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[TheCleft]

Update!

Guns!

We've had a lot of fun recently, for two reasons. One is that we're able to finally go over our weaponry in the game because we're preparing one of the major systems for Early Access (more on that soon, I promise) and the other is because I got to play with puns again.

Put simply, we're implementing new graphics for all player and enemy weapons. The previous one were pure placeholder, and we made the decision to keep them almost pure silhouettes for the time being - that was when Tango Fiesta's playable debut at the Eurogamer Rezzed show was our major concern.

Now the guns and other various weapons in the game are becoming more of a focus, we've taken the time to improve them as much as we can. I think our main reference - other than our own art style - is the Metal Slug series.

The new gun style on John Strong, as Ewan positions it for a quick preview.

We wanted the guns to be as characterful as the player characters and enemies. We wanted them to be over the top in the best 80's way, but also feel powerful and fun to shoot without being frivolous. When you're aiming for a slightly comedic tone with games it's easy to go too wacky. Metal Slug has, I think, always achieved a really good balance between great feel, a slightly fetishistic attitude towards the military and hardware aspects, but still been entertainment first and foremost.

So what did we do to our guns? We made them bigger so we could pack more detail onto them for the player to enjoy, and we made them chunkier and stubbier so they feel and look heavy on the characters themselves.

Another thing we had to do was rename the guns, as even though they're obviously based on real and in-movie guns, they're real products and we want to avoid any legal ballache. Plus, naming guns with a mixute of puns, references and word play is my kind of work! :D

Left to right, from the top left, row by row: Mac & Cheese, Sawn Off, 12 Gauge, Woodstock '69, Hong Kong '83, Oozy 8mm, Cobra Cleaner, Hong Kong '84, Manuel, Steel Auger, Arius A1, Oozy 9mm, Viper Combat Rifle, Matrix '80.

We also wanted lots of them! We'll spend a sensible mount of time balancing them of course, but really the main is to allow the player to grow to love a favourite gun not just because of how it plays and how it feels, but because of how it looks too. For example, the Arius A1 may be a very similar gun in terms of play to an AK47-esque gun that we introduce in an update, but they will look and sounds quite different so the scope is there for people to really associate... well essentially a personality with.

To that end, it's worth noting these are not finished yet, they're still due a colouring and detail pass to make each one really stand out. For example, the Woodstock '69 will have... you guessed it... a wooden stock
 

Some of the weapons at an in-development stage. You can see the photo reference as well as the original 'pure silhouettes' in some of them.

 
I guess whatever happens we're very confident the guns all play well, are fun to shoot, and this will give players lots of satisfaction - not to mention the replay value inherent in lots of weaponry options that behave in interesting and varied ways. We'll certainly be introducing more wild and imaginative weapons as we progress past Early Access.

Lofty aims... we'll see how it all pans out...

[TheCleft]

Here's an update on the weaponry & a new mechanic!

We've got some images of the far-more-finished look of our guns, and are working hard to get these all done in time for the trailer.

From top to bottom we've got the Arius A1, the Woodstock '69 and the Oozy 9mm.

I hope you'll agree, they're looking pretty tasty! they'll feature quite heavily in our upcoming launch trailer, and I'm very very pleased with how they're going :D

And then we've got some insight into a more recently-added system, the Revive.

Lots of players were dying during multiplayer gameplay, and obviously it's  no fun waiting on your mates finishing a level, so we added a system whereby another player can revive you if you're downed!

"Oh dear I seem to have been rubbish-at-this-game-d to death."


"Never fear, for I am an expert at medicines!"


*MASSIVE ARM WRESTLE/PREDATOR MAN GREETINGS*


"Oh gosh I'm so happy." - "Me too so glad you're ok now."

The main balancing factor is is that the player doing the revival cannot move or shoot while they're helping up the downed player. Makes it a bit less of an obvious win to simply run over and help your buddy out. OF course, you can stop the process at any time so you're not locked in, that'd just be frustrating

BUT! What if your team mates are dicks, or you don't want to hold up the team?

"Sod this for a game of soldiers, I'm out."

The good news is that if you opt out you'll just respawn at the level end, or at the next objective that's completed, whatever's soonest. So that's everyone having as much as possible while still having a balanced game that punishes poor play. We think :D

[TheCleft]

Tango Fiesta is out tomorrow! Yikes :D
Thought it might be of interest to share a bunch of our promotional imagery, because it's a side of development that is often forgotten about or perhaps ignored in favour of straight up coding and game design type stuff.

Anyway, here we go, I'll post some thoughts about what we're trying to achieve at the bottom!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The main aim with these is, to state the somewhat obvious, to get people excited and invested in the game. Focusing on the playable characters is obviously a smart thing to do as people relate to people more easily than they do anything else.

The shots of gameplay we've chosen are somewhat limited by the small scale of the game as it stands ready for Early Access. We had to go for interesting, action-packed shots over anything else. When the full game releases we'll no doubt have enough props and rich artwork, particle effects and lighting that even a quiet scene will look interesting and cool, but right now if there aren't any bad guys attacking and good guys shooting, the game can appear a little simplistic in stills.

There are also several mechanics and elements in the game which are very hard to communicate in a single picture - the revival system being a big one, and co-op backstabbery for gold being another - so naturally we're not limiting our efforts to these pics above.

Anyway, that's it for today. Bit busy, as you can imagine :D

[TheCleft]

We're out on Early Access! Hoping we'l get a few people playing and giving us thoughts on here. Would love to hear what ya'll thinkand make this game better together! You can check it out here.

Meanwhile, here's the launch trailer we made...

[TheCleft]

Good day to you!

I'm quite excited as we're just dropped our first big patch (technically our second patch overall) onto Steam, and this one's a doozy - basically we've spent the last week and a half fighting with the online play and trying to make it as stable and fun as possible. We've pretty much succeeded I feel, but it'd been a hell of a battle.

Here's the changelog, and I've tried to go into some details on each of the more interesting aspects as they're listed...

- Level loading times are now at least 100% faster
- Building debris no longer stays between levels
- Characters now wade/swim in water
This means that not only do players move more slowly in water, but it leaves it up to the player to decide how best to approach situations in the Island levels. It helps to make the level boundaries way more flexible, and gives this tile set a unique feel when compared to the Jungle and other planned sets which are broadly speaking a lot more enclosed and rigid.

It's important for both visuals and gameplay to combine and support one another when adding variety to gameplay and the game's progression. Each environment we add should have a very clear, singular and perhaps even exaggerated unique element that affects how they feel to run around and play in. For the Island set, the wide open beaches and ocean do that - the gameplay balance being your reduced speed.

On the flip side, for Jungle, we've got tons of bushes everywhere and an enclosed hard rock wall around the level, which work together to feel claustrophobic. This is even further enhanced by the fact that we've placed way more props in these levels compare to the others so there's more visual information to process. The fact that the bushes act as cover, interrupting movement and shots fired, means you also have to concentrate on a lot more variety in any given combat space. That space changes too as the bushes are destroyed and then grow back, so the feel of Jungle compared to Island is wildly different.

- A skippable camera tween & pan added at level start
- New OBJ ATK arrow asset added

We wanted to give players more clear information as to what they had to do in any given level. At the moment of course we only have one objective type (destroy the building) but watching people play online we could see some initial confusion as to what the game wanted the player to do. The camera pans between the objectives, then back to the player. Combined with the new 'ATK' graphic we think it's clear what is expected of the player now.


- LMB click anywhere on the mission intro screen now triggers game on

- 'Enemy Count' added after all objectives are destroyed.
- Have one mission arrow point to nearest bad guy after all OBJ’s are destroyed
This was another attempt to make it clearer what the player has to do to 'win'. Being an 80's action movie inspired game we thought it'd be obvious enough that killing everything was the aim, but by adding an 'enemy count' to the bottom of the screen after the 3 main objectives were completed means that players should be 100% clear on the criteria. This was another thing learned and (hopefully) solved by seeing real players engage with the game on YouTube etc. The 'enemy pointer' arrow is a bit buggy in the current build, but again more info for the player to react to is in this case a good thing.


- Mac/OSX fixes including a boot crash and focus grabbing at launch.

- Enemies are spawned into valid spawn locations
This means no more enemies spawning inside buildings (although we're still seeing occasional bugs like this) and a much more fair fight -  most importantly players will never again have an enemy spawn right in front of them. Unless we add Ninjas, of course :D

- We've rebalanced the modifier on the amount of players versus the amount of enemies that are spawned for multiplayer matches.
Currently we've set it to 20 active enemies in total on level 1 for singleplayer, which is essentially a cap. More will spawn in as you kill them, but never more than 20. This is still quite high and we're likely to balance and tweak the system more. The cap increases by +5 per level progressed into the game and for each extra player above 1, we add 10% to the totals.

- We've fixed Z-depth ordering
Hopefully for the last time, this means props, bad guys and players should all act properly in terms of what they walk behind and in front of.


- We've made sure whatever menu you're in, the player's 'back' button will take them back up a level.

- We now restocks the player’s grenades between levels.
More explosions, yay!

- The sfx on the Arius A1 now fires off properly.

- Added VO for the 12 Gauge in the Gun Shop

- Added VO for the VCR in the Gun Shop

- Gun unlocks now work int he Gun Shop
We're still not exposing players to the info they need for what actually unlocks the various guns, but will do so in an upcoming patch for sure. For now, it's a bit of mystery and surprise. Some are easy, some are not!

- Various animation fixes for player characters.

- Fixed an issue where some bushes were not acting like cover in Jungle

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

We spent most of our time fixing online bugs. One of the best and worst things about Early Access for small teams like ours is how much testing and exposure to bugs you get. We launched at the right time for us, but a lot of players were disappointed with the state of the online game. We reckon we've fixed 80% of the issues, and have made it a lot more stable. We think Tango's best with multiple players, so that was the reasoning.

ONLINE FIXES (so many)

- Hosted games on PC now show up in PC client “join game” lobbies
- Online games are way more stable and smooth,
- Fixed issue where Enter was used to Chat as well as to Start a game.
- Player numbers now showing above players heads correctly
- Player can see ‘Press R to refresh’ text in the client game browser
- Props correctly all load in
- A client who quit a game can now navigate out of the browser screen.
- Scorch marks no longer being carried over between levels
- All players cash, score and other info now matches correctly, and are being displayed on mission complete or failure screen properly
- Players are informed if another player drops out of the game



- Other players’ correct character portraits correctly appearing on the HUD
- Enemy spawning and targeting properly spread out between all players
- Lobby messages now firing correctly
- Game now informs the lobby when someone has connected to the lobby
- The sidebar status now correctly shows that the game is start-able only when players are connecting.
- Reviving a downed team mate works
- Opting out (killing self instead of being revived) no works
- Restart button - and all other functions - now working on mission failure screen
- Only the cash you earn goes towards your cash total


END OF ONLINE FIXES

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

- Save file encryption and decryption added

- Keyboard controls should no longer override control of all others during player/weapon select/gameplay

- Keyboard & mouse controls should all work as expected in all menus

- Implemented smart key bindings system to HUD and game UI reflects chosen controls/buttons/inputs etc

- We've sped up parachute descent at level start
This was just one of those things that would begin to potentially annoy players over repeated level failures & restarts, so we sped it up a lot.

- The player's weapon choice is now carried over into gameplay 100% of the time.

- The player now always starts wit their primary weapon equipped at level load.


Known Issues with Tango Fiesta:

- We're preventing join-in-progress Online and Offline Multiplayer until we’ve got time to make it robust
- Mac clients can't reliably see PC-hosted games (but PC can see Mac-hosted)
- We're forcing a loop on Coastal in Online Multiplayer, because the generator is bugging out when trying to go between the two, and Jungle just seems to be acting weird at the moment. Don't worry though cos we'll fix it soon, and you can have tons of fun in Coastal in the meantime.
- You can't pick a character or weapon load-out in Online Multiplayer yet (but can in local and Singleplayer)


PHEW

Anyway, amongst all this we've been working on new worlds, enemies and bosses, so we can't wait to show those off soon too :D

[TheCleft]

It's been a little while since the last post I did here, so I'm going to try and make up for that with some JUICE.

In the latest patch (out now) we made the usual ton of fixes, tweaks and additions, but key to the game was the introduction of new enemy types, and a re-thinking of how items drop in the game.

Allow me to explain.

The biggest thing that stood out to us was the lack of variety in combat (and now we've fixed it, the objectives are undergoing an overhaul too, obviously!) and that was down to one simple reason - lack of variety in enemies and their behaviours. So by thinking through a cheap (code- and art-wise) solution to the problem we discovered that the best bet was in shifting the player's focus using already established systems.

To cut a long story short, we stopped Ammo, Cash and Health drops being random, and made them a feature of the game's moment-to-moment play. Before the patch, every enemy dropped 2 Gold Bars, while there was a percentage chance they'd also drop Ammo or Health.

The first change we made is so that now specific enemies are labelled as carrying Health or Ammo (spawned at the same rate a the old drop rate) and so as a player low on ammo, or on health, you'll actively redirect your attention to specific enemies. They can be any enemy of any type (except Hunters in Jungle) and so this makes the action slightly more interesting by adding a small layer of consideration to the gunplay at it's most basic level. Since adding this, I've also noticed that the mere fact we clearly label stuff adds to the arcade-esque feel, but also by exposing the fact that these drops are definitely going to happen it makes the whole experience seem a little more rich in features. Subtlety was never going to be our friend in Tango Fiesta, but I didn't expect such a tiny tweak to change stuff so effectively.

So the next change we made was to expand this system to Gold. Now every enemy drops 1 Gold Bar instead of two, and there is a new label for enemies who spawn 3 bars. This isn't such a fundamental addition that it changes up all the combat in the ways the Health and Ammo do, but it does add a little bit of distraction to greedy players, or players who think they're doing well - they'll take risks maybe they wouldn't have otherwise because there's a dude with more Gold in his pockets. Often you can leave enemies alone if you're low on health, but now you might even push your luck just for a fw more dollars :D

Finally along this 'labelling' line, we've added Champions (far Left, below).


^from Left to Right we have Champion, Health, Cash, Ammo-dropping bad guys

Basically, any enemy type (except Hunters in Jungle) can be marked as a Champion when they spawn. Champions are a sizeable percentage more healthy, faster, and more aggressive than the enemy type they are based on. They will fire at a faster rate, their bullets travel more quickly - but we stopped at making them do more damage per se. They're likely to, because of all of the other tweaks, but we want skilled players to feel uncheated and this way they're still totally beatable. You can still play by the same rules, you just need to play a little better against Champions. Finally, we made beating them rewarding with a drop of some Cash, Ammo and Health too.


So beyond these cheap and very effective methods of increasing combat interest (what happens if you need health badly, and a Champion Heavy Machinegunner is the only bad guy with a Health drop...?) we have also taken the time to add a brand new enemy type (the first of many) to the game.

His current name is Radio Guy, and he is a pain in the butt!



This guy doesn't directly attack you, but instead keeps his distance so that he can stop moving, crouch down and take the time to call in backup. He spawns 4 bad guys right next to him when he's finished his 'attack' and then backs away again. The new bad guys teleport in after a timer, so you can cut him off by killing him if you're good enough and of course either successfully doing so or failing to do so can turn the tide of an encounter quite dramatically.

The interesting thing is he can spawn any standard enemy type in - so that includes other Radio Guys. Also, if he is a Champion, then he's more likely to summon other Champions, which makes him incredibly dangerous and any time he spawns we see players taking him out with extreme prejudice. It's great to watch the gunfights ebb and flow so much now.

For the detail-obsessed, her's s rundown of all the latest fixes.

ADDED
- Lots of particles!
Added new explosion effects for hunters, huts and grenades.
Added new effect for travelling through water and bushes
Added new particle effect for destroyed bushes in Jungle
Added weather effects for Jungle (Dust & Rain)
Added particle effects for picking up pickups (health/ammo/cash)
Added impact cloud effects for parachute/freefall, and Yatcha impact
Added environment hit particle effect
Added particle effects for Yatcha & Gordon death effects
Added particle effects for Revive Completion and Suicide.

- New enemy subsets, Support, Medic, Champion & Prospector
Only respective badges will drop relevant things.
Medic drops healthpacks
Support drops ammo
Prospector drops cash
- Champions have increased health, and a faster rate of fire.
- All unbadged enemies now only drop 1 bar of gold.
- Added prompt above player to say when they're reloading, for the duration of the reload
- Added weapon select between worlds (after bosses) in all game modes
- Added character and weapon selection into online play
- New ambient Music in the Jungle & Coastal Levels
- Game now displays status messages if there was an error joining an online lobby


UPDATED
- Hunter death explosions now do damage
- Updated effects on explosions
- Updated weapon sound effects and tweaked volume settings
- Changed z-indexing of the water & bush skirts.
- Removed 'Invisible' lobby setting for online play.
- Updated Host Game UI to play all sounds on all UI interactions
- Made the header for the field clickable in Host setup
- Gamepad can now be used for all Host Game setup interactions (except entering a password)


FIXED
- Fixed z-indexing of particle effect on ammo & health pickups
- Fixed gamepad issue on Windows where you are unable to sprint and fire at the same time (Requires input mapping Reset in Settings)
- Fixed bullets not pausing when the game was paused
- Fixed the UI disappearing for clients after the first level.
- Explosions no longer act like a vacuum when knocking back enemies
- Fixed burst weaponry not entering the 'need reload' state correctly
- Fixed UI not appearing for clients when level progression occurs
- Fixed bug with online hosting where you couldn't host a game if you set a password.

And now a treat for those of you who've been nice enough to read all the way to the bottom -  a sneaky peek at some nasty-looking characters who'll be coming in one of our next updates!



I've shown these guys at my Develop talk, and also on twitter, but from Left to Right we have Snowflake, General Payne, The Shocker, Lockjaw and Dr Fahrenheit! They're going to be Boss characters in our next world, and we'll be launching them alongside new basic enemies as well as new weapons and hopefully a new player character too :D

We're planning on at least one more 'generic' enemy type who'll appear in any World, and with luck they'll really add another aspect to fighting the bad guys that will layer on top of these new systems in really interesting ways.

[TheCleft]

It's been a long summer since I last updated this, but here we go!

We've just dropped update 23on our Early Access chums and we're calling it 'GET TU  DA CHOPPA!' for obvious reasons :D


Arnie getting impatient for the chopper.

So who is the Chopper and what does it do? Basically, it’s a new objective type - alongside the Hut Destruction and the Antenna Hack - and is part of the pool of objectives that each level chooses to populate the challenge from. The Chopper, however, is new and different from the others for several reasons.

First up it defends itself with a side-mounted cannon - very tasty -  which can quickly rip through your health if you’re not careful. Not only that, but it won’t just sit and take a pounding from your guns, because the pilot frequently decides enough is enough and moves to a new safer location after sustained attack. Finally, it also deposits enemy troops underneath it to further thwart your attempts to destroy it.

All in all it’s quite the handful! Sadly, it’s currently switched off for online play - it’s kinda working but not how we want it to (in other words it doesn’t exactly match the offline play) so we’re holding off on that till we can fix it - which should be very soon!


Our Choppa!

A lot of time has also been spent behind the scenes making sure the story tech we’re using is up to scratch. You can see a glimpse at it below, but obviously until it’s all perfect - until the story’s all implemented and the character portraits are all done - we don’t want to show it off very much. It’d be a major spoiler, and it’s not exactly something as iterative as, say, the feel of one of the guns! In fact we’re probably going to wait until we hit the big V1.0 to switch it back on for you to enjoy. But rest assured it’s coming… and it is a blast.


He’s chatty, our hero!

But that’s not all! We’ve finally addressed a big complaint with the game. At the end of every level in previous versions you’d have to go on a Perp Hunt (geddit?) across the whole map to find one miserable soldier hiding away and shivering in the corner. Well no longer! Now at the end of each level, once you’ve beaten all the objectives, one of two things can happen. First up, that could be it - ‘Mission Complete’ as soon as the final objective is dealt with! But secondly, there might be an ambush! It’s fairly obvious when it happens so keep an eye out - and just try to shoot all the bad guys before they shoot you! We really hope you enjoy this fairly small change, it’s something that’s bugged us since day one and finally knocking it on the head means a lot to us. Each level should go out with a bang rather than a whimper now.

As for today’s episode of our regular dev diary video series, which this week is a bit of a bumper because it’s two weeks’ worth of content, including a trip to Gamecity in Nottingham… well that’s right here: http://youtu.be/X6zeJYhywzA

And here comes the text version of all our efforts over the past fortnight:

ADDED
- New Objective, The chopper, available in offline play
Replaces the hut or the tower when spawned
Roams the map
Defends itself
Spawns baddies
- New animation system for props added
- Added framework and implementation for story system
- Added new SFX for the chopper

FIXED
- Rare issue with bullets that damage bosses, fixed.

UPDATED
- Numerous SFX updates and tweaks
- Numerous enemy behaviours updated
- Updated shotgun SFX

Next week we’ll be working on the introduction of our final World, one which has been overdue for a long time. One of our more… mechanical main characters will feel right at home there!

We’re also aiming to get more polish and some much more structured play into the game, systems that should allow us to make the game progress in a much more satisfying way and will make every level feel that little bit more magical. Of course we’re on a fortnightly update schedule so the week after that the drop should be … chunky to say the least! Watch this space (or twitter)!