art, and I can focus more on just pure level design! I like doing everything on a game of my own, but it's also neat to work on a slightly larger team.
The big news is Pig Eat Ball is coming to Nintendo Switch!
Yes, along with PS4 and Xbox One, you will get to play the biggest, weirdest, craziest action-adventure game on any console you want! (Okay, not Ouya, but hey, we got the big 3 :)
FEAST your eyes on the Nintendo Switch gameplay reveal trailer for Pig Eat Ball!
We don't have a release date yet, but are working hard to secure it.
What stands in it's way?
Console testing!
Yes, for all 3 consoles, there are rigorous in-house testing and requirements set for all games.
The great news is--we have passed Microsoft Xbox One certification!
That means it's ready to go.
But before we can set a date, we want to get PS4 and Switch tests done as well.
Certification Agitation
Both Nintendo and Sony have issues with the game.
Like what issues you make ask? Crashes? Bugs? Level design problems?
Heavens no, it's silly little things, but hey, fixing these details will make a more polished game for you in the end.
For instance, for the PS4 version, when allowing you to remap the controller buttons, we didn't correctly refer to the X button as the "Cross" button.
And for Nintendo Switch, when the game tries to log your score to the global Leaderboards, if it can't connect to the internet, instead of our simple message telling you there's not internet connection, we are supposed to display the specific Nintendo error code telling you, that you can't connect.
But the BEST had to be when we found out we had unregistered UGC. As in "User Generated Content". Now keep in mind, we don't have the level editor on the console version. That's only available in the Steam version. So how was anyone able to "make" anything on the console versions? LEADERBOARD NAMES! Yes, because we have global leaderboards for each level, and because you have a username that gets shown, this is now technically "User Generated Content" in 2019.
So yeah, it's stuff like that!
So we're fixing it all, which takes some time, and then sending it back into review takes a lot more time.
In the meantime, enjoy how cool Pig Eat Ball looks on a real Switch!
Summer Vacation
But fret not!
We are very, very close and have hope to secure a release date soon!
Click to enlarge, and then download this new art!
Perfect for a new desktop
Update Details
A new update for Pig Eat Ball is live in which plenty of "RNG / Random number generator" gameplay has been REMOVED, to ensure better replays of levels.
* For anyone just wanting to enjoy the game - regular gameplay is still great (there is still tons of variety).
*
But ALSO now, for those wishing to climb the Leaderboards, and just
trying to improve their fastest times on their favorite levels, things
are much better now!
* Lots of enemies and events have had the
"RNG/Random" elements made to be "deterministic". It means the levels
are still crazy and chaotic, BUT when you reset the level and try again,
balls, enemies, and hazards will all react the same.
* (Exceptions
to this rule include: flying "Bot" bugs, bosses, and a few spots here
and there still have some randomness to them, to ensure the max fun, and
twitch skill requirements.)
* Hundreds of levels were slightly
modified to ensure they are still super fun, but also easier to replay
and get the same outcome, to make them more exciting to go for the fastest time.
*
Note:Leaderboards have been reset. This is because the levels are now
different from a speed-running perspective, they've been rebalanced and
players will now get different times. So to make it fair, they've all
been reset. I do not plan to reset them again. They should be ready now
for serious speed-running. *(Why did I
have RNG in the first place? To require twitch-based skills in wild,
chaotic levels. I see now though that it was *too* much randomness, AND
I've found ways to ensure chaos, but with repeatability--the best of
both worlds!)
50 Steam Reviews???
** Please make sure to LEAVE A STEAM REVIEW! (Positive or Negative, however you feel about the game).
Help us hit 50 Steam Reviews!
When
we do, more of the systems on Steam will open up, and the game will be
recommended to more people, which helps us make money on the game, to
improve it, and make more games. Thank you!
In the process, we found a tricky crash, and a PS4 tester recorded this video.
Watch to the end, and see if you can decide what caused the crash.
Ready for some hints?
Hint 1: The objects that cause the crash are on-screen (something
off-screen didn't do it).
Hint 2: It's not just one object.
Hint 3: The player is indirectly involved.
Hint 4: The text that displays over the Toilets is not the cause.
(That's the fun credits level from the end of the game! Spoiler! Don't
worry, it's super fun to play even if you know about it.)
Hint 5: The Pillbugs are mischievous, but they aren't responsible for
this one.
Answer:
Okay, it is a bit of a trick question. It involves 3 objects, not just one.
The Bomb,
the Cigar, and the Pinata.
When you spit a Bomb at the Pinata, it works fine. The Bomb explodes,
and hurts the Pinata. If you spit a Cigar at a Bomb, that works fine.
The Cigar lights the Bomb on fire and the Bomb explodes.
When you combine all three, there was a crash.
Turns out, deep inside the code, I had a problem. I was not setting the
"instigator" for each attack. If the player spat the Bomb, he was the
Instigator.
But when the Player spits the Cigar, which then lights the Bomb, the
"instigator" was not being set in the Cigar. And when the Bomb asks "who
lit me" the Cigar didn't tell it.
So when the Bomb blows up the Pinata, and the Pinata checks for an
instigator, it was "null" (empty) and it crashes! NullExceptionCheck
The end of the mystery!
I've since fixed this crash (update soon for Steam!) and it will be
fixed in the console release.
This Thursday, September 27th, after 5 and a half years in development, we'll finally be releasing
our newest, biggest game Pig Eat Ball!
You can Wishlist and Follow the game on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/339090/Pig_Eat_Ball
But it's only coming to Steam this week.
Why?
For starters, it will be on 3 different platforms: PC, Mac, and Linux. That's no small undertaking to support multiple platforms. In addition to Steam, we're releasing to the popular "Green Man Gaming" store, and we plan to release a DRM-free version on a smaller digital store called itch.io.
But it is true the game will only be available for personal computers this week, and not yet for consoles.
The PS4 and Xbox One versions of Pig Eat Ball are working great!
The trouble is tied up in some red tape and timing. When I made the decision to delay the console releases of the game here's why.
Certification and The Fall
I had to make the decision to "split the launch" months ago. I was pretty sure that we would not get through the "certification" process for each console with much time to spare to hit a release date in September. And it was possible that if we had submitted to review for consoles it could have forced the launch later than September.
This Fall 2018 for games is going to be big. Really Big. One reason is Red Dead Redemption 2 coming out in October. But there are other big games from here on to the end of the year that will take up players' and the press's time and attention.
We're releasing now on Steam in an attempt to come out before all the upcoming bigger titles (even though some big ones such as Spiderman on PS4 has already hit).
Pig Eat Ball does not have millions of dollars to spend on marketing, so it could be very easy to get lost in the noise if we're not careful. By coming out on Steam in the early Fall, and levering the great story-player combined with an easy-to-use level editor we hope to build up the community of players leading up to the console launch.
Time to Market
The other big reason was to ensure that both Sony and Microsoft's internal teams had some time to promote Pig Eat Ball for PS4 and Xbox One. Even if we did manage to squeeze Pig Eat Ball through certification quickly, the console holders like to have some time to promote a title.
If the game had finished certification and then come out within weeks later, it's unlikely that Sony or Microsoft would have been able to move and plan fast enough to promote the game properly. There are many games in development for consoles and one way each MS and Sony *know* a game is serious is when the game is actually finished the review process for each console.
My hope is to get Pig Eat Ball through the review process in the Fall giving the promotional teams time to incorporate the game into upcoming promotions.
Console Me
So when it's actually coming to console? Well I don't have a firm date yet, but I'm shooting for very early 2019.
In the meantime be sure to grab a copy this week on Steam so you can play the single-player and start to dig into the awesome level editor!
Pig Eat Ball has finally hit "Alpha"! That means all the gameplay, levels, and characters are in, but there's still some things to rearrange and big bugs to fix. But that also means we're releasing the game SOON!
If you backed the game long ago, check your inbox, because I've emailed out all the Steam keys. If you didn't get one, check your Spam folder. And email me if you still can't find it. Here's some art I did to encapsulate what going Alpha feels like.
Yeah, that's me blissfully driving the spaceship while my tech lead, John Meister from Super Soul, is pushing this crazy thing :) Now we'll see if the wheels stay on this jalopy as all the testers play the game for the first time!
Pig Eat Ball has a large Adventure mode filled with a variety of action-puzzle levels.
Beating action levels are how you progress the story in Adventure mode.
There are 3 main 'goal types'.
Eat All Balls: every level requires that you eat all the balls to complete the level. It's sort of like a free-form 'puzzle' version of Pac-Man levels. There's no special restriction here, just figure out how to do it.
Timed Eat Balls: You still have to eat all the balls, but now there's a time restriction.
Survival Eat Balls: You can only take three hits of damage, or you fail the level. The goal is still to eat all the balls.
You won't get to pick the mode; it will be particular to each hand-designed level. The levels in the game have been designed by myself and Andrew Curry. If a
level is introducing a new enemy or level object, it will probably have the easiest goal which is Eat All Balls. Once you've seen a certain enemy, new levels with new designs will probably require tougher goals like Timed or Survival.
Every action level is timed. Your "time-to-complete" the level is checked and you are awarded 1 of 3 medals. Bronze, Silver, and Gold.
Bronze means you completed the level. It's the easiest version.
A Silver time is a little tougher. And a Gold time means you completed the level pretty fast!
All of the Medal times are hand-designed and balanced. As we get closer to finishing the game, we're constantly playing the levels and looking at metrics to balance the Medal times.
We won the Pearl from this Royal Clam. It had 4 action levels to beat.
Gold Clams
Pig Eat Ball is meant to be a "good challenge". It's not supposed to be the hardest game ever, and it's not supposed to be a baby's game either. It will feel tougher than a Kirby or Yoshi game, but much easier than a Super Meat Boy or Dark Souls. I'm trying to hit the Super Mario Galaxy difficulty.
However, there are some tough challenges in the game. Getting a Gold medal on any given level requires some skills! And the toughest levels in the game are in the Gold Clams.
That Royal Clam (upper left) has four levels for you to beat. You can see the shadows of four medals under him.
Action levels are given to you by Royal Clams. If you get a Gold medal on every level in a given world, a new section opens up. This gives you access to the Gold Clam. The levels these clams have are pretty tough. If you beat all of the Gold Clam levels in a world, you get access to the special, custom Disguise with unique gameplay abilities!
Polishing the Gold
This is a level from world 1 Gold Clam, it's a tough but satisfying challenge!
That's where development is at right now. We're almost done designing all the Gold Clam levels, and actually almost done with all the levels in the game!
It's a very exciting time.
Pretty soon we'll be able to test the game from start to finish. I'm pumped to see that finally happen.
We're initially translating the game to French, Italian, German, and Spanish.
As such, I'm knee-deep in localization preperation.
That means I'm taking any and all English text in Pig Eat Ball and changing it out for a list-look up.
Basically there's a big spreadsheet of all the text in the game. Each text entry has a name. The list redirects to the language the game is set to be played in.
Here's a pic of the spreadsheet:
The column on the left is the look-up code word. The column on the right is the text to be used in-game.
Below is the C# code in the editor.
The red text in quotes is the special look-up word.
It then checks the spreadsheet to find the actual, translated text.
That's the C# code.
Below is what it looks like in the helper system in Unity.
Why didn't I just do this all from the beginning? Well, that would take foresight. :)
But also it'd be a lot of wasted effort. The game changed a lot over the years. Even for a smaller game the design can change a lot. To be on top of it and have the look-up system already in place would be a good amount of work and commitment to a certain design. It's much faster to prototype things with English baked into the code.
I'm sure it's possible to make a game with the localization system in there from the start! I just don't think the design would be as agile, and I might be less likely to scrap work and make changes. That worries me as I could end up with a worse design, because I didn't want to waste earlier work.
Text Me When It's Done
In any case, we're almost done getting all the localized text ready.
After the spreadsheet is ready we'll send it off to the localization company to be translated.
Then all the text will just magically appear and be wonderfully translated in game!
I'm very excited to see all those languages be possible, and I can only read English!
