Uh-oh ... Doesn't look like the former team members wanna let go of this one : http://www.dotbunny.com/blog/news/the-other-brothers-cancellation/
Hi there Sladeums, Please simply ignore what dotbunny is posting. Bjorn and I are the founders (IP Holder) of TOB and he was brought on to do the programming. After 3 to 4 months of very little progress and attempts to get things moving faster we decided it's best to let go of him. No hard feelings. Unfortunately, he doesn't take it so well and that's why you see his funky statements and claims You can find more info here: http://mobile.indiegamemag.com/the-other-brothers-not-cancelled-despite-rumours-to-the-contrary/ We have completely discarded ALL code and started from scratch. As a matter of fact, we have achieved more in 2 weeks than we previously have in 3 months thanks to Robert and Guiseppe (Simian Squared). With that said, there is really nothing else to add to the story. Anyone can see that things are moving faster than ever and that should be proof enough. We are here to make a great game so let's focus on that Thomas P.
Indeed. This diary entry focusses entirely on technology. Tech behind The Other Brothers We decided to go with Unity because it's one of the "big three" (Unity, Cryengine and UDK). Unity won out because of it's incredible platform reach plus fantastic workflows. If we want it in consoles and vita and even televisions - we can! How about the rendering - what approach did we take? The key thing to realise about The Other Brothers is that it uses shader technology and render to texture to achieve the pixel effects instead of "just" low resolution art. This means we can drive the game with a lot of subtle "mode 7" style effects as seen on consoles and computers of yesteryear. While the STYLE of the game is retro, it is in no way primitive under the hood! This allows really fantastic "retro-cool" style effects such as mosaic effects in realtime - stuff you would only find by hacking primitive older custom chips such as the Copper in the Amiga or Mode 7 on the Super Nintendo. We think it gives it a cooler vibe having a "virtual retro gpu" ! Stay Pixelated!
Ok guys, just a heads up. This Thursday's live stream will be on 20:30 GMT+0 Come and see the developers live and chat with us, and see us develop in realtime URL: http://www.livestream.com/bjornhurri Really hope to see you guys there!
As a reminder: the live stream is up in an hour so get ready!!! http://www.livestream.com/bjornhurri We will answer all your questions there and show you some cool stuff live
If you want to watch how games are made... now is the time. Bjorn Hurri is painting live at: http://www.livestream.com/bjornhurri Thomas P.
The next post will be about AI, in particular - does smart AI actually mean more fun? also I will talk about the decisions the AI makes behind the scenes, so stay peeled, folks
Just finished the AI. I spent so long on this it's unreal. Tonnes and tonnes of work. Tomorrow (TOBsday, where we do a live stream!) I will post up a massive write-up on it. I guarantee you'll be impressed with what I've done with the AI in this game. It goes far beyond anything you'll find in a typical platformer. This does not include BOSS AI as that will be treated uniquely. Also to come will be an insight into our wicked new trailer we're making! Stay pixelated!
Check out our artist for The Other Brothers (who has worked for AAA for 10 years) work on our game here: http://www.livestream.com/bjornhurri in 30 mins! edit: for those who missed it, a recap is here! http://www.livestream.com/bjornhurri/video?clipId=pla_e5cec0ce-89a3-4ece-87d5-20d0f16c5188 An older build of the game is shown of an early level as well for a sneak peek!
AI A.I Artificial Intelligence, or Acute Idiocity? There's a lot of fun to be had making AI and it's actually very easy for an experienced programmer like me to invent AI that is foolproof and able to dodge your every attack while ensuring it can kill you. At Simian Squared, I've spent many late nights devising the perfect blend of AI, and observing my pet cats... although to be honest, I think they were observing me! But AI is an interesting subject. Make them too smart and it becomes tiring.... make it too stupid and it becomes predictable. Instead for games, the best AI is "entertaining" AI. It must always behave interesting and make you play a little bit different for each creature, it is how you make the game or break the game. I actually felt that the most important part for the AI in The Other Brothers would be to make the AI force the player to Play Different. Play Different is a motto of mine when it comes to playability and game mechanics. I love to make the player use the same controls, but react and act differently in response to situations the game throws up. As you can see in the above screenshot, it shows ratty, he has a red box surrounding him which allows the level designers to change his 'Aggro Range' - the range in which he will get extremely annoyed with you! The yellow line indicates the patrol route. Both are adjustable, so you can have rats which patrol a very long way, or rats that can't see very far. The designer is able to change the tint of any creature as well as change these properties. Best of all, every property in the AI is animatable...! So without the programmer being present, it's possible for an artist or level designer to create a virtually unlimited amount of behaviour from a simple set of behaviours. I try to discourage them though. A level designer out of control is a terrifying thing for a programmer to witness! Each creature in TOB has 3 difficulty levels the designer can pick from. There's stupid, average and smart. This is adjusted in the code on a per-creature basis (it's a lot of work!) but it's worth it because you don't want every creature to behave the same. For example stupid dogs can't spot you creeping up behind them, but average dogs can. Smart dogs may even avoid your stomp attacks from time to time... Controlled Random It's important to have a "controlled random fury" going on with the numbers. In my AI, the system is constantly fed inputs with random variation. The player might be close, but it has a little random fudge to it as the enemy might not judge if you're perfectly close enough to have a nibble on. Likewise this is present for their movement behaviour. Sometimes random numbers fight random numbers which are fed in as a fudge for a normal sensory input, which makes it feel like it is making decisions (it actually is) but sometimes it will not always be a good decision. It was important to slow down how often enemies make decisions. This is known as the time it takes to change your mind. This also has a little random edge to it as well. Nothing is completely random at all, it is merely taking a cold logical true or false, and giving it shades of grey for exciting variation. Emotion and Logic Each creature has a boredom level as well. If you keep diddling around it will get bored of your pranks and wander back off... maybe. Don't be surprised if a smart one pretends to lose interest and walk off... After all what is more fun to fight: spock or the hulk? Spock would grip you or distract you (yawn) but the Hulk has random fury and will smash the place up, you could slip away or Hulk could get distracted by a cheeseburger. You just don't know. Above all, the AI in TOB is very much interested in giving the player a good time rather than being infallable. It's entertaining AI, not stressful AI. And every single creature is different. Stay Pixelated -Rob
Thanks for the vid posting! We were also featured on RPG, and it looks like the internet is exploding with desire for The Other Brothers. That means we have to work that much harder so we don't disappoint you guys!
Nice to see some alpha gameplay footage. I can't speak for the rest of the Internet, but if they're anything like me..
The Other Brothers has now officially exploded all over the internet in a shower of pixel glory, being featured (again) on Kotaku, Rock, paper shotgun and other places... but remember where the diary began, your very own touch arcade! We'd love to do another interview with TA at some point if they get in touch, and for the fans I am currently working on: cutscene stuff... this is what people have been clamouring for, not just platform action but sheer entertainment value. To answer your question about achievements, yes! YES! tonnes of them. Being episodic, the first episode will likely last about an hour minus achievements, and longer with. But each episode adds more time so its something to look forwards to each time your tob app is updated, with no plans for stopping updates. Please tweet about this, as we want to hear from people what they think about the game and what they would love to see. You can also contact me directly on twitter if you want to chat.
The Indie Industry Indie is about to explode. It's no longer about David and Goliath, with the bedroom coder being jack of all trades and going it alone. Because now the "indie scene" is dominated by giants and ex console developers. The quality bar is just too high. There's exceptions which will always sing loudly like minecraft, but these are 1 in 1 million, literally what with development of games now open to anyone who can point and click. So to stack the odds in their favour, indies are now moving to teams to raise that quality and step in the ring with Mohammed Ali. Indie is now standing toe to toe with the big boys, and this is changing the nature of the old fashioned game industry where you had to get a publisher, you had to go retail and so on. Now anyone can do it, and the competition is boundless. This means quality for indie titles is now easily on par with AAA, it is just due to time and work restraints, indie titles have to have creative edge to survive. This means like in The Other Brothers, you need to think out of the box and create great AI, and playability to die for... and marry them with a stylistic and iconic retro style. That kind of stuff can only come from really hard working indie developers with prior experience.
