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[William Chyr]

Hey dude I just wanted to stop by and say I'm loving your game and how it progressed in 2 years. I started following you on facebook and look forward to seeing the game finished! 

Thanks so much! I'm really glad to hear that. It has definitely come a long way in 2 years. Also, you just reminded me that I need to update the facebook page more frequently! 

[Lo-Fi]

I might have asked this before, but are you doing anything to indicate the different gravity directions besides just color? Might be difficult for colorblind players.

[The_RonJones]

 Also, you just reminded me that I need to update the facebook page more frequently!  


lol right sorry, I meant Twitter...

[William Chyr]

I might have asked this before, but are you doing anything to indicate the different gravity directions besides just color? Might be difficult for colorblind players.

Yes, actually, making the game accessible to as many people as possible, including colorblind players, is really important to me.

Eventually, I'd like to have a option for people to map colors in the game, so that colorblind players can customize it to their liking.

However, there are also several elements in game that can help with gravity direction:

1. There are arrows on the boxes and switches showing which way their respective gravity directions are. This makes it so that the player can deduce which surface they need to be on in order to interact with these elements.

2. It's actually not so important to know which walls are which color, but simply which direction is down. The colored area is always slightly darker than the non-colored areas, so even if one were to look at the game in grayscale, you'd still be able to orient yourself.

Also, you just reminded me that I need to update the facebook page more frequently!   


lol right sorry, I meant Twitter...

Ah, yes, twitter is really the best place to stay up-to-date with the game. Any big news gets announced there first, and I do post screenshots there quite often.

[Sjonsson]

Just like The_RonJones I just felt like dropping by give you a comment.

When I first saw Relativity it was on a twitter feed I think and honestly I wasn't impressed at all, now that was quite some time ago and I just thought it was "just another puzzle game".

Then I kept on seeing the name Relativity popping up, even in some articles, and now your game actually looks impressive. You've gone far with the art from what it was.

Best of luck and I'm happy to follow your progress, just like The_RonJones!

[William Chyr]

DevLog Update #86 - 09/05/2014

Just like The_RonJones I just felt like dropping by give you a comment.

When I first saw Relativity it was on a twitter feed I think and honestly I wasn't impressed at all, now that was quite some time ago and I just thought it was "just another puzzle game".

Then I kept on seeing the name Relativity popping up, even in some articles, and now your game actually looks impressive. You've gone far with the art from what it was.

Best of luck and I'm happy to follow your progress, just like The_RonJones!

It makes me really glad to hear this! It has definitely taken a lot of work to get here.

You're not alone with regards to your feelings when you first saw the game. When I first started posting screenshots of the game, a lot of the comments were along the lines of "this looks like every other puzzle game - just a bunch of colored boxes in a white room". At the time, I was a little disappointed with the response. But I concluded that it was just because people couldn't see how interesting the mechanic was, and that aesthetics are not that important, so I just dismissed these comments.

Then I went to GDC in March, and asked for feedback from a bunch of developers who I respected a lot, but who didn't know who I was at the time. And pretty much all of their response was "you have an interesting mechanic, but you really need to work on the look of you game".

I decided to finally tackle this problem, and dedicated a full week to only working on the art style. And I am so glad I did. Good visuals makes a tremendous difference. And a lot of it also plays back into the mechanics itself, so you can't try to separate them like I did early on.

I knew this was really making a difference because when I started posting screenshots from this period, people would actually comment about the art style alone, and how that makes them want to play the game, as opposed to "this looks like it might have some potential, but..."

And even now, I still think there is a lot of improvement to be made with the visual style. I still don't know quite how it will evolve (in the same way that last year, I didn't know that the game would look like it does now), but I do plan on keep working at it. Overtime, a lot of small changes will add up to form its own unique look.

Poster and Flyer Design

Anyway, I'm getting ready for the Tokyo Game Show in less than 2 weeks!

Here's a design for the poster I'll have up at the booth:



And here's a design for the flyers I plan to hand out to people to come by. It'll be double sided, with the English version on one side, and the Japanese version on the other.



Any thoughts?

[Sjonsson]

Its really good to hear what you learned from GDC, rough comments from users can really beat you down and sometimes it is indeed very hard to see through and realise what the actual problem is. Maybe its exactly what the users are commenting on or maybe it is something completely different.

The game looks very 'artsy' now in a good manner, there are quite a few bad examples on
being artsy' but I really think you're doing it right.

About those posters, make sure to have one or more japanese people to actually read it through and give you feedback. I haven't been much with japanese but what I learned is is that sometimes the do and say things very differently, even though they have the same intentions. Maybe there is something in your fliers that adresses this cross-cultural thingy!

The layout and looks really good, readable and the pictures are interesting to look at.

[William Chyr]

DevLog Update #87 - 09/07/2014

Its really good to hear what you learned from GDC, rough comments from users can really beat you down and sometimes it is indeed very hard to see through and realise what the actual problem is. Maybe its exactly what the users are commenting on or maybe it is something completely different.

This quote from Neil Gaiman has always stuck with me:

“Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.”

I think it applies equally well to game design. Often, I find that a lot of problems are best solved through an indirect approach. For example, early on, a lot of people would comment that they'd want to know what color the different walls are, and people suggested things like having different colored grids, having the walls be colored all the time, or some kind of HUD showing wall colors. The problem was that visually, it just looked really awful.

However, when I added arrows to the boxes, it actually fixed this problem, because now, you could deduce which walls were which color based on the boxes in the room. And while that would only show you wall colors for the boxes you have, the other wall colors were actually irrelevant.

Bit Bash & Postcard

I showed Relativity at Bit Bash yesterday, and had a really positive response! I'm still too exhausted to write up too much about it, but do a more detailed post sometime next week.

Also, earlier today, I came up with this idea for a postcard, and was so excited about it, and proceeded to spend the next few hours putting it together.



What do you guys think?

[Connor]

awesome!

[Zaphos]

I like the postcard idea!  But I think in that version it's kinda hard to read because each letter is showing a totally different, busy scene, and the letters are pretty thin.  If you look at old 'greetings from' postcards ( http://designyoutrust.com/2012/06/vintage-postcard-travel-designs/ ), I think they used thicker letters and tried to have readable landmarks visible in most letters.  They also don't vary the colors so dramatically between letters, and keep a approximately consistent skyline across most letters' images ...

(Also I have a nitpick-y impulse to move the 'from' a bit closer to the 'Greetings,' and maybe like a couple pixels upwards?  But that's super minor / arguable.)

[William Chyr]

I like the postcard idea!  But I think in that version it's kinda hard to read because each letter is showing a totally different, busy scene, and the letters are pretty thin.  If you look at old 'greetings from' postcards ( http://designyoutrust.com/2012/06/vintage-postcard-travel-designs/ ), I think they used thicker letters and tried to have readable landmarks visible in most letters.  They also don't vary the colors so dramatically between letters, and keep a approximately consistent skyline across most letters' images ...

(Also I have a nitpick-y impulse to move the 'from' a bit closer to the 'Greetings,' and maybe like a couple pixels upwards?  But that's super minor / arguable.)

All valid points! This was mostly a proof of concept, and I think it works!

Ya, some of the postcards I saw had a pretty wide gap between "Greetings" and "from", so I added a few more spaces on purpose. But after I posted, I was also thinking that it looked kind of weird and wish I didn't do that.

Good point about the color variation not being so dramatic, and a consistent skyline across the letters. I actually missed that. None of the shots I used worked really well with the letters. Like you said, they are all pretty busy scenes, which work well as standalone screenshots, but not inside the letters. Also should definitely look for an actual thick font. Bold is definitely not enough.

[William Chyr]

Also, another thing I realized is that I don't have to have a separate image for each letter, but can have one image across two letters, like this one for Kentucky:



I should also add a noise texture on top and lower saturation a bit for the full vintage effect.

[Sjonsson]

This quote from Neil Gaiman has always stuck with me:

“Remember: when people tell you something’s wrong or doesn’t work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.”

I think it applies equally well to game design. Often, I find that a lot of problems are best solved through an indirect approach. For example, early on, a lot of people would comment that they'd want to know what color the different walls are, and people suggested things like having different colored grids, having the walls be colored all the time, or some kind of HUD showing wall colors. The problem was that visually, it just looked really awful.

However, when I added arrows to the boxes, it actually fixed this problem, because now, you could deduce which walls were which color based on the boxes in the room. And while that would only show you wall colors for the boxes you have, the other wall colors were actually irrelevant.

I think that quote is very applicable indeed. You really have to put up with all those ideas and suggestions, they mean that they care about your game for whatever reason and that's something to value dearly. Finding the solution, like you did with the arrows, that's the hard part. Like you said, an indirect approach is probably the way to go, very case specific of course.

[William Chyr]

DevLog Update #88 - 09/08/2014

Starting the Japanese localization process today! I think I will make everything bilingual for now, instead of requiring players to switch between English and Japanese.

[Jad]

I was almost going to ask 'how did you make the katakana possible to read in english too'

then I realized that I know how to read katakana,

....ah, so that's why...

[William Chyr]

DevLog Update #89 - 09/09/2014

I was almost going to ask 'how did you make the katakana possible to read in english too'

then I realized that I know how to read katakana,

....ah, so that's why...

I tried learning katakana for a while... but there's just not enough time in the day! But yeah, I would not have understood your question.

Anyway, continued to work on bilingual UI throughout the day.





Not super happy with the layout, but I think it will work sufficiently well for TGS.

[suny]

Beautiful Art style, I love it!
Good luck for the TGS

[William Chyr]

Beautiful Art style, I love it!
Good luck for the TGS

Thanks Suny! Great to hear that.

[William Chyr]

Oh, and since I haven't officially announced it yet... here it is:

Relativity will be at the Tokyo Game Show this year!



If you're going to be there, come say hi and check out the latest build!

[Connor]

man, i wish i had a poster with that kind of art on it, thats how nice it looks. really well done

too bad i dont live in japan, and instead live in canada, halfway across the world. D: