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[11clock]

We finished the jam (a few days ago actually) with great success!





The team has found this jam to be very useful. We now have a nicely established core gameplay loop. We are still working on it and will be doing a post-jam update, but we like the new direction for the game.

Please look at the playtesting topic here and provide feedback:
https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=59347.0
At this stage in development, feedback is very crucial, so it would be greatly appreciated if you test the game and provide critique!

In the meantime, the artists in the team are performing their own jam. More details on that soon.

[11clock]

I updated the Gameplay section of the OP.

-The game plays out as a turn-based combat-focused RPG.
-The battle system rewards both strategic play and timing skill.
-Perform series of button sequences to boost your attacks and deal more damage.
-Use a multi-directional dodge system to avoid damage from enemies. Watch enemy behaviors closely in order to dodge efficiently.
-Position plays an important role. Enemies take formations in rows and columns, and affect surrounding enemies based on their positions. Examples: Enemies holding melee weapons protect units behind them from melee attacks by slashing at whoever is trying to bypass them, and some enemies throw down splash potions to heal enemies around them. Also, some of your attacks are more efficient on specific formation shapes.
-Learn new moves for your party as the game progresses, and be able to upgrade their power at the cost of making them less energy efficient and intensifying their button sequences.
-Various spins on the RPG formula to minimize grinding. Items are consumables that recharge between levels, you obtain experience points for upgrades from defeating bosses, and clearing non-boss levels unlocks new items and abilities instead of experience points.
-Linear level progression, and levels are mainly cutscenes and combat. Exploration isn't a focus for this game.
-More to come as we make more progress.

[RayRay26]

Random post-jam update. Did a turn order overhaul based on suggestions. The new order is that all player characters go first in the order you like, then the enemies go at random. After the enemies finish, then a new round starts.



Notice how at first Kleeg has "next character" and Cyu has "do nothing." Once Cyu goes, then Kleeg has "do nothing." Selecting "do nothing" ends your turn for all the characters. After both Kleeg and Cyu go, the enemies go next. After you skip Kleeg, you can go back by pressing X, but once he goes this won't work.
On side notes, the players recover 4 EP on the next round instead of 10 EP on the next wave. The button prompt colors are based on the input required.

[mischa]

SUPER IMPORTANT GRAPHIC UPDATE

We simplified the look of the characters from the more complex Unity version. We believe this art style is a lot more home in the coded universe. This style was also easier to animate and draw, which means the development process should go a lot faster. Rik is now not only in charge of creating the character designs but is also helping with animating. This has sped up the process a lot too

Our focus right now is to implement these graphics into the version of the game we made in the game jam. The backgrounds will be unchanged from the Unity version (the ones Jorge made a while ago).
We'll be and adding more fun levels, characters and features after we finish this step!






view more images at http://imgur.com/a/hIGyh

[RayRay26]

Almost done with the post-jam version of Beat Brawl. Here's our new boss Esher. Currently he only has Bomb Hax, and he will get Sword Hax and Binary Digits later. You might also notice several other changes about the game too.
EDIT: Should also mention that he looks like a Bandit, but he will definitely get a new sassy sprite soon.


Targets menu is gone and now you just directly select the target. Back option is also available, which you can select with Z. Good for mouse and touch controls.
Bomb Hax: summons a bomb, and you gotta punch it. At half health, it's two smaller bombs. We have plans to add a symbol to indicate that you should punch this kind of stuff. Also in the first gif, you see the transition to the second phase, where you get 20 HP (the bar flashes, too). Notice that Kleeg can go again, indicating a new round. The second gif shows where Esher is really at when he clones himself. Not shown, but he summons 8 clones at quarter health.

[11clock]

Beat Brawl 1.1 Update



Download Links:
http://gamejolt.com/games/beat-brawl/225608
https://app.box.com/s/u6xki6u4hsl02q9uf9ix0ivycvje7y24

Playtesting Topic:
https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=59347.0
(Please playtest and provide feedback!)

-Heavily modified the battle system based on player feedback and personal critique. Worth a second playthrough!
-Countless tweaks and changes to improve the experience.
-A brand-new two-phase boss battle!

With this out of the way, the team will be moving on to creating Coded Universe in Unity! We are also looking for a new name for the game, because we feel that the current name does not capture the spirit of the game ("Universe" hints at a large world to explore when this game's world is pretty small and all about combat and boss battles rather than exploration).

[11clock]

Some concepts for the new art direction:

[11clock]

We have officially started the Unity project!
We are working in Unity and making the engine with a new set of rules and guidelines. A lot to keep track of, but we will be using a programming doc to keep up to date with the regulations.
The game will be in 3D but use 2D assets and function like a popup book.
This is what it looks like at the moment:



We also have most of the logic for the battle system in place.
Also, today RayRay and I set up Floobits! It allows us to work on code in realtime.
We also have Unity Collaborate active, which is like a pseudo source control system. Not as powerful as subversion and git, but it is very easy and convenient to use. Not very compatible with subversion though so we may have to ditch subversion.
We made a Popup Transform class to make the popup perspective very easy to work with:



It was mainly a technical week, but it will be smooth going from here!

In other news, Rik has been experimenting with a new dodge animation. It may be the one that we will use.

[11clock]

Completed the dodge mechanics, including the animation.

[RayRay26]

It's been a bit of time since I posted here. But now since we started remaking the game, we're almost finished with the move system and the menu for the ally phase. HD MENUS!

[RayRay26]

Even more progress! We're blazing through porting Beat Brawl into Unity. Our move system is a lot easier to work with, and scripting is a lot more convenient. Here's Bandit's Machete Slash:

And here's the HD version of the action commands (and a peek at Kleeg!):

[11clock]

We have been working on the damage system for moves and polishing up the moves themselves. Here are the two variations of Machete Bandit's sword attacks:


(This is an updated version of what was shown in the previous post.)



There has been a technical issue with our game in regards to hitboxes. It is in 3D but uses 2D assets. The assets are tilted in the same angle as the camera to "hide" their 2D.



Basically, the y axis is slanted. This means that we cannot use box-shaped hitboxes for attacks, and must instead use slanted boxes. Unfortunately, Unity does not give us that kind of flexibility for hitboxes, but we came up with a solution: two triangular prisms and a box stitched together:



Behold, the appearance of damage numbers!


(This may or may not be their final design.)

Finally, we have been playing around with how to do backgrounds. Here are a couple of attempts:





The team has met today to discuss the past two months. We have liked that we have done the Beat Brawl prototype in January, since it gives us a nice basis on what the game will end up being like. In February, we have been focusing on creating what is essentially an HD Beat Brawl, complete with 2.5D graphics and skeleton animations for characters. We were aiming to have this ready by the end of February, but it took us a lot longer than expected to learn Spine integration into Unity, and there have been some complications with moving everything to 3D and rewriting the engine in C#. Fortunately, we have most of the building blocks for making this game in place now, so we are expecting to move faster in March. Our goal for March is to have a complete HD Beat Brawl with all content from the original Beat Brawl, and a bunch of nice fancy effects for quality and game feel.

If all goes well for March, April will focus on story and cutscenes. We have been discussing making the story themed more about a virtual world where all of the inhabitants have a driving urge to fight due to long periods of peace leading to extreme boredom. The will to fight is fueled by the fact that unnatural death merely means respawning later thanks to the virtual nature of the world.

Currently, we have not decided on a new name for the game. If anyone has any ideas, please pitch.

[RayRay26]

Turns out using rhombus colliders and everything logic-based with our custom transforms was very inefficient, so the solution was to make it change position on render. Rhombus colliders became unnecessary, with box colliders sufficing. Everything remains the same look, though.

Now for the good part! We finished integrated Beat Brawl's action commands and hitstun code! (the difference between the previous action command showcase and this one is that moves can have action command patterns; rank of the action command also now comes into play with damage)

Also as a bonus, I took in my intro-loop music engine. You can see it working at the bottom-left.

[11clock]

It was difficult for me to work on Coded Universe last week, and it is totally not because of Breath of the Wild. Not at all.

Behold, dynamic camera system, plus a vignette shader!





I also made a new enemy, Crossbow Bandit, but he looks kind of lame at the moment. I will show him off once we have a fancier projectile system in place.

[11clock]

This gif is pretty much the summary of last week. Screenshake, new projectile effects, and the next wave of enemies walk in after you clear a wave. Hold left mouse button to see the full image more easily.



Also making progress with the Spark Assassin enemy. Pretty dangerous in the early game, and serves as a wakeup call after the easy first level. Will show him off when he is done, in addition to the Crossbow Bandit.

[RayRay26]

We finished the player moves from Beat Brawl! We made some decent progress on the enemies too, but we lack Esher! D:

Ok first, we gotta assemble the assassins.

Now here's Pulse Shot:

And then here's Lightning Punch:

And for what these assassins do, one move is Lightning Slash:

And the other is Chain Lightning:


We have a few polishes for these moves planned, so stick around for the upcoming demo!

[11clock]

Bonus Update: Background progress.

[11clock]

The team has met up again for a monthly meeting. We like the progress that we are making, and the engine is showing an end of completion, but we need more time to polish up what we have and will give ourselves an extra month to polish the game.

I will also be working on transferring the Esher boss fight from Beat Brawl over to the new engine. We want a boss to showcase, since boss fights will be a major focus for the game.

We are also still looking for a new name for the game, since we do not feel that "Coded universe" fully captures the essence of what the game is about. We are looking for suggestions on a new name.

[RayRay26]

And now the background is finished... roughly.

yes we're using the swamp music in the plains

[11clock]

Apologies for lack of a devlog report last week! Here is what we have been up to.

The background has been further fleshed out!



Looks nice but still kind of uninteresting. We plan on improving the background, as well as the UI, next month.

Redesign for Kleeg and Bandit! They will be converted into ingame assets soon.



We also started to improve on the battle animations. Here is a WiP punching animation.



You can now counter-attack enemies!



What we think is the final version of impact effects.