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[Ooghijmiqtxxa]

People of Earth,

http://volatile.insaneroot.com

About: Volatile is a PRPG (puzzle role playing game) for the iPhone and hopefully a flash version shortly after. The game is an interesting mix of casual and advanced mechanics. In a nutshell, it's like Bejeweled with abilities, RPG elements and some other bits thrown in there.

Mockups:
These are old mockups of how the game looks and works. Right now, the game looks exactly like this, just with some development hacks to make it easier to playtest and tweak.



In-game as of 1/20/10:
Here is what the game looks like at the moment.



Right now I'm testing out the different perks, how much energy it takes to use one and what color they should be. The numbers on top tell me how much energy I have at the moment and how much gets used when I use a perk.

I started a blog awhile back when this was still in it's infancy, but now that development has begun to really heat up, I thought it would be a fine time to share what I have and go through some of the details of getting a game like this done. You can read up in more detail on the development of Volatile on the blog here: http://volatile.insaneroot.com.

Next week I'll have a video post of our weekly play test!  Thanks guys, looking forward to your comments, feedback or questions.

[mokesmoe]

There's a Xbox arcade game that plays just like this. Don't let that discourage you though. It was a great game though, so obviously it's a great idea! Completely different graphics and setting, and an Xbox isn't portable. Good luck with this project.

[Stegersaurus]

There's a Xbox arcade game that plays just like this. Don't let that discourage you though. It was a great game though, so obviously it's a great idea! Completely different graphics and setting, and an Xbox isn't portable. Good luck with this project.

Puzzle Quest is also available on DS and iPhone, and if the dev hasn't checked them out yet, it can be good to learn from a success in the genre.

One thing I'd like to note for you, is match-3 style games often like to use different shapes for different colored blocks or at least different patterns drawn onto the blocks. This helps players identify visual patterns more easily at a glance, and is a big help for colorblind players.

[Ooghijmiqtxxa]

Stegersaurus said: "Puzzle Quest is also available on DS and iPhone, and if the dev hasn't checked them out yet, it can be good to learn from a success in the genre."

Puzzle Quest is a huge inspiration for this game. There were a lot of great things learned from PQ. I hope to improve upon that design and add my own little flavor to make it a bit more fun for multiplayer.

Stegersaurus said: "One thing I'd like to note for you, is match-3 style games often like to use different shapes for different colored blocks or at least different patterns drawn onto the blocks."

You are correct. Right now in our blind play testing, it hasn't been much of a problem at all. I am thinking of making each color have it's own unique looking tile, but still be a complete square. Still a lot more playtesting to get it right.

Thanks for the comments guys.

[mokesmoe]

Just changing those gold circles in the middle to other shapes like triangles and squares would be enough.

[Ooghijmiqtxxa]

mokesmoe‽ said: Just changing those gold circles in the middle to other shapes like triangles and squares would be enough.

That's a great idea! Thanks, I'll try that.

[Ooghijmiqtxxa]

Hey all,

Made some progress on the art side. Got a few icons done for the perks. Also got a new portrait done for one of the many bad guys in Volatile.



Lutars



1) Crossed Wires: Any ability used against player will be bounced back to sender.
2)Hide:Next damage received will be reduced by half.
3)Shield: Any Perk that would effect you will be blocked for 3 turns.
4)Fissian Explosion: Solves 1 volatile block and any blocks touching it.


On the code side, we just jumped a huge hurdle in the multiplayer. Had a bug where the server would receive different blocks then then the client, making it impossible for the client to see the correct playing field. Now that it's fixed, we've been able to do more playtesting without getting bugged all to hell. At the moment, we are working on the screens for mission selection and some misc. bug fixes with the perks.

Hopefully next week I can get a video of us playing our weekly game and can describe in greater detail what we are working on and how the game is played.

[Ooghijmiqtxxa]

Serious lack of updates on this, but we've been getting a lot done recently and I've finally found some time to post about it.

For awhile we were using a flash version of the game to do rapid prototyping and quick playtesting. It was a great way of nailing down the different aspects of the game that needed to be tweaked like the damage a perk does or it's energy cost and type. When we had to change something, it was incredibly easy. I just tweaked a number in an XML file, loaded the game up in Flash and was able to see the changes instantly. No waiting for new builds or time sinks at all.

Sample of some of the XML code for the perks.

Prototyping in flash was a great idea and if you can, I highly recommend doing so for your project in anyway possible. We were able to try things that I thought worked great on paper, but ended up sucking giant donkeys in practice saving us a huge amount of time and resources.

As of now, we have the game running on the iPhone now and all of the gameplay information from the Flash version carried over perfectly. which makes me a happy boy.  

Volatile running on the iPhone.

Now that the development of Volatile is starting to ramp up, so are the development blog post. I just finished a post up on the blog about some of the tools we use to work on Volatile. If you're interested, check out http://volatile.insaneroot.com for more information on that. Until next week!  

[Ooghijmiqtxxa]

Last week was a little hectic thanks to GDC but since I live in SF, I was still able to get some work done on Volatile.

On the art side, most of the important enemy portraits have been finished. One of the last important ones that we completed was this ugly guy:

Likes the taste of bones.

Still quite a few more art assets to be done, but we can start to see the light at the end of the tunnel now.

On the design side we got the mission tool up and running, which was a huge hurdle. Before we were just testing the game against each other but now we can start working on the single-player missions and getting the AI just right.

We've also just posted an update on the blog about some of the work it takes to get a portrait like the one above. If you're interested in checking that out, you can find it here: http://volatile.insaneroot.com. Until next time! 

[moi]

Looking good mang

[Ooghijmiqtxxa]

It’s been awhile since my last post here on the Dev Log. The Smart Guy (the guy who writes the fancy code) had baby twins so he was MIA for awhile. Which was a blessing in disguise to be honest because I needed to catch up on the art and design side. But things are back on track and we’re starting to pick up where we left off.

This past weekend we recorded some lines for Quinn, one of the more important characters in the game. Quinn is a character that runs “Quinns Quintessential”, a special store in the galaxy for all your gadgets and gizmos. Players spend scrap metal they’ve gathered in game to purchase items which change their stats and attributes.

Here is our actress. She is a local drama student in the area that we found to do the voice for Quinn.

This is the basic equipment: Samson CO1U USB Condenser Microphone, $10 popscreen, all hooked up to an iMac in the back.

It was a pretty successful recording. The script was pretty short so we got all the recordings done in about an hour and a half. We just published a post on the Volatile development blog that goes into more depth on the whole thing. http://volatile.insaneroot.com/.

Tomorrow is a big day for us as we’re showing the game off at our local game developers meeting (San Francisco Postmortem) for the first time. It’s going to be good to get some feedback from other game developers. I’ll be sure to come back next Monday with info on how that went. 

[Ooghijmiqtxxa]

Last week was pretty nuts. I was lucky enough to show Volatile to some other game developers at the San Francisco Postmortem last week. It was really exciting to get the game into other peoples hands, especially other local game developers.

I got a ton of notes and feedback from everyone. Here is a picture of John Grammam from Wolfire gettin’ his Volatile on.

Overall, I think the whole thing went very well for the first Volatile public showing. Now if only I can finish the damn thing. As always, there is a more in depth look on the Volatile website at http://volatile.insaneroot.com.

One of the things that I got the most comments about was the win/lose screen, so I'm going to be changing that and recording the progress. Should be a fun process. 

[Ooghijmiqtxxa]

This past week was spent on the list of critiques we got from the San Francisco Postmortem. One of the more major things I did was change the win/lose screens. Previously, when the game ended, a little tiny window would instantly pop up on the screen letting players know if they won or lost. It was very boring and a lot of people told me that it was a let down since everything else seemed so polished.

I came up with the idea of having a giant hatch that would come from the top and bottom of the screen and meet in the middle. The hatch would then open and the player gets a full screen of information on their performance from the battle.

Here is a shot of the progress of the hatch, from render to completed asset.

It feels a lot better than before and gives us a lot more space to work with. As always, there is a more in-depth look at the progress on the Volatile dev blog site here: http://volatile.insaneroot.com.