next »

[zeid]

BrambleLash is a spritely local multiplayer co-opetition with team swapping action. Enchanted sprites tether together to defeat slimey hordes, whilst plotting the demise of their teammates to get ahead. Connect, co-operate or betray to win!

Twitter
IndieDB
Facebook

[tjpalmer]

Looks really cool.

[blekdar]

The mechanic seems really neat actually. I am interested in seeing where you take this idea.

[zeid]

@blekdar & tjpalmer
Thanks guys glad you like what you see so far.

I have been working on the art side of things as of late pushing hard to get the enemy models complete. Here are some less than flattering images of the currently complete enemies in engine. There is a custom shader I built being applied which will require some tweaking. These guys are all animated but as you can see they are in T-pose for this little image:


Here is a screenshot of the placeholder enemies in game for comparison:


We are using ZBrush and Blender for the creation of all our 3d content, I already owned a licence to ZBrush and we didn't want to sink big money into a 3d modelling package unless we had to, hence opting for Blender. I have been using ZBrush sporadically for around 10 years so would consider myself fairly experienced with it. However I had never used Blender so was in for a learning experience, my knowledge of Maya and 3ds Max certainly helped and after getting my head around the new interface it is quickly growing on me.

My new pipeline for creating models is still somewhat erratic at the moment, however for the most it begins by making some very vague sketches to capture design ideas;

I really wanted to shoot the tether from the characters mouth like a tongue even before we decided to make the characters plants... But got a lot of push back

Following this I consult with Liam and anyone else in earshot who will listen as to what they like in the design and what they don't to see if I can justify to myself whether it is worth working on. I then begin to realize the concept in ZBrush. The design is still somewhat loose at this stage and ZBrush allows me to rapidly explore concepts, I really like the fluidity of the program. When I am happy with the design and feel I have sufficiently addressed all the old and new feedback I retopologize the model.  I was originally retopologizing the models with ZBrush however for the enemy base model I worked from Blender at this stage as an experiment, I haven't really decided which I prefer just yet.

Here is a retopologized version of the character model:

The chibi look of the character and hands didn't make it through the ZBrush design stage

With the model in Blender the UV's are created.  Initially I wanted to use ZBrush's UV system as it's incredibly quick, however given the simplicity and low poly counts of the models it became apparent it was simpler creating them using Blenders seam system. I hand draw the textures following this and get them on the models before calling the mesh final.

Next comes the rigs. The rigs are intended to be quick and easy to work with, I built the enemy rigs to allow for squish & squash to better sell the slime look. Liam built the rigs and animations for the player characters at this stage, but they will be getting an overhaul later when I touch them up. I make a point of having simple helpers as all you can interract with for the completed rig in order to keep animation a clean and quick process.


Each of the enemies was built off of the basic enemy (as seen above) at various different stages of completeness. They are all individually rigged, textured and animated in order to capture some distinct character in all of them.

There are still more enemy variations remaining but I am somewhat happy with my progress so far. Soon enough I will be able to jump back into coding until the next lot of art needs creating/finalising.

[tjpalmer]

Thanks much for the technical and tool info.

[zeid]

I have been pretty happy for the most part with the enemy designs, however readability has been a major concern. It has become apparent that a few of the designs aren't distinguishable enough. I certainly don't want to band-aid the issue with colour swaps or the like, as I want to fix things the right way!

The solution; reworking some of the silhouettes to make them more distinct ideally more indicative of the enemies behaviours. The first way of doing this will involve reworking a mesh or two (which will be ugly business at this stage). Another way I am improving the readability issues and creating differentiable silhouettes is by adding glowing areas on enemies through my custom shader.

The slime trail enemies back is made very distinct by the glow. On the other hand its front will probably need some tweaking.

As you can see the glow channel helps the enemies pop out from the shadows. It also provides some options for colour distinction between enemy types, though I don't want to overdo this. Subtly demonstrating the function of the enemy whilst differentiating them from one another is my primary interest in this effect.

The glow on the bomb enemies belly makes him more visible in the dark and implies his functionality.

I have also finished the look of a new dangerous enemy. If left unchecked it will power itself up then ram your tether and destroy it. I have attempted to reconsider my design approach when making this nasty little slime and I feel the benefits are pretty telling.

The red eye(s) and less comical look is an indicator of enemies that can break your tether

Here is a shortlist of the design changes I am looking at trying out on the enemies:
- Removing the bone motif and reworking the mesh proportions on the shooter enemy. I don't feel these work alongside the other standard enemy designs. I may revisit it for a boss, or elite enemy type in the future.
- Adding some glowing pustules to the front of the slime trail enemy so that always has a unique silhouette, not just when facing away from the camera.
- Redesigning the slime spitter enemy to be completely distinct from the shooter enemy. It was done very quickly and mostly as a placeholder, but it has become very apparent that a simple rework probably won't suffice.

As you can see I have been spending a lot of time with the art and design side of things. It is doing my head in and I am concerned I might be getting caught up with it all. So tomorrow I will likely get some coding in, a coding break if you will. But I will be getting my hands dirty with the art again this week, so expect to see how I resolved my design issues soon.

[jamesprimate]

love the 2 player mechanic and the main character flower sprite(?) -ish design is pretty unique. i could see how the look of the enemies could be confusing at quick glance though. and idk if this is helpful feedback, but when i first few times i saw the gifs, i assumed the player characters were flying from the movements. perhaps its clearer on larger screens though?

also, 3 months sounds pretty ambitious! but im saying this as a person on year 4 of my own "3 month project" hahah 

[zeid]

@ jamesprimate - We are certainly aiming high, we have been pretty committed to our scheduling so hopefully it all pays off .

i assumed the player characters were flying from the movements.

I completely agree.  The small .gif's with low frame rates exacerbates the issue but the current placeholder animations Liam created are beginning to show their age. I might have to step up the priority on redoing them to ensure they're suitable for promotional material in the not too distant future.  Other issues such as lacking shadows may also be contributing to the characters not looking grounded, so I might do a little further investigating into the issue, thanks!

As mentioned I had a bit of a break from the art side of things over the last few days to do some programming. I gave Liam a hand implementing a feature I have wanted in the game for a long time;

Proof of concept footage of the tether wrapping system. The system can account for any complex shape. There are some small bug fixes but we are looking forward to exploring how this new mechanic can be used within our future levels.

I also created all of the 'ram' enemy variant's behaviours. I am hoping to add some more intelligent and characterful behaviours to all of the enemies, (such as running away when the tether gets too close) as such the current streamline enemy code may need some expanding to better accommodate our new needs. The ram enemy was looking a little stiff floating around in T-Pose with all his functionality complete so I thought it only fitting to completely animate him.

The ram enemy expressing his jubilation at being added to the game.

I also spent some time revisiting some of the enemy designs.  I pushed the palette a bit further and made some of the changes I mentioned earlier.  Also at this stage the slime spitter enemy is being cut.  It behaves too similarly to two of our other enemy types and doesn't add unique dynamics to the combat.

Two more enemies will be coming soon!

[Join Indies]

Looks great, very interesting concept. I have trouble thinking of many games that are co-op and have players banded together. In fact, the only one that comes to mind is Knuckles Chaotix on the 32X.  Have you played it?  Was that one of the sources of your inspiration?

[ephoete]

Ok let's be short your original concept is simply brilliant.

Yet I'm a bit bewildered as of the progression of the gameplay behind this. In fact here's a risk that having two different characters -and here players afaik- tightly coupled makes the co-op mode very difficult.
The players will have to synchronize so much to go through the puzzle that it might get frustrating and you will end up having a master-and-slave scheme coming out of it in the end.
Just my small concern but I think I'd have to play it a little with my friends to see if it's funded or not. Is there any playable demo soon?

[jamesprimate]

As mentioned I had a bit of a break from the art side of things over the last few days to do some programming. I gave Liam a hand implementing a feature I have wanted in the game for a long time;

Proof of concept footage of the tether wrapping system. The system can account for any complex shape. There are some small bug fixes but we are looking forward to exploring how this new mechanic can be used within our future levels.

looooving this! expands gameplay possibilites hugely. also the ram animation is nice nice nice, lot of character.

[zeid]

@Join Indies - Thanks . Actually neither of us had ever heard of Knuckles Chaotix before your post.  I looked up some gameplay videos of it and now really want to play it.  It may inspire BrambleLash ideas in the future, particularly when it comes to single player.  We want to allow people who have no friends a brief taste of what the game has to offer, hopefully it will encourage them to go out and make a few so they can play the other game modes.

@ephoete - Our approach so far has been, 'being tethered is always good'.  At the moment when tethered there is an infinite range the players can separate, this will likely change especially now that obstacles are being added to the mix.  That said keeping the max range the players can separate liberal will definitely be important.  We want to encourage good communication as much as possible and have poor communication punished, but not to the point of frustration.  The potential to create a master/slave dynamic where one person is barking orders at the other is certainly a worry.  We will have to do some playtests with players of mixed experience to get a grasp on how, and where this becomes a problem so we can come up with solutions.

So far we've had one large scale showing/playtest session of the game, I imagine we will participate in another such event very soon.  We'll have to prepare a demo for that so i'll discuss with Liam if he's happy with me releasing that demo to my fellow Tigsource peeps.  Alternatively, we have to do a large scale integration of all the features we've been working on, so perhaps after that a quick demo can be created.

@jamesprimate - Thanks! More models and animations to come soon.

[ephoete]

Sounds good. Count me in! 

[Join Indies]

@Join Indies - Thanks . Actually neither of us had ever heard of Knuckles Chaotix before your post.  I looked up some gameplay videos of it and now really want to play it.  It may inspire BrambleLash ideas in the future, particularly when it comes to single player.  We want to allow people who have no friends a brief taste of what the game has to offer, hopefully it will encourage them to go out and make a few so they can play the other game modes.

It has mixed reception, but mainly because it deviated so much from the rest of the Sonic series. The link between players acts more as a rubber hand, allowing you to slingshot the other player which creates some momentary speed in the game.  It's also possible to play the game in single player mode-- without a second player, your partner just tags along. But you're able to make him stop and hold the band, allowing you to stretch it out and achieve the slingshot effect on release. 

You can easily try the game out on an emulator. I can't think of any game compilations that include it though.

[zeid]

I talked with Liam and he is certainly keen to get a demo out to the public. It might be a while before we're ready to distribute it but it is definitely happening!

As far as progress goes; I've recently been ensuring that BrambleLash is playable for people with color blindness. It is plain to see *no pun intended* that red on green just isn't going to work in the ways we've been using it (I had suspected this would be a problem). As such we are going to change the look of the breaker bullets dramatically.


If you can't see the difference between these two images then you have Deuteranopia.

While I'm on the subject of the breaker bullets;  The new Breaker enemy model is complete.  This guy likes nothing more than blasting your tether away.  At this stage the Breaker enemy variant is modelled, textured and rigged and just needs his animations completed.


"I will break you Batman!"

Liam has been implementing the various remaining obstacle types.  We currently have three obstacle types;

• Tall obstacles - The players cannot walk through these and the tether gets caught onto them.
• Medium obstacles - The player cannot walk through these or be pulled through these but the tether goes over the top of them.
• Small obstacles - The player cannot walk through these but can be pulled over/through them.

Getting pulled over a small obstacle to safety.

Liam has also been hard at work on adventure mode and getting level transition working. Whenever you move into a new area an objective is given.  Upon completing your objective the shadows to the side of the current area fade open to allow you to move to the next play space. Upon reaching the new area the old is sealed away with the shadows. We wanted to make level transitions endless and seamless and never break people from the immersion with loading times.  Each of these levels are to be procedurally generated with scenery, obstacles, objectives and enemy spawning configurations.  After a certain number of levels players will be pitted against one of a small pool of boss enemies.

[zeid]

All of the enemy models are done for now.  They may receive some changes based on user feedback but until then I will be moving on to other things.  It occurred to me that I haven't really described all the enemy types, so now seems as good a time as any;

The Wanderer



These are the most basic enemy type.  They roam aimlessly creating little threat.  However, as the number of enemies increase these little guys become a noisy sea of hazardousness.

The Slimer



The Slimer type enemy leave deadly trails wherever they move that remain for some time.  Similarly to the Wanderer they initially seem unthreatening but if left unchecked you will quickly find your movement restricted.  From a design point of view, Slimer enemies have the potential to create interesting restrictions to the players movement, cutting players off from one another and forcing better co-ordination.

The Shooter



Shooter, name says it all.  Avoiding their shots adds urgency to the game.  Whilst you can happily pick off the Slimers or Wanderers at your own pace shooters make an active effort to attack you and force you to manoeuvre the aforementioned enemies as you avoid their shots.

The Chaser



The Chaser is another pressuring element.  They roam in the same way as the Wanderer, but if you get too close they will become alert and chase you down relentlessly.  Once a Chaser locks on to a player it dramatically increases the tension, also the presence of a Chaser creates an area of avoidance and encourages the player to think tactically.

The Bomber



The Slimer roams around leaving a trail of hazards.  The Bomber explodes covering a large area in hazards.  When a Bomber is allowed to explode a significant portion of play space is denied from the player.

The Breaker



The Breaker is a Shooter on steroids.  He offers similar drama, but takes it a step further.  Bullets from the Breaker destroy the tether, this creates a lot of frantic avoidance whenever a shot is fired and makes the Breaker one of, if not the most significant target when he shows up.  The tether can make for a large target, so a Breakers presence forces the player to consider their positioning with regards to one another.

The Rammer



If the breaker is a roided up shooter then the Rammer is the equivalent for the Chaser.  The Rammer will again roam nonchalantly, however when it is alerted by a player it will take aim, charge up and launch itself rapidly towards them.  While charging the Rammer will be able to break the players tether, essentially turning itself into a living breaker bullet with some homing potential.

[zeid]

Don't think I had forgotten about you Devlog, I still love you and think about you every day...

It has been way too long since my last update.

Fortunately this entire time we have been busy working on BrambleLash!

Unfortunately most things we had been working on are pretty damn boring and didn't offer much to show.

For a while Liam and I were working on separate builds trying to progress as fast as possible.  This meant we had to spend a substantial amount of time integrating our progress back into one project.  We also decided to tackle a substantial number of bugs in this time; Many to do with the tether wrap, and also many arising due to collision issues from the obstacles being thrown into the mix.


One of the simpler bugs to fix...

We have added tension to the tether so players now must maintain some loose proximity to one another.  This has a large impact on gameplay and we are still fine tuning how much slack we are giving the players but it certainly adds something to the game.

Liam and I have also recently been working on the obstacle models.  These consist largely of rocks and brambles at this stage.  This is of course ground breaking and revolutionary to games as a medium!


First pass of the tall obstacle that catches your tether, and the small obstacle that you can be pulled through. Some animation will play when pulled through the brambles complete with particle twig breakage.

Also, pending some testing we can now say the game supports colourblind players substantially more than before.  The new breaker bullet may be a bit over the top at the moment, but it certainly won't be missed by anyone.


Deuteranopia

A breaker bullet looking terrifyingly large.

Whilst Liam added the level systems for the game, he was also putting in an objectives system.  He has been playing around with different goals of late to encourage different styles of play within the game.  One such example is our "Occupy" objective. Occupy is a co-op king of the hill style objective. Before you can access the next level you must have remained within the given area with at least one player for a given time.  I am very much looking forward to implementing some of my objective ideas myself.


The 'Occupy' area needs to be more readable at a glance but functionally it is very satisfying.

Perhaps the coolest thing I have to show off is something by the incredibly talented musicians we hired! Check out a sample of the music they have done for us on their Soundclouds:

Damian Dolin
Menu Music
In Game

Leanne Puttick
Higher Difficulty In Game
Leanne also put a boss track together which sounds phenomenal.

At the moment Liam and I are putting in extra hours and possibly going to do a Jam this week in order to get a demo we are happy showing our fellow indies by this weekend.  So if in 7 days time that isn't up here be sure to PM me hate mail.

[zeid]

We did it!


How far we have come since last we showed the game to the public.

An alpha demo of our game is finally ready!  We were up till 7am getting it to the point where we were happy to show off what we have so far.  There is still lots more we want to do, but we would both love to hear what people think of the game so far.  Feedback and critique is greatly appreciated!

Demo available for Windows, Mac and Linux:
Download Here

[zeid]

Just added a youtube video of the game.




We also recently applied for IndieCade.  If we are fortunate enough to get in we will have to scrape some money together to get to America... Anyone got a place I can crash?

[zeid]

We went to another playtesting evening in Perth.  Since the demo we have been working on 4 player versus mode.  The current game rules we currently have for four player are that the last two players alive win.  If the players aren't tethered together they can swap teams by reconnecting with any other player.  People really enjoyed the chaotic nature of versus.  They also had huge amounts of feedback and full of ideas they felt could improve the game.


Betrayal is a big part of the appeal of versus.

I also wanted to talk about the subtleties of some enemy behaviours in the game.  One of my favourite things to do when making a game is adding polish so these kinds of things make me very happy.  Something small I managed to add was enemies looking at players should they cross into their line of vision.  Enemies also attempt to flee away from the tether.  Furthermore since the demo was released I managed to reintroduce the disintegration effect launching in the direction the tether came from.  These little nuances serve to breath life into the enemies making them seem less mechanical and more like living beings, and also add some visual interest to the game.


Looking ominously down at the player.