Hello everybody!

Just thought I'd do a quick entry on some of the work I did for the trailer.

Since I wanted a super close up shot of a banana, and wanted a high resolution texture to support this kind of shot, I thought I'd break out my camera and try to snap some close ups of an actual banana. At first I tried to get some shots of the banana, as it were, but it turned out too.. round. It was difficult to capture all the sides as well, since it was so... curved.


Banana 3D-scanning in progress (supervised by my project lead, mr.Pug-Bear)

So what to do?
Well, why not try to UV unwrap the banana, in real life!



It seemed to do the trick and I managed to have that close up shot of the banana in the trailer.
Here's the result in Blender (with added bloodstains):




In other news I also updated my website to draw attention to MFP: BBB. I'll probably update it more properly in the future, but this will do for now. Oh, and I even set up a Newsletter, cuz I'm professional like that.

Check it out!
www.deadtoast.com

I had quite a few people asking to share more info on the Level Creation tools I showed earlier, and who am I to deny anyone that

Check out this video if you're interested in knowing more (hopefully you'll be able to make some sense of my rambles):


In other news I've been putting some work in to my presskit() and am pondering whether or not I should start trying to reach out to various journalists to try and make them aware of the game. I'm also finding out keeping a DevLog and generally trying to draw an audience to what I'm doing here is taking a lot of time. I'm still getting in the swing of things, so hopefully it'll all be a lot smoother down the line.

Until next time! Ta!

I haven't updated the devlog for a little while since I've been off doing some freelance work and been busy trying to get the word out about this game!

So it feels like it's high time to do a little press re-cap
The first website to pick up on the game was actually my favorite Swedish gaming news site FZ.se:
http://www.fz.se/artiklar/nyheter/20151126/slow-motion-vald-vapenakrobatik-och-bananer-i-svensk-indieaction

Later another Swedish site also picked it up, called GameReactor:
http://www.gamereactor.se/nyheter/293603/Little+Big+Planet-avhopparen+bjuder+pa+bananer/

I also did an interview for lv.80, which you can check out here:
http://80.lv/articles/my-friend-pedro-awesome-slow-motion-platformer-shooter/

And last but not least, Indie Game Magazine also wrote about it! Check it out here:
http://indiegamemag.com/listen-to-the-banana-in-my-friend-pedro-blood-bullets/


It's so nice to having revealed the game and seeing people talk about it, and actually getting excited about it! Somehow it feels more like I'm actually making a proper game now

So, now that the initial "marketing-push" has happened I feel like I can go back to focusing more on making the game again. I've been warming up my game-making-muscles with a bit of level design. It felt really good focusing on gameplay again, after having had the focus on the visuals of the game for so long.

I also made another wall and floor theme which is completely "white-box" to be used for making the initial white-box levels, to stop myself from getting distracted from the flow and functional aspect of the level.


Example of a level built in one go.

Currently I'm approaching level-making in two ways. One way is to just start making the level (usually in the middle of the level) and keep building upon it linearly. This way of making levels usually requires me to really 'get in the zone' mentally, and usually gives the levels a better 'flow' feeling to them.

The other approach is to make levels in different "chunks" or "motifs", as I usually call them. This approach is great for when you want to explore a certain mechanic or "hook". It usually involves trying all the different combinations and abuses of the functionally I'm trying to explore. However, putting all of these "motifs" one after another doesn't always equate to a good level. Therefore I like to keep a little library of different motifs that I can pull in to a level that needs some more gameplay sections. Or just starting from scratch and putting together various motifs which might work well together. Keeping the motifs in groups makes them easy to move around to try different combinations.


Example of different motifs ready to be put together to form a level

Eventually I will probably approach level making in a third manner, namely from a visual or "event" aspect. That is, making pieces of level that maybe wouldn't be so interesting if it was plainly white box, but that focus more on the dressing of that particular moment.

However for now I want to keep the focus more on the "pure gameplay" and be sure there's enough good stuff to cover the whole game, and in the process of doing so invent new mechanics to be used for designing levels.

Not sure how long it will be until my next entry. For a while I will probably just be making levels, and not sure how much of that I should be showing at this point

Let me know if there is anything you would like to know more about, or just any general thoughts you might have!

Until next time! Ta!

Phhewiiee... What a week!
I've been busy doing levels most of the week. I now have about 10ish levels with a grand total of about 20-30 minutes worth of gameplay! Hurrah! Though most of these levels are still only whiteboxed, and they will probably be iterated further in the future... but still. Hurrah!

Just for the heck of it, here's a GIF from one of the new whiteboxed levels showing a bit of brutal shotgun action.


It's funny how when you work on something for a long time eventually you get blind to the little things you told yourself you'd fix later... That's why I was really happy to hear feedback from ya'll out there! One obvious thing that somehow I had gotten used to seeing was how the arms used to spin around the back of the main character when aiming in 360 in the middle of the air. But no more!



Now the main character spins to face the direction he's aiming in. It's great because it makes you feel even more acrobatic when playing the game!

Another week has passed and progress has been made! This week I've been wearing my coder hat and trying to wrap my head around my previously written code.

The focus has been on small details in the players movement, animation and poses. I've also experimented with a new ability, namely being able to shoot from cover. Check it out here:




After sorting out the major quirks in the players movement that bugged me I moved on to some enemy work.
I always struggled with how to solve the issue of being able to shoot enemies half way through them spawning from a door. However I now believe I have found a fairly neat solution. The enemies now try to take cover in the door opening if you shoot at them before they're fully spawned.



I've also tweaked and added some new animations for the enemies, trying to make them act a bit less... dumb.
They now react when there is a gunshot happening that they can't see, like so:



Next I might do some work on the actual models of the enemies. I've still got loads to learn in terms of 3D modelling and skinning...

Christmas and New Years is over... After eating loads, relaxing and actually taking time to play some games for once it's time to get productive again!

It's been a great week. I've shifted focus from small polish to playing around with some new ideas and features. I've managed to get three rather exciting additions to the game.


First off: EXPLOSIONS!


Because you can't have an action game with out it...
The explosions are mainly based on this, with a few slight modifications: https://stevencraeynest.wordpress.com/2013/03/29/easy-volumetric-explosion-in-unity3d/
It was a great first glimpse in to shader-programming! I've never touched shader code before, but I managed to add a "pinch point" to the explosion, making it "stretch" slightly in it's origin position, trying to stop it from looking too round


Next up: Kicking!


... With the addition of some experimental UI. After making the explosions I made some explosive canisters. After making the canisters I obviously wanted to be able to launch them in the air and shoot them before they managed to land. So, the most fluid way off achieving this seemed to be kicking

With a bit off skills, you could even pull off this kind of bad-assery:



The last but not least addition: A new enemy!


Since one of your main abilities in this game is the ability to roll, it seemed to make sense to have an enemy based around rolling Now, you might be thinking this is a bit out of place from what you've seen of the rest of the game. However, there seem to be a plan slowly growing in my mind to explain and allow for these sort of things to fit in to the game (In reality, I kind of just want to make cool fun stuff and later vaguely try to explain it with some sort of story)

Here's a bonus close up of the little fella:



That's it for now.
Until next time. Have a good one

My goodness... It's been another week already??

I guess it has! So it's high time for another update. Lots of exciting additions have been made to the game!

Here's what's new:



After last weeks implementation of the ability to kick certain items, I wanted to explore that mechanic a bit further. First I made it so that if you kick an item in to the head of an enemy, they get knocked out. Later I figured I might as well make it so you can kick the gibs left behind when shotgunning an enemy at close range. Combining kicking with a splat-attack, you could get something like what you see above








It seemed like a fun idea to be able to have certain metallic objects (like the frying pan above) bounce off the bullets that hit the object. The bullets actually auto-aim to the closest enemies when shot at, even if it's the enemy's the one shooting at it, which can result in some quite funny moments








This next one maybe doesn't get a super high rating on the 'bad-assery-chart', however I'm excited about the possibilities it brings to level design. I've made a simple switch system which makes it easy for me to make things like levers and moving platforms or doors. Still got to make some sort of animation for flipping the switch. You are able to shoot the switch from afar to flip it (but only if you're in the correct direction).







After playing around with that new enemy last week, the ball one with the Tesla-charge-thingie-attack, I wanted to make a weapon the player can use with a similar attack. It's a ranged attack that freezes the enemies while shooting them....






... HOWEVER! The coolest thing with the gun is that you can launch the electric-tip and attach it to a wall or another object. You are then able to shoot from that position.







It kind of made sense to make a switch that is activated with the electric gun. Combine this switch with the ability to "shoot around corners" after launching the electric-tip of your weapon opens up lots of possibilities for cool puzzles, I believe.



... Aaaand once again, that's it for this week!
Until next time. Toodles!