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[SebastianGioseffi]

And in a completely unrelated incident, Okhlos is one of the nominees for the Indie Dev Grant from Bundle in a Box. If you were planning on getting the bundle, you will have the marvelous chance of voting us, and if you weren't you still have time to make new plans: http://bundle-in-a-box.com/

[roketronz]

After the Okhlos tour,  we can now focus on what's important: the game. At least for now, it's incredibly difficult to cover all areas of game development, being only two guys (plus we have to do things like writing this update ). So, this week, I kept my original plan of making Ares' minions.


Ares was the first god we had. I chose him because in the early prototype phase, we needed a warrior god, a melee oriented boss. So Ares was the logical choice. Then we had the semi bosses, which we knew had to be sons of Ares. Ares had a lot of sons, but we focused on two of them: Phobos & Deimos. Phobos being fear, and Deimos being terror. These two concepts were strong enough to give us some interesting mechanics for the semi bosses. Also they sounded cool as hell.



Here are a few sketches of Phobos & Deimos. I think I don't need to tell you that you can click in the picture to enlarge it.

As you see, I searched for a grimy look in Deimos, but the challenge was to not be too Hades-like. It was important not to relate Deimos with Thanatos (Death), who isn't even sketched yet but will surely be in Hades' rooster.

We ended up with Deimos having a white and red robe, to follow Ares' palette. He will be more of a ranged attacker. Phobos in the other hand, was easier to design. We took him to a primal, more savage conception, with lion hair, and fire eyes. He will be more melee oriented.

The cool thing is that each of them, represents a part of Ares. Ares will have area attacks, and melee attacks as well. So, in the Ares battle, he shows the two facets of their sons.



Here are in context, Phobos, Deimos, Ares, an Ares minion, and a philosopher.


Finally, the stage has to have a lot of enemies! So we designed some cyclops and a few warriors. The good thing about this, was that we had the main animations for the ordinary cyclops, so adding some Ares clothes was not much of a problem.

You can see the comparison between two running cyclops, to see what we had to do to animate them.





Also, we introduced our first rock thrower unit! He runs, throws rocks, and dies. Doesn't seems like much, but he can incredibly dangerous if he is in the right spot.

Below are the rest of the variations of the common units of the level, alongside Ares.



As you can see, this was all fun and games, but there is a problem. The decided to make A BIG CHANGE in Okhlos... This is driving us crazy, but we think it's a tremendously good change. What we are changing is... [CLIFFHANGER!!! DEV BLOG POST WITH CLIFFHANGER! SO ORIGINAL!] Check out what's the big change next week.


To finish, we want to say thanks to the people of Bundle In A Box, for nominating Okhlos for the Indie DEV grant. It's a big honor for us being nominated. Also, if we win some money would be incredibly cool.

If you don't know about the dev grant, basically, any person who buys a copy of the strategy bundle, can choose one of the nominated games for the grant to give them some money. The games are not in the pack, they just receive some help from the users. Also, only the most voted game will receive the money.



We are not only doing this for the potential money, (which, surely, isn't much) but in this way, we can reach more people, and they can get to know Okhlos.

That's all for this week! Thanks for reading!

[roketronz]

Ahoy there! This week, I will introduce you to one of the more important changes that we've done to the game so far.

Here is the thing: After a careful planning and analysis, we came to the conclusion that developing 12 levels will take me (Art only) a year and a half. The cost was too damn high!

Also, in a few playtesting sessions we found that players didn't seem to fully understand the objective. In addition, we found that the challenge in the mechanics was 

.



So, the problem was: Making levels took an incredible long time and effort, and  creating different challenges for every level felt inconsistent (like we glued a lot of different things altogether). What's the solution? We don't know for sure, but we found an easy way to test a new system.

Basically, using cities divided into small areas and building them up procedurally. Each world (we call each city a world, Delphi, Sparta, etc. would all be different worlds) is composed of two to five areas. You have to complete (usually, destroy) an area, in order to advance to the next one. When you reach the final area you will face the god of the world, and after you defeat the god, you will advance to the next world (Tebas, Sparta, Athens, Vegas, etc.).


This is a chunk. -Say "Hi" chunk. -Hi chunk

Each area in turn is composed of chunks. Each chunk will have data on the type of enemies that it will hold, also if it has hazards and environment stuff.
This is not only to help us deal with level design far quicker, but also pushes us forward to be able to take a lot of design decisions. The end result with this approach is that it gives Okhlos a much more arcade feeling. That's incredible good. It feels faster, more challenging. Also, it gives us the power of infinity in the level design. That could be a lot (or absolutely zero). But definitively give us a game which is fun to replay,  where you can find new things in each playthrough. And that is amazing.



This is ye olde static delphi.



This could be the new Delphi, or not! It will always change! Science! 



This could give you an idea of how the cities are gonna be. It's composed of 3x3 chunks. Each chunk has 10x10 tiles. Each tile can have anything (enemies, props, houses, shops, hazards, etc.). 

Well, all of this makes a tremendous change in the game, but we are quite enthusiast about this. We see a lot of potential for this decision, and the current build we are developing, looks amazing. As always, thanks for reading!

[Kurt]

This looks really nice! Always a fan of 2D + 3D.

[siskavard]

This looks insanely fun

FOLLOW'S

[Derqs]

ohh those graphics man!
following.

[Sved]

I don't know how I managed to miss this topic until now, but wanted to tell you that I really enjoyed your character research on the greek gods of he first few pages. I like how you slowly diverted them in your own style, yet kept the whole "family" consistent, great work!

[roketronz]

Thanks a lot for all the amazing comments! They are really invigorating!

I don't know how I managed to miss this topic until now, but wanted to tell you that I really enjoyed your character research on the greek gods of he first few pages. I like how you slowly diverted them in your own style, yet kept the whole "family" consistent, great work!

Thanks! I think that when translated into pixel art they become even more consistent. It happened with Apollo and Ares, and now I'm facing the new gods with that in mind.
Also, the color palette of each god it's gaining importance for it's own.

Like, you identify yellow with Apollo, red with Ares, blue with Posidon, etc. And that's a constant in the level. Those are a few things that we learned the hard way during the development. (recolorizing lots of sprites )

[roketronz]

Another week goes by, another update. This week's update will be divided into two parts. The first one and the second one.

Fountains

As I was telling you last week, we have changed Okhlos' level design paradigm. I am now making chunks, that hold information about how many enemies the chunk will hold, the hazards and the little houses. Making these chunks has become a completely pleasant activity (at least for now). It's like building dioramas. The bad thing is that it takes time (just like with dioramas).

Click to enlarge

Basically,  between drawing sprites, modeling and making little roads that are consistent within the chunks, I created a new hobby for my self. All I need now is a display that keeps the prefab spinning all day and to put it in a showcase (years of painting miniatures). 

Anyway, this lead me to touching up the fountains.  The fountains had been hastily made, with the idea that I would eventually have to touch it up. Besides, putting the fountains alone made them look odd, so I had model some benches taking into consideration the fact that fountains were a meeting spot in ancient times. 

First I start with the model.
 
I take the mesh to Unity. As with all the other textures, I use point as the filter mode, so as to give it the pixel-art-look.

(These are the typical settings we use on the textures so that they can be shown in all their pixel splendor ) 

Then, I add the animated sprites with 2DTollkit.







 
Some of you may recognize some of the characters in these fountains. It's purely coincidental.
 
The gif's resolution is not the best but you can see the animation very clearly. Also, some of the gifs are at double speed. Definitely there is some room for improvement on my gif capturing skills. 

Events
This week, so as not to lose the habit, we were showing Okhlos at a little event in Argentina. There were very few attendants, but the people who had the chance to test the game were delighted with the mechanics. How the mob moves and destroys everything in its way was something everyone pretty much enjoyed. Based on what Schell says about games having to start as toys, I think we are off to good start. Moving around in the game is fun in itself, without taking into account any of other extra mechanics. While we were there we had the chance to see that some people didn't quite understand the tutorial, so, besides promoting the game a little bit, which is always welcomed, we managed to use this event as a mini playtesting session. 
The second event we "attended" was MicAtlantica. We weren't technically there, but Okhlos was, to the rejoice of everyone attending the event. MicAtlantica is taking place in Santiago de Compostela, Spain.
 
You can see a list of all the games in the event here. We are delighted to be able to be part of it, even if we are not there physically. Just being one of the ambassadors of the Argentinean's game industry is quite a merit in itself. So if you are in Spain, go play it and tell us what you think!

[roketronz]

This week we will start with an ongoing series about heroes in Okhlos.

 

What are the heroes?

The heroes are special unit, that are going to be scattered all over the game but that you will also be able to buy with different units.

Originally, the heroes were only going to be available for purchase with slaves. The goal was to use slaves as coins, a kind of critic to the class system in ancient Greece, and the slaves would also have another function, to carry items. We realized that those two functionalities were too important in the game, and that putting that much into a single unit type would make the others less relevant. If the players wanted to buy items, they couldn´t buy heroes. And when they bought heroes, they lost all items they were carrying.

The system was unbalanced, giving too much importance to the slaves. The best strategy was simply to gather as much slaves as possible, forgetting about the rest of the units. That is why we decided that is was best for the slaves to keep the item-carrying functionality, but that the hero-buying part would be something that could be done with any kind on unit. Now each hero costs a certain amount of units, depending on what it does. For instance, Leonidas, king of the Spartans, is going to be able to be purchased with warrior units.

Each hero is going to have special stats and characteristics.
OEDIPUS




Oedipus  is based on the hero of the same name, but we took some liberties translating him into the game. Basically he is the king that blinded himself after he realized  the great sin he had committed, which made family dinners really awkward, and made Freud rich. However, in Okhlos, his power doesn't come from the myth, Oedipus doubles the number of people that are added to the mob. If you add a slave, you will get two slaves instead.



This is pretty useful, but is also makes it very easy to reach the mob limit fast.

Even though this seems like a non-sequitur between the myth and the in-game ability, we justify it with a Borges quote: "Mirrors and paternity are abominable because they multiply and affirm it" ("Los espejos y la paternidad son abominables, porque multiplican al hombre al infinito").


HERACLES




In Okhlos we are constantly lobbying to get this hero called like he should be. It's Heracles, not Hercules.

He is the son of a god and a mortal (remember that if something moved, it was very likely that Zeus would want to bang it). Heracles possess and incredible strength and can resist almost any impact. He would the archetypical tank unit, if not for the fact that each of his blows deals more than the rest of the mob combined (not true).

 
SPARTACUS




The Roman slave, turned leader of a popular uprising. Kind of a classical Che Guevara. Spartacus role is basically to make the slaves stronger.  Each slave will be stronger and tougher if Spartacus is in the mob.



Spartacus is like getting all your slaves on steroids. However, we condemn the use of non-virtual steroids.


ASCLEPIUS




Asclepius heals units. He is also Apollo's son, which makes him a demigod. It's always useful to have a healer in the mob. We still have some fine tuning to do, to see how much he will heal, and how close the other units need to be to be healed. As it is now, he is terribly unbalanced, but it's a matter of fiddling a little until it's right.

 

[SebastianGioseffi]

Last week Roque wrote a little bit about heroes in Okhlos. Today I will keep on writing about them. Why? Because heroes are a key part of the game.  Getting the right heroes in your mob can make difference between drinking spiced wine over the ruins of mount Olympus and getting squashed like an insect under Zeus' flip flops.  Not only that, heroes will make each mob different, will make you play in a different way, will let you build up different strategies. Heroes are everything.

There are several ways to get heroes.  As it had been said, some heroes may be found while exploring the levels and other through the hero market. Yet other heroes you will only find after defeating certain enemies: for example, you may be able to free a hero from the clutches of an evil monster and then add them to your mob.

Another things that makes heroes different from the rest of units is that heroes do not die.  They can be knocked out, yes, even the mighty Heracles can be sent out of combat by direct blow from Ares, but unlike regular people Heracles will rejoin the mob when you start the next level or when certain other conditions are met. So heroes are somewhat immortal but can still be temporarily disabled and leave the poor helpless leader alone at the mercy of an enraged cyclops.

There will be lots of heroes, so we divided them into five categories:

1) Super Units.  These heroes are an enhanced version of the regular unit types.  Hero warriors will be much stronger and hit harder than regular warriors, hero defenders will be much tougher, and hero slaves will be much more ... err ... enslaveable? Well no, hero slaves will also be much better as units than their regular counterparts. Heracles, who was presented last week, would be a perfect example of this, as he is the über warrior.

2) Kings. Rulers increase your mob limit. At game start, your mob can't have more than 50 members, without counting animals and heroes. But the kings increase that number.

Take Lycaon for instance. He was king of Arcadia, quite a big shot at his prime. So much that he thought he could fool Zeus. To do that he devised a cunning plan. A cunning and incredibly, ridiculously twisted plan. He invited the lord of Olympus over for dinner and, to test if he was really all-seeing and all-knowing, he chopped off one of his own children and served him as one of the dishes. The god of thunder noticed this and was not very happy (he is a picky eater). He immediately turned Lycaon into a wolf-like creature and killed the rest of Lycaon's children (he had like fifty of them, which may be why he thought that the best way to test someone's omniscience was to serve them one of his kids but still...).

Currently in the game Lycaon increases your mob capacity by 25, which is  a 50% increase from your starting value. He is the king that gives the highest increase in mob capacity so far, but this comes with a high cost: when Lycaon enters the mob, he will immediately kill 25% of your people. So... yeah...

3) Healers. Do you remember Asclepius from last week? Well, he was a healer. He is THE healer, actually. The demi-god of healing and medicine. Nobody does it better. But there were many others that were also versed in the ancient mysteries of medicine, and this category is where they belong. Like Hippocrates.

You may remember Hippocrates from oaths like the Hippocratic Oath that doctors all over the world take and uphold, even up to this day. Not only was he the greatest physician of his time (and you could say he kept on being the greatest physician for centuries, since his teachings were regarded as perfect and for a long time no one even dared to seek further improvements), he was also a badass. He was imprisoned for his then radical views on medicine, and held captive for twenty years (during which time he never backed down and instead spent the time writing medical treaties). He was the Mandela of medicine but bald, and he could heal more units at the same time. So if you have an injury... if no one else can heal you... and if you can find him... maybe you can hire... Hippocrates (cue in theme music).

4) Unit Enhancers. These heroes just make other units, usually of a certain kind, be better at their stuff. So, like a super unit that makes other units neat units. For example:

Leonidas, king of the Spartans. He is remembered for leading the fearless 300 Spartan warriors that almost managed to single-handedly stop the huge invading Persian army at the battle of Thermopylae (and for lots of internet memes after the Zack Snyder movie was released). In Okhlos, Leonidas is a warrior enhancer: he increases the damage output of all the warriors in the mob like, a lot, but at the same time he reduces their defense. All warriors thus become very lethal killing machines under his command, but they may end up having supper in hell after the fight if they are not careful (they will not be).

5) Special Abilities. These heroes are the cream of the crop. The best of the best. The awesomest of the awesome. The ... ok, you get the idea. These heroes each have a unique ability that is what separates them from the rest of the crowd. Not a even a programmer that has learned to code using Pascal can fit them into any category other than this generic random mix of a category that is Special Abilities. One example of a hero that has a unique special ability was Oedipus, with his cloning. Another one is Perseus.

Perseus is a another mythological figure that you may recognize from the movies. He was the main character in Clash of Titans for instance. And he killed poor old Medusa. Perseus was one Zeus' sons (one of his many, many, many offspring) so he had that to his advantage. But he was an illegitimate child so he had... issues... with his father's wife, Hera. Let's say that Hera was not fond of the fruit of her husband's escapades. Among the various wondrous items Perseus got during his adventures and travels (think half the table from the DM handbook!), he had Hades' Cap of Invisibility. His ability in-game comes from this item, because he is able to turn the whole mob invisible to enemies until they attack (it's an artifact, its powers are ill-defined at best).


And this is it for now. There will be more heroes, of course, hundreds! But we have to keep some surprises from you. So we bid adieu to you all until next week, when we will talk about paternity tests in the age of haruspices and meddling lightning gods.

[ephoete]

Is it due to the gif generator or the animations always feel a bit too fast to me?

Despite this, the new direction with the gameplay further to the feedback you've got seems promising. Love the new heroes as well.

[SebastianGioseffi]

Is it due to the gif generator or the animations always feel a bit too fast to me?

You are right, they maybe a little fast (specially on some browsers). We are still relatively new in this gif making business, but we will keep trying to get them working as they should.

Anyway, thanks for the comment!

[SebastianGioseffi]

Here is a new update, written with my good friend and collaborator José Luis, who was too lazy to open an account to I am posting on his behalf. Enjoy!


As the end of the year gets near, you know it's a tradition to start making lists, lots and lots of lists. For some, it's a way to look back into the year that's about to end and see what has been accomplished. For others, it is a way to look back at the things they've missed and swear that next year will be the year. For others, it's another chance to remember the good moments that passed, the joys that the year brought. And for others, it is a way to not having to think in a proper update. Of course, this is not our case.

These are bugs that (while they may have been annoying, difficult, easy or anything in between to fix) brought at least a smile to our faces when we saw them, made us look at the rest of the team and go "Hey! Look over here! This damn thing is broken again!"

So first we start with numero seis.

6. This is thriller, thriller mob

Once we found out that the mob would turn to face the wrong side while moving or not turn at all, as we can see here in an extreme case. At the time we had more pressing issues, so fixing this bug was a bit low in the queue and we ended up having a moonwalking mob with us. And someone would always start whistling Thriller while playtesting. That was the worst part, I think.

5. Oedipus summons an otherworldly horror

The horror! THE HORROR! It seems that time travel, cloning people, being the father of your brothers and sister... these kind of things aren't without consequences for your sanity... and Oedipus knows this very well. At some point, he tried to escape this torment by splicing DNA from the people he cloned to create a vessel for a Great Old One to inhabit so it would wreck havoc on ancient Greece. Or maybe he just created copies of animated sprites that got stuck together at 0,0,0. I still think Oedipus is not to be trusted, but the guys will still use him in the game. Iä! Iä! Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!

4. Oedipus has gone to far...

This is a last minute addition to this list! It happened this morning, and both Sebastian and I agreed that it deserved this spot.  We were working on being able to replay a level with the same mob when we realized that crossing your own time line leads to unfortunate situations like that one. And Oedipus hadn't said anything to us. Yet another reason not to trust him.

3. Apollo uses his Rapid Shot Feat

Ouch, that looks like it hurts. A lot. Poor philosopher. Now imagine you are testing, battling Apollo with your mob. Then you pause it for a moment to check some variables and stuff, to check if everything is behaving as expected. Then you go back to the game to move on to the next critical moment aaaaand... this welcomes you. A bunch of arrows shot rapidly by the god Apollo. It's not fair, is it? Also, notice how they are arrows and not cats? Damn Roque.

2.Perseus goes Garry's Mod all over Delphi. Or just slithers around. One of those.

Many are Perseus' exploits, as we all know, but it seems griffons have a funny effect on him. When brave Perseus was attacked by one of the majestic beasts and later rescued by the rest of the mob, he never recovered from the experience. But he gained the ability to phase through buildings and stuff, so there's that!

1. Hallelujah, it's raining philosophers!

And this is the top of the list! The best one! The philosophers rain! Why the background is dark grey, you ask? Because this happened among a complicated series of things breaking one after the other, including the level not loading and the action phase getting stuck in "spawn player". But seriously, I think this picture speaks by itself. So behold the best bug of the year!

And that's it. There were more bugs, of course, but those were more of the "AAARGH!!!" kind and not memorable at all. I hope this list have made your life 780% percent better (±780).  Enjoy the upcoming holiday, celebrate responsibly and don't aggravate Santa by throwing stones at the reindeer.

[Mr Bismarck]

The problem with Perseus reminds me of

.

However, I love philosopher rain!  If you get enough you can take a Barthes!

I'm very sorry.

[ephoete]

If you get enough you can take a Barthes!

 

[Juan Raigada]

This looks incredible. I will be following!

[roketronz]

A new year started. We can now talk about Okhlos' development in terms of years. Many things happened throughout the first year of development, good and bad. While it usually is a good idea to recap the year we found it too cliche, so we did something else and took the time between last update and this to rest.

The result was this update about a topic I usually hate: logos.


Nowadays, designing a logo seems to be about following a series of strict steps. A lot of logos are very similar to each other.
Looking at a small sample of logos, we can see the following characteristics.

• Letters with gradients.
• Broad strokes to make the title stand out.
• Leters in perspective.
• Metallic.
• Illustrations framing the design
• Constrast between colors (mainly primary colors)
• Vector friendly
• Easy to read (this is not the case)

Some excellent designs came out from following these guidelines. Even Gravity Fleet didn't escape from them (although that doesn't make it a good example). But there have also been lots of logos that are very formulaic.

Many of you know my background. I am an illustrator, not a graphic designer, so I have enough of an aesthetic sense to realize when something is wrong but it would be hard for me to find a way to fix it. So I end up fixing it by trial and error, which is both costly and tiring.

We have a mini-rule for a lot of our deicisions regarding Okhlos: doing the opposite of what we did with Gravity Fleet. Taking that into account, I decided to not priorize readability above everything else and focused on making the logo in a pixel art style that went along with the game's aesthetic, at the same time making it a nice image by itself. I didn't follow guidelines for design, readability, color contrast nor anything like that, simply an image that says "Okhlos" and that the splash suggested the game's context.

I started the most obvious way, by making stone letters.


This is the first draft. Perspective, stones with some cracks and the design inside the letters that have a little Greek touch. The romboid-shaped "O" were something that I ended up taking from my research on different fonts.



These are some of the fonts that I researched. From this list I took various characteristics that suggested Greece.

Found the characteristics, I started scribbling different ideas about a more polished logo. With ornaments, styles and other embellishments.


The problem with these approaches was that the letters , although they were made out of stone, didn't have much weight. Somethign was missing.

I decided to made the letters in 3D, change the font and play around with the camera to make it look like something stupidly huge seen from ground level.

This brought me to this next version, which let me start the pixelation and gave me a clearer vision of what I was working to acomplish.


To make the 3D I ran into a series of problems. Mi idea was to take my strokes from Illustrator to Max and work them there. They were horrible hours of trial and error, checking what could be imported into Max, because almost everything that I exported from Illustrator was rejected by Max. Finally I found a way to save an .ai as a Legacy (Version 8 ) and that solved my problems using Max to extrude the shapes from Illustrator. After that, it was all camera effects.


This is how it looked on Max. The image above shows the first part of the work where I start drawing over the letters, separate them and correct some imperfection, etc.

Once I have this as a base, I started pixelating this but at double the resolution I should, making me waste some hours. Finally, I ended up with the 3 options that I show next. Although none of them are finale, they are close to what we believe could be a good logo/splash for Okhlos, always taking into account the idea that we want it to work more as an image than as a logo.

I got inspired a bit on Norman Rockwell for the one with the red background, but both Sebastián and Cristian (Panchín, a designer friend that was giving me some tips about the logos) insisted that it suggested Japan way too much. I think it's one of my favorites, from a completely aesthetic point of view.



This one, after a lot of failed tries that I haven't posted (from all the stages of design, there are a lot that I think should not be seen by humankind), is the one that had that illustration component that I was looking for. I cleaned up the rocks quite a bit, take off the lines (that in this case makes it more readable) and added a few city things in the background.

Although I think that unfortunately we can't close the chapter on logos, we are closer to what we are looking for.

Any feedback is welcome! And yes, the name from the update it's inspired by

song.

[roketronz]

This looks incredible. I will be following!

Thanks a lot!

The problem with Perseus reminds me of

.

However, I love philosopher rain!  If you get enough you can take a Barthes!

I'm very sorry.

Sorry for taking time with the replies, we've been kinda disconnected

[eigenbom]

I love the concept of this game, and the art looks great. Good luck with development!