Okay! This week I started things off by making a placeholder tutorial screen:



More importantly, though, I set up the first user experience flow. I decided to change things up if it's your first time launching the game. Instead of taking you to the level select, I will take you to the aforementioned tutorial screen and then straight to Level 1-1. Why make you suffer through clicking your way around a level select screen that means nothing to you yet!? Straight to gameplay, baby!

Similarly, I've also set up the tester flow with an extra screen with instructions for logging into Everyplay using the test account and a button to do just that.

And the rest of my week was spent working on a new level, Level 4-3.



The level is split up into three towers, but when you're playing, you have the impression that you are simply racing down a single long tower, trying to outrun the giant spiked crusher that is chasing you down the whole time. A big part of why the level is spit up into three parts like this is to help accommodate checkpoints and the big crusher.

Speaking of crushers, there are also many smaller ones sprinkled throughout your harrowing escape down the tower.. you know, cuz I'm mean like that sometime ^_~



I also wrote another Lessons From Suzy Cube post which I invite you all to read. This one is all about the culling system I wrote to allow the game to run nice and fast, even on my iPod Touch.
http://louardongames.blogspot.com/2015/11/lessons-from-suzy-cube-improved-mobile.html

I am currently debating whether or not to attend GCD in SanFran in March. If I do, it will have a huge effect on my priority list as I will concentrate on making World 1 look all finished and stuff. Anywho, still on the fence about it so I will keep all of you posted.

First I want to encourage all of you (noeinz especially) to check out the latest instalment of Lessons From Suzy Cube all about making the game feel great to play on a touch screen: http://louardongames.blogspot.com/2015/10/lessons-from-suzy-cube-mobile-controls.html

Now for the update!

I mostly did some bug fixing and getting around to backlog stuff this week.

I started the week by making a variation of my chaser enemy which looks like a snowman head... And hides as a snowman's head!



Getting these right also meant addressing some bugs in the chaser behaviour which were totally overdue.

I also wrote myself a super useful debug script which follows the player around spawning cubes at regular intervals. What's really neat is that I can copy the cubes in play mode and then paste them back into the scene in edit mode to use them as a template for placing stuff like coins to perfectly match the player's path or jump arc. It's been extremely useful on level 2-3 with all the slides and jump pads.



What else, what else? Oh! Wrote a little script to make particle effects that ignore the time scale. When Suzy is hit or gets a power up, there's a slight pause or slowdown that many people were assuming was a bug or chugging.. hopefully this will help make the effect look more intentional.. as intended...



And, finally, I created a set of gradient assets using a custom vertex alpha shader. They should be really useful for making blocks look like they are cut off or receding into darkness.. OR LAVA!!





Well, that's it for this week. Halo 5 just came out, so I make no promises for next week!

Look, noeinz, I would love to tell you that Suzy Cube will change your mind about platforming on a touch screen, but I mean, it's still a touch screen. That being said, I do take the problem really seriously and have taken a number of steps to improve game play on the platform. In fact, I plan do write a whole Lessons From Suzy (http://louardongames.blogspot.com/search/label/Lessons%20from%20Suzy%20Cube) post about it.

But, to give you a bit of an answer, for the virtual d-pad part of it anyway, I'm actually using InControl (from the Unity Asset Store) to handle inputs and it comes with a configurable virtual analogue stick template. I'm using an invisible stick that's floating (reposition's based on where you put your thumb down), which I have traditionally not liked, but it's also draggable.. This makes all the difference! I can not stress this enough!

As for the gifs. Sorry to say, but they are all captured from the editor on my Mac, mostly using the keyboard and sometimes using a 360 controller... ^_^

It's update time, oh yes it's update time!

Spent the week working on Level 2-3, a snow themed level, and a bunch of stuff relating to it. For instance, I wrote a script that allows me to create triggers that can temporarily change pretty much any setting related to how the character handles. This allowed me to create sliding slopes and icy slippery areas too!

I created these pick-up style rings which make coins appear. Getting all the blue coins before the timer runs out will earn you a star. You'll want to find stars because some levels will be locked unless you have a certain number of stars.

I also modelled and implemented these nifty archways which are really just invisible teleporters that make it seem like two parts of a level are physically linked when they are not. This should be really useful to have in my toolbox going forward.

Oh, and I started the week by modelling a number of snow themed props to get into the spirit of things. You can see a small sampling below...







Well, That's it for this week. I should have the first pass at this level done early next week, allowing me to move on to other stuff. Man... I can't wait to get to the point where I can make a new level without having to implement any new features... Alas, I'm not there yet! I must continue filling my toolbox!

See you next time!

I like the buns/ears, from a game design point of view it makes it way easier to quickly read which direction the player is facing.

One thing I felt from this gif is that Suzy's shadow could do with being a lot darker - when you jump on the enemy it's hard to judge where Suzy is, and the shadows are also very hard to see on the mesh floor.

Other than that it's looking great, nice to see a lot of effort put into the boss! Looks like it'll be fun to fight without being frustrating.

Ya... I've made a note for myself to look into lightening the mesh floor so the shadow shows up better. I definitely have some wiggle room to make the shadows more apparent too.

Good call on the buns helping with character facing... Didn't have to say it myself ^_^

Slim update this week. I spent Monday playing Toto Temple Deluxe and Rayman Legends (both awesome, BTW) to recover from an exhausting long weekend visiting Angel Falls (also awesome, BTW!)

So I spend the rest of the week mostly tightening stuff. I fixed some bugs I was having in the level select screen when using a controller.. which looks like this for those interested..



I laid a bunch of ground work for flow through the game. I set up all the level buttons in the select screen (the coloured cubes) and created level stubs for every level I plan to have in the game. So.. I mean, technically, you can play through the whole game now, from start to finish... Only, like 98% of the levels are just a piece of flat grey ground with a goal object and three stars next to where you spawn.. Doing this actually let me sniff out a few bugs I wouldn't have other wise and all things in level select land are now nice and dandy.

Oh, and I finished up work on the boss fight functionality. Again just a few polish items and some bug fixing. Any remaining little issues I'll fix as I create the individual boss fights for realzers.

i also spend a day trying to update InControl to the latest version... No luck.. Man, it really does not like that my game is in Javascript (gasp! I know I know, spare me! The next one will be in C#, I swear!)

Ok, gonna go spend some time properly prioritizing my tasks for next week so I have something interesting for the next update!

The boss design is definitely coming along nicely, and is much improved over that older one.

What are those hat power-ups, just place-holders?

Placeholders? No, those are the two power-ups you can get: A double jump hat and a ground pound hat.

And the boss is.. like 99% done. I just need to polish up some stuff like effects, audio and things.

 I've spent the week adding functionality to the boss like making it so Suzy can damage it and it can die when it runs out of hit points. With that done, I moved on to building a big variety of actions the boss can perform, like spitting fireballs at you or causing things to happen, like lava columns to shoot up from below. You know, boss stuff! The idea is that each boss in the game will only perform a handful of these possible actions, with every encounter involving a different mix to keep things fresh.

The boss was interactive but totally passive all week. I could set off the attacks using debug buttons but it wasn't a real boss fight until this morning when I wrote up the system that drives the boss. It looks something like this:



If you want to know more about the inner workings of the boss, you can check out my full blog post about it here: http://louardongames.blogspot.com/2015/10/suzy-cube-update-friday-octobre-9-2015.html

The system drives a number of different actions ranging from idling to a raging lava tsunami of doom!! You can check out some of this stuff in action below...



Next week's update probably won't be as exciting as I'll just be doing some polish stuff and taking some time to refactor some scripts that need refactoring.

See you then!

PS: Yes.. that last GIF shows the boss with a couple of band aids on his head. I added these this morning to make it obvious where he's vulnerable.

Sorry about skipping the update last week. I ended up spending most of it working on a wedding card for my cousin who's getting married this weekend.

Anywho!

More boss stuff! Got all the animations done (as far as I can tell) and started hooking things up in Unity. I've got the state machine all up and running and I got kind of carried away hooking up effects and screen shakes and stuff. Here's a before and after of the intro sequence:



So, as you can see, I have also been putting SOME work into setting up functionality such as for the intro sequence: locking out player control, switching camera view etc.

I've also written a simple little averaging script which makes a transform stay between two other transforms (with a weighting value). I'm using this as a target for the camera in order to frame both Suzy and the boss dynamically. You can see it in action during this bite attack:



So, even though Suzy isn't moving you can see the camera following the motion of the boss' head while also keeping Suzy in view.

The next couple weeks are likely going to be spent making the boss actually functional and interactive. Kind of important!

OH! I've also posted a new "Lessons from Suzy" blog post. This one is on level variety.
http://louardongames.blogspot.com/2015/10/lessons-from-suzy-cube-level-variety.html

Until next time!

I love all the object interaction! Objects bouncing into each other and off each other, rolling stuff into other stuff. Looks like it'll be ripe for emergent smiles!

It's good news this week! I've redesigned the boss! Remodelled and rigged it too! I've made a good bit of progress on the animations as well, which has been fun! My education was in traditional animation, so it's always good to have the opportunity to roll up my sleeves and breath some life into a model.

Since this version of the boss has way less body segments than the old one (4 instead of 11) and that those body segments are simpler than the old ones (no spikes), I was able to put much more geometry in the head while still coming out of it using WAY less verts than the old model (624 compared to 2414!), yay!

I also decided to forego the blend shapes for this new version as well, getting better results by simply rigging the brow up to three bones, left, middle and right. Here's an animation of the boss getting bopped on the head! Remember, bosses must always be mad and/or incredulous when you score a hit on them!



Next week will be more animations as I'm only about half way through the list so far!

See you next week!

Really enjoyed the jump pad gifs, nice to see so much variation : ) also really like the dragon-snake :D
Is there any kind of story or context for the game that you have planned? or will it be a fairly light 'collect all the things' type affair? (Which is cool too, never bothered me a jot in mario)

Not much of a story, no... Maybe something about the bad guys running through town and stealing everyone's gold coins so Suzy sets off to get them back from the bulies who took them... I was batting around an idea for a trailer down the road which would play on the idea that Suzy is helping by essentially running off and grabbing all the coins for herself ^_^

So.. short version, nope no real story. Just some fun levels full of fun challenges.

This looks amazing, definitely want to keep an eye on this!

Fingers crossed you are able to release it on PC, but for now just keep working on whatever platform is most comfortable for you

Thanks Ishi! Leilani's Island is looking super sweet too BTW! Which platforms are you targeting?

As for a PC release.. I'm not closing the door on any platforms this early in development. The only really obstacles are points of sale and any platform specific features I decide to include. But for the initial release, I'm concentrating on iOS.

Soooo... This week's update is kind of a bummer. I've spent most of the week working on the game's final boss/template for all boss fights and I'm considering scrapping my work... Ya... The rig needs to be redone to be easier to use, I'm not really in love with the boss' design.. I don't know. I'll mull it over this weekend and see what I decide to moving forward.

This pretty much sums up how I feel about my week.

I've also been plagued with the usual list of Unity upgrade bugs after installing 5.2. The worse two only seem to affect my target device (iPod Touch 5th Gen) causing my lightmaps to display without filtering (blocky... and no, it does NOT fit the style) and the other essentially cutting my carefully maintained 60fps in half!

So, in order not to leave you all on a sour note, I invite you to check out my latest "Lessons from Suzy" post about how I'm avoiding ambiguous jumps in the game:
http://louardongames.blogspot.com/2015/09/lessons-from-suzy-cube-measuring-up.html

TLDR:

Thanks, guys! You kind words help me press on!

I don't have time for a big update this week so I'll just refer you all to my update post on my blog (bad form, I know!): http://louardongames.blogspot.com/2015/09/suzy-cube-update-friday-september-4-2015.html

But here's a TLDR for the rest of you:
Still working on Level 3-3.. it's taking a long time!
Worked on projectiles and cannons!

Ulydev: Thanks so much! I'm using Unity.
Bencelot: Don't worry, it is a cropped view. I think I've got a screenshot of a more typical view on my blog.
Quicksand-T: I know, right!? I friggin' love that game! I know it's not very original, but I really inspired me.
ProgramGamer: Crossover = Done!

Lots of people refer to her ears, but those are meant to be square hair buns.

I've started work on a new level, level 3-3. Why not level 1-2? Well, I won't get into it but I wrote all about that on my blog.

The level is lava themed with various timed obstacles that move to the music (some slight bugs to fix regarding this...) I also implemented a simple lava plane which follows the camera in X and Z but keeps a fixed Y height, giving the impression of the lava going on infinitely.

I also did some work on some generic stuff that isn't necessarily for level 3-3, like a ghost enemy which will chase you by following everywhere you've been and some retracting spikes which can have their timing easily offest for cool effects.

As always you can get more info about this on my blog. Let's look at some gifs!

Yes, loving the progress on this! I like what you're going for with the end of level challenge. It's a nice little reward at the end.

Ooh! Thems some pretty fancy shmancy visuals you've got there! Some really nice stuff indeed.