next »

[lyon]

Wrote some more music for the game, this is like a world map thing

https://soundcloud.com/lyon-beckers/world-map

[Pixel Noise]

Music sounds great and should fit the style well, it looks like! Loving it so far 

[lyon]

Music sounds great and should fit the style well, it looks like! Loving it so far 

Hey! I know we connected on Twitter, but just wanted to say thanks again for the kind words!

As far as updates go, I've been still grinding away at the Kickstarter page, but I am finally done! If anyone wants to help me out by maybe looking at a preview for the campaign page, hit me up on twitter.



Also we're only 8 sign ups away from hitting our goal of 100 on the thunderclap, which you can sign up for through twitter, facebook or tumblr if you wanted to help spread the word!

[lyon]

Very happy to announce that we've reached our goal on the thunderclap campaign!

As I'm getting the demo ready for the Kickstarter launch, here's a couple of things that have changed:





Little attack indicators that scale to the strength of the attack, and...



Some minor UI improvements, ie the inclusion of icons for the menu items. This one was especially important for me because my eye had a tendency to just scan for an M, and then I'd choose the wrong stance. Whoops!

[lyon]

Added a new and improved mouse input control scheme, here it is in action:



The old one was super messy, wound up scrapping it entirely, input was too confusing in play testing. The mouse-over tile highlight goes a long way

[lyon]

Only two more days until we go live on Kickstarter! Here's the Kickstarter trailer

[lyon]

Wolf Gang is now officially live on Kickstarter

[lyon]

I've added a new potential frog character to the game.



This little guy posed some complications with the clothing system because of his eye placement. Up until now, clothes have just been linked to limbs in the rig, but to be able to have modifications, I've added a few extra bones that are parented to the head and control individual clothing articles.

In the case of the frog, I used this to rotate the "Hat" bone back a little bit so it would fit comfortably over his eyes



This unfortunately meant that I had to go through and update the rigs on previous characters so that clothes would appear properly BUT it's better to catch stuff like this now before there's hundreds of models to fix.

The frog characters will have a couple additional attributes that give them an advantage, namely that they can leap up ledges, and they can traverse water tiles. More on that later.

[lyon]

Added water tiles! These add an extra layer of depth to the game because it presents areas that some characters (like the amphibious frogs) can enter, while others can't.



The AI already knows to avoid the water tiles if it doesn't want to get its fur wet.



The water provides an opportunity for the frogs to jump out for a sneak attack before retreating comfortably back to the safety of the water.

[lyon]

The badge system is now implemented! When badges are equipped, they give characters additional attributes or bonuses. In this case, the water badge allows characters that would otherwise not be able to enter water tiles to do so.



The badges are managed from the equipment screen just the same as the clothes, with a few differences. The colors of badges cannot be customized, and only one character can wear a badge at a time.



To save players the hassle of having to do inventory management, the game simply prompts you to choose whether or not you want to remove an equipped badge if you try putting it on another character.

[lyon]

Received some good feedback on the demo regarding the ambiguity of attack range. If you're highlighting a tile that would put you out of range to attack, unless you're counting tile spaces, it can become unclear whether you'd still get a chance to attack that turn if you moved.

For example, this is ambiguous because the attack target stays red:


As a solution, when you are selecting a tile that would put you out of range to attack, it will grey out the target's highlight to hopefully communicate the viability of the target better.



I've also started a weekly video series to document development updates for those who might prefer to watch things play out rather than keep up with reading about things. You can check it out here

[lyon]

Haven't had much time to post here BUT there has been a few big changes, some major behind the scenes stuff for optimization, some control stuff, but most importantly, I ditched ambient occlusion and wrote a nice outline shader. Might do tutorials on the optimizations I made for the grass as well as a tutorial for the outline shader once this Kickstarter is done and I have more time.

In the meantime: screenshots!







In Kickstarter news, the campaign is entering its final few days. We're still a long ways from our goal, but there have been some clutch finishes on Kickstarter these past few months, so I haven't (completely) lost hope yet. If you're digging the project, tell your friends, share it on social media, and if you can afford any $ amount, it all adds up, every little bit helps!

[lyon]

Been a while since I've posted an update here, been keeping at it, here's a few updates:

• The Kickstarter did not succeed. It was a long shot, but you can read more about my thoughts on it over at the post-mortem
• The game is now in early access on Steam and itch.io
• As part of the first early access build, a lot of changes have been made, a lot of which is kind of behind the scenes stuff, including a complete overhaul of the AI. Previously the AI was entirely independent, the enemies had no way of choosing an optimal target beyond trying to figure out what their teammates were doing based on their proximity to things. This resulted in some weird behavior, and made the enemies pretty stupid in larger levels. Now the AIs cycle through each teammate at the beginning of their turns and essentially collectively decide who would be best suited to go after each target.
• As a result of this, a LOT of optimization has been done to the pathfinding.
• A lot of graphical optimization.
• The currency system as well as a shop and NPC system for "town" areas have been added
• A new 3v3 level has been added.

Some screen shots of the more tangible additions:

[Pixel Noise]

The graphics definitely seem a bit...sharper? Like the character models pop out more against the background, I think. Looks good! Followed the KS campaign - sorry it didn't pan out, but glad you are pushing forward in development!

[lyon]

The graphics definitely seem a bit...sharper? Like the character models pop out more against the background, I think. Looks good! Followed the KS campaign - sorry it didn't pan out, but glad you are pushing forward in development!

Hey! Thanks so much for the kind words, it means a lot! I agree that this new look is crisper. I like it. The ambient occlusion was kind of a band aid solution to add depth to unlit textures, and I think the outlines and projection shadows do a way better job of it.

Here's another screenshot of some of other stuff I didn't think to share because it's been a while and I forgot what exactly was new.


This is a shot of the added currency counters on the world map. The left number represents the total of coins left that you can spend, the right number represents the total number you've collected. Medals are earned by completing all three objectives on a level in one go, and they're used to buy the badges.

[lyon]

Remodeled Scully, the bighorn sheep and Wolf Gang's first boss character today. Here's a comparison before and after. What a difference 3 months of messing around in Blender makes

[lyon]

And now that we've introduced Scully, it's time to show some of what he can do!



He charges forward in any of 4 directions until he hits either the edge of the level or a solid object, damaging and knocking away any enemies that block his path.



If a character in Scully's line of fire has an obstacle blocking him on either side, the character will instead be pushed backwards, and halt Scully's movement.



If a character cannot be pushed to either sides or backwards, Scully defaults to a regular attack instead.

[io3 creations]

Looking at the visuals, I prefer the previous version rather than the one with the outlines.  That has a nice 3d cartoon feel and seems more consistent overall, especially that in the new one, not every object has an outline (e.g. grass).

Also, there's the aspect of the outline not being connected at the corners.  That reminds me, have you seen: Toony Colors Pro 2 covers the same issue:  Smoothed Normal Tool fixes broken hard-edge outlines.


Regarding the Kickstarter trailer, it seemed to be missing something in terms of the "Rich Storyline" i.e. what is the story?  What is the main character's motivation.

[lyon]

Looking at the visuals, I prefer the previous version rather than the one with the outlines.  That has a nice 3d cartoon feel and seems more consistent overall, especially that in the new one, not every object has an outline (e.g. grass).

It ins't obvious from a lot of what I have shown here, but the ambient occlusion actually caused a lot more inconsistencies. Aside from displaying differently on different devices, it also sampled the mesh vertices, so on anything with movement on it like the grass or the water, there would be a black halo around where the mesh would be before shaders on any adjacent geometry. As far as the grass goes, much like it doesn't have the outline applied to it now, the ambient occlusion actually wasn't applied to the grass or water either.

Other issues were introduced with camera zoom, since the ambient occlusion was a screen space thing, things would be inconsistent at different distances.

And I mean finally it just came down to taste for me. To me, it looked muddy, you'd get halos around the characters as they moved, it forced my hand to "cheat" some geometry in certain models to make things look right, and I just generally do like things more colorful.

Also, there's the aspect of the outline not being connected at the corners.  That reminds me, have you seen: Toony Colors Pro 2 covers the same issue:  Smoothed Normal Tool fixes broken hard-edge outlines.

No I hadn't seen that, I'll have to give it a deeper look! Thanks for pointing me in that direction, that was the one thing that was bothering me, especially since it's so noticeable on Lucas' jowls.

Regarding the Kickstarter trailer, it seemed to be missing something in terms of the "Rich Storyline" i.e. what is the story?  What is the main character's motivation.

I wanted to keep the Kickstarter trailer short, and tease the story through the interactions shown in the trailer, but I got into more story details on the actual page. The gist of it is that Lucas (the wolf) and Otis (the sheep) run into each other after Otis is ostracized by his fellow sheep. After an initial scuffle, the two decide to conspire to fight the other sheep so that Otis can get his revenge and Lucas can expand his territory. Eventually you get through the sheep territory and your party's aspirations grow as more people join your team, making your way through other animals' territories. This is essentially the story of a semi well-intentioned group starting something that gets way out of their control and they have to deal with the consequences.

Though as much as I would love to think the Kickstarter suffered because people didn't get enough of an idea of the plot from the video, the sad fact is that no one actually saw the video hahaha

[Samaras-Sama]

This looks great lyon. I'm loving Scully's redesign. Keep up the great work.