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[Quentin Delvallet]

UPDATE 01 July 2018

Finally, an early demo. Play it here : https://gamejolt.com/games/iab/349443

________________________________

WHO IS ME?

Hello, I'm a french engineer, mid twenties, making and playing games as a hobby, blue eyes, not a Blue-Eyes White Dragon though.

GAME IS WHAT?

Say hello to Incidental Animal Barbarism. This is a game where the platforms platforms you.

Born in the GMTK Jam #1, the concept of the game is about having mostly-incapable characters travelling through big, dangerous mazes. With the help of only you, being capable of moving some platforms to make the travels much more efficient (and pain-friendly).

WHAT WILL HERE?

Here, you will mostly get the dev processes, progresses and news about the game. I don't know if it will be often, but everytime I have something to show, I'll show it.

For some points, I will try to describe my though processes and/or technical solutions.

HERE IS NOW

So here's my progress so far. Everything you see is obviously work in progress.

Here's one of our tiny cutie character :



You can't jump :



You can't fly :



But you can make it fly :



GAME WILL WHAT?

The game will be about having multiple characters travelling in medium-sized brain-killing labyrinths, meeting wierd NPCs that are stuck here since forever. Use a wierd physic to make the platforms get rid of the obstacles to finally find what lies at the end of the labyrinth.

I don't know yet the number of characters and worlds be the game will feature some NPC with goofy stories, funny visuals and, probably, mini-games alongside the main goal of the game : finding the exit.

It will be showed later, but to find the exit, you must travel each level with illogical paths and dangers.

[Quentin Delvallet]

DEVLOG 1 - DESIGNING AN NEW CHARACTER :

Incidental Animal Barbarism will feature a undetermined number of characters with each one having a unique, yet basic, idea of gameplay and a unique World.

Since now, you only met Cheep, The Innocent Chick that is good for nothing. It can't run, It can't jump, It can't fly, It's a worthless piece of garbage but at least it's cute.

So one of my ideas was to have multiple animals all asociated with one kind of quirk. So I came up with multiple ideas.
The first was to have a character harder to control and so I came up with a character that still couldn't jump but that could run. Only run. It's life purpose would be running.

No matter what you do, it will be running, you can only affect it's direction. So I started the though process, how could it affect the game?

Here are a few things I came up with :

- The player will be falling off platforms a lot so I would need to design wider pieces of platforms
- Far fewer time to think because it could basically just run itself into traps
- The timing of throwing the animal would be a lot harder

The conclusion? It would be a fast-paced character so it's World will be more focused on longer travels, reflexes and less puzzles.

So now I had to think of a well-suited animal. One that could be associated with endless running. Thus I searched the magical place of the internet for animals that could match these kind of keywords : "longruns" "running" "long travelling animals"
And most of the time I was facing the same "smart" answers, the best animal for running is : THE HUMAN.
THANKS PEOPLE OF THE INTERNET YOU SAVED ME ONCE AGAIN.

I searched even more and then I faced an article speaking of two animals :

- The horse, hard to draw for me and boring. Meh.
- The ostrich, long legged, stupid and silly looks. Perfect.

MEET OSCAR THE FOOLISH OSTRICH



Don't judge Oscar by it's look. It looks stupid, but it's way worse than that. It's purpose in life is RUNNING !



IT WON'T STOP



IT CAN'T STOP !



I've yet to design it's World though.

BEHIND THE SCENES

I'm no artist so making any visuals is a really hard part for me but I'm still making it myself, since, I'm free to use. So here's my process for making Oscar :

1- First the face. I had to look up for side view of ostriches and this one was the base I used :



So the idea was :
- Quite a tiny head
- Quite a long beak
- Quite a big eye
- Ugly ass-hair that hopefully didn't make it to my design

And after trials I came up with this



Originally, it had only one eye but I couldn't make it looks stupid with one eye, so here I went with a simple trick :



2- Then the body

I needed a full body reference so here the reference I used :



I reduced this picture to pixel size to have a rough approximation of the body to be able to reproduce it. After noticing that the big tail looked stupid I had to reduce it but in the end I had something close.



3- Then the legs

I knew they had long, thin legs so I didn't use references, I just drew wierd sticks-thingies and it looked okay. After a few tweaks I had Oscar :



And tadaa, I had my pixel ostrich and i'm proud of it. I won't detail my animation process because it's not very scientific but just a word on it's idle animation I posted earlier.
I wasn't happy with the legs after animating the head and the body, it had to few movements and I didn't know what to do. One moment I started deleting one of the leg and with the animation still running in real time I noticed it looked like it was taping? on the ground. So I worked on it to have the final animation. My ostrich looked so impatient it was so awesome ! Even though the idle animation won't be very very used, it directly referenced it's gameplay on how the ostrich was craving for running it was perfect.

BUT THEN CAME THE RUNNING ANIMATION

WHY DID WE MADE LEGS SO HARD TO DRAW CAN'T WE ALL HAVE WHEELS?

So I watched running ostriches again and again and finally found a cool GIF :



So I decomposed it into 8 important frames and it still looked good :



I had a model, and finally was able to make it's running animation.

FINAL WORDS

While researching more on an ostrich's running motions, I found out that males ostriches were black with a few white feathers while females were generally brown. In the beginning I wanted my animals to be genderless but, oh well, who cares. Oscar was born.

Thanks for reading, I won't be posting a lot of Oscar but surely you will hear more of him in the future.

Oscar says bye. (Metaphoricaly, animals can't talk in our world).

[agingminotaur]

Hey, the idea sounds like fun, and your gifs of Cheep and Oscar so far are actually really cute and funny (but I would like a lighter background color). The sheer helplessness of both characters is what cracks me up, and of course should make for a good motivator in a game. You get the same kind of itch to help as in Lemmings Good luck, and keep us posted.

As always,
Minotauros

[Quentin Delvallet]

Thanks for the kind words ! The background is a one-color placeholder so I will change that easily for the next images/gifs so it will be more attractive to watch.

Yes, playing with their incapabilities/cuteness/helplessness is what makes the fun. Most player that will play the game will start with a simple idea "ow, this chick is so small and cute, look at it walk!" and then "oh! I can also move this platform" and, one second later to the hilarious reaction "oh my! I launched it and it's now bouncing on every wall!".

I will keep you updated guys, don't worry, even if I have nothing to show I will try to make a new gif for old things every week-end. It will also serve me as a "ops, I have nothing new done this week" reminder 

[Josh Bossie]

Really, really love how detailed your dev log is. Always good to see your process.

Definitely watching this one

[organicpencil]

This... is beautiful. *Watches intently*

[Quentin Delvallet]

DEVLOG 2 - CHEEP THE INNOCENT CHICK

A tiny devlog today !

You've seen it in my first images, but Oscar is not the only character you'll be playing in Incidental Animal Barbarism.

Cheep will be a kind of the default/main character, even though every character will have it's own world/chapter. So I will mostly be using Cheep to present the next features so it's time to give it a decent presentation.

ORIGIN OF CHEEP

You may not know, but Incidental Animal Barbarism is an indirect full version of a game I did in 48 hours for the GMTK Game Jam, the name of the game was Oeufwakening (bilingual french/english pun, sorry), it was within the 20 winners and is featured in this video from Mark Brown, from the Game Maker's Toolkit series. (yay!)

And so, Cheep was already the character of this game, I just kind of redone it's sprite a little after designing Oscar, who inspired me to make goofy-looking characters.

But Cheep wasn't born here, it was born when I was training/trying to do less abstract art when I worked on Red Aleph, a game I did two years ago with my brother. You can play it here. Ultimatly it was scrapped since I spent a lot of time on him alone and didn't had the courage to design a full game with this style.

Then it stayed still for a while and I eventually polished it and re-used it for the game jam.

Next time I will try to elaborate more mechanics and explain how you travel within Indicental Animal Barbarism's worlds and levels, since it's something very specific I haven't introduced yet.

[Quentin Delvallet]

DEVLOG 3 - World Navigation

Hey everyone, quick update on how you travel the world of Incidental Animal Barbarism.

In the game, you have a kinda-open world, where you travel from level to level. Here's an example of a level :

Each level will have the exact same size, and each level has 4 sides. Each side will make you reach another level.

Here's an example on how it looks like, when all 4 sides lead to the exact same level :

But that's a basic case, this is how I developped the level system. Imagine 3 levels :

Each black rectangle is a level, each one has a name, here it's level 1, 2 and 3, in red. And you noticed it, written in blue on each side is a "next level" variable, that indicates which level you will go if you cross this side.

Here it's a simple example, but here's the same drawing with ugly arrows to show how intricate and complicated it will be to travel through my worlds :

And here is a final, real example, with two levels, with only the first level's right side leading to the second level :

I hope it's clear and everyone will have fun travelling my labyrinths 

[Quentin Delvallet]

Hello, hello

Quick update, I won't do anymore big devlogs because it's a lot of work

I have somewhat finished the tutorial along with some code and systems polish. I also dev'ed a spike with very work in progress visuals :



Also, notice the upgrades on the grounds  

From now I will try to post some gifs from time to time. I'll try to do a more complete communication campaign once I'm far enough in the development since I can't work, dev the game, communicate on it, play games on my free time and watch stupid videos all at once  

[Quentin Delvallet]

Nooo stay 

[Josh Bossie]

I like your map-to-map traversal in theory, but it really bugs me that there's no spacial logic to it. Like, if I fall right into room 2 then falling left should take me back to room 1, not room 3.

I'm sure this is on purpose and maybe reinforces the labyrinth nature, but it's needlessly confusing and obtuse to me.

Also it'll never not be hilarious that you move your little chick by walloping it with a giant stone

[Quentin Delvallet]

Yes indeed in theory it seems very very confusing (And it really is, our brains are not programmed to work like this), but most of the time there are not that many maps and progression is still linear with groups of levels following each other and there are "can't go back" sections.

Also, you can travel really really fast so maybe luck will be on your side

I may have a demo of the tutorial and the first world next month, I'll be able to see if this works or not.

[Quentin Delvallet]

Finally, a demo !

Play it here : https://gamejolt.com/games/iab/349443