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[melos]

some misc programming today. just trying to get my burn list down. maybe i'll do level design tomorrow? after finishign some other entitiy stuff.

fun facts:

my burn list (to-dos for programming bugs/features/etc) has 850 items since march 2013. It's missing tons of stuff i didnt really use it for. jon and i's shared feature reqeuest/bugfix list has ...200-400 things on it? not sure...that's a guess. and that's missing stuff too.

the game seems so like...simple but even as it'ssimple there sso much complexity. ui, tools, Event, event API, sound, dialogue, data, entity, player, world map, etc programming...

[melos]

wow, i played a lot of fantasy life today. probably too much. and the past two days. i'm obsessed with it a bit....i don't know...the way it paces little things for you to do and hides small mysteries abt the way the systems of the world work is kind of fascinating, even though the core actiosn you do, on their own, are kind of boring? like boring combat or hitting things etc. idk.

well, I did do a tiny bit of level design, ad fix some programming things today...so all is not lost...and other htings....

[oahda]

jon and i's

english what happened to u

I really like the colours in that last image but I do feel like there should be a little bit more than just a solid green blob. :c The right side of the cliff with a little more variation looks great. Maybe more rock all along the way?

[melos]

grammers overrated gotta type fast!


i think (not sure) that it might be intentional. Jon can wirte more, but I believe that part of it is that it's too much work to do that much detail work on every screen in the game. Part of it too is that it matches the storytelling feel of the game, parts of it are left as imagined. not 100% suure though.

[melos]

I programmed some things today. Tomorrow I'll do that again. OH YEAH i worked on voice SFX today too hahahaha I almost forgot about that. The major characters have their own voices. Kind of fun.

[kittakaj]

Voices are exciting. Yeah I mean there's stuff in that screenshot that isn't finished necessarily. On the other hand, I am trying to keep things loose and not have an all-over sense of detail. Both for stylistic/experiential reasons and so i'm not drawing areas for the next 5 years of my life. Anyway, it'll be good 

[melos]

playing...less fantasy life...sometimes it's fun to check off boxes when the boxes are related toe achother. thats' fatasy lfie

also playing talos principle! hey it is good. too tired to write more.

wil try to post more in other devlogs argh

[melos]

made video here!!! of some gameplay...in an early gauntlet..





you can play the game at neutral energy mostly ofc, but you can also play it at HYPER PURPLE!!!! which measn you run really fast and jump low. it's fun and feels good (heh)

i also redirected my fantasy life energy into working on some music https://soundcloud.com/seanhoganok/slowtune_2014-12-15-wip

and playing more talos princple..

[Jondog]

Wow the flow of movement in that video even with the high purple amount looked really cool.

[oodavid]

Video looks like great fun! It was a bit hard to tell, but how does the shield position change the movement in the purple water spouts?

[mushbuh]

i'd like to see people do all while/all purple challenge runs where the amount maxed is not the one that one benefit them

[melos]

New 60 FPS video! It's a much-needed update to the other "What is Even the Ocean" video from May 2014. Also on our website.

Sign up for our mailing list! IT's on Eventheocean.com

Here's the video






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Thanks for the comments!

oodavid: In the water spouts, a shield that tries to block its flow (so point shield down or up) will make it accelerate you fater, like holding  a float while under water. With it point other directions the acceleration from the geyser is normal.

mush -  energy levels are beneficial in both ways for most of the rooms (well maybe, it's designed to try to capture that). But  seeing xTreme runs would be neat.

[Immudelki]

edit : new page, I shall quote your last message so you won't kill me ^^

New 60 FPS video! It's a much-needed update to the other "What is Even the Ocean" video from May 2014. Also on our website.

Sign up for our mailing list! IT's on Eventheocean.com

Here's the video





--

Thanks for the comments!

oodavid: In the water spouts, a shield that tries to block its flow (so point shield down or up) will make it accelerate you fater, like holding  a float while under water. With it point other directions the acceleration from the geyser is normal.

mush -  energy levels are beneficial in both ways for most of the rooms (well maybe, it's designed to try to capture that). But  seeing xTreme runs would be neat.

The whole art direction looks promising. The colors palettes are also very original (not considering the end of the video of course )).

Keep up that good work  

[melos]

thank you!!


and yes, make sure to watch our new gameplay video everyone and post lots of press articles about it! (hahaha0ds-av)

[melos]

so yesterday, I uh...figured out problems with my computer (the fan vent was blocked by 27 months of dust so i had to disassemble the computer to clean it..ughhh) but then fixed them...i also played a lot of fantasy life as stress relief.....

[Pidroh]

That video was very smooth to watch and calming. Your voice, along the soundtrack, fits great with the mood of the game, haha.

Are you against capitalism or are you just trying to "break the trend" in design? I like how the game feels like there's no conflict, more than "there's no violence". Something like Dust Force, for example, doesn't have much violence, but it feels very objective oriented, skill oriented, while your game feels more like you can just enjoy yourself going through the stage however you, instead of trying to meat a goal or doing things perfectly, so that feels pretty intriguing and relaxing. Very cool stuff!

I find it funny how you seem to have some placeholder gameplay element graphics (the things which send you up, if my memory serves me right, watched the video a couple of days ago) but the stages are so well done. Nice job, man.

[melos]

Thanks Pidroh : ) Glad you like my voice. I've been getting occasional comments like that! Makes me want to do more video devlog (maybe I will do one now.)

I'm not against or for capitalism...it's such a complex system of like, everything. But I'm against the uncritical use of systems which seem to stem off from how we are raised under capitalism - things like gaining items to progress, harvesting the environment to make progress, destroying things to progress, increasing stats/other things and deeming 'increasing' as good. These things can have effects that are positive, but most of the time they are done in a lazy way. Fantasy Life is one extreme of this, though I would argue Fantasy Life has some interesting aspects to it

There is a narrative conflict which motivates travelling through the game, but yeah, it is not conflict on the level of having to be perfect. The design intentionally is made so there isn't a clear definition of 'perfect' when going through a level or area.

Anyways, glad you like that level so far! A lot of the nice level design arises from the design of the entities - Jon and I work together to pare down a complex entity into a simpler one. For example, that water geyser (the blue rectangle) used to rise up and down into the ground, and you could surf on top of it or bounce - that was really complex and also had the negative aspect of requiring waiting for it to get into the right position (which kills flow through a level). So I scrapped it and we had this other entity that shot up five rectangles of water, vertically, at different speeds, that you could ride on to get to different heights - kind of hard to use. So I changed it to one rectangle shooting. But then it still had the waiting aspect. So then Jon thought of just having a single geyser as we have now and it's more consistent with interactions, and intuitive physically.


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As far as Saturday went, it was good for marketing. We got a retweet from Egoraptor which reallly helps a lot - I've actually never gotten retweeted by someone with 200k+ followers so that was nice - I think I would have been super excited if that happened with Anodyne two years ago, but now I'm kind of conditioned to not get as excited when nice things like that happens (oh, human brains...).

[melos]

Made a video abt how Even the Ocean handles collisions with Jon's new art. Feel free to request new videos!

[melos]

made a theoretical design post about a term 'Genre Space' . useful for anyone wantitng to compare games or design them, MAYBE?

http://t.co/AeahBeBeZW

[gimymblert]

As I mature as a designer my genre space collapsed to 3 axis: action, passion, management (it sound better in french: action, passion, gestion), of course passion is narrative/story like quality. It's from the expression "action, passion and derison" but took of when bioware offered a story mode, an action mode and a rpg mode.

Tangentially I look at game through the "head, hand, feet" lens which is basically "presentation, interaction, option/navigation" or "look, act, select", it's come from teh realization that we sometimes reduce genre to verb into these lenses (run, aim, shoot or hop and bop with "head/presentation" being implicit of sidescroller as there is 3d to make the difference). Also control on a pad tend to aggregate toward this pattern too (right stick generally deal with head, buttons + right trigger with action, left stick + trigger with movement (feet)).

It make thing simpler, uncomplex and logically tied together.