Suzy Cube Update: October 30, 2015 First I want to encourage all of you to check out the latest instalment of Lessons From Suzy Cube all about making the game feel great to play on a touch screen: http://louardongames.blogspot.com/2015/10/lessons-from-suzy-cube-mobile-controls.html Now for the update! I mostly did some bug fixing and getting around to backlog stuff this week. I started the week by making a variation of my chaser enemy which looks like a snowman head... And hides as a snowman's head! Getting these right also meant addressing some bugs in the chaser behaviour which were totally overdue. I also wrote myself a super useful debug script which follows the player around spawning cubes at regular intervals. What's really neat is that I can copy the cubes in play mode and then paste them back into the scene in edit mode to use them as a template for placing stuff like coins to perfectly match the player's path or jump arc. It's been extremely useful on level 2-3 with all the slides and jump pads. What else, what else? Oh! Wrote a little script to make particle effects that ignore the time scale. When Suzy is hit or gets a power up, there's a slight pause or slowdown that many people were assuming was a bug or chugging.. hopefully this will help make the effect look more intentional.. as intended... And, finally, I created a set of gradient assets using a custom vertex alpha shader. They should be really useful for making blocks look like they are cut off or receding into darkness.. OR LAVA!! Well, that's it for this week. Halo 5 just came out, so I make no promises for next week!
Your game is looking really great, but at the moment it looks just like super mario 3d. It is going to be pretty impossible to match that in quality so I was wondering how you were planning to make your one stand out from Mario?
Well, Destined, I'm not gonna be coy about it. My goal IS to pretty much make my own iOS adapted version of Super Mario 3D World. I wrote more about why on my blog a few months ago: http://louardongames.blogspot.com/2015/08/lessons-from-suzy-cube-why-do-master.html
Suzy Cube Update: November 6, 2015 Okay! This week I started things off by making a placeholder tutorial screen: More importantly, though, I set up the first user experience flow. I decided to change things up if it's your first time launching the game. Instead of taking you to the level select, I will take you to the aforementioned tutorial screen and then straight to Level 1-1. Why make you suffer through clicking your way around a level select screen that means nothing to you yet!? Straight to gameplay, baby! Similarly, I've also set up the tester flow with an extra screen with instructions for logging into Everyplay using the test account and a button to do just that. And the rest of my week was spent working on a new level, Level 4-3. The level is split up into three towers, but when you're playing, you have the impression that you are simply racing down a single long tower, trying to outrun the giant spiked crusher that is chasing you down the whole time. A big part of why the level is spit up into three parts like this is to help accommodate checkpoints and the big crusher. Speaking of crushers, there are also many smaller ones sprinkled throughout your harrowing escape down the tower.. you know, cuz I'm mean like that sometime ^_~ I also wrote another Lessons From Suzy Cube post which I invite you all to read. This one is all about the culling system I wrote to allow the game to run nice and fast, even on my iPod Touch. http://louardongames.blogspot.com/2015/11/lessons-from-suzy-cube-improved-mobile.html I am currently debating whether or not to attend GCD in SanFran in March. If I do, it will have a huge effect on my priority list as I will concentrate on making World 1 look all finished and stuff. Anywho, still on the fence about it so I will keep all of you posted.
Suzy Cube Update: November 12, 2015 This update comes a day early. I won't be available to do the update on Friday, so Thursday it is! It was a lazy week for me, so it won't be a very big update. I did get some work done on some desert props, though! And made some interactive sarcophagi! The Mummy Skull is essentially my take on Dry Bones from Mario games. And made some/ still working on some wall mounted blow torches!! Also wanted to mention that if all goes well, I'll be attending GDC in San Fran in March! This will mean re-vectoring my efforts to concentrate on making the beginning of the game as presentable as possible rather than painting the whole thing in broad strokes. I will keep you all posted on the GDC situation and let me know if you are planning to attend so we can meet up! See you next week! I've got to go finish that blow torch and then plan the next four months!
The early parts of the game are already looking pretty slick - can't wait to see how much more you can dress it up. interactive sarcophagi?
Suzy Cube Update: November 20, 2015 Back to our regularly scheduled update... I'm working on a new level, level 1-3. It's a big descent to the goal and all about learning to use the double jump power up. I'm having fun with it. I even added a couple of hidden areas! These are fun for breaking up the look and action of a level and giving the player a sense of exploration and discovery. And I'm currently working on a basic flying enemy for the game: Killer Bees! Expect to see more of this bad guy next week! That's it for this week's update. Not a glamorous one, I'm afraid. It's what happens when I spend most of the week with my nose buried in the editor. So I will leave you with a couple more screenshots. See you all next week!
Suzy Cube Update: November 27, 2015 So, Level 1-3 is done for the moment and I've got my new bee enemies working! I suspect they will cause... quite the buzz... Moooving on! I've got a good chunk of work done on Level 1-2 which makes me feel pretty good about having a nice presentable World 1 to show off to folks at GDC in March. Notice the fog effect? That's actually three things working together... The camera background colour... The scene fog... And finally, my custom gradient objects to simulate height fog. Put it all together and you've got a nice misty forest feel. Now, I've had all the parts needed to do this in place for a while now, but it was only this morning that I figured I would write a simple script which ensures all three colours match up when the level is loaded. In short, I simply grab the camera background colour, and then set the fog colour to match and finally I set the colour of the gradient object material to match as well. This should make it nice and easy for me to make changes and adjust the background colours of levels to get them just right without having to fiddle with all three colours individually. It's not a HUGE thing, but when you're working on your own, every little time saver like this can really pay off in the long run. Next week I should be finishing off work on Level 1-2 and then moving on to, either, 1-4 or the first boss level, not sure yet... We'll see next week! See you all then!
Suzy Cube Update: December 4, 2015 Level 1-2 draft is done! It's all about teaching the player to use jump pads including the normal kind, bounce pads and jump activated pads. I thought the tall trees of a forest motif would be perfect for this. I also put in work on converting my previously lava-rific boss into it's watery World 1 version. I set up its attack sequence too and did a bitty bit of set up work to simplify making the level leading up to the boss. Otherwise, just a little bit of bug fixing, nothing to write home about. Next week I should have a completed boss level draft and, hopefully, some early progress on Level 1-4. Until then, have a great week, folks!
Suzy Cube Update: December 11, 2015 Ugh, barely an update this week... I spend the first few days working on our annual holiday card so I knew the update this week would be slim... then I updated Unity... And, as usual, I then had some bug fixing to do. The funniest still isn't fixed... Get it? It's funny because it looks ridiculous, and bees are bugs. it's a bug which affects bugs. Funny. Also, it only happens on my iPod which is a pain in the ass. It's so much easier to debug stuff when it happens in the editor too. Well, I'm going to get back to work on the World 1 boss level... Ya.. That level I promised would be done this week.... Oh, speaking of which, this is how the level starts right after you hit the trigger which gets the water flowing... and RISING!! DUN DUN DUUUUN!! Ok.. I think I'm done making promises I'll just end up breaking, so... See you all next week!
No Holiday Updates This update is a non-update, if you will. I've decided that rather than end up posting half baked updates throughout the holiday period, I figured I would would on Suzy Cube when I can, not worry too much about it and then come back with a single update in the new year outlining any progress I may have made between now and then. Holiday preparations have simply been taking up more and more of my time and I would rather not force myself to work on the game if it doesn't make sense just so I have something to post to the blog each week. And so, I say goodbye to you all for the time being and hope you'll all pop back in in the new year! Happy holidays all and have a safe and happy new year!
Suzy Cube Update: January 8, 2016 Hey everybody! Hope you had fun over the holidays! It's great to be back in the action! Ok, short update. Draft of World 1 boss level is FINALLY done! I struggled with a really dumb bug that was really more of a case of boneheadedness rather than an actual bug. You know, when you overlook something so stupid that you simultaneously feel good for solving the problem but like a total idiot for causing it in the first place? Ya, one of those! I've still got that darn scaling bees bug to deal with, but that will have to wait for Xcode to reinstall (ugh, computers!) Once I get that sorted, I'll dive right into the last outstanding level for World 1, Level 1-4. With Level 1-4, that will mean the whole of world one will be drafted, allowing me to shift to testing and polishing to get ready to show off my vertical slice at GDC in March! Hopefully I'll have more to say next week than "I fixed the bee bug!" but, seriously, I'll consider the week a success if I'm simply able to do that! See you then!
Suzy Cube Update: January 15, 2016 Started work on Level 1-4 this week. It's been really meandering because I didn't really know what to do with it. It turns out that my one idea to make it more open isn't really an idea at all. I knew I wanted to do this outside-inside thing but I still needed a core mechanism for the level and so... SWITCHES! This is just one simple example of what I can do with these switches. I should be able to set up some fun situations using these and I now have a much better idea of what I want to accomplish with the level. Also, check it: bees are fixed! Sweet! Only problem, I don't really know what caused the bug in the first place. I tore the prefab apart bit by bit to see if I could get the bug to stop happening and couldn't. I then decided to try the opposite approach and rebuild the bee from scratch, one component at a time to see when the bug would show up... It never did! And since I now had a new working bee, I just overwrote the old busted prefab with the new working one. Bee fixed! I much prefer when I actually learn something by fixing a bug, but hey, I'll take it! Ciao for now and catch you all next week!
Suzy Cube Update: January 22, 2016 SO, I've got my hook for Level 1-4: Switch activated temporary blocks! I know, I know, not a catchy name, but they sure are fun to play around with! The problem is, the layout I had been working on since last week really didn't showcase the mechanism well. I spent so much time building the level without knowing what I would, ultimately do with it that it just didn't fit. So, on Wednesday morning, I saved a copy and started over! You can't polish a turn, as they say. So I spent Wednesday redesigning the whole level on paper, this time totally supporting the core mechanism of the temporary blocks. And this morning I finished the first pass draft (whitebox) of the level! Once I actually took the time to work through the design of the level, it came together so much faster! Well, that makes all World 1 levels accounted for and drafted! This means I'll be focusing on testing for the next little while and then moving on to decorating the levels once I'm satisfied with the design of all of them. After that? GDC, I guess! Any of you planning to attend? I'll see you all next week!
Suzy Cube Update: January 29, 2016 March is fast approaching, gotta get to work making the World 1 levels look their best! A big part of that effort is simply to place more decorative objects in the levels but in doing that for Level 1-1, I kept running into more and more lightmap seam issues. It really sucks that Unity's lightmapping middleware doesn't address the problem of seams with some fancy post filtering or anything, so, in order to address these issues, I'm forced to create secondary UV sets by hand rather than rely on Unity's automatic lightmap UV generation. This probably wouldn't be such a noticeable issue if not for the fact that all the objects in the game are barely textured rounded boxes ^_^. Pretty much a worse case scenario! Check out the difference it made on this bush asset! I also made the (surprise!) sixth and TRUE final level of World 1 on Monday. It's Level 1-S or Special. The idea with the special stages is to offer the player something different from the usual levels. In the case of Level 1-S, it's a series of isometric perspective puzzles on a short timer ^_^ Now, here's a trick for any of you working on an isometric game who still want a little perspective. Rather than use an orthographic camera, use a perspective camera with a very narrow field of view. Pull the camera far back in order to frame the action properly and you'll notice that by zooming in, you've essentially "crushed" much of the perspective away. The narrower the FOV, the less perspective you get! Next week will, likely, be more decoration efforts for more of the World 1 levels. See you then! BONUS WIP shot of Level 1-1
Suzy Cube Update: February 5, 2016 I'm not sure how to handle this update. I think I'll just write something short-ish here and invite those who want more details to check out my blog post update: http://louardongames.blogspot.com/2016/02/suzy-cube-update-friday-february-5-2016.html This week was all about further massaging my World 1 levels both for looks and for playability. I had my wife play through hand of the World 1 levels. She doesn't really play these kinds of games, so it was really eye opening! I also got back some gameplay videos and some feedback from a friend of mine who's been testing builds out with his son for a while now. This feedback and my observations have lead to a number of changes, either planned or implemented, to the game's early levels. I an not overstate this lesson, which I've learned and relearned over my years in the industry: As developers, we have no idea how hard our games are to other players. There is, simply, no substitute for user testing! For you level design nerds, as I mentioned above, if you are interested in a more detailed breakdown of the changes I made this week, especially to Level 1-2, you can go check out my long form update on blog: http://louardongames.blogspot.com/2016/02/suzy-cube-update-friday-february-5-2016.html For everyone else, here are eye treats for you! Next week is Carnaval here in Venezuela, and that means Monday and Tuesday off so next week's update will probably be a little slimmer. I do hope to make it up to you with a long overdue Lessons From Suzy Cube post, though! (http://louardongames.blogspot.com/search/label/Lessons%20from%20Suzy%20Cube) OH! Also, don't forget to let me know if you are planning to attend GDC and would like a chance to try out the game for yourself! See you all next week!
Suzy Cube Update: February 12, 2016 As previously mentioned, it was Carnaval here in Venezuela this week meaning Monday and Tuesday off, ergo, teeny tiny update this week. I've been messing around with ideas for generating skyboxes to spruce up the backgrounds in the game... It's still looking rather rubbish for the moment so nothing to show off, yet. Most of my week was, in fact, spent on a meaty new Lessons from Suzy Cube blog post all about level design. I invite all of you to check it out: http://louardongames.blogspot.com/2016/02/lessons-from-suzy-cube-level-design.html It includes the first ever public video footage of the game!! Aw, heck, here it is for those of you who don't like reading so much: Well, that's it for this week. GDC is fast approaching, I hope I get to meet some of you there! Ciao for now!
Suzy Cube Update: February 19, 2016 What's up folks!? This week, I focused on creating skybox backgrounds and then spend yesterday doing something stupid! I was pretty sure, for the longest time, that I wasn't going to make any sort of background for the game. Well, staring at those vast expanses of solid colour made me realize what a difference a simple background could make. I did some experiments and settled on using skyboxes generated right in Unity using reflection probes! Reflection probes are meant to be used for generating cubemaps to fake local reflections on objects, but it turns out, those cubemaps can make damn fine skyboxes too! So, I've been setting up background rendering scenes in order to generate skybox textures. This is what the background scene for Level 1-1 looks like. Floating islands, blocky clouds, big boxy sun.... ...all surrounding a reflection probe at the centre of the scene. Also, notice the simple procedural sky shader I created in ShaderForge which allows me to set lower, upper and horizon colours as well as adjust the height and diffusion of the horizon. Quite handy! Here are some shots of some of the backgrounds I've got so far (as usual WIP, subject to change.. blah blah blah) Surprise Sphinx when you finish the level!! So, what's the stupid thing I did? The stupid thing I did was to rewire the way the game handles inputs less than a month before GDC. And it felt SOOO good! I use InControl, which is awesome! What's NOT awesome is that I'm a dumb noob who went and wrote a game in JavaScript (never again!). Because of this, I've had to move InControl into the project's Plugins folder so my JS scripts could access InControl which is written in C#. The problem with this, is that it made it a huge pain to keep InControl up to date. So, yesterday, I completely changed the way my game interacts with InControl and was able to move InControl back out to where it wants to live in the project hierarchy. So, how did I do this? The short version, is that I created a system which uses two scripts, an Input handler (JS) which talks to the game scripts and an InControl Relay (C#) which talks to InControl. The two scripts talk to each other using SendMessage which is a Unity engine function which allows messages to be passed to GameObjects and Components rather than from script to script directly, transcending the language barrier. Now, SendMessage is not as efficient as calling functions directly, sure, but it does get around the language problem. If smarter folks than me have a better idea, please, chime in! Now it's off to finishing up backgrounds and decoration in time for GDC. See you all next week!
