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[Jasmine]

Man, this game is coming along quite well! The art is stunning, gameplay looks great, and music is very fitting! Keep up the great work, guys!

[Bluebutton]

Artwork looks great and seems like it's making really good progress.

Would love to play a build!

[ernanir]

Man, this game is coming along quite well! The art is stunning, gameplay looks great, and music is very fitting! Keep up the great work, guys!

Thank you! It was not easy to match the art, gameplay and music, but I think we are finally getting it right. Comments like that also help to show us that we on the correct path. Hope to see you here soon.

[ernanir]

Artwork looks great and seems like it's making really good progress.

Would love to play a build!

Thank you my friend. We are very happy that with the result that we have so far, but we know the are tons of room to improve.
I would love to share a build with you, hit me with a e-mail so we can talk about it.
[email protected]

Lovely weekend

[ｂ∀ ｋｋｕｓａ]

This is so good.

[ernanir]

Thanks Bakkusa. Sarah is a amazing artist.

[ernanir]

Hello Friends,

Ernani here. Today isn't the best day for me, my mother in law's cat is missing, internet is slower than ever, the neighbor has his music loud as fuck and my room is a fucking mess. With all this shit going on it's really hard to focus on the game.  Instead of crying like a baby, Im going to share 5 things I learned so far building Turtles of Destiny.

1 - Connections and hubs make things happen. If you are really serious about making a game it's in your best interest to know lots of people and "be" in lots of places. I met Sarah (Artist) over newgrounds, JJ (Programmer) was in a developer group over facebook, Geoff  at Tig and JJ introduced me to Vincente (Sound Designer). Being proactive in order find this amazing team really paid off.

2 - Watch devs videos. I learned so much by watching videos from Derek Yu, Jonathan Blow, Tommy Refenes, Ed Mcmillen and others. Marvelous tips concerning game design, business, marketing, positive mindset and the overall journey of building a game.

3 - Meet lots of devs. I live in a small city and I think Im the only gamedev here, but that doesnt stop me from surrounding myself with other devs. You can contact them over facebook, newgrounds, Tig, kongregate, indiedb and so on. This relationship can be helpful to both sides, just keep in mind to give back too, there will be lot of devs who wants only to leech and never seed.

4 - Avoid burnouts. It's easy to get obsessed with your project. I had times that I would dream about the game every single night. That's no heathy at all. Try to balance things out, watch movies, make love, physical exercise helps a lot.
I do Jiu-Jitsu and it's really aids me.

5 - Don't try to get everything perfect, just ship things. A example from our game, we have this whole bunch of different mechanics, we do not spend months deciding if we will build it or not, we just do it and then we make it better and if it doesn't fit the game it's ok too.

There are more lessons and maybe I will write them at some point, but for now that's it. I hope someone can benefit from this post.

Lovely sunday guys.

[ernanir]

Hello Guys,

This week I will post everyday.

I knew it would be a hard task to find the core of the game, but I didn’t know it was going to be so time consuming. The good news are that I think we finally found it. There was this huge road block at first when we tried to merge two styles (Action and Puzzle), it just didn’t work as good. I’m not saying it’s not doable, many games have done it before, but for us it didn’t feel right. Fitting the art, the music, the speed of the protagonist with a Actiony puzzle platformer was somewhat messy.

Now that the we embraced the Puzzle part everything is connecting. The music feels great, the level rhythm is really smooth and even the age range of the players became wider. Looking back it seems obvious to connect the dots, but it’s not obvious at all, it takes loads of testing and feedbacks.

Time to make tons of levels now :D

[ernanir]

 New Mechanics

We have been playing around with new mechanics for a long time, some work and some doesn’t. This last two weeks it seems that we hit the right spot, all the new mechanics fits quite well with the rest of the game. Of course they will need some heavy polish and go through playtests but the we are very optimistic.

1 - This is a idea that Amora from Miniboss Studio (Towerfall, Somewhere out there and Skytorn) threw at me and I loved it. It’s a way to show that sky changed her blocks without relying too much on the interface. A little aura-explosion happens and she changes from one block to the other.

We also made moving in game platforms!  I know it’s common, but believe me, we will use it in a uncommon way.

2 - On this one, it’s a force field that will enable the blocks to move from one side to the other. It feels smooth so far and they are many puzzles possibility with it.

3 - Last but no least, We are trying out to make the regular block timed and reusable. This will impact the game in two ways, we will be able to make levels longer without having the need to use a bunch of senseless checkpoints but also will add a bit of action, just a bit I know it’s seem a little dull as it is right now, but it will be a game changer in Turtles of Destiny.

[ernanir]

Writing everyday here is making me more connected to the game and my hunger to develop has grown quite a bit, great surprise that is. Now let’s get to the main subject of this post.

Sometimes I feel a invisible pressure when I’m making new levels. It’s like they have to be better than the older ones and because of that I only start making them when I’m in the perfect mind condition (Which can take days). Unfortunately that impacts my productivity in a bad devastating way, so I came up with this new idea to turn things around. I made a new folder of levels and it’s called “Play Around”, there I can do just that, Play with my imagination.It already feels so much better to approach it as a toy instead of a task.  

Here is the first result of the Play Around folder. It’s the first time I mixed the two new mechanics (Time reusable blocks and Force field). I’m pleased with results, I found some bug while mixing them two mechanics, but I like how the fitted together. I will try to keep a steady pace and make at least one “play around” level per day, let’s see where this path takes us.

2 days from now, JJ will deliver new mechanics so I can go even further with the level depth. That's all for today.

* ernanir felling excited!

[ernanir]

If you read the last post, you know I’m doing a experiment on making tiny simple bits of levels everyday. This strategy had the sole purpose of pushing away the anxiety that comes from building (or trying to build) pretentious/complex levels and increase my productivity. It’s working beyond my wildest dreams,  stress is down, productivity is up and the best part is that I’m getting new ideas for more robust levels.

Since this strategy is working so good, I’ll stick with it, for two weeks straight and post my progress here.

 Let’s talk about the new tiny levels now:

First Level: I managed to make this level yesterday after Jiu-Jitsu class. It’s very simple but it has two strong points to it. The first one is that we can tell a bit of the story with the background (I know there is nothing on the background for now) and there is room to deliver a little challenge to player by mixing the moving platform and the regular timed block early in the game.
 

Second Level: I made this one  earlier today. It’s my first attempt to mix the yellow block and the moving (vertical) platform. I don’t really like the game design of it right now, but that’s what the Playing Around folder is for. From making this one I got a ideia to make a different level and that’s great. Maybe Sarah or JJ will have a nice a idea when they see it too! That’s it for the levels.

There is a whole bunch of things to do today still.

- Play Talos Principle, tip from Marcos Venturelli (Chroma Squad, Relic Hunter Zero and Dugeonland).  Thanks for taking the time my friend.
- Make new level
- Meeting with JJ, two hours from now.
- I have to set a new date/time to meet with Sarah over skype

[ernanir]

Hello folks! This will be a super fast post. I’m having trouble delivering the goods for my day job and that drains me a bit. I almost gave up on making the two levels today, but I held my ground and made them :D I like those new levels the least, maybe because I did them in a rush, but I’m really glad that I was able to get them done despite my currently situation with my work.

Since I don’t have much time today, I’m just gonna post them here, without explaining.  Tomorrow I will have a meeting with JJ at 16:00 and with Sarah at 16:30, really looking forward for that.

 
First level of the day:

Second level of the day:

Great Weekend everyone

[ernanir]

Today was a busy for sure. I had a meeting with JJ, he did some awesome stuff concerning the mechanics. After that I talked to Sarah about the storyline and about the game map. There will be some very unique stuff happening concerning the level navigation, but that’s all I can tell for now.

I made two tiny levels today, just to see how the new mechanic works. It’s a trigger mechanic and I love how this can unfold in loads of clever puzzles. He also made the animation for the timed block, it’s only a placeholder, but I really like it.

Great Weekend Devs and Players! 

[Connor]

Avoid burnouts. It's easy to get obsessed with your project. I had times that I would dream about the game every single night. That's no heathy at all. Try to balance things out, watch movies, make love, physical exercise helps a lot.
I do Jiu-Jitsu and it's really aids me.

man, you have no idea how much this rings true with me. its challenging as hell to avoid getting obsessed with your own work, especially when you have people counting on you. i recently was contacted by a publisher and now i cant stop thinking about how to make them happy. i needed to hear this.

[ernanir]

man, you have no idea how much this rings true with me. its challenging as hell to avoid getting obsessed with your own work, especially when you have people counting on you. i recently was contacted by a publisher and now i cant stop thinking about how to make them happy. i needed to hear this.

Glad it helped you Connor. Balance is the key.  

[Igor Sandman]

I really like the color palette you chose for this.
It's looking great!

[ernanir]

I really like the color palette you chose for this.
It's looking great!

Thank you so much! Our Artist is really passionate about our project

[ernanir]

Hello Friends,

Today is sunday and I’m so glad that I was able to reach my daily goal. The trigger mechanic looks very cool so far, I played around with it a bit and it has marvelous potential to make some twisted puzzle.  Here are the tiny levels I made this morning:

PS: The Talos Principle is a amazing game and it’s giving me some great insights about how to improve our game design.
Great sunday guys

[ernanir]

Hello lovely people!

I just had this idea of drafting the levels the night before I make them and I had this amazing surprise. The first draft was a bit dull, but when I made it, it got more sophisticated and I love it how it looks now.  Sometimes you draft something and it doesn’t look good when you execute, BUT it goes both ways and that’s great! Lesson learned.

Today, I’ll meeting Sarah again, so we can work the on the story.

Great week guys. 

[ernanir]

Hello fellow devs,

Yesterday me and Sarah started doing a mind map for the story of Turtles of Destiny. We made huge progress in the storyline and characters development. The mind map structure that we built will help see the game in a more broad perspective.

Here are the tiny levels that I made today.