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[gimymblert]

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[TRASEVOL_DOG]

Oh man !!! That dragon looks AWESOME !! The game overall looks really nice too ! But that dragon tho !!

[Louard]

I like the buns/ears, from a game design point of view it makes it way easier to quickly read which direction the player is facing.

One thing I felt from this gif is that Suzy's shadow could do with being a lot darker - when you jump on the enemy it's hard to judge where Suzy is, and the shadows are also very hard to see on the mesh floor.

Other than that it's looking great, nice to see a lot of effort put into the boss! Looks like it'll be fun to fight without being frustrating.

Ya... I've made a note for myself to look into lightening the mesh floor so the shadow shows up better. I definitely have some wiggle room to make the shadows more apparent too.

Good call on the buns helping with character facing... Didn't have to say it myself ^_^

[Louard]

It's update time, oh yes it's update time!

Spent the week working on Level 2-3, a snow themed level, and a bunch of stuff relating to it. For instance, I wrote a script that allows me to create triggers that can temporarily change pretty much any setting related to how the character handles. This allowed me to create sliding slopes and icy slippery areas too!

I created these pick-up style rings which make coins appear. Getting all the blue coins before the timer runs out will earn you a star. You'll want to find stars because some levels will be locked unless you have a certain number of stars.

I also modelled and implemented these nifty archways which are really just invisible teleporters that make it seem like two parts of a level are physically linked when they are not. This should be really useful to have in my toolbox going forward.

Oh, and I started the week by modelling a number of snow themed props to get into the spirit of things. You can see a small sampling below...







Well, That's it for this week. I should have the first pass at this level done early next week, allowing me to move on to other stuff. Man... I can't wait to get to the point where I can make a new level without having to implement any new features... Alas, I'm not there yet! I must continue filling my toolbox!

See you next time!

[noeinz]

Hello Louard,
Your game looks great. It definitely has the mario feel to it. I was wondering how are you doing the game controller on the ios touchscreen. The gifs make the sequence look very responsive. I usually don't favour platforming games on the mobile because the controller doesn't translate the best.

[Louard]

Look, noeinz, I would love to tell you that Suzy Cube will change your mind about platforming on a touch screen, but I mean, it's still a touch screen. That being said, I do take the problem really seriously and have taken a number of steps to improve game play on the platform. In fact, I plan do write a whole Lessons From Suzy (http://louardongames.blogspot.com/search/label/Lessons%20from%20Suzy%20Cube) post about it.

But, to give you a bit of an answer, for the virtual d-pad part of it anyway, I'm actually using InControl (from the Unity Asset Store) to handle inputs and it comes with a configurable virtual analogue stick template. I'm using an invisible stick that's floating (reposition's based on where you put your thumb down), which I have traditionally not liked, but it's also draggable.. This makes all the difference! I can not stress this enough!

As for the gifs. Sorry to say, but they are all captured from the editor on my Mac, mostly using the keyboard and sometimes using a 360 controller... ^_^

[noeinz]

Thanks for the informative reply. Looking forward to your updates and blog post about the control scheme that you will implement. you seem to have a very good foundation about level designing the game.

[Louard]

First I want to encourage all of you (noeinz especially) to check out the latest instalment of Lessons From Suzy Cube all about making the game feel great to play on a touch screen: http://louardongames.blogspot.com/2015/10/lessons-from-suzy-cube-mobile-controls.html

Now for the update!

I mostly did some bug fixing and getting around to backlog stuff this week.

I started the week by making a variation of my chaser enemy which looks like a snowman head... And hides as a snowman's head!



Getting these right also meant addressing some bugs in the chaser behaviour which were totally overdue.

I also wrote myself a super useful debug script which follows the player around spawning cubes at regular intervals. What's really neat is that I can copy the cubes in play mode and then paste them back into the scene in edit mode to use them as a template for placing stuff like coins to perfectly match the player's path or jump arc. It's been extremely useful on level 2-3 with all the slides and jump pads.



What else, what else? Oh! Wrote a little script to make particle effects that ignore the time scale. When Suzy is hit or gets a power up, there's a slight pause or slowdown that many people were assuming was a bug or chugging.. hopefully this will help make the effect look more intentional.. as intended...



And, finally, I created a set of gradient assets using a custom vertex alpha shader. They should be really useful for making blocks look like they are cut off or receding into darkness.. OR LAVA!!





Well, that's it for this week. Halo 5 just came out, so I make no promises for next week!

[Keops]

This is beautiful! I love 3D platformers and this one looks amazing. The gif animations have a great vitality, I can almost feel the tightness of the controls. Great visual feedback when jumping, stomping baddies and collecting things. Really looking forward to seeing more of this project!

[ProgramGamer]

Technical details are technically interesting!

[flipswitchx]

Freakin' adorable I love it. Interesting and well written blog entries on game design as well 

[Louard]

Okay! This week I started things off by making a placeholder tutorial screen:



More importantly, though, I set up the first user experience flow. I decided to change things up if it's your first time launching the game. Instead of taking you to the level select, I will take you to the aforementioned tutorial screen and then straight to Level 1-1. Why make you suffer through clicking your way around a level select screen that means nothing to you yet!? Straight to gameplay, baby!

Similarly, I've also set up the tester flow with an extra screen with instructions for logging into Everyplay using the test account and a button to do just that.

And the rest of my week was spent working on a new level, Level 4-3.



The level is split up into three towers, but when you're playing, you have the impression that you are simply racing down a single long tower, trying to outrun the giant spiked crusher that is chasing you down the whole time. A big part of why the level is spit up into three parts like this is to help accommodate checkpoints and the big crusher.

Speaking of crushers, there are also many smaller ones sprinkled throughout your harrowing escape down the tower.. you know, cuz I'm mean like that sometime ^_~



I also wrote another Lessons From Suzy Cube post which I invite you all to read. This one is all about the culling system I wrote to allow the game to run nice and fast, even on my iPod Touch.
http://louardongames.blogspot.com/2015/11/lessons-from-suzy-cube-improved-mobile.html

I am currently debating whether or not to attend GCD in SanFran in March. If I do, it will have a huge effect on my priority list as I will concentrate on making World 1 look all finished and stuff. Anywho, still on the fence about it so I will keep all of you posted.

[Pineapple]

I really love the style of this. Nice art and animation!

[Osteel]

I just want to say I love everything about this game and really captures the 'mario 64' vibe really well (not sure if that was intended).

I have a question as well. I'm just wondering why you chose to go the mobile route with a 3D platformer game and not do it on PC and stick it on Steam or something? Either way, looking forward to getting to play it.

[noeinz]

Loving your progress. the snow man heads are so clever. i like the hat trick you got going on there too.

I did something similar like your cube generating idea but mine was a trail renderer with a long lasting time to see the players pattern.

I have been reading a lot about vertex shaders and wondering if I can somehow use it in my games. Have not found a good use yet.

Great idea for your tower drop. Makes sense to build it modular. I've done vertical platforming as well but to get replayibility on mine I loaded modular blocks to generate new towers everytime. Yours is a story game so you dont necessarily need random blocks to load but maybe you can reuse it as a minigame outside of your linear progression.
e.g. https://raheelzubair.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/screens03.jpg

I cannot wait to read your blog updates about control mechanics and gameplay. You seem to be very experienced in the subject matter.

[Louard]

Osteel: For the love of the platform, really. Like I've mentioned before, I'm not closing the door to any platforms at this point in development, but I'm targeting mobile first because it's a game I always wish I could have been playing on my iPod ^_^.. Especially after getting a controller!

Noeinz: Ya, procedural content shuffling wouldn't really make sense for Suzy, but I have several ideas written up for other games that would involve some type of randomization/procedural generation. As a dev, it's very attractive to me because it means working on a game that you can play yourself ^_^.. I mean, Suzy is fun and all, but I know every level perfectly. Even Notch never knows the layout of a new Minecraft world!

[gimymblert]

SO I catch up the tab about control, good job because that's definitely genius, are you the first to come up with the drag idea? because damn!

[Louard]

Well, Jimym, It does work surprisingly well, but I can't take credit for it. It's just one of the settings in the InControl virtual joystick component. Thank Gallant Games for that one!
Ya, a friend of mine is experimenting with the same kind of joystick in his latest project after playing Suzy Cube.

[tylerfunk]

Osteel: For the love of the platform, really. Like I've mentioned before, I'm not closing the door to any platforms at this point in development, but I'm targeting mobile first because it's a game I always wish I could have been playing on my iPod ^_^.. Especially after getting a controller!

I'm not trying to sway your opinion or say what you should do, so don't take this that way.

It's really good to see a 3D platformer of this quality being released on mobile (there's never enough of those) but I have an android phone, and while it's great to game on, it has limited memory. I'm worried that I wouldn't be able to get this game since anything over 40mbs would be too much. Lol.

Since you're already playing on a pc to test it, it would be super easy to release on computers as well since it's made to use as little processing power as possible (as you said to put it on moblie). Pretty much any computer could run it, so playtesting wouldn't be that difficult. You could just use itch.io to release it at the same time as mobile for the same price and all would be good. You can even sell android versions straight from the site (I believe). It'd a extremely simple setup, and it gets decent traffic as well hosting hundreds of game jams.

TL;DR
You could release on computer through itch.io so that us peoples who don't have a lot of memory on our smartphones can play as well.

[Cranktrain]

You could release on computer through itch.io so that us peoples who don't have a lot of memory on our smartphones can play as well.

Honestly, I don't think this game would have a problem getting on Steam, with just a little extra effort making sure it's not a haphazard mobile port. I too would be keen to play this game on PC, but don't actually have a smart-phone, and it would be a shame for it to only exist on mobile, where the control mechanism would appear to suit it the least. But as you say, it's Louard's decision!