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[tsameti]

Thank you much for providing such a friendly narrative to your development process. It's very cool coming in here and seeing how your thought process has carried you from black squares on paper to textured obstacles and exploding aliens.

It does strike me a shame that the ultimate expression of game dev appears to be mulching the xenoscape with a minigun, but you know what? Heck, it looks great.

Would it be cool to use several colors for alien goo and randomize the those colors you dole out to the individual monsters? I ask that because it could make for a fairly psychotropic wasteland in between waves. Would that cause performance concerns? Also could be an eyesore.

Anywho,
Keep making magic, sir.

[Alex Vostrov]

Thank you much for providing such a friendly narrative to your development process. It's very cool coming in here and seeing how your thought process has carried you from black squares on paper to textured obstacles and exploding aliens.

Thanks. Glad you like it.

It does strike me a shame that the ultimate expression of game dev appears to be mulching the xenoscape with a minigun, but you know what? Heck, it looks great.

Sometimes I wonder what I'm doing making a game about mass alien genocide, but screw it.  I'm going to make the most awesome alien genocidal game ever.

After this project is done, maybe I'll work on something more sophisticated.  Or maybe not.

Would it be cool to use several colors for alien goo and randomize the those colors you dole out to the individual monsters? I ask that because it could make for a fairly psychotropic wasteland in between waves. Would that cause performance concerns? Also could be an eyesore.

I can do that by changing one line of code.  The problem is that you'll want to kill me after seeing rainbow blood splattered everywhere.

[ness io kain]

I understand your concern with the messiness.
A good example of a (hilariously?) ultraviolent game would be Team Fortress 2. It is a great game, and the violence is just silly, like The Three Stooges would be if it was on all kinds of illicit hallucinogens. It's enjoyable, but personally, I can't play it for any significant length of time without thinking, "Wow, this is pretty mindless. What's the point in all this, exactly?" It's just pure fun. I do think fun is a good thing, of course, but it seems like it gets dangerous when it's so very raw.
I don't think every game needs to be seriously meaningful, but I do feel that as things become more shallow, they lose lasting power.
I realize not everybody likes Cave Story (there's nothing everyone likes, of course), but if you do, this should work fairly well as a contrast:
I feel like Cave Story is effective because because it has so much heart. It's not a light game at all, and it was obviously constructed very thoughtfully. Yes, there is a lot of monster killing, and the appeal of adventure is also complemented by the appeal of destroying thing... But in the end, it's a very warm, positive experience.
And if you don't like Cave Story or have never played it, the same thing can be said about most games in the Legend of Zelda series. Beyond that, I can't think of any examples at the moment...

I once made a game where you run over zombies with a car. The characters and such were very abstract and cartoon-looking, and there was no blood. So it didn't really use the appeal of ridiculously over-the-top violence... But I still feel disappointed by the fact that it was such a base, raw kind of enjoyment.
Conversely, however, I also once made a game about crashing a space ship into walls. I feel like it was very clever and humorous, and it felt a bit more sophisticated, even though it was still quite goofy.

I don't know that I necessarily had a point in all of that, but hopefully it gives you more to think about...
Generally, I guess I'm saying that there is nothing universally bad about making something "light" or "shallow", and those can actually be more directly fun... But in the end, they still don't feel as deep or lasting as something that was more thoughtful. It's just two different things, really... And from the looks of your game so far, it doesn't look like you're attempting anything terribly serious.
But again, there are still ways you can make it feel a bit better... Like I said, I think my crashing-space-ships-into-walls game was more effective than my running-over-zombies-in-a-car game, because it was generally more clever (it was also a bit weirder, which made it stand out a little more).
I think because your game involves tactics and strategy, you're already heading in the right direction there... it's going to seem more intelligent than it would have if it were a purely action-based game.

I do still have some specific suggestions about the blood, though:
As it is now, it does look like something a lot of people would find to be gross. I'm honestly a little disappointed in myself for not being at least slightly repulsed myself; I've definitely become a little desensitized to this stuff... (Some people might not see that as a bad thing, but I would feel kind of inhuman if I wasn't still disturbed by some things... But I've gotten off track enough already, so I won't expound on that.)
I think you are decreasing your possible audience there, so it is a thing to be concerned about (although, having not finished anything many people have actually wanted to play, I am not really in a position to talk about audiences). Changing the color, I think, would go a long way in fixing that problem. I think a lot of people are bothered more by blood as it becomes more reminiscent of actual human blood... That's typically the case for me anyway, although the presence of blood in itself (without mutilated flesh and such) tends to not bother me very much; I think this is because I have seen a lot of it (I seem to have week skin, so I cut myself a lot on fairly mundane objects, and I also have a strange medical problem where I will bleed from my nose for fairly lengthy periods of time without an actual reason... but again, I'm getting sidetracked, and I'm talking about myself too much). At any rate, I feel like you could do two things to make it seem realistic (which, hopefully, will make it less gross):
1. Replace the color with something completely different. You might want to experiment with different things to see what works best (for example, I feel like yellows and browns might still look a bit nasty). If the color is pleasant enough, it might seem fun and kind of cool instead of gross (because the effect does look rather nice).
I think you should stick with a single color, though. A rainbow effect might be a bit too crazy!
2. Give it less texture. The splattered spots on the ground are quite detailed, and more realism, I think, is going to translate pretty directly into it being more repulsive. In addition, the higher level of detail seems to contrast with the rest of the graphics.
This transitions pretty directly into my thoughts on the terrain...

I really like the look of the walls as they are now, and I actually liked the floor more before it was changed... Yes, the background did look a bit flat before, but I'm not convinced this was the answer. Texture is not a bad thing, but it doesn't seem to match with what you're going for with everything else... And I don't think you should change the characters in such to match with the newer look of the ground (and the blood effects), because I think it would make things more stale. I liked the stark way everything jumped out to the eye before.
Now, a few more thoughts on coloration:
I feel that the ground and the walls should be similarly colored. If the ground is going to be blue, the walls should have a bluish tint. Otherwise, the walls stand out from the ground in a pretty awkward way, as if they were totally separate objects... and they're obviously not buildings or anything, so I don't think that's a good thing. Like I said before, if you're going to include more wall colors, it would be good to also have corresponding floor colors.


...Anyway, those are just some comments from one random guy; take whatever you want from them. If you don't find any of this interesting at all, I do apologize for wasting a small slice of your day... because this has been kind of a long post!

[RCIX]

I may be a little sensitive to this stuff here, but i thought you might want to hear from someone who's a bit more "conservative" in their views.

I'd say that's quite a bit overboard. The reason i didn't mind playing Alien Swarm is that A: there's not that much gore or blood, and B: it's mutant aliens who's primary goal is to kill me and my marines. I have good justification, unlike mowing down hordes of zombies as much for the gooey explosions as they're coming after me.

I don't want to come off as arrogant or a jerk or anything, just giving you my perspective . I think that if you came up with a less, um, "red" look like the abstracted look of your terrain/marines, it could be that much better.

[Alex Vostrov]

Thanks for your perspective RCIX.  It's something that I'll consider as I try to balance the art in the game.

[Alex Vostrov]

Usually I post about stuff that I’ve just finished.  I grab a couple of pretty screenshots and stick them for your enjoyment.  This probably makes the game development process seem nice and simple, like walking across a room.

Well, today I’m going to talk about a problem that I don’t have a solution to. Walls! I hate walls!

A couple of days ago I decided to improve the look of walls in the game.  I had a couple of ideas for this, but so far I haven’t come up with a solution that I like.  Let me show you some of the valiant attempts.



My first try was to add some texture to the walls, like I did with the background.  It’s a bit more interesting, but I still get a profound sense of blah from that picture. Yuk!



My next approach was to try some shading that I quickly threw together.  It helps a little bit, but I’m still unhappy with the look.  It somehow doesn’t fit.

I spent several hours fiddling with the shading settings, trying various combinations of smooth edges and sudden transitions.  Unfortunately, nothing really worked.  I think that I’m going to put the problem aside for now and work on something else.  This is probably the 3rd or 4th time that I’m shelving the wall work.

Hopefully I’ll get an idea that works soon.  Know any game that did top-down walls well?  Keep in mind that the walls have to be polygonal.

[RCIX]

I think that a sharp and defined yet small transition would give the look of walls well, but you'll have to fiddle with it...

[ness io kain]

I still feel like it would have looked nice if you had kept everything simple, including the floor (see my novella-length post on the previous page). Otherwise, you're going to want to redo all of the foreground objects as well, because the simplicity of them contrasts oddly with the new detail of the walls and floor.
If you do plan on sticking with this route, though, your second example isn't bad; you're definitely heading in the right direction with that, at least. I still think there should be more similarity in color between the walls and floors, though...

[ezuk]

Count me as another who liked your initial mockups from page 2 of this thread.  The flat art style reminded me of some of my favourite animation , Samurai Jack in particular.  The colours were muted but attractive, the characters and backgrounds worked well together, and the mock-ups had real style. 

If you do go with the textured look, please consider toning down the colours.  The bright blue, bright red, and busy texture overwhelm the unit sprites.  Making the wall and ground textures monochrome might help, too, as Machine Saint has pointed out.

I'm looking forward to this.

[Alex Vostrov]

I guess the reason that I moved away from the original simple look was that I wasn't sure if it was enough for a commercial game.  It seemed too simple to me.

[ness io kain]

It might be interesting to look at both versions of N+ as examples:
The XBLA version is more highly regarded; it's more popular and is generally considered a better game overall. The handheld (DS and PSP) version, as far as I can tell, was less successful commercially and wasn't enjoyed as much by critics or "ordinary gamers" (it's still pretty great, though).
The XBLA version kept the minimalistic visual feel of the original N, whereas the handheld version had graphics that were decidedly more complicated.
Regardless, though, they were both commercial titles, and they did well. I think Jonathan Mak's Everyday Shooter sold pretty well, too, and it has a pretty basic look. Oh, and Eufloria. I don't know how that did as far as sales go, but as far as I have read, critics loved it.

...Anyway, my point is that it being commercial shouldn't necessarily stop you from keeping the graphics stylish and simplistic. I honestly think there are a lot of people out there who would agree that it looks nicer overall.

[Alex Vostrov]

After my last post about wall woes, I tried a new approach.  The idea is to tile a lot of sprites along the edges.  Here it is:

[mokesmoe]

Looks good.
The specific combanation of wierd purple things and solid black doesn't look very good, but I assume this is just a proof of concept.

[Alex Vostrov]

Looks good.
The specific combanation of wierd purple things and solid black doesn't look very good, but I assume this is just a proof of concept.

Yes, almost all the art that you see in screenshots right now is a placeholder of some type.

[ezuk]

This looks like it could be interesting - far better than the shading or textures from a previous post.

I hope that we'll be seeing some mockups or more gameplay advances in future updates.

[Alex Vostrov]

Your wish is my command!  Let's talk about random maps.

It’s important to me that random maps are interesting in Infested Planet.  They’re going to be used in the skirmish mode and in the campaign, so there has to be some variety in the generator.  I was pretty proud by the map generation as-is, but some things bugged me.  For example, all maps were rectangular.  This was a holdover from when the game used a tile-based map.  Since I changed the map to polygon-based I’ve wanted to have non-rectangular maps.



A couple of days ago I finally made the maps have a random shape.  Here are what they look like now:



Another thing – I was so annoyed with the temporary interface that I changed it to something better.  The old one took up a large chunk of screen space and made it hard to take screenshots.



If you look carefully, you’ll notice some new elements on the map, besides aliens and humans.  I’ve been working on the campaign code, and that’s a part of it.  I’m going to talk about them more later.  In short, their purpose is to spice up the game and add some variety.



Another detail that you may have noticed is that there are no walls in the middle of the map.  That’s something that I’m reworking right now.  The old walls were all the same size and I want to add some differences in scale.  There are also some bugs in the polygon code, so I’m in the process of hunting them down.

[Alex Vostrov]

I heard that Attack of the Paper Zombies was mentioned at a PAX panel.  Thanks to whoever did it! Yay!  Now a bit about how the game is doing.

I’ve spent the last week working out the bugs in the random map generation.  Since the switch to a polygon-based map, I had to throw in some semi-complicated algorithms into the mix.  For example, I have to be able to merge the outlines of two polygons quickly and without errors.  It worked…sort of.  These algorithms have to be implemented fairly carefully, because they can blow up in special cases.

That’s what I spent the last week doing – generating random maps and waiting for the generator to blow up.  The good news is that 99% of  maps are clean now.  There are a few sneaky bugs left, but I’ll catch them eventually.  The result is that random maps look better than ever now – take a look.











The other thing that I’ve whipped up last week was the replay system.  The game is getting complicated enough now that it’s hard to debug.  I’d be playing a random map and at some point the game would crash.  How am I supposed to diagnose the problem if I can’t make it happen again?

To address this, I’ve made the game record all input – mouse movement, clicks and button presses.  I’ve been careful to write the game in such a way that it’s 100% deterministic – if you do the same things to it, you’ll get the same outcome.  This means that I can now load my replay files and reproduce the problems exactly.  This will save me a ton of time and make the final game much better.

The question, of course, if whether this will make its way into the final game as a “record game” feature.  That’s not as straightforward as rigging a debug system and it might take me a couple of weeks to polish it up to acceptable levels.  I don’t know if I have the time to do that, but it’s on a “wanted” list.

[Scut Fabulous]

Those random maps look excellent!  Do they need to be contained areas, or could they get strung together into like, meta-maps?

[Alex Vostrov]

I could add a passage to a different map in theory.  The game is fairly self-contained, though.

[Alex Vostrov]

I play with Infested Planet a lot.  I don't mean playing the game (I do a lot of that too).  A lot of times I'll spend a day tweaking particular unit or ability in the game, making it feel just right.  That's the story with a new weapon type that I added - the fusion rifle.  I just spent a couple of days making how those guys work perfect.

It all started with me feeling that there was a hole in the marine lineup.  There were a lot of powerful specialists, but the basic marine felt rather obsolete in the mid-game.  I have a strong aversion to "same thing but bigger" upgrades, so I set out to design something that would act roughly like the rifleman, but be distinct.



Attempt 1 - Walking Siege Cannon

My first idea was to give the rifleman the same bullet type that siege cannons use - powerful explosive bolts.  I called them "fusion rifles" and we were in business.  The idea of ripping through crowds of enemies with explosive bullets felt right in my head.  Unfortunately, when I coded it up I quickly saw a problem.

Why wouldn't I want to use these new fusion guys?  They quickly ground through anything in their path.  I planned for the fusion rifle to be the cheapest weapon, just one level above the freebie auto-rifle.  Obviously, I couldn't make it some sort of planet-killer gun.  I had to add some sort of disadvantage.

 I settled on two things - the fusion guys couldn't use grenades and they ran out of juice.  Basically, I saw these guys as sprinters and not marathon runners.  You'd sweep in with a team of fusion riflemen and blow stuff up while you had the power.  I experimented with lowering their rate of fire with time, but settled with taking away their explosions after the initial fight.

At this point I went to sleep, not quite happy with the feeling of the new weapon.



Attempt 2 - Flip it Around

Just before I fell asleep, I got a great idea for fixing the fusion rifle.  I'd try flipping it around - instead of getting weaker with time, the riflemen would warm up and become more powerful.  I jumped out of bed and wrote the thought down, briefly considering coding until the morning to make it happen.  In the end, I decided to sleep on it.

The idea turned out to be good, but a bit annoying.  I ran a lot of tests, timing how long it took for the new riflemen to capture hives, when compared to other weapons.  I even had spreadsheets with precise comparison tests.  My tests showed a problem in the new setup.

The best thing to do was to wait until fusion mode kicked in and then to run forward.  It still felt like a more powerful version of the rifleman and the mode switch was just a gimmick.  Every time you were kicked back to the "normal" mode, it felt like the units were weakened.



Attempt 3 - Edgecraft

I decided to take the new design and to really push it to the edge.  There are two main changes that I made to the previous version.

- The "cooled down" mode was given 50% more range, making it a mini-sniper rifle
- The fusion mode had its range chopped down to have ultra-short range, but with amazing damage

The effect, as I anticipated was rather interesting.  The fusion riflemen would engage the enemy at long range and then switch to fusion mode for explodey fun.

What I got in the end is a sort of futuristic berserker.  When the riflemen are cooled down, they are good for picking off targets from long range and skirmishing.  When they really get in trouble, though, they go nuts and start exploding everything in range.  Of course, since their range is really small, you really have to jump into the thick of things.  They tend to either kill the opposition of die in a blaze of glory.



I really like the final result.  It's roughly balanced, distinct from the auto-rifle and useful in both modes.  I think that I went through 10 or 20 different micro-versions of the fusion rifle in the two days to achieve this.  The funny thing is that you'll never see the stuff that I've taken out of the game, because it didn't measure up.  I should do a post about that sometime - the 90% of the game that you'll never play.