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[ratrogue]

Oh, look: another Video!

I added some "eye bugs" - little creatures walking around randomly. It's mainly a test if something like this would add more to the atmosphere of the game, and we think it really does. Right now TRI lacks some kind of personality, and the eye bugs are the first step to gain it. They will replace the statues later, so some of these creatures will be collectibles. It's all part of the new story, which hopefully reached its final state this time. More on that later.

Another change is the addition of the glow image effect. The main reason was one feedback I got, which summed up the screenshots pretty well: "Looks like Quake ... with debug shapes!". We won't do much about the Quake-look yet (content update will come next month or later), but the TRIs hopefully will look less than debug shapes when they glow and have some kind of texture. They still are very sharp though, and this is one of the main reason they look like "debug", so this is probably something I will tackle some day.

BTW, it's pretty annoying that Unity's standard glow image effect uses the alpha component of materials to determine how much a material will glow. This basically means it's not usable with transparent materials out of the box, but luckily I found a way to circumvent that by writing a custom shader.

The creatures and the glow will be part of an update which will be uploaded Sunday or Monday (hopefully), together with some fixes and tweaks.

[shameless plug]
We started a Kickstarter campaign. Well, not only us, but also eight other developers. Together we wanted to try something new - a Kickstarter Indie Bundle! So if you think there aren't enough indie games in the world, here is your chance to back nine at once. ;-)
[/shameless plug]

[ratrogue]

Devlog entry 7:

Hi!

Yes, we and our project TRI are still alive! After a pretty long break at the end of 2012 we decided to move the game into a different direction, especially regarding the style. The story changed, too, but this is not quite as relevant, as the story and plot we thought of were never an integral part of the alpha versions. In the current pre-release we even removed any hint of story, because we want to add NPCs later, and concentrated on other stuff this time.

The pause in the last quarter of 2012 was mainly for doing contract work, to get some money for food and shelter - but it also gave us time to rethink some design decisions we made regarding TRI. The main concern was to make everything easier for us to create content, which means:

simpler textures – mostly just quadratic tiles

• We combined this with a shader to look up the tiles – fed with the tile texture atlas and a noise texture, the walls, floors and ceilings don't look too much like repeating patterns.
• Currently this shader works fully with Direct3D, but is a bit broken in OpenGL – because of a bug in Unity3D 4.x there are ugly artifacts visible for everyone on Mac or Linux. This will hopefully be fixed some day ...

random tiles

simpler mapping – standardized box mapping will do in most cases

• This is done in the 3d modeling program (3dsMax). Additional customization of the mapping is done only when necessary.
• Of course this means that for more sophisticated architecture the textures have to be carefully chosen, so for example it doesn't show too much seams on curved walls.

visible seams, will be repaired

simpler level creation – try to stay in a grid of 1x1x1 meters initially

• I wrote a MaxScript tool for 3dsMax in order to have vertex snapping on a 3D grid. It's a pity this isn't built in, as my solution is quite prone to errors (often, undo doesn't work) and unintuitive to use. But it's better than nothing. I think in Lightwave this functionality is called Quantize.
• The tool allows us "to go into detail": by clicking on a button you can half the unit, so it the unit 1m becomes 0.5m becomes 0.25m becomes 0.125m ... etc., thus everything really will be in a grid. Of course there are exceptions, like round shapes.

vertex snapping tool

simpler level export – click a button in 3dsMax and the stuff is in the game

• Another tool for 3dsMax is an exporter which automatically exports all the objects in the scene as a complete FBX which is used as the level geometry in Unity3D. Having a fast pipeline is awesome.
• The exporter prepares certain objects specifically for the game. For example, there are surfaces in the game where the triangles don't stick, so we assign them a particular material. Every submesh with this material will be exported as its own gameobject, and therefore can be easily recognized in the code.
• We can add some keywords to the name of a mesh so it gets treated differently when exported. For example, adding "$Export:Bridge" to the name will remove the object from the level and export it as a separate file named "Bridge.FBX", or adding "$NoExport" won't export this object at all.

export tool

simpler mission design – the main goal of every level now consists of collecting three keys in order to open a portal to the next level

• With just three symbols in the top right corner of the ingame GUI, everyone knows what they have to do without much explanation (ideally).
• Even though the premise of collecting three statues sounds kind of boring, it actually freed us from having to think of overly creative, but in the long run unnecessary mission goals. The goal is clear and creativity can be spent on the level design and puzzles.
• The pacing is slower now and the learn curve for the player was decreased, because single levels are often dedicated to single gameplay elements. They are also less confusing as it is more clear what to do next; we reduced the elements that look interactive but really aren't.

collect statues as mission goal

All this simplification resulted in a better consistency of the looks and the gameplay. The new art style can be tweaked quite easily by changing a few colors, the ambient light and the global fog. Improving the gameplay and layout of a single level even after texturing and mapping it became  easy. With the new limitations, we can predict the ideal size and content of a level much better and we're more confident now when creating the level design.

We also created a tutorial mission which will introduce the player to the world, so it contains a show-jumping course for learning the basic controls, but will also be the start of the story, as NPCs will give the player motivation to actually move through the levels.

tutorial parcours

Right now we get mostly positive feedback, especially regarding the level architecture. But not enough people are playing the game – let alone buying the alpha version. The trailers we do might be big turn-offs, as creating the triangles seems tedious. It's actually fun and feels natural, but how can we tell the hard to convince trailer-watchers? We probably need to make it more clear that TRI's focus is not only on puzzles but also on exploration.

current trailer

Regards,
overhead

[mrKaizen]

The color are wonderful and even if the polygons number is not that high the gfx works very well.
Reminds me a bit Q.U.B.E. and Quantum Conundrum - games I like so I will follow TRI (good name btw). Ok, so.. let's try the demo.

[ratrogue]

Cool. Please tell me what you think of the demo. =)

[ratrogue]

We're currently preparing an update, so here are some recent screenshots.











More will follow!

[ratrogue]

Adding more decorations and different textures:



Small birds in the air, circling around the tower, to make the level feel more alive:

[Games Inquirer]

Looks really good, reminds me of Kairo but not so gloomy.

[ratrogue]

Yeah, we were a bit inspired by Kairo, mostly when we changed the art style half a year ago.

[jO]

So good! I really like the latest art updates.

[ratrogue]

jO: Thank you! We like them too.

Some impressions from the last level of the upcoming update - first, zones that change your gravity direction:



Second, floating kamis and how to lead them elsewhere:

[ratrogue]

I'm so happy that we're getting near to releasing the next update (codename "MagicalMonk")!







The new website is already finished, only thing that's missing is a new trailer and a new presskit.

[ratrogue]

So,

the new update for TRI (0.3.0, code name "MagicalMonk") is out now, yay.

Along with the new content - three additional levels, a new character appearing sporadically, posteffects, controls setup, textures&decorations, etc. - and the occasional gameplay tweaks and bugfixes (full version log here), we switched our payment method when we gave the website a major overhaul. TRI is now available via the HumbleStore widget instead of our own shop (which wasn't the best option from the beginning).

Also, people can get a special edition of the game with soundtrack, because IMHO the music is pretty unique.

The new trailer is here:

Oh, right - in a fit of delusions of grandeur, we not only increased the price from 5 to 10 dollars but also submitted TRI to Greenlight. It would be nice if someone could vote for it.

Regards,
overhead

[ratrogue]

Heya,

are here members of IndieDB? If so, they could vote for TRI becoming Best Indie Game of the Year. That would be awesome. :-)

Unfortunately, we don't have much time right now for the update, which is a huge bummer. But in the meantime Jana wrote a blogpost about the cutscenes we want to add to game.

I also

, which shows real gameplay scenes only.

Regards,
overhead

[jO]

Ohhhh, one has to love the vibe that comes from this video. And the music is great!

[ephoete]

Good progression since the last time I've checked out this thread. 

[William Chyr]

I remember playing the demo of TRI on Desura and really liking it. Cool mechanics, and seriously beautiful artwork.

I didn't realize you guys had a devlog going. Posting here to follow.

[ratrogue]

I didn't realize you guys had a devlog going. Posting here to follow.

Cool, that means I might write more here again. ;-)

Too bad so much stuff is happening right now, so that development of TRI is really slow. I hate it! But for example this week we're in Düsseldorf, attending the German Developer Award, as TRI is nominated for "Best Learning Game" ... hehe, I don't know either how that could happen (well, we put the game in that category, but just because there aren't much categories would fit, and we certainly didn't want to compete with Crysis 2).

Regards,
overhead

[ratrogue]

Hallo again,

we released the Beta version yesterday, so I thought I would post this news here.



So, yeah, the new version, called "ObliviousFox" (TRI 0.4.0), finally includes all levels (as seen above), with the last ones not really finished and totally untested. Here and there might be bugs and missing textures. But at least we can now make the game better, and not larger anymore, and this is a great burden taken from my shoulders.
Until the release we need to do new sounds, the GUI (main menu and so on), implementing the story (animations, cutscenes), test-sessions and of course polishing, polishing and polishing.

The main points of the version log are:

• Tweaked creation of triangles, they can now intersect with static objects and other triangles (should make it easier to place tris)
• Fixed major bug which lead to losing the ability to reflect light rays in level "Reflections"
• Added background scene in main menu
• Tweaked feedback for triangle creation: intersecting with objects shows the intersection
• Improved appearance of most of the important objects in the game
• Added new four new levels
• Tweaked feedback for triangle creation some more: while placing a corner point, (most) inappropriate positions are greyed out
• Added feature: press F1 to show the position of all key statues

BTW, we're visiting the AMAZE in Berlin next month. If anyone of you is visiting, too, we will hopefully be there nearly all day. And we also might attend the EGX Rezzed (end of March), as TRI is showcased there in the Leftfield Collection.

In other news: we were greenlit by Valve! This came totally unexpected for us, as we weren't even the Top 100, but I guess Steam is becoming more and more open anyway.

Last but not least we filmed the first part of a series of simple

videos. I hope we can find the time and motivation to film the rest of these. :-P

[William Chyr]

Hey guys, I purchased the beta version a few days ago, and finally got around to playing through several levels tonight.

First of all, love the art and music. Really nice combination and great atmosphere. I love the first time you see the fox, when you're crawling through a little tunnel, and see the fox's legs go by. Every time afterwards, whenever I saw the fox run by, I got really excited.

You guys probably already know this from playtesting, but man, once you start being able to change gravity with the triangles, you can get pretty nauseous! I got up to Labyrinth, but had to take a break at that point. Have you guys noticed this with other playtesters? Any tips? I'm guessing you get used to it after playing a bit more.

Also, for the final release, will saving the game allow you to save positions of triangles? I ran into a bit of a bug where I had built an elaborate triangle path, but then fell and got myself stuck behind a bunch of triangles. I couldn't get myself out as all the triangles in that section were dependent on another. This was in Labyrinth, on that U-shaped platform on the first floor, as I was trying to climb upwards into the structure.

[ratrogue]

Heya Willy,

thanks for buying and giving feedback!

Feeling nauseous happens to a few people, and we're sorry for that - the gravity changing mechanic is prone to that, I fear. I get a bit sick when I watch playtesters who play very hectically and a bit uncoordinated. Maybe you can experiment with different settings for the FOV and camera smoothness options, and try to play slower, but other than that I don't really know, to be honest. I'm not sure how we could tackle this problem, too. :/

You can save in the game via quicksave, and you have three rotating quicksave slots, so you can load an older quicksave. Saving the triangles alone isn't planned. So, being trapped in your own triangles can definitely happen, but perhaps I add an option to destroy all triangles and their dependencies, although that would change gameplay a bit at some places. Hmmm.

Thanks again for the feedback!