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[Humble Constructor]

I have been developing my first game for two months. It is a simple 3D puzzle, in which the ball player jumps on cube blocks. When the player jumps on a block, the block is repainted to the player color. The player can also change self color by jumping into the jar of paint. The goal of the game is to paint all the blocks to specified colors. The task is complicated by the rule that the player can't jump on blocks of the same color as himself, but he can walk on all sides of blocks. So, you have to think hard to find the right path through a level.

Besides of basic blocks and jars of paint, a level may contain another game elements: destructible blocks, doors, portals, etc. Exact list of them has yet to be determined. I hope, that in addition to classical elements like buttons and lifts, I will be able to make some more uncommon ones that uses color mechanics. For example, it may be a palette block, color of which is mixed with the player's color when the player steps on it.





Levels

There are three types of levels in the game: common, bonus, and milestone. Bonus levels are more difficult than common, but they may be skipped. Milestone levels introduces new game elements like destructible blocks or portals. There are several levels available to the player at any given moment of time. Exact number depends on how far the player progressed in the game.

There is the level panel on the top of the screen. It gives an overview of the current progress and shows what comes next. Levels of different types looks different on that panel. I think the level panel should encourage the player's interest. But decision of showing the level panel all the time is questionable, so I would like to hear your opinions.

Current state

By this time I've done first demo, which contains 25 levels and 2 game elements: jar of paint and destructible block. Current version isn't polished enough. I'm going to improve animation of the ball, add some effects, like splashes from ball's jumps, and make block repainting more interesting. UI animation is also requires some work. As for graphics, it most likely remains the same. And, of course, I'm going to add more game objects.

I would like to hear what you think about it. Can such game be interesting for someone? Could it be sold on Steam? Sometimes I think, that nobody likes puzzles :-) My friends told me that such gameplay fit better to mobile, and I surely agree with that, but I really want to focus on PC for now, because I have no experience with mobile at all.

[Humble Constructor]

It's over a month since my last post - a long time! I know, I should update my log more frequently, but it was so difficult for me to start writing in english, so I was putting this off as long as possible. Hopefully, I will report on my progress more frequently now!

To simplify my task I will break the story about changes to several posts. So, I will write about only one change for now, and others will be here in a week.

The refreshed look

No, graphics is still abstract, just the player now is not spherical, but boxy. That change seems important to me: the quadratic basement makes the player looks more surefooted and shows better which cell he is standing on.



The look of blocks changed a bit too. I used a trick with normal smoothing before, that mades blocks seems bumpy. I abandoned that trick later because it complicated modelling of blocks with some details on their faces. Now I think that the new look is not only simplier but also cleaner.

The new boxy player also required a different shape of the jar of paint. So it is now boxy too. I also combined the jar with the block it based on:



New game elements will be designed in such "style" too. I'll tell about them soon!

[Zorg]

I like the idea and style for this game.

In the last screenshot you should use different symbols for red and green (like in the video). I guess it's just a mockup and you planned to re-apply that logic anyway. It's a nice touch. Maybe the symbol could somehow be attached to the paint buckets, too?

Following.

Edit: A cylinder would have been an option for the character, too. I liked the contrast between the cubes (square) and the sphere (circle). Also, "Slinky" movement.

[bittwyst]

This looks like the kind of thing I'd like to play, keep it up

[Pixel Noise]

I think this could work on various platforms - mobile and tablet being possibly the most likely. I see a lot of these type of puzzle games on tablet. It's definitely a cool idea, and one you should continue!

[Humble Constructor]

Thanks, guys! I'm glad to see that you like it!

In the last screenshot you should use different symbols for red and green (like in the video). I guess it's just a mockup and you planned to re-apply that logic anyway. It's a nice touch. Maybe the symbol could somehow be attached to the paint buckets, too?

I decided to reduce number of symbol shapes to only one. The reason is simple: such symbol on the block means the only one thing - 'it should be painted'. There may be another symbols too, with a different meaning. At least it was at some time. But currently there are no other signs except of should-be-painted, so, I'll think about symbols differentiation again. Anyway, old symbols seemed a bit... messy. Maybe I'll try rectangular shapes: square, diamond and triangle.

As for paint buckets, I thought that might work well when buckets were standalone objects. But now they're just an another kind of blocks, and, as I already said, symbols on blocks has the concrete meaning. So, I dropped the idea of visual link between buckets and symbols on blocks. But buckets still may have symbols:



Yes, buckets itself may be (and, sometimes, should be) painted too! Maybe it sounds a bit crazy...

Edit: A cylinder would have been an option for the character, too. I liked the contrast between the cubes (square) and the sphere (circle). Also, "Slinky" movement.

Yeah, I thought about "slinky" movement too! But I honestly don't know why I was not trying cylinder and "slinky" at all Maybe I just forget   But for now I'm almost surely know, that if I start to experiment with it, I'll never done the game. Anyway, thanks for ideas!

[Xonatron]

This game has great presentation. Very elegant and smooth graphics style. I enjoy it.

[Zorg]

I thought you originally introduced different symbols for players with color blindness. I don't think it would be too cluttered, as i already mentioned, in my eyes it's a nice touch because the symbols break up the square world a bit.

Edit: Special plates could feature an additional small step, like the paint buckets.

[Humble Constructor]

Xonatron, thanks!

I thought you originally introduced different symbols for players with color blindness.

Yes, I originally thought about it, but I changed my mind later: it will be too difficult to design all elements in a way that respects color blindness. I'm not sure, is it acceptable to make a game that isn't playable to some people?

Edit: Special plates could feature an additional small step, like the paint buckets.

Sorry, I haven't fully understood what you mean. Is it something like half cubes?

[Zorg]

I mean you could attach plates (thickness around 1/4 cube) to the cubes for the special functions you mentioned. Like you attached the border for the paint buckets.

[Humble Constructor]

Aah, got it! I already used this approach for one game object. I'll show it soon!

[Humble Constructor]

New block repainting animation

From the beginning I considered paint an important part of the game's visual appearance. So, I expect that sooner or later I will have to handle this task. But I wasn't expecting that an implementation of my idea will become so difficult thing! Many days I spent on experiments, several times switched to another tasks, and, finally, here is what I have done:

   

And now, several words about implementation

The idea is pretty simple: prepare a single channel texture which the animation is baked in. In this texture a value 1 means that pixel should be repainted first during animation, 0 - last. Having such a texture and current animation time, shader can do all the rest.

Surprisingly, the main difficulty in this task was the creation of such a texture. The value in this texture should vary very smoothly in the flow direction, but it should be reasonably sharp along the perpendicular direction. I originally thought that I can draw some spots and then blur them. But after experimenting with various blurs, the result was still too far from desired and the animation was jerking. At some point I was even trying not to use a texture and instead write a super-function that would have been calculating the repainting time algorithmically. But that attempt was not successful too.

Finally, I had been achieved an acceptable result using a contour map that is smoothed by the self-made postprocessor:



The left picture is what I painted by hand, the right one - the postprocessing result. This is not a generic solution, the postprocessor works only for my specific task because smoothing guides are hardcoded in it.

It may be not oblivious, the texture is mapped onto a block in this way:

   

Does the solution cost these efforts? I don't know. I think, an artist could make more effect with less work. But my game is going this way 

[Xonatron]

Great effect so far! And interesting implementation (animation baked into the texture)!

[Humble Constructor]

Paint splashes

After I have improved the block repainting animation, I decided to get into the second long-planned thing - the animation of paint in jars. I originally thought that spray should fly out of a jar when the player jumps in or out of it. So I expected that I would use a particle system for this effect. But after some experiments this approach was seemed to me somehow wrong, and I tried a scrolling texture:



Yes, it look pretty bad. Of course, it isn't a final version. But anyway, it wasn't suit, because it looks more like tree leaves, not like paint (normal maps didn't help too). Then I finally decided to search for some references - how should paint act in such a situation? And I found this video, which cleared things up.

Then I spent some time with blend shapes and in the end I got this:





Not an ideal, but I'm nearly pleased with it.

Twitter

I have been trying to highlight developing on Twitter for some time. This devlog is still lagging behind it, so, you can see something new in Twitter.

[bittwyst]

Looks awesome

[Zorg]

Very nice touches!

I had this idea of a slight splash rotation. While being completely unrealistic, it might look good(?). The rotation is too fast in this sketch, but i think you get what i mean.

[Humble Constructor]

Thanks, guys!

I had this idea of a slight splash rotation. While being completely unrealistic, it might look good(?). The rotation is too fast in this sketch, but i think you get what i mean.

For me this seems a bit odd, but I understand that how it seems may be quite different from how it'll really looks like. Actually, there is so much things that could be improved in a splash! But I'm currently focused on finishing the game, so I don't want to get into any experiments with the appearance. The thing is that I'm making this game fulltime, on my own money, and I do this first time. And I have a family. So there is not so much options for me: get a job and switch to part-time development soon, or finish the game soon... and then get a job Needless to say, the second option attracts me more. The finishing of a product is an experience that will help me later with my next games (I hope).

[jctwood]

This is a beautiful project and I absolutely love the little design touches and visual feedback you are adding. Do you have any plans for the background of the game? I can imagine some kind of paint factory moving along paint cans. Also what is the game being built in?