TIGSource Forums

* Final Release Update *

So "The Lost Light of Sisu" will be released for Nintendo Switch and Steam (PC) on the 27th of February. Super exciting for me since it's the first game that I have ever released! :)

Release Trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sx4uTfGiMRU

Steam:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/876150/The_Lost_Light_of_Sisu/

Nintendo Switch:
https://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/the-lost-light-of-sisu-switch

Screenshots
Here are some screenshots, you can find more in the press kit: Sisu Press Kit (https://www.solvarg.com/presskit/index.html).

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1ZtzZ4ju-GaLvzfzBe3XmZy3EW1ldnPXL)

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1onc0Kkn3cOKOAJkLBkq-q0Pv1BOGE75b)

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1AMOZec_avvrgjpcUZBBSMNH7bvKRedlo)

* * Initial post * *

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BSVhEYW9qY3lRMnc)

The Lost Light Of Sisu is a heavily physics based puzzle platformer set in different alien environments.

Story
You are on your way back home when the ship loses its energy. Because of this you need to land and search the nearest planet for a new source of energy.

After beaming down, you find energy cubes that will power your ship, but also change your abilities.

To collect all of the energy cubes, you need to use these level-temporary-abilities and solve physics based puzzles.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BdDM0N19HWGZfSkU)

Gameplay
You can move left, right and jump. You can also roll up hills and cling to walls.

On each level you need to collect a certain amount of energy. This energy is radioactive and affects your abilities.

To collect all energy cubes, you need to use these level-temporary-abilities and many environmental physics based systems.

Features

• Character is fully affected by realistic physics.
• It's a mix between a platformer and a puzzle game.
• The energy only alters your abilities for the duration of the level.
• Using physics to create interesting solutions and gameplay.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BamRSaE4wRGVmSms)

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BSkhMejB5eXR0Q2c)

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BcmJZS0o5cHplSEk)


Tech
Im using:

• Unity as game engine.
• Blender + Paint.net for graphics.
• Audacity + LMMS for music and sound.
• Git + bitbucket for source control.

Graphics
I am currently working on going from the prototype graphics into the final graphics. It will look more like this:

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BN3lWNURqOFlzOFU)

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BdmVydEpfbzF5a3M)

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BbFdUdldIQnZNeXc)

>>> DEMO <<< (https://andersnord.itch.io/the-lost-light-of-sisu)

I am really looking forward to be sharing my progress with you guys. I will be posting about tech solutions, graphical things and sound/music production. I regret not going on here earlier, but hey. Better late than never :)

I usually don't like 3D graphics much, but I like the alien world you created, especially the pink and orange one!  :)

Looking forward to seeing further progress, combining the gameplay with the environments. :)

I really like this one, particularly the lighting in the cave.  The overhang gives a great impression of entering underground.

I am glad you like it, even though its 3D! The vibrant colors make it pop, but it may be a bit too much on the eye? I might have to tone down some of the colors for its final version, hmm..

Yes! Im hoping to be able to integrate them in a nice way.

Thanks for the feedback Waru :)

---

Its cool that you get the sense of entering a cave. I was thinking of maybe changing the music when entering these caves, kind of like in banjo kazooie or underground mario levels. But also might be wierd :-\

Thanks for the feedback AaronB :)

As a Finn I feel the need to ask: how did you choose the word Sisu? Was it random, or does it have some meaning within the game? Figured you might have heard of the concept as a Swede.

From wikipedia: "Sisu is a Finnish concept and cultural construct that is described through a combination of various English terms including stoic determination, grit, bravery, resilience, and hardiness."

It can also be either a sort of candy or a truck
(http://cloetta.studio.crasman.fi/pub/web/images/tuotekuvat/Sisu+36g+Xylitol_angle_2015.png?c=400x460)  (http://sisuauto.com/wp-content/uploads/polar_nappi.jpg)

Hi!

Yes, I have heard about the concept and thought that it was a good fit for the game. The story is basically that the protagonist is on their own, far away from home and needs to bring home the cargo, no matter what. They will endure they pain of picking up the radioactive cubes. They will not stop for anything until this cargo has been delivered despite the fact of being all alone on an alien planet without any way of communication.

Apart from that, I personally think that Sisu is a really beautiful word (or name). And I have seen it used sometimes by companies, but not the ones you showed. Interesting :)

I hope you dont mind me using this word?

Sounds like the protagonist has plenty of sisu, so using the word is fine by me  :).

Great, I am glad to hear it :)

#Update 1

So yesterday I was working on trying to find the right feeling for the graphics (colors and geometry). Im not sure I got much wiser, but here are some different versions. Its really hard to both find colors you like and highlight whats important in the scene to the player. Any tips?

All feedback is much appreciated :)

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BMUtBTlQxVm9WMjQ)

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BMk52dTRuUi1zSGc)

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BNnR6Y28xUHhkOFU)

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BMk5oQ1dtclBKSDg)

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BRHZITXlsdmw4MEk)

This one looks best to me.  Having subdued colors for the world makes it easier to use lighting to draw the players attention.

Yeah, thats a good point! I think I might just have the first level take place during night to make it easier for the player to know whats important in the game.

Thanks! :)

Just played the demo for a bit, really fun! Good controls and interesting game mechanics (buoyancy puzzles were neat). It was fun having the "ah-ha" moment when I realized the little collectible trinkets were affecting my movement mechanics.

I played about half of the demo, so I'm not sure if you added this, but maybe one of the collectibles could make you sink faster and allow you to sort of "swim" underwater? Not sure if there are interesting puzzles to be made with that (maybe not), but could be fun.

Thats a good suggestion! The idea is that Im adding new cubes with different abilities when the player reaches new points/worlds in the game. So if there will be a water-heavy world, it might fit right in.

Thanks for trying out the demo and providing good feedback :) much appreciated!


#Update 2
So last friday I kept on working on the graphics and I think I ended up with something that worked pretty well for a first level. Attracting the player to what is important in the scene (Energy cubes! :beer:)

Here are some images from the final result:

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BQkdLa191YmRzYmc)

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BOHZYeVRGZVU1RW8)

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BYjRyZ1I4NnpsNHM)

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BbmpYQmZBTlF6Z2M)

#Update 3

So far this week I have mostly been working on adding audio to the game. Things like walking, jumping, rolling and collecting pickups.

This video also gives level 1 a quite nice overview.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4STiJs7lFU

#Update 4

Yesterday I mainly worked on trying to give the main character a bit more life-like feeling.

I dont think I ended up with anything final, but here are some different prototypes. Which one do you like the best?  :blink:

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BSndCdktzT09icEk)

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BeVpCME5GZXVqUG8)

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7Ba2EzSHZVNFlBNHc)

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BSUgyQ2l2aUM0anM)

And here are some quick sketches:

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BeldZcmRvTUtTNEU)

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BX0VJVWZ3Y2JBVjQ)

Personally, of the 4 character GIFs, I really like the third from the top (the plain cube with the 4 "legs"). It looks like the cube is standing up and running, I think it gives the character the most "life". The first GIF is nice though too, makes the cube look kinda like a ghost :o

I actually kept on working a bit on it, and I ended up with something similar to the third one. I will update with a post tomorrow I think. Thanks for the feedback, great to hear that you felt the same way about the third one :)

#Update 5

Alright, so here is the new character animation. More still needs to be done, but I think its a step in the right direction.

New animation in action:

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BdVkxaHEtUmdodEk)

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BeTRDOXdLbmxiWFk)

I have also finished level 2 mostly. Only a few minor things left to fix there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yrZ7_TMt-Sc

#Update 6

Updated the character animation again. Added some bobbing up and down which makes it feel more alive I think. Probably needs some more work, but good for now. Also created the third level and added some new trees.

New animation in action:

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BaE5wdEhSOTJTdlE)

Also finished first version of level 3:

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BRzNpV242QmlnSXc)


Log and Pine tree models that were added in level 3:

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BQnZraWdrb3NfN2s)

I really like the direction where this is heading. Can't wait to see more.

Did you consider using a starry dark night as a skybox? I feel like it would be cool to see stars or a moon in the background. You can alternate between that and the mountain side.

Im glad to hear it ;D

Yes, I have been thinking about adding something like that at a later stage. And when you put it like that, I can really see it being a good idea for the atmosphere. Thanks for the tip :)

#Update 7

Almost done with level 4. There is interactive water in this one, which turned out quite well. It will potentially be hard to see whats under the water though.. hmm   :blink:

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BSDZIQThlWTNOdXM)
Level 4.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BLUdVOEFnS3ozSXc)
Player floating in the water.

#Update 8

Yesterday I worked on a tool for switching gameobject to prefabs in one click.

I also had a lot of trouble with baking light maps. Seems like Unity 5.5 is not very good at this when some geometry is getting too big (Like my level-geoemtry). Not sure how to solve this at the moment.. Any tips?  :shrug2:

This appeared when I got the idea of having light coming through the holes in the wall. But since the lightmaps did not want to finish, Im not sure how to proceed.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BQ0dJYUtnUnpqeXc)
First version of level 5.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BRHg4Rm1WQkVqb00)
Light coming in through hole in wall.

#Update 9

So thursday started out with one of my meshes being messed up from repository cleaning.. so I made a new better one, which I had planned anyway.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7Ba1NOVDdQNk1scmc)
Messed up trees.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BN211dUZoMWNzeU0)
New big pine model.

Then I started working on level 6. I have tried different approaches to create the level-mesh and I think Im starting to find a good work flow.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BQWFYNDJZNENTRjA)
Started blocking out level 6.

The controls look amazing, and I like the backgrounds. However, to be very honest, I'm not totally convinced by the main character, even with the fun walk animation, it still feels like a cube (well, it is a cube). I understand it may not be your goal, but I would be very curious to see that with a more credible character and good animations. (I saw your mockup for an improved character, but all of them still feel very cubic, yet I think it should be possible to have something a lot more alive while still keeping the possibility to make it roll into a vague cubic shape.)

Ah I see. I have been trying to make the cubish character look more alive, but I totally understand what you mean. It would be nice with some animations for running and such, that totally shakes off the cubic shape(I really want it to feel like a credible character). However, a big problem appears when the cube rotates, which messes up all animations. It also needs to be a cubis shape, since all of the physics and logic is based around that. Right now im doing all the animating in a shader, which has its pros and cons.

At the very least I will try adding an eye that is animated. I think that will add to the "alive" feeling.

Thank you for the kind words and the honest feedback , I really appreciate it! :)

I'm not sure at all, but I think you're on a good track for that "alive" feeling with your sketches, maybe if you just round a bit those sharp edges it could change it quite a lot, while still keeping the global cubic aspect. Then when the character rolls, you could curl inside its characteristics (tail, head, wings...), and deploy them again when he stops? (I have a very vague idea how this all works so I may be totally wrong, I just used this technique on a old prototype of mine for a party game, with cute "lizard cubes" (?) that could dash by rolling very fast, all curled up).

Ah, yeah I think I understand what you mean. If you do it right, it sounds like it could look really nice. Thanks for the ideas :)

#Update 10

Last friday I:

• Finished level 6.
• Found a nice way of altering the player-path-edges without having the geoemtry cut into other object. Or where the player is moving.
• Boxed out level 7.
• Boxed out level 8.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BODVEUHBMOV94Ylk)
Finished level 6.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BRWF1OW5RU0VVbkk)
pointy edges on player path.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BRHI1SzE0NmNDVFE)
Blocked out level 7.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BUXRseWVoTXF1YzA)
Blocked out level 8.

#Update 11

So yesterday I automated reference finding of energy cubes and interactable objects (things that needs to tick every frame) to make it more convenient when having many levels.

I also boxed out level 10 and 11 (Boss level). I think level 9 needs to be remade, so havent decided what to do with it yet. Maybe just cut it out of the game.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BbE1NaVQ1OUZqZXc)
Logs in the water.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BNkhjTF92UHVGbUE)
Blocked out level 10.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BYzdZaWNsWjVvaDQ)
Blocked out level 11. The boss level!

#Update 12

I implemented two new things yesterday as well as finishing level 7 and 8.

1: There is now a fade in and fade out between each level. This actually made a big difference for the overall feeling.

2: The player cannot enter wall-state when in water anymore. This was due to issues with player getting stuck between tight areas when wanting to jump from the cieling of caves.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BWnJNbVhnSFpoY1E)
Finished level 7.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BM3U4c0huSDhBWFU)
Finished level 8.

#Update 13

Finally finished with the main graphics remake of the first worlds graphics. Level 10 and 11 was done yesterday.

Also updated graphics for the wind and added positions for all the secrets. (Each level is supposed to have one secret/extra thing to collect. Kind of like the band aid in Super meat boy). Not sure yet what it will affect though  ???

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BS3hyNUsyeXZLQ3c)
Finished level 10.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BQXAtQ211ZVRtTWc)
Finished level 11.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BWnc1SkRIUzVObnM)
Visuals for wind.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BMm8tR19nTFRVYW8)
Accidentally found this version when trying to make wind. Potentially cool for some eletric storm or attack?

#Update 14

Finished visuals for the beam and started working on the visuals for the spinning "enemies".

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BNk9McGRUMzNqMWc)
New visual for beam.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BcEFFbWVpOUtkUXc)
Suggestion 1 for spinning enemies.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BTTR0OEEyZ3dXQ2c)
Suggestion 2 for spinning enemies.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BOTVuUzJkRGRRbVE)
Suggestion 3 for spinning enemies.

I do like suggestion 1 the most (suggestion 3 looks a bit too aggressive), even though its a bit thin and draws too much attention to itself. Probably not the best visual representation of when it will start to affect the player physically either. But when you put them all together as I planned to.. damn, there is a lot going on.. :wtf:

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BbFJ5Rm45RUZEMG8)
Suggestion 1 in game scenario.

This is all looking real nice!

Thanks! These kind comments truly helps keeping the motivation up :)

#Update 15

So I have been away this week, but I have been able get some work done. I have been able to finish the first iteration of "Spinning enemies" at least. A big part of it was also to try to make it look ok with multiple stompers next to eachother, since I often put like 5 in a row.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BZUdTYUhtVlVQdDQ)
1 - 1.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BRXNsUzhfNmJ3djg)
1 - 2.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BdXkxdnpVS2hRaEE)
2 - 1.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BWWRMRTFDV3M3MFU)
2 - 2. -> FINAL VERSION FOR NOW.

I also tried using some physics to get the rotation of the roots right. But it just ended up being very unpredictable. It was kind of expected, but hey! You gotta try new stuff :)

I got this kind of nice rope-liana thing going. Might use that for later.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BMk1ZOWlhd1VxckU)
Physics bloopers.

#Update 16

Now I have finished replacing all of the "spinning enemies" that are pushing you back in different ways. This time its the "Spinning Pusher" and the "Spinning Pendulum".

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BN2NrcXF3STQ5Mm8)
Spinning pushers.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BU3JfQTczUXYtVHc)
Spinning pendulum.

#Update 17

Currently working on getting the main character up to speed with the rest of the graphics. This means jumping animations and adding something that makes the protagonist feel more alive.

Some different jump animations that I tried out

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BWlJ1NWlWUDltdFk)

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BeV9Bb1BPZDRiTWs)

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BQlFqdF9IQV9YUnc)
The one Ill probably choose for now.

#Update 18

This time I have tried to add an eye to make the character feel more alive and like a creature. There were a few issues that shaped the solution.

One was that I needed the eye to be a separate mesh from the body. That made it look wierd though, since the eye didnt jiggle along with the body.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BdVAxSDB6Wjc1dmM)
Stiff eye.

So the solution for rather small time frame ended up being closing the eye when running. I really like the effect though, it almost feels like the character is just running for it. being afraid.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BbzFtNllkU2paTUk)

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7Bd3pxWjlGYWJ4TEE)

And this is just a still image that I happened to get when pausing the game. I though it looked pretty cool, almost like a poster  :handthumbsupL: ;D :handthumbsupR:

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BWWRLaENlcndHS0E)

The "legs" on the cube are pretty great. They remind me of that pajama dance gif (http://i.imgur.com/StnEq.gif). Adding a bit of squash and stretch (http://wyongedu.weebly.com/uploads/2/8/4/6/28464083/516591383.png) to the jumps could be pretty awesome too.

Hey! Thanks for the tips and feedback, appreciate it!
Totally agree with the squash and stretch. I will hopefully have time to look into that soon.
And its very clear with the images :handthumbsupR: ;D  :handthumbsupL:

Maybe a bit too clear with the pajama dance, haha  :lol:

#Update 19

I have started working on the world map where you will choose which level to play.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BejhKMmZLU0QxVzQ)
First prototype of world map.

So basically what I do is using the x and y position of the spaceship (grey cube) as longitude and latitude. Then I convert to the cartesian coordinate system from the spherical coordinate system.

Here is a C# code snippet:

#Update 20

I have kept working on the world map. The numbers above are supposed to symbolise which level it is and the numbers below how many energy cubes the level contains. I might change this since it might be a bit unnecessary to show the energy amount before hovering above the level.

Concept
The idea is that you will be able to go straight to the boss if you wish. But to get to the next planet, you need a certain amount of energy cubes. This means that you might only need to finish 7/10 levels on world 1 to proceed. I hope this is a good thing to keep people from getting stuck.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BWmlBclgxZTNTdmc)
Updated prototype version of world map. In the end a level is selected.

#Update 21

Worldmap has been updated and has now a menu and also updated graphics. Still a lot of work to finish on it, but here are some different stages it has gone through:

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BM3NmaTZWemNsb0U)

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BQ2NHTy1WX0FSSGs)

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BbE1obkNHMG84bUE)

Place, scale and rotation tool
I felt that it got a bit tedious placing all those trees, so I created a simple tool that:
1 - Checks where the planets surface is by raytracing towards center of the planet.
2 - Moves the tree to that location.
3 - Rotates is randomly.
4 - Scales it randomly.

If anyone is interested in the code, just let me know.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BdlpaVlhBV1NQdkU)

I can't see the images  :-\

Hmm thats wierd  :-\ I have asked some friends to check and it seems to work for them. Maybe it just takes some time for the images to load?

Is it only on page 3 you cant see them, or is it all images on the dev log?

I can't see none of the images from the dev log

I'm watching the thread from an Ipad, using Safari explorer, I don't know if that has something to do

That doesnt sound too good.. and you can see the images on all the other dev logs?

One of my friends that tested visiting this dev log was on an iPhone using Safari, and he said it all worked fine. So if you can see images on other dev logs, I'm not sure what to do  :(

I really appreciate that you let me know about this issue, I will see if I can try it out on an iPad somehow to see whats wrong.

#Update 22

I have removed the information about how many energy cubes each level contains since I felt that it mostly cluttered the view. Also it did not feel that important to show the player when I though about it a bit more.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BbEtXUlVuLXhBaWs)

Saving progress

After that I needed to add a save feature for each completed level. So that when you restart the game, your progress will still be there. It was also necessary for being able to know if the player should have access to and be able to go to the next planet.

So now it works like this:
1 - You fly to a level on the planet and enter it.
2 - Once you complete a level, that progress is saved and you return to the planet-view to choose a new level.

The progress is shown by turning red levels into green ones at the moment.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BUF9iRHQzbGRqQ1k)

I can see the images from other dev logs with no problem, I don't know why

Edit: I tried visiting this dev log but from my Samsung Galaxy phone using Chrome, and I now could see the entire dev log, images and everything

It is strange that you have no problem with other dev logs. Maybe it has something to do with how I host my images..?

Anyway, Im glad that it works on your phone. Thanks for the information :)

#Update 23

So lately I have had my hands full with things related to something I cant talk about yet, but soon :)

Anyway, apart from that I have been working on fixing graphical bugs where meshes cut through other meshes, fixing logical bugs and updating minor things in general to make the game feel more polished. Below are some examples of what I have been doing.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BN1BPX1NCMnpYRms)
Added discrete outline to energy cubes to make sure that they are visible against all backgrounds.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BQUozOHdmNkxzcXM)
New look for the swings. Will update these more later probably.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BTnNVUFRUMHFTZGc)
New look for the water logs.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BUm53Sk9LcXpaRVE)
There were a few levitating spinners in the current 10 maps. Solved this one by adding stones in the background.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BY1FxSS1QUmpwTTg)
Added a bottom to the beam-mesh. It was visible when detracting the beam.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BMnBRMm9nSmx0NXM)
Shadow acne from blender models.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BbXpPOG5IbkZ6NnM)
No shadow acne when changed settings for the main directional light. This seems to add a bit of "peter panning" though, but in my cases it seems unnoticeable, hence neglectable. (Bias = 0.1 and Normal Bias = 0).

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BTW9FRF9hem1TczA)
It is also possible to run off the map for a bit longer now before the map resets. Also a small fade has been added before restarting.

#Update 24

So this time I have made some changes to the main character. First of all, it does not change color anymore. This was initially though of as a debug-tool showing me the different character states. Also, I have added a swim and on wall animation to make it possible for the player to recognize these states.

Because of this, I have changed the color to a more blue-purple-ish one. What do you think, is it a good choice?

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BRlVhODJFblg3RVk)
Animation state indicating when on walls.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BbHFiVy1tOTQ4VlE)
Animation when swimming.

New demo

I have released a new demo, version 0.2.0. Woho! ;D
I have some conflicting thoughs about how some major things are in the game, so all feedback would be so very welcome!

>> DEMO << (https://andersnord.itch.io/the-lost-light-of-sisu)

Thank you for sharing this demo! I really enjoyed it. In some respects, it felt a somewhat like a cross between Super Meat Boy and Ori. It reminds me of parts of both games, in different ways.

The walking animation + eye on the box are awesome - I love it! I'm really looking forward to seeing how this project evolves.

(By the way, it's cool to see another developer from the Stockholm area. I did gamedev in Stockholm for a while until just last year. My studio co-founder is from there.)


Onto the feedback - A lot of my feedback has to do with level design stuff at the moment:

Not sure why, but I initially had a lot of trouble with the green platforms, to the point where I thought I was missing something or doing something wrong. When I eventually got the hang of the green platforms though, I found them fun...However, it's pretty punishing in level 8 when you fall all the way down and have to wall jump back up!

(I truly failed at the green platform in level 9. It felt like the small blocks were getting in the way. Also, a minor thing - with the positioning of at least the one green platform in level 6 - I couldn't jump directly from the wall to the platform. Instead, I vaulted right over it.)

It feels somewhat tedious to get pushed back by the spinning pushers. I can't remember exactly now why it felt tedious, but I wished they would instead push me back in one swoop, so I could more or less "skate" back. Speaking of which, the spinning pushers don't have much consequence - they would carry more weight if they were made out of razorblades or something else to inflict death. :) Then I would take more care to actively avoid them.

It also felt a little tedious for the spinning pushers to be placed close to edges/corners...right where a player might want to stand before timing a jump over them. Maybe that's an intentional part of the design though. :)


It felt "clunky" to roll uphill (slow anyway), but in a strange way, I kind of like it. I'm curious to hear what others think of it because I could see some players finding it too slow.


I really enjoyed the cube that makes you jump higher, especially for jumping back and forth on the walls. (It feels tedious to wall jump up high walls with the regular jump.)


My co-founder, Manne, played through the demo too, and we chatted about it and both felt that there are some interesting opportunities with the abilities of the different cubes. It would make for some interesting puzzles to require the player to change out one cube for another cube, rather than simply collecting them. I'm guessing though that it's something you have planned for future levels?

Anyway, thanks again for sharing! It was a pleasure to play!

First of all, thanks a lot for taking your time playing the game and writing this feedback. It means so much.


I actually had super meat boy in mind as one of the inspirations, and Ori is such a great game too, so that makes me glad!


Thats great to know since it is kind of and unconventional animation style created  procedurally from code. I wasnt sure it felt alive enough.

Oh thats cool, but also sad that you left. Where are you based now, if I might ask?


Great feedback. Its comforting to know that you enjoyed the green swinging platforms, even though I need to improve the level design a bit. I feel like I understand why really well in your explinations as well, thanks!


The one swoop part is interesting, I will look into that.

I see how killing the player would force the player to be more careful. And I have thought about it, but one of the games more interesting features are(in my opinion) that you dont really die, unless you jump off the map. I hope this means less stress and less irritation. You just need to redo that small failed part. But if this has the concequence of having the player care less about timing and such, I need to find some solution to it.

Some placements are intentional for sure, but I will have an overlook again. I dont want it to feel tedious, thats for sure.


This one is hard. Most people tend to not roll that much. They start jumping instead. And this is a problem actually, since it most likely means that people find it rolling too slow.. nice observation!


Thats true. It is kind of a problem in later levels when you have felt the power of the cubes affecting the jump and speed. (Might be before as well, but I think it adds on to it). I havent really heard it before though.

About being able to drop a collected cubes and combining the correct ones definately opens up for more puzzle-like solutions. And I agree that it would be nice. I even thought hard about implementing it a while back. But what I dont want to do is overshoot my scope and end up with a couple of years in dev time. Its a really hard line to walk. But your suggestion have had me thinking about it again.. so well see what I end up with. Becouse I also agree that its hard to create puzzles now when you cannot drop a cube, the solution becomes very linear. But it also simplifies it by a lot.

I am sorry for the late answer. Im currently out travelling, but I try to read tigsource every chance I get.

Again: I really appreciate your insightfull feedback, it has already helped me and ignited new thoughts and ideas. Many thanks  ;D

Not a problem! I'm looking forward to your future demos and updates. I'm very interested in seeing how this game evolves! The physics and design of it seem really fun!


It made the most sense for us to start our indie studio in the US, though we're traveling around the Asia Pacific for a year+ at the moment.

Just finishing up 3 months in Thailand and headed down to New Zealand next week (for a quick vacation), then over to Australia before circling back to Southeast Asia for the rest of the year. (We're looking forward to meeting indie devs in NZ & Melbourne since there aren't as many in Thailand!)

Where are you traveling at the moment?


I do agree that death seems somewhat out of place for the pacing of this game, though off the top of my head, I can't think of anything that would really cause the player actively to avoid the pushers and wouldn't be frustrating (such as death or losing, say, a cube). I'll try to mull that one over. :  )


It makes for an interesting pacing challenge, level design-wise. It seems like a particularly fun game to design for!


Makes a lot of sense. Maybe you mentioned in an earlier post, but I'm not sure at the moment - Are you aiming to make multiple worlds or focus on making a certain number of levels for one world type? I believe you mentioned something about wanting to incorporate different alien environments.

Yeah, I'm not entirely sure what you're shooting for in terms of scope. There may be a good way to pace the levels to incorporate a limited number of puzzles, but as you mentioned, puzzles may not necessarily be what you're after in the long run. Maybe you have some other plans for the mechanics you introduce via the cubes?


Inga problem! Hope you're enjoying your travels! I'm glad the feedback helped at least some. I really love the direction you're heading with your game! Hope there's another update soon!

Ah I see. Wow, that sounds like a really cool trip to make! And you work on games during that time?

I'm travelling Japan for 3 weeks. Currently in Kyoto, such a nice country :)

Thanks! Yeah, it's a tricky one. But its good that it has my full attention now when I do playtesting!

Exactly. So the plan is to make a couple of more planets with different cubes and different environments which in combination creates new types of puzzles.

I think puzzles is a rather loose term in this case. It's not like suduko or crossword puzzles but rather small challenges where you have to think about how physics comes into play. Still thinking about it though.. but I do want a decided set of challenges which I can then introduce and combine to make it more challenging,  if that makes sense (:

Thanks, you too! Sounds like you are and going to have such an adventurous year!

It really did, thank you. Now I'm psyched to get back to work when getting back home. Then the updates will start coming again :)

#Update 25

I am back from a 3 week long trip to Japan and super excited about getting back to work!

Participating in Stugan 2017

First off I have some exciting news to share which is that I have gotten into this years edition of Stugan :) I feel really lucky but also very nervous about it, but in a good way. You can read about this years participants here:

>> Stugan 2017 << (http://www.stugan.com/stugan-2017aaa/)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxveLWv-xJ4

I will keep updating this dev log when I am there, which might hopefully be interesting for you guys.

New worlds
So when I traveled I still did some work on the game. Mainly thinking about what the upcoming planets/worlds should be like.

My thoughts at this time are:
- World 1 - Forest
- World 2 - Ice
- World 3 - Lava
- World 4 - Jungle

I will introduce two new cubes with unique abilities in each world. The main focus of the cubes are to change the conditions enough to make the player think about the level in a different way. For example, in world 2 I will intruce a cube that makes the player heavy. This means that the player will not jump as high, crush ice if falling with enough speed, sink in water etc.

This could be called some kind of puzzle, but not in the traditional sense. I have decided that the puzzle parts will be created from the environamental physics based systems. A simple example would be that in world 1, you need to jump from a high enough place to reach the energy cube floating far beneath the surface.

Ice planet

I will be focusing on the ice world because that is the one I am currently working on.

So the main concept introduced in the ice world is ice( :o ). This means less friction and also some interesting opportunities to alter the forest-worlds environmental based physics systems enough to make the player recognize them, but still face a new challange. Here are some gifs that explain the core idea of how the more frictionless ice will affect gameplay.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BSVZFT0VQd1lZTWc)
Current prototype map for initial ice world concepts.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BUmVRWjVLSlpnRGc)
First hardcoded prototype for rolling on ice.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BNFZlTjFQdzdqX28)
First prototype for sliding on ice walls.

The cubes I want to introduce are:
- Heavy cube -> Makes you sink in water. Makes it possible to crush ice.

- Gravity cube -> Changes gravity. Makes it possible to walk on the roof an reach other parts of the levels.

These cubes will also counter act on eachother. So if I have a heavy cube and collect a gravity cube, I am back to the normal state.

Here are some early level prototypes to describe how they might work:

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BTGt2S2diVWlqZ0E)
First cruch the ice to get the gravity cube, then grabbing a heavy cube to get back to the ground.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BcE9OVzNxSkxCaHM)
First sliding on top of ice layer. Then grabbing a heavy cube and crushing ice.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BTmMwdzkwbzFqaVU)
Some potential use cases for ice.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BcXJtMkVrMV9YRDg)
Proposition for color scheme.

Linux demo
I have also added a Linux x64 build to itch as well :)

>> DEMO << (https://andersnord.itch.io/the-lost-light-of-sisu)

Final words
I hope this log entry wasnt too hard to follow, but I really wanted to mention and include this stuff.
All in all it feels really good to be back and I will try to get back to my "one post a day"-schedule.

Please feel free to comment and give me any opinions you might have on these subjects :)

#Update 26

Yesterday I started looking into how to differentiate between different surfaces and how the character would behave. Sliding on ice did not work by just adding a lower friction surface, since I move the character by adding force. So what I am currently doing is raytracing downwards to find out what type of ground the character is on. This "system" could also be utilized for playing different sound clips when walking on different surfaces, for example.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BeTlPbURBTlIyRW8)
Rolling on different surfaces.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BaGFKd2lJS2dRcEE)
Sliding on ice.

I love how simple the character is!

I tried version 0.2.0 of your demo and had a pleasant time until the end of level 4! After picking up the final energy cube, I experienced massive lag the rendered the game unplayable. The lag is there after the level ends and even after I restart the application.

Aside from that problem, I really enjoyed what I got to play! Especially after picking up 2 yellows and a red! Keep it up!

You're game looks super cool, I really like the animations you've done for your main character. It gives it so much personality.

Thank you for taking the time and trying out the demo, I really appreciate it!
I am glad that you liked the character and its simplicity, it has worried me that it might be too simple.

I am sorry about the issues you experienced, I havent heard about it happening before. Sounds like a major issue though, so that worries me.

I dont seem to be able to reproduce it myself so if you still have the game, and find time, I would really appreciate if you could email me the ouput log file. Its located under "TheLostLightOfSisu_v0.2.0 -> TheLostLightOfSisu_ver_0.2.0_Data -> output_log.txt". email: [email protected]

Also, if I might ask, which operating system are you using?

Again, Thanks a lot for the feedback, its great that I know about this issue so that I can be on top of it if it happends again :)


Thanks a lot! I have been worrying about how the main character will be percieved. If its enough with just having an eye and no mouth etc. So hearing this makes me so happy  :shrug2:

#Update 27

I have re-added the gravity cube (that existed in some older prototype versions) and a heavy cube.

New cube abilities

• Gravity cube - Alters you gravity/makes you ligher. Time to start thinking about everything upside down :)
• Heavy cube - Makes you heavier. It is no longer possible to walk on the normal surface, unless you are under water. You sink to the bottom of water, but are still able to swim (somewhat :lol:)

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BMEFGaldkSWZSRzg)
Picking up a heavy cube.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BYlpIVW42Sm01ajA)
First picking up gravity cube. Then heavy cube to return to normal gravity state.

#Update 28

I have prototyped crushable ice and the first two levels that will introduce the gravity and heavy cube.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BUHpveFdMZHZYQ28)
Crushing ice and sinking after picking up heavy cube.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BdjAxWnJ2YTFSVFk)
Pushing ice to solve reaching gravity cube.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BSkY4Vnp2OHNsV0U)
First ice world level introducing the heavy cube.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7Bai16UzNVWUJNelk)
Second ice world level introducing gravity cube.

#Update 29

I have been working on a prototype level for the ice world which includes many of the mechanics which this world will offer. So here are some examples :)

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BOGx3UFowN19lcE0)
A test course for ice sliding challanges.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BdG04MTZRaEo0WEE)
Rolling under water and jumping up slope with heavy cube.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BTVdfd1VXVlpKN0k)
Using swings when possesing a gravity cube.

Infection color

So the logic behind the infection has been that when you pick up a red cube, the character becomes infected with a red pattern. If you then pick up another red cube, the infection spreads more. If you then pick up a yellow cube, there will be another infection which is yellow.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BZW1ZMzRENGFkS3c)
Infected from picking up a red cube.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BUG9HY1ZQdHVhOGM)
Infected by two cubes and showing two separate infections.

This did not work for more than two cubes. Or was at least causing a bit of headache for me. This is all written in a shader and would only grow in complexity as more cubes (hence more colors) gets added.

So the solution I came up with was to blend the colors of the cubes that got picked up.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BVFVfcmRrVTZzdzg)
Infected from picking up an orange cube.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BV1hPbjdQRmQ0dE0)
Infected from picking up a magenta cube.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BY19MYmV6ZWUzcVk)
Colors are blended into one color.

So I think this worked ou pretty well. The character gets less cluttered with many different colors, and it is maintanable for the adding of future cubes. It might remove some of that "infectous" feeling from before. It might also be a bit more confusing. But the main reason for adding it in the first place was to make sure that the player understood that the picked up cube has infected and is affecting the character. And I think it still fills that purpose since it workes in the same way when only one cube is collected.

#Update 30

So yesterday I tried to find some fun things involving pillars and rotating blocks. Here are some of the things I came up with:

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BMkVWRGEwcFFjcnc)
Jumping forward on some rotating blocks.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BdTQxM3hkeG1VOFk)
Jumping backwards on some rotating blocks.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BTEtpZmMwTlZ5Qmc)
Jumping on falling pillars.

I also started looking into falling ice and some dynamic enemies. Not fully sure yet how they will behave, look or work. But usually it figures itself out when you experiement with the initial thought. Unless it turns out not to be fun, then its time to scrap (usually :) ).

By the way, congrats on getting into Stugan! Can't wait to hear how that goes.

The new design concepts look like a lot of fun to play around with. Hope to try some of them out in the next demo. :)

Thank you! ;D  I am starting to get really nervous but also excited.

Its great that hear that the design concepts looks fun to play. Hopefully the next demo isn't too far away (but probably a couple of weeks at least).

#Update 31

Yesterday I generally kept on fiddling with the ice world concepts.

I ended up having some trouble with stuttery and jerky AI movement. The enemy was set to be a kinematic rigid body and used the "Rigidbody.MovePosition" method in a FixedUpdate loop. I have read different theories on how to solve this problem, but could not get it to work properly. I did however realize that I probably want to have the enemies being dynamic rigid bodies to simulate a better (and more fun) fish-behavior. So hopefully that will work out better.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BWHhsSWRBS1Zqd0E)
Avoiding falling ice.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BZmlCcFFNZXI0dW8)
Getting outsmarted by that clever flying fish AI!

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BMTMxSnF4b0ZsSFU)
Jumping on iceblocks floating in the water.

#Update 32

So I kept on working on the fish AI and I am not sure where I have landed really. Its behaviour is too random at this point I think, even though it can create some really nice moments. It becomes unpredictable (good or bad) but also unpredictable in the sense of me not being able to rely on that it will keep the player from crossing a water obstacle.

I think its going in the right direction, but I need to make it less random.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BcHhwaDczc3dqX0U)
Fish in water this time. Still aggressive though.

I also added the possibility to push icicles down from the roof. They should hopefully protect you from the fish.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BTnJObktMX29hbkk)
When it goes right..

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BUVdZZ1ZOWTVuTWs)
When it goes wrong.. kind of.

Also, under water currents have been added to make for better water-obsticles. They hopefully work well together with the fishes as well.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BOEZQYTJteEZyZVE)
Under water currents.

#Update 33

A new enemy under the code name "ice bear" has been introduced. It is basically a land based obsticle which should stop the player from passing unless they possess the correct cube or solve it in a clever way.

I added the possibility for the bears to carry an energy cube. You need to possess a heavy cube to be able to make them drop it. I not sure about this and will keep on testing it out today. Somehow it feels unnecessarily complicated.

I also updated the fish by adding a nest, so its possible to see where it originates. And also a sort of visual representation of the area where it will be aggressive and attack you.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BU2JOYlpta2hOajg)
Getting past bear by walljumping and pushing ice.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BTnhNcV9TRHJBV1k)
Steal cube from bear by possessing the heavy cube.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BbXZVWFNnSm5VblE)
Updated visual representation of fish with nest and aggression area.

Map graph representation
During the weekend I also started looking into applying Mark Browns (https://www.youtube.com/user/McBacon1337) Zelda dungeon graph system on the maps of The Lost Light of Sisu. Where a lock could be a cliff you cannot climb with out having the jump cube, which then is the key.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BUENPMmROcFQ3WUE)
Mark Browns (https://www.youtube.com/user/McBacon1337) visual representation of a dungeon in Zelda.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BXy1OV04wazJiSEU)
My first try of modifying this formula to fit The Lost Light of Sisu.

I will hopefully elaborate on this in a later post when I have tried it out more and made sure it actually makes sense :)

#Update 34

So I decided to remove the possibility for the bear to carry energy cubes.
I also removed the need of having a high enough falling-velocity to crush ice.

On top of this I decided to add some "smoke puffs" on impact when possessing a heavy cube. This should hopefully help indicating that you are a bit heavier.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BWEw4OTJid1JyZGM)
Orange smoke puffs on impact when possessing heavy cube.

I also decided to update the under water current, since it was really hard to see where it had an effect.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BWkNEeVNXNUloMUE)
New current vs old current.

I started working on a new level which should incorporate the falling ice first and foremost. But also have a puzzle in it as well as introducing under water swimming. It was actually first constructed as a map graph (see last post). When Im done with it, I will try to write a post that makes sense of how and why I like these graphs :)

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BSmltODR0ZGVMYkE)
Falling ice level prototype under construction.

#Update 35

Short update today:

- Updated looks and behaviour of prototype ice bear because of buggy behavior and physics bugs (getting stuck between hand and body and such). I kind of like how it just grows taller. Maybe it will end up looking like those ChuChu enemies in Zelda. Or like this ->  :mockangry:

- Created a under-water-current-maze kind of labyrinth to add some more "puzzle" parts. I might combine this with having patrolling fish that the player will need to avoid.

- Finished prototype for level 3. Also started working on level 4.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BelM3Uy1GY0JDZkU)
New look for bear.


(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BaVVlVVMxQUtjUkk)
Under-water-current-maze.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BNjBBbDlReFJudEk)
Prototype for ice world level 3.

#Update 36

Yesterday I finished about half of level 4. This included a puzzle and two platform challenges. One of the challenges included ice-swings with a twist after picking up a gravity cube. And the other one is a platforming challenge with slippery ice.


(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BT1gyMU5UcU1tbjQ)
Ice swings + gravity cube.


(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BWl92d2Zsc0FxNmM)
Failing against falling ice.

This is the puzzle challange that awaits in the start of level 4. Can you figure it out?  ???

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BM2x4ZFQ5b0phR0E)
Puzzle challange in the beginning of level 4.

#Update 37

So level 4 is done and I have started working on the map graphs for level 5 and 6.

I Changed a few things and updated the falling ice challange which was included in yesterdays post. It just didnt work that well when I wanted it to be possible to do with or without the gravity cube.


(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BQnh6SlFVY1Nhek0)
Falling ice challange without gravity cube.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7Bc25iWWQwWk52TnM)
Falling ice challange with gravity cube.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BWWNhQlRyYjFMM2s)
Sliding challange.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BZ0w4NGNjMjRnQzA)
Final prototype for level 4.

#Update 38

Last friday I finished level 5 which includes the fish enemy. The fish needed some changes so here they are:

- Added red zone around it to make player understand when it will be aggressive. It will stop being aggressive as soon as the character is outside of this zone. Time will tell if this is good (too easy? too hard? fun?).
- Added possiblitiy to patrol multiple checkpoints.
- Changed behaviour when it has jumped up on land. So it only adds force horizontally instad of towrds the checkpoint.
- Removed collision between fish and character to make sure that the character always gets thrown in the correct direction.
- Made it possible for the fish to kick the player in one direction when in water and another as soon as its in the air.

I do wanna change it a bit more, but at least its usable now. I will let the testing show whats needed to be changed before doing more.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7Bb3FTZi1sUmVFczQ)
Red area showing agression area.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BV0ZKS3pOWUh6bDQ)
Multiple checkponts when patrolling.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BTl9xZVB4a2hRejQ)
Trying to attack through ice as soon as player is inside aggression area.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7Bcm10ZFBRRVdYX00)
Fish kicking character out from water and on to land.

I finished also level 5 which should introduce and some platforming challanges.
Here is an overview:

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7Bd2thbjhZbU9qOUU)

#Update 39

Level 6 is now finished and introduces the rotating blocks from #Update 30.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BbDJzT1JNNDRyeE0)
Platforming between rotating blocks.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BN0haejBjNXNsZ0k)
Level 6.

I also started working on a level which is supposed to be very / completely dark. It will utilize the fact that the energy cubes glow and can be used as flashlights. I think this darkness adds some variaty to the gameplay and make the player pay attention to things more carefully.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BaGxvQ0owaTRpU00)
Dark level concept.

I also worked on a bit on music for the game. These are very early versions, and might or might not make it into the game.

I was thinking that this one would play as soon as you start the game and when you hang out in the menus.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3JcE3llNr7BTFlOUmJ2NHJ4dVk/view?usp=sharing (https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3JcE3llNr7BTFlOUmJ2NHJ4dVk/view?usp=sharing)

And this one would play in levels of world 1. aka forest levels. I like how its very soothing and makes me calm when I play.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3JcE3llNr7BR0gzcWNtY2txbHM/view?usp=sharing (https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3JcE3llNr7BR0gzcWNtY2txbHM/view?usp=sharing)

Music is a good start but I can't help but picture something a little more atmospheric/ethereal?

Maybe that's just me

Looking great!

I really like this.  The motion feels so right  :handthumbsupR:

I see what you mean. That was actually what I though as well until I tried playing the level while having the music playing in the background. It is very calming. But you are right in that I might loose the atmospheric part, which would be a bad thing. I am planning to add bird chirping and such which would add to it. But probably not create a "exploration in space" kind of mood. Tricky.

Thanks for the feedback! I will keep at it  :)


Hey thanks! Really good to hear for motivation ;D


Great to hear that you like it! I am actually thinking that I should try adding more of these "physical obsticles" into the game. Where you get the nice feeling only physics provide.

Thanks, helpes to know that you like it :)

#Update 40

I finished level 7 - the darkness level, as well as level 8 which is the first sliding level.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BN2twZnpFcThHbUk)
Fish in the darkness.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BVTFHUk9ZRmltNVE)
Finished level 6.

It is a bit hard to see with all the collision boxes showing, but there is an under water maze at the end with patrolling fishes. I hope that this adds to some varity and not confusion as to where the energy cubes can be found. It adds a bit of exploration to the game as well, which I rather like.

Sliding levels

I have been thinking that I want a type of level where you need to reach a cube in a specific time. Something similar to the "treasure chest levels" in ray man. Its basically that you need to reach a point in a ceratin time frame, otherwise you get to restart.

I do enjoy these levels where you mostly just run head on, sliding down slopes and push jump at the right time. What I didnt like about the ray man implementation is that its not very calming. So I decided trying to do one similar level with the intention of having frequent checkpoints to avoid that frustration and stress.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BNDlZWVJXXzB6U1k)
Sliding part 1.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BWURwak9hZGdHQjA)
Sliding part 2.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BejVQRzdJbTY2QUE)
Sliding part 3.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BQUFQMHZja3VSS28)
Sliding level.

Between each sliding part there is a checkpoint where you grab a cube. Do you guys think this is a good way of mixing it up a little, or is it too stressfull for the game? (earlier in the game, it is basically hard to die, even though the grade of punishment that you receive is the same. You have to replay that one failed obsticle)

#Update 41

So yesterday I addressed some minor issues that occurred during a play test session. A part from that I finished level 9.

In level 9 I teach the player that it is possible to "jump" from the roofs when under water. I also try to mix and combine some of the obstacles that I have introduced in earlier levels.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BbXFqVDlpNXZIREE)
Jumping from "roof".

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7Bb2VycDBMQlMtQXM)
Rotating platform puzzle.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BSTFyVUN2dkhtbG8)
Wind combined with falling ice.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BcFFtcm0xSnU2dm8)
Swing combined with falling ice.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BdU96a1d0V3AxNm8)
Level 9 layout.

#Update 42

So last thursday I got some doubts about if I was on the right track. It felt like the ice world was getting a bit cluttered with too many different mechanics that did not have a good cohesion with eachother. Some of the mechanics are also lacking the ability to be used in different scenarios.

The falling ice, for example, is only useful for falling. It could not really be utilized for something else. So what I started thinking about was this ice orb that freezes you and could be used in more scenarios like:

- Falling like icecles.
- Rolling down slopes.
- Floating/sinking in water.
- Being shot from a potential enemy that could be moving, spinning, aiming for the player etc.

I am not saying that the icecles could not fit into some of these scenarios. But with the ice orb the ideas just came naturally. This orb could potentially also be used in other worlds. A first world version could be stone orbs that just pushes you back. This woulf be a bit easier on the player.

I have learned that a mechanic needs to be able to be juiced to create different scenarios. Which is basically why I started thinking about this "issue".


(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BaHBTV2kwVE9xdDQ)
Frozen by ice orb.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BZDJxZy1pUDlsakE)
Avoiding ice orbs on an ice slope.

The other thing I have been thinking about is that I dont really use what I have tought the player in the first world, only partially. I like how enemies like the spitter in "Ori and the blind forest" progress by getting stronger by learning more attack moves. They reuse an old enemy that you know, and then change it little bit making the challange greater.

I am thinking about doing this with my introduced mechanics in world 1. But I will have to prototype it first to make sure it is actually fun and not just repetative. I will probably end up with a mix of these evolved mechanics and some new ones. I have already tried this with the swing (making it slippery out of ice), and it has worked out well.

Going to Stugan
Also, today I will go to Stugan. I am still nervous but super excited to meet all the other developers  ;D

#Update 43 - Arriving in Stugan

So yesterday I went to Stugan (http://www.stugan.com/stugan-2017aaa/)  ;D The people here are really nice and seem very good at what they do. I hope I can learn a lot during these 7 weeks and that my game will have gotten much further afterwards.

Because of this I don't have anything to show today, but hopefully there will be something to show tomorrow  :)

#Update 43

There was a lot happening yesterday. A lot of testing games and a minor press conference. I still feel like a got a lot of things done though, which feels very good.

So first, the image that I used while talking at the conference:

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BM2UwMlRTVUZwUjQ)
Logo + world 1 map.

A part from that I started looking into what I talked about in #Update 42, evolving the pushers and stompers from world 1 into ice versions. They will basically also freeze the character for a short while after you have been hit.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BMWhhMWdJaGVjS2c)
Frozen stomper.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BLXl6Zm9YMGk0MTg)
Frozen pusher.

I also created a first version of the "Spitter". It will be able to shoot orb´s in different directions. It might even be able to aim for the player in future worlds.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BOE5FWXlNTHR1YlE)
Spitter - Ice version.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BR2YtMjYzdjZPam8)
Potential usage of spitter.

I also ended up updating the visuals for the wind. Too many people said that they did not see where it started and ended. Also that it was a bit unclear. So I made it a bit thicker, which I hope helpes.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BQVY2QzVYUmJpYTA)
New wind.

#Update 44 - Level design

I feel like I am done with building the tech for the ice world, and started looking into re-creating the ice world levels once again.

Something I want to do is create longer levels that are about 2-3 minutes long. It is hard to know what makes a good platformer level and how to get started with one. I have looked at games like Super Mario and Super Meat Boy to get some different thinking into it. They seem to have somewhat the same approach, which is introducing a new mechanic or scenario for each level and then gradually make it harder and harder for the player.

I have also seen games where you break them off in different parts with totally different mechanics. Mark Brown has a good video of Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze where they tend to do this. You can watch it here, I really recommend it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqHcE6B4OP4 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JqHcE6B4OP4)

Then there are the other parts which are:
- How to get started with a level.
- How to make it a challenge.
- Keeping the levels interesting (introduce new mechanics, use them in new ways etc).
- The layout of the level. Should it be possible to backtrack? Should the player explore the level or should it be linear?
- Should it contain puzzles that break up the pacing of the level?

The are for sure more things to think about, but I tend to get stuck. I think a good approach is looking at which building blocks you have (mechanics, enemies etc) and figure out in which order you want to introduce them and how to up the difficulty in a fun and challenging way.

If someone has any recommendations for articles or such regarding this subject, I would really appreciate it :)

However, I did some implementations yesterday and one of them was the possibility to rotate the spitter to make it shoot in another direction.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BN1d6OFAzZGhMNTg)
Spitting in facing direction.

#Update 45 - Level design

I mainly worked on creating more levels yesterday, so here are some images from those levels and their design.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BZGFtX0g1bzlPc28)
Level 3 first current obstacle. Shaped as a maze to teach player how to swim.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BYXFGdDlmbVdSNnc)
Level 3 second current obstacle. A yellow jump cube is hiding in the lower middle of a current while fish are patrolling the area.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BZVRkSG1zNjZ5M2M)
Level 1 layout.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BWXlkdXlYdVdzNU0)
Level 2 layout.

A obstacle combination that did not make it into these early levels, but I will definitely add it for later harder ones.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BYzN1eDkyeUhiaWM)

#Update 46 - Level design

I finished level 3 and 4 yesterday. Level 3 introduced fish and a rolling spitter orb challenge.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7Ba0hqOG0tdmFhTGM)
First spitter challenge.

Level 4 introduces the gravity cube.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BXzNnREFDbGE3aDQ)
Second gravity obstacle.

Something new I am trying in the ice world is starting off with 3 levels introducing one cube, the heavy cube. I wanted to make sure that the player have understood the mechanic of it before introducing the next cube (which is the gravity one).

I also updated how the swings move. They no longer move horizontally, only vertically. Too many people had trouble figuring out how they worked and got frustrated by their movement. I might introduce it later though in a later world where I want a more challenging swing.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7Bbmw4c01kcXdUM28)
Updated movement for swings.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BaVFwWWpPeEdUU3M)
Level 3.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BU2FlLVNxc2hCTDA)
Level 4.

#Update 47 - Level design

I worked pretty much this whole weekend and finished up level 5 and 6. They both keep introducing the gravity cube in different ways.

Level 5

On level 5 ice slides get introduced. And a problem that appeared was that you would not see the end of the slope before reaching it and then you had to jump in blind faith that you would land somewhere. So I introduced a simple camera system that zooms out the camera when the player is inside a certain area.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7Bd0hfZEN0TFc0Q3c)
Camera zoom feature in action when using ice slides.

I first tried using the velocity of the player to decide how much the camera would zoom out. It felt too random and I realised that it would be hard to control when it zooms out and to which degree.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BeWQyTjR1aEpNMWs)
First velocity based prototype.

There are also a few obstacles and puzzles that appear when the gravity has changed. I have noticed that even simple things get tricky just because the player has to adjust to having everything the other way around. It is kind of a funny thing to see.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BSGdUUmVGOHo4RWs)
Gravity obstacle 1.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BQzdZQUVMRWJKbm8)
Gravity obstacle 2.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BZUwyRHFMTlFWYTg)
Gravity obstacle 3.

I also introduced a simpler puzzle where you need to wait for the ChuChu to pass before going into the wind. I have then evolved this concept in level 6.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BNExIUS1Ed2xJMGM)
Gravity obstacle 4 - mini maze.

Level 6

On level 6 I keep adding to the gravity obstacles and then show the player in the end that the heavy cube will turn the gravity back to normal. That they contradict each others effects.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BdndTcGF0bnZUTTg)
Gravity obstacle 1 - The swing obstacle that I have showed before in different forms.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BZDZkUnFTX1BVZVU)
Gravity obstacle 2.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BWU9YVi1aQ2YxMkk)
Gravity obstacle 3 - Big maze.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BenY0d0tDN3hJUTA)
Level 5.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BbUhLMlJRTDhxeFU)
Level 6.

It looks like you're working really hard! This looks pretty good design; I hope we can sneak a peek soon!

 :)

Creating a game is like painting a picture - the number of variables is infinite.  I'm sure there are rules - but breaking the rules is also part of the game!  Ultimately it is the human mind you are trying to please - play testing and feedback are your only real true friends for answering these questions.

Thanks! Yeah, I will let you know as soon as the next version is ready  :)


Thanks man, great tip. I really agree about what you are saying and you put it beautifully  ;D


#Update 48 - Forest world update

Yesterday I tried to make the cube animate in the correct way when running on the roofs after obtaining the gravity cube. It did not go too well  ???

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BMnNaQVUwOGJYUFU)
Weird animation 1.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BeGg0MVFBQWJURnc)
Weird animation 2.

I stopped after a few hours and will try again sometime not too far from now.

Forest update

I did end up updating the current demo (alpha 0.2.0) locally. These changes were all based on multiple rounds of feedback. Here is what I changed so far:
- Removed the flowers. People thought that they were collectibles and tried to grab them.
- Make swings move horizontally only.
- Removed cubes after picking them up. This is a controvercial one for me since I really like them. But they did not contribute to the gameplay in any real sense. More in random ways and mostly negative ones (were in the way when landing sometimes, attracted attention around the player, distracting because people were thinking "why are they following you?").
- Made it impossible to fall out from level. No one though it made any sense. And it does not fit the game to "die" and then restart the level.
- Updated the particle effect for jump-cube. No one really understood what the cube did the first time around, until they picked up the speed-cube and started thinking that the yellow one probably did something too.
- Switched place on level 1_2 (introducing jump cube) and 1_3 (introducing speed cube).
- Added zoom out for swings on level 1_6. They disappeared off the screen when jumping with a jump cube.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BYW1MS0dTdXlud0k)
No more flowers. Also the cube gets absorbed.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BSWFyekVuMEVTejA)
New jump particles.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BNVF6cG0yMTRINGs)
Zooming out on swing obstacle.

#Update 49 - Heavy cube update

I did not have much time to finish anything yesterday. I fixed some minor bugs and updated the color of the heavy cube from orange to teal-green to avoid confusion with the yellow jump cube.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BcFdpOEtGOFRyR3c)
Collecting heavy cube.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BSndUUkJGNW4zUms)
Effect from jump and heavy cube combined.

#Update 50 - World map

The world map has gotten a huge update which makes it possible to travel between different planets. Also it is no longer possible to play the boss until you have completed a couple of levels, indicated by the numbers below the boss skull. When you have completed the boss, a "cannon" appears that can transport you to the next planet.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7Ba1RRb0Ztbm5EeDg)
Boss is not playable (6 / 7 necessary  levels completed).

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BRk44TG9qZmF0U3M)
Boss is playable (7 / 7 necessary levels completed).

And this is how the world map looks now:

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BeDlVR2V5WEI2NGc)
Planetary travel in the world map utilizing the "cannons".

What do you guys think about these two things?
- The way I try to let the play know that they have to complete at least 7 levels before the boss is playable.
And
- How the planetary travelling looks and feels?

#Update 51 - Ice Ice Cube
 
I started working on the graphics for the ice world planet since I will have a spotlight-video made for The Lost Light of Sisu here at Stugan the 9th, and I would like to show some more footage of worlds that are somewhat finished.

I created the ice shader in a Unity plug in called Shader forge (http://www.acegikmo.com/shaderforge/) which I can really recommend. What it really comes down to though is to try to make it fit into the graphical art style of the game, which is hard. Here are some different versions that I came up with.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BQmUya2ZVdEZEQ1k)
Showing how the ice looks right now.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BMEs2aVkyRXdQVDA)
Ice version 1.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BZGE4VmhmMUU0WXc)
Ice version 2.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BcERxTDVmS2VIcmM)
Ice version 3.

I personally really like ice version number 2, but I dont feel like it suits the game. Its too jagged compared to the rest of the feeling that I try to communicate.

#Update 52 - Art style
 
So I started thinking about what direction I wanted for the art style again after receiving some feedback and also in aspect to how much time I have to put into each map that I create.

I would also like to to be able to have some 3D tiles and stitch them together in some way. I will probably look into that tomorrow.

These are some early tests, what do you think?

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7Bazd2VldyeDVhYUU)

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7Bbkx4UFFZcXA0eWM)

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BTkdfOVhYSzlIU3M)

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BTGczQThkVXJtajQ)

#Update 52 - Tool for tiles
 
I started looking into creating a shader for stiching together different 3D tiles. First I wanted the edges to be able to have different y-positions (height). I got it working and it looked pretty cool.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BczVPckNJN1FldWM)
Stitching tiles together.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BRXZnRzY0akFSdDQ)

I did get some very rare occasions of vertices not ending up at the same location, and also the tiles would need to have the same amount of vertices at the edges, and they need to be using the same tilable normal map.

So what I did instead was keeping all the edge-vertices at their original position. This way I can mix and match different tile sizes and different types of tiles without running into stiching issues.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BUkxWOTJjV2QzVVE)
Getting a paralax effect from different sized tiles.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BeE5jbG9VMG53cFE)
3 different sizes of tiles next to each other.

And finally some images from more art style tests:

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BakpBWHRvOElxNHM)

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7Bb2xjdThJM2hLQ2s)
Testing depth of field to see if it would make sense in this game.

#Update 53 - Getting ready for Stugan spotlight video

Yesterday I was working on putting together some stuff for the spotlight video that Stugan does for each team. I am a bit nervous about it. But in the meantime I created some gameplay footage that could be used in the video and a youtube header. (it will get recorded today I think)

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BWjM1QlE5U0Njbmc)

#Update 54 - Back to tiles

Yesterday kept looking into being able to use tiles instead of one mesh for the landscapes. I found that by using different black and white gradients to control how different normal maps are applied to the tile mesh, I can hopefully sew them together in a nice way without getting too much visible repetition.

These are some early examples:


(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BSUxTajdnWlk2YjA)
Gradient do get tile to rise in middle only, making it possible to connect flat tiles on the right and left side.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BLTJ0Q2RyQ1luUFk)
Gradient do get tile to rise on the left side only, making it possible to connect flat tiles on the right side.

Here is an early image:

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BUmNBbjRLZ08waFk)
Still issues with getting edges to work well together in some cases (see upper right part of image).

A very good start! I follow!

Your tech art stuff is so neat! The gradient tile gen is super cool, looking forward to seeing how it develops.

Thanks! I appreciate the support  ;D


Thank you! I am glad that you like it, Ill try to write more about it as I continue to develop it  :)


#Update 55 - Art style struggle

I had a hard time yesterday trying to figure out how to put levels together in an efficient and nice way. And at the same time create an art style that is interesting and sticks out from the crowd.

I also worked on the tiling tool, which feels done at the moment.

Tile based tool

So yesterday I mentioned shortly that I had some issues in the background mesh where the sewing did not quite work. Well it turns out that the gradient that I created in paint.net does not create coherent colors for each horizontal line. Even though it was only a really small different, it ended up meaning that the edge where two meshes connect is visible.

I solved this by using Inkscape instead, which works with vector graphics and created coherent gradient values.

I also had to make sure that the normal map is tiled, otherwise it ends up with the same problem of having some vertices being offset at the edges.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BRmp0d1FiVXQ3emM)
No gap between tiles.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7Ba2RuUERiVnZoTVk)
6 tiles put together. They partly depend on world space coordinates to create some differences.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BQVdrS2tlakk2Y00)
Using different gradients to elevate the mesh.

Art style

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BWnlZZ0hIZG5jWE0)
Prototype 1. Too much going on.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BWVlvdWUwMUNPTjA)
Prototype 2. Still too much going on.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BaDYzai1qc2hwOVE)
Prototype 3. Background is too detailed and draws too much of the attention.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BVEFjNGRhVmg1bjA)
Prototype 4. Welcome back to the early 2000nds.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BTFBMV19Hclp2Xzg)
Prototype 5. Less distracted by the background. Starting to like where this is heading.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BR2tqQ3k3UTNFYTg)
Prototype 6. Added shadows.

There are so many things that end up being troublesome though, just to get it to work the way I want it to.

- When you offset vertices in the shader, the camera will cull those objects depending on the original mesh shape. This creates a very nasty popping effect.
- For each type of tile, you will need to create a separate material. And then if you want different normal maps on similar tiles, well then thats a new material.
- Vertices being offset differently because image editing software (paint.net and apparently photoshop when a friend tried it) does not create perfect gradients.

A bit of a rant, but I thought it could be interesting to know about stuff that comes up from all of this  ???

Final

Funny thing that could be used for deforming the landscape when something happens in the game.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BRUVjRk01STFKLWc)

I like the style, and the game seems to have a lot of thought put into it.

..also, as a Finn I can't resist the sisu

Hey, thanks a lot! Glad to hear that you like the style and that me using Sisu is a positive thing :)

#Update 56 - Darkness (levels)

I am taking a break from the art stuff and revisited the concept of having dark night levels. The energy cubes has been removed since the last time I tried it so I needed to make the player start glowing when picking up the cubes. I think it worked out really well, both from a gameplay perspective but also that it added these really nice shadows which could potentially be used for gameplay (thanks for the idea  Mahatmaindie  (https://twitter.com/mahatmandie)).

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BcmtHM3RXcnZXT1k)

I also introduced a milder version of the spitter which has orbs that only pushes you back instead of freezing you. I will probably use these in the first world.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BbDFHZmpIWXFub1U)

I also made the collider for picking up energy bigger to avoid annoying moments where you would miss to pick up an energy cube, even though it looked like you should have gotten it. This feeling especially occurred when the camera was zoomed out.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BT1BxOE1MTHFyd1k)

A part from that I have made some minor changes to the levels to make them more fun and less annoying.

#Update 57 - More darkness

I have kept working on darkness levels and finished up level 2_7 and 2_8.

A few gifs showing how the shadows come in to play. I really like how the cut away most of the screen. In combination with not seeing that far away from the character, this makes you very focused on what is important in the scene.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BMmJENE1jMDV1eTQ)

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BcEFmb1phY1M1cGc)

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BYkYtN19PVDlxQ0k)
Scary pusher shadows.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BUUc4V1ZuNC1OMFU)
Level 2_7.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BTm5KVkhvSFVkRlU)
Level 2_8

I also started thinking about the boss for world 2. I have a few ideas but haven't settled yet on which one/ones to go for yet..  ???

#Update 58 - Fishy boss

I have started working on the second boss now. It is a big fish that you will need to feed with smaller fish by tricking them into its mouth. This is just a first prototype of the boss the be able to show it to people and let them try kind of what it will end up being in the end.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BcEZiaC1HellPYlk)
Part 1 of boss so far.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BSFN4VUZCU0Y1OUE)
Part 2 of boss.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BWV9FeDBPSnBLSU0)
The whole boss.

I also started prototyping features for the next world which is probably going to be something with magnets. But well see..  :blink:

#Update 59 - Magnetizing

Trying to get started with the third and last planet, I started making prototypes of some new mechanigs. So far I have added positive and negative magnets. I'm thinking that they could potentially be the core theme of the planet. Also conveying that the planet is a bit unstable gravity wise, so there are floating puddles of water and things like that. But well see..

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BWHlZbGlDa2lSbkE)
Positive magnet.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BUVpOaVNfb2VmbkE)
Negative magnet.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BdWppMHZVZldhbE0)
Jumping on sliding blocks.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BLWtRZk5xamw0emc)
Attracting sliding blocks with positive magnet.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BTmFyd0pxME1NTm8)
Deattracting sliding blocks with negative magnet.

#Update 60 - Flapping

New energy cube
I added a new energy cube for planet 3 which makes is possible to... FLAP! I mean I guess fly a little bit. This combined with some new elements of floating water makes for some interesting interactions.

I went through 3 iterations before settling for the final version.
- First one felt like having a rocket boost on the back. More like levitating.
- Second one felt better but still confusing to people as it gave different results depending och when you flapped.
- Third one resets the y-velocity each time, hence gives the player predictable results. And it feels good.

I try to visualize how many flaps you have left with the pink dots. Not sure how close that is to a final version, but people seem to understand what is happening and what it means, which is the important thing for now.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BeXJ0bmp2RHY0VE0)
First version.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BcFNzcndndmhfMFE)
Second version.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BUXQtaXlQMElOOTQ)
Third version.

New mechanics and interactions

I added floating water puddles that can be used for multiple purposes. As you can see in the first gif of this post, it resets the flaps. But it can also be used for jumping upwards and creating obstacles together with the magnets.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BSlNYN0ViV0FXaEk)
Jumping between water puddles.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BQlBYc1hPNjdwTDQ)
Water puddles + magnet set up.

#Update 61 - Slamming energy

New energy cube
I added another new energy cube for planet 3 which makes is possible to... SLAM!.. into the ground. I really struggled trying to find how it should affect the character. But I guess I found it by thinking of what the opposite of flapping was( ...  ??? ). And its not as it is an uncommon ability. Anyway, it feels as though it complements the other abilities well and will hopefully be a fun thing. This is what it looks like at the moment:

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BU2xQbTV4dVNGMU0)
Slamming into ground, water and wind.

One thing I am worried about though is how to teach the player that you will need to push the stick downwards before pressing the jump button. I have so far not introduced any visual tutorial for controls. By that I mean no images of "Press A to jump" or a controller-stick moving downwards while showing the jump button being pressed. Any suggestions?

Heres a list of the abilities that I thought of:
- Shoot yourself in a certain direction when let go of jump button.
- Being a magnet that shifts from positive to negative each jump.
- Slowing down time permanently. Or slowing it down depending on how fast you are running.
- Getting cloned, so you would have to move 2 characters at once (both listening to the same input)
- Change shape.
- Become a liquid.
- You can see sound as a fourth dimension.
- Teleportation.
- Invisibility.
- Starts talking and making sounds. Affecting the surrounding environment.
- Jump to a different dimension where you can pass certain objects.
- Turning into a prism being able to direct light.
- Moving between lights.

Many of these could be a core mechanic of a totally new game. I really wanted to avoid introducing something too advanced/complex.

Stuff I tried

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7Bamt4bTg3UlZfMm8)
What if you had a spinning magnet?

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BbTFTMkZyQlM1N0U)
What if the cube changed your shape into a circle? (the collision geometry is a circle, not visible).

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BeGlsWHo4TTQ5eEU)
Other visuals for flapping (I think the old one is better).

#Update 62 - Magnetic mechanics

I have added some mechanics that are mostly related to magnets.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BRGF4RlVDTlZWeUU)
Spinning around magnet.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BUURwLS1mWlFEeTQ)
Magnet pushers.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BWGlYOWhjRkFPaE0)
smaller magnetic spheres. I am hoping to be able to make some kind of puzzles out of these by having them rotating in different directions.

Experimental features

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BVkdFS1UtUEoyOFU)
Magnetic swing.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BV2ZpblNORGJRRjg)
Travelators.

A magnetic swingy tampon!

I like the direction you are taking with the magnets, but I suggest not to over do it, it can get confusing figuring out that many variations/features and things similar to each other but that work so different.

I also like the bit where you tried different shapes, since the character already is a little bit gummy it makes sense for it to reshape into appropiate forms for different circumstances.

Haha yeah, not really what I wanted to convey, but hey. Something to work on (:

I think you are right about the magnets. I need to make sure I dont overdo it and that the players find the different interactions interesting. AND not confusing, thats a good point.

Ah cool, I see what you mean. But at the same time, thats almost like a core mechanic on its own. I feel like I have to watch out with the scope if I ever want to finish this.

Thanks a lot for the feedback, I really appreciate it :)

#Update 63 - Birds and fixes

Birdie

I added a new enemy for the third level which will be sort of like a patrolling bird. I want the first world to be about the ground, second about water and third to be about the air. I mean in general.

This is what it looks like after the first iteration:

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BRFFHOEpqR2N3QW8)
Bird attacking.

Magnetic transportation

I added this transportation system which makes it possible to choose which side of the transportation cube you will travel on. This becomes a minor puzzle and will hopefully work well together with the bird.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7Bai1YSmI4YmhyZm8)
Transportation system.

Water surface walljump

I finally found a nice technical solution to find out if the character is at the surface. I have wanted to be able to let the player do walljumps when at the surface but not when under water. This is how it works now:

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BdGJKazhpckFreTg)
Water surface walljump.

Final

I still feel like there is something missing in this world. Probably gonna try doing something with a homing-orb-spitter and also some type of enemy that works well together with the ground slam ability. Also need to watch out for what @desdemian wrote about not overdoing the magnet theme.

#Update 64 - Bullying homing orbs

Homing Spitter
A spitter for the magnet world has been added and it shoots.. homing orbs! I hope the color switching of the orbs is intuitive. But I will see after some play testing.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BWDY4UXM1UTZib00)
Final version after iteration 1.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BZjNmalIyVnNXYkU)
When the game is bullying you (earlier when it was a bit OP).

Updated floating water
(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BcFIzLU1DMDU5eVk)

Map 1 of magnet world
(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BSWRQTXZwOUxrdEk)

#Update 65 - Floating water and magnets

I finished level 3_2 yesterday and made some changes. Both to game mechanics but also to my "tools". Here are some new obstacles that I put together using the new mechanics:

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BRmtnajVRWXpsakU)
Flap obstacle 1.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BYU5tOXpNWGp5Wmc)
Flap obstacle 2.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BXzF5MEpBaVpEdFU)
Flapping hard when jump cube picked up.

I also updated the magnets, removing the collision with the center piece.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BQXNDRVRlSnI5d00)
Traumatized from getting flung around in the magnet.

Added features

So I finally got so annoyed or afraid of this happening in a final build so I added some stuff:

- I added a beam drop off point that only happens if you are in the editor and have checked a box. I did this so I wont have the character beam down somewhere random from when I was developing. (See teal label for "EditorDropOffPoint" and blue label for "BeamDropOffPoint").

- The camera will always move to look at the beam drop off point before the level fades in. This way the experience will be consistent across maps as well.

- I added level 3_1 and 3_2 to the third planet and updated all the related logic.

Finished Level 3_2

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BZGNCSUswbkxrdlU)

Play test

I also did a play test of these two new maps and the floating water puddles were very unintuitive. I am not sure how to solve this.. they kind of work like a swing, but you can access them from below and the sides. And I really like how they behave.. hmm  ???

#Update 66 - Looking into art style again

I started out yesterday by finishing up level 3_3 and 3_4. I added and updated transports to the levels. It ended up looking like this:

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BX0JxTV8xd2NfMHM)
Getting transported.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BQWVKc1pubDE2YUE)
Level 3_3.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BYU5OQjVkc1pfYUk)
Level 3_4.

Prototyping new art style

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BNjQ1Xy1VZXBCX28)

I really like the direction this is heading. And it feels so much more plausible than the old direction did. Also a friend (ItsMadsTalking (https://twitter.com/ItsMadsTalking)) made a  mock up of what he though it should look like:

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BZl95dE5saHRnZzQ)

I think it look really cool with the organic environment in contrast to the alien cube. What do you guys think, should I go towards this style?

#Update 67 - Deeper art style

I started the day with some play testing, then continued by fixing a few issues that had appeared from changing different things:

- Added damping to the wind again, since removing it led to all sorts of bugs and unpredictable behaviour.
- Bug fix for ChuChu not getting pushed enough after changing kick force.
- Resetting flaps instantly when new cube is picked up.
- Made wind more visible on light background.
- Changed color for slam cube.
- Fixed bug where levels on planet 3 did not get completed.

puh, all these "minor things" takes so much time, but adds so much to the experience.

Art style direction

I finished the day by digging into the art style. I wanted to make sure that the new art style direction was actually gonna work for the other planets as well. Here are some images from that:

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BcV9OMHhIS0dBUFk)

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BQTR1aEFMYjhudnc)

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BZmdZakxHOVFKSW8)

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BYk1ZRlBkdHE2SjA)

#Update 68 - Upgrading slam

I felt that I had find another way of activating the slam ability. Pushing the left stick down and pushing A(jump), while in air, is not very clear. So now I have a visual queue that shows the player when its charged up and when it gets activated. It gets activated by pushing the left stick down. This has turned out to work really well, and every play tester has found it by themselves (so far).

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BbEJNZUJBcFpqM0U)
Slamming in wind.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BYjFTWlRBcERoQ1U)
Slamming in water.

I also had:
- A meeting with Erik Odendahl (https://twitter.com/erikodeldahl) from Fast Travel Games who helped me out with my narrative
- Play test with a friend
- Fixing stuff from both of those sessions
- Worked on the upcoming 3_5 level

#Update 69 - Deeper art dive

So yesterday I continued digging into the art style and it is starting to feel really good. Here is a list of what I accomplished:
- Added particles to make the scene feel more alive.
- Added wind to the trees and foliage to make the scene feel more alive.
- Played around a little bit with music, ambiance and sound in general.
- Made the main path through the level unlit with a custom lightning model.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BNlFOcTJZQk4zRzQ)
Final particles and wind.

I did a few tries of adding geometry along the path to make it come alive more. Also got inspired by ItsMadsTalking in update 66.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BSE5aM1FpV0lrWjA)
Path geometry 1.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BemZvSWFBSXVqdk0)
Path geometry 2.

Also madness when the wind is too damn strong!

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7Bbi1ka1FHc2w0bDg)

#Update 70 - Character sounds

So I did two things other than play testing and fixing a few minor level design things:
- Updated the walking path.
- Started adding new sound to the characters movement.

Sounds

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAlqyYCzmbQ

I really like how the sound feels alien. It correlates well with the environment and I think this is the way to go. I tried having "regular" footstep sounds earlier, but it just didnt feel as good to me.

Path

I tried out different versions of the path to make it feel a bit more alive and not so stale.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BWmVlVk44b2MzYVE)
Original straight path.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BWG9lMlRGSy1mMDQ)
Wobbly path.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7Bb2xWRlpvdXowQms)
Masked out path.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BSDV6cWZLWTVjTms)
The path geometry.

I ended up using the wobbly path. It really gives you the sense of being out in the forest on a more natural and organic path.

#Update 71 - Merging and color schemes

So I mainly merged branches and fixed things that arose from play testing. I also tested out some color schemes for the forest level:

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BeFV5OG1wVWFKTnM)

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BOFNUQlYxQVEzdTA)

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BNVhMWndUcmc2Y2c)

Any opinions so far?  :)

I just stumbled across this, love the minimal aesthetic!

Haha very cool stuff!  :monoclepop:

Thanks a lot! Great to know the art style is moving in the right direction :)


Thanks! Glad you like it   ;D

#Update 72 - Color scheme tool and world map rework

There was a lot of visual progress happening the other day.

Color scheme tool
I created a simple tool that can read different color scheme settings and set them instantly to the whole scene.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BRDNRMlhnak9VX0E)

World map remake

The world map needed to resemble the new art style so this is the result of that work at the moment:

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BcFhuQXlnVkV6V28)

Detracting energy flower

I used to have flowers next to the energy cubes to explain where they actually come from. But there was a big problem that people though they were pickups. Now the flower retracts when the energy has been collected. I think it adds some value story-wise and creates a nice effect:

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7Bb0RYN2FtZ1d4ZnM)

Final forest color scheme

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BM2VPZjFWY2pyeE0)

#Update 73 - Final version of level 1

So I mostly polished things and fixed minor issues yesterday. So not too much to show, but here is an image of the final level 1:

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BMmt0OGZaUE50TkU)

Things I polished were:
- Made flower withdraw slower
- Updated sound for picking up energy
- Updated beam visuals
- cleaned up level 1 and updated the visual layout
- Updated world map level color

Yes - the alien nature of the main character immersed in a natural environment is evocative and threatening - in a good way.

So much new stuff since I last had a proper look at your DevLog! The artstyle is really coming along! The lighting alone changes the mood of the scene a lot.

The magnet additions look interesting to try out, though I hope the pusher magnets don't feel too punishing! (Especially since I found the pushers, pre-magnet, a little punishing!) Hard to tell without playing to see how it feels.


Really enjoying your DevLogs! Awesome to see how the game is progressing.

Thanks for the feedback, great to know how it comes across :)

Hey!

Yeah, the light has improved a lot I think. Its a way easier art style to add light to as well, so its not necessarily me getting better at it suddenly, but still :)

Im glad it looks interesting. I will really try to make the learning curve well paced. I havent really implemented the magnet pushers into a level yet actually so I will see how it feels in the end.

Thanks for reading it and letting me know you like it, really helps for motivation :)

I have been meaning to try out your new demo. The new control-scheme looks sweet when being able to shoot in different directions!  :eyebrows:

#Update 74 - Final version of level 2

Level 1_2 is finished and I started looking into sounds for the pushers. Its a tricky one but I think Im on the right path. I have them spinning with a low frequency sound at the moment. Ill upload a youtube video as soon as it feels done.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7Bc1g3OFJIVlc4dzQ)
Level 1_2

I also tried cutting off the underground parts visually. What do you think feels the best?

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BSWpTdU0yUi1FWDQ)
With roof.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7Bb21ISXBIQmIybEE)
Without roof.

The backgrounds are soo good =O Especially the light effects. :wtf:

Absolutely! It definitely helps with motivation to hear people's thoughts, and I'm very excited for Sisu! I love that little cube. :)

Our new build should be up sometime next week. I threw together a quick level today to play around with some of the new enemies. It shouldn't take much longer to finish it up. Gotta say - you were absolutely right! Shooting in different directions adds so much to the gameplay.

I'm glad that you like them and thanks for letting me know! Very helpful  :)

Thats very nice of you to say :) Really makes me wanna put more work into that little cube.

Oh sweet! I'm glad to hear that you liked it, cant wait to try it out  ;D Im already imagining the air battles!

#Update 75 - Sound and graphical upgrades

Yesterday I did a lot of different things and I tried to document most of them.

Colors for enemies and energies
There was an issue with having red-ish enemies and a red energy cube. Because I really want the player to notice the cubes in the environment so they have to pop color wise. First I tried making the stomper either brown-earthy or greenish. But earthy felt a bit too boring. And green communicates that its something good. So I decided to go with purple-pink colors. Here is the result:

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BSl9ZYUNxcFZjb3M)

Graphical upgrades

# Energy pickups

The biggest change is that I have decided to remove the infection pattern that the main character got when picking up cubes. I felt that it did not go well with the new art style in the sense of being too detailed. Instead the whole character changes color and I think its both more clear that the energy cube affects the player, but also its visually more pleasing.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BOFpHVHBhT3JHdmc)

# Shadows and light

So the ground material now supports shadows and gets affected by point lights. This is the result:

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BelIxVmc0bTNacTA)

# World map numbers

So before the numbers always got rendered on top of everything. On the edges of the planet this often created an illusion of being on top of the level, when in fact you were not. So I added the beam to the ship and changed so that the numbers are not displayed on top of the ship. This is the result:

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BMUZOellzbHk4dHM)

# Beam color

I also changed the beam color to communicate that its a good thing for the player. But also to differentiate it a bit more from the background.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BTnN4Mjd6TUZPTk0)

World map audio

I wanted to add sound to the world map to add the same level of detail to all parts of the game. I tried adding some basic ambiance, sound when moving with the spaceship and when selecting level. Technically its working, but now I need to find better suiting sounds.

Extra

Just a random gif from when I tried to add inertia to the spaceship.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BWW9jbFV5Q1IzLW8)
Hyper speed travelling.

#Update 76 - World map colors and night light

It is the last week here at Stugan and we are leaving for Stockholm on Friday. After 6 weeks of intense development I can really feel that Im a bit tired, but I will try to take some time off after we get back. It also means that I have pulled back a little on how much I try to get done each day to have time to hang out with people here and not strain myself too much.

Anyway, yesterday I  decided to let the player light behave differently on night levels opposed to day levels. Here is what it looks like:

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BLXgwX0Y0ck1obGM)
On a day light level.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BeEF0M3lrMGtPZXM)
On a night light level.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BOWpPMDhxYkNYU0E)

World map colors and cannons

The world map got updated with new colors and new (but still temporary probably) models for the cannons.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BOWhXOUx6djVveWM)
New colors for planets.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7Bc1NVWi00M3UwSFE)
New cannons.

#Update 77 - Stugan

So this is the first day back working after Stugan (http://www.stugan.com/). I took a week of vacation trying to recharge my batteries. But from now on I will try to post daily again :)

Stugan (http://www.stugan.com/) was amazing. Having the opportunity to focus on my game 100% while having mentors from the industry visiting and other talanted game developers around me all the time was truly invaluable. It is going to be a big change of pace being back home, but thanks to Stugan (http://www.stugan.com/) I now have a very clear goal in mind of where to take Sisu. I am so grateful I got this opportunity  :shrug2:

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BVXN1MVlVMEhVa1E)
View of the beautiful landscape around Stugan (http://www.stugan.com/).

Stugan finale

Stugan (http://www.stugan.com/) ended with an event in Stockholm where everyone got to show their games. It was so much fun seeing people playing Sisu and enjoying themselves. This will keep my motivation on top for the rest of development  :handthumbsupL: ;D :handthumbsupR:

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7Bd0plRXlaazVJZWM)

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BMEplVXMtSW9aMnc)


Alright, back to work!  :handjoystick:

#Update 78 - Travelling around planets

So the first day back was good. I mostly did administrative stuff like sending e mails and getting back into it. But I did manage to do some coding.

Something a lot of people has mentioned is the possibility to travel around the planets. From the start I made a restriction because I felt that it just added complexity. But now I need the extra space if there is going to be 20 levels on each planet. Also it is a really nice effect and since almost everyone wanted to be able to do it, I decided I would give it a shot.

I really like how it turned out and it only added some minor problems. The big one remaining is how to handle the camera when travelling between planets. It already works but does not feel very good. Anyway, this is what the rotation looks like right now:

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BUXZ6SGFmR0dhSXc)

#Update 79 - World map updates

I kept on working on the world map with different results.

I have this idea of entering the world map instantly when the game starts (instead of having this extra start-menu-screen), but I ran into a few issues so I had to postpone that solution.

I also started looking into handling planatery travel better, because now it just goes too quick. Its a bit nauseating when the camera flips over so fast. It turned out to be a bit more work than I expected so that is also postponed for a while.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BRUN4NnJvYmwxUlk)
Planatery travel.

The layout of the levels on the forst planet is now more path like. I think this helpes a lot when trying to guide the player to the level you want them to choose.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BSG9tXzhTeXdmQUE)
Level path layout.

There are still things needed to be done on the world map, but I am going to switch over to creating the final levels now. Those are the most critical thing to be able to get a feeling for how the game will play at the moment. It is also good to get some variation :)

Funky FOV

I messed around a little bit with the fov of the camera and this happened. Pretty cool in a way  :P

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BUklrZzBFT0tyRW8)

#Update 80 - New maps and UI update

So yesterday I updated the UI from 2D to 3D and added a particle effect when collecting energy.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BYUtZaUJMTW9oRTQ)
First iteration of UI effect when collecting energy.

I also changes the mesh of the energy to being an icosahedron instead of a cube. Before when the energy followed the player and interacted with the world, the shape mattered a lot. Now it can be any arbitrary shape.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BVDRvcnpZMTI0dWs)
Icosahedron energy.

I am also starting to re do all the levels for the first world based on all the feedback I have gotten at stugan and other places. Its things like:
- When and how things/mechanics are introduced.
- Difficulty curves for mechanics.
- Letting the player use the last collected cube before having to enter the spaceship beam.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BR2RsN1BudnVvZDg)
Level 1_1

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BLXAyRzlBNlgxaE0)
Level 1_3

Joao from Stugan here!

Awesome devlog so far, man, you're doing a great job! Replying so I can get to subscribe to your posts! Go Sisu!  :beer:

Loved the new UI btw.

Hey man! Great that you are here  :toastL: ;D :toastR:

Thanks, really appreciate those kind words!

And why didnt I know that you have a tigsource page? I just checked yours out, looks really great! But you should update a bit more often, I wanna know the latest news for Dandara ;)

#Update 81 - New maps and stopping tech

I created a new method for keeping the player inside the level. Before, I used specific bounding boxes on each side of the level to stop the player through physics.

Now instead, I use a bounding box to keep the player inside the level by keeping track of if the character is inside this box. If they are outside, then Ill return them to the latest acceptable position inside the bounding box. This is the same bounding box that I use to control the cameras moving area.

I basically do this to make things smoother when creating so many levels. If things update autamatically (and are simpler), I concider it a win.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BblJSM3lWbVdCT3c)
Player getting stopped as soon as outside bounding box.

I also added level 1_4 which introduces pushers and started on level 1_5 which will repeating what the player has learned on previous levels.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7Bc0NlSUdtQXVOYzg)
Level 1_4

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BcEplS0NheGtCdXM)
Half done level 1_5

#Update 82 - Recap map

So I finished level 1_5 and came up with some new ways of combining the pushers and stompers. The one I liked the most was the "stomper gate" thats created out of two stompers.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BcXRRenVqdXh6QWc)
Stomper gate.

The idea of the recap map is to repeat what the player has learned in the previous levels up until now. So it includes multiple cubes, stompers, pushers, water, walljump and rolling.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BUEIzSUlnT0Iwdm8)
Finished level 1_5.

#Update 83 - Started on map generating tool

I finished level 1_6 which is introducing the wind concepts.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BZVpYZV9USmE0MEU)
Finished level 1_6.

I also started working on a tool that would use my main path to generate the rest of the level. I have a good start but it is far from done.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BLUxVXzhUeF9VUUE)
Early version of level generation tool.

I am also imagining it will generate the background. I will also have to adress that the objects are getting occluded as soon as the camera enters them. But I think I have an idea that I will try out next time I get time to work on this tool!

Just discovered this and have read through all your posts. Amazing work! Looks amazing. Love the feel of it all.

One thing I thought that could be cool is that when swimming on the top of the water the eye could come up like a periscope and kind of look around, would look cute and cool

Thank you! It means a lot to hear that, happy that you like it  ;D

Oh that sounds sweet. That would definitely look cute and also enhance the fact that you're at the surface. I am trying to lock down the game at the moment so not sure how many more animations I will have, but I really appreciate the tip :)

#Update 84 - Enemy support

Layout of level 1_7 is finished and it introduces both the spinner and some more advanced features of the water. What I am trying to teach as well is the fact that you can use the enemies as a means of transportation. They are sort of "supporting you" in reaching places which are not possible otherwise. Or they might just make it more convenient, like the pusher elevator.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BOWRPLTcyWDRfREE)
Pusher elevator.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BelVYVEZSVy1tMTg)
Thrown by spinner.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BbTluR1N3dFl3OTg)
Thrown again.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BV2h0U1FsX2JSMUU)
Level 1_7

Oh, man that's some nice scooping action with the spinning purple & pink plants!

Hey, sweet that you like it! I hope to have more of that type of interaction :beer:

#Update 85 - First night level

So I have finished another 3 levels. One teaching swings, one repeating the things learned on the last levels, and the first night level. The night levels are going to be a little bit tricky in how they render, but I think I have found a way that works. I really like how its pitch black for a while before you collect the first cube  :blink:

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BX3R5Vi1JTEJlTVE)
Intro first night level.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BeklpeWlTXzYxVVE)
More advanced pusher elevator.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BQ0VrRGhBMVRvakE)
Level 1_8.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BZ2JXRkxlQ2dPYm8)
Level 1_9

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BcGZTLW9vb3RuQms)
Level 1_10 - Night level.

#Update 86 - A few more levels

I have created some more levels and intend to keep doing the same today. Hopefully I will finish early and have time to keep working on my level tool and maybe react to some feedback I got this weekend.

Level 1_11 contains more advanced walljumping and platform jumping.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BSllLM2toT2NOdDA)
Level 1_11.

Level 1_12 keeps creating harder scenarios where wind is involved.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BT3hTZ1EzZW9RMjg)
Level 1_12.

I had 2 playtests this weekendI and I think I will make a few changes to these levels. But not until I finish todays planned work (creating 2 new levels for the forest world).

New variations of wind and stomper

Here are the new variations on level 1_11 and 1_12 for stomper and wind.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BYVpxRzBlc09ZRFU)
Stomper running lane.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BbnRWdm1ZSTdaSWs)
Swinging in the wind.

#Update 87 - Scaling water and wind

New levels, new combinations of mechanics and a few technical solutions. Here we go:

Technical solutions

So I had this issue where wind and water did not scale their appearences. In the wind case it meant that there where as many wind-particle-emissions for a low area as for a big area. I solved this by using the area of the collider to figure out a good emission rate. And I just used the one I had as prefab as reference for this value.

The extra particles really help the player determining where the edge of the wind actually is.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BbTBZMV9tMGMzc3M)
Wind now and before. (Now a lot more wind particles).

For the water it was about how much the water refracted and how big the normal map texutre was i.e the tile scale. For this solution I just used the height and width separately to decide the tile scale.

The old solution affected gameplay when the refraction was set too high. This was a dealbreaker for sure. The visual part is otherwise very subjective.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7Bc2pQcTdjUmFmNjQ)
Water now and before. (Now has less refraction).

New combinations of mechanics

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BX0dfRC1kUjZjLWs)
Under water + pushers.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BNUN1VW90NllQYTA)
Swings + pushers.

New levels

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BY1VlR01pejlWYWM)
Level 1_13.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BS0hTMnNwSGRWU00)
Level 1_14.

#Update 88 - Night maze

I created a new night level yesterday and wanted to try adding a maze. It felt natural since the line of sight is very limited which makes it more exciting.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BbVNUUVFmU2RlejQ)
Exploring maze.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BRjY4S1FFX0ZLQk0)
Jumping on maze walls.

The idea is that its supposed to be pitch black behind the player. But I really like when the night sky is visible:

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BSm1BdElZbV9XUmc)
Night sky.

I also created a level with a lot of jumping cubes. Now in the last levels of the forest world, I really wanna give the player a lot of cubes to create a feeling of being overpowered.

New levels

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BcEpkZFc4aU1fR2s)
Night level 1_15.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BcFZNOVZQQjZHYTg)
Level 1_16.

#Update 89 - Level generation tool update

I got some time yesterday to keep working on the level generation tool. I have tried to figure out what I need to do by hand and what can be generated. My goal is to generate everything, including trees and mushrooms. I have gotten to the part where I can generate background and foreground meshes from the hand made path.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BSktvLVhQRGdYLXM)
Generating foreground and background.

New levels

I also created two new levels that introduced a lot of run and jump energy. The running level includes a lot of timing obstacles and so does the jumping one, but with a totally different feeling.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BUWdlM1prREt5Zms)
Running level 1_17.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BTEFDYlN3MXZSaTQ)
Jumping level 1_18.

#Update 90 - Level generation tool update 2

New levels and some updates to the level generation tool.

I tried to figure out which path-blocks are at the very bottom to make them scale bigger in the z-axis. This seems pretty tricky since there are so many edge cases. Its not enough just raytracing downwards trying to see if there is something there. In the gif below you can see that there are still holes in the edges. Not even sure how to solve that. I think it might be one of those things that I should just let go and focus on later if I have figured something out.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BSmZjcnIwd3ZQUXM)
Trying to generate bigger foreground pieces for bottom path.

A short gif from the second level where a maze and pushers have been mixed.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BeGlMOFhKT0lqSnM)
Pushers in maze.

New levels

These new levels introduced a good mix of the mechanics that I have tought through out the forest world. And the night level (level 20) introduces mazes with pushers inside them, which I think works out great. It adds to the tension when inside the mazes.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BWEduRGJZdVlueHM)
Level 1_19.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7Bb1NzdXptYTlsVHc)
Level 1_20 (Night).

#Update 91 - Level generation tool update 3

I have kept on working on the level generation tool. It currently uses the hand-made path and some extra black geomtry that tells us where the player cannot go.

The background trees and horizon forest is now also being automatically generated.

The trees are generated from random points inside a certain area. Then I check if they are close to a wall and scale them down if they are going to clip it. This is very simple but since the levels are not being generated runtime at startup I can afford to have some minor errors when props are being generated. Because I can always go in afterwards and alter them a little.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BdTVkSEJuWWpZcjA)
Generating level 1_3.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BazVheVNyNmJLODQ)
Generating level 1_4.

Today I´m going to try to add foreground props as well and then well see if thats enough. Dont want to make it too complex.

#Update 92 - Level generation tool update 4

The tool can now generate mushrooms, flowers and foreground trees. It can also handle background for water and adding darkness to the bottom pieces of the scene.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BZjNoS1NIY2xvUVU)
Generating level 1_4.

I also made the water animate. I think its a bit hard to see the water though and there are some issues with the refraction when scaling the water mesh.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BbVhLR2hRX1RDYkU)
Animated water.

#Update 93 - Level generation tool update 5

Yesterday I worked on making the generation for the background trees better. I also made a lot of edge-case fixes for creating the underground parts.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BMlZHRVByWklFU3M)
How the trees are placed now.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BLWk2ZzAtLXhOdjg)
Zoomed in to to see the smaller foreground props.

I removed a lot of the random generation logic from the trees and made a more straight forward placement algorithm. This is probably pretty visible from the sky, but not (hopefully  :blink:) from the zoomed in player view.

hey i played through the demo at the Stugan finale! i forgot about this until now, you're making good progress, still looks really dope!

Hey!

Thanks for coming by and trying out the game, much appreciated  ;D
And thanks for the kind words, I am trying to wrap it up so hopefully the progress will keep coming!

I checked out you game Interaction Boy 3000, and it looks really nice! Is there any demo or something that I could try? (could not find any on your tigsource page)

#Update 94 - New forest boss

I had some other things to attend to yesterday so I did not get too much done. I made some bug fixes and started working on the new forest boss. It is a huge version of one of the spinning pushers, which I think makes sense. Im trying to keep as much logic from the old boss as possible. So the player will still restart from certain checkpoints if hit by the spinner.

I want to change up the pace a little bit, but I dont want the player to get too stressed out. In the old version, the boss sounds were very intense, so I think I can make it less stressful by having a lower-base-swooshing-sound coming from the boss.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BLWhpMHJCZkdBcVk)
Forest Boss. Spinning slow due to low fps rate when recording.

There's not much to play yet, I'm actually hoping I will get to go to Stugan next year and make a demo there! :- )

I like the way it scuttles around hm hm

Alright, let me know if you want someone to play test!

Cool! I really hope you get in ;D I had a very good time there.
If you have any questions about Stugan, I'm glad to answer them ofc :)

Hey, thanks! Im glad you like the characters movement :)

#Update 95 - Forest boss update

I kept working on the boss and the map is pretty much done. Now I need to add visual cues when passing checkpoints and such.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BOFQ1Mm5fdWR5VVU)
Part of forest boss level.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BVEg5V3ZRVVV5djA)
Boss level with no level generation.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BOS1rNVBJdlMwV00)
Boss level with level generation.

#Update 96 -

I have added visual feedback when reaching the checkpoints on the boss level. I still want to change the arrow to something more "beacon"-like. It currently looks like this:

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BVVpnTURhblQ3V2M)
Passing checkpoint on boss level.

I have also been working on fixing bugs in the level generator. Sometimes scale and rotation has created some issues that hopefully are dealt with now.

Now its time to generate all levels, brush them up a little bit and then create a demo-build with the first world only that I can send to people :)


 

#Update 97 - First world ready for test

So yesterday I finished up the first world and played through it. It is 20 levels with 1 boss and it took me about 50 minutes to complete. I think thats pretty good. So now I need at least one more world (the plan is two more) to feel good about the amount of time it takes to finish the game. I will fix the things I noticed during the playthrough and then start having some play tests to make sure everything is clear to the player.

I also upgraded the level generation tool a little bit by adding a seed functionality. It pretty handy if I want to re-generate a level after I have removed something or messed something up. Then I dont have to check the whole scene again.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BUlpRRWhoQXF2b1k)
Seed implemented in level generation tool.

I also fixed some minor bugs regarding the water. Apparently for some of the 2d-collider methods, z-postion of the game object needs to be at 0. This feels a bit weird to me since we are in 2D space. But I might have missed something.

#Update 98 - Water visuals and fixing colliders

I did a lot of bug fixing yesterday that included:
- Visual issues with meshes
- Clipping of text
- Build errors

I also fixed some bigger things that has bugged me for a while:

Collider fix

So there as always been an issue when using one collider for each building block. The physics engine thinks from time to time that there is and edge between two blocks that are right next to each other and makes the player "trip". This also happens when wall jumping which leads to even bigger consequences. When I did my own play through this was extremely frustrating at times. So what I found was the Composite Collider 2D that is already implemented into Unity. You just add it to the parent game object of all the colliders and set the collider to use the composite collider. And voila, it creates one seamless collider. I thought that I would have to use the polygon collider 2D. Either by writing my own script or setting the points by hand.

Don't forget to set the composite collider to use polygons instead of edges, otherwise the player falls through sometimes ( ! :wizard: ! )

Water visuals

It has also bothered me for quite a while that it was hard to see where the water was, and it did not really fit into the games visuals. I also wanted some foam around the objects that intersects with the water surface  :eyebrows:

This is what I came up with and it is so much easier to see where the water is. It also fits the alien environment, which I like.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BSC10UnRxejBxcU0)
New water visuals.

Final

I also tried to get the DOF working in a good way. For some reason, objects floating in the air with no object behind them, also gets blurred. So I still havent added it, but I got a cool looking Tokyo Cyberpunk looking feel  8)


(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BUXp0X3NFUG43a2c)
Sisu as a tokyo cyberpunk game.

#Update 99 - Prototype of intro cinematic

So there was quite a few things that I did last thursday.
- An intro animation.
- Updated visuals for pusher to let player understand easier which way it will push you.
- Versioning of save file.

Intro animation

I have added a simple intro animation that plays when there is no precious save file. A simple but effective way to show it only the first time the game starts. It is supposed to look like a crash, but the short feedback I have gotten is that it looks more like a regular landing.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BMzJVTk9KSmppLU0)
Intro animation.

Pusher visuals

I wanted to make it clearer which way the pushers are actually going to shove the player. It was a hard for the player to know which way they were going to get pushed, which ended up with some annoying side effects. I dont really want the player to have to fail once because they didnt realise that the pusher would push them in the wrong direction.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7Ba2ZoZ1Q4b0hKMjQ)
New pusher visuals.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BeWF2MUZ6Y2V6NTg)
Prototype that I did not go with.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BenlQY2lULUZUemc)
I also tried to change the mesh. First prototype.

Versioning of save file

So I have added a version to the save file to be able to know if the save file is compatible with the current game version. At the moment I will remove the old save file and create a new one if the version is not the same. This might change depending on if I have to patch parts that are concerned with these things, but at the moment I think its fine.

#Update 100 - Second planet

Yesterday I decided what I wanted to put into the second world. I changed from having an Ice-world with a gravity changing and heavy cube to an ice-magnet-world with flying and ground slamming cubes. I will probably remove the heavy one, since people did not really like it that much during play tests. The gravity one is still good but I feel as it could come in handy in the last world by affecting all the other cube abilities.

And mechanically I decided to keep the second planet as an ice world but also include the magnetic parts from world 3. I think it feels more interesting and can create some really nice moments.

I had time to create the two first levels that introduce the flying cube, ice and spitters that freeze you. 

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BU1llTl9wRllzQTQ)
Level 2_1.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BMUpWYzJUTHA1d3c)
Level 2_2.

#Update 101 - Ground slam in wind

I have finished 3 more levels. They introduce the slam cube and how to use it in wind and water. I also introduced magnets and how they affect the flapping ability. The magnets actually strips the player of the remaining flaps if they get caught.

Here are some gifs of different things that I introduce to the player in the new levels:

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BRnp5Zmx3aTF0R0E)
Learning slam ability by utilizing the wind as a swing.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BaHpsMlByU0NxUTA)
Magnet elevator.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BWFFWWnE3LTlBU2M)
Spitting ice obstacle.

New levels

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BVjhyenpZcXNQTFU)
Level 2_3.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BTmxOcFJ2TjRJMXM)
Level 2_4.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BTWkxVnNFMGNaa00)
Level 2_5.

#Update 102 - Fish is back!

I have made some more levels that introduce fishes, ice-slides and negative magnets. Also floating ice which I might remove, but it looks and feels kind of nice.

I also made the fish kick the player to the left or right if they currently have a roof above them. Otherwise it kicks them upwards out of the water.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BdXIyTXlHRG9adzA)
Ice slide.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BRnVuQk5aWnJXSWM)
Fish and floating ice.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BNVludGlSUUh2bU0)
Fish and floating ice.

New levels

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BVjhyenpZcXNQTFU)
Level 2_6.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BTmxOcFJ2TjRJMXM)
Level 2_7.

#Update 103 - More levels

I basically worked on new levels and tried to incorporate some ideas that I had into them.
- Using the negative magnet (that pushes the player away) in fun ways.
- Combining flying and running in a good fun way.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BM19uZzBoQWtQbDA)
Flygin through magnets challange. Failing..

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BYTlNdHMwX1J3YUE)
Splitter challange.

New levels

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BLVctYmxpQlZxMkk)
Level 2_8 - A night level.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BdDE3Rmg1MDBLVXc)
Level 2_9.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BbTJleGJUTlNtcmc)
Level 2_10.

#Update 104 - More levels

I made two new levels that advances into using more slam cubes and flying cubes. On the level where you obtain multiple slamming cubes, the birds did not have time to react. When I tried to change this, they got a little bit too agressive :brofistL: >:( :brofistR:

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BUW54cHNrXzEyT3c)
Overly aggressive bird.

New levels

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BaW5zZUl5alRVLUU)
Level 2_11 - A level introducing multiple slam cubes.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BcC00Nk5OQjJUcnc)
Level 2_12 - A level expanding on having two flying cubes.

#Update 105 - Ice slide challanges

I have made two new levels that introduce ice slide challanges. Level 2_13 combines timing with flying. And 2_14 combines timing with slamming.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BdjVTakRWT2ZoVEk)
Sliding and flying.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BRW1nYzJjdHljaXc)
Sliding and slamming.

New levels

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BM2dLYkZfVGNNTk0)
Level 2_13 - A level introducing ice slides + flying.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BZ0tGZ2dIVU5VNnM)
Level 2_14 - A level introducing ice slides + slamming.

Game looks great mate, I like the ideas you have.

The first thing that came to mind when I saw your introductory post was Thomas Was Alone. I think this game could benefit greatly from a narrator, that is if it fits your vision for the game of course. Not that finding an ideal narrator is an easy thing mind you. ;D

Keep at it, I'm very curious where this goes. :)

I really like the idea of having a narrator. I haven't thought about it though, and it feels a bit too late into the game to add something like that since I am trying to wrap it up. And like you say, its not the easiest thing to find the ideal narrator or write good dialog.

Thanks a lot for the kind words and the great idea. I'm going to ponder a little on it to see if I can maybe add it in some form..  ???
I really appreciate it :)

#Update 106 - Ice on nights levels

Yesterday I finished level 2_15 which is a night level, and level 2_16.

2_15 combines the darkness of a night level with under water mazes that are patrolled by fish. And 2_16 expands on flying through magnetic fields with the right flow.

Also, I have some issues with ice and night levels.. I dont think you can call it a feature really ???
Anyway, I am prioritizing finishing the 20 levels, and then I will look into these bugs that are not game breaking.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BTHZLc0ZDaVRLMlE)
Flickering ice during night.

New levels

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BZmdYS2Vqa2pUenc)
Level 2_15 - A night level .

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BbGRwMnp1VXl2SjQ)
Level 2_16 - A level introducing ice slides + slamming.

#Update 107 - Spitting in the wind

Level 2_17 and 2_18 are finished.
2_17 is all about spitters spitting ice orbs into the wind and wall jumping from ice. The ice orbs gets affected by the wind and creates some nice scenarios.

2_18 is all about wall jumping and flying with a lot of speed.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BUngtQ0d2MU8yMDg)
Spitters spitting ice orbs into the wind. Soothing.. :P (should have been an endless loop..)

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BRHlMWmdXejN1a0E)
Spitters spitting ice orbs into the wind.

New levels

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BcUJqTGhRWE4xT3M)
Level 2_17.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BU0dvUF8wRGUtODg)
Level 2_18.

#Update 108 - Windy ice slides

I have finished level 2_19 and 2_20. PUH! Finally done and ready for play testing world 2. These levels include stuff like ice slides with wind that pushes you and tricky dark mazes where you also have to run and fly over obstacles.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BOVJZWVZvMWVEWmc)
Run and fly in darkness.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BTEozS29DVE9fZVU)
Windy ice slides.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BLWtxMFFIS2dUNmM)
Reflection in the ice on night level.

New levels

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7Bek5aanlmRkFMS2s)
Level 2_19.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BSWx6T3VsR0ZrOW8)
Level 2_20.

#Update 109 -

So this last friday I started looking into feedback that I have gotten from the last play throughs. One of the bigger feedbacks have been that people have had a hard time grasping friction under water. So what end up happening is that when they try to jump up on a cliff under water, they push against the wall and the friction stops them. This makes them think they cannot make the jump. So after trying some different versions where I changed the friction under water (removing it) I went for a simpler level design approach. I used angled cliffs instead, so the player does not push against the wall.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BNmtVYzdaSDYwSFE)
Angled cliffs instead of blocky ones.

I also added all the levels for the ice world to the second planet. So now it is all testabel. I still need to make a mesh for the second planet and create the boss.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BWlZrYWlFeXB5YUU)
Level layout for second planet.

The camera does now react to when the player is under water and shifts its angle so it is easier to see what is going on.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BRjRIVnJyZDlMUms)
Level layout on second planet.

The jump-presses are now kept in memory for ca 200 ms. This means that if the player presses jump right before they land on the ground, the character will still jump. Before you could press it right before you land and get no jump, annoying.

I also did some other minor bugfixes.

#Update 110 - Ice world Boss

So yesterday I pretty much worked on the boss for the ice world. It is a big fish that you need to feed with smaller fish to make it move. In this gif, the boss starts moving when the small fish is close enough to the bosses mouth. In the final version the boss will probably shoot out a tounge or something like that.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BaURiTkE5SExReVE)
Tricking fish into the bosses mouth.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7Bc3lMNC1DR2pWcWM)
Boss level layout. The boss is the big red (wobbly) square.

Visuals ice world

I also did a quick test for how the visuals should look for the ice world. Instinctively I want the world to be white and blue, but the white is kind of straining on the eye. So I might choose some other colors.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BZldrVlFwREl4dDg)
Quick test for visuals in second world.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BU2FSQmNka1pvbUE)
Older visual test where shadows are added.

#Update 111 - Ice world level generation

Yesterday I mostly worked on generating the ice world levels and bugs/fixes that was needed to make it work. I'm about half way through I think. I still need to add smaller hills, both in the background and the foreground. But also some minor props like icicles maybe.

Here are some images from the ongoing work:

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BeXVuZTNlWldlaEU)
How it looks now.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BNGYwaDRwdG50WXc)
Generating level.

#Update 112 - Generating ice world

So I have kept on working on generating the ice world levels, and I am starting to feel pretty satisfied. There are still some minor things, but I am glad with how the hills are generated and how they avoid sticking out through geometry and stuff like that.

So the ice world background is basically composed out of these components:
- Big hills in the far background. (Red circle)
- Medium hills. (Blue circle)
- Mediummedium hills. (Black circle)
- Small hills. (Green circle)

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BUmczeGg0RzA5T2s)
Layout of hills.

And the foreground is basically composed out of these components:
- Ice. (Red)
- Hills that create depth. (Blue)
- Snow particles. (Black)

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BVjJWM2lSalBIM0E)
Layout of foreground.

I am also adding something to the caves (like the mushrooms in the forest world), but Im not sure exactly what that will be yet. Otherwise I feel satisfied that this is the right amount of things to make the world not feel crowded or empty. Still haven't looked into the colors either.

Progress

Here are some images that shows the current progress:

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BWXFJREhLNFBqREE)

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7Bbi14QkxLWEZ6SVk)

#Update 113 - Generating ice world

I have just kept on generating the ice world. 19 out of 21 levels, so done soon :coffee:

Something I have had to deal with in the ice world that was not present in the forest world was the ice. The ice does not necessarily have anything behind it or in front of it, so it is a bit more to take into concidereation when generating the level. I solved this by introducing a new builing block that operates like the path building block, but is invisible. It still has a trigger collider which has caused some issues when raytraing, but I think it is solved now. Here is an image that shows how I have placed these new building blocks and how they have helped generate the back and foreground.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BT1I1NmozWGJ5clU)
The yellow diamonds represent the new invisible building blocks that helps the generation algorithm figure things out.

#Update 114 - Depth perception and colors

The ice world level generation is done for this time and I have tried out some different colors. Now I need to make some play tests to learn more about the maps and if there are any places that are confusing,too hard etc.

Here are the different color palettes that I tried out. I currently like the white and blue the most, even though its a little boring in the sense of beeing very conventional and what you would expect from an ice world. But its a nice contrast from the first dark forest levels. I would have liked to have another color than white, but then the depth perception becomes worse, which is a huge deal.

What do you guys think about the colors? Or do you have any other suggestions? :eyebrows:

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BT0pORFVFZjhFNmc)
White to green.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BQXhtZnNzZGJxbWM)
Red to blue.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BOWx3dGFEcU4zQmM)
White to red.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BVnJ4Um5FSHFQYk0)
White to blue.

Level depth perception

I also improved the feeling of depth in the ice world. It was really hard to see where the player could interact with the world because of the fact that the color change/gradient was happening too slow. This is a before and after:

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BOUNuMDI4MEVVdDA)
Old.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BZTJwQ2kyWDQ1Umc)
New.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7Ba3JWVERuYUM4Vzg)
Old.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BVnJ4Um5FSHFQYk0)
New.

#Update 115 - Tongue

So a very small update today since all of yesterday (and probably a big part of today) went to "administrative stuff" that does not create any progress for the actual game.

Anyway, I had time to fix some stuff based on feedback. One of those things was the second boss. When the fish just disappeared, no one understood that the big fish ate the small one. So I came up with the simplest solution possible, I added a tongue :giggle:

Hopefully it is more clear what is actually happening now. The play test on friday will hopefully let me know.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BNGwzeTFGd3p1RDg)

Ho man... this looks great! Love the colour palette, the simplicity of the universe and all the cool physics effect!  :handjoystick:

#Update 116 - Secrets

yesterday I started trying to implement the secrets. There is supposed to be one secret on each level. I have a few issues with them though.

- I dont know, story wise and technically, WHY the player is collecting them other than that its fun finding secrets.
- I need to make sure that the player dont think it will affects their abilities in any way, like the energy cubes, and gets that its a secret.

Other than that I want to change the color of the level on the world map to let the player know they have collected the secret.

Any suggestions regarding these issues are very welcome  :shrug2:

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BbUlLVTFLZ2Q0RXc)
Current prototype of secret.

Hey, Thanks! Thats very kind of you. I am glad that you like so many aspects of the game  ;D

Ooh, I like the secret!  :gomez: Looks appropriately mysterious.

#Update 117 - Main menu

So I decided to remove the main menu that normally shows up in games when you start them and went for a more "The Witness" kind of feeling where the game just starts instantly where you last were.

I did this to get the player started faster and have less friction in general. It also feels a bit more immersive and in the end the extra main menu just felt unnecessary to me. So now you have to press a menu button (esc or start button) to open the menu.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BanpvcGxqYWlVems)
The menu where Play -> Resume, Gear -> Options, Cross -> Quit.

Level color

Here is an image that shows how the levels are colored on the world map depending on if they are incomplete(red), complete(green) or complete with a discovered secret(white).

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BbE9LbUkyMTJCdzQ)
The different level colors appearing in the world map.

Ice world prototype

Appearantly I have forgotten to show the new prototype for the ice world on the world map, so here it is:

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BZnNGNnAxSWlZOTA)

Oh, thanks! :) Mysterious sounds good!

#Update 118 - Thoughts regarding the end

Personal playtest

Yesterday I played through the whole game and made bugfixes for a couple of things that I found. I made a list of stuff/bugs I noticed and categorized them into Minor and Major. Major things affect gameplay and Minor ones can be visual or things that does not make a level unplayable.

The end

I also though about how to end the game. The original idea was that when you return to your home planet, the secret cargo that you have been transporting turns out to be something that regains energy to the planet (or something major like that). Then the mayor would steal the large energy diamond, get infected by it and turn into the final boss that you have to defeat.

But now I am thinking about just having a ceremony on your home planet, without the final boss. This is mainly to be able to put more time into making the rest of the game more polished. But I wonder if players will accept this, or react in a bad way since last boss fights are pretty common in games..  ???

And regarding what the secrets might do/affect. My brother came up with the idea of adding something extra to the final ceremony scene depending on how many secrets you have collected. I like this idea because of its simplicity but also because it stays a mystery until the end of the game what they actually do.

#Update 119 - Light on night level

Last Friday I worked on fixing the things that I had discovered during my play through. One of the most visual things were that I did not let the meshes receive light from the player. This had a huge impact on the pitch dark night levels. Here are a couple of images:

Before:

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BV2pxcHdURDFWX1U)

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BdUZ1NlZoMEJHNlE)

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BUHI3UXFIVFY5Rjg)

Now:

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BZURBZUVhSndQYU0)

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BYzY5b2FJQXhsclk)

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7Bc25BYnd3MzBzV3c)

I also realized that I had set the models to have flat shading instead of smooth. That helped making it smoother as well.

User play test

I had a friend play through the whole game and collected the feedback live. It was a lot of useful information and it seemed as though he was quite pleased in general. He seemed to accept that there was no "final boss fight" but did not like that fact that the first boss was much more rewarding then the second one.

He played on his projector which was quite cool (cinema feeling) :whome:

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BckVBN2VHUVVyN2s)

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BTEhwMTBnX1Q2UGs)

#Update 120 - Getting caught up in color schemes

Okaay. So yesterday I started fixing the things that was discovered during the Friday playtest I mentioned in the last post. I had one reoccurring issue which was that players would think that the turquoise sky behind the tree line was the actual teleport beam from the ship. So I though "Hey, lets try to change the color of the sky to differentiate them". And then 6 hours later I had been stuck in color-scheme-mode. Classic mistake, but I just couldnt let it go. It is still not finished but I did have some important realizations.

- The ice world is way too bright. When trying out having black in foreground, it becomes clear that this is what I should do.
- The forest level is very well composed (realized again after a lot of testing different new color schemes).

Ice world tests:

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BT0JhN1pXdDhTYzg)
Test with white in foreground.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BbUNzQ1FRaWxIMGM)
Test with black in foreground.

These are different color scheme tests:

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BeE1NTFktQ1BwX0k)

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BN3phOHRhalN5aGc)

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BX3cwT2JXMlc1YVk)

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7Bd3hfNFlBZ1lDams)

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BYmhxUHBoemhJMTg)

Forest world test:

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BSW5aLXQ4b0R0eUU)

I Like this one, but compared to the final version, it just looks way more earth like and way less alien, which is what I am going for.

Forest final

I decided to change the beam color instead of the sky. But then I also felt that the enemies should pop in another color, to differentiate them from other pink and purple things in the scene.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BamdqZXNCNjhBaHc)

I did manage to get some other bugfixes done, and it is what I will keep doing today. But I might have to finish the ice worlds color scheme now that I know its not very good as primarily white.. :addicted:

#Update 121 - Ice world colors

Yesterday I did a lot of minor fixes on leves where I have gotten relevant feeback. I also changed the color scheme of the ice world to this:

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BaWFqczBZOUZhSUE)

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BQnpENlN6SE1aem8)

I have a playtest again tonight so I can try out my changes. I am not totally in love with the colors of the ice world, but they work really well in the sense of UX for the player. Its easy to spot enemies, important objects and where they can go. Also its not as straining on your eyes as the white foreground was.

#Update 122 - The ending

So the playtest yesterday went really well. And I spotted some crucial things that I need to fix while he had some good feedback regarding the ending.

So right now you get to the last planet after finishing the second boss (which is really easy compared to the first boss). When you get there the game basically tries to explain why you have traveled through these planets and then the game exits. Both of my play testers have said that this is very much an anticlimax. So the proposition was to change the story and make it simpler.

Something along the lines of:
- Just being someone who goes to these planets, collects energy och then gets something valuable from the last boss (which I am also intending to implement).
- After that you beam away from the planet to give the feeling of continuing the journey.

Other than that it was mostly minor fixes. Some things are still a bit too hard. One things he mentioned was the acceleration when having collected a lot of speed energy. The character accelerates way to fast in the air so the player looses control. I have tried to fix this before, but I am going to give it another shot.

Also, here is something that I added yesterday to try to explain that the teleporters are driven by the energy that you collect on the levels.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BRXdyRFR1LUtsYlE)
Red and yellow energy from the first planet.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BSmZyRGcyN25aN3M)
Blue and green energy from the second planet.

#Update 123 - Transparency sorting

I have finished all the fixes based on wednesdays play test. The major ones were:

- Getting stuck between ice and regular ground materials.
- Flying ability not always getting shut down by touching a magnet.
- Tried adding a fix for not accelerating so fast when in possesion of many speed enegies.
- A lot of minor fixes to make levels smoother.
- A lot of minor bugfixes in general.
- Sorting of transparent objects.

Actually I could fix the last one by just changing transparency sort mode under Graphics -> Camera settings from Perspective to Orthographic.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BNU9GVDYyMUZ4VW8)
Pop happening from perspective sorting.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BU1V2RWw4OU5JMWM)
No more popping when using orthographic sorting.

Fewer updates

I am going to start working part time as a game developer at a company that makes VR games. Ill be working 60% which means that I will probably just update this log 1 or 2 times a week from now on. That part is a bit sad but I am super excited to start working there and I feel that this part time thing is perfect right now  ;D

#Update 124 - Final boss - part 1

So these last two weeks have been kind of busy from starting a new job and trying to figure out the new routines. I did manage to get some work done last week though. I decided to go with having a final boss (as I mentioned in #Update 122). It is supposed to be that final obstacle before being able to beam into space and finish the game.

It basically consists of two parts:
- First part: You need to collect all different types of energy while progressing forward. Meanwhile the boss is lurking underneath you, trying to bring you down.
- Second part: You need to hurt the boss with falling objects a couple of times. When the boss is completed, a white energy will appear from within it. That white energy makes intergalactic travel possible.

I still need to implement the final sequence and even more importantly, the boss behavior. I'm not 100% sure yet about how it will attack or bring the player down  ???

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1m1-GuAS8ZKizBy-hOktccY5Rrkh35hdK)
Boss following player.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1wMogNC8lu9teJchA-J9dSq1j90bUYPOF)
Hurting boss in final sequence.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1h9VU5zIAnWycN3GEkgGsxF2wFE1ucPtF)
Outline of final map.

I don't reply very often here, but I just wanted to let you know that I'm reading and enjoying every update! :coffee:

You know, just saying in case it feels like you're shouting into the void.

#Update 125 - Final boss - part 2

Yesterday I tried to figure out how the boss should attack the player and how to increase the difficulty as the level progresses. So for the first part (before the final battle), this is what I came up with:

First the boss shoots green mindless orbs. Then, as the player progresses, it also starts shooting blue orbs and then pink orbs. The blue orbs shoot straight up as soon as they get a free space above them. And the pink ones are homing orbs.

Technically the orbs gets spawned underneath the players current location. Their initial velocity forward is correlated to the players current velocity. This seems to work fairly well for creating a fun varying obstacle.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=13WnacHjCMvsCUAS-tA7rteGtoRGpnGzF)
Green orbs.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1h1TGHlEy-wq-YFbPL4bvFMNgk69wytqa)
Blue orbs.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1jXM-mjSI1AOdYMZRGOfATbTAKwqEGTAH)
Pink orbs.

This is clearly a very early prototype, but I like the way its heading  :)

Hey, I really appreciate hearing you say that! It absolutely gives me some extra energy to keep posting updates :coffee:

#Update 126 - Final boss - part 3

I kept on working on the boss and the logic for finishing the game last friday. When the boss gets defeated (by dropping things in its head) a white crystal appeares. This is the final energy that makes it possible to beam away from this part of the universe. So now it's actually possible to win and finish the game :handmetalL: :P :handmetalR:

The ending is very basic now, but I am imagining something like energy charging and then the ship gets beamed into space in a white ray of light.

The last parts are very basic:
- The boss needs balancing and ofcourse, final graphics.
- The ending is just showing that the logic part works.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=16_gN1ky1zoRx2_xr49NsRDMj0nPzHtBJ)
Respawning pillars.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1P679oU-pz616dML__gFobPO0DQeGRq-f)
Final energy.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1FzIwK9eLX_dlJOV8qQheirg6Sz9EOLGK)
The temporary ending.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1AKDvYkJkLOyj714-ulq7vERBl9Kdz2iW)
Swinging in part of final map.

#Update 127 - Settings menu

Yesterday I started by looking into what is actually left to do before the game is finished. I am thinking that I will try to work on the thing that brings the game towards its final state the most. What brings the most value.

The main topics were:
- Sound -> Characters (Sisu, enemies etc), Event triggeres e.g. when beaming to other planet, and music.
- Graphics/Animations -> Characters (Sisu, enemies etc), Boss 2 & 3, final world.
- Menu system -> Tab for Resolution, Graphics quality and monitor selection.
- UI Graphics -> Layout, Icons.

This list only include things related to finishing the game. So Steam, Console porting, Marketing and all that stuff is not in it. I got a bit too stressed and side tracked trying to think about all that stuff at the same time, so I decided to finish the game first, and then think about those things.

I choose to start looking at the menu system to be able to get rid of the "Display resolution dialog". I also chose not to include being able to change input. I will wait for feedback and see if that is something people really want. I will also wait for general feedback that might include things like being able to run in window mode etc.

So what I needed to include now was a way to change resolution, change quality and change display. I decided that dropdown menus felt like the right way to go for setting resolution and quality. Unfortunately, it seems as if they dont scroll correctly when using keyboard or controller input. I have not been able find any events that gives me the information I need to scroll it by myself from code either. Which confuses me a bit since it is such a common scenario. Here is a gif showing my issue:

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1NFaJ4HeAPRou8GITSg8dbwMco214Zq1I)
Dropdown menu not scrolling when using keyboard or controller as input.

I might have missed something obvious here, any tips?  :shrug2:

#Update 128 - Settings menu

So I finally got the dropdown scrolling correctly for keyboard and controller input. I actually had to hook into Unitys event system to get the information I needed. By both triggering and handling a certain event I could write some code that took care of the scrolling.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1zEi5Sd-dIsJCnO6ca8fXjr1KgJ_c9_fx)
Working dropdown menu.

I also ran into a bug where the spaceship moved way faster on lower graphical settings.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1CBSNq2ptUAkcwwvYwtbIkHw4pH_Ou4G9)
Speed bug happening when lowering graphics settings.

And finally over the weekend I put together a series of clips from the game. I did it for a specific purpose (that Im not sure if I can talk about yet) and now, since I already have it, I though I might as well upload it and show it here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6AhQfkLQPU

Hahaha, that reminds me of a Game Jam I once joined where you had a little space-ship that you could send from one planet to the other with a click. You could zoom in and out of the planets, but our programmer mis-coded the speed of the space-ship to be relative to screen dimensions; you always covered the same nr of visible pixels per second. So zooming out would make you speed up relative to the in-game universe!

But this was a happy accident, it gave us a really nice way to control speed with simple control scheme actually worked really well with this game! Time was not an element in the game mechanics (we were making a space-themed logic puzzler), so it didn't break any mechanics, and it actually gave a really cool method of fine-grained control over movement.

#Update 129 - Icon

Stuff I did yesterday:

• So when I finally though I had fixed the dropdown menu, I realized that it did not work for controllers, only keyboard :o
  Luckily it was just a simple miss where I had forgot to trigger the event system for controller input.
  
  
• Then I started looking into removing the mouse (cursor) completely. So far you have been able to use it in menus, but in combination with the dropdown options, it created some bugs where the UI lost focus and you could not get it back. It turns out its harder than I expected to ignore mouse clicks in the event system. There are solutions for sure, but I decided to wait since it wasnt that straight forward.
  
  
• Started working on the last planets visuals. I want to make a planet with a lot of craters. I will try to keep working on the final boss today and finish those graphics.
  
  

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1hj0G62mshjYQONBbojfkQLAK-xmVsnCy)
Very early version of last planet.

• Application icon! I did a really quick version of an application icon. It feels pretty optimal 8)
  
  

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1KOCnaiYz6p24h0A8Hnt54b60DlFxzNOj)
Application icon.

Haha that sounds kinda cool. I like the idea of being able to control "fast travel" that way. If you wanna travel far and fast, just zoom out the map like you would anyways. Neat! The fine grained control also sounds very nice! Talk about a bug turning into a feature :gentleman:

#Update 130 - Crater world visuals

So I have decided and implemented what the crater worlds visual style is. This is from the world map and from inside the level:

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1TMoStFXsUEUEyOgjgvaO2yhl3GOKh1YB)

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1bXHHWBGyybKHcA55F3kXJM-bJLOZ4ns5)

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1TNodsA9T6qhv1QMyyIJ7EacKc20a3IK3)

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1DkXwW4eyRb8pfXAKVO15ws3TnL4OhAFJ)
The whole level.

Deep pits

I had an idea of trying to have deep pits in the ground that would render on top of the flat ground. For this I tried adding another camera that just cleared the depth buffer. This way I could render things on top of the normal camera. An issue was that everything underneath the hole was rendered as well. I didn't want to put more time into it, but to make this look right, I'm thinking that I would need to have an occlusion material that only renders to the depth buffer to covers these un-culled faces.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1MHOHDJyva_oLcyzn9HHMfXQd828iymPc)
Inner side of pit has camera facing faces that does not get culled and therefore gets rendered on top of everything.

Icon
I also created some more versions of the icon. Which one do you like the best? :monoclepop:

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1Snp7ywdwzhe3BhiUfQUorYx_uQTcqfJq)

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1CiJsEeGpO7EVZSWxKwD5cGCsEf_HpBY9)

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=10N1eg8WPeDk5CtNPAHK4K8axaT1SySJX)

Top one for me. But you know there are various tools to turn low-res icons into SVGs, right ;)

#Update 131 - Fishy visuals

So yesterday it was time to make some idle animations for the main character and some graphics and animations for the fish-enemies (including the boss I guess).

Idle animations

So while standing idle, the eye can either blink once or twice in a quick mannor. It can also start looking around in some random angles. This is a pretty simple implementation, but I think it serves the idle animation purpose and still have some variation to it.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1Wo2aawhSXWpJLlRoJ4fLGjsFmYw1EIB6)
Idle animation.

Fish graphics

I also started working on the graphics and animations for the fishes. I want something simple and playful. This is what I have got so far:

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1eSbLGsu-MVJS_9fdqDpYLJoaZiuKbLHj)

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1-l57-8zN5XdjalQHB7vg4eShcfiiKEks)

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1KXBTww14fMJMkv_W5TPIP2DmZCSDYZzC)

So the idea is that the fish will open its mouth on certain occassions. I'm not totally sure about when yet though.

Agreed. Its probably the clearest one, thanks for the opinion :)
I havent needed an SVG yet but I probably will ahead, and I didn't know you could create an SVG from a png directly. Thats a good tip, thanks!  :gentleman:

Shhhhh

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1eSbLGsu-MVJS_9fdqDpYLJoaZiuKbLHj)

#Update 132 - Sneaky bird

I have kept working on graphics and there has been progress in the fish and bird area.

Fish

So there has been a few additions since the last post:
- The fish opens its mouth when attacking.
- The attack range circle graphics are updated and animated.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1qZcpUhgixaYIon8VnzmtFx4e2tgETQst)

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1ws4ZJaE6k89fIXyRgGXVN6GqnO3giUld)
Poor fish stuck on land  :'(


Bird

I am aiming for a somewhat alien playful bird. I might add some wind particles when inhaling and exhaling air. This is the current status:

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1eMk1JB16hYNxYtqe9rYIbcC3EYKlv3KK)

Blend shapes

I like to create animations by using blend shapes. That is basically what I have done for both the fish and the bird. These are the blend shapes for the bird:

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1X1s6I3JJ9DFkG0iQZq3dDi587GIqBm7g)

Conclusion

So these are basically the only two animated living things in the game, if you ignore the spinning and spitting plants, and the bosses. I wanted to keep them simple yet make them fit into the art style and be playful. Right now I think they do just that.

I also like how the "aggression circle" turned out, with red in the edges and a clear color in the middle where the enemy is. It makes it easier to know where the enemy is and when it will attack. The animation helped a lot with making it feel good too.

Haha.. well spotted. That sneaky feeling was spot on :gentleman:

#Update 133 - Boss & Bird

I have kept on working on the sneaky bird and the fishy second boss.

Bird

So this is the result from trying to make the bird inhale and exhale air.. I like how its playful, but I hope its not too playful compared to the rest of the game?

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1VkhKVXPQX3R-7pI_pQJ_bYO2PN7QDmLP)

These are some variants that I tried:

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=19SRa9LNALbHganQmu2JhFLXI5RbWhAL0)

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1EnDOM14E2xBxDwCT0K-AZNyom78hljia)

Big Fish Boss

So the second boss got a huge graphical makeover. Now its a big fish that uses its tongue to eat smaller fish, yummy. Right now it just starts wiggling and then makes it way backwards to the next stop. I tried making it turn (sadly I forgot to record a gif) but it did not turn out that well. And especially not for all of the different stopping points. I still like the swimming backwards thing. It kind of makes it feel a bit more retro somehow? My brain might just have gotten used to it though and trying to excuse it by thinking its retro ;D

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1opIEkpbXs7j0NVb0jQM0Igp2U9iTuI7t)

Random

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1ue6sDaT9xebT64dcqsaKZtilPZ0v7Tw5)

I might have missed it but you can't die in this game right? All opposition is in the form of impeding your movement, kinda like the wonderful RunMan: Race Around The World (http://wherecouldtom.be/games/runman/) (but without the speed emphasis).

If I remembered that correctly: how are you designing bosses in this context? Is it like a "you spent the whole level getting used to your temporary abilities, now show how you mastered them"-type deal?

Good job on the camera work  ;) I reminds me of a certain fight in Shadow of the Colossus!

This looks fascinating! Good luck with the development. :)

Wow I'm kind of amazed you're so serious and regular with your updates, way to go! Lots of new stuff since the last time I saw this project, congrats :D

Thank you, I appreciate it :)

Hey, thanks! If I understand you correctly though, I am sad to say its only a part of the screen. So normally the character is centered horizontally. But I like the idea of a "situation aware" camera system :)

Thanks for letting me know! Helps me want to keep on making them :)

Exactly. The idea is that you cant die and as soon as you have finished an obstacle, its done. Trying to be a less frustrating but still challenging game.


It is kind of like that in all the boss fights, but they also have another layer of "how to not kill the player but still be challenging". I did think about how to achieve this a lot. The result is kind of mixed. Sadly, I have not implemented the "purest" versions of this in all the boss fights because of my scope and time frame.

Boss 1 - Spinning Pusher
So in the first world you the temporary abilities are: Speed and Jump. This makes it perfect for a boss that is chasing you (or you chasing it, could have been the better way to go in hindsight).

So my initial idea was that you would be chased by this huge guy that is basically playing with you. And when they catch you, they pick you up and put you down on a previously reached "checkpoint". This would have been a very nice way to not kill you, but still punish you. It is basically the same thing, but visually, story wise and emotionally something totally different.

Anyway, this is not what I did, since I felt like I did not have the time to make this huge boss character with animations and all. So how it works now is that when the boss catches up to you, you get thrown backwards. The game fades to black and you get beamed down to your most recent checkpoint. The level has several checkpoints to make the experience less frustrating by not having to replay the whole level. It is technically the same thing as the initial idea, but presented, in my opinion, in a worse way. I have play tested it quite a lot and people generally does not react to it as "you died" which was the main goal.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=0B3JcE3llNr7BOFQ1Mm5fdWR5VVU)

Boss 2 - Big Fish
New temporary abilities are: Flying and Slamming into the ground, wind or "diving" under water.

Here you have to make regular sized enemies chase you and trick them to get close enough to a big fish boss that will then eat them. This makes the big fish move. So here its more about coming up with the idea of feeding the fish with smaller fish and tricking them to get close enough. It is a bit more playful, includes other elements into the game and naturally removes the need for killing the player.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1opIEkpbXs7j0NVb0jQM0Igp2U9iTuI7t)

Boss 3 - X (not decided yet)
This world only contains the final boss and does not introduce any new energies. The boss level has two parts. The first part where the player needs to progress and avoid getting hit by the projectiles fired at them. If you get hit, you restart at your last reached checkpoint (like the first boss). Then it has a final part where you need to figure out how to damage the boss and get the final super-energy.

Here the player gets a stronger sense of dying and failing than the first boss. It is the last thing you do in the game though, so I kind of like that it makes you feel more vulnerable. I will try to make the restart more natural though, so the player hopefully wont think of it as dying. Honestly though, I would have liked to have more bosses that plays out like the second one. More playful and with natural reasons for not dying.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=13WnacHjCMvsCUAS-tA7rteGtoRGpnGzF)

Final
I had other ideas like: Having the player steal the energy power ups from a boss that were protecting them by trying to push you away. And every time you stole an energy from them, they would move to another place, presenting a new challenge. Kind of a different twist on the second boss.

Another one was to have the player choose an energy/temporary ability and then perform different unique tasks with each one of them. The boss would be finished when all powers had been utilized in the correct way.

Sorry for this long long answer, but its something I have though a lot about and something that I feel has not been done too many times before, so its an interesting topic. Haha, its actually way longer than most posts so I guess your question hit a subject that's dear to me :)

Don't apologize! I'm interested in reading this; why else do you think I asked? :P

Haha, good point :)

#Update 134 - Magnets and ice orb explosions

Magnets

So I decided to fix the graphics for the magnets that so far has just been transparent boxes in red (positive) and blue(negative). I really wanted the player to know that you would get sucked into the magnet before trying it out. Then the visual design is good enough.

I had some trouble figuring out how to create the magnetic effect. A key thing was that I wanted it to affect the visual look of whats behind it. Because of this, I started looking into panning the UVs used by the refraction normal map into the center of a quad. This turned out to be harder than I though to get right. The first attempt:

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1260GP3O_g-qol1JYOYXY5R1OPkckCLVb)

This created some unwanted distortions between certain polygons though, so I started looking into making it more like a "flat sphere". This is the result from using an actual sphere:

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1sX4dGLmgBwUnnEzQ2MePFGVrswvfvKXx)

This looks good but creates another problem; that I would have to change the bounding box that decides when to start applying the magnetic force to a circular shape. That would potentially have a huge affect on the already created levels, so it was a no go.

I went through some different iterations of trying to create this squared out "flar sphere" and ended up with this:

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1DLCtUbhPeYfXxHx0vdhsTverk_5GLbwd)

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1uVeHakGQqoydqkt3R_ARyEquQvlaBQb1)

Exploding ice orbs

It was also time to do something about the ice orbs that just disappeared when they were supposed to break. I created a particle effect that gets triggered after the orb disappeares. The "going from red to white color" visualization of the degradation of the orb prior to triggering the particles is still not great though. Im not sure how to visualize it without changing scale or transparency. Maybe scale it right before it explodes..

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=10L6kvG_5rs_T7J94VQ8d7V7zaj1zgJFz)

Final - Bloopers  

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=19IaiSIO74-LWR394_eX3MLFz4aThmiUU)

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1DvIqEMz6jKLE8VmK5MoSeCCgiVHACi5U)

By the way, I just noticed that you reside in Stockholm. Same here; if there is ever an indy dev meetup or something that you're joining let me know! :)

Ah, cool! I usually go to the Unity and Indie Game Dungeon meetups :)

#Update 135 - Crater boss concept update

So the biggest graphical thing left is the final boss. I have kind of struggled to try to figure out how to make it hard enough but still fun. The ascending orbs were kind of hard to control the difficulty level of. So I started thinking about how I could make it less random and more controllable. This is the idea that I liked the most; letting the boss have octopus like arms that try to grab the player when jumping over gaps. They would have different behaviours just like the orbs.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=14CTjPDM80IMNtyVm8372eBh2x8uv_ixH)

I also raised the lava-level to create a mysterious look and only show the siluette of the lurking boss beneath you. So you wont see the bosses face until the final battle where you need to get the pillars to fall on its head like before. This concept makes more sense and I like it way more. The ascending orbs might be utilized in the final battle by having the boss spit them out or something.

This is a very early prototype of an "arm" coming up, trying to block the player.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1H0NuGu98WH16N8NnGg6qpAiEzRLCmeuC)

#Update 136 - Crater boss concept update

I have kept on looking into the crater boss and how it should work and behave. Here is a new gif of how it looks right now:

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1qYuhpnNX_cVnsg7RtxgJ0BrsnGVxOxqa)

Here are some prototypes that were more physics driven, but I decided that its behavior became too unpredictable:

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1mniLqQhUzoXvGM9H71kDHkmRw_50TZ2q)

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1vVbHQ4oivblfRBYFWfE7t9uEywFw457r)

I have made a bit more progress but unfortunately I dont have access to my computer since im away over christmas. I hope to show you more progress soon. Until then, Merry Christmas!   :coffee:

#Update 137 - Crater boss arm update

Here is the newest version of how the arms work. They shoot up right before the character jumps. And then when the character touches them, they pull down into the lava, hoping to catch the player by surprise.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1rezkq182O3bH_w2qbPqJIMiynbMH3H1S)
Getting pulled down by an arm when touching it.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1yXy0QZF8S9tEXo3Z-ILiTvXcgdMjw44H)
Arm pulls down when player touches it.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1DbLuGl1UzRJGX5Q6EC15XFxO8bLASwyk)
If jumping at the right moment, the arm can shoot the player into the air.

Console development

I have also started porting the game to a not yet mentioned console which I think the game will be perfect for. EXCITING :lol: but also scary and a lot to learn :waaagh:

Ah, cool! I usually go to the Unity and Indie Game Dungeon meetups :)[/quote]Nice, will try to make it to the IGD on th 17th :)

Would that mean I get to playtest this game IRL if I show up? ;)

Ah, nice!

I'm not sure if I will be able to go yet either but will try as well :)

And thanks for the reminder, I actually cant remember getting a notification from meetup..  ???

#Update 138 - Crater boss arm update

I have added the next version of arms that the crater boss will have. They will have suction cups that inhales and creates a force towards them. The arm also follows the player/aims at the player to make it a bit harder.

Here is a series of gifs that shows the progress:

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1S11d7iJClQWR0k6DahQ8WN9uGYOTTBVr)
Only suction.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1okoNPXLfwWkXx31XuvFrFEtKViwE2x4z)
Colliding particles.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1suWJaLDfsHebmTVJWTO4cxgoWnJDqf1G)
Arm aiming at player.

I will hopefully be able to make the arm a bit more wobbly and less static, but thats a later problem. For now, I will start making the next and final arm :)

Great style!

Thanks! :)

#Update 139 - Quick crater boss update

The idea for the third and final arm is done. It will end up behaving something like this:

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1DgUlzEgBUdPOuW8ImCZWJjCV74Wgdstm)

It gets actiavted based on how close the player is. It can create some fun moments where the player either gets pulled down or tossed around if they are not close enough.

These are some earlier versions where I could control the arm with keyboard input. Looks kind of silly :)

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1PBCLsgwpKYGwqsX1t8a6ge2cx1uJR9N3)

I can almost see a core game idea being born here  8)

#Update 140 - Tentacle visuals

The visual part of the arm is starting to come together. I have had a hard time trying to figure out how this is supposed to work, but I finally feel like these graphics and movements are working.

The arm is moving back and forth trying to convey some sort of tentacle feeling. This makes the arm a little bit more unpredictable when the player jumps into it. Sometimes the character gets stuck in an "inwards curve" (like in the gif below) and gets pulled down into the lava. If they hit a bump, then they'll be fine. To create a more believable arm I have tried some different things like speeding up the animation when the arm is shooting up.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1BbK5b2gSaWiFCIeueByzGlqJTiDx-Enq)

This is a view where you can see how the collision boxes follows the arms movements.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=19Re3Xg1cW3xWI5CKSRg_Pd5pXzMqvHiw)

I am hoping that the rest of the final boss will finally be a bit more straight forward to create :shrug2:

#Update 140 - Tentacle suction cups

I have updated the tentacles with some suction cups and added them to my prototype arms.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=17Q8zZBcOEH95mmDYRdSHYQMmQBdyfumo)

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=19aViz_z5ntCqqCLmkCQnHuFyYi_986ML)

Now I need to crate the final fight. It's mostly visuals but also some minor logic.

Floppy arms 2

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1kTeG9jSZOQ-QYDVVWuk3fFXiXv5Wq7ke)

Kinda looks like those inflatable tube men :mockangry: (but happy)

#Update 142 - Boss visuals

I started working on how the boss will look and have something like this in mind so far:

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1zVLkHSZArBCFAXSxnfKVMRZ-jgPb0mKb)

I also had some concerning performance issues that arose from the tentacles. Since they have a pretty deep bone hierarchy (see update 140) every  transformation of the root bone affects all of the other bones transformations. This becomes a ripple effect since I rotate every bone individually :whome: And what does not make it better is that every bone has a collider that also has to recalculate all of the physics stuff each time it gets rotated or moved. This added up when all of the tentacles were animating all of the time.

My rather simple but effective fix was to check how close the player was (in the horizontal plane only) and decide if the animation should run or not. This helped a lot and I'm happy that I did not have to figure out a different solution now when they are working as I want them to.

#Update 143 - Boss fight!

I have almost finished the final boss fight which gives me some hope of ever being done :beg:

So the idea for the final fight is this:
- The boss pops up from the lava shooting homing orbs at the player.
- The player needs to steer those orbs into the black pillars above the boss so that they fall into its head.
- Every time the boss gets hit, more tentacles gets added and it moves faster.
- When it dies the final crystal energy is ascending from it's mouth.

I am really hopeful that I will finish this part today  :shrug2:

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1YNK5jLucyIQLlMEFTDorDDjLHML8D8Cy)
Firing orbs at player.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1sXDPRm-yqowHbFYK8FVoNBTzYU9TRFOc)
Hitting boss with pillar which activates new tentacle.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1ugrWRb-0uf6CxAjiNOJ0nvTgYxBzbpCL)
Boss dies and final crystal energy appeares.

#Update 144

So unfortunately I have not been able to work this week and will not be able to work the next week either.
But in about two weeks I will be back in full force :)

Here is a gif from some progress I made this last weekend. It shows:
- Particles for the projectiles that the boss spits out.
- New graphics and particles for the falling pillars.
- The tentacles change color when the boss gets hit.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=19bV0qoynq8utAGrMEdVNvuyz0UXOjBMN)

#Update 145 - Audio and UI focus

So I am back after a few weeks off, and it feels great :)

Yesterday I started by evaluating what I have left to do before release. I realised that I have actually come quite far which felt good. Its a classic but spending some time away from your project gives you some perspective.

So I started by evaluating the world map view (when you are in space and choose which level you are going to). It was mostly issues with audio, but also some other things.

The two big things were:
1: Audio not fading out when going into and coming back from a level. This was also true when entering and exiting levels.
2: The UI buttons lost focus when the left mouse button was clicked.

Audio
So there seems to be a few nifty things that Unity has implemented into its audio mixer. I have barely worked with it before so I got positively suprised. The one thing that I really liked was snapshots. When you have set up your different snapshots, Unity has build in methods that allow you to just call the snapshot object like this:


This will animate between the current snapshot into the MixerSnapshotOff snapshot during 1 second.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1l-D3ctFgXjzdOCKTgm6-jXj4DoKNhCdp)
Initial snapshot.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1F8-CM5hfMzFCHiE0CI4BJKVFhC-5aAtH)
Snapshot when the master volume is 0.

There are a lot of other nice things you can do, and this tutorial was really good at displaying them:

https://www.raywenderlich.com/159874/audio-tutorial-for-unity-the-audio-mixer (https://www.raywenderlich.com/159874/audio-tutorial-for-unity-the-audio-mixer)

UI Focus

So the issue was that I only want to use keyboard and controller input when the game is played on PC. But if you are in the options menu and click the left mouse button, the UI loosed its focus. Suddenly the player is stuck and cannot return to the game. I solved this by having a simple script keeping track of when the UI was not focusing any UI object.


It is not the pretties solution but it does the trick. Also, make sure that it only runs then the UI is active. I was quite supprised that is wasnt possible to turn off mouse input in a simple way though.

That reminds me: did you ever link any tracks here?

Hey! Sorry for the late answer.

I did post two audio-clips in #Update 39 (page 4) at the bottom of the post.
A lot has changes so Im not sure if I will be using them, but I still like them.

This is what I wrote then:

I was thinking that this one would play as soon as you start the game and when you hang out in the menus.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3JcE3llNr7BTFlOUmJ2NHJ4dVk/view?usp=sharing (https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3JcE3llNr7BTFlOUmJ2NHJ4dVk/view?usp=sharing)

And this one would play in levels of world 1. aka forest levels. I like how its very soothing and makes me calm when I play.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3JcE3llNr7BR0gzcWNtY2txbHM/view?usp=sharing (https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B3JcE3llNr7BR0gzcWNtY2txbHM/view?usp=sharing)

#Update 146 - Intro animations and UI audio

So I have finished up all the technical tasks that I had for the world map. It was a lot of audio related tech, but also some more interesting visual and technical things.

Intro animations

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=12ZDeU6sJ-UG3DAms5JcGS8ybbG1f7O6W)
Intro animation that plays the first time the game is started.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1AVSino1SUiSIQd-Lo_X01Gzy8Ueh5Xg3)
Exit animation that plays when the player enters the last teleporter and gets transported into space.

UI Audio

Among other things, I added audio to the options menu. Now it bleeps everytime the focused UI element changes. I solved this by implementing the ISelectHandler interface.

Quoted because pagination. Sounds nice! Bit short, but I guess that's the idea of sharing a clip.

Ah, thanks :) Yes, exactly. If I decide to go with any of them, Ill make them longer.

#Update 147 - Energy flowers

So yesterday I first played through a lot of levels to figure out whats left to do there. Its mostly audio related but also some other minor things.

I have shown these before but I finally added them yesterday, the retracting energy flowers which adds some logic to why energy is floating around in the world.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1IBqvevyzy8WTtAYTx5J9iVEcVPmLFVtl)

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1dd5kcjn0NlnzYpgumroS_FEHXplfaR-U)

Today I am going to start looking into creating a simple audio system thats pools the audio sources. The reason is that some levels have a lot of enemies and it feels a bit redundant that they have their own audio source, even when you cant hear them. But hopefully I will be able to write more about that stuff tomorrow :)

Oh, and heres is a screenshot from the game which I took for the twitter header, but I rather like it so I though I could share it here as well!

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=11W9mhql-fcEHpQGc1nnRqx5DqwKK1oZO)

#Update 148 - Audio Source pooling system

I have been meaning to do this post several days so I am happy to finally being able to do it!

I have created an audio pooling system that makes it easy for other components in the game to just ask that system to play any sound at a certain position. It works really well so far and has made it a breeze to add audio.

So this is what the audio source pooling system provides:

• Pooling of audio sources.
• Instantiating new audio sources if there are no available.
• Offers three playback types: One shots, Looping and Background.

One shots are audio that is supposed to only play once at a certain position. For example when the player jumps.

Loops are audio that is meant to be repeated for as long as the calling component wants it to. Usually for as long as the player is close enough to hear it. For example the sound the stompers create when constantly spinning.

Background audio is supposed to always play and does not care about distance to the audio source. Typically used for ambience or music.

How it works in practice

One Shots

This will be an example for how the players footsteps gets generated.

The player audio script exposes a field of a Sound class called movement. This contains settings for the audio such as which file/files this sound should trigger, the desired volume, pitch and some other settings.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1OijxHdVo2y-XChoNWZbpj4eM2yRKqsQ7)
Sound field exposed in the inspector.

The player script then calls the audio manager playing a one shot, like this:


The audio manager then grabs an unoccupied audio source from the pool, assigns all the settings from the MovementLevelSound and triggers a coroutine that keeps track of when the sound is done. It then returns the audio source back to the pool and deactivates it.


This is what it looks like.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1jl4c28rpmFVvQueFiqMpgl2Xje9_HhX_)
An audio source gets triggered and positioned for each foot step. Also when the player jumps and lands.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1P674k0RRb-vo_MJF-e689AL5HLyGG12o)
In the hierarchy the audio source is parented to the correct root to easier keep track of which audio source is playing what. Also makes it easier to debug.

Looping

For the looping sounds the calling component is responsible for stopping the audio source. This is because there are different reasons for different component when to stop or start playing looping sounds. So I simply return the audio source to the calling component and then they return it to the audio manager through a call to Stop, like this:


Background

The background audio will loop and play forever. The key here is that all background audio has 0 in spatial blend to avoid being dependent on where the audio listener is in the scene.

Final

I really enjoyed creating this pooling system so I hope it was interesting to read about :)

I never had to deal with programming sound, but that looks like a solid architecture :)

Can it also use this distance information to change the volume?

I'm glad it looks solid, thanks :)

Regarding using the distance to control the volume, its something Unitys audio sources already does. There are multiple settings you can use but basically that is what the "Min Distance" and "Max Distance" inspector settings controls. So if you put the audio source to be linear, then the volume will be at maximum when the audio listener (attached to the player in my case) is inside the Min Distance, and then fade out linearly until the player is outside the Max Distance. Then the volume is = 0 (and that is also when I usually return the audio source to the pool).

#Update 149 - Visual bugfixing

So I have kept on adding audio to the game and I think that I am nearly done. I still need to look into adding some sort of ambience system that plays random bird/noises in the background for the forest world. I guess I should do something similar in the ice and lava world too, but Im not sure yet what sounds they should be.

Other than that I also did some bug fixing and one of them was that the eye of the main character popped out when slamming under the water (or basically when the character was moving right before slamming). So when fixing that I made the eye open fully by mistake, and it looked kind of funny :blink:

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1koxbuORpuu42kugOGYJEwBdb7ZpDaLXO)
Looking confused when slamming down..

#Update 150 - Audio

Yesterday I implemented some nice audio effects:

• The higher audio frequencies gets cut off when the player submerges in water. As soon as they reach the surface again, it goes back to normal. This really adds a nice effect of being under water.
  
• Added a similiar audio cut off effect when entering the menu.
  
• When walking or jumping on ice, the characters footsetps and jumping sounds changes.
  

These things were pretty smooth to implement once I understood how Unitys audio mixer system works. So If you want to create something like that yourself, I would tell you to check out Unitys official tutorials for the audio mixer, they are very good and informative.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60HcB-QcN04

Oooh, I love the minimalism. It actually works really well without any music

I'm glad you like it!  ;D

I have actually just been going through those thoughts in my mind. If I want/need music or if ambient is enough. In this case I guess ambient is both soft background atmospheric audio and bird chirps. But not actual traditional music. Hmm.. Great to hear your opinion :)

#Update 151 - Water splash and UI visuals

Visuals
When entering water, in addition to a water splash sound, I have now added some splash particles. It really added to the feeling of entering and exiting the water.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1R1jW01lVt_SqyWvkpNSyLEHrY-ZgWydH)

I also started working on finalizing the UI which has been temporary this far. I wanted a cleaner look and less color at the same time, but not remove it completely. The solution was to only show color for the currently selected button. This is what it looks like in the first level menu:

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1L0YP_2YguEn2J59NPx0z5vGCFrSO6JAP)

I still have some work to do in the options menu where resolution, controls and possibly audio options should be available.

Audio
So in the end of last week (and weekend) I implemented a small "system" that detects when the player gets hit by an "enemy" which triggers a certain player-is-hurting-noise.

I also added audio for "footsteps" when swimming in and under water. I made a big difference.

I love the addition of water splashes and energy flowers!
The UI buttons seem to need a bit more love. Right now it reminds me of video app menus. Maybe have some energy flowers pointing at the selection?  :P

It's great to see how well things are progressing! Thanks for the Unity Audio tips! I myself am working in Unity and was secretly dreading audio work haha! Keep it up!

Check out mynoise.net if you don't know it. It has a lot of good ambient noiseblockers, might be good for ambient inspiration :)

Thats great to hear that you like them :)

I am glad that you could get something good out of the audio posts ;D

Ah I see what you mean. Now when you mention it, I actually remember having similar thoughts in the beginning when adding them. If I have time I might change it, but what I have found is that those icons are really effective. People seem to understand immediately what they represent, which is the most important thing to me (since I dont want to use text). In todays post I will write about the options menu that I created yesterday which has some other icons. They are a bit prototypish, but might give a better feeling of what it would look like without the video-related ones.

And thanks, I really appreciate your honest feedback! :coffee:

I just checked it out and it seems great for inspiration! Thanks a lot, thats a great tip ;D

#Update 152 - UI Options

Updates

Yesterday I mostly worked with the UI for the options. It still doesnt feel totally finished, but here are the main changes:

Made edges of UI elements sharper.
(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1VQAogMYw7XreY_9F_S6-lwfS718KcXY6)

Updated Options layout.
(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1CgZG_0HfjSsqYM0KsxS6KkHXMsSwY5yn)

Updated dropdown menus visuals and added new icons for resolution settings..
(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1NzDmS-Y0VzGTr6ykZFl4QaY2d6b8aSiA)

.. and quality settings.
(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1wWf-o-jti6XaGEzHU_YhoTjS1kv67Dx3)

I also updated the mechanics of when to show the controls. Instead of showing them all the time, they appear once you select the controls button. This is a bit wierd since all of the other buttons has to be pressed. These control-images are still temporary and I am working on something more fitting.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1Z-7sBazDcSbRdL3oVfpUA4WGmgnKt41V)

I am not sure about these icons, but I dont know how to show "Resolution" and "Quality" with icons. And it would be nice to not have a separate submenu..  ???

Early culling bug fix

I had an issue where animated skinned mesh renderers would get culled before being off screen. In this case it was one of the arms of the final boss. But it turned out to be a simple fix where I only had to increase the extents of the bounds for the skinned mesh renderer. Might come in handy to someone else :)

#Update 153 - UI Options & Company

UI

I have had some time to keep on working on the controls option UI. Its not really looking as well as I want it to but the idea is starting to show.

So the idea is to color code the different input buttons and then have animations at the top showing the different actions. Like a blue outline which shows the character running back and forth inside it. The temporary white boxes symbolize where these animations would show up. Unity does not support gif files as far as I have understood, so I probably have to look into some image-switching solution.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1XGdoi2st3OuhMSIAVmPnSyeyItRXgNwO)

I also switched the backwards arrow icon to a solar-system icon instead to symbolize where you go when you exit. The backwards arrow is used in the options menu, and I did not want to confuse by using the same icon for two different things.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1250JTqg6-2ZiY8RUYUfCsTC09a8OeROL)

Company

Other than that I have been busy trying to set up a proper company where I can release games. Its still pretty far from done but I am learning a great deal and will hopefully be able to show something soon.

#Update 154 - Animations in UI

So yesterday I managed to implement a simple system for animating an image based on multiple images. Now you can see the character running in the upper left corner when entering the controls section in the options menu. It will have a blue border around it to indicate its connected to the blue input.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1sl5gBSLn__W_lAtG1Ys0JUob6Vfj-qUn)

this is a code snippet i found on the Unity forums that I have modified to work for images instead of textures, and when time scale is zero:

#Update 155 - Animations in UI

I havent had time to work much more but I have at least finished the first version of the controls UI. It looks like this:

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=16BTikLX8tK8ax_i8h5Y02kEfCuZrxa0m)
There should be a green border around the jumping animation that my screen capturing software removed.

I am still kind of happy with the original idea of color coding the controls and show them as in game animations. But it looks kind of messy and does not really suit the otherwise visually clean game. I have to think a bit more about how I want it to be structured..  ???

Very nice!

Could you add a little symbol (square, circle, x) in the top-left corner and at the controls as well, for the people who are colorblind?

Ah, I see what you mean. Yeah that could definately help to understand how they are connected. Thanks for the tip!  ;D

I am also looking into using colors that works better for people who are colorblind. I got a tip about this image and using these colors:

(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DXEg05hWAAQHkSJ.jpg)

Well... that is an absolutely terrible selection of colors, hahaha.

Purple is Red + Blue. Colorblind people like me tend to see that as blue. Red, Green and Yellow are exactly the colors that are the weaker colors for the most common form of colorblindness

ColorBrewer2 has a good 4-color set:

http://colorbrewer2.org/#type=qualitative&scheme=Paired&n=4

Matplotlib has some good stuff too, although that is more about colorblind-friendly gradients, not categorical colors:

https://matplotlib.org/tutorials/colors/colormaps.html#sphx-glr-tutorials-colors-colormaps-py

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xAoljeRJ3lU

Oh haha, great that you got me paying some attention to this, thanks :)

I obviously dont know much about it so I should probably delve a bit deeper into it then, great with some references :blink:

#Update 156 - Falling through the ground
So last friday I fixed some game breaking bugs.

1: You could fall through the ground at ceratin places.
2: The second boss would devour multiple enemies at once if they were in the "eating range" at the same time.
3: You could get stuck in a stompers flower hat.
4: The ice would flicker on night levels where there were no ambient light.

1 - Composite Collider 2D
As far as I could understand, this was caused by using the "Composite Collider 2D" that unity provides. This is a component that takes multiple collider component and turns them into one during runtime. I was using the "Polygons" setting in the "Geometry Type" options and I had similar issues with falling through the ground earlier when using the "Outlines" options.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1F_b9EQTKfolALPHzPfsL5iqUnnOcFU3W)
Falling straight through ice collider.

So when I tried to figure out what was wrong, I did things like this:
- Looked at the created collider visually in the editor - it looked fine.
- Turned off the adjoined collider to where the character fell through - This helped in most cases.
- Changed the collider into not using the composite one - Worked well.

So I figured it might be a bug in the Polygon option. So I tried changing back to the outlines options. It has a default "Edge Radius" option of 0. When using that setting, the character fell through the ground pretty quickly again. But when I changed it to "0.01" I havent seen the bug. So hopefully this will work  :shrug2:

4 - Ice flicker
I could not figure out what actually caused this. I tried changing a lot of settings in both the material and light settings. In the end it seemed as if this visual artifact showd as soon as the material was transparent. So I decided to create a separate material for ice on the night levels. Its kind of a dirty fix, but it does the job  :eyebrows:

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=16urVGOsB3MEVw7Y19kOWODZqJVwLAQjx)
Ice stops receiveing light when charachter/camera is at a certain point/angle.

#Update 157 - Flying visualization

So I have been busy with creating company stuff and porting the game. But I also had time to make some improvements to the flying visualization.

The old one showed shortly how many jumps the player had left and then disappeared.

This is how it used to look:

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1S6WoGFcdxwn36HbNa0A2CmJ7_vSPTMiM)

Now the circles that indicate how many "in air jumps" there are left appear as soon as you leave the ground. They also stay for as long as the player is in the air.

This is how it looks now:

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1KTZ2wUNUbPX2sjxYgE3xfNLUGlkd2Wv0)

I thinks its clearer and hopefully players will pick up on it quicker.

Love it!

Thanks, Much appreciated! I´m glad it makes more sense :)

#Update 158 - Unified UI

Previously I had a separate UI for the world map and for the level since they contain different buttons and features. Yesterday I decided that I wanted to use the same UI prefab in the world map as in the level. The main thing to fix here was how to make sure that the correct buttons show at the right time. So the different situations for me would be:

- Using different platforms. Some may not need graphics settings for example.
- Being in the world map and not show buttons like restart level and such.
- Being in a level and show restart level, go back to world map, but not quit game.

The simpel solution for me was to use #if #else preconditions based on platform together with a check if it was the world map scene (build index 0). This way I could simply activate or deactivate the different buttons depending on which platform and scene that was loaded. The grid layout group took care of the placing of the buttons dynamically.

Updates

Im sorry if I am not posting as frequently here as I have before, but I try to write at least once every thursday. Its getting hard though when I'm porting the game to a platform I'm not sure that I can mention, and dealing with a lot of business set up which doesnt have anything to do with the game necessarily. So sorry about that, but Ill try to find interesting aspects of those things as well that might affect the game in certain ways. I hope you think that could be interesting as well  :)

Man, this is looking so nice / lovely! Looking forward to playing this.

Hey, thanks a lot! I hope it wont be too far into the future :)

#Update 159 - Choosing audio

I am in the middle of trying to find the final audio for everything in the game. Like Background ambiance, pickup sound etc etc.

I will write an update and try to link some audio when its more finalized. At this point it seems like I will be able to add all the audio that I wanted from the start, except for music. It will be more of an ambiance layer with birds, wind and things like that. But nothing is set in stone, so who knows, I might feel like it really needs to be some music there  :)

#Update 160 - World Map Audio

I have found and added the (hopefully  :shrug2:) final audio to the world map. So now there is audio for:

- Background ambiance
- Intro cinematic teleportation.
- Spaceship movement.
- Activating and selecting level, teleporter and boss level.
- Teleporting between planets.
- Final cinematic.

So I actually got inspiration for in game animations based off of sounds that I found. A good example is the heart beating boss level icon. I really like how it adds some extra tension before entering it :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWYB0gGPMrw

Hey this is pretty beautiful? Any ETA?

I'd love to be friends. Is this possible?  :gomez:

I love the idea, but I don't hear the hearbeat on the boss icon though?

Cool that you like the idea :)

I have double checked that the heart beat audio in the video exists. The sound contains almost only very low frequencies so Im thinking that you might have listened through laptop speaker or something like that (that cuts off the lower frequencies)? Then it might not be able to hear it actually.. and that is in it self a good point  :) I should probably add som mid-frequencies to that audio so all types of speakers can play it.

Hey, thanks! I appreciate that :)

I dont have an ETA but I am hoping in the coming 6 months. But its a really tricky thing to estimate.

Do you mean on the tigsource forum? Im not sure, but if it is, ofcourse  :beer:

What are your plans for the music? :-)

Yep, was a laptop speaker  :)

Glad the feedback was of use ;)

Hey!

The plan is to start by only having ambience-like audio and then build from that. You can hear parts of it in the #160 update :)

Ah, thats probably going to be common. Thanks for letting me know!

Haha, yes. It was great feedback  ;)

#Update 161 - Audio update

I have kept on working with adding audio, this time for the levels. And for the forest levels, this also included all the general audio for things like the wind, the character, the flowers, the beaming up and down etc. I still haven't finished up quite yet, but I will post a video later with all the audio.
Here is a list of whats been added this time:

Character

• Running
  
• Jumping
  
• Swimming
  
• Swimming under water
  
• Getting hit
  
• Falling into things
  
• Rolling up slopes
  

General

• Beam down
  
• Beam up
  
• Picking up energy
  
• Flower retracting into ground
  
• Picking up secret
  
• Water splash
  
• Wind
  
• Checkpoints
  

Forest

• Stomper enemy
  
• Pusher enemy
  
• Spinner enemy
  
• Enemies impacting with player
  

Things left to do in the forest

• Ambiance day
  
• Ambiance night
  
• Boss related audio
  

The ambiance is a bit special. At this time, it is just playing an audio file, but I am thinking about writing a small "ambiance audio system" that randomizes which bird will chirp and things like that. This could come in handy for the other levels as well. The point would be to make it sound less repetitive.

#Update 162 - UI Fading

I have implemented the sound for the menu UI now, and realized that the fade ins and outs for audio and visuals when restarting and going to the world map needed some updates. Also when exiting the game.

This is what it looks like now (and you can imagine that the audio fades out and in with the same pacing  :P)

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1yJuTFYcjIKIhd3_Rf08OPeRp8bWGS4QB)
Restarting level.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=17WDeGYGtrqVJvoBXUvvDIzJtKPETYgek)
Going to world map from level.

I am still working on adding and finishing up all of the audio and will post an update as soon as that's done.

#Update 163 - Visual feedback and audio updates

I have kept adding new audio but also some visual feedback where I felt it was needed.

So when getting hit by an ice orb the player gets frozen for a short while. This is communicated to the player through audio and visuals. I have also added a small particle affect when the player thaws.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1sCpYJc1nwHeFxAEImZafNmJqPvV_9d_S)
Getting frozen by an ice orb. Small particle feedback along with audio when thawing.

I also felt that the visual feedback when flapping was not satisfying or good enough. So I added a small affect every time the player activates a flap.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=15Y_AERPhoW3v-k3BSGUIPTJy29ZlWbRp)
Visual feedback when flapping.

I also added audio for:
- Under water currents.
- Spitters.
- Ice Orbs when impacting and exploding.

#Update 164 - Slamming Visual Feedback

I have added some additional feedback when activating the slam ability. The idea is that the green diamionds are being released when slamming down, and then recharged.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1-N9dLcNAMsutcbEkd0WHm6riDswFMi9I)
Final version.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1re9ofckh0lltKzjZxJrvGkwqrG2J_trj)
Early prototype where "air" got shot upwards when slamming down.

I have also added some more audio for the Ice-world fish boss and some other things. There are not too many things left to create audio for so thats nice  :)

I have also started looking into Steam-related and console-related things which is interesting but also takes up a lot of time.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1TCtVqQLWKpnxRd5Oa2GfZ9sM8I_58PBv)
Some extra footage of the character playing around with slamming in water.

#Update 165 - A mix of updates

Oh man, time flies, and I have mostly been working on non-tigsource-friendly-stuff. But I have some new things to write about finally :)

Steam
So I have managed to register my company om steam and upload a build that I have been able to download, and it works! Such a nice feeling to have your game (even though its not public  :P) downloadable from Steam.

So there was some "paperwork" that was necessary to be able to get access to all of the steam works stuff, but all in all it was a very smooth process.

Hopefully Ill be able to test the game easily now on different computers and get some information about if something is not working as intended.

Dynamic audio system
So I tried to make a more dynamic ambience audio system for the forest and ice world. It kind of worked but it also had a few issues. The idea was to have a number of separate bird sound files and play them randomly. Easy enough right? The problem was that the audio files that I had included a lot of background noise. So I also needed to have some general background noise playing at all times to not make it sounds weird. But it still kind of did. I also did not have a clear idea about what the ambiance audio should be for the ice world.

To get a cleaner bird sound, I tried recording my own whistling, which turned out ok. But the lack of "forest ambiance" in the audio made it sound super flat. I could probably have spent time on having the audio sound like it came from the right, or left with different nuances, but it just felt like too much work at this point. And I was not even sure it would sound that good. And what about the ice world?

One of the whistles trying to sound like a bird: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1warbLEegYAT3n9huAhQoeHekczAdCdpf

So I decided to use longer audio recordings of forests with bird in them (and other longer recordings for the ice and lava world). I added a few of them for each world and then randomize which one plays at the start of each level. This way it still feels dynamic and there is no issue with volume levels or the "forest ambiance"-feeling.

This solution also have some issues, but I think its the best sounding, and simplest solution so far.

Other updates

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1-Iae2SffiPX_TQfPOXc83X4e4NJZiAK0)
Showing current version number in game menu (lower right corner).

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=10kTctw8ZLW0Ht1UQD6A2fIbByjWKyNXI)
Updated controller button information.

I have also:
- Added lava particles when things go through the lava surface.
- Added audio for lava boss arms going up and down.
- Handled console options vs PC options (resolution and such).
- Added console controller scheme to options.
- Volume adjustments.
- A few bug fixes.

Other updates
So one of the last things to do game-wise is adding the final audio for the lava boss and the birds on the ice level.

The last major thing in general though is to port it to the X-console and hope that they accept the game into their store. That is all for now, but hopefully there will be more updates soon :)

Awesome! It sounds excellent to me. If you need some more ambient music, maybe we can collaborate. :)

This looks great! I love his little walk and how expressive his eye is.

I'm doing sort of a similar style of character in my game (small and cube-y) and I'm in the process of the same debate you had toward the beginning of the devlog in terms of whether to give them a head or more features or not. It's really helpful to see how you worked through it and how the response was!

I dig the boss heartbeat sound on the world map, too. It really does add a nice tension. You generally want some energy around 250 to 300 hz for 'laptop bass' to come out. Once that's there, try adding a high shelf to taste. Not so much that the highs are audible, listen for it sounding like the bass is 'pushing air'. I think heartbeats in media often have a bit of energy somewhere between 800-1200 hz too. That's just a guess from picturing the sound in my head though so take it with a grain of salt.

Unsure if the icons on the pause screen is a good idea. I didn't get 'World Map' from that button on it's own. Have you tried it with labels?

Also, hear me out on the 'flap' indicator: If you have those orbs rotate in a circle underneath the character, then you can make it so Sisu kind of 'jumps' on each one and they pop individually. In my opinion it would make for a stronger and more intuitive visual metaphor. Not that it's too hard to understand what's going on as-is, but it might save your players just a second or two of puzzling it out.

Hey!

That's great, I'm glad that you could find some help and inspiration!


Good to hear that you use the word tension since its right before going into a boss level.

That is some good information, thanks! Its one of those things you easily forget to test and figure out how to solve in a manageable way. But checking the hz-range totally makes sense.


I do agree with you. Sometimes it is really heard to convey what the icons mean, but in this case I two main reasons for keeping them instead of text.

1: I think that when you have clicked that symbol once, you will know what is does. There are also only 3 other options which are quite clear what they do. It also correlates with the red colored background as being something "exit" like.

2: My main goal with the UI (and the whole game) was to stay away from using any text. This is mainly to keep the project smaller and avoid having to localize (translate) the game.


I really like that suggestion. That could look so sweet! If I get the time, thats definately something I would like to do, Thank you!

Haha a little animation of that *pop* and sisu flying upwards keep playing in my head.

Thanks for all the great feedback and for checking out my dev log!

And that "The Decision Engine" you are working on looks really cool. I'm going to check it out as soon as I get the time!

#Update 166 - Post effects

So I had some time last week to work on the post-effects. The Color Grading made the biggest different in my opition. It made the scene and colors come together a bit more.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1bk2I8WDG1fk5OgJzK2xZk1u7nnbIf-ar)
The forest with NO post effects.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1Rh-DyOHuzJGwRNEFuG9TAQQOTX1OvSIx)
The forest with post effects.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1d2UnrrKEaC9cS6bDNXyOAiUAsoJGVotX)
Ice world with NO post effects.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1BeMhu9q_NM4VMr5mLcb5crK7a2WigTce)
Ice world with post effects.

I also tried adding Depth Of Field (DOF) to the game. But there are too many transparent object and particle effects in the game that gets blurred as well. So I have decided to not use DOF.

I did however try to create a transparent beam that would write to the depth buffer so the DOF would not blur it. It looked ok but it felt like it could add a lot of work in terms of testing.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1Hf2b-8DES1N2VAwI-K38qiPK3rXSgtdG)
Beam that writes to depth buffer so DOF handles it better.

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1eBKPqREmF2nUm7wkJmsJOT9tui_bKYUW)
Game without DOF

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1LUzLLCbK4Bz4QT7uMqn2bgdExyrQ9PmI)
Game with DOF

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=15XQ8vCkKndJOAJN8fVMLLOhq0Lo8L6CB)
Blurred beam when DOF is activated.

What do you guys think, is it ok to skip DOF?

Time for Release on Nintendo Switch and Steam (PC) - 27th of February

Woh, it's been a long time since I posted regularly here. The main reason for that is that the development of the actual game ended quite a while back. So the last year has mostly consisted of "porting" the game to Nintendo Switch and setting up a company called Solvarg (https://www.solvarg.com). There are things I could have written about for sure, but I just had too many other things to keep track of and I'm sorry about that.

So "The Lost Light of Sisu" will be released for Nintendo Switch and Steam (PC) on the 27th of February. Super exciting for me since it's the first game that I have ever released. So many new things to learn about! :)

Release Trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sx4uTfGiMRU

Steam:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/876150/The_Lost_Light_of_Sisu/

Nintendo Switch:
https://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/the-lost-light-of-sisu-switch#game-info

Screenshots
Here are some screenshots, you can find more in the press kit: Sisu Press Kit (https://www.solvarg.com/presskit/index.html).

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1ZtzZ4ju-GaLvzfzBe3XmZy3EW1ldnPXL)

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1onc0Kkn3cOKOAJkLBkq-q0Pv1BOGE75b)

(http://drive.google.com/uc?export=view&id=1AMOZec_avvrgjpcUZBBSMNH7bvKRedlo)

Good luck! I'll get a copy on Steam when it's out :)

Hey, Thank you! I really appreciate that :)