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[roketronz]

So we had a couple of days off this week, thanks to Carnival (yes, that’s totally a legitimate and valid reason!) and I took off to spend them in the rural and wilder part of the country. While I was there I started drafting up the first few mini-bosses of the game. 

We already had the designs for the monsters, but I took on the task of translating them into pixel art, and when you do that they usually change a lot. Drawing and illustrating are very different from creating something through pixel art. They are basically two different languages, and you have to know the strengths and weaknesses of each one if you want to do good work. You also have to realize that things are going to change a lot going from the concept art to the sprite.

I worked on three mini-bosses that will all have very similar mechanics. They are the Manticore, the Sphinx, and the Chimera. Here are the sprites I made for them:



The Manticore



As you can see, the body started off looking more like a greyhound’s, so I riffed off of the Nemean Lion to give it more shape and complexion.

The wings were a real pain. I thought I could just use the wings from the Harpy, but I soon realized that the two creatures keep their wings in very different positions when they’re idle and relaxed, so I ended up having to change them a lot. I started with white wings, changed them to black wings, and then somehow ended up with a completely different set of bat-like wings.

(Luckily, I was able to recycle that set of white wings and use it for the Sphinx. Otherwise they would have been a huge waste of time.)

The tail was pretty straight forward, as was the cloth that adorns the Manticore’s body.

As you can see, we took out the horn for the final version, as people would not stop pointing out that it looked phallic. (We are obviously very mature and professional here at CoffeePoweredMachine…) We also changed the face a little and we think it’s a bit more badass now, although maybe it looks a bit like Abraham Lincoln? 

The Sphinx

 

The Sphinx came together pretty quickly. We had planned from the beginning to use the same body for all three mini-bosses so that we’d only have to make a single running animation for all of them, and as such we just took the body of the Manticore and gave it a palette swap for the Sphinx. We also recycled some of the wings that we had discarded earlier while making the Manticore, so all I really had to work on were the torso, the jewels, and the snake.

The torso was by far the most difficult part here. I had to decide where the torso would emerge from the body, how the arms and shoulders would be angled, and I had to create a lot of other small details that were ignored – or rather, neglected – in the first draft. We used Artemis as a base for the size and proportion of the Sphinx’s torso.

We ended up scrapping the Sphinx’s arms altogether and just made the wings pop out from her shoulders.

I also had to raise the snake-tail a bit more as the wings were covering it up.

Finally, I just threw a lot of jewels on there, because, you know, reasons. 


The Chimera



Similarly to the Sphinx, the Chimera came together pretty quickly, mainly because the body was already done.

I struggled on two points with this creature:

The first was the head. The fire mane is going to take quite some time to animate, and working on fire has always been my kryptonite.

The second thing, as you might be able to tell, was the tail. I wanted to use the same snake as I’d used on the Sphinx, just to save us the time of animating another one, but it looked really boring. My second attempt didn’t come out much better, if you look on the sprite sheet it’s really rather ridiculous – it’s just a regular lion tail with the head of a snake.

In the end I went back and stuck to the original concept, and I ended up with this weird Rockewellian [~obscure art joke] snake-tail.  


Final results

 

And ta-da! This is how they turned out!  

This post was written in a hurry by @roketronz and then, as always, it was edited and proofread by @pfque_!

[SebastianGioseffi]

It's that jolly season once again. That magical time, when families gather merrily around the repository  and share amazing tales of commits of old. Yes, it is changelog season again.

If you remember our last changelog we had left off at  Version 0.4.0. There have been four versions since then, leading to version 0.4.4., the version we sent to the EGX Rezzed, but we are going to sum them all up here for dramatic reasons.

The biggest addition in these versions was probably Atlantis, something  you may have guessed from the last series of posts and we won't repeat here. However, a lot of other things found their way into the game while Atlantis was resurging from the depths, and here they are. Without further ado, we present you the changes from versions 0.4.1 up to 0.4.4. :



Hero Cages
Once in a while, while you are travelling through the monster-infested streets of Delphi, Ephesos or Athens you may run into a cage made of reinforced bronze. What is inside the cage? A random hero eager to join the mob if you destroy the cage! What are you waiting for? Free Adromeda and let her wreck havoc with the rest of the gang! Let Galen loose and wait for the healing to begin! The power is in your hands!

More Units
Roque has put his mad pixel art skillz to use and now he have new female defenders, warriors and philosophers!

Color Tint
Back in the old days, units in the mob would change their color like chameleons. Then they didn't. And now they do again. We use the color tints basically for feedback. When a unit is attacked it is painted red for a couple of frames. If it gets infected with the plague (Plague? Which plague? Well, keep reading below and you will find out). And if they leave the mob, they get greyed. It's an instant feedback and very hard to miss. For the win.

Lifebars
Units have always had a certain amount of hit points. Bad guys would hit them and they would lose hit points until eventually they would die. So they have always had a health stat that could be represented with the ubiquitous health bar. However, we never liked the idea of having to micromanage each unit, so that is why we chose not to show the life bars. You shouldn't worry that much about individual units, you should care about the mob as a whole. Also, having a health bar per unit would mean that there would be a zillion health bars onscreen, making everything very cluttered. And it was this way until quite recently, when Roque had the idea of showing lifebars of the units but only when their health is below a certain threshold. What this does is give you a very quick feedback of the current health status of the units in the mob. And how cluttered the UI becomes, corresponds to how worried you should be about them. If you see only a life bar or two, they won't bother you too much, and you wouldn't have to worry too much either. But if the screens starts getting filled with lifebars, then you are in trouble and should start looking for some healing pronto.

Slow Motion Effect
Because Okhlos is so next gen. Or so 1999. I am not sure. But the certain thing is that now when the leader dies, it will trigger a cinematic slow motion effect that will let you locate the new leader more easily in the middle of the mayhem (and if a leader died, chances are there was lots of mayhem going around).

The Plague
We'got a new hazard, the plague, which damages units and spreads throughout the mob if the units are too close to each other (much like you would be expect from a plague). If we are to be accurate, the plague is not technically a hazard, it is more like a new status for the units, the plagued status, that can be triggered by some hazards (plague infested chunks of meat spread throughout the map, for instance) but also by the attacks of some enemies. The idea of the plague came up while we were testing some changes in the core mechanics, and it eventually grew until becoming a full fledged feature as it is now.

Pathfinding System for the Enemies
– Is there a house between you and I? - said the cyclops - That will no longer stop me from clobbering you. I now have the ability to go around it!

The Phantom Mob
We have a new item! We have been calling it the Phantom Mob item so far, although it has absolutely nothing to do with the Phantom Menace (we solemnly swear that there won't be any Jars Jars. Well, we swear there most likely won't be any Jar Jars. Disney has been making very tempting offers...). Back to the item. What it does is create a squad of phantom units that join the mob temporarily. You use it and ... BAM! You now have a bunch of spectral guys ready to kick ass for you. At least for while, until they return to the aether from where they came from.

Lots of new Voice Effects
Yup. You can now listen to the mob roar, cheer, scream and yelp as they go around doing mob things. Gordon made a bunch of them and he keeps on making even more so get ready to listen to the sound of the mob in all its glory!

And the rest of the changes that do not deserve a separate paragraph (mostly because if they did, this post would end up way too long, much like this title)

• Units now jump a little when they join the mob (it would seem they are very enthusiastic about the prospect of an becoming part of an angry mob).
• More juicy on prop and building destruction.
• Tutorial stage completely revamped.
• The way to stop Apolo's special attack has changed (much more intuitive now).
• The mob now has an onscreen stats showing the accumulated attack power, defense, speed and HP of all the units.
• Hero presentation FXs.
• New minimap graphics.
• The camera now gives you a little more room in the distance in which you move the mob.
• Enemies now hate props a bit more.
• The mob no longer has an onscreen stats showing the accumulated attack power, defense, speed and HP of all the units.Artemis has a new special attack.

In addition to this, as always, there was a fair chunk of bug fixes, tweaks and minor additions that we won't even mention, plus a couple of big changes that deserve a separate update so stay tuned for them!

 

Finally,  do you remember that Okhlos was going to be showcased at the EGX Rezzed, as part of the Leftfield Collection? Well, that is happening right now! So, what are you waiting for? Go, go, go!

[rek]

The Phantom Mob
We have a new item! We have been calling it the Phantom Mob item so far, although it has absolutely nothing to do with the Phantom Menace (we solemnly swear that there won't be any Jars Jars. Well, we swear there most likely won't be any Jar Jars. Disney has been making very tempting offers...). Back to the item. What it does is create a squad of phantom units that join the mob temporarily. You use it and ... BAM! You now have a bunch of spectral guys ready to kick ass for you. At least for while, until they return to the aether from where they came from.

Perhaps name them after one of the rivers or fields in the Greek afterlife – the Stygian Horde, the Kokytian Shades, the Asphodelian Redeemed...

[SebastianGioseffi]

Perhaps name them after one of the rivers or fields in the Greek afterlife – the Stygian Horde, the Kokytian Shades, the Asphodelian Redeemed...

Nice! They are all awesome sounding names. I particularly like the Kokytian Shades (and the lament thing of Kokytos goes really well with the spectral thing).

[roketronz]

Hey gang!

It's been a while since we last talked! (Actually... we kinda talked last week.)

Last weekend we had the great honor of showing off Okhlos' at the EGX Rezzed event in London! Well, actually, we weren't there personally, but the game was! It was an amazing opportunity for Okhlos and we want to give a big thanks to Dan Da Rocha, Cissy, and Dom for taking care of our little game during its trip to England and for helping us make this happen! It almost felt like we were there ourselves!

We also wanted to thank our Swedish friends at Glitchnap (who were at EGX Rezzed showing off their own game, Sentree) for offering to babysit Okhlos and keep an eye on it. Even though we didn't up needing their help thanks to Dan, Cissy, and Dom, the gesture itself and the willingness to help meant a lot to us! You guys are amazing!

And one last round of thanks to the EGX Rezzed Leftfield Collection staff for selecting Okhlos and inviting us to show our game at their event! We were very proud to present there and to be surrounded by so many other great games! If you happened to see the game there, please let us know! We'd love to hear your impressions.

Well, our British adventure and all those thanks aside, at the end of the day this is still a Devblog [citation needed] and we have to spend at least a little time talking about the nitty-gritty - the hard and dirty business of game developing. This week we talk about verbs. In particular, all the great new ones we've introduce into our game!

(To tell the truth, these verbs have been in the game for quite a while now, but Sebastián made me realize that we'd never actually talked about them here!)

The idea of adding more verbs actually came from Daniel Benmergui. He was trying out our game and playtesting it yet again (poor, poor fella) and he told us that while it was good that we were tweaking and balancing the elements we already had, there still weren't enough things for the player to do. There weren't enough verbs!

Daniel began asking us hard questions. What actions should the player be able to perform? Should there be more of them? If so, what should they be? Finding the answers actually took a lot of time and work, but we think we've got it right with these new verbs.

Please note that we are  not talking about the current verbs in Okhlos, only the new ones!

Attack!!

This may seem pretty obvious, but there's actually a catch to this one. We already had an attack action before, but it was linked to moving. When you moved the mob, the mob would automatically attack whatever it ran up against. With this new approach, now the mob can move without attacking and can attack without moving. This creates interesting new scenarios and options that we couldn't have had before! (Yay for us!)


Protect yourself!

The complementary opposite of the previous verb - this verb makes your units block attacks! Defending yourself from an attack makes everyone in the mob all stop at once, which might make them easier targets for a little while, but at least the enemies' attack will hurt a whole heck of a lot less!

I have to admit, the animations for this one are real cute. :3 You know what wasn't cute though? Going back through all 100+ units in the game and designing a brand new blocking sprite for each of them! It was torture! D:


Disperse!

Disperse! Finally! All the new verbs are cool in their own way, but this one is my favorite. This action makes all the units scatter and spread out. You can use it to escape, to attack several enemies at once (so cool!), and for a couple of other things we'll explain below:

In previous updates we talked about plagues and poisons. In order to stop them from spreading through your mob and infecting everyone you'll have to disperse your units until the compromised members heal themselves or die off.


Up until we thought of the disperse action, philosophers were the only units that could recruit more units. Now, however, everyone can! This is actually how the earliest prototypes of Okhlos worked - every unit could recruit more units - but back then it felt a bit too chaotic to us and it seemed that players would have a hard time knowing who they were recruiting. However, we've reconsidered our opinion since then and we've come to two conclusions:

1. Being able to disperse but still having to grab each unit one-by-one felt pointless and overly complicated.

2. Chaotic is good enough for us! 

We adapted the negative units to this change in the recruiting mechanic. We've nerfed their negative effects now that they're harder to avoid.

The sense of chaos feels good, it feels right for the game, but we'll probably have to work a little more on letting the players know what units they're adding to the mob in the middle of all that mess.

And those are our new verbs! What do you guys think? Please let us know, we're always happy to hear your feedback!

Thanks again to everyone who helped us with Okhlos' little trip to London, it was a great formative experience for our growing game!

See you all next time!

This post was written - poorly - by @rokentronz and soundly beaten into proper shape by @pfque_

[roketronz]

Hey gang!

You might be asking yourselves where we’ve been these past few weeks, and I really wish I could tell you, but the truth is: we’ve been working on some really exciting super secret stuff for Okhlos! We can’t tell you about it just yet, but rest assured that what’s coming will be really, really cool!

Unfortunately though, all this exciting super secret business has been taking up a lot of our office hours and leaving us exhausted, so we’ve been far too tired to keep up with updates here on the dev blog. That’s why we’ve been so quiet lately. We’re starting to wrap up Okhlos and as we’re getting closer and closer to the finish line we’re realizing that, sadly, there’s so much to do that we just won’t have as much time for updates as we did before.

/Brutal Honesty Mode: OFF

That said, there are still plenty of updates to come - and some very interesting ones at that! - so worry not, ye faithful reader.

GRABBING ITEMS

As you know, in Okhlos, items are temporary power ups that you use in the heat of the moment to help you through tough spots.

For example:

Say you’re surrounded by cyclops – throw a bomb! Blow ‘em up to smithereens!You’re about to get hit really hard by a harpy – use an Aegis to make yourself invincible for a little while! Don’t put with that bird-brain!


In Okhlos, most of the humor - much like the rest of the game - hinges on the premise that you’re trying to control an unruly mob and that as such, things will get messy. We use the mob and its different units to poke fun at the nonsensical structures of society and social class and to make fun of how even in the midst of chaos and anarchy everybody sticks to their assigned roles and positions, no matter how hypocritical or terrible they might be. One of our units, in fact, is the slave, or servant. They are the only unit in the game that can carry items. (Because I’m sure the philosophers are too busy thinking to do any heavy lifting, right? Bastards.) They can each carry up to one item and if you run out of empty-handed ones then you won’t be able to pick up any more items until you’ve used one up.

By looking at your mob you should thus be able to see how many items you have, what items they are, and how many spots you have left for picking up new ones. The slaves aren’t particularly powerful units on their own, but they are essential to playing well and getting through the levels. You’ll definitely want at least a few of them around for those really tough situations.


Slaves carrying items. circa IV BCE

Aside from holding items, up until now slaves have also been the only unit that’s been able to pick them up! This meant that in order to get an item you had to walk over it with a slave unit. (The slave itself didn’t have to be empty-handed – as long as you had one slave unit that was free to carry the item, any slave could pick it up and it would instantly pop into the free slave’s hands.)

This, however, was a bit of a pain. There is no way to manipulate units individually in the game, so getting a slave to walk over the item could take several attempts, wasting time and effort and frustrating the player with a menial task. Sometimes the player would try a couple of times unsuccessfully and just assume they didn’t have an available slave, when actually, they did! It just wasn’t intuitive; a lot of players took a while to clue in to the mechanic, and would naturally try to pick up items using the leader unit instead. This player behavior continued despite tutorials and the player’s level of experience.


After some thinking and a few helpful suggestions from our friendly translator and editor, Pablo, we decided: What the hell? Why fight it?

So we’ve changed things around! Now the leader unit is now able to pick up items and pass them on to available slaves all on their own!



Now if you see an item and you have an available free slave, you can grab it easily and without any hassle!

And if you don’t have any available slaves, now the game will tell you so!



 What do you guys think of this change? It’s definitely less ‘realistic’ than picking up items with slave units directly, but it’s a lot more intuitive!
(And thankfully for us we were never aiming for realism in the first place!)
(Wow, could you imagine?!)

Well, that’s us for this week! Please write us! Follow us on Twitter! Like us on Facebook! Send us your love! We need it! We crave it! 



The first draft of this post was banged out quickly by @Roketronz and then slowly and lovingly groomed to beautiful adulthood by @pfque_. That poor unlucky sod.

(He also makes games, you know? You can try out his latest one here – it’s a tiny twine game about a faucet that was made for Twiny Jam.)

Drip by @pfque_

[rek]

And if you don’t have any available slaves, now the game will tell you so!



 What do you guys think of this change? It’s definitely less ‘realistic’ than picking up items with slave units directly, but it’s a lot more intuitive!

I like it, but maybe the pop-up should be a bit more direct in its meaning. I could see this being confused for an instruction ("you can pick this up") rather than an alert that you lack slaves, and thus can't pick it up.

[roketronz]

I like it, but maybe the pop-up should be a bit more direct in its meaning. I could see this being confused for an instruction ("you can pick this up") rather than an alert that you lack slaves, and thus can't pick it up.

Mmm...I think you are right.

I'm trying to think examples for this, maybe a grey slave icon? The grey slave thing with an annoying sound?

Maybe a red X in addition to the grey slave?

I think the red X alone is not enough. It simply states that you cant grab it, and doesn't tell you that you need slaves to pick that up.

Thanks for the feedback and bringing this up!

[roketronz]

Good news everyone! We’ve just launched Okhlos’ pre-order and Steam Greenlight campaigns! The pre-order campaign is full of amazing tiered rewards and super cool 3D dioramas to explore! You can view it right now at http://okhlos.com and vote for Greelight here.


Got Steam installed? Click here to open it directly on Steam! 

What’s in the pre-order campaign? Besides buying the game in advance, it’s an opportunity for anyone to become involved with the game. Through the campaign's lower tiers players can gain access to Okhlos' closed beta, which we'll be announcing soon, and to its Original Soundtrack, created by A Shell in the Pit. Through the higher tiers you will have the chance to become one of the game's characters, either as an angry mobster or one of its leaders! 

So, what are you still doing here? Go and check the pre-order site and marvel in Okhlos’ wonders! (or you can see a description below)




You will get a digital, DRM-Free copy of the finished game upon release (PC, MAC, and Linux) at a 33% discount plus a Steam key when Okhlos is made available on Steam. You will also get access to the game's closed beta which will be announced soon. (You're also getting an additional 0.3333333333…% discount which we weren't even going to mention, but we thought you should know just how nice we are. ;p)




Turn up your speakers! Blow out that boom box! Wake up the neighbors with your 5.1 surround sound system! If you pick this option, aside from a digital, DRM-Free copy of the finished game, a Steam key, and access to the closed beta, you will also get a digital copy of Okhlos' Original Soundtrack by A Shell in the Pit. Take the sound of the mob along with you wherever you go! KAPOW!




Have you always wanted a chance to stomp your foot in Zeus' big, ungrateful face? Well, here's your chance! Send us a photo and we will turn you into a game unit! You'll have the chance to become a citizen, fighter, defender, slave, or even a bureaucrat! You'll rampage your way across ancient Greece as part of the mob, delivering chaos and mayhem upon your enemies*, striving to defeat and overthrow the tyrannical gods! You'll be included in the game's Encyclopedia with your name and everything! Careful though, only 100 people will be able to snag up this opportunity of a lifetime, so don't hesitate or it'll pass you by!
 

*Some chaos and mayhem, as well as some clobbering, stomping, and frying , may also be delivered onto you.




There is nothing more exhilarating than being a part of a righteous mob that delivers great vengeance and furious anger upon its enemies… or is there? Only one thing can top being part of a rowdy, devastating mob – and that's leading a rowdy, devastating mob! If you pick this option you will be one of the 30 lucky people to be included in the game as one of Okhlos' philosophers - the mob's leaders! Can you imagine the power? The pure, unlimited power!?* 

  
* Power limited by the mob, technical limitations and the rules and regulations of the state of Massachusetts. The chances of your character getting clobbered, stomped or fried will also be considerably high.


Do you have questions about the pre-order tiers? Check our FAQ page and/or contact us!

[roketronz]

In only 6 days OKHLOS has been Greenlit! That's huge!!! Thanks all of you for your incredible support! This couldn't have been possible without you!!(and sorry for the pun)

[roketronz]

In case anyone missed the previous update, here is the gist of it: OKHLOS GOT GREENLIT !!! And only six days after we launched the campaign!!



It's been a extremely frantic and tiring week but we are ecstatic. First and foremost, the overall response was great. Many long-standing Okhlos supporters turned up once again to vote and share the news. The response from the local community was great. More than once they would beat us, sharing news in different sites or forums! And at the same time, we found lots of people who had never heard about the game until now,  and fell in love with it. It was wonderful to read all the comments and messages. So we thank you all for that! 

Steam Greenlight is not the same of what it used to be when it first started. Many more games are getting greenlit every week, for one, which gives you much better chances of getting among the top games. But, at the same time getting noticed these days has become increasingly harder. Putting a game on Greenlight is not something that Kotaku or Gamespot are going to write about anymore. But this is not to say that there are no news outlets or sites that write about Greenlight anymore. We found out that many sites are stilling willing to write about a game on Greenlight, if they find the game interesting enough. 

The first articles that begun to appear when we launched the campaign were at Pixel Dynamo, this news bit at Gamers FTW, or here at Load the Game. Not long after that some larger sites wrote very nice pieces about Okhlos. Like at Okhlos: My Big Fat Angry Mob at IndieMag. And then Killscreen gave us Okhlos Turns to Ancient Greece to Explore the Phenomenon of Mob Mentality. Neat!


Like Killscreen, many sites covered Okhlos!

Then we were delighted to see that Megawacky, who runs the  webcomic Bits & Bytes, devoted an entire strip  to Okhlos! You can read the Okhlos, and the whole webcomic, which is full of game references and jokes, at the Bits & Bytes site!Another guy who showed once more how amazing he was, is Pixel Prospector. He runs one of the best, most comprehensive sites on the planet with resources for indie games. That alone is enough to put him in our good list for good. But asides from this, he runs a pixel art devoted blog called Pixel Artus, and this week he took over Tumblr with a series of Okhlos' gifs (more than five hundred likes and shares!).


Bits & Bytes preview (Spanish only, sorry!)

Something very interesting we discovered these days was that we got a very large number visits, votes, comments and likes from different places spread from all over the world. We expected most of them to come from the US (where most gaming sites are from, and Steam users are from) or Argentina (Hi, mom! Thanks voting us!) but we were surprised to find, for instance, that IGN Africa wrote about the game, where the Greenlight Brigade highlighted Okhlos among the best of the weeks roundup. Or that, at Game Guide France, they published a very comprehensive piece about Okhlos. Or that a games' blog from Japan, Shibayama Blog, which is quite big, also pulled up the news about the game, followed by lots of tweets and comments in Japanese. Neither where we expecting so much visits from Russia. But a curator of pixel art works posted about Okhlos at VK (the second largest site in all of Russia and one the largest in all Europe) so visits started pouring from there.


Are you really posting screen captures of gaming sites?

The best part of this is that it is not over. Just yesterday, the amazing Richard at Games Freezer, who had already played Okhlos at Rezzed and wonderful words about it, and now he did it again. And a few minutes ago, just before we hit the publish button, we heard the fine folks at Checkpoint published this beauty of an article (in Spanish). So, we can't stressed how happy and thankful we are. It's wonderful time to be part of the angry mob of ancient Greeks. 

Now time to get back to work! Somebody has to finish this game!

This post was written by @SebaGioseffi

Here is an actual screen of the game!

A few Automatas locked in fierce combat! Click to enlarge!

[team_q]

Awesome! Good job dudes! 

[roketronz]

Hey gang! How’s your week been?

Ours has been really busy! We’ve been concentrating hard on how best to display information to the player within the game.

As you might or might not have noticed, we don’t really like to pat ourselves on the back here at Coffee Powered Machine, or give ourselves too many compliments. We really try to avoid it.

…But having said that, at the risk of sounding a bit pretentious, we have to admit something:  we are trying to make something pretty new and unique here. Nobody has made a game quite like Okhlos before. Even though you may gather up a lot of people like in Katamari Damacy, or you may control a lot of units like in Pikmin, the similarities end there. Our game is fundamentally different.

As such, we don’t have a lot of examples to follow or existing parameters to use as guides. This has made Okhlos hard to develop. Very hard, actually.

Every new step we take is a step we have to test, gather feedback on, and see how well people understand it.

It’s very much the same process when it comes to displaying info in the game.  It’s easy enough to show a ‘nerf’ status ailment on a character or even a few characters – but it’s very hard to display it over 50+ units without it looking horrible. Sometimes we try to display information as a Real Time Strategy (RTS) game would and that’s hardly ideal. Okhlos isn’t an RTS game, it’s pacing is fast and dynamic where an RTS’ is methodic and plodding.  It’s almost the complete opposite. So we’ve learned to handle each piece of info on a case by case basis, always looking out and checking for a few things.

For example:

• It has to be a visible effect – you gotta be able to see it. Can you see it?
• You need to know when the info or the effect is still relevant and active and when it’s not.
• It can’t block or cover too much of the screen - you need to see where you’re going.
• It can’t be a dominant color, that’s too strong.
• Etc., etc., etc.
• And so on and so forth…

There are a lot of “rules” that have started to emerge from the systems we’ve created and the ways in which they interact. They’ve become our own little mythological monsters and we’ve got to wrestle and defeat them just as the mob would. (Mob pride!)

Take the following for example:

Aegis Shield

The Aegis Shield is an item that gives your mob invulnerability for a certain period of time. (Don’t ask me how long. I honestly don’t know. I’m the artist, the creative visionary over here. Ask Sebastian. He’s the numbers guy.) While the item’s taking effect we somehow have to display invincibility and let the player know intuitively that the item is working. We have to use a color, a graphic effect, or something of the sort, and we also have to show when the item is beginning to wear off.

When we first created the time, Sebastian quickly did some placeholder art and that tided us over for a while, but when I later had to take on the task myself, the first design turned out something like this:



And here is what it looked like when the effect was wearing off:



As you can see, the effect is very obnoxious and covers up most of your mob, making the units hard to see. It’s definitely less than ideal. The symbols we used weren’t great either. They’re a shield and two plus signs, which aren’t very legible or easy to interpret. They got in the way and just bog things down.

So, in the end, we decided to take look at the classics and actually ended up using the effect Sebastian had originally come up with as a place holder. It just goes to show. You never know just what ideas will stick in development.

This is what it looks like:

 

This is how it looks when it wears off:



The effect I designed was a little clearer about when it was wearing off, but for the most part, Sebastian’s design simply feels better. The one big drawback is… well, that we’re half-tempted to add a ~certain~ little tune to complete the retro vibe and just make it

! (Wink wink, nudge nudge, know what I mean? Say no more.)

(Yes, I’m afraid we might just have a very juvenile sense of humor here at Coffee Powered Machine!)

Sebastian was kind enough to make a color editor for me, so I could change around the colors of the invincibility effect without having to venture into the dark depths of hexcode:



What do you guys think of the effect? Too retro? We’re still pondering it over and are very open to suggestions. Let us know what you think!

And as a last note before we go, a little word of caution – NEVER dismiss a programmer’s placeholder art until you’re ABSOLUTELY POSITIVE you’ve made something better. They might know something you don’t. (As much as one might hate to admit it.)

Catch you guys around next time! Like us on Twitter! Follow us on Facebook! We might not know how to use all this new-fangled social media, but we need your good old-fashioned love! 

This post was written, poorly and misshapen, by @roketronz, and soundly beaten into shape by @pfque_ .

[ryansumo]

Kudos to you guys for managing to keep up this devlog despite all the work you must be putting into the game.  Seriously, I don't think a lot of people understand how much time and effort it takes to keep this up.  Your Argentinian empanadas must be giving you extra energy! 

[roketronz]

Kudos to you guys for managing to keep up this devlog despite all the work you must be putting into the game.  Seriously, I don't think a lot of people understand how much time and effort it takes to keep this up.  Your Argentinian empanadas must be giving you extra energy! 

Hahaha! Thanks for the appreciation! Nice of you to mention this! Indeed is a lot of work (and have in mind that I'm not that good at English, so lots of our texts must be checked twice just to be sure ). But in the end, we really enjoy what we do.

And yes, the empanadas help a lot! We still order empanadas every Friday!

#empanadasfridays

[roketronz]

Hey gang! How’re you fine folks doing today?

Welcome back to the fantastic, bleeding-edge, always on-time Okhlos dev-blog!

This week we want to talk about two little things: the Mob Mentality Meter and the Morale stat. They’re two elements of the game that you might’ve noticed by this point but that we’ve never really talked about or explained. We’re going to fix that today and tell you a little bit about how we’ve pared them down and combined them to make the game even better!

The Mob Mentality Meter!

You’ve definitely seen this one if you’ve been looking at our screenshots, watching the videos, or tuning in to the

Also known as the ‘Mob Meter’ or the ‘Mood Meter’, the Mob Mentality Meter is the little bar at the top of the screen that denotes how much energy and furor your mob has:
It was a cool pool party for the Cool Mobs at my school!

Depending on how many units you pick up, how many enemies you kill, and how much property you destroy, the meter will go up and down throughout play. The game starts you out at ‘Cool Mob’; from there the more chaotic and unruly and big the mob gets, the more the bar fills up, passing through Reckless Mob, Frenetic Mob!, and finally MEGA CHAOTIC MOB!

Originally the idea was that each of these stages would award you a small damage bonus and these would start adding up to make an important difference in the game. We haven’t gotten around to implementing that yet and the idea is still on the table - we’re unsure if it’ll make it in at all – but we do have a very tangible reward in the game for making it all the way MEGA CHAOTIC!

You get to demolish and tear down buildings and just raze everything to the ground!

We may have sunk a few hundred hours into Rampage as children. Can you tell?

Nothing is really quite as satisfying as that, don’t you think?

However - not everything is fun and games and destroying houses! You’ve also got to be careful your mob doesn’t get bored! A mob that hasn’t smashed anything in a while or found new recruits is likely to become a Depressing Mob, and as we all know - depressing mobs are no fun! No one wants to be part of a depressing mob. Units will slowly start leaving your mob if you’ve become Depressing, so you better find something to smash or a new recruit to liven up the place - and you better to do it quick! 


Sure, misery loves company, but misery also likes going back home to curl up on the couch and binge on Netflix.

The Morale Stat

Now, unless you’ve been paying reaaalllllly close attention, you probably don’t know about this one. It’s one of the more obscure and hidden-away stats in the game, and compared to Attack, Defense, and HP, it’s harder to puzzle out what it does for your units.

Morale is the stat that determines how likely your unit is to abandon the mob when things get tough. When a big hulking enemy puts its foot down and tries to intimidate you, Morale is what determines whether a unit flees in terror or sticks it out to fight for you. When you’ve run off to the other side of the map and a unit has lagged behind, Morale determines whether it runs after you to catch up or whether it shrugs its shoulders and finds something easier to do.

(We also have a few hazards that deal with and affect morale… but we’re not quite ready to talk about those yet. Stay tuned in to our devblog for this juicy secret! ;p)
 

The Problem

So, nifty little systems you might say, right?

Right!

However, something was bugging us the other day. We were watching

when we noticed something that made us rethink how these two mechanics work and interact together.

Let us explain:

It’s purposefully difficult to raise your Mob Mentality in Sparta – definitely harder than it is in Delphi. That’s part of the challenge of the stage, and Sparrow was struggling with it for a bit. His mob was getting depressed and he struggled to keep the meter up at ‘Cool Mob’.

Searching for a way to keep his people happy and motivated he came across ‘Parmendies’ in the game’s shop – a philosopher unit that raises your Morale by 25%. He made the obvious association: ‘Morale is what raises your Mob Mentality!’

We immediately slapped our foreheads.


Seeing it play out in front of us, that association makes complete sense! Morale is the word one would use to talk about one’s confidence and zeal in the face of hardship and opposition. If there were a stat that raised the Mob Mentality Meter it should totally be called Morale.

But there isn’t. And it’s not.

So Sparrow paid the hefty price for Parmenides thinking his Mob Mentality would boost up and he would be rid of his pesky problem, and then, well… nothing changed.

This was our fault. Our handy-dandy list will illustrate why:

• The word ‘morale’ is confusing.
• The stat isn’t intuitive to understand.
• It’s used very little.

So, burdened by this great dilemma, we huddled together, talked it over, and put our brains to work on a solution.

The Solution!

Well, it was pretty easy actually. We figured Sparrow was actually kinda right. The Morale stat should totally boost the Mob Mentality Meter.

So now it does.

This not only gets rid of the meddlesome confusion and makes the game more intuitive, but it also adds functionality to a stat that wasn’t really seeing much use. That’s great! With a very simple change we actually improved the game on several fronts and reinforced our game mechanics by consolidating them!

Hurrah! Who ever said this game development thing was hard! :D

(Just kidding – this stuff is terrifyingly hard and difficult and oh god there’s so much math and nothing is ever really done and we have to test and test and test and it takes ages and aaaaaaaaaah someone please save us! D:) 


Well, this was our insightful, bleeding-edge, desperate plea for help this week! I hope you’ll join us next week for a bit more fun and misery! Meanwhile, check us out on Facebook and twitter, your likes and follows help us a lot! And please throw @pfque_ , our resident writer, editor, and translator some peanuts for penning this beautiful blog post while we were busy making games! (And not binge watching E3 pressers~ )

[roketronz]

As some of you may have heard, this week  in  São Paulo, Brazil, the largest indie gaming event of all of South America is taking place:  Brazil Independent Games Festival. This is exciting news for any indie game developer in the region, but we are particularly excited because out of more than almost 700 entries, Okhlos was selected as one of the finalist, and is running for the Best Gameplay category! 
 

In this category, we are competing against these fine videogames: 

A Good Snowman Is Hard To Build by Alan Hazelden & Benjamin Davis



 

Klang by Tinimations



 

Big Action Mega Fight! by Double Stallion Games

https://youtu.be/LnVygtVgmv8 


Circa Infinity by Kenny Sun

https://youtu.be/bQKeNF8ph8E 

Most of the games haven't been released yet (just like Okhlos) so we haven't had the chance to play them yet. We are looking forward to give them a go at the festival. However, based on the trailers alone, you can already say it will be a very tight match!

Once again, thanks to the people of Big Festival for choosing Okhlos as a finalist! Wish us luck!

Brazil, here we go! 

[ｂ∀ ｋｋｕｓａ]

Your game is so much better compared to the others.
i hope your game wins!

[SebastianGioseffi]

Okhlos won best gameplay award at Brazil Independent Games Festival!

We are thrilled to announce that Okhlos, was chosen from among 700 hundred competitors from all over the world as the winner of the Best Gameplay Award, at the Brazil Independent Games Festival.

Brazil Independent Games Festival (BIG Festival) is the largest one of its kind in Latin America and the third largest in the world, with almost 700 hundred submissions this year from countries from all around the world. Of the games submitted, 50 were chosen to be showcased at the festival. Last night, during a ceremony in Sao Paulo, 9 awards were presented, and out of the 5 finalists in the Best Gameplay Category, Okhlos arose as the winner.

The festival’s official site, which should be updated with the winner’s list soon: http://www.bigfestival.com.br/

We promise to do a more comprehensive post about this, and our experience in Saõ Paulo in the future, but right now, we wanted to share this awesome news with you guys!

 

[roketronz]

Hey there! 

As you might already know, a few days ago Okhlos won the Best Gameplay award at the Brazil Independent Games Festival (mandatory weekly braggin). This was huge news for us. We spent almost a week in Brazil, São Paulo, and enjoyed the heck out of the festival. We are working on update about our whole experience there but that is not what I want to talk about today. 

At around the same time we got back home, local newspapers picked up the news, which is also awesome. As expected, they gave a nationalistic twist to the news. "Argentina Wins Videogame Award". So far, so good. The thing is that one the news outlets that posted about it is the second largest newspaper in the country, with a print-run in the hundred of thousands and over a million online followers. As you might expect, there were tons of comments everywhere.  We got lots of nice comments and words of encouragement, but, at the same time, some people started trash talking the game. And not just the game itself, but also pixel art and independent games in general. 

Why the hate? You can argue that internet will always be full of trolls and haters, but on the subject of these comments, our friend @antennariagames said something that made a lot of sense: "[...]I want to emphasize (again) that the comments here are not criticism of the game, it is not about "you always get criticized" (which is true), but it's about that there are too many people who think they know about videogames because they play them, but they don't know about the existence of an independent movement, and they don't know to evaluate it in terms of expression, only in terms of production. An independent game to them is garbage, and when it gains artistic relevance, and even economic relevance, it might seem so absurd to them that they end up banging their heads against the wall because they can't cope with the idea that this movement exists and it is something real (get out of the tupperware effect)".  

So, we are totally OK if you don't like our game. We are totally cool if you hate pixel art and don't even want to try the game. We don't pretend to exercise a homogenized taste. And we deal with negative comments in the best possible ways. But some of the comments here were so ridiculous that we had to do something. So we took the best ones, and we put Monty Python characters in it. 

Now, before reading the comments, keep in mind that:

A) We didn't reply to any of these messages. We let the love flow.


B) This is not about taste or aesthetic choices.


C) The game is not available yet, so none of these people played the game. They only watched our (year old)

. 


That being said, here are the comments' highlights!






For the young ones, this is a screenshot of a colecovision game. As you can see the comparison is absurd. I don't use so much magenta. Nor black.