2018.01.18 Boss 101, future games and ShMUPS devblog

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Also, some of the movies above are from test runs with a buff'd health score so the player is a little tougher than normal.

There's been a few games posted here with unusually resilient ships/characters in demo footage only for this to be the explanation. Don't do this. Debug cheats are very helpful for testing, but in demo footage it's hard to get a sense of how the game plays if the demo footage doesn't really accurately show how the game mechanics and balance work, especially if you're making the player much more powerful than normal or invulnerable, etc.

An overall thought about the tanking - most of the gameplay is/will revolve around being hit at least occasionally

Ew.

Shmups that expect you to take a few hits generally have very, very messy game balance. It's not fun running into a pattern you simply can't dodge only to die because you got hit too often previously, or to lose your entire lifebar instantly because you ran into something that happened to hurt a lot more, or because you didn't quite reach the boss with enough health to tank its hits.

Euroshmup design traditionally features the mistake of making hitboxes gigantic, and then trying to balance that out by giving you a bullet spongy lifebar, which then becomes a joyously un-fun experience when the designers make stuff that you can't avoid, in a genre where the fun comes from shooting and dodging. Modern shmups on the other hand (especially Japanese styled ones) rely on smaller hitboxes, and making patterns all possible to dodge. It's difficult to strike a balance when designing attacks that are difficult but fair, but it's infinitely more enjoyable when it's successful.

That's not to say that bullet sponge shmups can't work, and to be perfectly honest I think casual euroshmup style games probably are an easier sell to the mass market, but the point is that truly undodgeable attacks generally don't exist in shmups, ever (even in games with shielding like Giga Wing and Mars Matrix, patterns are all still dodgeable). It kills the part of the joy of the genre that comes from that feeling where you've run out of lives and bombs, but you still have a chance as long as you can dodge. Even with no resources left, if your dodging is true you can succeed. Lifebar shmups with impossible to dodge patterns destroy this aspect of the genre. I suppose I am a bit of an arcade purist in this sense.

If you're going to expect the player to tank bullets, doing so with something you can directly control to block hits like an R-Type or Ikaruga style shield or a melee deflection attack that's player controllable is probably going to be more enjoyable than "you're gonna get hit, hope your health holds out" design.

[Donley_Time]

That's good to know. Is there any visual indication of the hitbox? Like a pendant around his neck, or even just a circular-overlay?

Yeah - we're thinking right now of the best way to relay that info to the player so he can clearly understand where he can and can't be hit. You bring up some good ideas too! Some of what we are thinking is an early in game talk between the two main characters explaining the matter and showing the player. Since we allow all sorts of hats and alterations to the main character (from a strictly visual standpoint) we are working to make sure the player understand that these things don't make him a fatter target for enemy bullets.

Good stuff man!

[Donley_Time]

Congratulations! Now get back to work and make sure the game's great for its release!

YES!!!!! We're right back on it!!! HAHAHA

Thanks man!

-Tim

[Donley_Time]

Also, some of the movies above are from test runs with a buff'd health score so the player is a little tougher than normal.

There's been a few games posted here with unusually resilient ships/characters in demo footage only for this to be the explanation. Don't do this. Debug cheats are very helpful for testing, but in demo footage it's hard to get a sense of how the game plays if the demo footage doesn't really accurately show how the game mechanics and balance work, especially if you're making the player much more powerful than normal or invulnerable, etc.

An overall thought about the tanking - most of the gameplay is/will revolve around being hit at least occasionally

Ew.

Shmups that expect you to take a few hits generally have very, very messy game balance. It's not fun running into a pattern you simply can't dodge only to die because you got hit too often previously, or to lose your entire lifebar instantly because you ran into something that happened to hurt a lot more, or because you didn't quite reach the boss with enough health to tank its hits.

Euroshmup design traditionally features the mistake of making hitboxes gigantic, and then trying to balance that out by giving you a bullet spongy lifebar, which then becomes a joyously un-fun experience when the designers make stuff that you can't avoid, in a genre where the fun comes from shooting and dodging. Modern shmups on the other hand (especially Japanese styled ones) rely on smaller hitboxes, and making patterns all possible to dodge. It's difficult to strike a balance when designing attacks that are difficult but fair, but it's infinitely more enjoyable when it's successful.

That's not to say that bullet sponge shmups can't work, and to be perfectly honest I think casual euroshmup style games probably are an easier sell to the mass market, but the point is that truly undodgeable attacks generally don't exist in shmups, ever (even in games with shielding like Giga Wing and Mars Matrix, patterns are all still dodgeable). It kills the part of the joy of the genre that comes from that feeling where you've run out of lives and bombs, but you still have a chance as long as you can dodge. Even with no resources left, if your dodging is true you can succeed. Lifebar shmups with impossible to dodge patterns destroy this aspect of the genre. I suppose I am a bit of an arcade purist in this sense.

If you're going to expect the player to tank bullets, doing so with something you can directly control to block hits like an R-Type or Ikaruga style shield or a melee deflection attack that's player controllable is probably going to be more enjoyable than "you're gonna get hit, hope your health holds out" design.

All good info and yeah, we're listening. I'd like to take a moment to address some of your thoughts. I hope you (and anyone who might reads this) understands that a) we are aiming to make the game fun to as wide an audience as possible and b) we are not perfect but we do listen and adjust as much as we reasonably and possibly can. None of that is an excuse but a reality and I am hoping you can give us the logical leeway of understanding this is an ongoing process.

First up with the footage. Well, it's already done so I'm not sure about the 'don't do this' part. I am guessing you mean try to avoid it in future videos. To that, yah, as much as reasonable we are looking to provide people with a sense of the accurate final game. Some of the footage we shot was during testing. It's not the final game tunes since we simply didn't have all that final work in place when we were prepping for Steam Greenlight. In an ideal world we would only shoot final footage but that mainly comes nearly to the end of the project.

Second - the tank concern. I think it was mentioned before but we aren't planning on letting the player be a bullet sponge with a large hit box (I think this is in a post above this one). I understand you are voicing a concern so I am going to summarize what I believe you are saying to see if I understand you correctly. (since you are saying several things):

- (euro)ShMUPS with large hit boxes and large life bars are not fun since they traditionally rely on player's getting hit a lot
- Modern ShUMPS that have small hit boxes and one hit point and crazy patterns you can dodge with only with super reflexes are also not fun.
- When the gameplay balance is good on a modern ShUMP it's fun (that is to say a well-designed game in its genre is fun)
- (euro)ShMUPS can be fun if done right
- Adding abilities to (euro)ShMUPS to allow for bullet blocking is one way to make things cool and fun for the player.

Good stuff and I agree with the thinking. Now I am going to put something out there as a thought. The thing we are going for is a fun game first and foremost. We are clearly falling into the shooter/ShUMPS category so we are really looking at the things that seem to work and not work for various shooters. We are also looking at things unique to us (like the make a boss). I love that we came to this site and people are interacting. It’s awesome and very helpful. Post like yours are coming from a good place I know.

So yes, we will definitely take all that into consideration going forward. Will the game lose the life bar? Probably not. Will we be double sure to look at the feel of the game and see how people are reacting to the gameplay during the test session. You bet.

I think one thing to remember is we are like you. We want a good game! There is a little story we tell each other and I’d like to think it permeates a lot of our decisions. We ask frequently “Are we making a ‘tell a friend’ moment?” The idea here is we are creating a game with amazing gameplay that will make YOU feel like telling a friend about “I played a game where a T-REX Robot threw TRAIN CARS at me!” or “I used a lighting gun to mow down a wall of robo-mosquitos racing in behind wall of sand pillars erupting from the ground!” Those are examples of course and many people will find different things to like in the game. Another one might be “Wow – I just dodged a CRAZY hellish hail of bullets from that Spider boss and he completely missed me!” The spirit of those examples is when you do something awesome you naturally want tell or show people. Let people be awesome as much as possible! (we understand the caveats included with a broad statement like that)

At any rate – thanks for the comment and as I said – we do listen and respond!

If you are REALLY interested in giving feedback on the real game (and not just looking at videos or screenshots) then we already have a growing list of people we are considering for the test sessions/BETA later on. Feel free to mail us at hello @ donleytimefoundation.com (remove spaces)

Best,

-Tim

[BareKnuckleRoo]

- Modern ShUMPS that have small hit boxes and one hit point and crazy patterns you can dodge with only with super reflexes are also not fun.

This is absolutely, categorically incorrect. Many, many bullet hell games exist with small hitboxes where the difficulty is very reasonable and does not require "super reflexes". Touhou games, Cave's games, Crimzon Clover, etc. You can have one-hit kill shmups with small hitboxes that are still very forgiving for new players. This is why shield mechanics (ChoRenSha 68k) and autobomb mechanics (Dodonpachi Daifukkatsu, Novice modes in a lot of games) exist. You can have a very precise game without necessarily scaring off a more casual audience.

“I played a game where a T-REX Robot threw TRAIN CARS at me!”

The point is that you can have these kinds of memorable experiences in a game without this whole business of undodgeable shots. I played a game where magical gendershifters shoot down steampunk trains and airships. I played a game where girls get transformed into chubby pig super heroines riding exercise bicycle spaceships while fighting an evil pig army and instead of getting powerups you PORK UP. I played a game where you rescue disco cyborgs in space with a giant cat that shoots squid for bullets. I played a game where you fight giant samurai who summoned tanks and blimps out of portals to attack you while you shot giant katana at them. I played a game where you fight penises that shoot sperm at you. I played Parodius, which is too infinitely weird to describe.

None of those games had undodgeable bullets. What they all had was solid gameplay, and pretty fun scoring systems (Parodius scoring less so, score systems aren't Konami's strong suit). Both of these are crucial, because when the novelty factor wears off (and it will), the game mechanics and scoring are what will drive a player to play them over and over. No matter how novel or interesting the bosses look, players won't be able to overlook broken gameplay. A good example of a bad "novelty factor" game is Eight Forces: you can play as a ridiculous number of characters like a unicorn who has a chandelier and drinks wine in his spaceship or a tiger that shoots giant, muscular disembodied arms. Graphically, it's incredibly amusing, but nobody gives a fuck about the game or remembers/plays it (except Macaw) because the game itself is awful.

I don't mean to sound all hate-y on your game, I mean it looks fucking gorgeous and I'd love for it to succeed as we need more solid commercial shmups, but I'm extremely skeptical when you tell me the bullets are undodgeable by design (unless you have a mechanic designed around blocking them like Pink Sweets and its charge attacks).

[Donley_Time]

I don't mean to sound all hate-y on your game, I mean it looks fucking gorgeous and I'd love for it to succeed as we need more solid commercial shmups

Honestly - That's probably the best place to let it go for now. For me the hope is you understand the "spirit" of what I am saying (the game goal is to be fun) and when you read my breakdowns you aren't looking for "gotcha's" and "that's not true" statements. When that starts up I feel (from personal observation) things can go south quickly unless there is extreme diplomacy and tact displayed.

As I mentioned, it's important to hear feedback and I understand pretty much anything I say can undoubtedly be picked apart on some level (probably many). You've already been extended a personal invitation to be on the BETA list to test the game. If you don't want it, that's fine but realize it's there to you or anyone else on this site.

At any rate - I will send you a PM since I have a few questions that are better offline.

Thanks again and best!

-Tim

[Squire Grooktook]

- Modern ShUMPS that have small hit boxes and one hit point and crazy patterns you can dodge with only with super reflexes are also not fun.

Most modern shmups are not like this at all though. The small hitbox actually makes the execution barrier incredibly low and most patterns are very reactable. One hitpoint isn't accurate either. You usually get tons of lives (basically your hitpoints).

It's like how everyone talks about Dark Souls being thE HARDEST THING EVAR!!! but it's actually just Mega Man difficulty with a super lenient buffer that lets you get your moves out on frame 1 so there's no execution barrier at all.

I also think that large hitboxes, for a certain definition of large (ie Raiden/Darius/Gradius hitbox and not huge ship with huge hitbox), work very well in many cases and more developers should look into them. But it depends on the type of game you're making. Anything that can qualify as "dense" will not be fun under those circumstances so you'd need to stick to clever patterns that are sparse but confusing.

The only shmup I've ever played with fun bullet tanking is Guardian Legend. Mostly because the game is more of a straight up rpg/adventure game then a shmup, and the tanking can be recovered by killing everything for health ups. Although even there, it's probably possible to dodge everything, if pretty brutal (see: Gigawing, Mars Matrix, again).

Keep in mind, rpg's are the only games where 100% of all hazards in the game shouldn't be dodgeable. If you're making an action game, any kind of action game, everything should be avoidable.

[Donley_Time]

- Modern ShUMPS that have small hit boxes and one hit point and crazy patterns you can dodge with only with super reflexes are also not fun.

Most modern shmups are not like this at all though. The small hitbox actually makes the execution barrier incredibly low and most patterns are very reactable. One hitpoint isn't accurate either. You usually get tons of lives (basically your hitpoints).

It's like how everyone talks about Dark Souls being thE HARDEST THING EVAR!!! but it's actually just Mega Man difficulty with a super lenient buffer that lets you get your moves out on frame 1 so there's no execution barrier at all.

I also think that large hitboxes, for a certain definition of large (ie Raiden/Darius/Gradius hitbox and not huge ship with huge hitbox), work very well in many cases and more developers should look into them. But it depends on the type of game you're making. Anything that can qualify as "dense" will not be fun under those circumstances so you'd need to stick to clever patterns that are sparse but confusing.

The only shmup I've ever played with fun bullet tanking is Guardian Legend. Mostly because the game is more of a straight up rpg/adventure game then a shmup, and the tanking can be recovered by killing everything for health ups. Although even there, it's probably possible to dodge everything, if pretty brutal (see: Gigawing, Mars Matrix, again).

Keep in mind, rpg's are the only games where 100% of all hazards in the game shouldn't be dodgeable. If you're making an action game, any kind of action game, everything should be avoidable.

OK! For some reason I understand what you just said pretty clearly. HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!! I think the explanation of the one hit point and multiple lives thing just made something click in my dense head! YES!! haha Also - the listed games I can look into also.

I think something that happened was unfortunate wording on my part turned into a sticking point but the deal is - I am here to learn and adapt to make sure the game is good. As you might imagine I am hesitant to lay down any "laws" for the game unless they are tested and true. At this point when I play the game for shiz and giggles I dodge and weave and have a blast. I avoid all shots but I kinda know the bosses pretty well since I am making the game.

That said - me thinking the game is 'awesome' does not translate to good tuning nor does it mean the rest of the world agreeing to my assessment. HAHA!

I do feel there is a long road ahead on the tuning and gameplay front. This will mean adjusting things like patterns, timing and all. I certainly hope the impression isn't that I am sitting here turning up the bullet spigot and player health just to make things look interesting. That's not what I am saying nor is it what I think is fun. In an earlier post I believe I mentioned players (me included) love to feel awesome and when you pull off some big feat (usually involving a life or death situation) you tend to feel awesome.

Love this site and the feedback and thank you for contributing. I really appreciate anyone taking a moment of their day to make a comment. This helped me with a thought process and I will keep what you said in mind. It's a big time for us as a team and we want to use our (limited) resources in the right way - bringing YOU the best game possible.

Don't forget to mail me if you want on our BETA list!

Best,

-Tim

[Squire Grooktook]

Ah, I'm glad I could help. And I'd love to try the beta, though I am a bit too busy with college for consistent feedback, but I'm sure it would still be interesting/fun to give it a shot..

[BareKnuckleRoo]

The only shmup I've ever played with fun bullet tanking is Guardian Legend. Mostly because the game is more of a straight up rpg/adventure game then a shmup, and the tanking can be recovered by killing everything for health ups. Although even there, it's probably possible to dodge everything, if pretty brutal

It's very unusual for a shmup, but it all works surprisingly well; you can probably dodge everything if you use the right powerups to cancel bullets (namely the fireball), but your weapon energy is tied directly to your main shot strength, so there's a risk vs reward element there. There's also some attacks that do a brutal amount of damage to you as well (the long eyebeams, touching bosses) so in many levels you can lose a massive amount of health with one mistake, but the chances of health items appearing increases the lower your health is, so recovery is always possible. I suspect a no-damage clear of all shmup stages (say in TLB mode) is entirely reasonable, albeit very difficult.

The overworld is probably tougher to no-damage, as some of the midbosses move extremely fast, like too fast to outrun. You'd have to plan well to deal with those or possibly avoid them altogether.

You've already been extended a personal invitation to be on the BETA list to test the game.

I'll pass on the beta invite. I tried the flash version; I think you have an interesting concept for the game, but it's one that's aimed at a very different market of players the people who play arcade styled shmups, so I think you shouldn't be focusing on looking for feedback from us - just make the game that you want to make, one that you'll be happy with. It's a game that features upgraded, lots of buyable hats, and a bunch of levels; it's the sort of thing that'll be a hit with the casual crowd.

So, the flash game: I played Normal mode for a few minutes until I realized I'd upgraded my main gun's damage too quickly and bosses were dying before firing a shot.

Skipped to Hard mode. Basically, regardless of upgrades, I had a peashooter and could only take like 3 or 4 hits. Essentially, it was unwinnable if I ran against a boss that had attacks that were silly to dodge (the bananas and mines that arc up and then down). In fact, a lot of stuff is very silly to dodge; movement speed is just too slow when a lot of the attacks have very large hitboxes. The most frustrating part about dodging is the fact that so many attacks appear from offscreen, so it's not unusual to move around and be hit from something that you couldn't see being fired, especially when it's those blue minions that occasionally fire aimed shots. This is another reason why it's a good idea to make sure the camera has all the action on-screen: getting hit by offscreen shots isn't fun.

I eventually beat the level 72 boss in Hard mode, by rolling a particularly easy boss that tried to ram me and summoned gas mines with super easy minions. I realized that shooting the boss with my peashooter was a giant waste of time, and most of the fight was focused more on farming the minions it spawned for those temporary gun powerups and health refills. I did roughly 90% of the damage with the fist launchers.

Upgrading health is a huge priority as it allows you to go longer between health refills, and there's so many attacks you can't avoid (bosses that zoom across the screen to ram you combined with spear attacks that spawn offscreen at the bottom of the map with no warning indicators to show where they will appear). Even once upgrades, if you run into a bullet sponge you seem to spend more of the fight hunting the minions for their powerups, hoping for health or fist launchers. There doesn't seem to be a happy medium here; either you are too powerful and you can literally kill bosses in seconds or ignore bullets, or you haven't upgraded enough to survive.

And I didn't even notice until now: there's a time limit. I had a fight going against a boss who I did scratch damage to and had spent a good minute one hit away from death plinking away and hoping for another fist launcher drop, thinking "I'm in a really good groove, I can still do this as long as I can get another powerup!" only to lose because I ran out of time. Basically, the game is telling me no matter how good I am at surviving I should have grinded more. I was left with the experience of playing what felt like a grindy, shallow action RPG. It was felt nothing like a shmup to me.

If your Steam release is anything like the flash game I have no doubt it will be met with praise; if there's anything they love it is grinding, pixel graphics they can call 'retro', lots of collectables, and longevity in games. I would suggest focusing your efforts more on marketing to your real target audience, and less on worrying about what we think, because I think that addressing a lot of the criticisms with the game would require altering it so fundamentally that it would be no longer recognizable as Boss 101.

[Donley_Time]

I think you have an interesting concept for the game, but it's one that's aimed at a very different market of players the people who play arcade styled shmups, so I think you shouldn't be focusing on looking for feedback from us - just make the game that you want to make, one that you'll be happy with. It's a game that features upgraded, lots of buyable hats, and a bunch of levels; it's the sort of thing that'll be a hit with the casual crowd.

Thanks for the look at the game! We do appreciate it. To be clear - we have always been making the game we want to make and are happy with. hahaha. You pretty much summed up the whole philosophy we use as a jumping point for the game's ideas. The reason we are checking in with sites like this (at least in my opinion) is sometimes you can pull really good ideas from examples people mention or provide. Warning Forever looks AWESOME. That kind of stuff makes questions and answers like these worthwhile when we get in touch with games we might not see otherwise.

We'll keep coming back here and if what we are posting isn't your cup of tea - fair enough. Thank you again for checking things out and many thanks for playing Boss 101 (web version) so far.

Best,

-Tim

[Doctor Butler]

He is right about the undodgeable patterns.

At the highest level, the goal of a shooting-game is trying to do a perfect-run. If getting hit is a foregone conclusion, that dampers the enjoyment, and might kill replay value.

You say you're targeting a casual audience, but I very much doubt that casuals would want to play a game were you are guaranteed to eat damage.

[Donley_Time]

He is right about the undodgeable patterns.

At the highest level, the goal of a shooting-game is trying to do a perfect-run. If getting hit is a foregone conclusion, that dampers the enjoyment, and might kill replay value.

You say you're targeting a casual audience, but I very much doubt that casuals would want to play a game were you are guaranteed to eat damage.

Yep, that's why I didn't want to get locked into that language and clarified (at least I thought I did) about being able to dodge and avoid stuff in the game. Looking back at the response I think I could have worded it better. The spirit of what I meant was "it can be tough" not "you will get hit in the face all the time" or "we want you to be a bullet sponge". That said - I can completely relate to the concern.

So - to clarify and there is less confusion going forward. You are expected to dodge bullets. The design of the patterns always has an "out" for the player (a dodge area or gameplay feature to allow damage avoidance). It will be hard (of course) and we still are tuning the gameplay (obviously).

I mentioned before one of the helpful things about coming here is it does help clarify the ways we are communicating our intent to the audience (and you). We do listen! Do we make mistakes? Yep. Do we work to correct them quickly? Absolutely. Will they always be corrected to every single person's satisfaction? We hope so but probably not.

The intent is to give the player a good experience and feedback is critical. You made your concern loud and clear and we're listening. This is a more casual shooter type game but not at the expense of basic fun and good gameplay.

Hope that helps and thank you for the response!

-Tim

[Donley_Time]

Game Loops! Creating the Boss 101 game loop. Let’s talk about this shall we?

Spoiler

Our game loop is the basic or typical game cycle the player will experience when he plays the game. For us this is the actual action round of playing the game (the part where you shoot the bad guys). In making your own game you want to start doing this as early as reasonable for obvious reasons. It’s the cheapest and fastest game development you can do. Mistake and changes are pretty cost free since no one is really working on anything except you on a diagramming program.

The way we started was to lay out all the actions we felt the player would go through from beginning to end in the broadest strokes possible. This is stuff like start the round, read some dialog, see a cinematic etc. and proceed into options like pause the game, get hit by bullets, kill the boss. You can imagine from this tiny list there are tons of things happening in any basic game round. Well, we need to understand and control that so we can actually make the game. Maybe you are working on a game and wonder about this so read on!

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Spoiler

First and foremost – this process is something we use on Boss 101 and might not be for everyone – I encourage you to test the veracity of it and see what works for you! Don’t take my word for anything without thoughtful examination on your part.

OK – get yourself something to track all this game loop stuff in. We use Visio and Google docs but you can use anything really. Google docs are free, there are also a lot of free graph and chart making software programs. You can even use paper, old school style.

The main point of your game loop pass is to hit all the highlights YOU think will happen at any point in the round. Just write ‘em all down and collect them on one spot. Do not worry about mistakes or missing things. In your mind you want to just go from start to finish and list all the things you can do. The thinking here is you can always add things in. The important part is to get from start to finish and re-read what you have for errors or omissions. You don’t want to get bogged down at this stage, you want to finish the loop.

When that is done you should go back and arrange things in order if they aren’t already. This is where Visio or charting programs are great. You can draw all those awesome little arrows and flow chart thingos to make connections to various prices of the game loop. Cinematics lead to gameplay, gameplay leads to achievements. All the great stuff happening.

Once you think you have a pretty good overall flow you will then take each item in that chart and start breaking it down HARDCORE. Well, at least as hardcore as you can for the moment. I personally think it’s really important to leave yourself some wiggle room with the systems. Many times and idea will just not pan out and you don’t want to be boxed in with a bunch of unique or inflexible game systems. Ideally – crap that isn’t working you can just take out and stuff that is working you expand on.

Again – the deal is not to turn this into a study in minutia. Rather you want to start asking some obvious questions as early as possible. things like “are we pausing and if so what will the player be able to do?” That sounds incredibly obvious but you want everything out in the open so you can take full advantage of your time and resources. There are few things worse than getting to the end and realizing you left out a ‘return to main menu’ option or an important end of round screen.

OK – so you went through all that and you have a pretty good list. Well, my advice here is to wrap the whole thing up and let it sit for a few days so you can revisit it with fresh eyes. I use this ‘let it bake’ philosophy a lot and it has saved me heartache time and again. What seems genius at 3 in the morning might be absurd on Friday afternoon after coffee.

The basic game loop should cover a typical game round and might be more complex for certain gams (think Civilization and its myriad options in a round). Another thing to remember is you can also put loops WITHIN loops. The basic loop exists within the great game loop and that might connect to other game loops like mini-games, upgrades, achievements, save screens and on and on. Start putting those together after you main loop and you are well on your way to really making a game.

To summarize – this process is about getting you asking questions about your game’s rules. That is it. You are pretending to be a typical player and thinking about all the things they can or might do. You won’t be perfect but each time you sit down and review you will likely improve the loop (any loop really) and thereby improve the game experience.

DO IT!

SideNote: We were in IndieGame Mag this month!

Boss 101 in the latest issue of Indie Game Magazine! Take a look and support a great site!

Link to the site here

Hope you enjoyed and talk with you soon!

Remember to LIVE YOUR DREAMS!

-Tim

[Doctor Butler]

Will there be a score/time attack mode?

[Donley_Time]

Will there be a score/time attack mode?

We are planning one yes! Right now we are doing game tuning and tweaks but on the list is a time attack mode. I recall getting feedback about this earlier. It seemed if a mode like this was done well people would enjoy it for the replay value!

-Tim

[tiaoferreira]

Well done, man! Magnificent work.

[Donley_Time]

Well done, man! Magnificent work.

Thank you so much - we're working hard and doing our best! Appreciate the kind words too!!

-Tim

[Doctor Butler]

So when is the projected PS3 release?

[Donley_Time]

So when is the projected PS3 release?

It would be post PC release and the PC version is scheduled for late July/early August at the moment. If the demand is high enough we'll put PS3 porting high on the list. The other good news is we are talking with possible sponsors for the game who would help us get it to the consoles quicker.

We'll keep you posted on the progress!

-Tim

[Donley_Time]

Welcome to the Boss 101 update! Story and Bosses, Two great things that go great together!

Story:

Doesn't come up a lot in the updates but rest assured there is entertainment in Boss 101 beyond the awesome battles. Our goal is to give you a glimpse into the universe of Boss 101. We want to show you what is going on and hint at the larger forces in play. We know much of the the game boils down to cool arcade action but that’s not stopping us from plotting out a narrative for you to enjoy and follow. Here’s how we are planning it.

In-Round Dialog:

You’ve seen this. Bosses, Steve and Max talk with each other at the beginning of and during rounds. This is the basic stuff to give you the flavor of their personalities.

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Spoiler

Making a Boss Room and various Command Center moments:

This is similar to the in-round work where you are seeing the guys and their friends react to various stuff happening in the game.  You will hear the visitors call into the Command Center and get to listen to conversations with ROB (their IT robot and part time chef)

Kite Room:

This is where you can just hang out and relax between battles. Fly a kite and listen to the guys talk about what’s on their mind. You might learn a few important things about STEVE and his past.

Game Cinema’s:

Overall storytelling in and there for a reason. We have a delivery system for these we believe you will enjoy. The idea is to give you narrative as YOU want it with the ability to play and replay as you like it. We’re working on this to make it special and memorable for you the player.

The point of all the above is there will be an underlying reason and motive for the way things are in the game. If you want to play and enjoy the game for pure arcade fun you can do that but always available will be the personalities and the history of the Boss 101 universe.

It sounds crazy but I think it’s as fun to help create the backstory as it is to work on a lot of the bosses and battles. The other day we were talking about the Command Center and why exactly would Max and STEVE have this awesome and advanced place to hang out in. Of course once the light bulb went off it made so much sense and wrapped a lot of the other pieces together too. YOU TOO will find out what’s going on when you play (or maybe read a Wiki article, HAAAAAAAAAAAA).

Bosses!

This time around we are looking at wrapping up another large scale boss. I’m going to put in a couple in progress shots of what you can expect. I’ll leave it to you to figure out what's going on here. Let’s just say it’s going to be pretty epic and we think you will like it a lot. This guy is “on track” to be an awesome boss! GET IT!?!?!? ON TRACK! That’s a hint!

Some regular and destroyed states for part of the boss:

Just know this – we care about Boss 101 a lot. It’s a fun game and a great experience for us. We’re working every day to bring you our best and earn your purchase.

Remember to Live Your Dreams!

-Tim

[RipperRoo]

uhm just what i know from reading a lot of developer blogs etc.
porting to ps3 is HELL.. a ps4 port would probably easier, from what i heard!
also sony is interested in supporting indies for ps3 afaik...

just sayin

[Donley_Time]

uhm just what i know from reading a lot of developer blogs etc.
porting to ps3 is HELL.. a ps4 port would probably easier, from what i heard!
also sony is interested in supporting indies for ps3 afaik...

just sayin

Good stuff man and we will look into both! Thanks for the tip!

Best,

-Tim

[Donley_Time]

Hello again and we are back with UI talk and a peek at how we go about making the UI for Boss 101.

Cool art for Boss 101!

Before we get rolling with UI talk - how awesome is this? Our very own Manon demonstrates her skillage with this amazing page of Boss 101 squaring off against Max and S.T.E.V.E.! I can't tell you how happy this made me when I saw it.

I want to see a whole book of it too! GENIUS!

User Interface (UI) - overall thoughts

The safest way to start is to say UI should be functional and consistent. Functional in that buttons, visual cues and actions the player take all work and make sense. Consistent in that you should keep a theme or look across the whole dad-blamed thing. Nothing is more confusing for a player than having a bunch of random fonts, colors and button sizes from panel to panel in a game. It's a bad way to bring the player into the action of the game and in some cases may prevent them from playing your masterpiece.

When we work on an interface we normally begin with a sketch in Photoshop or similar program. In most every case we take art from the game and work on top of that. The reason here is you want to look at your work in context. Use the same colors and visual themes. When you have a screencap or the original file at hand you can pick colors and cues while you work and also just get a sense of the shapes.  

The Make A Boss Equip Screen

So - in our Make a Boss room we have a button which brings up an equip panel where you can adjust your current weapon and hat. The idea here is to let you the player kit yourself up the best way possibly to battle the bosses. Since they are rolled randomly we wanted to give you this one last chance before battle to lock in your choice for items.

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Spoiler

So we took this first screen cap here as the base to work with. This is our reference for the colors and look of the area we're working with:

From there we do a quick first pass to block in the area we will be working on and control the space we want to use. This is not intended to be final so we're not exactly looking for artistic perfection. That said - color and general shaping is good to consider. The deal is if you are too sketchy and unrefined then it's really hard to judge what is happening.

Allright - that came out OK, not awesome but the major movements are there and things are still missing. Control surfaces are undecided but the whole thing didn't take but 30 minutes or so.

Now with that out of the way, the design was left to sit for a night. The next morning I (Tim) discussed the basic functionality with Joshua (our programmer). Right off the bat he had a few suggestions about ways to improve the look and was able to answer a few questions about how the panel might function. We had a long Skype call and the result was this:

HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!! What the heck! Well, those are meeting notes and I understood what they meant so I went to work. Some of the stuff we spoke about were a control pad type switch-out for the various hats and guns. Up and Down for Hats and Left and Right for the guns. I wanted to explore that idea which lead to this:

Ok - so that looks a lot more like something we would use! YES! Notice we added in a reference shot of Max with some hats and weapons mashed in so we can see how much space things might take up. From here the next steps are to polish up the overall look and add in needed iconography to the page. EASY-PEASY - well you get the idea. The major movements are done and the polish is arguably the funnest and easist part since all the big decisions are made. There may be more tweaks of course after some playtesting but we are good for now!

That's it for today's UI talk so let's take a quick look at the latest in our series of How To Make a Game!

This week's topic is perspective! Keep it or lose it!

Full article here - How To Make a Game - Part 14

Perspective is simply your point of view toward your game project.  Sometimes you want to zoom that view way in but most of the time you want to keep it far out so you can see what’s happening. There are a lot of ways to make a game and some people advocate things like a vertical slice (which is essentially building a representative portion of the game with all working parts). Others might tell you to work on everything at once. I can tell you from experience anything can be made to work if you have enough time and money. Let’s assume you have limited amounts of both and here’s how perspective can help you finish your game sooner and better.

One thing we do with Boss 101 is constantly pull back and look at the game as a potential customer might. We assess the value of the game based only on the screenshots we have released and the information out there. We put aside for the moment we’re the creators and we already know how wonderful the game is. The deal here is we are looking at it like a real life customer would. This is incredibly helpful. Another obvious thing is to look at similar games and see where you stack up. The intent is to compare the overall polish of a game you hold dear with your current efforts.

There are plenty of times you will want to micro focus on art, mechanics and code. Ideally this all happens after a big picture moment or once the plan has been laid out. Diving straight into machine gun art or character modeling before any prelim deign has happened is risky at best.

Once you have your direction then we are into what most people would agree is the heart of game making. This is where you are doing heavy lifting and getting the game made. Art assets, code, sound and countless other specific game tasks would fall into this realm. You will need to remove all distractions to do your best work.

OK - hope you enjoyed this look at some of our process and join us again next week for a continued look at the magic behind the scenes!

Remember to always live your dreams!

-Tim

[Donley_Time]

Welcome back to another weekly update!

We have:
- Pixel Art setups in Boss 101
- Boss 101 and Indie Game Battle
- Camping time with STEVE and Max

**Pixel Art setups in Boss 101**

Let's get right down to it with a look at the pixel art process on Boss 101 or “how we do what we do art-wise”. What you need:

The Basics

Pixel Program – we used Photoshop for the art. It’s not better or worse than many of the other awesome programs out there. It’s just what we use. It’s nice because:
- Layers (ESSENTIAL for rapid art development)
- each layer can have an overall effect applied to it to influence the underlying art. For instance – you can use a layer with a gradient to darken and shadow a layer underneath. Very useful.
- Solid program not prone to crashes. I’ve used Photoshop for nearly 21 years and I think it has only crashed out completely on me maybe 4 times.
- Animation tools for .gifs are pretty good, I’m hesitant to say they are amazing in Photoshop but they can get the job done well.
- Folders – Essential for separating the various pieces and components of art. Also allows you to store multiple files in the same location for easy reference and referral.

[Cloud] Backup Service – I cannot stress enough how important it is to actually save and back your work up ALL THE TIME. May you never experience the incredible sad panda of seeing your work erased in a power outage. When that happens you cry, you wail, you promise to NEVER let it happen again and worst of all… it’s totally your fault since you should know better. Get a free Dropbox account, Google Drive or something. If you want Snowden level security you will probably have to pay for it but most of us don’t need 4096 bit encryption for our pixel cat art.  

Setting things up

Group similar items:
If you have a collection of similar items (we have a collection of player guns, player hats and bosses that get grouped together) your best bet it to put them all in the same Photoshop file. Saves a huge amount of time and makes the work a lot easier than having 200 little .PSD’s all over the place. This is a shot of our allHatsFile.psd. You can see we store 100’s of hats in one file.

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Spoiler

(sample of our hat working file)

Work on things in batches if possible.
If you are perhaps making guns for your main character, you would benefit from making all the same types at the same time. They reason for this is you end up saving design time since you are laying out all your ideas at the same time. The avoids pattern repetition, as well as mistakes and lets you focus on the creative but putting all similar ideas in front at the same time. It’s much easier to see outliers and weird things when you have a nice lineup going.

(sample of our guns which were drawn in batches)

Work on things in layers and start with black and white art first
I mentioned this in a prior post but starting with black and white is probably best for a lot of reasons. First and foremost you are probably not that good at color. SORRY! It’s true. I mean you might get lucky once in a while and get some compliments when you bolt right in with color work but unless you’re an art major and have studied color theory trust me on this. Do the first pass of your work in Black and White and it will save you a ton of time. Black and white shows your contrast areas and detail in the clearest way possible. Color will accentuate a strong black and white base drawing but a weak color drawing is normally weak because of bad color choice (obviously) OR it doesn’t have enough contrast. The black and white will let you focus on the important stuff first.

(sample of a black and white starter image)

From there the way to go is put your shading in a separate layer. This allows you to tweak and tune the look

(sample of a black and white shader layer)

(sample of the shader layer applied to the base black and white – used the ‘Overlay’ layer effect in Photoshop)

Then you can just add in the color layer and play around till you have something you like.

(sample of color – notice it is all flat shaded)

(sample of color layer applied to the final black and white – used the ‘Color’ layer effect in Photoshop)

All together!

As you can see once you have everything all tidied up in Photoshop, separated in layers, setup for colors then you can dig in and play around with intensity and color experimentation. You will like the fact you can adjust the shading layer but keep the great colors you found. All in all this is one of the most efficient ways I have found to work. It is not the fastest AT FIRST because there is setup involved but the overall effect is a much faster workflow and a strong piece of mind. An added bonus is the tweak and changes are a lot easier too. Of course, if you do everything perfectly on the first try you probably don’t need to change anything so just work as you please! HAAAAAAAAA!!!

Boss 101 and Indie Game Battle

STEVE and Max in Indie Game Battle by Blob Game Studios!

Well we are SUPER flattered to be asked to be included in Blob Game’s Indie Game Battle. We were contact earlier about permission to bring STEVE and Max 9and their trusty machine gun) into the world of IGB and we are STOKED to present to you the first images from their appearance.

CHECK THESE OUT! Are you excited?! We are! HAAAAAAAAAAAAA!

(two shots of the guys in Battle)

More details on their IndieDB page here so check it out when you have a chance!

http://www.indiedb.com/games/indiegamebattle

Camping time with STEVE and Max

Boss 101 STEVE and Max, guys’ night out. Camping time and ghost stories!

OK – hope you enjoyed that look at the process we use and as always…

LIVE YOUR DREAMS!

-Tim

[Donley_Time]

Thanks for stopping by and welcome back to the Boss 101 weekly update! A smorgasbord of goodies awaits you this week!

Weapons - the Lightning Gun

In the quest to bring you rocking gameplay and boatloads of fun we added this dandy into the player's arsenal - the lighting gun. Yeah, it is not only powerful but can target nearby enemies automagically and jump around to all local targets. When there is a lot of action on the screen is makes for a pretty sick show.

The player's version can be upgraded to allow for better targeting and more damage. It's great for clearing the area of those pesky bad guys. Check it out!

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Spoiler

Of course the bosses will have their own version. You might want to give it a wider berth since it can do serious damage. Of course you will be able to mitigate the damage with various upgrades but in the meanwhile - steer clear buddy!

Making Boss Levels

Work continues on the final levels of the game - SUPER BOSS LEVELS! Just a peek at what is going on but we have in progress shots of the before and after art as it is being created.

The setup

Initial layout - we look to integrate new art with existing art. In this case we have a set of pillars we are already using. These caps are for decoration and variety.

The Black and White

All niced up with some fancy art. From here they get colored and prepped for use in the game.

Animations from the Boss Command Center

Looks like Max & STEVE set off alarms at robo HQ. Late night raids do that.

Making a Game - a look at the bigger picture

Occasionally we bring you a look at the How to Make a Game series we're putting together for our friends at Indie Game Riot. Here is a snippet from the latest this week.

OK, you have your basic game loop and now you want to expand beyond that. Well, what do you do after that? Good question – you lay out the entire game in rough form as soon as possible!

You see, the temptation is always to spend time on things like polishing up this or that specific system but the real thing is you are making a game. A game has a lot of parts and you most likely aren’t a huge team. Completeness is your weapon against forgetfulness and running out of time.

Specifically I am referring to the situation you will be in when you make a cool game loop and a few awesome little gameplay features. You might sit back and thing “All locked down now!” but you aren’t. not even close. You’re making good progress though so stuck with it. Start laying out all the game loops you can think of. For every system. This includes all the UI potentials, all the gameplay modes, all the little things like loading and saving.

Break large areas down into smaller ones but don’t stop at any one area. “But Tim, won’t I just be skimming through a ton of important things?” Yes, my friend and that is exactly the point. You want to get a real assessment of all the systems which are in your game. From years of experience the best way for this assessment is to just make the game. Not plan it or think about it or imagine it will all be OK later. Just make the systems and see how they work.

I do recommend you put the systems in on a first pass level. That means they are working with a UI that is not all temp art. You should always make an effort to put in good art and good code. That is also part of the exercise.

Hope you enjoyed this look and more to come.

As always - live your dreams!

-Tim

[tiaoferreira]

Simply amazing!

[Donley_Time]

Simply amazing!

Thank you! Glad you enjoyed the update! We're working to make it as awesome as possible.

Best,

-Tim

[Donley_Time]

Welcome back to the weekly Boss 101 update!

How do you relay information to the player clearly and at the correct time?

This week we are diving into UI with a look at the Status Icons for the game Boss 101. What are status icons you ask? Good question! Status icons are the visual indicators for effects on weapons and bosses. For instance a boss might have a flame weapon. Well, we would have a status icon for the flame weapon created so you would know in advance what you are facing.

The idea here is we want the Make A Boss room to be a dynamic thing. You roll a boss and see the effects he has and you pull up the equip panel to decide what’s best to battle him with. Maybe the boss is weak versus melee weapons? Well this is where you can choose what to take him down with

The philosophy here is we want the player to really enjoy the idea of rolling random bosses and getting a moment to plan an attack. Kinda like thinking on your feet in the middle of the battle. We designed the game around the idea you get bonuses for clearing out bosses in sets as well as the idea you use certain boss parts to create or develop more tech for your weapons. That is where the Make A Boss equip screen makes its mark. Let’s dive in!

Figure 1: Here we have the regular Make a Boss screen with a couple of red squares representing the effect icons. Notice we are just laying things in for position and to get a sense of space.

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Figure 2: Here’s a layout with everything planned. You see a sample of icons and names in their proper positions. The point here is to create a UI with a focus on the important things. In this case we are giving the player a direct look at not only the Bosses abilities but allowing the player to compare this with his own weapons and armor (hats).

Figure 3: Here’s a first pass on some various effects for bosses

Figure 4: So the player will have resistances to the bosses effects (like poison for instance). This is a simple layout page with classic video game tropes using arrows to represent the good and bad effects for the player.

Figure 5: A look at some effects laid on for display on the Make A Boss Screen. This is mostly to get a sense of the colors and the best way to display things.

OK – that is the highlights for now but comments are questions are always welcome. We hope you liked this high level look at creating a game UI and the thinking that goes behind every part. We will be bring you more looks at UI philosophy and development in the coming weeks!

Boss 101 Gameplay testing

Welp, when the night winds down what better to do than play a little Boss 101 and shake down the latest. Here we are threading the needle during crazy boss attacks! If you don’t have the right hat you better be pretty good at flying! HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Remember to Live Your Dreams!

-Tim

[Donley_Time]

Hello and welcome to the Boss 101 update of the week. We have a few things for you so let’s get cracking!

Command Center Main Room

You already know Max and STEVE have a hangout but we recently did some adjustments and touchups to the place. Mostly so you can enjoy it a little better and understand the layout. You see - this isn’t just their home it’s yours too!

First up we have the redecorated main room with a big screen TV, award and basic remodeling. The idea in this room is you have access to all things you have done in the game (like achievements, stat tracking, etc). Additionally you can hang out with the guys and play games - that’s what the arcade matching is for after all. Finally we have a couple places you can go to from here. Kite Hill - were you fly a kite with the guys and the Endless Boss mode - where you can test your skills against a neverending horde of boss baddies. So to break it down you have:

Movies - replay and re-watch movies you have seen
Kite Flying - fly a kite with the guys
Endless Boss - take on endless boss baddies
Professor Mole - consult him when you have questions about gameplay or game elements
Trophies - Stat and achievement tracking
Arcade Games - relax and play games

Check out the images below:

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Main Room:

Main Room with selection labels active - same room but with the guides active to show the player some of what they can activate.

A close up of a few of the TV shows playing while you hang out.

Indie Game Battle

How awesome is this! The guys working on Indie Game Battle (http://www.indiedb.com/games/indiegamebattle) put up the latest gameplay preview with your boys Max and STEVE as playable characters! Check out the sweet footage below!

Gameplay of Indie Game Battle on Youtube with Max and STEVE

Screenie for you!

Despite his sarcasm, S.T.E.V.E. does care! He's actually a good teacher!

How to Make a Game - Preview of the next update!

When you are making a game - have you every wondered about the work that goes into it? We have so we broke it down into four basic areas:

What you know you’ve done: This is work you know about. Work you have done. This would be something like the creation and animation of the player and environment sprites. This is stuff scheduled and done.

What you know you haven’t done: This is stuff you know about, is scheduled and has not been done yet. Inserting sounds, finishing the cinematic movies, VFX might fall into this category.

What you DON’T KNOW and you HAVE DONE: This is stuff you needed to do and by sheer luck or fortune you ALREADY DID. This was not scheduled per-se but resulted from a lucky bit of earlier work. An example - you create the UI for an inventory panel a while back. When you go to make the UI for the player store you realize you already had done the base work when you did the player inventory. It was matter of re-using the designs and ideas to quickly make the new store in a fraction of the normal time.
An IMPORTANT NOTE: This type of work must be recognized for what it is when the time comes or you will redo things unnecessarily. Recognizing work you ALREADY did is the way to avoid remaking things over and over.

What you don’t know and you haven’t done: This is the killer category. This is every single thing that has not been done and you just didn’t think about while putting the game together. This category exists in all games no matter how much planning happens. It’s what I call the “bottom of the iceberg”. It might be big, it might be small. I’d like to think on Boss 101 we have a pretty small amount of stuff in here but there most certainly is stuff in here.
Examples: Medals awarded at the end of your game rounds. When those go in it is obvious they need a little something more than the method scoped out (perhaps they just appear with no VFX). Nothing was wrong with the idea planned but the execution gave you a clear picture of improvement. This is a case of the “you didn’t know and didn’t do it”. No one is to blame, nothing is wrong, this is just game development.
Most games live and die on this category: If you want a game that is going to get great reviews and the attention fans and friends you will do well to pay special attention to this category.

That's all for the moment but we'll be back soon with a new update!

Thank you for reading and keep living your dreams!

-Tim