[Log 2015.11.22 - Getting to know each other]

Log 2015.11.22 - Getting to know each other





:: What's new !? ::

Hello ! It turns out it's very easy to lose track of keeping up with this devlog. Work time for the game has been a bit all over the place for the last several weeks. It was easy to maintain constant updates when work was more consistent, but after missing a few it becomes pretty easy to slip. So to combat this, I'm going to commit myself only to one larger weekly update,every sunday. Then do more informal small updates throughout the week, as I feel like it.

So the past few weeks have been spent trying to take things a bit slower, trying to understand the project a bit better. I'm not worrying about deadlines anymore and for the most part I've thrown out any ideas we had previously about what the game is. Focus is coming back around to the important things about the project, joy in movement and a focus on the basics of the audio and visual design.

There are some areas of the project that felt very foreign to me, so the last few weeks have been spent trying to inch myself into a clearer understanding of the different parts of the project. It's very easy to take things for granted, when you are responsible for every aspect of a project. I think you need to be thorough in with each part of it or else you can easily miss important things that could make your game much better.


:: Movement ::

I spent a couple of weeks tuning the movement mechanics further based on feedback we got from Fantastic. The main point being that we were putting too much power in the player's control. Now, the mechanics force you down the mountain, and the game becomes more about how you deal with the motion you are being given. We have always wanted the game to be about flow, and this feels much closer to that.





:: Level Design ::

Level design for one was a huge blank spot in the project. We hadn't spent much time doing up until this point and had no workflow or tools in place for it. We were just throwing meshes around, trying to make something ridable. This was time consuming, and meant that since the design was being outdated constantly by the changes to mechanics, it was extremely hard to test the changes. It was important for me to be able to create a variety of levels easily so that I could test the player mechanics constantly in different situations.

I created a simple system for creating and placing terrain pieces so that I could easily do infinite runs for testing, and make those runs based on small chunks that I could easily create and update as the game changes.

We're using Unity terrain now for the ground. It was painful at first but thanks to a package called Terrain Former and a bunch of practice, making new terrains has become alot easier.

A big issue we have to deal with is properly scaling objects in the world so that the player understands their relationship to the world. This is one of the biggest draw backs of doing this type of game in first person. Before our levels were designed by throwing meshes around and scaling them up arbitrarily. I've decided to try and model everything in the future at a consistent scale and try not to grow and shrink things. Hopefully this will give the player some kind of visual reference, a consistency that they can use to understand things a bit better.


:: Visuals ::

The other part of the game that felt completely unknown were the visuals. As my ideas about where this game takes place continue to evolve it's become more and more important to develop those ideas into the game. The last couple of weeks have been dedicated to that. Changing the look of the game is a huge task though and i'm right in the middle of it so I will save that for a later post.

❄️❤️

So some feedback we had was the system of getting speed was confusing. Your main mechanism for getting speed was holding forward on the joystick, which is weird. Getting speed should come from going down a hill.

So I turned off gravity while on the ground. It was giving the player some speed going down hills but we needed something a bit more drastic. I instead took the force the player was adding with their stick and applying that in a downwards direction based on the direction the player was facing, multiplied by the slope they are on.

This is making the game feel a bit more relaxed in a way, things are flowing instead of being pushed along. Hopefully these changes will make the game more intuitive for new players as well.

[Log 2015.10.19]

Log 2015.10.19




:: Recap ::

My last post was in the midst of getting ready to show our game at Fantastic, almost a month ago.. Developement has slowed significantly since then. Here's a quick recap of where we've been with the project and where we would like to go.

The roadmap for the project so far, is we created the game in two days for a game jam. We spent a week rebuilding the mechanics after that, focusing on the weightiness of the movement and playing with some new ideas we didn't get to in the jam. This is the build we submitted and was accepted for Fantastic Arcade. We were overjoyed about this, but needless to say a weeks worth of work doesn't make much of a game.

It's at this point which we started this dev log. I had 3 weeks of my full attention to put towards making something for Fantastic. The main goals were to finish designing the movement mechanics and re-design the world the player would be exploring.

The first goal took up alot of time, it really took up most of the time I had to spend on the project. It's easy to get bogged down tweaking things, especially in a physics game. I could have probably managed my time better with this, maybe sacrificing some things, like prototyping rails which didn't really play much of a part in the final build. Though the feel of the game right now is great, so I don't regret much.

The second goal should have had more priority. The design of the world was relegated to several fevered days at the end. This was made much worse by a much earlier deadline for final builds than expected. I'm happy with the final design, but it meant we only had time to make "hard" challenges. I was only able to explore the design space that I felt comfortable in, without being able to boil those designs down into anything beginner friendly.

This lack of any introduction, and the fact we had no time for playtesting meant we ultimately submitted something that was very unfriendly to players jumping in for the first time.

Playtesting with friends during the event confirmed this but has given some great info going forwards. It's difficult, and frustrating showing things this early in developement. I think we all have a tendancy to hold things close to us, for fear of misinterpretation, or of people judging our babies based on a look at an unpolished side of it. Commiting to show something at events is a pretty good way to overcome this.

I don't believe any harm is done in the long run. The worst thing that can happen, is people are uninterested by the game in it's current state. Seeing this is a necessary step along a path to making something people will really care about.


:: Next Up ::

We've been talking since the start of the project about this idea of flow and fluidity of movement. Me and Richard as designers, put alot of importance on music and sound design and I think these two ideas work together perfectly. So looking for more opportunities to reward the player with sound and visual feedback, when they are moving well. Designing the movement systems to be simpler and easier what they would like to do, trying to build a system that has depth so players will feel like they are learning and improving.

We have spent very little time so far on world building, visual design, narrative so far. I think it's very important we start fleshing out these thoughts at this point. Once they are clearer to us, they can start to inform the choices we make in all other areas. We've got a board for visual inspiration you can check out here: Fulcrum Inspiration

I really like this, like either the movement or the verticality of it, though I'm not entirely sure which

Thanks, hopefully both : ]

This is looking really good, a first person game focused entirely on movement, it's not something you see much. It almost reminds me a bit of Tribes, and the skiing mechanic, which was about 90% of what that series of games was about. The aesthetic is very clean too, which has the bonus as its easy for the player to tell what is an obstacle and what isn't.

 

[Log 2015.09.20]

Log 2015.09.20




Spent the day designing. Got a few other loose ends tied up. A bit more to do tomorrow morning but otherwise we're ready for texas next week.

this is what mountains look like, right . .

[Log 2015.09.19]

Log 2015.09.19


We finally got down to business with level design today. The structure for the build we will be showing in a week is one moderately sized run. A giant portal at the bottom, brings you back to the portal at the top from which you start. This allows you to relatively quickly re try challenges you might have messed up before.

I really like the topographical map backgrounds, any plans to integrate that look into the game itself?

Thanks, the white one is our current, very placeholder title screen menu. It's something i'm going to keep playing with going forward but we're far from committing to anything graphically. All the visuals are still 100% placeholder assets we made for the jam version of this game!

[Log 2015.09.18]

Log 2015.09.18




Today was tweaking a whole bunch of little things. I've been cramming in features for the last week, which is a terrible idea this close to showing the game. So now i'm trying to make sure they are all at least playable. We will see.

I also started molding terrain features and designing features for the new level.

[Log 2015.09.17]

Log 2015.09.17

Made a quick title screen today. Not something i'd really like to be working on at this stage of development but kind of necessary to show the game.

We need to submit a final build to fantastic, in four days!

[Log 2015.09.15]

Log 2015.09.15

I went to the woods !

[Log 2015.09.14]

Log 2015.09.14


Late Logs ! So i meant to work on design but was inspired for how I wanted rails to work. We weren't planning on doing rails for this deadline but . . . looks like we are ! They will have a pretty significant impact on design going forward.

Currently they are super simple: Your grind carries the speed you had going into it, there's no gravity or friction currently but we'll add at least friction back in once we decide on a mechanic to allow you to pick up speed while grinding.

I'm really inspired by jet set radios, grind mechanics. Their animation and sound feedback, being placed on beat is wonderful. We'll probably try something similar.

[Log 2015.09.13]

Log 2015.09.13


Had the itch to explore some design ideas for the game. Playing around with topographical maps and simple grid UI stuff today. First in 2d, then trying it out in 3d. Things that might make their way into the game in some capacity . . .

[Log 2015.09.12]

Log 2015.09.12




Spent the day organizing assets. All our meshes, prefabs, materials etc, were in a pretty chaotic state. I archived all of the things we wouldn't be using anymore and old versions of everything. I Re-exported all our meshes as c4d files into the unity project to just take advantage of unity's c4d importer which made a huge difference for organization and will help with making sure all our project files and materials are referencing the same texture ( there is only one texture )

I then updated / fixed all our prefabs with the new meshes. Unfortunately this destroyed all the level design we had so it's definitely time to start designing some new stuff.

Tasks completed today :
• Organize assets ( Prefabs, Meshes, C4D files )
    • Archive old files
    • Make new c4d files for assets that we are actually going to keep inside the unity project
• Fix prefabs with new meshes and materials
• Apply proper friction and physics materials to all objects
• Played around with making unity terrains for level building

[Log 2015.09.11]

Log 2015.09.11




Today is the last (ish) day i'm going to spend working on mechanics before fantastic. I'm leaving in just over two weeks. The game needs significant design work first and foremost. Beyond that, it could use some UI , Sound , etc etc etc polish but we'll see what we can get to before then.

Spent most of the day working on implementing solutions for giving the player torque in the right situations and having it not impact them in the wrong situations. The goal is for the player to be able to perform a gesture with the right stick right as they are taking off from a jump, "Spin this way, at this speed". But the right stick has several other complicated functions in controlling the player so there were lots of edge cases to deal with.

Tasks completed today :
• Head movement ( up and down) is now constrained
• Torque added to rotation system, torque can be applied to the player's rotation by holding the jump button and using the horizontal axis of the right stick, while in the air, the player will now spin more from this torque than from their own input.
    • They still have significant influence over the torque while in the air
• Changes to the amount of control the player has over different aspects of rotation, mostly giving the player "less control" to compensate for the added control given with a properly executed spin

[Thanks everyone !]

Thanks everyone !

It definitely looks like a game!!!

how will progression structure work? like if the game consists of levels how do you go between them

G AME ! \:D/  We are still super open to progression ideas, but our current plan going forward is, each "level" is a floating island, the level will have self contained goals, and exploring will consist of launching off your current island and trying to land on other ones. There would probably also be a UI to select different islands you've been to.

We want to keep each one pretty small.

This definitely reminds me of the classic Quake mod from the 90's, Slide Quake. Expansive tracks, nearly no friction, whipping around tracks at breakneck speed... good times.

One thing that old mod did that I don't think I've seen since is the ability to turn/twist without changing your trajectory, so you can observe your surroundings without messing up your flow. Definitely not a required feature, but it was an appreciated one.

Sounds fun, i will check it out! Looking around and not having that directly affect your trajectory makes a lot of sense to me. It's in there now to a certain extent, but i'm definitely going to keep it in mind as things progress.

[Log 2015.09.10]

Log 2015.09.10

Spent a lot of time prototyping a new mechanic that didn't work out too well. The player's character controller is still pretty basic so i'm looking at way's of adding features, but if they are just over complicating things without adding anything meaningful then i'm just going to ditch them. The game is made to be played with a controller by the way

The current character controller does this:
- The left joystick adds force in the direction you are holding the joystick, relative to the player's current forward facing vector, holding left or right basically strafes the player controller. It also adds some rotation with the horizontal axis.
   - Ex. Holding forward on the left stick adds force on the player's forward vector, so when they are not holding forward they will just continue on their trajectory regardless of where they are looking
- "Forward" for the player is taken from the position of the body
- The right joystick rotates the head object in all directions with no constraints. I have a task currently to add contraints to where you can look while on the ground.

The interesting thing about this control scheme is that you can just freely rotate in all direction, which gave you the ability to do simple tricks like 360s and backflips. The extent to which trick mechanics affect the gameplay is far from being resolved and something were not worried about at the moment.

So my main task right now is constraining the player's ability to look around with the right joystick, and instead giving them torque when they take off from a jump. This might be cool !! I have no idea : D

Note: I use rotation to talk about what the player is doing with the right stick because the vertical axis controls the player's 'head' going up and down, but the horizontal axis controls the players body's horizontal rotation ( the body being a parent of the head ) which directly affects the player's forward movement.

Tasks completed today:
• Prototyped using torque 'all' the time on the player
    • Mostly unsuccessful due to my quadratic gravity algorithm but lead me to think that constant torque isn't a very good solution for what we want to do
• Added horizontal rotation to horizontal movement on the left stick, made movement feel more natural
• Made Horizontal movement much stronger in general, more feeling of control
• Slowed down rotation using the right stick significantly, this will work in conjunction with a new torque function to allow player's to spin themselves off jumps but not just freely control their rotation 100% like before

[Log 2015.09.09]

Log 2015.09.09




Spent most of the day working on control things. Updated to the newest version of InControl ( unity input library ) that had a new paradigm for handling binding inputs. Switched to the new system and it ended up being a good opportunity to try out some new things with the controls that turned out pretty well.

The first version of the game had a duck mechanic so you would hold the trigger to duck and release it to jump. The duck mechanic didn't work out well since visually you can't really tell when your ducking in a first person game at high speeds. The jump however has stayed until now on the trigger. Moving it to a bumper was a big improvement. Also added a separate button to  dive down quickly while in the air.

Tasks completed today:
• Control changes
• Adding physics materials to objects for bounciness, previously you would just run into objects and stop dead
• Increased minimum jump height, it was set to an arbitrary low value before.
   • This helps with another issue we are running into which is getting stuck in holes and in front of large objects, now you can hop your way out of more situations
• Added screenshot functionality in game

[Log - 2015.09.07 (2)]

Log - 2015.09.07 (2)

Spent the day removing a shortcut I had stuck in and had forgotten about. Previously I was clamping velocity to a max speed, it was an easy way to not have to fiddle with friction, gravity and player force values. However it leads to situations where you pick up a bunch of speed somewhere like descending a super steep slope or hitting a booster and then lose that speed a lot faster than you should.

So I removed the max speed clamps then tweaked friction and gravity values to properly control the player's speed instead.

[Log - 2015.09.07]

Log - 2015.09.07

hi hello ! The purpose of this devlog will be to keep track of what we're up to, day - to - day. Feedback is greatly appreciated !

Brief project history : This is a game we made for the Toronto Game jam this year. The prototype was a success and so we've been working on it here and there for the last couple of months. We are both very much part time on the project at the moment.

We will be showing our game in Austin at Fantastic Arcade in about 3 weeks so we're currently working towards that. Our main goals for the next few weeks are level design and mechanics mostly.

Our current level designs were all built for the jam version of the game and since the mechanics have all since been rebuilt since then, most of the design is broken.

Mechanics wise, we have a few small features we want to get done before FA. Mostly feel related stuff, like landing properly from the air either increasing or decreasing speed, not letting you move around while on your head . . other trivial stuff like that!

[? ? ?]

✢✣ A Snowboard inspired - race through ruins - on top of a floating archipelago ✣✢






Ben Swinden ◆ Richard Flanagan


? ? ?

This will be a 'report' on day to day activities for now. We are very early in the project but will hopefully be moving along quickly! Read on for the specifics

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