I'm not sure how to handle this update. I think I'll just write something short-ish here and invite those who want more details to check out my blog post update: http://louardongames.blogspot.com/2016/02/suzy-cube-update-friday-february-5-2016.html

This week was all about further massaging my World 1 levels both for looks and for playability.

I had my wife play through hand of the World 1 levels. She doesn't really play these kinds of games, so it was really eye opening! I also got back some gameplay videos and some feedback from a friend of mine who's been testing builds out with his son for a while now.

This feedback and my observations have lead to a number of changes, either planned or implemented, to the game's early levels. I an not overstate this lesson, which I've learned and relearned over my years in the industry: As developers, we have no idea how hard our games are to other players. There is, simply, no substitute for user testing!

For you level design nerds, as I mentioned above, if you are interested in a more detailed breakdown of the changes I made this week, especially to Level 1-2, you can go check out my long form update on blog: http://louardongames.blogspot.com/2016/02/suzy-cube-update-friday-february-5-2016.html

For everyone else, here are eye treats for you!









Next week is Carnaval here in Venezuela, and that means Monday and Tuesday off so next week's update will probably be a little slimmer. I do hope to make it up to you with a long overdue Lessons From Suzy Cube post, though! (http://louardongames.blogspot.com/search/label/Lessons%20from%20Suzy%20Cube)

OH! Also, don't forget to let me know if you are planning to attend GDC and would like a chance to try out the game for yourself!

See you all next week!

SOOO gorgeous!! I really love the art. The colours are just perfect!

March is fast approaching, gotta get to work making the World 1 levels look their best! A big part of that effort is simply to place more decorative objects in the levels but in doing that for Level 1-1, I kept running into more and more lightmap seam issues. It really sucks that Unity's lightmapping middleware doesn't address the problem of seams with some fancy post filtering or anything, so, in order to address these issues, I'm forced to create secondary UV sets by hand rather than rely on Unity's automatic lightmap UV generation. This probably wouldn't be such a noticeable issue if not for the fact that all the objects in the game are barely textured rounded boxes ^_^. Pretty much a worse case scenario!



Check out the difference it made on this bush asset!

I also made the (surprise!) sixth and TRUE final level of World 1 on Monday. It's Level 1-S or Special. The idea with the special stages is to offer the player something different from the usual levels. In the case of Level 1-S, it's a series of isometric perspective puzzles on a short timer ^_^



Now, here's a trick for any of you working on an isometric game who still want a little perspective. Rather than use an orthographic camera, use a perspective camera with a very narrow field of view. Pull the camera far back in order to frame the action properly and you'll notice that by zooming in, you've essentially "crushed" much of the perspective away. The narrower the FOV, the less perspective you get!

Next week will, likely, be more decoration efforts for more of the World 1 levels. See you then!

BONUS WIP shot of Level 1-1

SO, I've got my hook for Level 1-4: Switch activated temporary blocks!
I know, I know, not a catchy name, but they sure are fun to play around with!



The problem is, the layout I had been working on since last week really didn't showcase the mechanism well. I spent so much time building the level without knowing what I would, ultimately do with it that it just didn't fit. So, on Wednesday morning, I saved a copy and started over!

You can't polish a turn, as they say.

So I spent Wednesday redesigning the whole level on paper, this time totally supporting the core mechanism of the temporary blocks.



And this morning I finished the first pass draft (whitebox) of the level! Once I actually took the time to work through the design of the level, it came together so much faster!



Well, that makes all World 1 levels accounted for and drafted! This means I'll be focusing on testing for the next little while and then moving on to decorating the levels once I'm satisfied with the design of all of them.

After that? GDC, I guess! Any of you planning to attend?

I'll see you all next week!

Started work on Level 1-4 this week.



It's been really meandering because I didn't really know what to do with it. It turns out that my one idea to make it more open isn't really an idea at all. I knew I wanted to do this outside-inside thing but I still needed a core mechanism for the level and so... SWITCHES!



This is just one simple example of what I can do with these switches. I should be able to set up some fun situations using these and I now have a much better idea of what I want to accomplish with the level.

Also, check it: bees are fixed!



Sweet! Only problem, I don't really know what caused the bug in the first place. I tore the prefab apart bit by bit to see if I could get the bug to stop happening and couldn't. I then decided to try the opposite approach and rebuild the bee from scratch, one component at a time to see when the bug would show up... It never did! And since I now had a new working bee, I just overwrote the old busted prefab with the new working one. Bee fixed!

I much prefer when I actually learn something by fixing a bug, but hey, I'll take it!

Ciao for now and catch you all next week!

Hey everybody! Hope you had fun over the holidays!

It's great to be back in the action! Ok, short update. Draft of World 1 boss level is FINALLY done!



I struggled with a really dumb bug that was really more of a case of boneheadedness rather than an actual bug. You know, when you overlook something so stupid that you simultaneously feel good for solving the problem but like a total idiot for causing it in the first place? Ya, one of those!

I've still got that darn scaling bees bug to deal with, but that will have to wait for Xcode to reinstall (ugh, computers!)

Once I get that sorted, I'll dive right into the last outstanding level for World 1, Level 1-4. With Level 1-4, that will mean the whole of world one will be drafted, allowing me to shift to testing and polishing to get ready to show off my vertical slice at GDC in March!

Hopefully I'll have more to say next week than "I fixed the bee bug!" but, seriously, I'll consider the week a success if I'm simply able to do that!

See you then!

This update is a non-update, if you will.

I've decided that rather than end up posting half baked updates throughout the holiday period, I figured I would would on Suzy Cube when I can, not worry too much about it and then come back with a single update in the new year outlining any progress I may have made between now and then.

Holiday preparations have simply been taking up more and more of my time and I would rather not force myself to work on the game if it doesn't make sense just so I have something to post to the blog each week.

And so, I say goodbye to you all for the time being and hope you'll all pop back in in the new year!

Happy holidays all and have a safe and happy new year!

Yes, keep it up!

I love the colours in the rising water screenshot - it's very bright and vibrant. For me a lot of your other levels look a bit hazy - not sure if it's just the fact that there is fog there, or because of the distance of the fog, or if it's just the colour of it.

Have you done experiments with how much fog to use? I can definitely see how the heavier fog could be good for aiding distance/depth perception so that might be the reason it is like it is.

Depth perception and draw distance mitigation are the two big reasons for the heavy fog, you nailed it. I think the reason the latest screenshot doesn't look so hazy is that the playable tower barely recedes into the fog distance compared to, say the misty forest or long descent in the desert, both of which have much longer sight lines.

And thank you for all the kind words, guys. You have no idea how much I need it right now!

Ugh, barely an update this week... I spend the first few days working on our annual holiday card so I knew the update this week would be slim... then I updated Unity... And, as usual, I then had some bug fixing to do.

The funniest still isn't fixed...



Get it? It's funny because it looks ridiculous, and bees are bugs. it's a bug which affects bugs. Funny.
Also, it only happens on my iPod which is a pain in the ass. It's so much easier to debug stuff when it happens in the editor too.

Well, I'm going to get back to work on the World 1 boss level... Ya.. That level I promised would be done this week....



Oh, speaking of which, this is how the level starts right after you hit the trigger which gets the water flowing... and RISING!! DUN DUN DUUUUN!!

Ok.. I think I'm done making promises I'll just end up breaking, so... See you all next week!

Level 1-2 draft is done! It's all about teaching the player to use jump pads including the normal kind, bounce pads and jump activated pads. I thought the tall trees of a forest motif would be perfect for this.





I also put in work on converting my previously lava-rific boss into it's watery World 1 version. I set up its attack sequence too and did a bitty bit of set up work to simplify making the level leading up to the boss.



Otherwise, just a little bit of bug fixing, nothing to write home about.

Next week I should have a completed boss level draft and, hopefully, some early progress on Level 1-4. Until then, have a great week, folks!

I'm glad you asked! I'll probably do a "lessons" post about it in the future, but ya, everything in Suzy Cube makes heavy use of atlases. All particle graphics are on one atlas, all enemies (except for theme specific ones) are on one atlas, all level objects are on one atlas per theme and then there's another atlas for generic objects that don't belong to any theme in particular. So, yup, all atlases, all the time!

Man! This looks super sweet. Like, the art, the look and feel, the gameplay. It all seems top notch! I can't wait to see more of this game!

So, Level 1-3 is done for the moment and I've got my new bee enemies working!



I suspect they will cause... quite the buzz...

Moooving on! I've got a good chunk of work done on Level 1-2 which makes me feel pretty good about having a nice presentable World 1 to show off to folks at GDC in March.



Notice the fog effect? That's actually three things working together...


The camera background colour...


The scene fog...


And finally, my custom gradient objects to simulate height fog.


Put it all together and you've got a nice misty forest feel.

Now, I've had all the parts needed to do this in place for a while now, but it was only this morning that I figured I would write a simple script which ensures all three colours match up when the level is loaded. In short, I simply grab the camera background colour, and then set the fog colour to match and finally I set the colour of the gradient object material to match as well. This should make it nice and easy for me to make changes and adjust the background colours of levels to get them just right without having to fiddle with all three colours individually.

It's not a HUGE thing, but when you're working on your own, every little time saver like this can really pay off in the long run.

Next week I should be finishing off work on Level 1-2 and then moving on to, either, 1-4 or the first boss level, not sure yet... We'll see next week! See you all then!

Back to our regularly scheduled update...

I'm working on a new level, level 1-3. It's a big descent to the goal and all about learning to use the double jump power up.




I'm having fun with it. I even added a couple of hidden areas! These are fun for breaking up the look and action of a level and giving the player a sense of exploration and discovery.



And I'm currently working on a basic flying enemy for the game: Killer Bees!



Expect to see more of this bad guy next week!

That's it for this week's update. Not a glamorous one, I'm afraid. It's what happens when I spend most of the week with my nose buried in the editor. So I will leave you with a couple more screenshots.




See you all next week!

I would love to see an inventive takes on shells though!

Shells? Like Koopa shells? I do have some doodles for a thingy that can bounce around like a Koopa shell, but I don't think that's going to stay in scope.

This update comes a day early. I won't be available to do the update on Friday, so Thursday it is!
It was a lazy week for me, so it won't be a very big update. I did get some work done on some desert props, though!



And made some interactive sarcophagi!



The Mummy Skull is essentially my take on Dry Bones from Mario games.



And made some/ still working on some wall mounted blow torches!!



Also wanted to mention that if all goes well, I'll be attending GDC in San Fran in March! This will mean re-vectoring my efforts to concentrate on making the beginning of the game as presentable as possible rather than painting the whole thing in broad strokes.

I will keep you all posted on the GDC situation and let me know if you are planning to attend so we can meet up!

See you next week! I've got to go finish that blow torch and then plan the next four months!

Tape Storm? Looks more like a... TAPE WORM!!! HA!!!... Get it, Owen, TAPE WORM!!

Well, Jimym, It does work surprisingly well, but I can't take credit for it. It's just one of the settings in the InControl virtual joystick component. Thank Gallant Games for that one!
Ya, a friend of mine is experimenting with the same kind of joystick in his latest project after playing Suzy Cube.

Osteel: For the love of the platform, really. Like I've mentioned before, I'm not closing the door to any platforms at this point in development, but I'm targeting mobile first because it's a game I always wish I could have been playing on my iPod ^_^.. Especially after getting a controller!

Noeinz: Ya, procedural content shuffling wouldn't really make sense for Suzy, but I have several ideas written up for other games that would involve some type of randomization/procedural generation. As a dev, it's very attractive to me because it means working on a game that you can play yourself ^_^.. I mean, Suzy is fun and all, but I know every level perfectly. Even Notch never knows the layout of a new Minecraft world!