TIGSource Forums

Black Ice

Play the free alpha at: superdupergc.com (http://www.superdupergc.com) (PC/Mac/Linux)

Hi! My name is "Super Duper" Garrett Cooper and I'm here to talk about my cyberpunk hacking game, Black Ice. In Black Ice, you play as a hacker jacked into cyberspace, hacking megacorporations for their loot, defending yourself from their lethal countermeasures, or "Black Ice." It's a first person shooter with strong RPG elements, so it's kind of like Borderlands meets Tron.

(http://i.imgur.com/QZ5Cvz8.gif)
A webcrawler spawns to defend a server

Features:

• Fast-Paced First Person Combat
• Billions of Randomly Generated Items
• Deep Customization through the level-up system
• A Giant Beautiful Procedurally-Generated Neon World
• Extremely Open Development - I stream my development on Twitch (http://twitch.tv/blackicethegame) and I let players vote on features
• A wonderful original soundtrack by experienced composer V-Axys
• Award-winning Addictive, Replayable Gameplay (I was in the IndieDB top 100 Indie Games of 2013!)
• Zero Microtransactions. This game will only ever cost you money once, and not even yet. it's still free.
• Developer Promise: No copyright takedowns on Let's Play videos

(http://i.imgur.com/4MF9G5Pl.png)
Overview of the neon game world

(http://i.imgur.com/I4dQfGx.gif)
I don't bite - I leave it to these guys.

As of today, 3/5/14, I'm crunching to prepare for GDC. I'm not presenting, but I am attending, so I'd like to be able to show people my game.  I'm also planning on launching a greenlight campaign at the same time.

What am I crunching on? Multiplayer. I made the mistake of not building the game for multiplayer from the ground up, but I haven't had too much trouble converting it over. Last night on my Twitch.tv dev stream (http://twitch.tv/blackicethegame) I ran a successful multiplayer test with my fans (also known as Black Icicles)! We had a blast. I think I might actually finish it in time for GDC!

Well, my philosophy is that I'll never be totally done, but I've had the game playable and in the hands of as many people as I can get it into for months. I've had a lot of fun with people on youtube and twitch playing my game! Made a lot of friends with those people.

Incidentally, if anyone is curious about how I coded anything in my game, like the randomly generated items or the visual effects, just ask :) I'd be happy to show you during my stream, too!

Moar gifs! (I love gifs!)

(http://i.imgur.com/kWbium1.gif)
The appropriately-named Popup enemy

(http://i.imgur.com/0eCQskM.gif)
The infinity room starfield

(http://i.imgur.com/43rQcH7.gif)
Swarm buildings >:)

(http://i.imgur.com/acCIXiz.gif)
The Disc weapon

Hm, this is making me realize I do a lot of highlighting of features, but not enough general gameplay gifs and such. Well, I'm almost done with the greenlight trailer. I'll post that here later!

Just a quick post to say hi here as well, and welcome to devlogs! Good luck with crunch. I'll be going to GDC as well, so hopefully we'll run into each other there.

Cheers! :beer:

Also, the alpha has come a long way since the last time I played it. I don't even think there was music back then, and now there's new enemies, and the spiders are crawling up the walls (I don't remember them doing that before).

Yes, absolutely! I have a pretty frantic pace; I do a patch almost every single week. The music is legitimate; V-Axys made it specifically for Black Ice :)

As for the spiders crawling on buildings, not only did it make sense, but I had to do that to let the players jetpack around. I mean, I couldn't let them feel safe, could I?

Posting to follow and also so I get around to trying this out at some point.

Jono, you really should try it while it's still free!

Last night we had a really successful multiplayer test. We had three people in the game and we were played for about 30 minutes with only minor problems.  We hacked about half a tile (~40 buildings)! I'm planning on another dev stream and multiplayer test tonight, and if I get enough done, I'm going to release multiplayer to the general public.

Looks great!
What tools do you use, language etc.? :)

tried this some time ago and it was pretty fun! looking forward to seeing how it turns out

Unity Free, Unity's version of Javascript (I know I should be using C#!). Also I'm really into Trello (http://trello.com/b/RjPJxfWf/black-ice) for organization. I do a bit of texture work in a really old version of Photoshop. For multiplayer, I'm using Photon (https://www.exitgames.com/en/PUN) so that I can have public games for stuff like trading and PVP.

I haven't made my own models, but luckily the Unity Asset Store and OpenGameArt.org have been good to me. I also have a few really awesome fans that have donated models.

I tried really hard to get multiplayer perfect for release, but unfortunately I just didn't have enough time.  This is one of the very few times that I've failed to release a weekly patch.

That said, we did have a 10 player multiplayer test, and everything went pretty well! If you don't mind a few bugs, you and your friends can get it from this post on the Black Ice subreddit (http://www.reddit.com/r/BlackIce/comments/1ztl2u/well_i_feel_terrible/). Everyone had a lot of fun playing with each other last night :)

Last night, I got multiplayer into a pretty darn stable place. There are still bugs, but it's basically working.  Part of it was optimizing the sent messages down from 10k/s to about 30/s, and part of it was synchronizing health between enemies properly.

It also helps that the SHARK doesn't fire a missile for *each* person in the game. Good lord, was he deadly.

Love this style. I tried to make something like it but lost interest pretty quickly due to swapping to a different idea.

You should totally use an effect like this: http://i.imgur.com/NBOXZal.gif in reverse for when things spawn in. It looks very data-like.

Glad you like it! Yes, that effect looks pretty awesome. Just random noise in the texture, right? That might be beyond my current skillset, but I'll keep it in mind!

Cthulhu help me, I'm planning on launching the Black Ice beta this weekend. That's right, this Saturday, March 15, I'm planning on going live on itch.io and Steam Greenlight.

Changes are coming, so here's the rundown for the beta launch:

• The game will cost $5. This is less than a good cup of coffee!
• Everyone who buys it will get free updates forever
• I will not ever use microtransactions or DRM
• The price of the game will go up over time as I add more features
• Multiplayer!
• Steam Key when Black Ice makes it through Greenlight

I will still be offering a free version of the game, with the following changes:

• Player level will be restricted to level 4
• Multiplayer will not be available on the demo

Does $5 seem like a steal to you, and you want to give me more money? Well, I love you, but I'm not going to just take your money. I'm planning on kickstarter-style rewards. Here are my current ideas:

• For $10, you'll get a copy of the game, plus I'll put your name in it somewhere, like as a random hacker, or a corporation.
• For $15, I'll give you four copies of the game, because I know you have friends you want to play with.
• For $20, you'll get a copy of the game and you can help me create an original unique item, or class of normal items. Want to create <yournamehere>'s B.F. Ion Cannon? Let me know!

I'm terrified about this launch, but also super excited. If you have suggestions or just encouragement, please leave it below, or email me - blackicethegame [at] gmail.

What am I going to use the money on? Two things:

• Paying for the multiplayer server hosting
• Buying Unity Pro, so that I can make the game better

For the $10 and $20 tiers, your name or item might be part of a big list of randomly generated items or names, and therefore not be seen often. The game is procedurally generated, after all. If you make an item, I will provide you with a cheat code to give you the item, which you could keep private if you wanted. Also, please keep in mind it may take me a bit of time to get these implemented (especially for items).

I think this looks amazing! Def want in on this!!

Oh hey I remember playing this on r/gamedev's feedback Friday last year. Glad to see you're still working on it. It was looking good then and is looking even better now

Yes! I've been posting on the /r/GameDev Feedback Friday threads every week for months! It's a great motivator.

It's awesome you're launching, I wish you the best of luck. Unity Pro really adds some nice features. I'd buy Unity Pro myself if I could justify the price! So here's hoping you raise enough to get it ;)


Yeah, it's controlled by a texture. You can use the Alpha channel if the object has no transparent parts. Or you can use a totally separate texture (the idea I prefer) so you can customise what happens. The original I showed you is using a Gaussian noise texture, whilst this one uses a Perlin noise texture: http://i.imgur.com/PBZXlQv.gif The colour can be set to anything you like too.

As you're using Unity, I can send you the shader and control component if you wanna use it or take a look.

Ooh, I really like the perlin noise version. It seems like a more realistic (although maybe less tech-y) disintegrate.  Sure, if you want to send it to me I'd love to take a look. (email in profile)

And if you're interested in any of my code, I'd be happy to share. I stream all of it on Twitch anyway :P

Hi guys! I started my Greenlight Campaign (http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=232152287) and multiplayer beta (http://superdupergc.itch.io/blackice) on Saturday! Things are going pretty well. I was pleasantly surprised by how many people were willing to pay a little extra to help design an item.

So that might be a good thing to think of for your game - people like kickstarter-esque bonus rewards, offer them if you can :D

Also, new logo!
(http://i.imgur.com/3VIfSsdl.png)

Just played the demo and the game is definitely fun. I look forward to seeing an improved UI, some more enemies, 3d pickups that resemble the item, and first person weapon models.  It's really a cool concept that's fun enough to spend 15 or more minutes playing(I have a very short attention span, so this is more of a compliment than it sounds). :toastR:

Tried out the demo, pretty sweet!

Actually, I'd love an opinion on that. Right now, you can fire multiple weapons at the same time. The way the keys work, you don't have to switch between weapons (press 1, select, fire weapon), you just hit the appropriate key for the weapon. 

I honestly don't think the game needs first person weapon models at all. I'm going to try to compensate by doing cool particle effects for each weapon, maybe still do some muzzle flash, but to add them in would actually slow down user interaction and change the feel of the game, which I don't want.

Improved UI is definitely coming! Mostly from a beautification perspective, since I think it has almost every function you could want.  More enemies are also coming.

Yeah, if that's a gameplay design goal, then I'd definitely agree that adding first person weapon models would be a hindrance. Particle and lighting effects could take care of it nicely.

I definitely agree that the UI is pretty functionally sound, so I was really speaking toward it looking placeholder and looking forward to seeing the final design.

Definitely great work so far!

The new logo is awesome. And love that gif where the spiders just swarm over.

So now that Unity has announced the new UI is coming in 4.6, which is due some time this summer... I don't know, I think I'm going to wait until then to redo my UI.

I am going to purchase Unity Pro soon, so hopefully I'll be able to go crazy with cool particle effects to make the weapons feel more physical!

Migrafael - the new logo was made my @metkis (http://twitter.com/metkis); I'm glad you like it!

I had that image of the spiders swarming over the building in my head for months before I was able to do that functionally, and I love it too :D Thank you.

I've got a patch coming for this week, primarily for bug fixes, but I'm also tweaking some balancing and adding a new rainbow projectile type! It's going to be fun.