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[Bishop]

ScreenshotSaturday cross post.

Trying to push my game back to textless. Previously the broken TV (not in this shot) would tell you what button to press to pick up items. Now the main character thinks about picking up stuff and hopefully players will just mash buttons till they find the right button.

[siskavard]

The more I see of this game the more I want to buy it with MONEY

[Bishop]

I've spent far too much time tinkering with this little bit but I think I'm finally happy with it.

After drawing a little antena you pick up and use to play the animation, cassette tapes or little lightning bolts off other TV's I think I'm going to settle with animation plays when you get into range. I added a little tuning minigame to it so the closure you get to the "sweet spot" the clearer the image.

I wanted the user to be able to replay animations if they needed to and since it was teach button presses and game mechanics I needed it to be impossible to screw up.

[Bishop]

I've been pretty quiet lately so here's to fixing that.

So the overall game size has is still expanding and I've been working on trying to fill in the missing or ropey levels between all my well tested polished puzzles. (The blinking level is the channel changing test level)



Other than that I've been playing around with co-op mechanics. I'm trying to work in a respawn mechanic so that killing your co-op buddy isn't as big a set back. Currently the idea is there will be piles of TV's around the place and you can respawn your friend by powering on one of the TV's in the pile.



You can also pick up team mates and throw them now which I've not started exploring as a puzzle mechanic but it looks really promising.

Trying to get a lot of the prototype co-op stuff finalized for showing at Rezzed which I only found out today I'm going to be exhibiting at! See you there if you're going.

[Bishop]

Current work in progress on the co-op respawn mechanic and animation.



Edit, this must have not been step to loop infinitely

[devi ever]

This is the first platformer I've been genuinely down to my very core excited about since discovering TIG last week... holy fuck dude.  Stylistically everything about this is amazingly inventive and aesthetically PERFECT.

[devi ever]

Played the steam demo.

Really enjoyed it, but was extremely sad at how basic the first demo was.

Looking forward to experiencing more variations on the concept you have going.  Definitely a great start.

[Bishop]

Thanks Devi! I'll put out a much larger demo nearer release. I only really pushed that one out as it was part of the prize and requirement to Intel's Level competition last year.

In other news today I added suicide. Only really intended for co-op in rare occasions that you get yourself stuck or if you want to restart after your friend died rather than revive them later. Or I guess you could suicide and let your friend get you past a tricky bit of platforming, pretty emergent mechanic now that I think about it.

[Bishop]

Been pretty quite lately, I hit a real wall in production, low motivation, etc.

Anyway that's all resolved now and I'm currently pushing out just under two levels a week, should finish all levels first draft in October at this rate :D



Been working on one of the last levels of the game where you find the TV remote. I think it's a bit too 'Fez', still playing around with it at the moment.

[qwiboo]

Glad to hear you're back on this. Can't wait to see more, good luck!

[Bishop]

Hey everyone. I've been spending a while coding in the intro to Trash TV and I've been holding off showing anyone until it looked better. But really I think I should do a sanity check first as it's taking up quite abit of time.

Copied from video description

"So the user moves (w,a,s,d or joystick) to tune in the reception and change channel, once a perfect tuning is found tv zooms in and player takes control of the little floating squares, the idea is that the spirits of all the TV's (each a colour of the test card screen) group together enough strength to posses and animate a television and that's where the real fun begins."





What do you think? It's pretty ropey at the moment but is the core idea sound? Do you think I should continue or go back to the drawing board?

[Christian]

Hey everyone. I've been spending a while coding in the intro to Trash TV and I've been holding off showing anyone until it looked better. But really I think I should do a sanity check first as it's taking up quite abit of time.

Copied from video description

"So the user moves (w,a,s,d or joystick) to tune in the reception and change channel, once a perfect tuning is found tv zooms in and player takes control of the little floating squares, the idea is that the spirits of all the TV's (each a colour of the test card screen) group together enough strength to posses and animate a television and that's where the real fun begins."





What do you think? It's pretty ropey at the moment but is the core idea sound? Do you think I should continue or go back to the drawing board?

Awesome! You're still working on this! I found the game on Greenlight a few weeks ago and the demo was really cool and the trailer looked great. I was worried when I saw that there hadn't been any new info.

As for the intro, it definitely sounds interesting and seems to fit with the surreal nature (TV's committing suicide?). What were you considering to do instead?

[Bishop]

Awesome! You're still working on this! I found the game on Greenlight a few weeks ago and the demo was really cool and the trailer looked great. I was worried when I saw that there hadn't been any new info.

As for the intro, it definitely sounds interesting and seems to fit with the surreal nature (TV's committing suicide?). What were you considering to do instead?

I have no other ideas for starting the game to be honest. Perhaps paying an animator to create an intro cinematic rather than a coded and interactive one.

[Christian]

Awesome! You're still working on this! I found the game on Greenlight a few weeks ago and the demo was really cool and the trailer looked great. I was worried when I saw that there hadn't been any new info.

As for the intro, it definitely sounds interesting and seems to fit with the surreal nature (TV's committing suicide?). What were you considering to do instead?

I have no other ideas for starting the game to be honest. Perhaps paying an animator to create an intro cinematic rather than a coded and interactive one.

Personally I feel that a coded and interactive intro would fit better in with the aesthetics and just jives with the theme that it's a puzzle platformer game. It's different and gets the player involved and thinking right from the get go.

[Bishop]

Been rushing to try and get the game ready for the IGF. For ages I've been dabbling in all areas but today I finally hooked loads of stuff and fixed a ton of bugs. Got my brother to sit down and have a play, took him 1 hour 10 to complete everything I'd made so far. I feel crossing that one hour mark was a real mile stone I just wanted to share with everyone. Didn't crash either! Although there were two small bugs. Co-op is still miles off, but single player feels really close to being something. Think I'll release it single player and then co-op after (for free). I think without playing it before a few hints, Trash TV will be roughly 1.5 - 2 hours long. I feel happy with that amount of gameplay, what do you think?

[siskavard]

Good luck at the IGF!! 

[Little Nando]

IGF? Very cool!! Lots of luck mate! 

[Bishop]

Trash TV has been Greenlit!

For anyone wondering about the details, I got onto Greenlight system a day or two after it started. I managed to dodge the $100 fee and the organic traffic on Greenlight at the beginning saw me get a few thousand votes on the first few days. By day 70 traffic died off and I was on 5k yes votes. Every day I get around 0 - 10 votes which meant by day 365 of Greenlight I was on 7k.

I was lucky enough to be featured in Jesse Cox's Greenlight show which got around 100k views. Of that only around 1% came and voted on the greenlight page. Of those votes, 65% were furious that I dared to make a 2D game and voted it down, but I still had a little jump of about 500 yes votes. Eventually I climbed to 8k votes by day 442 and that's when I was greenlit. I don't think I ever tipped into the top 100 items, I think I sat around position 300 although this is a pretty big guess.

442 days on Greenlight and I still never really formed an opinion about it. All I can really think is, fuck, have I really been working on this game for so long? Single player is nearly finished, I'll be pushing out a larger demo real soon.

Good luck to everyone else awaiting Greenlight, I'll shoot you a vote if you need one.

[Franklin's Ghost]

Congratulations and well deserved. Also thanks for the info on your process and submission for greenlight, interesting to read your thoughts on it all. 

[Christian]

Congrats on getting Greenlit!

Man, I'd love to ask all those people who voted 'No' why they voted that way. I only discovered your game last month and I loved the demo. The whole guns-for-puzzles mechanics and the art style was very cool. Can't wait to see this on Steam

What did you decide to do with the intro?