tinyBuildGAMES

Hey remember when I said we were making that other game? I wasn’t kiddin around!

This is up to date alpha footage. The general consensus is that “it looks like ass” and some parts are hard to read and control. So I’ll be mostly in Photoshop for a while now, re-drawing stuff. What do you guys think?

This is a lot of firsts on this project; it’s my first time using C#, first 3D game, first time writing shaders, and we’re basically stepping it up from the last one. One of the goals with Game 2 was to make a way more solid style and world and attitude than No Time, which was kind of all over the place.
It’s a weird task though; should I write a 300 page design doc just for me and another guy to read? Should I write a huge backstory for every character? Well here’s one idea:

It’s basically an app I made that labels everything in the game in a really broad strokes way. The top line is the broadest definition of the game, then the options under that are a bit more in-depth, and opening those gets more in-depth. That’s the order that people think of games in- you don’t picture it from start to finish, you picture it in terms of “What am I gonna work on this year?”
“What am I gonna work on this month?”
“What am I gonna work on this week?”
And all the nuts n bolts like the speed of bullets, or enemy AI patterns can shape up in testing and prototyping.

Clicking on boxes will eventually pop a flash card of what that thing is and how it should work. This app basically describes the game piece by piece without feeling like a chore to scroll through a giant bible.

Have you ever tried to plot out a scrolling shooter or beat-em-up level? No? Neither have I!

In planning the above level (which is the level in the video) I noticed that each level in these kinds of games needs to introduce like 4 or 5 new enemy types just to stay exciting,  and smashing through robots from start to finish would probably lose it’s punch. So that’s why I started prototyping the break in the middle where you fly forward for a while and play it a different way.
In No Time To Explain we had different characters and bonus levels to keep things upbeat, but with this being a combat game it feels like there’s gonna have to be way more twists so the high-speed action doesn’t just burn out before we get a chance to really get into it. That’s pretty scary, from a design perspective.

And don’t worry, I’m AGAINST putting “Go find the blue key” puzzles in a combat game. As long as I’m here, you won’t be stuck re-directing a laser with triangle mirrors for 10 minutes.

So that’s basically a quick update of what’s up with this game! Wanna see some concept art?

Another good way to get a more solid game world is to do way more concept art.

This boss MUST:

• Stop you from getting in close and slashing him somehow, just to force you to use a new tactic
• Have big hands, because he uses them to make a cool entrance.
• Be covered in triangles and be blue/green, to show that he’s part of the earth-faction (don’t worry, this game’s story doesn’t focus on factions or nations or anything like that)
• Have some kind of big weak point that you can go up and slash to death once his defences are down, to show off that the game is a shoot-em-up and a beat-em-up.
• Spawn smaller enemies for you to throw at him, cos throwing is cool, and this might be a good opportunity to teach people how to throw.

Bosses are usually designed for function before being dolled up.

Oh also happy birthday me!