next »

[Louard]

Sorry, folks, spent many, MANY hours in my kitchen washing utensils, pots and pans and all manner of cooking wares as, apparently, that's a thing you have to do after getting your place fumigated... Bummer...

BUUUT...

I did finish up the design draft for Level 2-2.



Basically, it's a simple continuation of the work I had started last week but with tweaks to the difficulty (such as replacing some rotators with safe platforms and closing gaps) as well as integrating coins, pick-ups and stars.

Something else I did was to make the rotators shiny!



A loose rule I've been following for Suzy's development has been to use the same, simple material on all solid surfaces. This allows almost every static object and every dynamic object to be batched together along with giving the game a distinct and cohesive look. However, I decided to break this rule for the rotators and give them faked specular highlights in order to better sell their motion, especially when running on top of large rotators which take up most of the screen. See, the problem in those cases is that the silhouette of the rotator isn't visible so there are few cues to give you a good sense of the block's rotation. Seeing the highlight crawl over the surface helps immensely with this.

Finally, I've started working on the technical setup for Level 5-2. The level will have Suzy trying to escape an avalanche of sorts while sliding down snowy hills. So I got to work on the avalanche ball of death!



The GIF is kinda choppy but I think it still gets across the sense of urgency.

Bad news for next week. I've been putting off working on my wife and mine's annual animated holiday card but I must put off no longer. I figure most, if not all, of my week will be spent working on the card so I'm not sure I should promise anything Suzy related. Check back in anyway, though, as we never know!

[jctwood]

Really nice to see these rules forming around the design philosophies of the game. It seems like that is incredibly important when making anything cohesive, as you put it. The powerup hats on enemies and the specularity on the rotators is very clever!

[Louard]

I wanted to take the time to wish everyone a great holiday season, and to thank all of you for coming along with Suzy and myself on this great journey!

I don't plan to work on the game all that much for the next week or so and will, likely, be skipping the next two updates. Keep checking back in for Suzy's return to the blogosphere after Christmas.

Happy Holidays!
Joyeuses Fêtes!
¡Felices Fiestas!

[Louard]

Just a quicky for anyone checking in this week as I've not much to report having taken, pretty much the whole week off.
I did, however, attempt to re-model the lettering used on the title screen. Though I didn't like the results and scrapped the work, I did decide to re-shade the title letters by hand rather than continue using the the old lightmapped letters. Here is a side by side of the old and new for comparison:




As you can hopefully see, the old shading was splotchy and less well defined.

Oh, and I'm working on this...



I'll let all of you speculate about it.

Ok, come back next week for my first real update of the new year! See you all in 2017!

[Louard]

Happy 2017 everybody! First update of the year! Hopefully the first update of the year all of you finally get to play Suzy Cube!!


No promises...



Ok, so, first thing's first, progress on the pig from last week...



It's a piggy bank! And it's shiny!



Now, it won't just be sitting there spinning in the game, that's just to show off the shininess. The idea is that if Suzy comes across one of these hidden piggy banks, it'll freak out and run away. If Suzy can chase it down and bop it, it'll explode in a shower of coins!

It's just one of those fun, smile inducing surprises.

The meat of my week was spent working on that fabled rejiggering of the level select screen! Ok.. half my week... Monday was a holiday and I caught a cold over the holidays... Anywho! LEVEL SELECT!

The big change I.m working on is to move from a paged system to a scrollview for the world selection. It looks like this:



The reason for the change is that swiping from world to world is much more natural on a touch screen, and I wanted folks using other input devices, like controllers, to be able to intuitively move between worlds by simply selecting past the leftmost or rightmost levels in a world. This, by the way, isn't natively supported by the scrollviews in Unity so I experimented with this custom functionality in a clean blank scene.



In this scene, selecting any of the buttons will cause the scrollview to move to center that button on screen. Which looks like this:



And, BTW it feels really natural when using a controller.

That's really the meat of this redesign, but I'm also going to be taking the opportunity to address some bugs and change up other bits of functionality. I expect to be on this well into next week. So, please, check in next week even though I know UI redesigns aren't the world's most exciting topic!

Together, we can get this done! 2017!!

[Ishi]

No topic is too dull for a devlog! This is what a lot of game development is about and it's always interesting to hear how people tackle different things, not just the flashy stuff.

[Zorg]

Please keep blogging. It is interesting. It is simply impossible to read/comment on everything.

You could use another color for the letters on the title screen. Any color will do.

P.S.: The shiny pig is great.

Edit:
Maybe it turned out way too playful, but i'm sure a saturated logo would give some life to your title screen:

[Louard]

OMG ZORG I'M FREAKING OUT!!! 1st Suzy Cube Fanart!!!!

Indeed, a little zannier than I'm looking for but has certainly lit a fire in me to spruce it up further!! Thank you so much! The logo is super creative!

[Louard]

Well, hey folks! Small change of plans. A friend of mine convinced me to enter Suzy Cube into the 2017 IndiePlus contest:
http://indieplus.game/

This has, mostly, meant concentrating on making the necessary changes to send a build to the contest rather than strict forward progress.

Thankfully, the contest does not require games to be finished. This is good as I don't have time to finish the game in a week. What I did have time to do, however was make this sign to plop into all the stubbed in levels currently taking the place of unfinished stages.



What this also means is that I had to move some progress impeding bugs to the top of my stack. Primarily, a couple bugs in Level 2-B.



One bug made it impossible to get an opening on the boss during his third attack sequence. No opening, basically meant an unbeatable boss fight... Which is problematic...



The other bug involved simply adding this gift box containing a Double Jump power-up next to one of the checkpoints. This was really just a boneheaded oversight on my part as the level requires the use of the power-up to proceed but the placement of this one checkpoint made it possible to respawn with no way of actually getting off the starting platform. Whoops! Well, Double Jump added and problem solved!

I also took the opportunity while I was in there to fix a number of other boss related bugs. So all in all, boss fights are in better shape now.

Finally, I did get a little work done on the Level Select screen. Most notably has been building upon my work from last week to now have the world pages automatically center after dragging. Simply put, once you lift your finger after a drag, a simple function loops through the page positions and figures out which one is closest to center of the screen and automatically centers on that page. It feels really natural on mobile, just like swiping between pages of your Home Screen.



Oh.. I do have this other issue I just can't seem to figure out. I don't know when it happened, but at some point, my pause menu became unresponsive to mouse and touch input. Still works with a controller, but completely unresponsive to taps and clicks. Kind of a problem as it means there's no way of returning to the game after pausing!



I would really like to figure out a fix for this before sending a build to the contest...

Next week, I plan to send a build out early enough to give me time to react to any issues with the submission process. After that, it's back to the Level Select screen and the last couple of improvements I have planned. Check back in to see how it all went.

[nu_muso]

This is all kinds of awesome! All the best with IndiePlus, you should do well

[Tuba]

Feel bad for noticing this only now. The game has a cool Mario64-ish vibe, looks pretty fun.

Good luck!

[Louard]

As usual, thanks to everyone following for your kind words and encouragement!

I concentrated on getting build up for the IndiePlus 2017 competition this week. I'm glad the upload process to TestFlight went off problem free. On my crappy internet, I usually have to retry the upload several times. This time, no connection interruptions and uploads finished pretty quickly. I uploaded one build, like, Wednesday with a couple stopgap hacks but then uploaded an updated build on Thursday which, among a couple smaller changes, fixed the infuriating pause menu bug from last week.

If I can go on a short tangent... Unity folks: Turns out what made my pause menu unresponsive to taps and clicks was the inclusion of a canvas component on the menu's parent panel... I did this to avoid Unity having to re-batch the whole UI just to animate the pause menu but it also caused this bug. Still don't get it. I removed the canvas component and the menu started working again. Performance doesn't seem affected really, so, whatevs!

OK, back to the update!

So, other than getting the build ready and uploaded for the contest, I also finished the implementation for the Piggy Bank.. uh.. not enemy?



It's behaviour is super simple. It just perpetually runs away from Suzy, just a tiny bit slower than her run speed. Trapping it in a corner works best for actually popping it and getting that sweet sweet shower of coins!



I've also made good progress on Level 5-2, the one with the rolling snow boulder. I've adding obstacles and hazards to the slopes and decided to use teleporters between distinct sections in order to get around the problem of checkpoints.

You see the issue is in ensuring the boulder doesn't just start at the beginning of the level after a respawn. Instead, I split the level into distinct sections each with its own boulder which is usually triggered by Suzy sliding down the first slope of the section.

Anywho. Next week, I'll be concentrating on more level design. I've decided to shelve the further changes to the Level Select screen I'm planning to do as getting the levels done is really what's holding up the next round of testing which needs to happen sooner rather than later.

See you all next week!

[Louard]

Hey, folks! Looky what we've got! Level 5-2 all up and drafted! I put the finishing touches on the initial design yesterday. I think the stage will be a fittingly challenging one which should be a nice fit for World 5 and be a perfect lead-in to the more relaxed feel of Level 5-3. The constant pressure of the Impending-Snow-Boulder-of-Doom certainly helps keep the tension high throughout the stage, and the varied obstacles should keep our little Suzy on her toes. (if she had toes)



I am starting to get a sense of there being a light at the end of the tunnel. My level design to-do list now only has four regular levels and four special levels left on it!

Before we all get too excited, though, I must remind all of you... And myself... That once I get through this list, I will have a draft version of every level done. This will lead into several rounds of user testing and iterations to improve the levels before gradually giving way to levels getting nailed down and ready for final decoration. Completing the level drafts is, of course, a HUGE step toward releasing Suzy Cube, but it is by no means the final step. Much work still lies ahead!

Though this first design pass isn't meant to include any decorations, I did have to put in one little thing...


Oh no!

In case players don't immediately get that the big rolling snow boulder is dangerous, maybe noticing this poor frosty dude totally eating it will help drive the point home.

That's actually it for this week. Pretty much concentrated on the level the whole time. By yesterday afternoon, I started on the paper design for the next stage, but nothing ready to show yet. Check in next week to see my progress.

Ciao!

[Louard]

Been hard at work on Level 3-4. A wet, water filled forest level brimming with logs and rafts to float on!



I had other duties this week, so I wasn't able to finish the initial design pass on the level, though I'm continuing work this afternoon. The early bit of my week was spent finalizing the paper design and coming up with a nice, cheap and stylized solution for all that flowing water needed in the level.

I really wanted to reuse an existing scrolling material I had created for other animated water effects. In the end I ended up mapping a square, split into strips, onto a simple straight gradient section of my water effects texture atlas.



By offsetting the trips which make up the plane, I was able to create a wave-like effect.



This is what it looks like in motion...



And with added particles, the waterfall effect is complete!



Oh! Another neat thing I did in this level was to get around the challenge of trying to maintain spatial continuity by using a fake cave entrance leading to a connecting section of the level which gives the impression of Suzy traveling behind the waterfall in order to emerge in the next section of the level.



In truth, these passageways are actually teleporters and none of these bits of the level are actually anywhere near each other ^_^
It's Movie Magic!

Well, that's it for this week. I've got to get back to my watery playground!
See you all next week!

[Tuba]

Nice waterfall effect.

[Louard]

Ok, gonna keep it short and sweet this week as I've been goofing off most of the morning and really should get back to work!

Level 3-4 design draft? Done!



If you fancy a nice stroll down some rapids, then this is definitely the level for you!



Took me longer than expected to get the level to this point, so it took me until Thursday to, finally, put pencil to paper on the next stage, 4-4. Hope to have more progress to share on that level next week... Along with more on this mean lookin' character!



What's it all about!? Why is it holding a bone!?

Check in next week to find out.
Bye for now!

[nu_muso]

I love water so this is my kind of level! He does look pretty mean. Some kind of pirate? I guess we'll find out next week. I'm enjoying these updates by the way. Keep it up 

[Manaflow]

Oh no. It's one eyed Jack!
The water affects look really neat! I've always wanted to make cool water effects for my own games.

[PlatinumLifeOW]

Nice work so far looks fun .

[Louard]

Well, holy crapola! Suzy Cube is one of 10 finalists to the IndiePlus competition!! That means I'm going to be flying to San Fran in two weeks for GDC after all since I've been invited to attend the winner's ceremony/party!

And THAT means my work on the game has been completely derailed in favour of prepping for the conference!

Last year, I think, I spent nearly two months preparing for GDC, this year, I got a week and a half! So, I'll be preparing promo materials.. Like this sweet ass poster...



... And also decorating a couple of levels to use as a showcase at the con. Last year, I put a lot of time into all of World 1 in order to have a nice demo to show. That much work just isn't feasible this time around so I think concentrating on two levels is a good plan.

Did I get anything done this week besides the poster? (which, BTW, I had to touch up from screen captures from Unity as I don't own 3D rendering software! Suzy herself is a complete vector trace-over of her in-game model!)

Well, yes, yes I did get something done! I've started work prettying up Level 3-4 for GDC. The waterfalls are cool, so I think it'll be a nice showcase level... Should have screens for you next week before I fly off.

I also finished work on the eyepatch wearing Skull from last week... What's it do!?



Yep, it's basically a Hammer Bro.

It can throw any manner of trinket, but I pre-made two versions, one which thrown bones (as seen above) and one which throws BOMBS!!! Mwahahaha!

Well, that's it for this week's update... I'm going to go back to freaking the hell out about GDC!!

BTW, If you're going to be at GDC and want to meet up and play the game, hit me up on Twitter (@LouardOnGames)

See you next week!