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[DNK]

Hello and welcome everyone!

I’m DNK, chieftain of Dividebyzer0 - yet another team of lunatics who seeks for self expression.
So… we would like to tell you folks about our new upcoming game - BYTE.


Long story short:

BYTE is a 2D top-down stealth-puzzle game, where player controls a sneaky cyber-worm performing some malicious deeds in the network of the near future.
>> Alpha demo <<

Platforms: Windows, OS X, Linux

Release date: TBA



Full description:

Main gameplay may kinda remind of “Snake” from your old Nokia phone, but who cares: every time you steal valuable data, your cyber-worm is getting longer, which makes it harder to control and evade anti-viruses.



Throughout the game you will be able to upgrade your worm in both passive (+% to moving speed, downloading, etc.) and active (adding jaws, that help you break ICE, for example) ways.

The game itself is not just a sequence of levels, by the way - there is a web map, where you can choose your next run, examine stolen stuff, read newsfeed and more.



The plot is revolving about mysterious and powerful web virus, capable to down modern, heavy internet-dependent world on its knees. Player acts as an anonymous hacker, making his own way through the non-linear story.


Phew… Okay, I guess that’s enough for a humble announcement. Feel free to drop-off your thoughts here on TIGsource or in our forum.

Stay tuned with us via:
RSS feed and mail subscription on the studio’s website: Dividebyzer0.com
Facebook page: fb.com/DividebyzerO.team
Twitter page: twitter.com/dbzteam
Private questions? Shoot’em at [email protected]

[DNK]

Hello everyone! It’s status report time!

Okaaaayy… aha… hm… well, it looks like there is not much to show right now. But everything in motion, slow but steady: artists working on game objects, our code wizard experimenting with shaders and particles for backgrounds, and me struggling to find god damn time for level planning.
So, we’ll update prototype with some new art and features next month.

Right now, I want to tell you folks a bit about our game/level design tools. Maybe you will find something useful for your own projects.

As a game engine, we chose Construct 2 - HTML5-based tool for 2D games. Extremely easy to use, yet powerful enough for small-to-mid projects, supporting all major platforms (mobile, web, PC, OS X, Linux). But even if you are using Unity (or anything else) for your 2D game, me can recommend C2 as a super fast prototyping tool, thanks to sets of game objects behaviors, drag’n’drop canvas and visual programming through event lists.
Cons: rough version control systems support (problems with parallel commits), lack of HTML5 native support on mobile, and finally C2 is windows-only.

That’s how it looks on BYTE example:






By the way, if you know magic numbers code stuff, you can extend C2 by writing you own behaviors and plugins in javascript.
Here is a slightly more detailed opinion on Construct 2 from our coder.


As you may noticed, BYTE has square-cell structure. And to level design maps with such structure, we are using another tool named Tiled.
Basically, Tiled is a flexible 2D map editor that supports orthogonal, isometric and hexagonal orientation. But what is more important to us, that’s the ability to use Tiled .tmx maps as a tilemap object in C2! So, we are drawing levels in Tiled (which is very convenient thanks to Tiled’s cell structure), and then importing those maps in C2 with a few clicks. Moreover, you can edit Tiled maps in C2 which is also very cool.

One of the game levels in Tiled:




And yes, blue “walls”, which are visible in runtime, generates automatically thanks to our custom C2 behavior, as well as detection of those walls by cyberworm.

-
That’s all for now, guys. As always, feel free to questions/comments. Hope to show you something more fun next month.
Cheers!

[DNK]

Surprise! Still alive we are. And this time, we’ve got some major news.

WARNING!
A wall of text incoming, so for those who want to catch up quickly, here’s TL;DR

• We have redesigned BYTE game mechanics from scratch and made an alpha demo out of it, which is available here in the web.
• Any comments/feedbacks/opinions are highly appreciated!

Controls:
Arrows - moving worm on the grid
Spacebar - downloading
R - level restart
Shift - scanning mode
D/F - zoom-in/out



As I’ve mentioned above, we did a lot of re-do work. The most significant – the puzzle system and the way player interacts with it.

Now, the main principle behind the puzzle system are drivers that are connected to other objects (like firewalls and antiviruses). It’s kinda buttons-triggers in other games – when you are overlapping driver with your worm, it toggles connected object’s state. Each object has different states, obviously, like “open-closed” for firewalls and “patrolling-idling” for antiviruses.

Another important thing is that the driver switches state of connected object only while you are overlapping it. Leave it, and object will return to its default state. And yes, the default object’s state itself can vary – for instance, you may find yourself on the level with initially opened firewall and if you touch its driver, the firewall will close.

A game is worth a thousand words, so we’ve prepared a little alpha demo for you. It’s demonstrating not only new game mechanics, but the graphics and music/sounds (still subject to change, though), as well as the bit of a  story, which takes part in full version of the game’s plot.





BYTE OST on SoundCloud


What's next?
Our “to-do” feature list has also been changed. We are planning to add asynchronous multiplayer and economics to the game (say “goodbye” to release anytime soon).
Right now, the vision is this: players will be able to make and upgrade their own levels (or “servers” in game’s terms), store and sell data, and most importantly – steal data from one another. The multiplayer part is always-on and completely integrated in singleplayer experience, so you will see on your global map story missions as well as other player’s servers.



Aaand thats it, for now.
Desperately waiting for your feedback, guys

Have a happy hacking!

[DNK]

Aaand new version 0.5.7 is out!
We added a couple of “user-friendly” improvements to...well, improve “friendliness” of the game:

• Firstly, the stuck-detecting system. From now on, your cyberdeck will show a warning message each time worm gets locked.

• On-screen controls reminder. Just in case you got amnesia or simply tired of reading tutorial chit-chat.

• Small fixes in level design for smoother experience (including the annoying one on Level 11 “9s Bit News Blog”)

• Lastly, many typos have been ruthlessly eliminated. For great justice!

As always, you can play up-to-date BYTE alpha demo here: dividebyzer0.com/byte

[DNK]

Socialization on the move!

Now you can follow our one-of-a-kind cyberworm simulator on IndieDB and GameJolt!

Next, we have just released a standalone build of the demo (no more crappy web-browser stuff!). As promised, it supports Windows, macOS and Linux. You can grab the latest version here from our site.

And last but definitely not least – we got our very first “let’s play” video!
You can watch it below:




A big thanks to Fellow Player for his time and funny comments;)

[DNK]

Alpha demo results and progress so far



Firstly, I would like to thank everyone who tried the alpha demo. When you are building a long-running game in spare time only, the feedbacks (especially, positive ones ) from the community are natural fuel, that helps you keep pushing forward.

I also want to thank the community of GameJolt, Gamin.me and XGM in person, because the most comments/play sessions comes from them.

The results themselves are pretty neat - it turns out that we are making something meaningful and even enjoyable, which is very cool. The most complaints were about chat system and mistakes in level design (already fixed in build 0.5.7). So in future major public releases the chat system will be redesigned to be more intuitive, less annoying, and without stopping the gameplay. We plan some changes in scan system as well, because the current implementation is almost useless on levels with many elements.



Now, about the current progress.
As you can see, we remade an antivirus, so it looks more aggressive now. But most importantly, the work on the multiplayer side has been started! I really can’t tell you much about it, because right now we have a veeeery blurry vision of it. But as soon as we test and clarify anything, I will let you guys know in an instant.

And yes, we plan to go open beta with multiplayer! So soon you will be able to hack your friends or being hacked!... Well, not very soon, actually, but cheer up! We have some interesting meta-stuff in our pockets to show you in the near future, so stay tuned