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[DK Development]

Hey folks! Let me give you a small introduction who I am:

My name is Daniel, I'm 17 years old and hoster of my own Developer-Group called "DK Development".
We are currently working on a Game called "Adventures of a Block" or in short "AoaB" - this is a work titel, if you have better suggestions feel free to post them!

We have no Budget, just a dream. I'm extremly passionate about this Project, but I know that this can fail - however, all of us gained something from it.

Our Team:
We are currently nine members including me as the Main Developer.
Jan, he is a Developer too; Shane, our 2nd developer; Mathias, our 3rd developer; Luc as a composer and Matt, our Artist.
So let's dive in!

Adventures of a Block
Windows / Mac / Linux

Story

The story is about a man falling into a Coma. He can think of the most beautiful and complicated Puzzles.
However, his state won't get better. The World gets darker and monotonous. As he dies, the world dies. - His imagination dies.

-- This Story isn't complete yet.

The Idea

AoaB is aimed to be a Adventure-Puzzle Game, featuring multiple worlds and a Co-Op mode.
You are a Block, trapped inside of a labyrinth. There is one goal you have to move towards, but in between there are multiple enemies, such as Patrols, Spikes, Water, Electricity and more.

Before you think "Ugly!", read to the End. I have some eyecandy


The Blocks

Player:





The player is you. Simple. Move it to the Goal and win. Simple. Try to get around enemies. Not so simple. Try not to die. Hard.



Patrols:



The Patrols are blocks that are moving towards "Patrol Points". These are invisible to the user. If you get touched by them, you'll die. The important part is, that you can die as oft as you want - but it costs time. If you need more time, you lose Points. But don't worry, we will choose a fair time!
Here's an example (The Gif is lagging, not the Game):





Coins:



You may have seen them above. The Coins will be thrown into more "dangerous" ways. So the Player get's a nice bonus if he decides to take the risk.
The Coins will be the in-game currency for the shop. We don't quite know what will be in there, maybe some stuff for personalization? You can write in the comments what you think about it!



Buttons:



The Button gives you the ability to activate specific mechanics. In this example, it activates a door. To give you a better example:
Imagine the door is closed by default. As soon as you step in front of it, spikes come out and kill you. You now have to search for a different way to deactivate the Spikes, guess what? Yep, the Button. It deactivates the Spikes and opens the door. Tada! You made it.



Spikes:

Well, i thought about creating a new gif. But you can just look above, there you will see them in action. If you touch them, you will die. You won't die if they are not out. Pretty neat!



Beam me up, Scotty!

Oh, Those pink looking blocks on the ground:



These are Teleport stations. If you run over them, you will be teleported to the other station:





Important Informations:

 The post above does not represent the latest work! You are missing Water, a Dispenser, a following Enemy, and more. But these features will come as they are finished!

Remember the Eyecandy I teased above?
Well, here we go. This is the Design for the first level that takes place in the Summer / Spring (These are Big, right-click them and say "open image in new tab"):

Front:


Back:


And the player perspective:


And a calming gif (Maybe needs a while to start playing fluid):



Final Words
You will see the "ugly" Design frequently here, since it is our testscene
Keep in mind that this is my first post here. So if there is something i could do better, say it!
Thanks for taking the time,
Daniel

[bdsowers]

When the blocks are moving, have you considered making them rotate forward instead of just sliding? Think it might add an interesting dynamic to the  movement, whereas now it feels a little raw.

[DK Development]

When the blocks are moving, have you considered making them rotate forward instead of just sliding? Think it might add an interesting dynamic to the  movement, whereas now it feels a little raw.

That's a nice Idea. The problem is, that the Cube would "jump" (Move bumpy), since - it's a Cube. But I will check that out and provide you with a gif later today!


For all others, have an Overview of one of our Levels!

[PetterBergmar]

Looks nice! I like the simple style.

[DK Development]

@bdowers, I have to regret your Idea. Since our Levels will be much more comples over time, we can't allow the block to "hop around". We need some sort of an instant turn, if the user want's it.

However, dont be sad. I will tease all of you another time.
Because we created some very nice looking Prefabs. I won't show you the lovely animations, but I will show you the Picture of it 

[DK Development]

What a amazing week. We created our individual style, Luc created some sounds and a first look into the music, we got a level creator, some new blocks and we did some massive server work. This isn't a point here, but hey! It was massive and a lot of work

So let's turn around and take a look on this awesome new Image, showing some of the assets Matt created:


Isn't that sweet? Some of these things are quite obvious, such as the cannons, some aren't that obvious. Post your ideas what the "?"-Block could be"

So, why the hell are there two cannons? And one big spike, and three smaller ones?
Well, let me show you this gif from our "beautiful" testrange:

That's right! A cannon that split's up into three different balls! And since the user needs to see which cannon does what, we have two different types. One shoots normal cannonballs, the other shoots these spikey ones. Pretty nice!

For the next step, we got some Water. Remember as i said that I can't show you that feature, since it wasn't ready? Now it is!
The Water slows you down and only works in one direction, once you where in and out, you can't go back. So before you jump in, you should check out all other ways to get to the goal!


Can you spot the Button on the block above the water? It now can use a Engine!
The Engine produces, obviously, power. This power is sometimes needed to fire up a specific element - a Button for example.
Since this is very hard to show in a gif, take our word!

For the next Item you have to take our word too, but we will show you this in our next Blog!
We created a Platform that needs a specific weight to be activated. If you hop on it as a Player, the attached scale goes half full, so it's not enough weight.
If you now throw one of our weight-blocks on it, the scale goes up to 100% and activates whatever there is attached to. I'm very sad actually that we can't show this,

since it's amazingly beautiful an very well done by Shane.

The following enemy (aka. the stalker):

What should I say about this. It's in the title. So just take the gif and lets move on


And the last new feature: Boost-platform

This one is pretty simple as well, you move on to it and you gain speed. If you move over it a second time, you get back to normal speed. It's just a little bit, but enough to get crazy in small ways

That's it in case of feature, but we are not yet done with this post!
Because we created a small "Cinematic" (Overview) of the first level, you can watch it on our YouTube Channel:



We also got Twitter: https://twitter.com/tdkdevelopment

Stay tuned!
~ Daniel Könning

[DK Development]

"What do I show to you?", that's the first question that comes up to my mind.
Since our last Dev-Blog I have to say: Not that much. As example: I did a lot of work on our Servers because our Game will get a Level Creator with the ability to share level with all people playing the Game. That feature will come up in version v-0.0.3 - I can't show it for now, but the basics are working, Colors, Walls, Players, Enemies and Coins can be placed.

Second on my list is our Newsfeed in the Game, as well as a reworked main menu and a reworked level selection.
Wan't some Screenshots? You will get them anyway!

Newsfeed:



Level selection:



Sadly, this is what I can show you as of today. See you in the next Blog,

stay tuned!

~Daniel

[GarBenjamin]

This looks very cool. Really like how you are keeping a simplistic presentation and focusing on the gameplay. At the same time it looks very interesting. Great work!

[DK Development]

This looks very cool. Really like how you are keeping a simplistic presentation and focusing on the gameplay. At the same time it looks very interesting. Great work!

Thank you!

[PetterBergmar]

I had missed that you're making this co-op! That's really cool..

[DK Development]

I had missed that you're making this co-op! That's really cool..

Thank you! At DK Development we love to destroy friendships

And we can share a new map before i post a new Blogpost!
As always - Right Click on them, Open in a new Tab - you now can see them "in complete".

[DK Development]

What a blast!
We did probably the most exciting thing so far, we like to call it "Engineception". And it is: The Level Editor!
Also, we have to say goodbye to Luk Grätz and say hello to Raimundas Pavilonis!
But without any further-do let's get started!

The Level Creator

The Level creator gives you the ability to create and share levels with your friends and the whole community. We are planning to add Steam Workshop support so you can reach an even bigger platform to share your awesome creations. Let's take a small look into some of the features of the Level creator:

The Stages

The stages are the different heights the level can be played on. So imagine you start in Stage 1, an easy stage with just some gems on it:


As you now proceed into a higher Stage, for example stage 0 (which makes no sense) using a Teleport platform, the player is able to get on a completely different level:


But why do we call it Engineception? I mean, that's not a Engine at all, is  it?
That's true. The point is that WE call it Engineception. We, the Developers. And the Point is, that you somehow have to connect from which Teleport platform you can get to the next one, when the spikes get triggered, etc. Stuff that we do in the Engine, but since we don't want you to access the Inspector with all it's Scripts and variables, we had to make a part of the Engine into the Level creator. Engineception.

Saving creations

Obviously, if you create something, you want to save your work. Our Level creator makes this quite easy:



A general overview
A overview is mostly at the start of a feature. But I felt that this looks so confusing, that i first wanted to explain what Jan did:


This is how it looks if created 4 stages, starting with stage 0.

Your levels will look the same as ours. They will take place on a island just as the ones we created. This is just a state-of-the-art preview.

And now, let's get to the Eyecandy! Are you ready? I am!

For the first step, we will show you pictures of another level we finished:



Pretty awesome. And let me tell you: It is as hard as it seems

Here's a general overview of it before Matt made it beautiful:



Now we have some images from the darker period of the Game. They don't have levels on them yet, but I just felt to show them anyway.



Just some side notes, each blog has it's own individual mesh - not just a texture. An entire stage, full of bricks has 10.000 Polys, which is as much as one tree.
But what abilities do we have with that? Well, each brick can have it's own Physics. Each individual brick can be react different to it's environment.

In the Blogpost is a video showing the animations. However, it doesn’t load if I link it in here. So I’ll leave the link to the video here




That's it for this time! Be sure to follow us on Twitter to get additional informations.
Stay tuned!