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[Fun Infused Games]

Description:
Platinum Kill is a fast paced, run and gun shooter featuring lots of action, weapons, and a tongue in cheek sense of humor. It will feature six unique levels each with a challenging level end boss. The game features a chiptune soundtrack with a unique song for each level. The graphics will be a low res pixel art style. The game is playable with 1 to 5 player local co-op (4 gamepads and 1 keyboard player) and up to 4 AI players (limited to 5 real and AI players total).

This game also features AI helpers that are unlocked when you reach kill streak milestones. These helpers are slightly intelligent characters that you play alongside you, giving you the illusion of playing with friends even if you're all alone. They stay with you until they die or your player is killed.



The obvious comparison with Platinum Kill is going to be with Contra. Contra certainly is a big influence on this game (the original two NES titles mainly) but it is my hope that Platinum Kill can do enough different and better that it can stand on its own as not a copy but rather an envolution of the genre. There have been other entries in the genre since Contra and Super C, but I feel like those failed to really capture the excitement and pace of the original games. I want to recapture that as my starting point and layer improvements upon it. Think how the new Doom still feels like the original Doom games but then expands upon it.



The original game this started as (see History section below) took about a month and a half to complete and I've been working on this version since January of 2017. I'm hoping I can complete this in the next 3 months but I'm bad at estimates and it'll probably end up taking way longer. I do all the programming and design myself and UI graphics and then contract out for in-game graphics and music.

I want to talk about my game here, share what I am doing and gather feedback on how I can make the game better. If you want to playtest my game yourself and can use Steam on Windows, just drop me a line.


Screenshots:
http://www.funinfused.com/images/PK_SlimeMonster.png
http://www.funinfused.com/images/PK01.jpg
http://www.funinfused.com/images/PK02.jpg
http://www.funinfused.com/images/PK04.png
http://www.funinfused.com/images/PKBoss1Emoji.gif


Videos (newest to oldest):









https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNUYoNKq8k0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSfBGnax_zg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yh0SuMUgSgc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mP0xr45lH80

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kLtyMwQ-KU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljm4pTKWBY4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bK-ktv0ius

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8aAK20yTnM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJBx1Lt6n_s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1AYpxt4EC4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OCgf9eaQgg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtfCtKpu-l0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uXrLNczWMdQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzRybGbitH8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NyVwYudnXNw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xl3fykqJ1c4&t=2s

Engine:
Custom built using C# and MonoGame.


Platform:
Steam / PS4 / XB1
https://store.steampowered.com/app/575660/Platinum_Kill/

Game History:
Platinum Kill started off as Ultra Aktion for XBLIG and later ported to itch.io. My hope was that I could do monthly releases of titles and be able to support myself as a full time indie dev. Because of the short timeframe, I did all the graphics using simple colored rectangles and instead focused on making the gameplay as fun as possible. To this end, I think I succeeded well, but in a flooded marketplace and even at just a dollar, Ultra Aktion didn't stand out. XBLIG, where I released it initially, was also near the end and had a plethorea of issues (such as the game showing up in new releases but not being able to be downloaded for over a week before Microsoft finally fixed the issue). After the itcho.io release, I placed Ultra Aktion in Steam Greenlight was the comment that if it got appproved, I'd turn it into a full proper game. Well it did and that's what I'm doing now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LAI7DURjaU


Dev History:
I'm the developer and founder of Fun Infused Games. My focus has always been on creating 2D old school styled games, games that I grew up playing and have a special place in my heart for. I started making games back in 2009 with XNA and released 8-9 games for Xbox Live Indie Games (XBLIG) over the next few years. After XBLIG folded, I tried a few other platforms, releasing one game on iOS (Hypership Out of Control) and two on Ouya (ugh, waste of time). For the past few years I have been doing Steam releases and have released improved versions of four of my XBLIG titles on the platform. I also have a PS4 dev kit and a mostly working version of one of my games, but I have since gotten distracted doing Steam games. One day I plan to get back to PS4 stuff and release an actual game there too.


Links:
Website - http://www.funinfused.com
Twitter - https://twitter.com/funinfused
YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtzFZwb1UhLKp8edddZbq8g
Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/pages/Fun-Infused-Games/261073264705
SoundCloud - https://soundcloud.com/user1903103
Ultra Aktion on itcho.io - https://funinfusedgames.itch.io/ultra-aktion
Current Steam Releases - http://store.steampowered.com/search/?developer=Fun%20Infused%20Games

[Codebread]

I like the idea of 5-player co-op. I had never thought of doing something like that because I'm so used to it capping at 4. I'm excited to see this completed!

[Fun Infused Games]

I like the idea of 5-player co-op. I had never thought of doing something like that because I'm so used to it capping at 4. I'm excited to see this completed!

I know some gamers don't use gamepads and the Xbox gamepads support 4 out of the box... figured if I was adding keyboard support, why limit it to 3 gamepads

I need to get a video of this sometime, I tend not to have 5 people to play with though.

[Fun Infused Games]

Spent tonight updating pixel art effects for monkey shot explosions. It's funny sometimes how little changes make a big difference. Started this addressing a bug where particle effects got immediately stuck to the ground but ended up changing colors, positions, and making it a lot bigger.

This is polish. Lots of little changes make big differences overall. You can release a game without polishing it and it works just fine, but a game with high level of polish really stands out. Having a feature working doesn't mean you're done. Finish it... then spend another couple hours making it better.  

These pixel art explosions by the way are simple random particles. You seed them when they fire with how far they spread on the X axis, how far they spread on the Y axis, position, max size, and x/y position. What makes them look the best is max size is a max random value actually. If you sent max x size to 16, the particle could be anywhere from 4 pixels to 16 pixels. This creates cool random looking pixels when explosions occur.

[Fun Infused Games]

The early stages of the second level... doing a snow/christmas theme.

[Fun Infused Games]

I updated Platinum Kill a week or so ago to log the time and location of any player's death. I am just doing this to a Death.log file in the root of the application folders for simplicity. I took this one step further this past Saturday and added a toggle to the game to draw little red skulls anywhere the player has died. This allows me to visually see areas that may be too difficult (or too easy I suppose). I can have any of my playtesters email me their Death.log and instantly know how far they're getting and what they're struggling with.

It got me thinking a lot about what other player analytics may be useful. I think my next step will be adding a GUID to what is logged so I know which deaths were from a single game. I could start charting then how far average players are getting and determine what I can do so they get a good value from playing.

It even got me thinking about recording the user's input so that I could replay how they did later (this will prove to be tricky to accurately do though because there are a lot of random numbers for items and enemy behaviors that would also need to be captured).

This is kinda new territory for me, I've never really formally analyzed any of my past games, but I think it's going to be a useful tool I can use going forward and I suspect I'll have more to share in that regard in the future.

[Fun Infused Games]

I plan to get some new videos up soon but for now just a quick touch base about progress...

Cutscenes
I wrote a really basic cutscene manager. Basically you pick an image and how long it displays for and create a collection of those and that's your cutscene. I added cutscenes before each level, trying to make them a bit quirky and silly and add a little story to the game.

AI
The best part of Contra was playing with a friend. But what if you don't have a friend handy? I added the ability to add up to 4 AI players to Platinum Kill so you always have someone to play with. It's rough and unfinished (and they have no clue how to fight the bosses) but it's neat too. They're pretty stupid and mainly just march through the level shooting, ducking shots, and jumping across ledges (not always successfully) but I think it's a good start.

Rather than create a whole new AI character, I implemented the AI as a new controller type (the game currently supports gamepad and keyboard). This allowed me to separate the AI from the character and then just hook it into the existing character, who works exactly as he always has. As far as the game is concerned, there is no difference between an AI player and one controlled by the player and that works great (although if you die first, you'll have to watch them finish).

[Fun Infused Games]

Here is a quick GIF of what the AI looks like in action.

[Fun Infused Games]

And here is one more of basic snowing effects. Just a randomly sized pixel with a slightly random speed. When it hits the bottom  of the screen, it respawns at a distance between the current left edge of the screen and a full screen right (this makes it so when you move to a new screen, you don't see gaps in the snow). Using the random speed is necessary, it looks very "stiff" and unrealistic if all the snow is at the same speed.

[Fun Infused Games]

Nothing super exciting, just working on the AI some to add unique behaviors when creating the AI player. This is necessary because if you create 4 AI players that all behave exactly the same, they'll traverse the entire level overlapping each other.

I'm starting with adding a 50 to 100 Aggressiveness behavior, randomly generated. The higher the number, the more aggressive the AI player will be. For the moment this means moving across the screen faster, waiting until the player is closer to the edge before jumping, shooting more often, etc.

I'd like to make the different AI players prefer other paths through the level too. Some AI will prefer to go on the high paths, others will take the low paths, etc.

[Fun Infused Games]

I've been slacking posting updates but that doesn't mean I haven't been working on this. I've got a lot of level 2 done, which is a North Pole themed level with killer snowmen, elves, whales, and penguins (which fly too).

Below is a video of all this madness, let me know what you think.





Also if anyone is interested in beta testing on PC, I can send over a Steam key. Just drop me a line.

[Fun Infused Games]

I don't have any new code to share, just plugging away on this game still.

The second level (besides the final Santa boss) has been completed.
Bullet colors for the players have been changed to orange which stands out better.
Started work on the third "sewer" level by implementing parallax backgrounds of sewer walls / pipes. Similar to the black background trees in the jungle level.
Resolved some spawning bugs that resulted from code being repeated in two places (bad design).
Updated cutscenes so that the text fills in one letter at a time. This has a much more "old school" vibe to it and really adds to the presentation.

On the bad code design note, that's something I've struggled with on this game more than others in the past. Platinum Kill started as Ultra Aktion and was supposed to be a really basic game which I completed in a month. There were design principles I didn't follow for sake of completion speed and because I never ever intended to spend so much more time making this game. Enemies for instance are a mess of movement, generic AI commands, and specific AI commands. It is not well structured in any way and makes big AI changes challenging. Starting from scratch, I would have done something much more behavior based and generic, if that makes sense.

[Fun Infused Games]

Spent the afternoon cleaning up the fonts in Platinum Kill. Previously this game (and my other retro titles) used a font called Arcade Classic. This font mostly looks good but it's got some weird spacing issues. Recently I found the font Press 2P Start which looks better and doesn't have the spacing issues, so I replaced all the font spritesheets in my game with this new font.

The other big recent change I made was separating weapons from attributes. Previously there was a Rapid item that sped up your shot rate but everything else was a totally new gun. Now Rapid is a proper attribute on a gun and other attributes can be applied too, the first of which is Giant (which was previously its own gun). Now if you get the Giant item, it makes the shots of whichever weapon you have giant. Like weapons, you can only carry one attribute a time, so if you have Rapid and get Giant, Giant will replace Rapid in your inventory.

I did a lot of small tweaks here and there too... UI updates, changed the colors on some enemy masks, and started to flesh out the level 2 Santa boss's behavior more.

Here is a screen shot of 5 players at once in Platinum Kill... something I have NOT seen in other similar genre games. 4 of the players are AI... adding AI players (up to four) allows someone that doesn't have a friend to play with the ability to play with others. The AI is kinda dumb right now (they fall in pits constantly) but will be improved. If nothing else, they're nice for when I do videos and screen shots

[Fun Infused Games]

We've got a basic cutscene system in Platinum Kill to display initial story and between level cutscenes, trying to add a little life and humor into a genre that is so often devoid of any semblance of storylines.

[Fun Infused Games]

Lots of tweaks to enemy behaviors over the weekend to the first level... mainly...

The moai heads (which act as gun turrets that raise from the ground) were tweaked to reset if the player moves out of range. Previously they didn't which let to them shooting almost immediately at you if you came into range but left before they shot, then returned into range.

Level one boss shots were changed a lot too. He shoots a spread shot down at the player when in his first form. The shots were made a lot wider and a lot slower. Slowing it down adds tension you miss when it goes fast and makes the overall experience feel more threatening. It also feels more fair as you get a more of a chance to dodge the shots vs having to be in the right spot almost before he shoots.

These are little things that sound minor but have a signification affect on how the game plays and feels. Polish polish polish!

[Fun Infused Games]

Below is a new video of the ice levels. It shows more complete enemies and effects than my previous video of this level and includes several UI updates. If you watch this video compared to the previous one, you can see how lots of little touches can really add up.

[Fun Infused Games]

Here is an updated Jungle level too, shows different bullet colors for player, improved UI elements, and a much tweaked level boss.

[Fun Infused Games]

Did a lot of work lately on improving the "game feel" of Platinum Kill. Watched an excellent video by one of the Vlambeer guys on that, highly recommended if you haven't seen it yet:



The major takeaways from that led me to adding more screen shake, quick black/white explosions when things get hit, and muzzle flashes. You can see much of that in this small boss gif in the next post.

I need to ramp up and get going on the sewer level next. Right now I am working on a document detailing the enemies and art I want which I can pass along to an artist to get a quote / buy artwork.

[Fun Infused Games]

[Fun Infused Games]

Trying something different and fun by adding a surfing level. I have this right now as the first level in the game but I am thinking I may switch it to level 2. I wanted an easy introduction to the game, but it doesn't give as accurate a representation of the game itself I believe as the jungle level does (although it is much easier). In some ways it feels more like a special/bonus level than a normal one.