Student Developer: Microsoft Surface Pro - Log 3 + Boatventure 2013

WHO IS SHE? She is the co-lead of BOATVENTURE 2013!
Boatventure 2013 Dev Log located below the Surface Pro: Wrap Up.

The Surface Pro: Wrap Up

It's been roughly 2 weeks since I decided to use the Microsoft Surface Pro as a tool for game development and in these two weeks I've decided that the Surface Pro is a great tool for developers on the go, but not yet a perfect replacement for a desktop development environment. Most of the problems stem not from the internal hardware or the power of the system itself, but in the available software and the size of the screen (which surprised me in how much it could hinder productivity). The Surface Pro did a lot of great things for me--it ran pretty much everything, let me draw and sketch ideas like I was using paper, connectivity was solid and the type cover made it comfortable to program for hours--but there were a few issues that slowed me down and helped me determine that, for a software/game developer, the Surface Pro is a stellar secondary device, but only a decent primary one.

For a primary device, the screen size was much too small for me to easily multitask, especially when it came to managing 8+ code windows at once. That was probably my biggest issue and it ended up inhibiting me more than I would like to admit. A few other smaller issues, like the length of the charger and the quirks of Windows 8 also, upset me, but it was definitely the screen size that convinced me to return to my desktop for big projects.

However, where the Surface Pro truly shines is in its ability to be an amazing portable device. If I was to go out for a few hours--an example would be a class--where I needed a light device that could power through all of my college activities, let me sketch ideas, and make code edits (or even create full programs in a reasonable amount of time), the Surface Pro would absolutely be the device I would choose. It's just when you ask it to become a primary device that it may fall short for heavy developers.

Do I recommend it? Yes. And I already have to several people. It's just important to ask what you want the device to do before you purchase it.

Boatventure 2013: Development Log 1

A great example of prototyping in action.
These five silhouettes are no longer part of the game.

Today marks the beginning of the weekly (or occasionally bi-monthly) development log of Boatventure 2013 (20XX)! I was working on the first draft design/prototype of the game during my two week test of the Surface Pro as a development device, but sadly (or wonderfully), that prototype bombed and helped us to determine that our core mechanic just wasn't fun! First, here's a bit of background

After many years of global warming, the majority of planet Earth has found itself submerged beneath a torrent of rising sea levels while much of mankind has been wiped out by the resulting influx of superstorms. In recent years however, with humanity at the brink of extinction, the Earth has finally begun to stabilize itself. The majority of those who survived this global warming-related apocalypse have taken refuge on what little dry land remains, while others have taken to the seas themselves, searching valiantly, for any remains of civilization until the depths claim their lives as well. Thrown into the fray without any hesitation for adventure, you play as a boat scouring the ocean world, searching for a way to kickstart a new civilization, and somehow resurface the world that now lies beneath the tides.

If you take a look at the images above, you'll see five ships and a submarine. In the first design of the game, the player would be able to unlock new, larger ships and then cycle through them at will during the gameplay in order to solve puzzles or just lay down the law to other ships. The system was based around a mobility-power dynamic, where the smaller ships were more mobile, but the larger ships were more powerful. Luckily, it became apparent during prototyping (and prior to that, in some arguments with the musician, Jack Yeates) that the system might not be fun, or at least be terribly difficult to balance. (On that note, check out one of our MANY concept songs and maybe let us know what you think!)



In a true designer fashion, I don't like really like scrapping cool conceptual systems without testing, so I insisted that we prototype it out; and for a few days, I thought it would work out, but it quickly become more and more apparent to me that cycling through different boats was a fun mechanic, but that the power vs mobility dynamic was not. At all.

In the end, we got rid of the different sized boats, but kept the idea of cycling through multiple specializations of ship. This means that you can unlock new ships with a new type of weapon (like how Megaman unlocks new weapons) and cycle through them in real time. In addition to this, we're considering a Cave Story-esque mechanic where each ship can "tier up" by doing well, obtaining a more powerful weapon in the process. Like Cave Story, however, they can also level back down.

It's important to note, that unlike both of the mentioned games, we plan to make sure that every type of weapon has some sort of gameplay purpose (akin to The Legend of Zelda's items) to aid in the exploration! So cannons might be able to break down certain walls, torpedoes can destroy underwater rocks, and battering rams could maybe let the player push objects that would normally damage them. Each different weapon corresponds to a different specialization. (We're still coming up with more like an anchor grappling hook.)

A bit of a very basic platforming scenario. TAKING PLACE AS A BOAT!!! :D

In addition to the combat, it's important to remember that the game is an exploration-adventure game where the player is literally a boat. We've spent a lot of time thinking about how the player can get around (and we have a lot of ideas!) Though, one of the tested mechanics that was really positively received, was the submarine mode. Since your boat has the special ability to change into different ships, it can, naturally change into a sub to explore the deep-sea depths! In addition to this, the player can unlock a lot of other cool tools for exploring and getting past obstacles that they couldn't otherwise get past.

Submarine mode is my personal favorite though. It literally and figuratively adds depth to the game and will let us design some really cool areas to fight in, explore, or solve puzzles in, whereas the other ideas are more combat orientated with the added bonus of increasing mobility (Castlevania-style).

So, hopefully, you like the idea of Boatventure! It's really shaping up to be an amazing, beautiful, stylistic adventure game that we can be proud of; and our secondary protagonist at the top of the page, is shaping up to be a great character. More on the main character in the coming updates. :)

More sketches of our super cool co-lead! 

Second Semester: Clusterfuck, Voyage, Dolphin Squadron

Catalyst. A game from Clusterfuck. 

So, it's been awhile and I'm a little upset that I let myself just not update for such a long period of time, but I'm ready to get back to business.

Well, actually, let's start with a short look at my last three weeks. During break (and after Voyage) I went to a couple of parties and had some fun. I found it ironic that I left college and partied, but that's not important. I was a little upset that I didn't get any actual work done, but I'm usually overworking myself anyway, so it was fine. Then, suddenly I came back to college. I was ready to work--then I went to more parties and socialized too much. This took me over for a few days.

Now, I'm actually back and prepared to work. To be completely honest though, I feel that the partying was a pretty solid experience. Socializing at these things gives you a pretty good view of the world. I learned a few things about people that I wasn't quite expecting, but that's neither here, nor there. You are here to read about games! Our games specifically.

So, Clusterfuck 

This is video game design in action.

Project Clusterfuck has been advancing at a pretty solid rate. The artists legitimately love working on the game, but we're still in pre-production, so they haven't begun to hate their lives yet. What we're doing now is working on the concept art, developing a style, working on our stories, running into design problems, etc. The image above is from one of our first meetings where we were taking a look at control schemes. As you might be able to see, Clusterfuck is being designed for controllers. We also make sure we keep the scope in check because being in-scope is absolutely essential for any game. We want to be ambitious (because this is a project about learning our limits), but we don't want to actually make a clusterfuck of a game. Ya dig?

Updates about Clusterfuck will be made from time to time. I'm not actually sure how much the team wants to reveal about the game before we've figured things out; and while I am the game designer, I'm not the project lead. We don't even have one of those yet. Right now, Clusterfuck is just our game. As such, information about its development will be sporadic, but awesome and artsy!

Some Clusterfuck Art

Tenebrae (By Meghan)

A Story (By Hunter)

Catalyst (By Brook)

A representation for 16 of the Clusterfuck characters. Sans Project Duo.

Project Voyage and Dolphin Squadron

Progress on Project Voyage has been interesting. I try not to work on it unless I'm certain I have time to blog, so, for the last few weeks, I've gotten little to no work done on it. Jacques has created a few new songs that I'd like to show, but I'll wait until I have time to write a specific post about it. As for Dolphin Squadron...we only need like seven assets (which has become a joke around ACPC Productions). I'm sure we'll get it done sometime after the Global Game Jam, but until then, I'm back in direct contact with Brook (the artist), so I'll try to make him do it over the next few days. :P

Consensus (with myself)

WE'RE ALL JUST TOO EXCITED ABOUT CLUSTERFUCK TO WORK ON OUR OTHER GAMES.

Alas,
Expect Greatness.
Ryan Huggins~

Design Process: Project Voyage (Day 3)

Rain's a'coming! Also, yay! A hat! No sail though. Bummer.

DESIGN PROCESS: This is where I will be choosing a project and discussing it's design decisions over a period of time. Expect frequent updates.

I decided that I should probably write this blog post before I got too caught up doing art and lost track of time, and then all of a sudden, I'd have two blog posts to write in a day! Uncool. So, today was mostly a Dolphin Squadron day, since Brook sent me some art assets to throw into the game, but that's information for another day. Over the last couple of hours or so, I've been thinking about the atmospheric systems that would have to be made for Voyage and they've made me realize that this'll probably be a somewhat long-term project after-all... Alas.

So, Mother Nature is a powerful woman who don't need no man--and is probably not a deity to be trifled with--as such, I've determined that any seafaring game in it's right-mind should take weather and atmospheric factors into account. Things like time of day, incoming weather and the general atmospheric conditions are super important for both the "feels" and, to a  lesser extent, the actual gameplay.

Speaking of gameplay, I haven't really put much thought into it yet; I like to develop worlds A LOT, so I'm holding off on that for now. A different approach is art-style and gameplay first, story and world second. I'm trying to make a game that's fun, but that's also atmospheric as fuck. A background story and a deep world are key, but not quite important at this stage. Granted, as far as animation and art goes, I'm not the best in the world (or even close), so I think I'll have to find one or make all this shit myself. Whatever, let's take a look at atmosphere for a little bit.

These atmospheric concepts are easily my favorite so far. 

When you think of the prettiest time of day, you don't usually think of mid-afternoon. You think something like, "Oh, oh! Sunsets are pretty!" or "Pretty sunrises are also pretty!". Sometimes you maybe think of both. If you're weird, maybe you do think that the most beautiful time of day is one of the regular, average-Joe times. That's cool, but I like sunsets. I love sunrises too. But what I really love is stars and how sometimes you can see them as the sun is rising or setting. I was never able to really see stars living in a city, so they were always double the beautiful to me. Therefore, that is what I'd call beauty; it's also what I've tried to capture it in this here concept.

As far as systems go, the dynamic-time-of-day-and-sometimes-atmospheric-effects-plus-weather system is going to be a very complicated one; but the way I see it is, if I can design it in a simple way, I can probably code it with enough time, effort and outside assistance. I mean, can you even imagine a game where you can actually see a lightning storm happening in the background? And then maybe watch it get closer until you're right inside of it!? Then you capsize and end up on a remote island, but with all of your stuff so it's just like being lucky, but also exploring. That's a game worth playing.

I can imagine it. It's a pretty cool game. It also probably exists somewhere else. But I'm not trying to innovate my life away here, I'm taking something I love about nature, about perspectives and seeing if it'll work in a 2D game (my favorite kind). So, let's hope it comes together one of these months.

Perspective of clouds makes things better. And that aura! ;D

Expect Greatness.

Ryan Huggins~

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Current Project: Dolphin Squadron

DOLPHIN SQUADRON

So, Dolphin Squadron has been in development for about a month now. Originally, it was supposed to be an arcade-inspired game for Steam's Greenlight program. Sometime during the beginning of development we realized that we liked the game beyond it just being a school project and it went from a shitty school project to a shitty personal one. 

In Dolphin Squadron, you are a dolphin hired by the US Marine Corps to intercept dangerous underwater mines that are being used to covertly destroy coastal cities around the world. The core game is a vertical scrolling shooter where you play as a weaponized dolphin fired out of a deep-sea submarine. Starting at the bottom of a trench and traveling up towards the surface, the goal of the game is to destroy a mine before it reaches the surface by first, catching up with and destroying a mechanized escort fish that's carrying it to the surface, and then destroying the mine with your dolphin's body. The hook is exploding dolphins. To destroy the mines, you have to destroy the mecha with your dolphin lasers and then slam your dolphin into the mine.

There's more than just dolphin lasers now, but this pitch was what sold the game to my class and teacher and from there we began development on a game that was pretty much about blowing up marine wildlife. Ironically, only one person was concerned about the potential for people to become offended by the game's core theme of kamikaze dolphins, but we ignored them and continued to work on the game.

These kind of things still make me happy. Haha

Presently, the game is on a smooth development course (with an February-April release window), but there are a few issues with the core design and some mechanical issues that I'll need to iron out before a release. Of these, one is establishing a clear method of level progression and another is the difficulty of creating "procedural" (read : random) obstacle generation that doesn't fuck up and create impossible gameplay at higher difficulties. I haven't heard any complaints about the enemy/obstacle locations being "dickish" (direct quotes) from the most recent versions of the game, but reaching a happy balance for difficulty (as far as concentration of obstacles goes) is getting very difficult.

Currently, the spawning of enemies and obstacles is pretty random--and that works fine for now--, but I'm wondering if there should be a more dynamic system for spawning enemies and obstacles. I figure that once I reach a middle ground for obstacle concentration, I can tone up the difficulty through other means such as providing the level boss (the mecha) with weapons and introducing mid-bosses in some levels. Weapons balance was a minor issue for awhile, but at this point, the weapons seem to be suitably balanced, though they'll definitely change a little bit before the end of development.

Our goals for the game aren't terribly crazy, but we do plan on polishing the game for at least a month or three before releasing it. Figuring that we can implement all aspects of the levels, get all of the art done and add a fun number of gameplay secrets before sometime in late January/early February, we could have the game ready for a release sometime in April. Eventually, I'll release a video or two of the gameplay and how it's progressed. :D

Expect Greatness,
Ryan Huggins~

Welcome Back, Me

Well, it's certainly been awhile since I've last updated. For the last few weeks (months?) I've just been acquainting myself with the college life. I'm now attending Champlain College for game design and so far it's been a pretty fun time. ...But no one cares about my college experience. What's important is that I've been improving my skills as a game developer and designer for the time I've been gone and here I am, returning prepared to make some games. So, let's talk about those.

Project Fall :

My previous project, Project Fall, hasn't been updated too much, though I'll potentially be releasing the prototype to the wild soon. Currently, I'm working on developing an artistic style for the game before I dive head-first back into development and turning it into either an arcade-style platformer (a murderbox as I like to call it) or a full-fledged platformer. Who knows. Maybe I'll do both! The design is solid, the testers like/love it, the controls are sexy--it's a good prototype...now to just make something with it.

Concept Art for Project Fall

Dolphin Squadron :

Here is the project that I'm currently working on. Dolphin Squadron! Dolphin Squadron is an arcade-inspired scrolling shooter where you play as a dolphin employed by the Marines/SEALS to intercept and destroy deadly, coastal-city-destroying, mines...with your flimsy dolphin body. I like to call the game Exploding Sea Battles sometimes since there are a lot of explosions, many of which are friendly sea creatures simply getting in your way.

I designed the game for my Game History and Development class here at Champlain College, but it was an idea that I had previously come up with while I was showering. Figuring that a radical game about exploding sea creatures and a weaponized dolphin would garner at least a little attention, I decided to use the concept for the game. Right now, the game is a little more than a prototype and I plan to throw up some updates and videos here to show progress as the game develops.

A friend of mine actually turned his monitor to play the game...

Dolphin Squadron was developed over 4 weeks (for class), though arguably, I coded pretty much the entire current version of the game in less than a week (the last week :P) before the game was due. We plan to finish the game and add some more crazy shit to make it sexier and overall more fun to play. Current issues include difficulty, a minor lack of understanding the goal (for new players), and a shitty tutorial.

Hanriot :

Hanriot was our (ACPC Production's) first game jam game. We formed at the game jam and have decided to stay a loose group pretty much during our time at college. Hanriot was a game designed for the theme of disavantage and our lead designer (I programmed), James Shasha, decided on an Italian Pilot who crash-lands in the Alps, behind enemy lines, during WWI. The goal of the game is to get through the Alps and reach the city at the end of the game.

We didn't manage to complete the game because of mapping bottleneck issues with Game Maker 8.1, but we did create a visually pleasing game (even though it wasn't perfect) in 48 hours, with a bunch of freshman game developers. We were very pleased with ourselves.

YOU CAN DOWNLOAD THE GAME HERE.

WELL, ACTUALLY HERE.


Project Clusterfuck :

So, I wanted to make an RPG/Adventure game and thus, Project Clusterfuck was born. Generally, I develop games under the Siifour Studios name, but this game is currently being developed under "my" side-studio ACPC Productions (you don't want to know what it stands for) and the final game will probably fall under the ACPCP and Siifour Studios production houses (Siifour's designer and musician and ACPCP's artists, testers, co-designer).

The game is literally a clusterfuck of five different RPG stories because we thought it would be cool to have the player transverse through a series of different RPG stories. Whether or not the idea will hold up is up for speculation, but based on our current designs, we're more than ready for the hurdle. I'm producing, coding, and designing the game, but with five people writing five different stories for the game, I figure that I'll be more of a mediator and balance maintainer than a full-fledged designer. :P

Project Clusterfuck is my current large-scale side-project. While I work on Clusterfuck, I'll probably develop at least 5 or 6 games of a Project Fall or Dolphin Squadron scale and hopefully they'll be just as fun as those two games are shaping up to be.

We will also have a fuck-ton of art and concept assets.

Now here are the artists:


Brook (Revocare) :

Some of Brook's OCs.

A mecha and it's rider (WIP)

Brook is our key artist. 

Megahn (Nanrie) :

Two Clusterfuck characters together. 

One of Megahn's OCs.

She can drawn with pencils too. Who does that anymore? ;D

Hunter (Totalblatherskite) :

They got infatuated by a cat in a movie. He drew a cat.

OCs from Hunter's story. 

Matt (Pseudosutra  I don't currently have any of his art, but here are his character designs) :

One of Matt's characters drawn by Brook.

An ACPCP fan favorite. Gungie (I think that's how they spell it...)

MOTH CHARACTER! :D

Ryan  (Project Duo) :

The main character of Project Duo.

I'm not a colorist. Haha

The above character's brother.

Note : All of this art (sans Hunter's) is for Project Clusterfuck. ;D

Expect Greatness.
Ryan Huggins~

Current Project: Fall

You're the horizontal thing (he's flipping).

Today is the last day that I've dedicated to official prototyping of Project Fall. Which essentially means, that I will continue to prototype the game until it feels like I want it to feel, then move on to learning Unity so I can port it to that platform (if 2D is actually feasible there). It also means that I can like, release screenshots and concepts of the prototype because it's actually pretty fun now.

Obviously, the screenshot that you have become privy to in this post represents more of my legendary placeholder artwork, but it handles the job of emulating gameplay, and it does that job extremely well.

The Early Story

So far, a few things are different with how I approached this project as compared to City Across the Sky, and yet the game followed a pretty standard stream of changes and iteration. At first, I had an idea of a game where you would have a bunch of weapons (the prototype only has 10), murder enemies, and avoid falling objects from the sky. It was going to focus on paths of motion and tight controls but be executed around the notion of avoiding this falling objects. I started on the prototype, got wall-jumping the way I wanted it, added a weapon or two, created some enemies and everything was fine and dandy. I thought the game would work out exactly as I planned it. Then I added the falling objects and the game suddenly was some shit. I realized that my original vision just wouldn't work with what I had coded (motion of objects and controls) and with that, the vision in my head fell apart. However, I liked what I had created a lot, so I kept the enemies, weapons, and movement and later moved towards and idea which I called the "murder box".

The Fall

After the idea of "Fall" had failed me, I decided to keep the name (since I have another project called Spring [more on that later]) and work on the concept of a murder box arcade game. But, for awhile, I thought the idea was much too simple and reminded me a lot of Super Crate Box, a game by Vlambeer, a studio that I really like and would ideally, like to emulate, but not copy. I was at a complete loss for what to do with the game, and let it sit for about 5 or 6 days. I hadn't abandoned it, but I didn't have an idea for what to do with the game. The simplicity of the gameplay is inspired somewhat by Super Crate Box and to a lesser extent Super Meat Boy, but I'm working hard to make it feel like a different game entirely.

I believe that it's very important to come up with your own ideas, but at the same time, I don't think that borrowing ideas that work from other games to supplement your own individual visions is necessarily a bad thing. As long as you're not ripping off another game, I feel like similarities between games should only serve to honor the original inventor of the idea.

The Inspiration

For awhile, I had trouble finding something that could work as a goal for the gamer; one that didn't tread too closely to Super Crate Box or the notion of solely trying to acquire a higher score (but that would ultimately be the goal of course). In SCB, getting the crates and finding new weapons was the major goal. It served the purpose of randomizing gameplay and acted as the scoring mechanism which was a great design choice because it fostered simplicity. For a while, I wondered what I could use as my scoring mechanism. For a while, I couldn't think of anything.

But, I asked my girlfriend (who is by no means a gamer of any kind) to make a list of things she thought I could put into the game to make it better. She made a list of ten things, and initially, I thought the list was a pile of crap, so I was frustrated by her naivety within the discipline of game design. I was serious, and her suggestions were...well they were not serious. So at first I disregarded the list and stopped development for a day or two. But eventually I came back and looked at the list and something clicked with two entries on the list.

1. Triangles that spin and cut you.
2. Squares that shoot you.
3. Keep the basic shape thing you have.
4. If there is something good falling from the sky, give it a rainbow trail or something.
5. Zooming cars.
6. Raining guns that you have to avoid.
7. Mermaids.
8. Catch the gun and it kills everything on the screen. Call it the "Silver Star Gun".
9. Bubbles. Toxic bubbles or happy bubbles.
10. Sound effects.

Raining guns and the "Silver Star Gun". From these ideas, I created the Gunstar. 

The GUN STARRR.

A weapon that, if the player is doing very well for a certain period of time, will fall from the sky and offer you ultimate power for a short time span and allow you to murder the crap out of everything on the map (if you're skilled). This idea, spawned from a list of what I considered terrible ideas at first, inspired me to work on the game as a murder box and helped me move away from the idea that the game was too inspired by Super Crate Box.

What you should take from this is, ideas can come from ANYWHERE, not just yourself. Outside ideas are extremely important and even if you don't think that whoever is giving you the ideas is qualified to give you ideas (probably because you don't think they know about games or fun and you do because you're a "game designer" and they're a regular person). You have to remember--and I have learned to remember--that game designers aren't usually your target audience, just because they MIGHT be the most vocal audience or offer the most criticisms, you don't tailor your game to them, you tailor it to the people you want to play your game. In the case of Fall, it was casual gamers and the indie hardcore.

The Murder Box

So, by mixing ideas from other games and adding a few of my own, I've managed to make Fall feel more like an action-arcade game inspired by the elemets of Super Crate Box (spawning weapons to keep you on your toes), rather than a copy. By adding elements from Team Fortress 2 (rocket jumping), Cave Story (where certain weapons affect how you move), Galaga (power-ups which are not implemented into the prototype yet), Super Meat Boy (simple motion, but with my own arcade "feel") and my own design elements (usually inspired by friends and family) such as the Gunstar (a power-up) and the leveling (leading to bosses), difficulty (based on a tier system) and scoring mechanics (which encourage the player to beat their own high scores to encourage player improvement), I managed to make Fall a completely different game and in the end I hope others think so as well.

Concept Artwork

By Jacques Yeates. He thinks it's too cutesy. You can see how the Gunstar
 has influenced the theme of the game.

By Ryan Huggins. I thought the shades (reference to Gurren Lagann) made this
one of the greatest things ever.

Early Prototype Videos

Expect greatness. Ryan Huggins~