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[desdemian]

Level design progress:


Based on some feedback, I've been working on the first and second level.
The second level had a few problems:

* The wording of the mission briefing made people believe that they had to get out of the pod. This was fixed not only by rewriting it but by attaching the character with a seat bealt to the pod.

* The pod was simplified by removing the controls from the outside of the pod, into a separate deattached panel. Since the original configuration seemed like the pod was actually closing rather than opening.

* Some coloring relations were set up to let the player know what controls work together.

* The pedal use to be too close to the hand, and somewhat pushable by it. Now was moved to the bottom of the pod, the hand can no longer reached it (by a significant distant) and the fact that you have to use your foot should be pretty obvious now.

[desdemian]

Today I worked on level 3.

The changes were not too big. But hopefully people will understand the machine right away.



The new additions:

* A red cable links the button to the marker.
* The marker is now bigger and clearer to point out the current color.
* The arrows were made bigger to tell the player what each pedal does.

[desdemian]

I'm not completely sure about today's changes. Testing with the new demo (v0.6.2) will have to show the final conclusion.

The problem with level 4 was mainly that it was hard to move around, since this was the first time the player has to move their character, so:

* Tutorial was slightly improved.

* A vacuum tunnel was added to avoid the player the trouble of too much displacement.

* The entrance to the "pro" area was widened, and the room shrank to make movement easier.

[desdemian]

Level 5 was a mess:

* The same thing needed to be done 4 times (put garbage in garbage compactor).
* Each required very good control of the character.
* Thus taking too long making every player that reached that far, quit.

So I changed some things:

* Intead of one huge task, now I have two, a very easy one, and a medium size.
* The medium task should require som fiddling, but you do not repeat the same actions over and over, just once.
* It still requires some skills, but should be much easier to execute (and a little bit harder to figure out) for the player.

[desdemian]

Some small changes:

Level 1 now has a lever instead of a button.



Level 3 now has lights that explicitly indicate the state of the pod:



A new demo is out: http://www.themostposerheroes.com

[desdemian]

For the last month I've been working on adding a little companion to the usual characters.


The movement is different though. While the others characters move like humans, and have to use legs and arms to move around, this little robot can fly around to any place in the level.

It is much easier to control, and is supposed to help the main character in theirs task, as it has greater control to push things around or move around the level.

It is only a secondary character, and is supposed to be used as support, and not replace the main character movement.

[desdemian]

The last month I've been restoring old features.

Grabbing objects is now operational and a new level in which it is required to insert a battery is work.

So far the demo has 9 full levels.

[desdemian]

Lately I've been working on levels 11 to 13.

They place the player on earth, trying to sort out the difficulties of dealing with gravity.



A lot of the content and design is done because this is how initially the game was going to start. But I think I will try to be more focused on action.

Here's a minion ragdoll waiting to be animated:



Doing the AI for this characters is going to be painful. 

[desdemian]

I've been working on the minion's AI for a few days now.

It's a simple state machine, having as input all the physical values of the minion and the main characters.

Thus it is able to punch, jump towards the character and get up from the ground.


Trying to be a threat:


Jumping onto the head and getting up:



First fight:

[desdemian]

In the last few months I've working full on finishing levels, I went from 12 levels to 20. finally all the tools and generic stuff I had programmed were useful to make a big step forward.

Right now I'm working on the last 5 levels. Then the full story and gameplay will be completed, and "all" that will remain will be to hire an artist and redo all the artwork. Add sound and music. Porting to mac and linux. Support multiple resolutions. etc. etc... oh god I wanna throw up.

[desdemian]

One thing I'm struggling is the robot. Some players have reported that the robot is too easy to use and thus too boring.

That is exactly what the robot is about. In the beginning there was no robot but I wanted to add a way players could just push around the character, so they can have a "magical" force to help them solve problems.

So the idea is not that players will use the robot constantly, just to push themselves eventually. In some puzzles the robot is critical, but most of the time the character can solve everything by themselves.

I think I need a way to award the player that doesn't use the robot.

[jordanchin]

This game is looking really unique. I love paper art!

[desdemian]

Thanks, I'm actually starting the process of a big art makeover with a proffesional artist, but we will keep the paper aesthetics.

[desdemian]

Eventually the character meets another character and they have to work together to complete the missions.

They have a different mission than the main one, but they are walking in the same direction so why not walk together, right?


This is the second character fiddling with some books.

[desdemian]

Been working on the final levels. I'm happy that the game is almost fully playable from beginning to end.

This is just a level I came up almost like two years ago, where you have to use a skateboard.

Just to try out the physics, I made the character perform an ollie (not necessary to solve the level). It took quite some time (30 minutes) but it's a legal ollie.

[desdemian]

After three years of working alone, I have finally reached out and started working with an artist. I received some portfolios after a posting an announcement on facebook but they were not what I was looking for.

Eventually I did manage to reach two professional artists with enough years of experience that I was happy with their work. I made them do some hours of paid testing just to see what they could do and if we could work well together. I decided to work with one of them and we are moving forward with remaking the entire art for the game.

These are some initial doodles/concepts for the main character, and we also tried some art styles for the entire game.

[Pixel Noise]

Nice! Looks like the new art will be a good fit for the overall style and gameplay.

[desdemian]

Work with the artist keeps moving forwards. We've been working on finding a main character.

We went from the doodle 11 to chosing a path and starting iterating on it. We did a wrong turn somewhere (blue glasses iteration) that I was not happy with, but eventually managed to turn right back on track and I'm very happy with the final result.

Choosing the final colors was a little bit of work, since some of them made the character very monochrome and boring.

[foofter]

The style isn't my favorite, but I have to admit that it is eye-catchingly unique, which is a really good thing! Cohesive and original! 

[desdemian]

After working on the first levels, an issue came with having too much white paper on the scene.

The original purpose of white borders, other than making everything seem more "craft/hand made", was to make it very clear which object were collidable and which were not.

It didn't seem wrong on the third level (the first one we worked on).

But on the first level, the one were the player is inside a pod, the excess of white paper became too much and added too much noise to the environment.

Thus, I'm pondering if I should eliminate the white border and leave everything cardboard made.