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TIGSource ForumsCommunityDevLogsArmillo - 3D Platformer (Wii U eShop, PC & Mac)
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gimymblert
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« Reply #40 on: November 18, 2012, 08:06:00 PM »

Glad it's helping you, I often fear that my "observation" came out too harsh. Just by reading the devlog it look likes the game lacks focus, so i don't really the reality of exactly what you are doing.

However I wonder what is the function of collecting the critter too. Is it a tier side challenge like in mario (timed red coins, great coins puzzle, generic coins)?

By puzzle I don't mean the "push random blocks kind", a puzzle is any challenge that ask an insight or some for of pattern recognition, the opposite is a gameplay like "sonic unleash" (akin to guitar hero) who only work by "prompt" (push the correct button to success). For example understanding how to take shortcut by keeping a boost is a puzzle, you must understand that a particular setup require a particular power and that you must prepare for it. Basically it should not break the flow of the game. Reading your devlog I'm not sure, confused, about what is the core flow of the game and how the "break" fit in.

Great level design to look out aside from mario is sonic classic (2D megadrive series) especially sonic 3 and how it balance simplicity vs intricacy to hold interest (especially in the first level). Sonic 3 have complex layout but very simple path with a lot of fake visual way. It's something that have been translated into modern game like uncharted where you have an intended visual path and then something happen (pipe break, wall explode, floor collapse) and the path suddenly change.

It is a trick to hold player interest but the main difference is that in sonic 3 if you react (or know already the trick) it actually open new path (and add the puzzle element inside navigation)! The intricacy of the level is made so it's hard to keep a global map of the level BUT each part is distinct enough that you can still navigate by simply by recognizing the right spot. This increase replayability as the level is always more complex that the player can memorize (keep stimulation at a high level) without hindering the ease of navigation.

Another good lesson is that they have transition between break of gameplay to keep a sense of flow, for example almost any speed part will have a ramp or a bumper to send the player flying, temporizing arrival in more dangerous or just slower part, of course the player can still avoid this and plan another routes and approach once he know the lay out, plus the speed part has generally affordance to let the player choose another path/alt/shortcut once he realize they are there. Later sonic past classic had lost all those great bits.

A great fangame that capture all these lesson is sonic fusion:



look how enemy and puzzle placement are manage with speed section, how they temporize and interact with each other. Look how the game manage tension by giving a pause before something dangerous happen or let the player nearly escape danger through clear placement of danger along path. It's much less intricate and complex than a sonic 3 layout but all the lesson are here. Pay attention also how sound and visual subtly forewarn the player.



However given what you say, I think the focus is to provide a kind of stop and go type of gameplay, area of challenge linked by speed path.

Is it purely linear? If not how non linearity is handled? Circular optional path (diverge for optional challenge/reward and merged back)? Alt path (pipe like in mario) leading to the same goal? lock and key (find key in alt area to unlock gate)? Optional area (diverge for reward and challenge and and backtrack)? Collect to progress (get all critters then rush to exit)?

Just a bit more of sonic fusion just because Who, Me?



I'm NOT using sonic because your game look like sonic, but level design is universal. It only stress my point. Look how the game prime an intended path and yet have many alt, and sometimes the intended path is only available is you keep the flow, losing the flow send you in a alt but does not penalize the player yet give him an idea that there more to see.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGFvYtRswJI&feature=autoplay&list=UULPmvsu5Z4-2CUlM-FaNZFg&playnext=7
Look how each level have its own flow and  puzzle motif (that are cleverly evolve along the level) and how puzzle/challenge feed back into the flow. It also have a lot of small "feel good" clear and timed opportunities that let you dispatch things efficiently in the flow, before that windows closed and you have to do it less efficiently and with a little break of flows. There is no combo system, yet you feel like you can combo naturally the level.

Feel free to ignore anything irrelevant I say Tongue
« Last Edit: November 18, 2012, 08:35:33 PM by Gimmy TILBERT » Logged

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« Reply #41 on: November 18, 2012, 10:51:00 PM »

Glad it's helping you, I often fear that my "observation" came out too harsh. Just by reading the devlog it look likes the game lacks focus, so i don't really the reality of exactly what you are doing.

Not harsh at all.  I fact, this is the type of feedback that I love to get.

This game is definitely lacking in focus.  It was initially created by three guys with very different gaming philosophies, and there wasn't really any real game designer leading the game.  So it ended up being a mis-match of a bunch of features.  I started this dev log so that I can share about our adventures in trying to fix all of this as well as getting some community input.  I might not get it all fixed in the end, but I know that I'll have fun doing it.

However I wonder what is the function of collecting the critter too. Is it a tier side challenge like in mario (timed red coins, great coins puzzle, generic coins)?

Ahh.  I guess I haven't talked about the roles of the critters.  They have multiple levels of help.  In-game, they are the ones who opens up the doors.  Later on in the game, they also create platforms for Armillo to jump on top of (game specific triggers), and also act as ammo for the gun that Armillo can eventually equip himself with.  I'm also working out how they can help during boss fights as well.

Then at the end of each level, there's a bonus stage.  The more critters you save, the more bonus time you will get - I have yet to think of the reasoning, but it could just as well be that the more critters you save, the more energy they'll give you to survive there.

Then there's the boss stage that is surrounded by a force field.  In the level select, there will be a prompt saying "Save x # of critters to enter the boss lair".  Once you save that many critters, they will encircle the force field, spin around it, and then destroy it.

By puzzle I don't mean the "push random blocks kind", a puzzle is any challenge that ask an insight or some for of pattern recognition, the opposite is a gameplay like "sonic unleash" (akin to guitar hero) who only work by "prompt" (push the correct button to success). For example understanding how to take shortcut by keeping a boost is a puzzle, you must understand that a particular setup require a particular power and that you must prepare for it. Basically it should not break the flow of the game. Reading your devlog I'm not sure, confused, about what is the core flow of the game and how the "break" fit in.

Good insight there.  I don't think I've really talked much about the flow of the game on this dev log.  I was thinking of doing that once I started designing new levels.  At this point, the best way I can think of is to either play the demo or to watch a playthrough.  Someone did a playthrough of the first level of the game, but it's basically our "not happy with this" demo.  But it's going to get a lot better:





Great level design to look out aside from mario is sonic classic (2D megadrive series) especially sonic 3 and how it balance simplicity vs intricacy to hold interest (especially in the first level). Sonic 3 have complex layout but very simple path with a lot of fake visual way. It's something that have been translated into modern game like uncharted where you have an intended visual path and then something happen (pipe break, wall explode, floor collapse) and the path suddenly change.

It is a trick to hold player interest but the main difference is that in sonic 3 if you react (or know already the trick) it actually open new path (and add the puzzle element inside navigation)! The intricacy of the level is made so it's hard to keep a global map of the level BUT each part is distinct enough that you can still navigate by simply by recognizing the right spot. This increase replayability as the level is always more complex that the player can memorize (keep stimulation at a high level) without hindering the ease of navigation.

Another good lesson is that they have transition between break of gameplay to keep a sense of flow, for example almost any speed part will have a ramp or a bumper to send the player flying, temporizing arrival in more dangerous or just slower part, of course the player can still avoid this and plan another routes and approach once he know the lay out, plus the speed part has generally affordance to let the player choose another path/alt/shortcut once he realize they are there. Later sonic past classic had lost all those great bits.

A great fangame that capture all these lesson is sonic fusion:



look how enemy and puzzle placement are manage with speed section, how they temporize and interact with each other. Look how the game manage tension by giving a pause before something dangerous happen or let the player nearly escape danger through clear placement of danger along path. It's much less intricate and complex than a sonic 3 layout but all the lesson are here. Pay attention also how sound and visual subtly forewarn the player.

Awesome!  Thanks for that information.  Something for me to keep in mind.


However given what you say, I think the focus is to provide a kind of stop and go type of gameplay, area of challenge linked by speed path.

Is it purely linear? If not how non linearity is handled? Circular optional path (diverge for optional challenge/reward and merged back)? Alt path (pipe like in mario) leading to the same goal? lock and key (find key in alt area to unlock gate)? Optional area (diverge for reward and challenge and and backtrack)? Collect to progress (get all critters then rush to exit)?

The game starts off pretty linear, then opens up in the later levels.  Even if you look at the first level, there's a lot of additional areas that you'll see that you can't seem to access if you play normally.  There's a bunch of areas in the game where you back-track.  In order to keep those back-track areas interesting, in some levels I make the player back-track through the parallel world so there's different enemies and obstacles.  There's a bunch of lock and key levels including one level where the exit point is right beside the starting point, but locked.  There's also a couple of levels in there right now that acts a bit more like a metroid style game where you have to maneuver around to find where to go next.  But I try to limit the openness a bit as having those types of levels too open end up feeling very out of place in a game that's meant to be fast paced.

Just a bit more of sonic fusion just because Who, Me?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ak07k6sZvI&feature=autoplay&list=UULPmvsu5Z4-2CUlM-FaNZFg&playnext=2
I'm NOT using sonic because your game look like sonic, but level design is universal. It only stress my point. Look how the game prime an intended path and yet have many alt, and sometimes the intended path is only available is you keep the flow, losing the flow send you in a alt but does not penalize the player yet give him an idea that there more to see.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hGFvYtRswJI&feature=autoplay&list=UULPmvsu5Z4-2CUlM-FaNZFg&playnext=7
Look how each level have its own flow and  puzzle motif (that are cleverly evolve along the level) and how puzzle/challenge feed back into the flow. It also have a lot of small "feel good" clear and timed opportunities that let you dispatch things efficiently in the flow, before that windows closed and you have to do it less efficiently and with a little break of flows. There is no combo system, yet you feel like you can combo naturally the level.

Feel free to ignore anything irrelevant I say Tongue

Totally agree with you there.  Flow is really important.  Those Sonic videos are pretty cool.  All those elements, even though they come at you at a pretty fast rate, come together pretty nicely.  I also noticed that it seems to take advantage that quite often when you run into a wall, your first instinct is often to jump, but the variation of the result is what makes it interesting.

On a side note, sometimes I would design a level, and it feels right - but just for me.  When other people play, I see them get frustrated on certain areas, so I find getting other people to play the game to be a really useful learning tool.

Thanks so much for all your feedback!
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« Reply #42 on: November 19, 2012, 01:42:19 AM »

In order to anticipate people reaction you can pretty much anticipate their reaction based on some concepts, it does not replace playtesting but you frame faster what's happening, it's late over here so I will present you with 3 of them. Consider than when you design a level, there is no surprise for you, you also know all the game concept and symbol to decode, new player don't have this luxuries. However each beat of challenge came in 3 categories of difficulty (there is other "slices" of categories but I won't develop them now):

1- effort (how much input)
Imagine there is a straight line, you just need to move forward, now imagine the path is still linear but have turn, it's not more difficult but you have to pay attention and steer the character in the correct direction. Every good game first level are generally more complicate than difficult, basically they ask for increasing number of input without challenging the player at all, this is to teach him basic input. It is also a kind of stimulation and use to give rhythm to a level, it's less boring to take twist and turn than just following a straight path, that's the lowest form of engagement. At high level it is twitch skills, techniques in street fighter are gate by complication (QCB is complicate, could be replace by something simpler like just a button pressed). Game like guitar heroes are entirely based on complication.

2- recognition (matching pattern)
When you need to match things together you are using recognition, you are simply using your memory. Puzzle game are matching game generally, once solve you only need the memory to pass them. In RPG learning elemental weakness is just a matter of applying the right spell, once learn it is automatic, no thought required. This is complexity, the more you have it, the more the player have to keep track of element, the easier for him to make a mistake because he has forgotten something, it's information overloading. Works great with randomness (game like bejeweld or tetris) because once something is known it devolve into pure effort.

3- anticipation (mind game)
Anticipation is where a game acquire most of his depth, that's where planning and strategy come into place. Anticipation is trying to find the next pattern and to prepare for the consequence. Depth increase with the importance of how many step ahead you need to anticipate, especially when there is many option (breadth). If you have only one option and one only step of consequence (short terms) it is basically just recognition. Management generally require anticipation, you have to choose among many options which one is best, consider long term consequence (cost and reward) and prepare a strategy in case thing goes wrong (so called plan B). Anticipation is the risk reward assessment of a situation.

How does that relate to new player? Well of course the way you present challenge should be in this order of increasing intricacies, notice those are not mutually exclusive and generally feed into each other. The fact is if you plan correctly your level you should be able to anticipate the player reaction, does he have learn and master a concept at is effort level? does he have met the situation before so he can recognize it, is there anticipation in the challenge? You must check even the simplest element, navigation being the first (yes check that you learn the player what is a wall and floor, how to move how to orient itself, how to read the environment to know where to go, is there guide or hint that show the path? can be landmark object, collectible as bread crumbing, funneling, direction of wind, new enemy that spawn, etc...).

Now you should chart the level on paper (or excel) and check if those question are met (that's the core of level design, not jumping in the editor making cool level), then test how you solve them. Level design is building a knowledge course, it is like a personality quizz (mechanics that listen to the player to adapt the game, can be as simple as a skill tree or a class system), a test (to see if he know is shit), a support group (encourage him to continue) and of course a playground (game should fun :p ), most designer only consider the playground.

NOW what you said about critters raise a flag. Apparently they are used as keys (platform if they open new path are keys), as a currency (score at the end that buy more times) and ammo (consumable). The problem is that key don't mix well with ammo, key are a delicate in game economy, there is two kind of key, consumable and permanent.

The logic says that consumable keys should be in the same number or more than currently accessible locks, if key are consume as ammo this number decrease until there is more locks than keys. If those locks are critical (prevent reaching the exit) then you should not do that. That mean that all locks operable by critters should be optional. If they are permanent keys, the same applies. What left is that they are really "buff", they increase the firing rate, cooldown or whatever variable there is. Anything that act as a resource management system should be handle with great care. What I see is that may cumulate the function of star and cap switch in mario 64, the collecting number is a key in the global progression, locally in the level they are also permanent key (not consumable) and also buff. In level they can be consumable key if and only if they still count at the completion of the level as been collected.
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« Reply #43 on: November 19, 2012, 10:46:35 PM »

In order to anticipate people reaction you can pretty much anticipate their reaction based on some concepts, it does not replace playtesting but you frame faster what's happening, it's late over here so I will present you with 3 of them. Consider than when you design a level, there is no surprise for you, you also know all the game concept and symbol to decode, new player don't have this luxuries. However each beat of challenge came in 3 categories of difficulty (there is other "slices" of categories but I won't develop them now):

1- effort (how much input)
Imagine there is a straight line, you just need to move forward, now imagine the path is still linear but have turn, it's not more difficult but you have to pay attention and steer the character in the correct direction. Every good game first level are generally more complicate than difficult, basically they ask for increasing number of input without challenging the player at all, this is to teach him basic input. It is also a kind of stimulation and use to give rhythm to a level, it's less boring to take twist and turn than just following a straight path, that's the lowest form of engagement. At high level it is twitch skills, techniques in street fighter are gate by complication (QCB is complicate, could be replace by something simpler like just a button pressed). Game like guitar heroes are entirely based on complication.

2- recognition (matching pattern)
When you need to match things together you are using recognition, you are simply using your memory. Puzzle game are matching game generally, once solve you only need the memory to pass them. In RPG learning elemental weakness is just a matter of applying the right spell, once learn it is automatic, no thought required. This is complexity, the more you have it, the more the player have to keep track of element, the easier for him to make a mistake because he has forgotten something, it's information overloading. Works great with randomness (game like bejeweld or tetris) because once something is known it devolve into pure effort.

3- anticipation (mind game)
Anticipation is where a game acquire most of his depth, that's where planning and strategy come into place. Anticipation is trying to find the next pattern and to prepare for the consequence. Depth increase with the importance of how many step ahead you need to anticipate, especially when there is many option (breadth). If you have only one option and one only step of consequence (short terms) it is basically just recognition. Management generally require anticipation, you have to choose among many options which one is best, consider long term consequence (cost and reward) and prepare a strategy in case thing goes wrong (so called plan B). Anticipation is the risk reward assessment of a situation.

Good advice there!  Out of the three points, I would say that I've put the most thought into recognition.  It's sort of important for this type of game which often switches mechanics as to keep the flow moving and avoid situations where the player just doesn't know what to do next.

For instance, one of the levels I have exploding barrels.  Before the player can contact any of them, I get an enemy to fire and detonate one to denote the danger.

In another area of the game, I have an enemy stomper that attempts to stomp you by flying around and stomping the ground to attempt to squish you.  Now this stomper can also smash blocks as well, so to make that clear, I made a narrow passageway surrounded by barrels so as the stomper that tries stomping you, it destroys the barrels around you giving you that hint.  To make it more obvious, I get the player to 'snake around' the barrels so that the result is more clear.  That section then follows by a blockade of barrels where you need to use the stomper to go through.

There's a lot of other examples, but those are a couple that stand out.  But those are primarily for learning new mechanics.  I also know that repetition is the key.  Teach a new mechanic, repeat, repeat, then repeat again in order to get it to stick to memory.  If I introduce a new mechanic, then don't re-introduce it until much later in the game, assume another sort of tutorial to re-teach the mechanic, but doesn't have to be as elaborate.

There are some good anticipation moments in the game.  Where you see a speed-up plate, you know that it follows with a fast and narrow path.  You can also see enemy spawn points coming up signaling that there are enemies there.  Camera often auto-pans towards key visual areas.  Also, if you see some markings on the floor and a portal - that's going to be a parallel universe puzzle.

Effort probably needs some work as level 1 is a bit all over the place.  Plus there's a lot of dull moments in the game that could be addressed through increased effort.  There are some areas that work however such as the beginning of the level teaches maneuverability by showcasing a simple down-right-up-left-down-right style maze.  And boost is taught by narrow passage way followed by a block that can only destroyed by a boost.

I'll keep those three points in mind when designing levels.  Quite helpful that you've summarized them.  Many thanks!

How does that relate to new player? Well of course the way you present challenge should be in this order of increasing intricacies, notice those are not mutually exclusive and generally feed into each other. The fact is if you plan correctly your level you should be able to anticipate the player reaction, does he have learn and master a concept at is effort level? does he have met the situation before so he can recognize it, is there anticipation in the challenge? You must check even the simplest element, navigation being the first (yes check that you learn the player what is a wall and floor, how to move how to orient itself, how to read the environment to know where to go, is there guide or hint that show the path? can be landmark object, collectible as bread crumbing, funneling, direction of wind, new enemy that spawn, etc...).

Now you should chart the level on paper (or excel) and check if those question are met (that's the core of level design, not jumping in the editor making cool level), then test how you solve them. Level design is building a knowledge course, it is like a personality quizz (mechanics that listen to the player to adapt the game, can be as simple as a skill tree or a class system), a test (to see if he know is shit), a support group (encourage him to continue) and of course a playground (game should fun :p ), most designer only consider the playground.

Yup.  Agreed!  It's interesting that you mention this as when initially designing the levels in Armillo, I was definiately that designer that only considers the playground.  I still somewhat am, but I'm constantly learning.  Just working on this game has taught me a lot of lessons.

NOW what you said about critters raise a flag. Apparently they are used as keys (platform if they open new path are keys), as a currency (score at the end that buy more times) and ammo (consumable). The problem is that key don't mix well with ammo, key are a delicate in game economy, there is two kind of key, consumable and permanent.

The logic says that consumable keys should be in the same number or more than currently accessible locks, if key are consume as ammo this number decrease until there is more locks than keys. If those locks are critical (prevent reaching the exit) then you should not do that. That mean that all locks operable by critters should be optional. If they are permanent keys, the same applies. What left is that they are really "buff", they increase the firing rate, cooldown or whatever variable there is. Anything that act as a resource management system should be handle with great care. What I see is that may cumulate the function of star and cap switch in mario 64, the collecting number is a key in the global progression, locally in the level they are also permanent key (not consumable) and also buff. In level they can be consumable key if and only if they still count at the completion of the level as been collected.

Ahh.  I guess I should explain the collectables in more detail.

So there are two main collectables in the game: Critters and Orbs

Critters are not consumable.  Even though they are used as ammo, opening doors, etc. they don't reduce in number.  So as soon as you fire one with your gun, they return back to you once they settle.  However, the number of critters affect the rate of fire - the more critters you get the faster you fire out of the gun up to a certain number, and some doors require a number of critters in order to open.

Orbs are consumable.  You collect them in the level, then use them in the in-game store to get new power-ups for Armillo.

There are also color-coded lock and keys in the game.  But that's a level specific collectable.
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« Reply #44 on: November 24, 2012, 12:49:52 AM »

Just had an awesome time-off and a nice little get-away with family.  I'm still recovering from my cold.  I don't think colds are supposed to last this long  Lips Sealed

I've been working on changing the bonus stage themes.  Some cool stuff coming in especially an awesome new music track from our audio guy!

Also working on drawing a much better in-game character dialog.
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« Reply #45 on: November 24, 2012, 03:01:16 AM »

great!
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« Reply #46 on: November 24, 2012, 11:55:22 PM »

A 3D artist helped create a boss model that's going to be in this game.  Here's a partial result so far of the head:


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« Reply #47 on: November 30, 2012, 12:34:21 AM »

A bunch of changes have went into the game since the last post.

Firstly, the dialog system was re-written.  I needed something a bit more dynamic, where I can insert better scripted dynamic sequences.

I'm also working on a bunch of changes for the 1st level.

Firstly, on game-play - I needed the level to be more focused.  As this is the first time the player is being introduced to the game, I have to make sure that the player is mainly tackling just one task at a time.  Things such as if you're breaking a critter cage, there won't be any orbs for you to collect around it.  So I've been re-working the level design around that criteria.

Another thing that I wanted to do was to create some sort of negative emotional attachment towards the enemies straight from the first level.  This is where the re-written dialog system comes in.  Now the boss is going to show up a few times in the level, and converse with you.  First time, he's emphasized on capturing your friends.  Second time, he's pissed and tries to hurt you.  And third, he wants to kill you!  Evil
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« Reply #48 on: November 30, 2012, 01:38:15 AM »

 Hand Money Left Smiley Hand Money Right
Looking forward to it.

From what I've seen, the levels seem to be linear. Will there be any open field levels, or will you make the player travel between corridors and small areas?

I would keep the combo system, with smaller numbers (like Mario and the red coins), so players could take a breathe from the "comboing" and proceed playing at their pace.
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« Reply #49 on: November 30, 2012, 09:29:37 PM »

Hand Money Left Smiley Hand Money Right
Looking forward to it.

From what I've seen, the levels seem to be linear. Will there be any open field levels, or will you make the player travel between corridors and small areas?

Yup.  There will be a good mix of levels with open fields and metroid style levels with some required back tracking/searching.  Initial levels will be a bit more closed to help with familiarization, then start to open up as you progress.

I would keep the combo system, with smaller numbers (like Mario and the red coins), so players could take a breathe from the "comboing" and proceed playing at their pace.

Cool!  I like that idea.  Something about playing Mario and collecting those red coins are satisfying, even though it gives me a 1-up of which I have like over 200 of already Smiley

Thanks!
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« Reply #50 on: December 01, 2012, 11:40:44 PM »

Starting to work on a new level now!  This is going to be the first boss level in the game. 

Scenery-wise, I'm thinking of a planet composed of four seasons.  One part of the world will be spring, then summer, fall, and then winter.  The level will progress in that order.  No particular reason why I chose that other than it'll probably look cool when going through the multiple boss sequences and progressing from season to season.

Here's a really rough drawing of the initial map layout I'm thinking:



It's got 5 sections of interacting with the boss.  3 of those are arenas where you'll be in an active battle with the boss.
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« Reply #51 on: December 03, 2012, 12:03:42 AM »

Here's a shot of our custom in-game editor that we use to create our levels.  It helps create splines and place objects on a spherical world.



So that's basically the start area of the new boss world.  The light blue lines represents moving blocks that travel along the green splines.  The red area represents lava.  Despite the four seasons setting, I'll have to try to make this world look evil.  Can't have flowers and butterflies in the boss world.

In other news, I've posted up a blog on IndieDB on my decision to 'mute' Armillo.  So he's no longer going to speak up in dialogs:

http://www.indiedb.com/games/armillo-the-parallel-universe-mystery/news/dev-blog-12-shut-up-armillo

From here onwards, I'll just paste the links to the articles I write on IndieDB.  That way, I don't clutter up this Dev Log.

And I've also recently ordered a new laptop for development.  Can't wait!  Been working mostly on a smallish PC partition on my Mac Book Air, so I no longer need to worry about trying to conserve hard disk space on anything I do.  I've been surviving with less than a gig free for the past week, already done everything under the sun to free up disk space.
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« Reply #52 on: December 03, 2012, 11:45:56 PM »

That editor looks kinda cramped, hah. Anyway, the game's looking interesting. Keep up development! I like the style you've got going here.
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« Reply #53 on: December 04, 2012, 12:58:59 AM »

That editor looks kinda cramped, hah. Anyway, the game's looking interesting. Keep up development! I like the style you've got going here.

Haha!  It is definitely cramped.  I no longer know what some of those buttons are even used for!  Shrug
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knightSquared
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« Reply #54 on: December 04, 2012, 01:10:32 AM »

I finally got an initial layout of that level done.

One of the cool things about our editor that makes creating world art assets easier is the 'Export' button on the bottom left.  Our lead artist had created a special spherical UV model layout that wraps around a sphere without any texture pinching on the poles.  So we've worked out a system to take all the splines of the level, and map them automatically on to a texture based on those UV coordinates.  Then we use photoshop and solid-fill up all the areas.



So earlier, I've mentioned about a four seasoned theme.  Unfortunately I can't seem to make it work - Spring time contains too much happy time for a boss level.  But I would still love to create another level with that theme.

After some thinking, I've decided to go with a desert - grass - ice themed world.  Using photoshop again, I've filled out the areas in the texture map with the corresponding colors:



Then running the editor with that texture properly wrapping in the game.



Next comes the time consuming part which is to properly texture and normal map this beast.
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gimymblert
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« Reply #55 on: December 04, 2012, 05:37:04 AM »


One of the cool things about our editor that makes creating world art assets easier is the 'Export' button on the bottom left.  Our lead artist had created a special spherical UV model layout that wraps around a sphere without any texture pinching on the poles.


Huh? I wonder How he did that ...
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knightSquared
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« Reply #56 on: December 05, 2012, 12:53:01 AM »


One of the cool things about our editor that makes creating world art assets easier is the 'Export' button on the bottom left.  Our lead artist had created a special spherical UV model layout that wraps around a sphere without any texture pinching on the poles.


Huh? I wonder How he did that ...

Apparently, he never told me how he did it.  But next time I chat with him, I'll see if I can get some specifics.  But if you analyze the texture map of the first image, it's basically a 2:1 ratio texture.  Left side contains the wrap-around for the northern hemisphere.  Right side contains the wrap-around for the southern hemisphere.  It works quite well.

So I just got my new laptop!  Been installing all my programs and syncing up to our depot through SVN.  Really love the power of this system and extra HD space!  But what's up with this Windows 8?  Not too bad once you figure out how to navigate around it, but seems to be running into some compatibility issues with some programs I need.  Hopefully it can be resolved.
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gimymblert
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« Reply #57 on: December 05, 2012, 07:46:51 AM »

Oh I think I see, the "pole" aren't the stretch edge line but are "inside" the UV. Or something like that. He's clever :O

Ah I think the black part are the unused texture space, there are none in the rendered sphere, so it show the uv projection, I think I get it now!
Thanks for the explanation Smiley

Keep up the good work Smiley
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knightSquared
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« Reply #58 on: December 06, 2012, 12:46:50 AM »

Oh I think I see, the "pole" aren't the stretch edge line but are "inside" the UV. Or something like that. He's clever :O

Ah I think the black part are the unused texture space, there are none in the rendered sphere, so it show the uv projection, I think I get it now!
Thanks for the explanation Smiley

Keep up the good work Smiley

Thanks!!
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knightSquared
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« Reply #59 on: December 06, 2012, 12:53:43 AM »

So everything's installed on my new laptop.  Now back to development!

Here's a rough initial pass of the texture map:



In-game it looks like this:



At this point, it still looks a bit bland, with some of the textures a bit too much on the realistic side.  Another thing that's missing is props, but those will come at a later time.
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