Unityyyyyyy!

Just thought I would share with you a bizarre look at Into This World from a different point of view. And I mean that literally and also in a punny way. This is a screenshot from ITW being developed on the program, Unity.

Look at them there new fan dangled three dimensional looking photographs.

This is what Unity looks like when you move the camera around. Not so 2D sidescroller now are you? part of me wants to incorporate some 3D elements into the environment and then the other part of me says screw it, that's too much work, let's go eat a Klondike Crunch bar instead.

SUPER HD TURBO REMIX RAINBOW EDITION: FOURTH STRIKE!

Since I can never leave my pixels alone, I went back and redid all my sprites. I think this should be the last time I mess with the pixels (we'll see). I'm a pixel bully. Constantly messing with them. And taking their money too. And kissing their girlfriend in front of them. And then coming over to their house afterwards and proving how helpful I am with helping the pixel's mom set the dining room table which leads to her inviting me over more so I can mess with them in their only place of escape.

"How come I didn't get any milk?"

Who loves examples? Well get in here. I got examples coming out of my wazoo! My god, it hurts. Nothing should ever come out of anyone's wazoo.

EXAMPLES!

Here is an example of the original knife slash move for Drea step by step. Original version is on the left and the new one... wait for it... is on the right! Imagine that. Single frames by themselves are new frames added in more fluid animation.

Her original face always annoyed me. Looked like a doll's face. A creepy doll in your grandma's room that seemed to stare at you with disapproval. 

Little more build up in grabbing knife.

More of a blur for the knife streak. Plus her knife now gives off a shine onto Drea.

All the knife attacks now end with this staggered fade out effect.

I actually filmed myself slashing a knife for reference because the original always seemed like a weird way to recoil after swinging a knife.

More recoil.

The main reason behind going over these animations and re-shading them is because I got to play a demo of the game and the dynamic lighting that lit up Drea made here look very out of place and showed off how muddy her original coloring was. Plus, I'm a little obsessive.

FINAL VERSION!

And for no good reason besides he rocks, I was watching this earlier. Take it away Mike...

Make a Weapon Contest!

Don't tell anyone but I am disguising this whole Build A Weapon Contest as a means for me to find a better design to the Sound Drill weapon.
If you have read my older posts, I go through a lot of changes...

"ME TOO!"

Well, uh... meet me after the blog, lady... dude... whatever. I meant that I go through a lot of changes in gun design. With some of the weapons, I can say that I nailed it the first time.

No more interruptions. As I was saying...

"Hey Bannon. Do you know where the "&" symbol is on the keyboard? Oh snap, I think I found it. Never mind. Carry on."

AS I WAS SAYING... The main weapon of the EDU mech is the Sonar Drill (Or Sound Drill) or whatever the technical name will end up being. Here it is, as it has developed over the months. Look at it. It's all growns up.

It's supposed to be a weapon that is a combination of a power drill, a turret gun and a sonar cannon. But for the life of me, I can't come up with a design I am in love with. This is where you, the reader/pixeler/artist/idea-man/pyro/juggler/babysitter/pie-taster/Spiderman come into play. I would love some feedback and participation from the peeps that stop by the site and have been following the development of the game. Not only will it help me but I would actually love to feature someone's design in the game. I see how many people (er, I mean peeps) stop by the site but I don't get that many comments or feedback. This will get you guys (er, I mean dudes) involved with the behind the scenes stuff (er, I mean shit).

Here's whatcha gots to do.

Copy the example below for reference. 

The first one is 300 times bigger than the actual pixels. The smaller one is the actual size of the gun. This one was my second to last attempt. But all you need to realize is that the actual gun size never exceed more than 32 pixels across and no more than 22 in height (22x32). The magenta background tile is 27x32 but I don't want the gun too tall to where it covers up the EDU mech. So try to keep it under 22 in height. Thanks, your'e a peach.

You can sketch the gun or you can make it using pixels in Photoshop or Paint. Whichever way, I would love to see your designs. And the winning design will be put into the game. Along with a character based on you that will be featured in the game.

"Big Deal. Been there, done that."

Yes, that's right. A pixel you! Along with the gun design, send in a photo of yourself and you'll get pixelized. It won't hurt. Well... maybe. Maybe a lot in fact. The first two runner ups will also get a pixel character for participating too. But your stupid gun design will be burned at the stake! Or is it spelled steak? Mmm... steak.

Send in your submissions to b2thesoft@gmail.com. Put in the header "Hey Jerk!"

Never Happy

Emo kid is so sad. So very sad.

"Glue your hand to the prison bars they said. Glue your head to your hand that is glued to the prison bars afterwards they said. It'll be fun they said."

I am in a constant struggle with being satisfied then spiraling into a deep depression over the fact that I am never happy with my weapons designs for the EDU. This is a little example (I think my second example on this site, actually) of how the weapons changed over the course of me designing the game. Some factors that get, uh... factored into the changes are as follows;

1. Color: It must stand out from the EDU so as not to confuse the player.

2. Size: Sometimes the gun covers way too much of the EDU and looks too bulky. Or it can look too thin and underwhelming.

3. Non Gun Shapeyness: The hardest part of designing these guns is the fact that they are not supposed to be a gun in the traditional sense. They should not have a handle or a "butt" to them since they are turret guns that attach to the side of the EDU's gun mount. If they looked to much like the typical rifle shape, then I failed as an artist and a human being.

4. Tool Inspired: Since the EDU is a drilling mech first and foremost, it shouldn't be wielding military equipment. It can mount guns onto it's "weapon" mount but the drilling weapons should look more like power tools.

A: The Matter Maker. The original version isn't even the original version. That is the third rendition of the weapon. I finally nailed it with the more power tool looking version on the right. I love that design and it hit exactly what I was looking for in my weapon design. Futuristic but still recognizable as a tool. I spent a good amount of time at Home Depot looking at nail guns, saws and hand drills for inspiration. The left version looked too much like a gun and not a power tool. I have been known to be called a power tool on occasion. Usually when I had too many Mountain Dews in my system.

B: The left one is obviously dumb looking. This is an example of how I usually start off a gun to get the basic design and shape of it before I proceed to making a full version. I like how the drill ended up. I added the rivet looking things onto the drill part because that's how actual drills look that bore through rock. Plus it gave it more depth when it's animated.

C: The Cat Cannon original layout. I thought it looked dumb. It kinda looked like a sad robot penis. I also thought to myself "Where's the cat shell being held?" Obviously if you shoot a cat, it's gotta be contained inside something. So I redid it and it only took me one more time to nail the look. I wanted to keep it stubby looking. No need for a big gun with a long barrel. I mean c'mon, it shoots a cat. Not a lot of recoil on cats. Trust me.

Funny thing about this gun. I always think about Les Miserables when I see it. It took me the entire movie to animate the gun while my girlfriend and her friends watched the movie. See how dedicated I am to this game. Even when a shitty overly melodramatic... I mean, award winning sweeping epic of a musical is playing in the room, I ignore it to hone my pixel craft.

D: The Sound Drill is the Bane to my Batman. It has crushed my creative spine. I will never be satisfied with this design. Honestly, I don't think I ever will. The new design has that "rifle" shape that I am trying to avoid. Ugh. Ugh to my life.

E: Nailed it. Might change the color but my first go at it and I think I got what I wanted for the Mine Launcher. Big thick stubby barrel and not rifle shaped.

F: The Flamethrower was a simple fix. The original is the third rendition and I like it but wanted it a little more gritty. As gritty as adding some tubes and a rail on top can make something. I did this to some other gun designs. Nothing to dramatic to show off.

So, fellow pixelers, if you are having a hard time nailing a design, don't fret. Move onto something else and come back to a design later. More than likely, whatever else you ended up pixeling instead, heightened your pixeling skills just a little more to endow you with the prowess to conquer the earlier design that is thwarting your every mouse click.

 "Yeah guys. You can be emo and happy. Take it from me, Spiderman 3's Jay Leno!"

That's who that is, right? I'm hip. Please agree.

Cat Launcher

I thought I would share a new weapon I cooked up today for Into This World. This is going to be a hard one to find in the game. Don't ask how. Mainly because I don't even know how. It's that f'ing secret.
It's called....

THE CAT CANNON!

"For the record, I really do love cats. Here is some proof."

ULTIMATE CAT NAP!

"Ugh. Is that what I look like in 3D? The camera adds a few pounds. A few pounds of ugly. Hey oh!"

Hey, Classic Gameplay There, Bro.

My love for ye olde video games of yore heavily influence my decisions in making Into This World. One of these aspects is how the player controls the two playable characters:

The EDU Mech

The EDU Mech will fill the position of the "Heavy" archetype. This is usually reserved for soldiers, barbarians, or tank like characters in video games. The Heavy is for the most part slower but has a lot of firepower. Even though the mech moves slow it dishes out the damage in spades. In spades I says! It's essentially a God damned sexual Tyrannosaurus.

Just like him.

Drea

Drea is the classic "Ninja" archetype. She can pop out of the mech and hoof it if the player (YOU!) feels so inclined to do so. She's not a high heels type of gal so she is pretty nimble. Wall jumping, sliding, rolling and diving, all that shiz. The Ninja archetype is usually highly agile, but is balanced by the amount of suckage in the health department. Drea likes to jump but doesn't do much damage.

While the Edu mech has the ability to fire weapons and makes use of projectiles to keep enemies at bay, Drea will make use of her close ranged survival knife. She's gotta get in close and attack quickly.

Just like him.

City... Why You So Busted?

This city has seen much better days. The game will feature limited amounts of surface levels. This is an example of what I am trying to do with the cars used as tiles. I wanted to make them double as a storytelling device and for level variation. I was trying to concentrate on actual buildings and street tiles but I kinda got a little obsessed with making the vehicles once I got rolling. I still have a flipped over truck and a bus that Drea can walk through inside. 

The background is temporary for right. I am dreading having to do the giant city background. I will not settle for standard repeating building sprites. I really want to show a world that has gone to shit.

Inspiration for the look of the city is a mix of Los Angeles where I live and what they did in Minority Report. I like how they kept the original city intact but built futuristic structures around it. Old buildings wouldn't necessarily get demolished to make room for the newer "spiffier" ones. The old ones would become historical landmarks that we would have to work around. Like when I turned my grandma's room into the guest room. Sure Grandma's corpse started to stink the place up as she rotted away in her favorite rocking chair but who am I to diminish her historical significance.  If my guests feel creeped out by how it looks like she is staring at them as they sleep, then that's their problem. I think she looks better with her eyes open. I tell people she is watching over them while they sleep and will make sure to keep away evil succubuses in night. That's grandma for you.

A Real Gut Buster

So what you see above is just a small tech demo. It shows an example of how destroying certain tiles might look in the final game. These tiles are intestinal tracts, so when they burst it sends blood, bile, and entrails everywhere. The final game won't have you using a Windows cursor to perform biopsies like above. You will have a plethora of high power tools to rip open your patients the Earth.

We want the digging in the game to feel rewarding to the player -- to give a visual indication that you are tearing apart something tangible. Particle effects are one way video games convey this message. Whether you're smashing barrels or breaking pots, actually watching the object explode is often more rewarding than the items you find inside. Why else do we destroy these harmless decorations?

Indeed they do, Tinky. Indeed they do.

But the tiles in Into This World are not just for decoration. They are the very structure of the environment you navigate. So your tools and weapons need to feel powerful -- and what better way to show this power than through interpretive dance particle explosions!

That's all I've got at the moment. There's lots of secret stuff going on behind the scenes. Stuff not ready for mortal eyes. When the time comes, you shall be summoned.

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]