Oops! Stupid Pixels

Consider this post a tutorial if you will. A tutorial on how to not screw up.

So a lot of game development goes into proper planning. But where would we be in this world if we always planned everything to the last tiny detail before jumping into the unknown? For example, the Wright Brothers were originally trying to build a better toilet and not the famous invention they ended up with (no, not the popcorn popper, that's Charles Cretors, silly). And by some bizarre miscalculation due to poor planning, they accidentally built a flying machine which brought a joy to everyone that the world figured only belonged to the birds. Of course that is all horse shit (except for the popcorn guy). The Wright Brothers planned thoroughly before they got in that flying deathtrap.

"I like how you are comparing your game to the invention of flight. Whatta' douche."

Eat it, Bannon. Eat it hard.

So like any endeavor and especially one such as game development, you must plan ahead. Or like this moron (aka: ME!) you will draw things without any recourse of how things will interact with each other in your game. And how those things will even react once in the game. Confused? I am. 

Let's see how I finally got down proper tile spacing and my trials and tribulations from the beginning of designing ITW.

So... This is how it all started.

  

And then...

And then

   

And then...

  

And then...

 

Wait... not that beginning. How my game got started. Get it together, man.

When I first came up with the game I knew I wanted a girl piloting a mech. I decided on an egg shaped mech. And at first I thought about making the game a shmup (shoot em' up). But I remembered how boring those games are and nixed that idea immediately. But the character design stayed the same. She had to pilot an egg bot.

This was my first concept piece for the game. I decided on a white paint job because it stands out from the background vividly but still be devoid of bright colors. Funny how many different colors I tried for the cockpit glass. I settled on green. Woo hoo! GREEN!

Let's go for a walk.

A

B

So as you can see, there is a big difference between the A (the final version) and B (the original version). When I first started drawing the EDU, I just slapped everything onto it (the jet pack, halogen lights, drill arm, etc) without any sense of how this awkward shaped character would fit into the game levels. Sure this might work for a Metal Slug type game where there are not a lot of platforming elements, but not for a platforming sidescroller.

So with the smaller more condensed final version, I made sure that the EDU would be able to fit much better with the tileset where the tiles are 32X27 pixels in width and height. The original version was the exact height of two tiles. That would make it so cramp and you would have no wiggle room when you tried jumping to a higher walkway. You would have to jump into spaces EXACTLY. Almost like a square peg being put into a square hole. Plus that jetpack was just impractical. So it got shoved up the EDU's butt instead.

A

B

C

I even tried to keep the drill arm on my original design but it still wouldn't be able to jump up a shaft that was only one tile in width (check example C). It was killing me trying to maintain the original design and keep all the features I wanted. But alas. The drill arm had to go, otherwise it would overlap the tiles and that wouldn't be good for business.

Spaced out.

I should have just looked at Super Mario Bros for how to do this whole character to tile spacing thing. Why did I not listen to you Mario.? You are the size of all the tiles. It makes perfect sense. If you bash the bricks above you, you can fit in the hole you just made and continue moving upwards. Ugh.

Absolutely no way that fat ass can fit through there. Unless I made every single vertical shaft two tiles wide. Even then it would be cramp.

See how the character can now jump up a vertical shaft tile in length with no problems. Albeit the EDU is squeezed in there but it's a claustrophobic game. The player needs to feel a little trapped and alone.

So in conclusion, work out the size of your player in accordance to the tiles you are going to make. I sacrificed the drill arm in favor of strictly using mounted weapons. It did change the way I perceived the game, but you make do with what you have and you evolve your gameplay from there.

Check out this snippet of info about the amazing Shadow Complex video game. This is a classic example of poor planning. But catch it early enough like they did and you can still pull through...

Chair Entertainment's creative director Donald Mustard stated that much of Shadow Complex is based around the gameplay of Super Metroid, a game he considers "the pinnacle of 2D game design".[4] Much of their effort was in creating the Metroid-style of gameplay, a first for their company. The first month of development was spent having the team replaying the various Metroid games in order to establish the language and concepts of such games for development in order to expand on enjoyable sections while avoiding the mistakes of these games. Chair's design process started by drawing out the game's world on graph paper, using the concepts of tile-based games to craft out the world, despite the final game not being tile-based. This process set certain rules, such as how high the character may jump with the various upgrades or how far the character must run before a certain power would activate. They then played out the game on this paper map to make sure that all parts of the game were possible to complete. Such a map was also used to help with the game's pacing, making sure that the player's interest in the game would remain despite the acquisition of more and more powerups.[5]

Roughly six months into development, they recognized that their initial selected jump height was too large and did not fit with the game, forcing the team to redesign the map with a smaller jump height; Mustard noted this was one of the few changes they made that "hurt" but was caught early enough in the process to be repaired.[5]The team also had to consider the impact of the variety of power-ups they wanted to include, made more complex by their desire to have the power-ups usable anywhere. For example, while other games would specifically limit the use of a hookshot to specific surfaces, Chair's developers sought to have their tool usable on any surface, and had to consider all the potentially game-breaking routes that would be created by introducing the tool too early.[5] Several iterations of this paper map were performed, though Mustard noted that about 85% of their original design remained in the final map.[6] With a brush stroke tool within the Unreal Engine, they were then able to quickly build out their drawn map into the 3D computer engine, using a cylinder to represent the player. After working on tightening the feel of the player's movement controls with the simplistic map, they then began prototyping the rest of the game.[4]

Enemies and their ch-ch-changes!

Meet some of the enemies of ITW. I got some of these bad guys off of craigslist. What a weird auditioning process that was. Lots of them came with dreams in their heads and headshots in their hands. Took a couple of them on a tour of my casting couch. If you know what I mean. Wink wink! Sorry for the winking. I had an eyelash in there. I meant to say nudge nudge! Also sorry for the nudging, I saw a pretty girl walking this way and was hinting for you to leave.

The main inspiration for the enemies comes from microorganisms and various parasites that live inside of another living creature. Some are based on tapeworms found in dogs. Some are viruses inside the human body. And some are just big gross bugs.

The player enters into a world where she is essentially a virus to the planet. She is being sought out by all the other antibodies that want to get rid of her in order for the planet to survive.

I have yet to start pixeling the virus and cell enemies. I wanted to get down the "bug" creatures first. Then start getting into the grosser stuff later.

Ooohhh! Drea has her pick of some many handsome suitors. Which will she choose first? The bad boy with a sparkle of mystery in his eye? Or the adorable lavabug next door?

Original concepts. First enemies I pixeled. These look dumb. Dumb I says!

When I first started making the game, I had a more light hearted approach. You were still killing gross viruses and bug like things but they didn't look all too scary. And the game revolved heavily on the EDU mech being somewhat under armed. Your main weapon would've had little to not effect on the enemies. Mainly you would use your drill to open up the rock to make pathways to the dangerous liquids. The main strategy was to  drown your victims in bodily fluids, water, or lava. That element still exists but I gave the EDU more weapons. And therefore the enemies started becoming a little harder to kill. But they didn't look like things you would fear. And they looked kind cute. I went for a bright colored palette so they would pop from the background. But bright colors are not threatening.

EXAMPLE A:

Well... actually I would turn and run the other way if this guy was waiting for me at the end of along hallway.

EXAMPLE B:

Huh... you know what, this one doesn't work either. Is she an enemy of Aquaman that never made it to the comics? I'll give her this. If she came from a goblin horde, she would be the hottest one of the bunch. Either way, I didn't want bright colors. Ok. Let's move on.

Lavabug: Volummasae

Besides coloring choices, I also wanted to incorporate the liquid physics into the enemies as well. This fat bastard will have the ability to fire lava from his "spout" things in the front. But if you can sneak up from behind and send a rocket up his bum, liquid lava physics galore! This enemy replaced that dumb looking toad thingy in the above example. Not the toad thingy in the bikini but the enemies example above those photos.

Armored Snail:  Achatina

This is the only design to make it from the very start of the game. This little booger only changed slightly in colored to stay within the brown and green color theme of most of the enemies. He was inspired by a Zoomer in the original Nes Metroid. But mainly just a snail.

Venom Wasp: Vespa

The Vespa is another one that made the cut... kinda. Some of these enemies had to be sacrificed in size due to the tileset limitations. I had to make sure that they would fit in certain areas. This one was particularly tough to make work with the wings not moving to far away from the body. Plus if you check out the original example, he had a crest on his head and was a bright blue. I wanted the enemies to seem like they all came from the same place and did away with the bright color scheme. I also wanted them to seem like a virus could have produced these creatures.

My motto for ITW: The enemies must look like they came from Snooki.

Getting to know you

Let's get to know each other!

Well, just got done watching another shitty episode of Grimm. How is it that I have watched every episode and have never been enthralled by it? Yet, I have seen every episode? Must be some Hexenbiest spell. Meh.

So let's get to know the main character... Drea LeBas.

Drea Cuadra
So she had some bad luck in the past year or so. Her planet was overtaken by an alien virus (boo hoo). She was ripped in half and put back together with cybernetic parts (double the boo thrice the hoo). And to top it off she is now back on Earth and fighting an army of creatures to find her long lost brother (cry me a river, then jump in said river and drown yourself, please). So, basically she is a drama queen. Possibly a diva. Still working that out.

Drea has a military background but for her recovery process, she has been working for the UDF drilling company mining precious ore in the caverns of Mars. She acclimated her motor functions through diligent work and got used to her new cybernetic body.

She is kind of a Bitter Betty since the accident and doesn't talk much. She is pretty legendary around the Mars community due to the fact that she is the only person to ever survive an attack by the alien planet.

My inspiration for this character was of course Samus Aran. Who is of course inspired from Ripley in Alien. Drea is not a rip off but more of a homage to the perfectly competent female capable of kicking some major ass type of character of movie and game lore. At the same time not throwing it in the face of the audience that Drea is a woman. Sure she has some nice bazooms but this character can be a male or female. Doesn't matter. It worked for Ripley in Alien and Aliens (we don't talk about the other movies).
The major difference in character is that this chick is pissed. She has a military background and therefore does not take anybody's crap. Unlike some people that would like to talk out their problems, Drea would rather punch it out. Since the accident where her body and face got mangled, she has become kind of a shut in. She's kind of an emo girl that would kick your ass. On a side note, I pray to whatever cosmic god out there... Please O mighty deity, let there not be this vile emo fad in the future. And if you do not heed my cries, it's no future I want a part of.

"Since your'e rambling, I thought I might add my two cents. I don't know if the emo craze is still officially going on. I think they started as scenesters, evolved into emo then into their latest form of hipsters. Much like the misunderstood nerds turned into goths then eventually turned into vampires after Twilight came out."

Uh... wha? Anyways, you'll get to know more about Drea when the game comes out. During the game you will be able to jump out of the EDU drilling mech and give your legs a stretch. Of course you won't be physically as strong as your mech but you will be able to fit in smaller spaces and be more nimble.

   

I promised bazooms. You shall receive bazooms.

"Another thing about social classes. Why do the jocks and bros pop their collars? The original collar popper was Dracula. It was used on stage to help the actor disappear into a trap door but a giant popped collar is synonymous with vampires and other nocturnal ghoulish fiends. Why do jocks pop their collars? Dracula is just about as gothic as you can get. Don't jocks despise and pick on goths? Sure Drea has a popped collar but it's because she wears a military flak jacket. It's meant to protect the neck. And have you ever tried to fold those things down? Impossible. Plus a popped collar was how they used to make seemingly boring characters seems more hip and cool."

He is as cool as Mickey Mouse playing a blue guitar without any pickups and not even plugged in. Good job, bro.

Space Bending Level Design

Hey, I'm James -- Lead programmer and secondary artist for ITW. As you may know, Into This World is a story about a woman named Drea digging through the planet to find her missing brother. For now, that's all you need to know. No spoilers for you!


Stay focused, because this post is about navigating your way through This World. (See what I did there?)

Different Styles of Map Making change how space is perceived. Bending space has never been so fun!

Here I have referred to them as Type A and Type B. How the rooms relate to each other doesn't really change gameplay, but greatly changes how the player will perceive their position in the 2D space. For example, both maps above represent the same exact environment. Notice the Orange room in Type A spans the length of 4 gird cells -- that's a room 4 screens long. In Type B, this room doesn't exist. Green Room A connects directly to Gray Room C, thus bypassing this space.

This is often seen in RPGs, in which entering a small house takes you to a room that is much larger on the inside than it appears on the outside. I call this the Wonderland Effect, and it can be seen in many games across time. Bending space like this allows for some trippy level design.

Into This World will be using this (Type B) style of level design to its fullest effect, which is different from conventional Metroidvania kinds of games. And if everything goes as planned, we'll be releasing a level editor to allow players to make their own challenge rooms. (Separate from the main story line)

So brush up on your relativistic physics, because this'll be a mind (and space) bending experience.

"Hey everyone! Bannon, here. Before my associate goes ahead and promises space bending experiences, please familiarize yourself with Heim's Theory of manipulating space. Here's a quick example... Ya know baryons and all...

Into This World Introduction

No one likes a crab mech.

I am about to pop your Into This World cherry... wait for it... uh... there it is, officially popped. Clean yourself up. You're making a mess on my Krang area rug from Ikea. By the way, my name's Bannon Rudis, creator of the upcoming video game title, Into This World. Let me get the giant Indiana Jones crushing ball rolling.

ITW (that's just an acronym for Into This World, everyone, calm down) is a sidescrolling romp in the same vein as Metroid and Castlevainia SOTN (another acronym, there might be more, stay calm) but with an emphasis on exploration and digging. Everyone loves digging. Just ask these kids.

Couldn't be happier!

Why are you digging in ITW? Why wouldn't you dig? When you were a child and you came to a sandbox, did you ever question the inner workings of scooping piles of sand and then the inevitable conclusion washed over you that no matter how much you would dig, it did not in fact go all the way down to China?

"I never made it to China either. I made it to Singapore once. Nice people. They speak English. Who knew?"

Don't derail my rant, Bannon.
No, ya just dug. But let's suggest that your underdeveloped brain hungered for discovery and you wanted to know... nay! You needed to know what the hell was under all that sand. According to your ignorance something new and exciting awaited you beneath the surface.

Alas, there wasn't shit. But in ITW there will be. But of course the deeper you get into the world, the more dangerous it gets.

"Typical videogame logic. Why not throw all the toughest enemies at the hero first and get it over with? C'mon. If Bowser was the very first thing you came across in Super Mario Bros, you would be ass deep in your own tears."

I said shut it, Bannon!

In the year, let's say, 21XX, the world has been taken over by an alien virus that arrived via a meteor crash. The virus has spread throughout the entire planet and terraformed it into a giant living creature. Gross I know. Like yuck to the extreme, even. Everyone hightailed it out of there and went to the Mars colonies to start over.

You play as Drea LeBas. An ex marine who lost her brother over a year ago while their squad was fighting the creature planet. He was swallowed whole and Drea was ripped in half. Boy howdy, was she ever lucky. Phew! After being stitched up and turned into a half machine, she was off to work in the martian mines with her trusty EDU drilling mech.
But after receiving a mysterious transmission from her thought to be dead brother, Drea takes her drilling mech and journeys back to what used to be Earth. What will she find on the hostile creature of a planet? Tacos perchance? Probably not that actually.

Hey, lady. Get back in there!