next »

[Alain]

Nice! I like the different types of endings you outline here and the X-Com-esque (is that a word?) progression of days. It gives me the feeling that the game world is really alive, like the invasion is happening and it does not wait for me as the player.

[Ramos]

Nice! I like the different types of endings you outline here and the X-Com-esque (is that a word?) progression of days. It gives me the feeling that the game world is really alive, like the invasion is happening and it does not wait for me as the player.

Thank you for the kind words, Alain!
I approve "X-Com-esque" 

So I have a few minutes so I was thinking to share a bit of the game history.



The first installment of this game was made in flash and it was my second flash game made(I think it was in 2011 and was called "awaken front line"). I collaborated with Sergey D., the game got featured on Kongregate, Newgrounds and all major flash game portals. And here is how it looked like back then:



[...some more flash games made and experience...]

Then flash died and I had to migrate to PC / Steam, for me it was like "WOW" I could not even dream of reaching Steam but since I had no other choice I thought to myself I can at least try. So it took me 8 months of development to make the first PC version of this game series, I had 3 programmers abandoning the game, and only 4th one managed to finish it, Dmitry N. and because of problems the game did not get polished, did not get balanced, had very little content, had bugs ... BUT ... despite this, the people loved the concept and I managed to get a positive rating and give more than 100k units.  and here is a screenshot of it:



[ ... more history that I do not have time to go into details, I made and released more Steam games not related to this project, some via publishers and some via self-publish...]

and then I got back with my default programmer and mentor Sergey D. to make this game as truly intended from the beginning. Took us 4 years so far but luckily I had some funds from my other game releases to survive and a day slave job. SO here is the evolution to compare with the current version of Chromosome Evil:




Hope you guys enjoyed this little history page 

[cepnox]

Thanks for the history info, it was enjoyable.
I always liked this kind of insight - it makes the game more personal.
Btw, great job with the APC

[Lyue Tech]

Looks real great! Must have taken a lot of time to do all the pixel art. How much months have you guys worked on developing this game?

[SADoff]

Looks real great! Must have taken a lot of time to do all the pixel art. How much months have you guys worked on developing this game?

khhm years...
Afraid to calculate...
But this period contains many mistakes and rewriting full concept of gameplay. Tons of variants. Roma can give a plenty of old strange screenshots of global maps and camp menus...
Also we migrated to C++.

[Alain]

It was a great idea to give us this little wrap up of your game's history so far. It is really cool to see how it has developed since the first Flash installment!

[vivaladav]

We have now the final scenario design. Please note that the game will have a high re-playability value core pilar. SO in addition to the 4 main endings path, those endings will also have 2 additional endings based on secondary vaccine and satellite quests + a variation based on player choices in random encounters...

Have you considered that players that go for the 2 hrs ending might be pretty disappointed compared to the ones that go for the 10hrs ending?

Could you reduce that big gap?

[Ramos]

oh boy, so much feedback, let me get my coffee, Thank you guys 

Thanks for the history info, it was enjoyable.
I always liked this kind of insight - it makes the game more personal.
Btw, great job with the APC

Thank you for the kind words cepnox! I am glad you like the Aliens-inspired APC. I hope to see more Aliens inspired stuff within your game too 

Looks real great! Must have taken a lot of time to do all the pixel art. How much months have you guys worked on developing this game?

My partner Sadoff already answer but to be a bit more specific:
Awaken front line(flash version) - around 4 months
Flesh Eaters(first pc instalment) - around 8 months
Chromosome evil(ultimate PC version of this series) - so far around 4 years but as my partner said, we also remade stuff along the way, and it's hard to calculate how much exact time, but we had a very constant flow of work aka we ALWAY do minimum 1 update per week, never missed a week, like development became part of our lives

It was a great idea to give us this little wrap up of your game's history so far. It is really cool to see how it has developed since the first Flash installment!

Thank you Alain, we always wanted to do this concept but never managed to make it perfect because of lack of experience or funding but now we feel ready to make it the right way but we had some problems on some dev time estimations, I mean we initially hoped to finish it in 2 years

Have you considered that players that go for the 2 hrs ending might be pretty disappointed compared to the ones that go for the 10hrs ending?

Could you reduce that big gap?

We have considered but this is not that type of game. I will try to explain
The first time the player plays the game it will be basically a learning process about enemies, lore and the environment, and going on a longer path requires him this Information in order to succeed, also going on a long path he will require starting bonuses achievements from shorter paths or some darn good strategies and randomly generated opportunities.
Overall this game is not meant to end from 1 playthrough, re-pliability is core pilar. It may be sound complicated but I used the same design on the first instalment (flesh eaters) and people really loved it, some played the game 5-6 times and imagine that FE only had about 2 hours of gameplay at max and the 3 endings are basically the same ending affected only by some superficial choices along the way while on CE things have a lot more depth, we truly want each playthrough to be a different experience.
Worst case scenario we can balance gameplay time by adding/removing days with randomly generated content from between scenario missions or maybe even add more scenario missions.
Hope this will help create an opinion about the bigger picture.


Thank you guys, thank you for all the feedback!

[Beastboy]

That is good evolution from flash to pc. I noticed many thing were size disproportional in the flash version, nice to see they were fixed now
 

[AdrianMI]

Heya.
Nice to see the progression.

[Ramos]

That is good evolution from flash to pc. I noticed many thing were size disproportional in the flash version, nice to see they were fixed now
 

Thank you!
 It was my second game made, I was still learning to do pixel art & game design, I only had obsessive passion & motivation for learning game dev, no actual skill, so most of my flash games were beginner level.

Heya.
Nice to see the progression.

Thank you for your support, Adrian!

I am still waiting for you to start your dev blog on Rift Frigate
Cya on RGD

[liva]

Just watched the trailer on steam, I sometime had a little bit of struggle reading dialogues but one thing for sure I really like the mood of the game. Great work.

edit : typo

[Ramos]

Just watched the trailed on steam, I sometime had a little bit of struggle reading dialogues but one thing for sure I really like the mood of the game. Great work.

Thank you for the kind words liva!
Yes with the current trailer I only tried to show the mood & atmosphere of the game within gameplay mechanics, many people complain of a lack of action so for the next trailer I plan to display the action-pack part of the game.
Regarding readable text, what do you think was the major problem? Text size, text font, or the speed of text appearing and disappearing?

Mockup/little spoiler for one of the upcoming bosses in Chromosome Evil.


And tactical map design for this scenario.

UPDATE.

And here is the first actual screenshot for the above Lovecraft tentacle monster design + scenario design above.

The outside area is not polished and I will probably replace the outside urban theme with farm theme to be more related to "he who walks behind the corn" aka the movie "Children of the Corn" . ALso, I want to make it darker and more horror.

Will add soon some gifs and a final map layout screenshot.

[Alain]

Sounds great! I think the idea of replacing the outside with a farm theme would also be a nice nod to the original X-Com again

[liva]

Regarding readable text, what do you think was the major problem? Text size, text font, or the speed of text appearing and disappearing?

Its just a detail but I'm obsessed with them, as you can see on those screen, the text kinda blends with the background





I think adding a black outline to your text, even something very thin, would improve greatly the readability.

[vivaladav]

I think adding a black outline to your text, even something very thin, would improve greatly the readability.

+1

Even if I would try to add a dark background with a 30-50% opacity.
Considering you are already rendering a rectangle around the text, that should be super quick to implement and to try out.

[SADoff]

I think adding a black outline to your text, even something very thin, would improve greatly the readability.

+1

Even if I would try to add a dark background with a 30-50% opacity.
Considering you are already rendering a rectangle around the text, that should be super quick to implement and to try out.

Not so simple
dialog popup contains borders, angles and that triangle from mouth... so , all dialog clouds has 4 angles, and 5 strait lines and 1 triangle.
that was interesting to code

[vivaladav]

Not so siple
dialog popup contains borders, angles and that triangle from mouth... so , all dialog clouds has 4 angles, and 5 strait lines and 1 triangle.
that was interesting to code

Oh I see... even if for testing it you can just render a semi-transparent rectangle behind the popup and then if it looks nice you can come up with some better solution.

[Beastboy]

Not so simple
dialog popup contains borders, angles and that triangle from mouth... so , all dialog clouds has 4 angles, and 5 strait lines and 1 triangle.
that was interesting to code

I find your floating text a very fresh take on your game overall aspect that can  complement story and characters if used well., so I would try to polish this feature as much as possible.
I can read the text fine on pc, atleast in the screenschots, but as vivaladav said, a black transparent background can do wonders, on cellphone is a bit hard to read but i dont think your game is made for phones.

Hope the floating text will offer some interesting dialogues between difrent characters

[irn]

That tentacle monster looks really cool. Looking forward seeing it in motion