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[sodap]

I have uploaded a new version to itch.io

http://zacapumba.itch.io/suspicious-minds

[jboxx]

Love the art style, those robots are cute!

[sodap]

Thanks man, although they aren't supposed to be robots, just differen't colored characters. I'll probably change them to regular people with different combinations of head+body

[sodap]

I'm now thinking about the UI and game resolution. The game is currently 4:3 but we probably should make it 16:9 which is the standard for PC gaming nowadays. Also, the thoughts of the main character are misplaced right now, they clash with the gameplay and people can't really appreciate them, they just add confusion when they should add context and the good kind of noise, the game needs that psychological twist to it.

Mockup design of what the game could/should look like

[sodap]

About that mockup, some things have to change. I like the 16:9 setup but the GUI has to change, it feels so military-like right now. And it doesn't fit with the other UI elements in the menus, so that's a good starting point, making it fit with the buttons.

I'm trying to come up with some new enemy behaviors, because the game needs some variety and progression.

Janitors (melee range): they cross the screen stopping every once in a while, sweeping some dust. When they are next to the player character they may or may not hit him with the broom and keep beating on him while fading to black for the game over.

Forklift (moving): They move fast from side to side of the bottom part of the screen, and they may or may not try to shoot the player character.

Security guy (moving + melee): if the player kills too many innocents on one round, this guy spawns and comes running toward the player character to detain him.

Depersonalization: a guy that looks exactly like the player character comes walking and stops to kill any suspicious looking people, to help the player, but he can kill innocents which count as innocents murdered. He's always counted as a justified kill.

I'm open to suggestions btw, inspiration for this stuff is very welcome. I want all the enemies to add something different to the gameplay.

[sodap]

It's funny when you start trying different things, and you mess up with some variable and everything goes wrong. I was tweaking spawn times and trying stuff...



I also changed the heads to a placeholder one so they don't look too much like robots anymore, that was misleading information.

[sodap]

I've been working a bit on the art. The project is starting to get some traction, I have a new programmer on board and we're making progress in Unity.



What you see here is the new resolution to fit 16:9 screen ratio and get ride of the vertical crop bars, and a new UI design that might allow us to stretch the game to most screen ratios. Also you can se where things are heading with the new characters.

[sodap]

We have new animations now! I think this is starting to look cool. Soon we'll have a new pre-alpha demo version so everyone can check out what we've been up to

[sodap]

We've been working on it. I have to make a bigger commitment to this devlog to keep you guys posted, I am sorry for that. I'm very happy today after finding a good pacing for the game, although I'll have to keep working on that.

This is our new logo, which I'm pretty proud of. I'm considering making an HD version or keeping it low-res pixelart, even for bigger formats. If you are following us on twitter you've probably seen it already.

Last couple of weeks we've taken great steps towards the next public demo, probably the last public demo before release, although we could end up releasing another one for greenlight. Soon, we'll take on the new GUI and some polishing for the mess of features we've been implementing. On another note, for sound & music we've added Rubén Rincón to the Suspicious Minds team, he'll be making an adaptive music system for the game so we'll say good bye to the free music we've been using all these months. We're implementing Wwise so he can do his best work.

These weeks we've made an important change to the game. Minds (people who pass by) now react to the actions of the player. Maybe I'll have to explain this more thoroughly in the future, to be brief: some guys freak out and get the hell out of there, and others get mad at you and try to kill you. You can see a bit of that in this GIF.

Last, I'm dropping this screenshot because its funny that I keep making this mistake of messing up with the spawn timer over and over at least once a month.

[sodap]

I'm working on the GUI right now. I'm making some concepts, looking for the way to put all information about the game state right on the screen, but without confusing players. I want the game state to be displayed on screen at all times while playing, so I'm going to have to display things like kills (and the type), score, time left, current level, bullets, collected bullets for the next reload, that stuff.

It's important to think about UX, feedback, game feel, all that stuff. Things like clearly conveying the effect of players' actions, for example, when the player kills a Mind he needs to know if the Mind was innocent or hostile, and how many bullets he gets for the kill.

Currently I've got this:


I've also been doing some concept animations:

[sodap]

Hey guys, check this out: the musical theme for Suspicious Minds!

https://soundcloud.com/rubenrincon/everybody-wants-to-kill-me-suspicious-minds-soundtrack

Actually, the music in game is going to be adaptive so this is just a preview of what's coming. Our audio/music guy, Ruben Rincón is doing an amazing job.

[sodap]

This is not dead! The project was almost cancelled because the team split and I took on some freelancing jobs so this year hasn't seen a lot of progress and I haven't been very active as an indie developer, sadly. But that's about to change because I'm going to have more free time now.

I've been toying with a new way of making the graphics using 2d pixelart slices to make voxel-like characters. This way I can have all angles while making just one graphic, much like a 3d asset. Currently it looks like this:





All these months have been very stressful for me and because I couldn't or didn't have the energy to work much on actually developing the game, I've ended up thinking and rethinking the game far too many times, so the current status is: I need to go back to the origins, stay focused and make a more focused thing out of this game, it was already kind of working in the first place and I derailed way too much.

In case you are wondering this is how I'm doing the graphics

[cousin_it]

Hey, good work. You have an original game feel, a rare thing these days. I don't care too much about the graphics honestly, would play this even if it was a JS/Canvas demo. Your writing is great and conveys the mood very well. Don't give up :-)