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[rickomax]

Love these graphics 

[AlexVsCoding]

Hey Folks!


After finishing Narcissus and releasing the commercial version, Break N Take was my next chosen project planned to smash out, but I've realised that working on this game is biting off more than I can chew currently for my life at the moment.

Instead, I'm going to be turning my focus to smaller scope games to not only refine the workflow for distributing games on mobile platforms, but also give myself some time to innovate and recover from what was a very intense project, particularly near the end. Note that I do intend to develop Break N Take, but from a financial, health and time perspective it's not a good match for right now.

If you're interested in some of the specific reasons, please read below!


Client Projects
As it stands currently, I am a freelancer and whilst Narcissus has and is making me money, this needs to be supplemented with client projects not only to provide another source of income but also appease other organisations. For example, me and my partner are currently looking for a new apartment, and clients are a lot more reassuring to a landlord than "I have a game that I'm working on". Games tend to show long periods of time without earning money then sudden spikes of cash (If you're lucky!), which can make you more of a risky tenant, and unfortunately Cambridge is a very expensive place to live! I have 3 client projects in the pipeline currently, and it's going to be much harder for me to put time aside to justify building projects of such huge scale without having a stream of income to support it. On top of paid client gigs, I also have other dedications, such as building installations for games festivals (I'll be exhibiting a game installation at EGX Rezzed and another large festival in London at the end of this month!), looking after my own health and being there for my partner, friends and family.

Content Overload
Narcissus is a project that is made up of 50 designed levels. Creating games with manually created content is really really time consuming! It's one of the reasons why procedural generation has become such a popular route when it comes to games development, particularly with cash strapped indies. When I started work on Narcissus, designed levels were the only way I knew of generating content. It took 5 years on and off to finish, it was also my first commercial project so had to learn a lot/make a lot of mistakes.

Alongside working on Narcissus, I've developed and designed around 60-70 different games and prototypes. From a combination of working on these games and teaching games development to others, I can now flesh out the bulk of a game (Content depending) significantly faster than when I started games development.

For example, back in December, I completed a client project, which I amazed myself with how quickly I built it (Approximately 4 week turnaround for the project from start to finish). In comparison to Narcissus, the majority of the level design for the game was handled through random variables and tracking stats of the player, allowing me to generate a huge number of level combinations.

Whilst I don't imagine any game will ever take me as long to finish again as Narcissus (OR that randomly generated content is an equal substitute for designed levels), I'm aware that jumping straight into another game heavily reliant on linear content could cause burnout and bog me down in another marathon project. I'm currently looking for something shorter to work on with less manually designed content to produce as a cooling off game.

Here's the list of planned features to give you an idea of what I mean of the large ammount of content required for Break N Take:

- Art assets for 5 world zones (as well as connecting transitional zones for each)
- At least 10 unique building types in each zone (As mentioned in my last post)
- A tonne of different block types to mix up gameplay in these areas
- At least 10 enemy types planned as well as other AI
- 10 different super weapons with various levels of upgrading
- The inevitable pile of unforeseen stuff and testing!

A lot of the content for the game would be randomly generated, but there would still be vast chunks of content that would need to be designed due to it's linear nature of moving from settlement to settlement in game (Farm, town, city, millitary base, science base).

I also closely collaborate with a group of developers who have similar timelines with their projects. They also often space their large design heavy projects out with smaller projects inbetween which focus more on mechanics than level design.

Both of these experiences have made me want to focus on a much shorter project to develop - Something that can be built in a two month development cycle maximum, a timescale I don't believe this Break N Take can or should be built within.

Other Fish to Fry
When I finished Narcissus, there was two games that immediately stuck out as projects to take forward: Break N Take and another, Corporate Salmon. Break N Take happened to be the one that took my interest around the time of release of Narcissus from earlier dabbling, so managed to cover a tonne of ground in terms of work on the project (See the above forum posts over the last few weeks!) But, I've soon realised that out of the two games, Corporate Salmon is a much better project to work on in terms of scope as well as several other factors (Easier to learn the controls for for one example). Whilst Break N Take relies on the placement of blocks in the level to dictate the variety of the game, Corporate Salmon has an moving escalator as a set level design and the enemies and obstacles in the level to provide the variety of gameplay. This will allow me to focus more of my time to refining the gameplay and polish of the game.

Getting a couple more coals in the Fire
Whilst Narcissus did earn me enough money to work on my next project, getting a couple of extra projects bringing in revenue would definitely help me financially justify the time working on a larger project such as Break N Take. I cannot describe the satisfaction of doing a days work and seeing that at the same time, your game has been generating revenue regardless of your involvement with it. Narcissus from iOS alone (Post feature) will be generating around £15-£20 a day (Of which if the trend continues around £500-£600 a month, although this is could be more or most likely less). Unfortunately Cambridge is a very expensive city to live in, so it still leaves me several hundred pounds short (And inevitably Narcissus will hit 0 downloads a day at some point in the future). If I could get a couple more smaller projects bringing in a similar amount of money, this would free up my time from doing client projects (Very exciting client projects may I add!) to allow me to focus on building something bigger, sustained fully by my own games. 

One silver lining to consider is the messy admin work of setting up my Apple and Google Play accounts are all done, I now know the process of shipping a game from back to front. I just want to test that workflow with a couple of smaller projects first before I get back into the big projects again!

I can't promise anything for the future of Break N Take, there will likely be afternoons and occasions when I need a break from working on other stuff where I'll come back to this project. Rather than a commercial focus, it'll be a side project that I'll dabble with and tweak. I regularly doodle stuff about the project in my notebooks so if a cool feature comes up, I'll add it in.

Thanks for your patience and when I put together a developer log on here for Corporate Salmon I hope you'll indulge the project.

[jctwood]

I really love this project and I do hope you come back to it. Thank you for sharing your thought process with us though, I look forward to your devlog on Corporate Salmon judging by the quality of everything here! I hope to be at EGX Rezzed so I may see you there. Good luck and I hope the sales keep up!

[AlexVsCoding]

I really love this project and I do hope you come back to it. Thank you for sharing your thought process with us though, I look forward to your devlog on Corporate Salmon judging by the quality of everything here! I hope to be at EGX Rezzed so I may see you there. Good luck and I hope the sales keep up!

Thanks! Basically I've gone from having very little going on commercially to everything going on in the space of two months, so I've been having to adapt my life to match! With Corporate Salmon currently, I've gone back to the concept stage (Having already built a copy of the game a while back) since it currently looks like butt.

Spotted your Twitter comment, tbh the two main things I did to get the commercial gigs I'm on was first putting up a showcase of the work I'd done over the years. Literally within a day of doing that and posting it on all media channels I had a current client of mine get in touch.





The other is keeping an eye out for events with various organisations that present opportunities to make and pitch for stuff. One of the clients as an example is The Cambridge Stem Cell research lab, who ran a gamejam with the theme of Stem Cells. From winning that event, we were asked and helped to apply for funding to give us some time to develop the project. Getting a couple of these under your belt then makes it a lot easier approaching future clients.

Cool to hear about EGX! We'll be in the Leftfield Collection (Not sure where that is in the venue), would be good to chat!

[jctwood]

Really nice showreel!

[AlexVsCoding]

Hey Folks!

So I figured I'd add two quick videos to the post before I shift my focus away for a while (Currently building this weekend a HD revamped copy of a game jam submission called Vaccination for EGX Rezzed next month!):

GAMEPLAY FOOTAGE





UI SHOWCASE (MENU AND PAUSE MENU)





Hope you enjoy giving it a look!

[AlexVsCoding]

[flex$]

love what you've done with the original breakout concept here dude. really cool design and you've executed well.

[AlexVsCoding]

Hey Folks!

Finally picking this project back up! Can't believe it's nearly been a year since I posted about the project!

Here's a gif from this week of me remastering the enemies!

SO

In the last year, I've released two other games; SHUMP and Corporate Salmon. Whilst On a trip up to Scotland, I popped open Break N Take to have a little play and realised that the game actually has a decent amount of content!

So, I've decided to make this my next project, but with some changes from when I last worked on it, in particular, the main objective for me is going to be getting a minimum viable product in approximately a month. This includes:

+ Randomly generated city with 3 types of block (Multi-hit, explosive, standard)
- 3 different types of enemy (Cop, soldier, tank)
+ Shop with upgrade tree for 6 weapons
- Game scaling to various devices
- Ad integration/iAP
- Reward ad integration
- Endless play with highscores
- Finalised icon
- SHIPPABLE GAME

This is what is required to have a shippable game, based on how SHUMP does I'll be getting this prepared to release.

Once the above list is exhausted, I'll be cracking on with the following things:
- Get 5 different colour palettes designed and implemented (For different world zones)
- Different tiles for the various levels
- 6 different block types
- Intro and ending
- 6 enemy types in total (Cop, soldier, robot, scientist, tank and drone)
- Get the upgrade number up to 8 and further refine the current ones (I want to add a ball freeze function and possibly a low gravity)
- Bosses
- Scrolling levels (E.g. Wrecking the highway)
- Daily reward (Where you just have a room to abduct as many civilians as possible)
- A much more rigid structure to levels, possibly look at using seeds to generate specific levels (Then connect them with an world map, aim for 50)
- Unique backdrop in each major zone

I'm going to aim to get the baseline game done with any luck by the end of this month, from which I'll evaluate which of the above extra things to implement. Latest I want to ship the game in any state is February.

Stay tuned for updates, and here's an unfortunate clip of how the game's device scaling currently looks!

[FRACTURES]

Looking great. If you're looking for any music or sfx, I'd love to be involved. Latest reel:

+ lots more stuff over at my site fracturesmusic.com

[AlexVsCoding]

Looking great. If you're looking for any music or sfx, I'd love to be involved.

Thanks for the offer, your stuff sounds great but I managed to sort out the soundtrack for this a while back (check out the earlier videos), got music done by Fluke and the sounds I used bfxr!

[FRACTURES]

Looking great. If you're looking for any music or sfx, I'd love to be involved.

Thanks for the offer, your stuff sounds great but I managed to sort out the soundtrack for this a while back (check out the earlier videos), got music done by Fluke and the sounds I used bfxr!

No worries. Glad you found someone. Good luck with the rest of the dev, and maybe keep me in mind for something in the future?

[woodsmoke]

I <3 the colour palette.  We need more breakout games!1!, especially ones like this that add to the classic gameplay.

[AlexVsCoding]

I <3 the colour palette.  We need more breakout games!1!, especially ones like this that add to the classic gameplay.

Thanks! Took me so long to figure out the palette (As you can see from earlier builds). Should be getting some help with various palettes for different zones later in the game!

[AlexVsCoding]

Hey Folks!

Just wanted to do a quick share of what I've been working on!

Over the last few days, I've been fixing the assets in the game to scale correctly on various devices.  Here's the basic, iPhone 5s view first!

Here's the iPad working, with this one I created logic that factored in screen width to the placement of the blocks which can adapt to different screen sizes!

Here's the game on the tall boy that is the iPhone X dimensions - The major tweaking left to do (That 5% mentioned) is going to be looking at shuffling down the camera (So it's not a 50/50 split of screen use) and adjusting the UI accordingly.

For fun, here's how the game looks on a square device! I should note at this point too that all these clips are screen cap footage, so bits may have been cropped off the sides (Not such a good fit now eh)

[AlexVsCoding]

Hey folks! For Screenshot Saturday I've uploaded some longer footage of gameplay!

[AlexVsCoding]

Hey Folks!

Been "another" while since I've posted on this thread, just to let you know that I've been working on the project and it's coming together really nicely!

Here are some of the major features I've added:

+ Return to linear levels: Like with the rest of my games, I wanted a narrative that could be followed from start to finish. Rather than placing blocks individually though, I've created a seed system which allows be to decide the placement of blocks and their animations/states. Break N Take now has 40 levels constructed, with the aim of 50 for launch. At some point in the new year I'll probably do a full write-up on how my seed system works, so stay tuned for that!

One of the lessons I learnt from releasing SHUMP was that some players just want to go through the content at their own pace, so having the game divided up into levels that they can complete in their own time doesn't exclude casual players!

Sidenote that I'll still be using the random content generation I made originally for an arcade/endless mode which will exist alongside the linear game for those wanting a quicker and more intense experience. The seed system also opens up the possiblity of daily challenges rather than absolutely random content, something I'll hopefully be exploring in the new year! 

+ Level select/Overworld: To accompany the now linear design of the narrative, I have a swish looking level select for navigating the game!

+ Revamped tutorial: Unlike before where you had a bunch of civilians running around randomly, the game will begin with you interupting a campfire. It feels very cathartic pushing the button that unleashes the chaos!

Here's the stuff I want to add:

BIG FEATURES:
- Daily Challenge: Using my seed generation systems to create a sequence of levels to be completed daily to keep a flow of fresh content. May be an alternative to the absolutely random levels I previously had.
- Bosses: Got a couple of ideas in mind, one being a motorway chase scene, another a giant walker that fires balls at you that you have to deflect back at it, another a giant drone paddle you play a game of pong with.
- Revamping of enemies: In their current state, I'm not 100% sold on the various enemy types. In the new year I'll be looking at paddle enemies (Drones that block your path which you have to hit) and deciding whether bullets from tanks killing you is a fair option (One option being considered is it adding more balls to the screen which you have to keep from going off the top!) I'm also looking at bombs that you don't want to pick up, cops that shoot and can be abducted, smaller vehicles that can be picked up and dropped and shielded enemies that shelter nearby civilians from being abducted.
- Stats/Weapon info page: Having a page that shows the various weapons in the game, how far along the tech tree you are. You'd also get breakdowns of the various enemies and blocks in the game and maybe even some tips on how to play!
- Merging version of the game: It appears at the moment I have a rogue version of the game out there which has a variety of features in it, such as ad integration and the notifications system. I need to track this down, figure out the differences between the builds and add them to my current version.

Smaller Stuff:
- Ad integration: I think this should be reasonably straightforward for this project, I'm going to have an ad play every x number of deaths. The reward ad is the more interesting element I've got to experiment with, for example, the option to watch an ad to keep the batch of civilians you've lost when you died (to use in the shop in your next playthrough).
- Locking later levels: (Currently you can just play any level in the game)
- Extra SFX: Adding sounds to the menus, currently they're all silent and adding some extra sound effects to gameplay, stuff like the black hole doesn't have any noise and I'm mulling over having a bassy beam noise when it's active.
- "X number of civilians till unlock" marker on the shop screen
- Bug on the shop that causes the game to crash, need to figure out what's causing it
- Have shop fade when all civilians are distributed
- Ad disabling/leaderboards

I'll hopefully be putting up some gameplay footage soon of the new content, if you want a sneak preview, check out my postings on Twitter! https://twitter.com/alexvscoding/status/1075899578036162561

That's all for now, see you in 2019!

[AlexVsCoding]

Hey Folks! Happy New Year!

So after a relaxing week off, I’m back to work on Break N Take!

Whilst I was a lot more chill over Christmas than I anticipated, I managed to get a lot of testing done with folks and the verdict is in…

…

BREAK N TAKE IS TOO FLIPPING HARD

It’s one of the dangers of games development, becoming too accustomed to the difficulty, but in this case it seems to be universally a struggle for folks. From the ball moving too fast to the tutorial being too vague, the game needs more feedback and a smoother curve of difficulty. Here are some ways to consider:

- SLOW THE BALL DOWN: The biggest complaint is the ball is way too fast. The ball mechanics in the game not only include fast movement but an accelerant as the player moves towards the ground. Making this slower is one solution, another I’m considering is making the speed of the ball altered by the activation of the beam, so when the beam activates it slows.
- Better exit functions: At the moment in the heat of gameplay, it’s hard to find an interval to warp without dying. Either adding a temporary slowdown to the game once the appropriate number of players is reached or making the player auto-warp when all humans are abducted would be suitable solutions.
- Convoluted UI: The ball/paddle marker isn’t clear (And to the designers I tested it with thought I’d just forgotten to cover the bottom of the screen). Going to replace it with a percentage marker of how many humans are yet to be abducted.
- Tutorial needs work: Going to add an extra step to introduce the player as the main character, get them used to the controls and the intermingling of the mechanics.
- Shop doesn’t is unclear: Once again, since I’ve spent so much time with the shop, I know the various upgrades and items in there off by heart. I need to overhaul the UI to make it clearer what you’re buying.
- Not clear abduction is still possible without beam being active: I’m tempted to turn off the functionality of the beam when the player isn’t pushing the button to make the mechanics clearer, not 100% sure yet on that one.
- Double ball is overkill: At the moment, after 30 seconds a second ball appears, making it a lot harder to beat the level. At the least, I need to give the player greater warning of this happening but also give the player longer without it.

There’s likely going to be more changes I’ll be doing in the coming days, will hopefully keep you all up to date on here. Stay tuned for more soon!

[AlexVsCoding]

Hey Folks!

Here's a quick update showing the slo-mo in action - Definitely still some work to be done on it!

[AlexVsCoding]

Got the ratings system implemented, a way of locking later levels and added a dedicated level complete screen where the player gets their rating of play!

Another thing I thought I'd mention is I'm planning to axe all the enemy types from the game, such as the tank, soldier and drone.

WHY??? I hear you scream, but there's a couple of reasons:

- The game is already too hard for folks to play, removing additional complications is a good way to improve things
- It doesn't feel satisfying enough killing enemies or being killed by them (The soldiers take ages to kill you in and in contrast, the tank can insta-kill you with one shot which can feel unfair)
- Distracts from the core of gameplay
- More content to polish
- Allows for a greater focus on different block types, such as shield or ice blocks.

Because of these reasons, I'll be cutting them out for now. The plan will be to potentially re-introduce them in an update for the project if there's enough interest in the game. I'm thinking of having the credits being a downward scroll (In contrast to the start of the game) showing resistance fighters/weapons being built to show what'll be coming next. I'd probably call it the "Resistance is futile" update. Thematically, it fits with most alien movies where you have your initial "shock and awe" invasion followed by military fightback (Independence Day, War of the Worlds).

That's all for now, stay tuned for more soon!