Two Schizophrenics The Devblog

yay

Game is fully functional now, just need to make some tiles and whatnot to make it look pretty. Having some people check for bugs and whatnot right now.

Woops

Sorry for the lack of new posts, but the deadline coming up on monday I don’t have a lot of time to do a lot of things. If there’s anything you’d like to ask or suggest, feel free though!

Stats I

Before testing, I estimated about ten minutes of gameplay. On avarage, the testers took 46:51 to complete it. The slowest was Jay, taking a whopping 53:48 (almost an hour!) and the quickest was Nijman sailing through in only 38:58. More stats later.

Well?

Hey! Can’t say I have a good reason for not having updated other than the weather.

Don’t worry though! Just because of the radio silence doesn’t mean I haven’t done anything. For the past few days, I’ve been wrapping up all the technical bits in World 1 so that everything in it works as it should. I’ve also gotten a lot of work done on the bossfight of World 1, though I’m not giving anway too many details on that. And lastly, I’ve been busy with organising playtests.

Playtestting is often a bit of an afterthought in the indie community, I’ve noticed. I never really gave it much thought either, up to when I got a class in how to perform and what usability tests are. Up until then, I only barely knew the difference between a bugtest and a playtest. Now bugtesting, that stuff I do every other minute. Programming always gets me so excited, I just want to see what it looks like! However, just because it works the way I want it to, doesn’t mean it’s good.

Having performed my first playtest today, I have to say there were a lot of things that I missed in the design. For example: after implementing it months ago, aiming at a 45 degree angle is the most natural thing in the world for me. However, new players don’t know the button combination and get plain stuck at the part where you have to shoot upward at an angle. Another case: the prototype I’m testing with has placeholder graphics, which means I didn’t use seperate sprites for doors and walls. Having a door on a ledge with a high roof makes it look like a wall, and the player wouldn’t even think of shooting it. These things might be simple, but when players get stuck, players quit games. And I don’t want them to quit my game! Enjoy my damn game, players!

The testing being part of a school assignment, I had to record everything; camera, voice, screen, the works. Turns out Camtasia messes with Windows settings in an attempt to get both the microphone and its own sounds, but thanks to that it didn’t record the microphone. Oops! Another lesson learned I guess.

Shape up or ship out!

~Brian

Friends and Foes

Hey! Sorry for not making a post yesterday, guys. Uh, something came up. But I’m here today! This post is about the characters in One Man Army, something I wish I had put some more time into. Nevertheless, there’s still plenty to talk about.

So back when I started this project (somewhere in January) all I had was a platform engine and a guy with a gun. The nameless lead character and its design kinda came forth as a counter on the archetypical shooter protagonist: bald marine with a gung-ho attitude and corny one-liners. I wanted my game to be about a poor, Soviet untrained soldier. The mute thing wasn’t mirrored to the usual marine babbling, it was for convenience. Besides, why would he be talking in the first place? His trigger finger does all the talking.

The reason I decided not to give him a name was a tie-in to his backstory (or, story of the game, if you will) where he is just one of many clones and thus it would be useless to name him. I got rid of the story though, mostly because the whole clone-buying mechanic was canned by the new level system. The other reason was that, upon reflection, the story was retarded and made no sense at all. So now the whole story is that which you see in the game: you get dropped behind enemy lines and you kill everyone you see. Pretty much. The only thing that remains from the old story is that whenever you die, your corpse stays there for the rest of the game. I thought about taking it out, but then I figured, why would I? Seeing where you have died before is good feedback, and in my opinion it’s funny as hell to walk over your own corpse.

Appearantly, science still has to discover hair dye

So then there’s enemies. The first World is a big science compound in a snowy environment, which automatically paves the way for Snow Guards. Initially I had designed every type of Snow Guard with different behaviour, but due to technical limitations (and time constraints!) the only way types differ from eachother is their speed, their toughness and what kind of weapon they carry. Though I have to say, playing with these three factors creates enough diversity to make it an interesting difference.

So I made my first Snow Guard a couple of months back, and they have been in the engine ever since. Having spent so much time in the engine with those guys kind of made their character for me. Simple things like putting one behind a desk and one on top of a high tower does an amazing lot. Today, I started working on some alternative sprites for these Snow Guards since, you know, wearing ski masks inside is just silly. For me, seeing a Snow Guard without a ski mask for the first time was a bit of a freaky experience. But here are some of the results!

And on a closing note, please don’t hesitate to leave your thoughts in the comments! Even what you disregard as a suggestion without much thought can be the missing link. Oh, and if you have any suggestions on what I should be posting about, you’re always free to ask.

A kind word and a pat on the back,

~Brian

PS: If I’ve promised you’d be in the credits, contact me. I lost my list of creditables.

A Whole New Level

Today’s post will hopefully be a little shorter than the last, because I’m a little behind schedule. I haven’t been slacking off, honest! I just estimated I wouldn’t need to spend an hour on building a level skeleton on avarage.

Levels! That’s perfect for today’s subject. I’ve been designing all the levels in World 1 past weekend, and they are twelve in total. It’s been a lot of work so far, but I’m afraid twelve levels is actually not enough to please most players. Nevertheless, I’ll give you my work method and my own reflection on it so far.

I started out on paper. I find grid paper works best, since my level editor works with a grid as well. It also keeps you consistent, for instance I always used three squares high and two squares wide as the character size. In the actual level editor characters would only be two squares high, though. Guess I should have checked that out first. I’ll keep it in mind for when I get to design the World 2 levels. I’ll still stick to pencil and paper though, having somewhat unreliable hardware I’d rather have all those hours where I can see them.

Don’t spoil yourself, now!

As for the design method rather than design tools, I gave myself a few guidelines to work with. The big three for me were pacing, diversity and efficiency.
Pacing means that I have to keep in mind what the player is capable of, what ’skills’ have been learned. This being World 1, I also made a tutorial bit which explains how weapons are used, picked up and what the other buttons do. Can’t wait to test those when I finish this World!
Diversity was probably what I personally found most important. One of the first things I learned about game design was that repetitive gameplay is one of the major game-killers. I try to make every level have a different schtick, so to say. Of course I used some puzzle elements more than once, but in general, every level is new or interesting.
Efficiency was perhaps the least of my worries at the time, which means I now have a couple of guns and enemies still left unused in World 1. But I guess not all is lost, since I can still use them for the other Worlds.

So what’s this with Levels and Worlds being capitalised? Well, the way I’m designing the game world, every World has a clear theme and end. And by ‘end’, I mean boss battle. This is not to say after beating a World you go through a menu and select the next World. The way I see it, (after being convinced by someone else, actually) the entire game is connected. After beating the first boss, you walk through the door and end up in the next World. Initially, I had the idea of Worlds being playable separately, and between these you could buy upgrades to fit your play style. The reason I changed it was because these upgrades wouldn’t be meaningful. Sure, you could jump higher or run faster, but I wasn’t fully convinced this would really be worth the effort. So! Now everything is connected, I had to go about savegames differently as well. Before, you could only save between worlds. With the new system, I can just use savestates. I guess I saved(!) myself about a day of work there. What also came along with the new level system, is shops. Before, you could only spend money between worlds, but now I will scatter shops around the worlds so you can spend the money you make on overpriced guns, ammo, lives or healthpacks. I still have to think about all the details, but I’m way happier with the new system.

Woops! Looks like I threw up a lot of words again. Oh well, at least these daily reflections make me double-think everything. But I should get back to work, or you nice people would never get to see the final game!

xoxoxo,

~Brian

Guns! Guns! Guns! (and explosives)

Well, spent a large part of the day getting rid of virusses on my laptop so I didn’t get as much work done on One Man Army as I was intending to. But I still owe you guys a new post! After all, I had almost 80 hits yesterday- wow! Guess there’s lots of interest.

Guns! It’s a large part of what the game is about. Whenever I’m designing guns for the game, I keep a few things in mind. First and probably foremost: “Would i want to have this gun?” It’s important to me that the game is fun to play, and since shooting guns is such an important mechanic, I think it’s of utmost importance to have guns that are fun to use. Second, “Don’t I already have something like this? If so, is this still worth putting in the game?” Diversity seemed to be a great big deal for the early playtesters. If a lot of guns are alike, the gameplay goes stale rapidly. Lastly, “Can I do interesting things in level design if this gun brings a new mechanic?” perhaps not the question I’m most concerned with, but still a good one to think about. Especially now that I’m designing the actual levels, having puzzles that use special guns are lots more fun that the usual press-the-button-to-open-a-door or find-the-right-coloured-key. Of course, there have been a bunch of weapons I had cut from the game already, either because they didn’t bring anything new to the table or because they were just no fun.

Enough talk! Here’s some weapons (and pictures!)

Shoots bullet at a rather slow pace, but firing rate can be overridden by repeatedly pulling the trigger. Still doesn’t do damage for shit though. Good thing it has infinite ammo.

Has been standard issue for a while. Produces a nice stream of hot lead from the business end, but tends to run out of ammo quickly.

Shoots nails. Nails things to other things, mainly. Requires to be used in close proximity to be rendered effective since the nails don’t carry very far.

Might be a bit heavy for a person to carry, and is usually found mounted. Contrary to popular belief, the Gatling Gun does have limited ammunition. Not too accurate of a weapon, but the sheer amount of high-speed bullets compensates.

Put one on the floor! Stick one to the wall! Watch from a distance as your oblivious targets get blown to smithereens! Place them by standing next to a wall or crouching on the floor, and detonate them while standing.

These are not all by far, but if you have any suggestions or brainfarts, let me know in the comments!

Fuzzy baby seals,

~Brian