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[spinaljack]

Would anyone be interested in a sneak peek at the greenlight page?

[spinaljack]

I met the people from http://www.specialeffect.org.uk/ when I stopped by their stall at EGX Rezzed, accessibility has always been important to us in terms of game design so I was intrigued by their eye tracking car game made by Codemasters, SOAP. I was also impressed by their charity work with disabled gamers and asked if there was anything we could do to help.

We had a chat just now and it dawned on me that you could play Kaiju Panic entirely with the mouse if you wanted. With a few small changes to include linger and blink controls we could allow a whole new group of gamers play our game. This would likely be an optional control scheme in the full release or a modified version specifically for eye tracking. Most eye tracking hardware can control mouse movement so you wouldn't need any specific device or you could even use a mouse if you felt it made the game easier to control.

If there are any other accessibility concerns or suggestions please feel free to contact me about them!

[spinaljack]

If anyone's interested in how we storyboard animated sequences here's an example from our trailer animation:







EDIT: oops too big

Here's an early stage video:




Do note that sounds and images are placeholder. It's meant as a test for pacing.
We might change locations in the video as the story isn't really set in stone either.

[Rat Casket]

Holy shit thats a big thing.

[spinaljack]

Another interview has gone up:

http://www.nerfed.co.uk/kaiju-panic-video-interview-rezzed-2014/7542

and a review:

http://leviathyn.com/previews/2014/04/17/kaiju-panic-preview-egx-rezzed-2014/

[MAVW]

Wow, really interesting to see the progression of the game (I mean the PR as well). Just read the thread and I think you guys got it going. Keep up the good work, love the simples style and specially the smooth animations that's an important thing sometimes underrated in games, animations. Just always keep an eye open to not end up falling as a "Revenge of the titans" alike.

[spinaljack]

Wow, really interesting to see the progression of the game (I mean the PR as well). Just read the thread and I think you guys got it going. Keep up the good work, love the simples style and specially the smooth animations that's an important thing sometimes underrated in games, animations. Just always keep an eye open to not end up falling as a "Revenge of the titans" alike.

Thanks, the game has moved away from RotT more since dev vid 1, it's now more like an action game with direct control of a hero character. We plan on having different types of levels as well, some having puzzle elements or epic boss fights.

I'll get some new screen/vids up as we make more progress.

[spinaljack]

It's been a while since the last post but I've brought some gifs!

[spinaljack]

So I thought I'd talk about some of the development work on Kaiju Panic.
One of the things that allow us to develop maps quickly is our tile based system.
Not only does it allow us to pack textures more efficiently but it also allows us to swap pallets for different biomes, give each tile a different physical property, quickly paint blocks using the editor tool, generate new maps at runtime and also makes path finding simpler.

I'm going to talk about that last thing a bit.

For a tower defence style game with 100s of units all moving towards a common goal(s) it would be less efficient to use something like basic A-Star pathfinding unless you group units or share pathing data. Instead we went for a Dijkstra style graph search system. This means that path generation only happens once and all the units then check the next tile they need to move to using this path map. Whenever the map changes significantly the whole graph does need to be updated however.

We also use a separate graph for each monster behaviour type. Do they prefer roads or just pick the most direct route? Do they go for the HQ or do they hunt down your harvesters? Will they try to avoid your turrets? As the game progresses we'll introduce new monster types each with their own behaviour.

At the moment the system takes a few seconds to calculate a graph on a medium sized map which does cause a bit of lag between when the monsters will react to a change. The path generation is put on a separate thread which means there's no frame rate drop on the main thread but it's still not ideal. I might have to experiment with faster path generation.

[and]

This looks like it's come on loads since Rezzed! Keep it up!

[spinaljack]

This looks like it's come on loads since Rezzed! Keep it up!

Thanks! We intend to launch the steam Greenlight next week and send out alpha builds to the pre-order customers. After that I hope to keep a regular alpha update schedule like Prison Architect does.

I'm counting on people spreading the word about Greenlight

[_metamythical]

This game looks really great! I'm a fan already! Cheers 

[spinaljack]

Thanks for the comments,  they are very encouraging

Today I'm going to talk about business.

EuroGamer Rezzed was a huge success for us, it was the first expo we attended as exhibitors and it also generated a lot of good feedback and reviews. We didn't manage to cover all the costs with pre-orders though so we really have to think twice about attending future expos with an alpha version game. (The cost was close to £1000 for entry + travel, insurance, hotel and other marketing materials)

We do wish to attend more expos as it's a lot more easy to get noticed there than relying on the internet alone. The next one for us would be EGX London, Play Expo in Manchester and Tokyo Game Show in Japan. "Japan? That's crazy!" you might think but Sony are footing the bill for indie game devs this year so it's actually not a bad idea provided we get selected. We can also apply for match funding from the Liverpool Chamber of Commerce and UKTI for international trade.

Those expos are in September and October so the game should be finished or nearly finished by then which will hopefully mean we can better gauge interest and make a firm judgement on how much we should be spending on marketing. Opinions vary based on who you're asking and it's a difficult thing to measure but hopefully we'll make our money back.

[spinaljack]

Here's some things we're thinking about adding:

WSAD to move character - This seems like a good option but we don't want to remove the current click to walk controls so we'll keep both
Gamepad support - For you sofa warriors, we'd have to include a build wheel for construction options as well
Better tutorial - If anything we learnt from watching people play the game is we need better instructions
Sandbox mode - For replayability/leaderboards etc.
New game+ - These are coming back into fashion and it's always fun to replay the early levels with all unlocks
Voice acting - If we manage to get a budget for this, some people just don't like to read
More animations - Current story bits are static comics style frames, might add a bit of motion to the frames at least for polish
Monster bestiary - Adds a bit of flavour text to the monsters, also tactics tips
Easter eggs - shh, it's a secret
More NPCs - There's still the option to have your face in the game if you want to support us
Achievements - Possibly also granting a passive boost so you get something other than an icon pop up
Multiplayer? - Probably not but it's an idea..

[spinaljack]

Added 3 more biomes to the game (snowy, desert, and er.. eastern looking).
We'll release a new trailer/dev video to show them off soon.

[spinaljack]

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=245264358

Steam page is live now. Please vote

[spinaljack]

Have a look at our new trailer





Then vote on our steam page

[spinaljack]

Totally mesmerized by the Steam stats page and analytics.
We reached 11% and the first day isn't even over yet!
Most of the visitors are from UK and US but there's also a large number of Japanese and other language speakers.

Someone needs to pry my finger off the refresh button so I can get on with other stuff lol

[Connor]

PRY THOSE DAMN FINGERS


the trailer is really well done, i actually got the gist of the game just by watching the first 10-20 seconds. thats always a good sign.
i noticed you used a few grammatical errors in your dialog. not gonna be a grammar nazi, dont worry
i would really like this with multiplayer, it looks like it would be a ton of fun if me and my kid sister could play this together. hey, it might even get her off minecraft :OOOOOO

keep up the good work!
-connor

[spinaljack]

Oops, I need to update those screenshots.

I'm glad someone compared the game to minecraft XD

Multiplayer is on the list but quite far down sadly.