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[William Chyr]

This game is looking better and better, and the trailer music is perfect.

Will in-game soundscape be something along these lines?

EDIT: Any chance of VR, even after release?  Even if it's not a "feature", maybe as an unsupported hack (such as in Alien Isolation)?  I would literally pay twice as much to be able to explore these infinite fractal spaces in a Rift, even if it's not an optimized experience.

Really looking forward to playing this!

Thanks! The trailer music is by Ryan Roth, who also did the sounds for Starseed Pilgrim.

For the in-game soundscape, still not 100% sure what that'll be like. I think close?

As for VR, that's easily the most common question I get asked. I'll need to get some hardware and try it out first.

so, major question now is sony or microsoft? lol


im actually quite honestly thinking about making the switch to playstation. sony seems like a really chill group, and
it looks like they actually have fun doing what they do, and this is from an xbox fanboy, so.

I think both are really great consoles

[William Chyr]

Devlog Update #228 - 06/29/2015

Indy Pop Con 2015 Post-Mortem



I showed RELATIVITY at Indy Pop Con this past weekend. You might remember, I actually showed there last year as well.

Last year, I kept track of how many people played, and how long everyone body played for. I've stopped collecting that data now though, as it was mainly to see how long the game keeps people engaged compared to previous versions. Now, I see a significant number of people complete the demo, which is the first level, regularly.

This year, the con was much bigger. I think this was largely in part because they had several high-profiler YouTubers attending.

Indy Pop Con was three days, like last year.

This was the schedule for the show:

Friday, June 26
1:00pm – Opening Ceremony, Main Stage
1:30pm – Show Floor Opens for VIP
2:00pm – Show Floor Opens
8:00pm – Show Floor Closes, After Hours Activities Begin
12:00am – Show Closes

Saturday, June 27
9:30am – Show Floor Opens for VIP
10:00am – Show Floor Opens
6:00pm – Show Floor Closes, After Hours Activities Begin
12:00am – Show Closes

Sunday, June 28
9:30am – Show Floor Opens for VIP
10:00am – Show Floor Opens
5:00pm – Show Closes

Setup

Last year I had a table. This year, I moved up to a booth. Similar to several past events, Alienware was kind enough to lend me a few units to use to demo the game.



The con was much larger and busier this year. I remember last year on Friday, people didn't start to come by and play the game until 2 hours in.

This year, there were people pretty much right away when the con opened.

What was really cool, was that there were several people who were already familiar with the game. A lot of people would tell me they had seen the game somewhere, but couldn't remember where.

I think this is a good sign, because it means that the game is getting out there in a  lot of places.

There were also several people who had played the game last time I showed at Pop Con, and commented on how much the game has improved since.

Here's a comparison of the 2 versions, about 1 year apart:



Design Feedback

It seems that every time I show the game at an event, I get one tid bit about how to change the layout of the opening level to make it even more accessible to players.

This year at Indy Pop Con was no exception. It has always been difficult for players to find the entrances to the various puzzle areas once they get outside. During a conversation with a playtester this year, I finally figured out what the issue is.

I'll go into more detail on this subject during a livestream (which will be recorded and posted on YouTube) sometime later, but for now, it's basically that I need to switch the entrance and exit areas.

Reboot Indie Game Awards

RELATIVITY was one of three finalists, alongside Battle Chef Brigade and Crashland!



The award ceremony was the last even on Sunday, at 4 PM.

Here's the show as it was getting started:



Small, but dedicated audience!

Each team got on stage to present for 5 minutes.

Here's me presenting (photo by Ross Herseman)



In the end, RELATIVITY got second place, and I got this skateboard!



Congrats again to Butterscotch Shenanigans on being a fellow finalist and to Trinket Studio for winning the Reboot Award!



(Photo by Living the Nerd Life)

Thank you again to Indy Pop Con, the judges, all the other game studios that were showing, and all the people who have played and supported the game so far! Thank you!

[jctwood]

Congratulations! It sounds like everything is going well, I loved playing the game at Radius Festival last summer and wish I could have met you. Do you plan to be in the UK showing any time soon? Also do you have set days that you like to stream?

[TheWing]

I think this might work too if the letters would be upright (just normal vertical text)?

All of them look nice, so I'm fine with every one

[William Chyr]

Congratulations! It sounds like everything is going well, I loved playing the game at Radius Festival last summer and wish I could have met you. Do you plan to be in the UK showing any time soon? Also do you have set days that you like to stream?

Thank you! Really glad to hear you enjoyed it at Radius.

I don't have any plans to be in UK any time soon. I've actually decided to stop traveling to conventions to show the game, at least for the next 6 months or so, in order to focus on development. Traveling is just too disruptive to my schedule... but this means that I'll be making a lot of progress!

So maybe early next year I'll be in UK? In any case, would love to travel there once the game is done.

EDIT: Stream schedule is going to be 8pm - 10pm CST every Monday to Friday. I believe that's 2am - 4 am UK time. Not confirmed yet, but I will start to do 3pm - 5pm CST on Saturdya and Sunday, which would be 9pm - 11pm UK time.

I think this might work too if the letters would be upright (just normal vertical text)?

All of them look nice, so I'm fine with every one

You mean like:

R
E
L
A
T
I
V
I
T
Y

or with the actual letters rotated as well?

[William Chyr]

Devlog Update #229 - 07/02/2015

Gravity Direction Gizmo

Given that I'm making a game that involves switching between multiple gravity fields, you'd think it'd be pretty useful to know which gravity is in which direction in the editor view.

For a long time, I'd basically have to hit play and walk around inside the scene, in order to figure out which gravity is pointing which way. Having the cubes in the scene helped, as I could then derive the direction from their arrows.

It wasn't a massive problem, but definitely a minor annoyance that came up now and then.

Anyway, I finally got around to putting it on our trello board that I needed a gizmo to tell the gravity direction.

Chris started working on it this morning.

At first the gizmo's size depended on the camera zoom in iso view (worked fine in perspective), so when I was working at the zoomed out level I normally work at, I could barely see the gizmo:



(it's a tiny speck in the bottom right corner).

I needed to be zoomed in this much to see it:



Chris then fixed the size and made it constant in size regardless of zoom, but there was still this clipping issue when zoomed out, which didn't seem easily fixable:



At this point, we were looking at the default Unity axis gizmo. I remembered at some point I was playing around with changing the colors of the axes in the preference menu.

And then it occurred to me, that instead of writing a new custom gizmo, we could just change the colors in the preference menu, and use that to determine the gravity colors.

It only shows 3 colors, but since I know the colors very well by opposites (blue vs red, green vs yellow, purple vs orange), it lets me figure out the gravity direction very easily.

The bonus is that when I select an object, the axes for moving the object are correctly colored as well:



Stream Archive

If you missed last night's stream, here's the archive:

Part 1:



Part 2:



Part 3: https://youtu.be/M-DdeGqc54I

I'll be putting all my stream archives on a youtube playlist here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNqAA0dqOV6J2Q3Y26EvfwIrwQJANw64M

And of course, if you want to catch the livestream, it'll be Monday to Friday from 8pm CST to about 10 pm CST at: http://www.twitch.tv/willychyr

Pagoda Pillar Level

Worked on this level some more today. Here's the evolution of the level:










More shots of the (almost) finished level:

[Connor]

so if your not doing the uk this year, what about canada? maybe? :L

[TheWing]

I think this might work too if the letters would be upright (just normal vertical text)?

All of them look nice, so I'm fine with every one

You mean like:

R
E
L
A
T
I
V
I
T
Y

or with the actual letters rotated as well?

Yeah, like that
R
E
L
...

 (and apparetnly I linked the wrong image :D)

[William Chyr]

so if your not doing the uk this year, what about canada? maybe? :L

I'm not sure if anything else is happening in Canad this year? I know there's Full Indie in Vancouver, but that's actually really out of my way to go to. I was already in Toronto earlier this year...

Yeah, like that
R
E
L
...

 (and apparetnly I linked the wrong image :D)

Ah, ok. I was a little confused with the image you showed...

I'm planning on doing a rebrand that will be unveiled later this summer. Vertical logo is being considered!

[William Chyr]

Devlog Update #230 - 07/03/2015

Last night's stream started off as an attempt to put in the finishing touches of a level, and then ended up as a debug session in which we uncovered some changes with Unity's instantiation code in their latest update. All in all, another typical night of gamedev.

Part 1:



Part 2:



Anyway, we did manage to solve the weird bug, but then Unity crashed pretty hard, so I ended the stream then.

Afterwards, I was able to set up the level to run again. It took some tweaking, but I think I finally got the level of scale I wanted in order to convey some sense of mystery:

[jgrams]

Design Feedback

I'll go into more detail on this subject during a livestream (which will be recorded and posted on YouTube) sometime later, but for now, it's basically that I need to switch the entrance and exit areas.

Have you gotten around to covering this? It sounds interesting but I didn't have the patience to watch all the livestreams to see if it was in there somewhere.

--Josh

[William Chyr]

Design Feedback

I'll go into more detail on this subject during a livestream (which will be recorded and posted on YouTube) sometime later, but for now, it's basically that I need to switch the entrance and exit areas.

Have you gotten around to covering this? It sounds interesting but I didn't have the patience to watch all the livestreams to see if it was in there somewhere.

--Josh

Not yet. Still refactoring systems, so haven't gotten to work on the levels that are more puzzle-heavy, as they depend on the gameplay mechanics.

[William Chyr]

Devlog Update #231 - 07/07/2015

Invisible Arcade



On 4th of July, I attended Invisible Arcade 6. Invisible Arcade is an event that was started in Seattle by Samantha Kalman as a punk rock video game show.





This was the first time Invisible Arcade took place outside of Seattle, so it was really awesome to have RELATIVITY in the line up.

The show consisted of performers on stage playing through three games and discussing them. Each game had a different set of performers.

RELATIVITY was on first, and was performed by Kate Welch, with Jenn and Trin on stage offering commentary throughout (mostly about Kate's hair and Hogwarts).

It turned out really well, and Kate actually completed the demo while on stage! She had only played the first few tutorial puzzles before the show to get a feel of the game, so a lot of these puzzles she approached blind. There are some difficult puzzles in the demo, and playing a puzzle game in front of a whole crowd of people is pretty intense, so major props to Kate!



Programming Lessons

On Monday, I did a code review with Chris, who has been helping me with refactoring gameplay systems in RELATIVITY.

Mostly it's about making better abstractions, having things be extensions of classes instead of all bunched together in one script, using delegates instead of multiple checks between scripts, etc.

I talked about it in Part 1 of yesterday's stream:



I've also realized I still need to be pretty closely tied in with the programming. I thought I could just pass it off to Chris and focus on design alone, but I think the design of the mechanics in RELATIVITY is so closely tied together with the programming that it's not really possible to separate the two.

Transparent Shadow

When using the Unity standard shader in "Transparent" rendering mode, I get this really nice crosshatch pattern in the shadow (right), but in my custom shader, even though I can get the material itself to have alpha, I still have a solid shadow (left):



In the end, I actually did decided to keep this as a feature, since it helps with the box, but I had to come up with a workaround for the double gravity leaf material (since that uses a custom shader).



Basically, there's a duplicate leaf mesh that's using the standard shader, but I have it set on "shadow only" for the shadow option. And then the leaf material with the actual double gravity leaf material just doesn't cast a shadow at all.

New Level - Pillar and Grid



Started working on it in Part 2 of yesterday's stream:

[William Chyr]

Devlog Update #232 - 07/09/2015

TIGSource Devlog Spotlight!



Wow... just wow...

When I saw this posted yesterday, I was pretty much speechless. I've been posting on this devlog for over a year and a half now, since November 2013. It has documented so many changes in art styles, weird tech issues, all the events I've been to, and so many random thoughts. The game has grown so much during this time, and that entire evolution has been recorded here.

The devlog for me really is more than just a record of the game's development process, it has been a journal and a screenshot of my life for the past year and a half. Writing here has been one of my favorite parts of the development process, and the community here has been absolutely amazing.

TIGSource for me has always been THE indie game source, like its name is, so to get the devlog spotlight really is an honor.

Thank you TIGSource! Thank you dear devlog readers! And thank you Derek Yu for writing about RELATIVITY! 


Pillar Tower Level Evolution

Continuing to work on this level during livestream sessions. It still needs a lot of work, and I haven't quite figured out the correct proportions, but here's the evolution of the level so far:

























I really love the staircase that extends out from the center, but still not sure about exactly how that should look. Someone on the stream mentioned that it reminded them of Ico, which is a massive compliment in my opinion, and very much what I'm going for.

The cover for Ico is one of my favorites:



I really love the sense of scale and the feeling of longing that it evokes, so really cool to hear that the visuals in this level are a bit reminiscent of that.

Stream Archive

Last night's level design stream in now up:

Part 1:



Part 2:



And here's the full playlist of the level design streams so far: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNqAA0dqOV6J2Q3Y26EvfwIrwQJANw64M

[Box99]

Grats on the exposure/promotion!

[jctwood]

Really wonderful to see the TIGSource post and Invisible Arcade sounds like a really great idea. The gizmo fix for gravity direction visualisation is so simple but beautiful!

[William Chyr]

Grats on the exposure/promotion!

Thank you!

Really wonderful to see the TIGSource post and Invisible Arcade sounds like a really great idea. The gizmo fix for gravity direction visualisation is so simple but beautiful!

Ya! Things have been going well lately it seems :D I can't believe it took so long to get a gravity gizmo...

[William Chyr]

Devlog Update #233 - 07/14/2015

Continuing to work on this giant tower level. Filling in the details, and finally got the (almost) right exterior silhouette.

Everything is always in a state of flow, so I never say anything has been finalized.

I fixed the protruding stairs. Removed the piece of floor that was jutting out so that it doesn't look so fragile.



Really love the staircase that wraps around the outside of the tower. It still needs a lot of tweaking. It needs to be a combination of messy and structured. It can't look too clean or predictable, because otherwise it just isn't very interesting:



I love this corner with the columns:



Some more outside shots:







Some interior shots:





Lots of great editor tools being made, and a lot done on the backend to make designing levels easier. There will be a big post about all that soon, I promise.

Stream Archive

And last night's level design stream in now up:

Part 1:



Part 2:



Last night's stream had the most number of viewers so far! It got up to 37 at one point. Really cool to see the community there growing!

[William Chyr]

Devlog Update #234 - 07/15/2015

Past few days have been insanely busy, especially with the stream schedule, and just a ton of new developments.

Streaming has been going really well. Super stoked about the community that's growing over at the Twitch channel.

Below are some major updates.

Tree leaf material now lerps between colors when you change gravity:




Still have a bug where the lines start off with emission on at start, and then fade away quickly:



Cube is growing back on tree with inactive colors. Not sure why it goes back and forth between correct and incorrect color:



Looks cool though!

Accidentally forgot to change distance between instances of the world due to a new editor tool that was implemented, and during the stream last night, we "discovered" this level. I love that it actually feels like a city!

[Lo-Fi]

Hey Willy, do you work from home every day? I'm curious because I'm going to start streaming development of my game more often, but it wouldn't really work from the shared office space I'm at (well, it would, I just couldn't give any commentary as I work). And unfortunately I'm a lot less productive when I work at home. Got any tips for maintaining productivity while working at home? I'm planning on streaming once a week.

(Ooh, I just realized I could maybe reserve one of the meeting rooms at my shared office for a few hours for streaming).