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[Gwinnell]

Hello, hello and hello Tigsource! This week we were thinking of just releasing a small bugfix update with no new features, but that wouldn't be very fun would it? So here we are, we're releasing the game's first sort-of enemy Nana Ricketts into The Wonky Wagon!



She brings the pain and kicks a lot of butts!


Keeping the post fairly small this week. Give the update a try (if you've pre-ordered) and let us know what you think here on TIGS, or on Twitter or Facebook!

- Ashley

Full changelog:

20th October - 31st October

New Features:

• Nana Ricketts arrives at The Wonky Wagon!
• Heads are now randomised in the Character Select screen.

Bug Fixes:

• Old Man Ricketts "magic tooth" animation bug fixed.
• Players are no longer sometimes put on the wrong rugs in Standoff mode.
• Avatar box names stopped working and now they work again. (Thanks Stumpt for the bug report!)
  
• Bullets no longer get stuck in walls at 200% (we hope).
• Player gibs no longer spawn outside of the walls (again, we hope)!
• Player shadows now render on-top of fallen paintings in Timmy's Bedroom.
• Fixed bug where character heads didn't respawn in character select if they weren't in the right place (e.g. Chud wouldn't respawn if he was in slot 2).
• End round stars/score display now shows the correct score in the event of a draw.

Art:

• Nana Ricketts - door silhouette
• Nana Ricketts - fallen back on the floor.
• Nana Ricketts - floor lighting
• Nana Ricketts - dual pistols at different angles.
• Nana Ricketts - intro overlay.
• Updated Old Man Rickett's avatar face for about 4 different places. His face is skinnier now, don't you know?  

Animation:

• Nana Ricketts - entrance animation.
• Nana Ricketts - shoot, kill and exit animations.

Audio:

• Voice recording session for Nana Ricketts. Check out this Vine.
  
• Nana Ricketts entrance sound.
• Nana Ricketts death sound.

Code:

• Added "expo mode" checkbox to debug menu. No interaction within two minutes quits to splash screen.
• Added "watched variables" to debug menu. This is super useful.
• Refactored build system for Windows & Mac.
• Downloaded FMOD & FMOD Studio libraries for Windows and Mac and integrated them into the project.
• Started implementing FMOD "sound banks".
• Character Select screen now cannot go "back" unless everyone has their head off.
• Character Select screen now cannot go "forward" if someone has a head on but is not on a rug.
• Started new modifier menu controls from last week (no visuals).
• Nana Ricketts - gun aiming / arms ellipse.
• Nana Ricketts - guns flashing when she shoots.
• Nana Ricketts - shell casings fly out on both sides.
• Nana Ricketts - animations implemented.
• Nana Ricketts - spawn behaviour (global timer, only with certain modes/modifiers).
• Nana Ricketts - only spawns once per game if she dies.

Misc:

• Investigated FMOD licenses and hurray we got one!
  
• Emailed Jerry at Choosatron R.E. a multiplayer mixer.
  
• Emailed Stumpt a message of admiration, gratitude, other things. They so cool.
• Exhibited at the Bath Digital Festival launch event.
  
• Exhibited at GameCity for a few hours. Check out the Force Of Habit blog for write-ups on the things we saw.
  
• Renewed timmybibble.com domain name!
  

[Gwinnell]

Team selection implemented and very likely coming in the next release!

Blank characters pick up character heads and stand on rugs to begin the game. If two players stand on the same rug then they become a team! Trying to do things a bit differently to the usual "hit left and right on the analog stick"!

1.

2.

3.

[Gwinnell]

Team play is here and it's going to knock your socks off! Get your friends together and go 2 vs 2, 3 vs 1, or even 2 vs 1 vs 1. We've had a fierce Force Of Habit versus Clockwork Cuckoo showdown here in the studio. (Can you guess who won most often?) How will your own rivalries play out?


A GIF to celebrate the new team play features, by Tom.

We've implemented lots of things behind the scenes like a first pass of the advanced modifiers screen. We're able to toggle things like Friendly Fire and change Ammo and save custom game modes on the fly. (We've had to temporarily remove Bully mode for this release). We'll be letting you have access to this very soon! We're excited.

Here are some behind-the-scenes pictures of things in the pipeline:


Pillars for a new arena in the works.


Doodles during downtime?


Nick and Sophie testing out headsets.


We think this works now...

As always, let us know what you think of the new features, and shout if you see any bugs. Follow us on Twitter, Game Jolt and Facebook, and if you want us to bleed into your reality a little bit more then we have individual Twitter accounts too. ...and of course you can sub to this thread here on TIGS too!

Most importantly though, have fun!

- Ashley


Full changelog:

3rd November - 14th November

New Features:

• TEAM PLAY! Get your 2v2 and 3v1 and 2v1v1 on.
     Simply stand on the same rug on the Character Select screen!

Bug Fixes:

• You can now recharge bullets again in Trick Shot mode.

Code:

• Implemented 3 player teams. (e.g. 3 vs 1).
• Integrated team play features into the Character Select screen.
• Implemented first pass of advanced modifiers screen.
• Added (currently hidden) Friendly Fire modifier.
• Updated the summary screen to show "team name" of the winners (if playing a team game, of course).

Art & Animation:

• Base hat graphics for team play features. It'll look a bit more like THIS when it's finished.
• Started on the Crypt tileset.
• Researched particle system editing tools.
• Created some flamin' hot fire animations for the Crypt.

Design:

• Upfront design work for the Crypt arena.
• Types of level layouts concepted and planned (using Tiled).
• Figured out gameplay dynamics and arena objects.
• Figured out a cool & illustrative lighting style.

Misc:

• Nick tidied up the cupboard.
• Ashley moved into the other room for a short while.
• Set up and installed local network drive that syncs to the cloud so we can work seemlessly without the internet (at least we hope).
• Printed and stuck up mood boards on the walls for the Crypt arena.
• Cross-posted previous blog post all over the interwebs.
• Posted to Vine about Friendly Fire modifier.
• Set up a system for recording four player gameplay of the game with each playing on their own mic.
  

[Gwinnell]

Turbo Bullets & Finger Of God!

We've added a new game mode called TURBO BULLETS. These fancy new bullets are bullets that get BIGGER and FASTER when they are caught and refired. They're harder to catch, but the reward outweighs the risk... it looks and feels AWESOME when one of these knocks your opponent's head off.


Turbo Bullets in action!

We've also implemented a 'catch the leader' modifier, prospectively called FINGER OF GOD. The first player to die gets to become the finger of Timmy (or is it Timmy, who knows?), which has the ability to squish the other players still in the play space. The finger can never win the round, but it can affect the outcome.


Playing with the Finger Of God in the Spine editor.


Can you guess what these icons are for?


A bullet passes by really close...


A bullet passes by really close...


Start of a game, or maybe a respawn?


Full Changelog:

17th November - 28th November

New Features:

• Turbo Bullets mode.
• Finger Of God!

Bug Fixes:

• Fixed bug where Nana Ricketts killing characters could crash the game.

Code:

• Relaxed Play modifier.
• Timelord modifier.
• Square wave / turn based play modifier.
• Added statistics _behind the scenes_ in the game code.
• Modified character select UI/UX a bit so you can back out of it by pressing B.
• Added "bullets always bounce on walls" modifier. (It's not so fun so may take it out)!
• Working on new general menu screen.
• Added icons to the Advanced Modifiers screen.
• Implemented a whole bunch of animations, below:

Art:

• Finger Of God in various colours.
• Crypt lava pits.
• Crypt floor tiles.
• A tonne of icons for the Advanced Modifiers screen.

Animation:

• Near Miss Bullet (front) character animation.
• Near Miss Bullet (back) character animation.
• Falling into pits character animation.
• Respawn character animation.
• "Ready" character animation for character select.
• "Ready (double deffos)" character animation for character select.
• "Ready (double deffos, bam bam bam)" character animation for character select.
• Finger Of God idle animation. It's wobbly!
• Finger Of God squish animation, using Inverse Kinematics.
• Rug rollup animation for Timmy's Bedroom is now done in Spine (instead of AfterEffects).

Audio:

• Sampled and indexed a bunch of old records. We're up to like 600 samples now.

[The Translocator]

Really like those animations.  

[EdFarage]

Really am surprised to see how little attention this wonderful game has received on the site. Keep on going and I'm sure the attention you deserve will come your way!
The graphics are a deep breath of fresh air in an ocean of pixel art. Vector art woooo
(Saw the game originally on Gamejolt). Was wondering how much that cost for that Gamejolt banner? (Feel free to answer that in private!). I read that you were up in Sheffield for games Britainnia! You a local or just visiting?

Good luck folks!

Well theres your reason why it hasn't had much attention here.
Needless to say this game is amazing, the theme is really well worked and it seems very fun to play!
Im wondering if its only local multiplayer though, can i play this online?

[Gwinnell]

Really like those animations.  

Thanks!

Well theres your reason why it hasn't had much attention here.
Needless to say this game is amazing, the theme is really well worked and it seems very fun to play!
Im wondering if its only local multiplayer though, can i play this online?

It's local/single-screen multiplayer only at the moment. We're considering AI players/bots, but LAN/online is very unlikely.

[Gwinnell]

HELLO, just a mini post about Inverse Kinematics (IK) and it’s use in the Finger of God death modifier, included in the most recent release of Friendship Club.

“WHAT IS IK!?”, I hear you scream into the abyss? WELL, say you’ve got your hand on a table, then twist your upper body one way or another whilst keeping your hand on the table, in animation terms that movement would be an example of inverse kinematics. Your hand is anchored to the table, and won’t just slide off the table matching the rotation of your upper body. There are far more technical and detailed explanations of IK out there on the internet, but this is a shortish post so, I’ll direct you to this.


Squidgy!

As previously mentioned, we’re using Spine in Friendship Club for character, environment and effect animations. The characters have a basic rig, but one that doesn’t use IK, as it wasn’t available in Spine when we first moved all the animations over to it. I’m intending to retrofit their legs with IK in the near future, but the rest of their bodies don’t need it. This is due to the types of positions and movements they make during the game - it adds a lot of cartoony personality to the character animations when you’re able to ‘break’ their skeletons easily for extreme movements or poses!


...like this one.


Bones and IK nodes.

The Finger of God uses IK so it looks like it’s squishing things properly. You can see the finger tip hit the ‘floor’ and bend back, along with the second knuckle of the finger. We wanted it to be really over the top, squashing and stretching as needed, and looking really forceful as it descends towards a character. There aren’t that many bones in the finger - only enough to bend the index finger and deform the wrist.

The rest of the animation is created by the weighting of various points in the mesh of the hand. What I mean by that is that for the hand to deform at all, it needs to be transformed into a mesh made of points that can move and warp in the Spine editor. In the first image (captioned "squidgy"), you can see the image distort as it is turned upside down; parts of the PNG image of the hand are linked to these points and move the image with them as they are moved. The weighting is the influence the bones have over these points. You can assign different bones different percentages of influence over points near, or far away from them. This is how you can add quite a bit of movement to the different parts of the hand, with very few bones - like the 4 curled fingers bending slightly as the hand moves.

The other bonus to IK is that to achieve all the movement in that hand - the wrist twisting, the finger pointing, the bending and squishing at right angles - all of that was achieved with one control node. Just one. All that movement and juicy squishiness, from one node. It’s great!

This hasn’t been an in-depth view into IK, or perhaps even a particularly useful one… but I hope someone here finds it interesting!

- Tom

Let me know what you think here on TIGSource, or on Twitter or Facebook.

[8-Bit Ape]

Wowser, this game looks awesome! Also, top job with the detail you go into, you put my dev log to shame! As others have said, great style and animations. I think it would be a great idea to get some AI / Bots in as not everybody has awesome friends who are into single screen multi-player games.

Keep up the awesome work.

[Gwinnell]

Wowser, this game looks awesome! Also, top job with the detail you go into, you put my dev log to shame! As others have said, great style and animations. I think it would be a great idea to get some AI / Bots in as not everybody has awesome friends who are into single screen multi-player games.

Keep up the awesome work.

Hey, thanks! Some feedback on the TIGS IRC was to reduce the word length of posts, and show more images, so glad to hear you appreciate it. Will try to work in some AI / bots soon, but it's proving to be quite tricky! Revamping a lot of the menus at the moment to get the game ready for the Steam Early Access release early next year some time.

[Gwinnell]

Keeping your house clean.

This post is about the production of the game, and how we organise things. Not to everybody's tastes!

Spring cleanin'

In a previous post I mentioned that we spent a few weeks of reasonably intense prototyping to try to help us get a handle on what we want Friendship Club to be. Up until that point the game design was still a little under debate and we were unsure where to put the design emphasis. It was largely a question of how much from the basic game experience did we want to deviate and how did we want to present those options. Since playtesting a bunch of variations of the mechanics we've got a much better understanding on what we want the core of the game to be and how we want to structure the additional modes and gameplay elements to complement it. Production up until this point has largely been us throwing things into a big cooking pot, and we are now in the act of reducing it down.

That's a funny shaped pot!

In the week following Friendship Clubs inception at the game jam in November 2013 I made a Trello board for us to store ideas for its future development. At that point we weren't sure if any further work would ever get to happen on it, but I wanted to be sure to capture any thoughts we might have whilst our minds were still on the game. Roll forward a year and it'd become a bit of a monster with somewhere in the region of one hundred tickets, ranging from character and world ideas, through to sound effects, silly voices, anything and everything. It's worth noting that this isn't the production board, we have a separate physical board for that which I'll get to later*.


After a cloud service changed its pricing plan we decided to go back to doing concept boards the proper way.

This past week I've spent a bit of time going through all of our tickets and assigning them various labels pertaining to their status. Anything which hasn't made the cut gets archived. This might include things that we tried and didn't like or old ideas that are no longer relevant for whatever reason.

The labels are as follow:

• RELEASE: Early Access / v1.0 / v1.1+
• STATUS: Greenlit / Potentially Greenlit / Needs Further Discussion
• MISC: Needs Prototyping

The definitions here should be reasonably obvious. It's worth noting that the Needs Prototyping can apply to ideas that are both in the process of being greenlit or dropped, as well greenlit ideas that still need either art or gameplay prototyping done on them to prevent waste. An example would be something like a game mode that requires specific art assets - there's no point us spending time on those assets until we've tried it with placeholder art.


What, what?!

The keen-eyed amongst you will notice the v1.0 and v1.1+ labels suggesting there might be additional features released post launch. Indeed this is the case, taking the form of free DLC. We have *so* much we want to put into this game, but we don't have the cashflow or reserves to make some of it a reality at the moment. Apart from a paltry art grant we are entirely self-funded. This also drives our "Pay for Current State" approach to pricing. We can't predict the future and we've seen quite a few high profile failures on Early Access (cough cough) lately and we're not in the business of cheating or ripping people off. This has been our approach ever since we first starting selling the game direct. Buying it now will get you all future updates for free and if we can make the game the success we want it to be then it will help fund more development, with early adopters getting themselves something of a bargain. We'd rather things that way 'round than the reverse, where early adopters are getting screwed with broken builds for months and then kindly informed "That's it, that's all you're getting."


Some of the completed tickets from Friendship Club.

Touchy Feely Sticky

We still maintain a physical project board, split into columns for art/code/audio/QA. Populated with coloured post-its, this is where we do the day to day ticket writing, breaking down the Trello tickets with all their comments and ranting, into single tasks. It's worth noting that originally we were using Trello for this as well, just as we did with Toast Time, but with four of us on the project and in a single building it made sense to have somewhere we could gather 'round and chat. Using a big TV is obviously an option for digital boards, but we didn't have one at the beginning of the project.


There's no way a caption could make this photo any more exciting than it already is...

Tactical Map

With features now organised into milestones we could go about doing some time estimates and plotting out the plan of attack. To this end I decided to leave behind the digital calendar's we've used in the past and get ourselves a cheap, crappy year planner, the type you'd see sprawled and oil stained across a car mechanics desk. The reason for doing this was it gives a much better overview than most digital calendars (as far as I've found) with a true overhead view of the whole year in a manner that we can all gather around and discuss. With the planner pinned to a board we went about covering it with stickers (yay!). Green for expos/shows. Yellow for minor releases (every two weeks). Orange for major releases. Pink for MAJOR major releases. As soon as we'd actually plotted out a selection of the major shows, it gave us a much greater idea of how we wanted to plan our approach to release and marketing, and where we could set-aside time for code freezes, QA, trailers and so forth.

Whether we manage to stick to this all is another question, but it's a strong start and and in the ultra-ultra competitive world of games development it's important to give yourself every chance you can, no matter how slim. It is a question of survival. There's a famous saying "The more I practice, the luckier I get". I think the same could be said for planning. At least I hope...

- Nick

* USEFUL TIP: Force Of Habit have always kept a Trello board dedicated to all our game related ideas. This is organised into lists for mechanics, themes, characters, games and so forth. We can then dip into this whenever we like for inspiration regardless of what we're working on. I recommend it - notes are only as useful as your ability to retrieve the information in them. Also, this non-linear arrangement means that you can sometimes make unexpected connections. I might write a blog post on this in future...

[Gwinnell]

Release #13. Assassins & Team Hats

What's up, TIGSource friends? This week we have some exciting new features for you to play with. Well, if you've purchased alpha-access to the game that is. The first of which is a brand new mode called ASSASSINS.

In Assassins mode, points are awarded for each opponent eliminated, and points are deducted for suicides and team-kills. In regular games, this emphasises aggressive, destructive, quick-fire play - everybody wants to rush for the kills for maximum points. In team games - especially 3 vs 1 games - this emphasises pacing, accuracy and control. If you shoot your team-mates accidentally, you'll lose points, so be very careful.

The second new feature is a visual one. In the initial release of Team Play, it was somewhat vague which teams you were on. You had to either memorise it, or look at the avatars in the corners of the screen, detracting from the game. Now - as illustrated super early on in the design - we've put hats on top of the characters in the game. Yeah, that's right, The Canardinal wears the team hat _over the top_ of the galero.


A new taunt. Hit right on the d-pad during a game.


Falling into a pit of sorts. This will be used later on!


A super rough new menu previs.

There are other new things in this release, but they're mostly things you're not able to see yet. Well, unless you hit the "E" key on various screens in the game. Secrets lie therein.

Let us know what you think of the new content on Twitter, Facebook or here on TIGSource. Stay friendly!

- Ashley

Full Changelog:

1st December - 12th December

New Features:

• Assassins mode!
• Team hats are now on the characters in-game. Just like this.

Known Bug/s:

• Sometimes the scoreboard processes in the wrong order in Assassins mode. Lucky it's just a visual glitch!

Bug Fixes:

• Fixed bug where Finger Of God could not kill Nana Ricketts.

• Fixed bug where Finger Of God spawned twice when a player was killed by a dash/headbutt.

• Fixed bug where Finger Of God spawned when a round was over. e.g. in a 2 v 1 team game when the 1 player died.

• Fixed bug where loading appeared to never get past 92%.

• Fixed bug where incorrect score showed in the avatars during Deathmatch games.

• Fixed bug where killing oneself or a team mate counts as a kill in Deathmatch games.

• Fixed bug where respawn animation finished early because of player movement in Deathmatch games.

• Fixed bug where team hats did not reset on respawn in Deathmatch.

• Fixed bug where first frame of animation showed (or appeared to show) on a player's respawn in Deathmatch games.

• Fixed art bug where Wonky Wagon corner tiles were ever-so-slightly off-coloured.

• Fixed bug where Canardinal's hat changes (wrongly to a viking) on the Character Select screen.    

Code:

• Added visual swing to the Finger Of God.

• Refactored God & Accelerating bullets into Turbo Bullets properly.

• Implemented basic end-game/summary stats screen with kills/deaths on.

• Implemented "near miss front" and "near miss back" animations.

• Created Arena Select state/class for future menu stuffs. Tied in summary/character-select state so they all go back to the correct (new) menu screens.

• Created "Wobble" class. This is used on the advanced modifiers screen and on a whole bunch of new menus.

• Adjusted "drag" to the Finger Of God rendering.

• Added delay between death and respawn in Deathmatch.

• Implemented "corners" rug positioning modifier.

• Refactoried end-round scoreboard updating/rendering out of the in-game state and into it's own class.

• Refactored score variable from the Player class into the InGameState - Scoreboard class. This reduces confusion between Player score variables and Team score variables. (They're essentially the same, now).

• Implemented "Assassins" score system to go alongside Last Man Standing. Explanation above.

• Implemented "floorboard cracks" for the Finger Of God.

• Added "everybody alive wins" timer action / score mode.

• Created "Nudge" class. This will be used on the new menus for extra juiciness!

Art:

• Crypt furniture: Coffins, ghosts...

• Turbo Bullet icon.

• Finger of God floor cracks and gibs.

• Dream machine for mode select almost finalised.

• Items/objects for world select sketched.

Animation:

• Falling into Crypt pits animations (forward & backward).

• Attempted "spinning room" start screen.

• Created and exported the new menu pre-vis.

• Started creating a respawn effect in Spine.

Misc:
   

• Blog post about our Cornwall holiday published and cross-posted to Game Jolt Indie DB.

• Blog post about Inverse Kinematics, written, published and cross-posted.

• Blog post about the creative production of Friendship Club, written, published and cross-posted.

• Discussed Early Access release plan/marketing and sorted out 2015 year planner.

• Added Creative England text to website / marketing materials.

• Prepared full accounts for Creative England meeting.

• Feature list for Creative England r.e. 2015 release plan.

• Timesheets for predicting 2015 release date.

• Neon Caves port evening work.

• "Cognitive space" of menus written up.

• Put up Christmas decorations in the studio.

[Gwinnell]

Basic Character Design Rules

Because Friendship Club was originally conceived at a 24 hour game jam, the time restrictions forced me to come up some super quick character designs. All of the imaginary friends are based off the same design principles.

1. Simple shapes!

The general design of each character is quite basic. They're all made up of simple shapes. This was partly down to the time limit of the jam, but I was still trying to get a group of characters with really defined, obvious features; that a small boy might actually imagine and draw. It also makes for quite strong character silhouettes, which is always a good thing.



2. Identical bodies and guns

All the characters have identical bodies and guns. Again; this was mostly down to jam time limitations; but fortunately it also seems to make the individual heads stand out more and strengthen their personalities whilst still making them appear 'equal'.



3. Unique character colours

Each character has an individual defining colour to set them apart from each other. The obvious choice, (which is the same for pretty much all local multiplayer games) is to go for the primary colours (plus green) for maximum contrast between players. I wanted to do something a tiny bit different, so it's a slight variation on these; hot pink, lime green, orangey yellow and aqua. The colours needed to be really bright and saturated to stand out against the dark background.

I also wanted them to be a bit strange, unrealistic and different; because it's the imagination of a child. Green ducks are totally legit.



The unique character colour (I'm going to call it a UCC 'cause I talk about it a lot.) is present on the torso (or top!?) of each character, their gun, and on a defining feature of their head. For Chud, it's the horns and nose; for Shakey Jake it's the bandana/mask thing. For Old Man Ricketts, it's the decoration on his hat, and for the Canardinal it's the whole hat.

The UCC also extends to each character's bullets. It seems obvious, but it really ties the player to the action; which is really important in a game like this. You want to know exactly who's shot who (or if you've shot yourself!) - it's part of the fun.

4. Limited palette

This is probably more down to personal preference, but each character's colour palette is limited to 5 colours (in their neutral expressions.) and are based off their UCC. I guess this is just 'cause I like heavy stylisation and limited palettes; but it makes each character's unique colour all the more prominent, which really helps with player identification in game.

Even though a lot of these intial design decisions were made in that initial 24 hour period (and we've had plenty of time to change things up!) the characters have stayed mostly the same; they work so well with the gameplay.

It's a very fast paced game with a lot going on, so keeping things simple - at least graphically speaking - just seems to make sense. We need all the important elements to stand out from the backgrounds and not be confused with each other, and the designs (so far) seem to tick all the boxes.

5. Fan Art / Community Engagement

When people play the game, they seem to develop favourite characters almost instantly, which can only be a good sign. (This is partly down to Nick's audio skills and Tom's glorious voicebox for bringing them to life!)

An added bonus of having these super simplified character designs - which appeals particularly to me - is the potential for other people to draw your characters! (See the step by step guide below on how to draw a Chud!)

They're pretty flippin' easy to draw, and people can add detail and put their own spin on them. I find this pretty exciting and inspirational, especially when I imagine seeing them in a completely different art style to my own.

Here's Ashley's take on the gang; pixel style. So cool.



Also, some proof that anyone can draw these characters and have them still be totally recognisable!



I'll go into some more detail about character design in another post; but hopefully this little slice is interesting to someone out there. We've all become quite fond of these stupid characters, and I hope that other people like them too. If you have a spare moment, try doodling a Chud (or any of the others!) and send the result our way on Twitter or Facebook. We'd love to see how you'd draw them!

- Sophie

[oodavid]

This looks incrediballs, following

[Gwinnell]

Merry Christmas everyone!

[Gwinnell]

Happy New Year! It's the first release of 2015 and we've got some tasty treats for you today. Tasty treats in the form of pies... because we've added Game Statistics!.


A quick shot of the table layout. Pie served up warm!

As you can see, so far we are recording kills, deaths, bullets caught and bullets that nearly hit. We'll be adding lots more stats as time progresses; things like number of taunts (hit the d-pad), suicides, furniture destroyed, finger of god kills, bullets fired, and more (that we haven't thought of yet)!

There are a few remaining bugs with this screen, such as only the Winning Player being able to cycle through stats, but these will be fixed in the next release. No doubt!

Aside from that, we're still working hard on all of the new menu screens; cool & illustrative art, slick transitions, ambient audio effects, and lots of other jazz. Hopefully this will be ready soon so we can get back to working on the game content. Brace yourselves, it's going to be awesome.

Let us know what you think!


Full Changelog:

5th January - 16th January

New Features:

• Stats screen!

Known Bug/s:

• Stats screen can only be controlled by the winning player.!

Code:

• Finger Of God now spawns 1 second after a player dies. This is to prevent instant return-blows when somebody dies from a headbutt.
• Finger Of God now has giblets that spawn when it hits the floor.
• Added a little bit of Wobble to the corner / avatar boxes.
• Curtains transition implemented.
• Implemented first pass of intro state, mode select state, arena select state and the transitions between them.
• Implemented game stats screen.
• - Stencilling / masking to make the pie display properly. It has a strange perspective.
• - Recolour avatars when players exit the stats screen.
• - Implemented near miss statistic.
• - Added new fonts to the game.

Art:

• Stats screen for Timmy's Bedroom / House.
• Stats screen for The Wonky Wagon.
• Created some custom fonts! Cool as heck.

Animation:

• Curtains opening & closing animation.
• Started animating the 3 "dream machines".
• - Turning handle on one, bubbles bubbling on another, numbers flipping on another.
• Previs for Intro state, mode select state, arena select state.
• Previs for Stats state.

Audio:

• Nick worked to Tom's previs visuals.
• Pitched up monkeys to make them sound like curtain pulls...

[Gwinnell]

Konnichiwa autoduck! Friendship Club has received another update today. It features some new animations for standoff / quick draw mode, some bug fixes, and a whole bunch of other stuff that's currently under-the-hood. We're sad that we can't show it to you right now, but you understand right? Maybe next time...

Here are some GIFs of the new animations.


Quickdraw countdown #1 - Timmy's Bedroom.


Round Start!


Quickdraw countdown #2 - The Wonky Wagon.


A slight update to the Stats screen. Coming soon!

Let us know what you think! Here, Twitter, Facebook or wherever. Stay friendly!

Full Changelog:

19th January - 30th January

Art:

• Icons on dream machines: speedometer, stars on round counter.
• Start screen illustration stuff.
• Added a % (percent) symbol to our custom fonts.
• Branding things for a certain unannounced expo stand.
• New logo work, bits and pieces.
• Improved stats screen with more pies and floaty pies.

Animation:

• New standoff countdown animations.
• New round start / "GO!" text.
• Animated a small square to test XML Gibson export.

Code:

• Added masking and sliding to round select machine.
• Added sliding and particles to speed select machine.
• Reversed display order of speeds on speed select machine. (Fastest is now at the top.)
• Added rotation to arena select pieces.
• Fixed bug in new arena select state where there was no controller input cooldown.
• Attempted to implement xml files exported from AfterEffects using XML Gibson. No success so far...
• All sfx now play through the FMOD Sound Engine.
• Added new easing function so ease can be calculated from start and end value and not start and change value.
• Fixed bug in stats screen where 2nd/3rd/4th players could not control navigation.

Audio:

• First sound event in FMOD Studio.
• Set up project directories & workflow.
• Attached a door handle on the inside of the vocal booth cupboard thing that we have.
• Character select events combined and implemented in fmod project.

Misc:

• Cross-posted last releases blog post.
• Did company accounts.
• Big ol' brainstorm to improve one-line marketing message / description of the game.

Press:

We're writing a little press system thing that manages your contacts and can tell you when you (or another member of your team) last contacted somebody. I'm sure other systems for this exist, but none are specifically geared towards games PR... It's a bit like a cross between Promoter app and Distribute().

• Started press list database / backend / website.
• List press contacts name/email in table.
• Edit press contacts.
• Log emails sent to press contacts.

[Gwinnell]

Lately, rather than working on the game, we've been doing a lot  of blogging -- that's just what happens when you gear up for a big Steam Early Access launch! :D

Trailer 1:


Trailer 2:


Steam: http://store.steampowered.com/app/332760

The big announcement:
http://timmybibble.com/blog/steam-early-access-announcement/

Standing out at expos on a budget:
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/SophieHumphries/20150323/239487/Stand__Deliver__Budget_ways_to_stand_out_at_Expos.php

Using pre-visualisations in our game development:
http://fireside.gamejolt.com/post/pre-visualisations-in-game-development-cpbgyswu

Release day -- woop woop!
http://timmybibble.com/blog/steam-early-access-out-now/

Wallpaper:


We're going to be releasing another update on Friday which includes support for WASD keys and tidies a few other things up. Community feedback is great!

[Join Indies]

Really am surprised to see how little attention this wonderful game has received on the site. Keep on going and I'm sure the attention you deserve will come your way!
The graphics are a deep breath of fresh air in an ocean of pixel art. Vector art woooo
(Saw the game originally on Gamejolt). Was wondering how much that cost for that Gamejolt banner? (Feel free to answer that in private!). I read that you were up in Sheffield for games Britainnia! You a local or just visiting?

Good luck folks!

Chiming in and giving this more attention. Looks fantastic so far.

Lots of nice animation achieved just form scales and tweens of shapes.

[Gwinnell]

Hi everyone. I totally just worked the bank holiday to get an update published to Steam. The life of a game developer, eh?

Release #17

Advanced Modifiers fixed!

First up, we've fixed all of the accidentally-broken advanced modifiers. Relaxed play now works, target now works, the timer now works. This means we've been able to re-introduce Bully Mode, which was removed from recent builds. We've also added descriptions to the modifiers so you know what the heck they do!


Relaxed play might be my favourite...

Keyboard & Mouse controls!

Secondly, keyboard controls! We've implemented keyboard controls on WASD and mouse so even if you only have one controller you can still play with a friend. If you have two controllers, now three of you can play. (Maybe we'll even let you have FIVE players at some point...)

New game mode: Criss-cross!

Third on the list is a brand new game mode straight from the recipe book -- Criss-cross! Criss-cross is best played with four players, free-for-all or 2 vs 2. You start with no ammo at all, and so have to run to each other's rugs to charge your gun. This results in conflict areas as players cross paths. It's super fun - give it a try!

Character Select updated!

The final change is only a small one. The Character Select screen has been slightly adjusted so that players are more likely to run over other each other's rugs. This allows us to remove that little bit of text that explicitly tells players to do so, and as a result makes the game a more accurate realisation of Timmy's dream world. We've also moved the hats into the tooltips as the "A" and "B" were completely pointless - whoops!


New Character Select layout.

We've also been working on other stuff, but we didn't have time to implement it. There were some other little fixes and additions too, but there are (as always) too many to note. If you really want to know, the full changelog below contains all the secrets.

Cheers,
Ashley

Full Changelog:

Code:

• Started some LAN/online multiplayer code to "test the waters". https://twitter.com/ashleygwinnell/status/583399742425669632
• Changed Last Man Standing modifier to "Last Friend Standing"
• Added descriptions to all Advanced Modifiers.
• Added keyboard & mouse controls to the game. This helps people play who only have one controller!
• Moved debug keys away from WASD so they don't accidentally activate. (Windows only).
• Fixed bug where hitting LB to get to Advanced Modifiers during a menu transition made the screen get stuck offscreen.
• Added "Criss-cross" game mode!
• Fixed "relaxed play"  advanced modifier.
• Fixed "target" and "timer" advanced modifiers, and re-added bully mode.
• New head/rug positions on character select.
• New display position for team hats on character select - they've been put in the tooltips.
• "New Custom Mode" added to mode select.
• Hidden text labels for good on the mode select screen. It makes more sense to do so now that the "new custom mode" option is in.
• Fixed a bug where right triggers weren't working on wireless Xbox 360 controllers.
• Added "impact" effect that triggers when players die.

Art & Animation:

• Generic armour for testing.
• Different armour for each character! It's so pretty (and wacky). Ooooooh.
• New player death pop animation created and implemented.
• New player headbutt rebound spark animation created.