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TIGSource ForumsCommunityDevLogsMainframe One <Mega Man meets Ninja Gaiden> PS4, PC
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Author Topic: Mainframe One <Mega Man meets Ninja Gaiden> PS4, PC  (Read 5133 times)
AbsintheGames
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« on: September 26, 2015, 06:47:46 AM »


Site: http://www.mainframeone.com
Platforms: PlayStation 4, PC
Twitter: @AbsintheGames

MAINFRAME ONE is a fast-paced action-platformer inspired by the NES Classics Ninja Gaiden and Mega Man. Speed and agility are at your fingertips in this throwback pumped full of tight gameplay, hyper-responsive controls and eye-popping visuals inspired by the greatest pop-culture films, music and literature from our time.

http://www.gfycat.com/HollowThisAddax
http://www.gfycat.com/ThunderousSlimyCopperbutterfly
http://www.gfycat.com/OilyConventionalEgret




We are currently in development and have the game up and running on PS4 and Xbox One. Some of the game's features include:

  • Old School Action Platformer Turned to 11
  • Non-linear Level Progression
  • Weapon Power Up System
  • Speed Run and Boss Rush Modes
  • Insane Amount of Cameos from your favorite Indie Devs
  • Hidden Areas, Challenges, Easter Eggs and Unlockables

We have 12+ confirmed cameos that will be announced eventually for our Boss Rush mode. Most every one of our cameos are from well known indie developers and we are super stoked to be working with them to bring you our Boss Rush.


The Titan, Reaper Guard

The game plays like a mix of Mega Man and Ninja Gaiden. The main character is very fast, agile, can stick to walls, bound from walls, dash with a special attack, can pickup boss weapons after defeating them, power ups, etc. Levels are large and, for the most part, non-linear. There is also non-linear progression, as well. You can choose which boss to tackle when for a kill order similar to Mega Man, however, there will be alternate orders to gain access to hidden areas and challenges.


Everyone's favorite musician gets to be a Boss in Boss Rush in this cameo

I will be updating this thread throughout development, holding regular development streams for PS4 and PC on Twitch/YouTube, and just opening up our process of development to anyone with questions. I have been working hard on this for a long time and I'm happy to be at a point where I can talk more about it openly!

If you have any questions feel free to ask here or for more immediate responses hit me up on Twitter: @AbsintheGames
« Last Edit: June 18, 2016, 07:18:58 PM by AbsintheGames » Logged

AbsintheGames
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« Reply #1 on: September 26, 2015, 08:59:58 AM »

So this is cool. This is how we roll with first drafts of objects. This helps us with creating geometry.

The basic flow is to design environment art as seen in this pic with some basic distance rules to keep objects in check. After we decide we like where the art style is headed for a level we bring some of our draft assets into Unity and begin rigging, from there we greybox for proper distances for jumps and the like and then export geometry screens to finalize art for a particular area.  We haven't setup a proper tiling system since we just flat-out create art for every level. We maaaaay decide to use tiling but what we have is working fine and due to our art being 1:10 scale - we can throw a LOT of it inside of a level without performance issues. This helps considering we don't want to compartmentalize "rooms" if we don't have to - we want everything to be accessible without loading into rooms.

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sidbarnhoorn
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« Reply #2 on: September 26, 2015, 09:18:11 AM »

Awesome! Looks very cool and promosing. Following! :-)
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Siddhartha Barnhoorn
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Composed music for the games Antichamber, Out There, The Stanley Parable, Planet Alpha...

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« Reply #3 on: September 26, 2015, 10:15:17 AM »

Really enjoying the art style on this, and the gifs look really promising gameplay wise, with a sort of shotgun ninja feel to the player.
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Photon
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« Reply #4 on: September 26, 2015, 11:42:22 AM »

Well, I do like me some MegaMan. Like the looks of this.

But as much as I think you've done a great job with the low-res detail, I feel like the contrast isn't very good. The gifs look a little busy as a result.
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FK in the Coffee
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« Reply #5 on: September 26, 2015, 11:50:52 AM »

Wow, this looks buttery-smooth, and I'm in love with the cyberpunky aesthetic.  What tools are you creating this in?
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AbsintheGames
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« Reply #6 on: September 26, 2015, 07:16:33 PM »

Awesome! Looks very cool and promosing. Following! :-)
Thank you! We appreciate it!

Really enjoying the art style on this, and the gifs look really promising gameplay wise, with a sort of shotgun ninja feel to the player.
Glad you like it!

Well, I do like me some MegaMan. Like the looks of this.

But as much as I think you've done a great job with the low-res detail, I feel like the contrast isn't very good. The gifs look a little busy as a result.
Thank you and they can be. We are working to tweak palettes to make the screen easier to read at quick glance. There's a lot more setup we have to do for geometry and effects so we are taking things one step at a time with changes.

Wow, this looks buttery-smooth, and I'm in love with the cyberpunky aesthetic.  What tools are you creating this in?
Thanks! We are using Unity for the project. One of our goals was to keep a steady 60 at all times including hectic pixel explosions (they can get crazy with large amounts of enemies and bosses) and we are hitting 200+fps on both PS4 and Xbox One during standard play with dips as low as 100fps during intense sections. This, I feel is safe enough. We will still be testing and optimizing if needed but when we sync - it's a solid 60 full time.

We opted for our own "physics" instead of RigidBody2D. We still use RigidBody2D for some objects but the smoothness of play, traversal and movement come from simply translating the player's position each frame by its current speed.

The breakdown is pretty easy - we look ahead in the direction of travel to see if we intersect with anything that can stop the player like a wall, floor, etc. If we connect with one of our rays we simply check the distance to that object and compare it based on speed and our own deltaTime (we apply our own smoothing using an average). If the distance to collision is greater than our current speed will let us travel in the span of 1 frame, we simply move the full distance. If not and we will end up passing through collision and our speed hasn't changed, we simply move the distance of the gap and call that a "stop". Since it's based on distance we can have pixel-perfect collision.

This allows us to have framerate independent physics that accounts for spikes, we do not need to use a fixed step.

Here's an example of one of our super early builds:



You can see we fluctuate by hundreds of FPS without any noticeable hiccups. I did have an issue with gravity that was causing some bad stuttering in that build while falling but that has been taken care of when finishing physics.

The feel of controlling the player is paramount. We want people to instantly feel like they are controlling something familiar and not fight the controller to learn how the player "handles". Everything from fall-ledge-jump forgiveness, preemptive grounded jumping, wall bounding, etc - performance plays a huge part in making sure everything is tight, responsive and intuitive.
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AbsintheGames
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« Reply #7 on: September 27, 2015, 08:37:57 AM »

Here's a quick look at the enemies we have shown over the past few months in teasers:


That is an incredibly small fraction of the enemies we have completed. Of course, that poses its own set of issues - with too many enemies, it's difficult to make them all feel like their own class of enemy, but we are making sure every enemy has its own flair, attack patterns, etc.

One nice thing about creating a game with large open levels is that you're not stuck with linearity so you can use level geometry to your advantage when creating enemy AI and let them make use of the geometry much in the same way the player would leverage it with his abilities. This means that some enemies will not be "set and forget" style enemies with arbitrary movesets. A lot of enemies of the same type are tweaked for their specific positions so creating AI requires a LOT more switch(case) use than I would like. But the end result for level-specific geometry is convincing. All in all it's both incredibly fun for us to get down to creating enemies and frustrating at the same time. We have far more designs that hit the cutting floor than are in game ha!
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AbsintheGames
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« Reply #8 on: September 27, 2015, 12:31:43 PM »


Here we see JUMPGUY 1000 spawning and doing a small hop. You can see how our artist has given the character a sense of weight when landing as the enemy absorbs the shock of landing with his legs.

We further emphasize the weight of the enemy so you have a better sense of how dangerous it can be by using a custom physics curve for both the upwards momentum of the jump, deceleration towards the top and eventually its fall. We also throw in some very light screen shake and controller rumble when the enemy lands on the ground to help convey the dangers of this enemy when first encountered in-game from witnessing a single jump. The enemy has two stages to his attacks based on distance from the player and can target exactly where they player is standing when closer in range at the start of the jump.

Take a look at some gameplay of JUMPGUY 1000 in action: http://www.gfycat.com/ImaginativeEllipticalAztecant
Note: This takes place in my enemy testing rig. Pardon the lack of environment detail.

This method of feedback is important to us as we are trying hard to make sure that everything that is important, has a proper feedback loop so the game "feels" good to play. You shouldn't be able to pick out any one thing - if people don't notice it and they aren't complaining about something - THAT IS PERFECT! We prefer the understanding to be invisible to the end user so it just feels right, right off the bat.
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lobstersteve
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« Reply #9 on: September 28, 2015, 11:41:33 AM »

Very cool graphics and color choices Smiley
Looking forward for more.
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planckpixels
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« Reply #10 on: September 29, 2015, 12:32:31 AM »

Hi - I’m the artist working on Mainframe One.
 
A while ago I was invited by Jack at Absinthe Games to come and work on his much loved pet project. The game was super low res, just 192x108, it had crazy smooth controls and quite a brilliant game mechanic... I was intrigued. Being fairly new to pixel art at that stage I wasn’t really aware of the limitations or the challenge ahead.
 
A scene from Jack's original build -


As you can see below the game now looks a lot different, the level of detail was slowly wound up until we were happy with the current aesthetics.


Will share more on the art side of things throughout development.

You can learn more about the project here - http://mainframeone.absinthegames.com/

Like to know more about the design/art direction? Feel free to shout at me on twitter ~ https://twitter.com/planckpixels
« Last Edit: September 29, 2015, 02:43:01 AM by planckpixels » Logged
Fenrir
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« Reply #11 on: September 29, 2015, 12:58:30 AM »

The art style is amazing, great job guys and keep it up!
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aamatniekss
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« Reply #12 on: September 29, 2015, 01:46:08 AM »

This is looking extremely slick for such small resolution! Looking forward to seeing more!
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planckpixels
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« Reply #13 on: September 29, 2015, 01:41:07 PM »

This is looking extremely slick for such small resolution! Looking forward to seeing more!

Hey thanks! :D
I have come to love the size now too
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Jasmine
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« Reply #14 on: September 29, 2015, 01:54:55 PM »

Gonna go ahead and jump on the 'lovin' yer art' bandwagon. The different gameplay screens on your webpage are amazing as well! I noticed what looked like a small hoover bike racing mini game?

All-in-all, this game looks great! Glad to know you guys have been working for such a long time together, too. This project has a history, and it looks like you guys are moving forward strong!
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planckpixels
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« Reply #15 on: September 30, 2015, 12:38:25 AM »

Gonna go ahead and jump on the 'lovin' yer art' bandwagon. The different gameplay screens on your webpage are amazing as well! I noticed what looked like a small hoover bike racing mini game?

All-in-all, this game looks great! Glad to know you guys have been working for such a long time together, too. This project has a history, and it looks like you guys are moving forward strong!

Thanks for getting on the wagon! :D
Yeah Jack had a solid base by the time I came along and its gotten even better. Has been brilliant fun so far - will be great to share more as we go
« Last Edit: September 30, 2015, 05:43:56 AM by planckpixels » Logged
planckpixels
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« Reply #16 on: October 09, 2015, 02:42:30 AM »

Fun with Pixels ~
 
A little something I've learnt whilst working on Mainframe One... Animating at this scale is fascinating! All the animation principles still apply, but given the restrictions, you must find different ways to utilise them. Now that's pretty important because being able to create fluent movement with characters this size is required in order for the player to feel immersed in a game that still has a sense of scale to it. So, I wanted to share a few different ways I have been finding in order to try and achieve that.

One trick that I have enjoyed using so far is a one pixel stretch - This one pixel stretch super important in creating an extra frame of motion if you want to move a single pixel, for example the head of the Reaper Guard. (bottom gif)
As the Reaper turns his head you will see it stretch into 2 pixels - Almost creating a fake motion blur. It's really interesting finding ways to trick the eye actually. I think if this isn't implemented the animation will not look as fluent.

Learning techniques like this really helps to sell the animation, and is genuinely satisfying. There are heaps of different ways you can create more feel at this scale, but ill cover other stuff in future updates.
(example gifs of the pixel stretch are below so you can see it in action)



You can learn more about the project here - http://mainframeone.absinthegames.com/

Questions about the art and design? Shout at me on twitter https://twitter.com/planckpixels
« Last Edit: October 09, 2015, 02:56:25 AM by planckpixels » Logged
Czepta
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« Reply #17 on: October 09, 2015, 04:52:46 AM »

Really awesome work. Thanks for the insight into the art process, there's definitely a purity to such low res animation.
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Photon
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« Reply #18 on: October 09, 2015, 07:40:58 AM »

Good night, can we PLEASE see some action shots?  Hand Any Key Kiss

The low-res detail is just ridiculously good. But I want to see if the in-game action looks as juicy! Beg
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planckpixels
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« Reply #19 on: October 09, 2015, 01:16:23 PM »

Really awesome work. Thanks for the insight into the art process, there's definitely a purity to such low res animation.

You are welcome! Yeah, low res anim takes some getting used to thats for sure.
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