Updated Game-play Video

So here’s the latest footage of game-play, very close to complete, just bug fixes left really.

Change list:

• Fixed UI elements to make them sharper, particularly for up-scaling on the PS3.
• Lasers now have a short “power up” window, before then  extending until they hit the player or a shield block.
  This means you have a chance to avoid them.
• All controls are now more responsive:
  Inertia is reduced, player control is less “floaty”
  Button presses are now handled better, some times single button presses for things like the shields or target swap weren’t being picked up, they are now.
• Firewall power-up now protects against lasers.
• Menu elements have been fixed up to be clearer and consistent in appearance and position.
• Enemies now take a very small knock back when damaged.
• Enemies now display their health bars briefly when damaged, indicates that your actually doing something.
• Hit boxes have been adjusted to account for some previous problems with bullets missing.
  Same goes for lasers, but they were actually hitting too often. reduced the hit-box width.
• Point blocks now track towards the score bar, rather than the player.
  In almost all play testing the player was initially afraid of the point blocks, they thought they were enemy bullets.
• UI now displays relevant controls
  Triangle always displayed as the Shield Toggle
  Square displayed for draining, when no powerup is active/ready
  Circle is displayed for activating abilities when one is ready.

Not Seen/Inprogress:

• Bosses are now working, currently testing and bug fixing them before i grab some footage of them.
• “Stun” power-up works, but could do with some edits in terms of visuals, current state could be confusing to the player.

Menu Art Fixes

So here’s just a quick post to try and spur me into posting more material in the run up to efforts to get this game published.
Most changes and posts from this point on are going to just be detail the various fixes and changes going into the final submission.

Here’s one of the most obvious fixes, text/icon glow:

Before…

After…

I really wasn’t happy with the quality of the menu’s, especially on the PS3;
The art in the game itself up-scales very well, it all looks very crisp, clear and almost as if i’d made it that high quality…
The menu’s however, and some UI elements (fixed them a while ago) had problems with soft edges and glow. When they up-scaled they looked somewhat blurry and.. naff.

The solution, no more fancy Photoshop glow effects!
The text for menus now uses a simple drawn “glow”, its clearer and it up-scales well.
I also took the time to make sure all the menu items lined up properly.

I’ve done the same for the the level icons:

Before…

After…

So im not entirely sure if the glow on the numbers themselves works…
But the general effect is better, and the “selected” versions are far easier to tell them apart from the unselected ones.

Monday Update

Changes since Friday:

• More actual levels –
  The game now has more levels, rather than just defaulting to the first one.
• Endless mode –
  The endless mode now actually works, but not well…
  The spawning and difficulty algorithms will need a lot of work before release.
• Endless mode screen and saves –
  The screen from which you select the endless mode.
  This also displays your highest score.
• Fixed the fuzzy box on the menu screen –
  This was bugging me!
• Completed the save functionality –
  Now includes save data for endless mode.
• Updated the Icons and Images of the game description –
  Added the new, more exciting, game description images.
  Added the correct icon for save files.
  Included a missing descriptor image for the PSP version.

PS3 PLAYABLE!

IT WORKSSSS

The problems solved to get it working:

A certain npdrm file had to have the “minis” setting set to true for it to work on PS3
The sdk had to be 6.2.0 or less… i’d been working with 6.6.0… oops
The game code has to set the file usage to UMD and NOT set to Network…

Technical Requirements Checklist

So i’m now very close to submitting my game to Sony!

This isn’t the same as releasing the game however…

It will most likely fail the first time, and in fact we are counting on it!

Why?

Well it gives a little more time for play testing, but also we doubt that everything will be 100% to the letter for the submission requirements, its VERY easy to fail them, but at least we’ll have the feedback to know where we fell short.

This could be anything as minor as having the wrong version number in my submission, or as major as the game hard crashes.

The latter is what I definitely don’t want to happen, the first is just kind of annoying.

There is a huge list of requirements to meet for my game to be published, and this list is called the Technical Requirements Checklist (TRC).

Turns out all games with auto-saves MUST have these, Sony’s rules.

Luckily as i am producing this game as a Minis Title, a lot of the sections are irrelevant, the Minis program doesnt allow for network or game sharing elements, so the requirements for those aspects can be ignored.

The big items that i am in the process of ticking off are to do with warnings, save games and memory cards.

There are also sections relating to branding and image for any elements to do with Sony.

Thankfully I’ve not had to make any changes to meet these standards, keeping a consistent and recognizable design in terms of tutorials and controls display helped.

That’s all for now, ill try and get a new video up soon too.

Timing and Update functions

Time for a wordy post, as pretty much my whole day has been focused on converting code and very little visual work.

The short of it:

My game’s update mechanics are now time based! Fluctuations in fps should now impact game-play far less if they happen, and u also values are more meaningful and easier to balance!

The mistake i realized while writing this post:

I was using the time elapsed since the last frame, NOT the time since the last update.
Now that ive swapped to using the time since last update (which is updated with the time since last frame) the game play is soooo much smoother across the board.

The longer of it:
Originally my code used a very simple and fast method of timing, integers, each frame I would subtract 1 from the relevant timer(s). Zero meant something happened, or if I wanted to I could check other whole numbers for an event.
This worked great if every thing ran at a constant 30fps and I used multiples of 30 as seconds.
But it doesn’t work well in practice, more often than not I’m running at more than 30, I was running at roughly 90 most of the time, un capped.
So with my 60fps cap all the speeds were off.
But if I adjusted the integers for 60fps then any drop slows down the game…
For example the tutorial text rendering drops the fps to around 30on the psp.

The solution, track everything as seconds (suddenly all the values make sense in your head) and store them in floats.
These floats, instead of ticking by an arbitrary value each frame, are actually adjusted by the time since the last frame, meaning if a frame is slower or faster than average it doesn’t matter to the calculations.
Similar to the timers I did the same thing for movement, objects now move based of distance per second rather then distance per 30th of a second.
Backgrounds too are now uniform across the different menus, regardless of how much additional UI is being rendered ontop

Picture Time:

Move Tutorial

Shields Tutorial

New Levels Screen

Tutorial Progress

So the tutorials now work!

But like everything they still need some tweaking, pretty minor stuff however.

They did require a couple of new assets in addition to the display messages, below are the new “Training Bots”

A small bot designed to set your weapons and shields.

 

A larger, laser wielding, bot to test the drain and special ability features.

As well as adding these bots, i also reversed my decision to not have a movement lesson. Partly to just be sure that everyone knows all the controls, but also as it helped in coding the flow of the tutorial.

Other stuff…

As well as the tutorial setup i have also made the planned changes to the level selection screens.
Buttons are now smaller as to accommodate more, which are a new button for the tutorial level, and a button to go onto the next screen.

There is also space for a feature in the centre that displays the highest score of the selected level (or “Tutorial”/”Next” for those buttons).

Frame limiter: the game is now limited to 60fps, this doesnt make a huge difference on the PSP, but on the other platforms locking it is important to not have a game running insanely fast and being unplayable!
This change is what caused the vast majority of issues i now need to tweak as the current balance is a little off in terms of speed, everything needs to be sped up a little, but that wont take long to change.

Tutorial Level

So now that the levels are setup I decided to turn the tutorial of the game into it’s own level.
Originally it was just an intro section to the first level.

Having it as its own level gives me more control over how it works, as it will work rather differently to a normal level>
Additionally I prefer the design that means a player can go back and replay the tutorial at any time.

Below are the current “lessons” in the tutorial, i haven’t included one for movement at present, unless user testing proves otherwise, it shouldn’t be needed.

Just to compare, here is one of the old style tutorials:

The old versions did display an image to better show the result of the instruction, but this did mean it being superimposed over the whole screen, and having to be closed to continue.
The new ones will be displayed on screen until the action has been performed.

Adding the tutorial level in has meant having to edit and shift around the levels screen, but that had to be done for a few other additions anyway, more on that later…

Save games

So another addition that i haven’t blogged about yet despite doing a while ago is the save functionality.

Saving.

The game uses auto-saves that save at the end of each level or when you die;

If you complete a level that you hadn’t beaten previously it updates your save to show that progression, and update the highest score if it is a new record.

If you die, but have a higher score than previously, it updates your highest score for that level.

Loading.

If you haven’t already loaded a game from the main menu you are given the option to load a game, doing so will load the save, unlocking any levels that you have progressed too, and their highest scores.

If you have loaded a game and return to the main menu for any reason then you will see the “Load Game” button has become a “Continue” button, this will take you back to the level menu.

New games.

If you have no save games available the New Game option will be your only choice to play the game, Load Game will not be select-able.

If you do have a save game choosing new game will start a new game, and warn you, that the auto saves will over write the old save file.

If you have loaded a previous game and return to the menu, New Game will function as above, warning you, wiping the current state and taking you to the levels menu from which point any saves will be a fresh save, wiping the old progress.

Demo.

The demo video lacks the warnings of the final version, should hopefully have those working tomorrow depending on how busy i am.

Nearing the end

The first post in along time… sorry.
Expect a lot more over the next two months however! As the project is getting close to the end!

I don’t want to say the final stretch as it’s certainly not there yet, there still needs:

• Testing and then balancing.
• Checking to see it meets standards.
• Levels finished/tweaked.
• PS3 version testing.
• Digital storefront stuff.

For now here’s a first pass of some of the store stuff!

Icons for the PS3 and PSP respectively.

And the game description (just a draft for now), this one is the PSP version.

More updates to come soon! Really!