Thyria Devlog 02: Get to Know Thyrian Defenders - Part 1

The heroes from left to right: Thexter, T-Rex, Taz, and Redwing

WELL, HEY AGAIN 

Hey all, here again with another devlog update. Last month I gave a general summary of the formation of our team and an overview of our 2 projects in development. If you missed it get caught up here. Look, I know you’re all excited about our action rpg platformer, Thyria: Hunt for Kroohx, but I’m not going to talk about that today. This time around I’m going to tell you that you should be hyped for Thyrian Defenders, and not just because it’s first in line for release.

Since August 2016, we’ve pushed TD to the forefront of our development efforts and we’ve been in high stride these past few months. In just the past month we’ve completed another level along with dozens of improvements all around the board. But before I go into those details let’s talk about the gameplay and features. 

“TD has enough unique gameplay and aesthetic to stand out, and just the right difficulty balance to attract the hardcore and casual. ”

Sure, it’s a vertical shooter; a genre with countless titles and very few known for innovation. However, if you’re a fan that’s no problem at all. And if you narrow down the list of truly great ones you’ll feel there’s always room for more. Of course we’re big fans and think the simple ‘pew pew’ action of a good shmup never gets old. But this game has the potential to be much more than a love letter to a classic genre that no longer receives the attention like it once did in the 1990’s. We believe TD has enough unique gameplay and aesthetic to stand out, and just the right difficulty balance to attract the hardcore and casual. 

BASIC CONTROLS

The initial release of TD is going to be for mobile so we're talking touch controls here. I tell myself I'm not a fan of touch controls but I must admit when it works, it works well. Moreover, shmups are one of those genres that works great on a touch screen. So much in fact, they've earned their own name as the 'finger shooter.' TD controls pretty much how you would expect. Your ship tracks your finger movement while it constantly shoots and that is the core control. The position of the ship sits slightly above your touch point so that your finger doesn't cover the ship. This is important, because it makes you feel like you are flying the ship, not just shooting out of your finger. If you lift your finger the game drastically slows down and you are presented with 3 special options. Cyclone Bomb heavily damages everything around you ship. Shield gives you temporary invulnerability. Focus slows everything down except for your ship, empowering you with a master of the matrix feeling. 

“...you feel like you are flying the ship, not just shooting out of your finger.”

MORE THAN SHOOTING STUFF

TD follows tradition by including hand made levels that are each capped off with a unique boss fight. However, it’s how you play the game that makes it feel more modern and replayable. In order to make it to the next level you must do more than survive. Each level has four objectives that earn you a medal, plus 4 difficulty tiers resulting in a total of 16 possible medals for each level. You must acquire so many of these medals to unlock more levels and difficulty tiers. 

“In order to make it to the next level you must do more than survive.”

• Destroy 100% of enemies - Going for this medal leads to a pretty straight forward strategy, kill everything! This is naturally what most players want to do in these games, especially if they are concerned with score. However, there are often times you will think the better of it and choose an evasive stance when the risk is obvious. Hehe, but you better hold your ground if you want to get that medal.

Cyclone Bomb is especially useful when you're trying to destroy 100% of the enemies. (Umbrella icon is only part of temporary debug UI) 

• Remain Unharmed - So much as a scratch in the paint and you can say goodbye to this medal. Going for this one leads to a much more passive strategy where you don’t want to get too bullish, but you still gotta keep your finger on the trigger or those lingering baddies will cause you trouble.

Strategically timed shield usage can go a long way towards the 'Unharmed' objective.

• Collect all 10 Plasma containers - In every level there are 10 plasma containers the are spawned by destroying crystals, and also absorbed from Space Kraken. Getting them from crystals is easy to understand. Shoot it until it cracks open and wolla, out pops a plasma container. To get them from Space Kraken you must fly nearby the squishy critters for a set amount of time until they relinquish a container. The trick is, they’re always on the move and often flying through crossfire. Patience and timing is the key to earning this medal. Slowing time with the Focus special can be a great help with this one. 

Stay close to a Kraken long enough and out pops a plasma container. 

Bust up crystals to procure plasma containers.

• Special Objective - Every level has one unique objective. These include slaying a rare monster, collecting a high percentage of gold parts, bravely riding wind currents, preserving ancient ice formations, and more. These usually incorporate a unique level mechanic, or simply bring more personality to the level. 

Hey, you missed one! That's not gonna cut it if you want that special objective medal. 

Time to pick up the pace

The trade off for this methodical objective based gameplay is a need to keep the pace of the levels a touch slow, as far as scrolling is concerned. In order to contrast this and pump up the player's adrenaline we plan on including Hyperspace levels. These are very fast paced levels that must be cleared within a certain time limit. To keep up your speed you'll need to stay on a highlighted path and avoid obstacles. Baddies will be there to harass you as well but shooting is not the main focus of the gameplay in Hyperspace. That's the idea anyway, as we have yet to create a tangible mock up. Look forward to that in a forthcoming devlog. 

“In order to pump up the player’s adrenaline we plan on including Hyperspace levels. These are very fast paced levels that must be cleared within a certain time limit.”

RECENT UPDATES

Our biggest update since the last devlog is the addition of a new level. Introducing planet Crypto, a strange world made of bumpy rock formations intersected by rivers of bright green liquid. Shrouded in perpetual mist this humid environment provides an ideal spawning ground for the Space Kraken. Unfortunately, the Exodon invasion extends to this vital habitat. Strap up lad, those Kraken need your help!

Not only is the environment drastically different than the previous 'Asteroids' level, but several new enemies are introduced. Homing turrets shoot spinning stars that aggressively track you down. Skimmers dash along the surface of liquid and shoot packets of cluster bullets. Swarmers are small and weak but always come in groups, hence the name 'Swarmer.' To kill a Twin Shooter you must dangerously fly in between the bullets firing from its dual canons. 

In addition to this new level we've also made some small graphic improvements. Most notable is the addition of fully animated drop shadows for flying objects including your ship! 

We've also done significant balancing tweaks to the gameplay and controls. Enemies and projectiles have been made faster while your ship has slightly slower movement but a faster fire rate. This all amounts to an intense feeling of action and a much more fun challenge. Before these changes the Titan felt overpowered and the challenge was lacking. 

“This all amounts to an intense feeling of action and a much more fun challenge.”

NOW WE'RE ROCKIN'

Alas, I'm elated to announce a new member to the Thyria team. Alan Monteiro is a super talented musician/composer from Sao Paulo, Brazil. After looking into several potential composers, and even considering doing the music ourselves, it was Alan's natural musical talent and friendly approach that won us over. He's going to be ripping out some amazing tunes for Thyrian Defenders. You don't have to take my word for it, just take a listen to this sample track for the Asteroids level.

Now, imagine shooting up some Exodon while jamming to this, pretty sweet huh? Well hopefully you won't have to imagine for much longer, as things are still going really smooth. 

BYE BYE

That's it for this Devlog. There are still many features to cover. Next time I plan on detailing your ship's arsenal and the upgrades system. I'm also excited to describe the colorful cast of characters and how they are incorporated into the story and gameplay. Until then, keep an eye on Facebook and Twitter for juicy appetizers. 

RUNED (Formerly Remnant) Devlog 3

Working color version of 8 frame walk cycle. 

It's been a long long time since the last Runed devlog, and this will be the last devlog coming from me. Due to various circumstances, I politely resigned from the project as of August 13th, 2015. I know that's already a long time ago, but I wanted to button up the issue just in case somebody was waiting to hear more about the game from me. I've also been terribly busy on another game dev project that I can't wait to share more about.

Developing a game requires a great deal of hard work and time. In all I was on board for nearly 8 months as the sole artist for Runed. In that time, I learned a great deal about the technical intricacies of developing a pixel art game. Not only that, my pixel art skills vastly improved from beginning to end. Just look at my first devlog post and some of my most current pixel art to see for yourself.

When it comes to game development you often hear the words, "Never give up." I definitely have not given up. Sometimes you have to quit one thing in order to open to doors to something better. Indeed, that I have. The fire burns strong. 

Where most of the game's light comes from. 

If you are interested in learning the current status of Runed, or if you're looking for a C# programmer, try contacting @DeathGameDev for details.

Namazu Colony

The great Namazu Colonly, one of countless celestial beasts with alien cities seamlessly interwoven into the hulking anatomy. Only seldom seen through the most powerful telescopes pointed at the farthest edges of the galaxy, much of these space gods and their inhabitants remains a mystery.

This concept of giant space creature/cities has fascinated me for some time and I would love to further explore the theme and develop fiction around these enigmatic titans. Although, it's definitely not a simple subject to convincingly depict.

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The first challenge was scale. This piece was created in a 640x640px composition, which may not seem large in itself, but that's a lot of dots to fill for pixel art. In terms of the fish design, it was very fun but tricky to incorporate a staggering amount of precise mechanical details into an organic shape and still preserve enough recognizable anatomy of something that's characterized for being soft and curvy. Furthermore, the contorted gesture of the fish causes the perspective of the mechanical details to shift several times across it's body. This not only made it hard to manage the perspective of the forms, but also the lighting effects. 

Although, it wasn't all tedium to slowly chip away on this over the course of 2 months. I had a great time designing the mechanical details and pondering the potential stories in this fantastic universe. I always enjoy making color palettes as well, and these synth wave inspired colors do the space theme justice.
 

Throughout the creation process I periodically snapped screen shots to document my work. While the interval between screen shots was somewhat inconsistent these images capture a nice summary of the entire process. You can see I developed the face before I fleshed out the rest of the body. Sometimes I like to test a concept by fully detailing a small portion before spending much time cleaning up the whole. This allows me to quickly establish scale, perspective, colors, and can help me better visualize the complete work better than just a rough line drawing.

In spite of the difficulties, I'm quite pleased with the results. By pushing through this challenge I have become a better pixel artist, and am already well into my next large-scale piece!

Remnant Devlog 2

When I first began work on this project in January, I had little experience with pixel art and never created it for an actual working title. Therefore, the more I do and learn about pixel art, the worse my earlier work on Remnant appears. This growing awareness began to significantly hamper my motivation to continue working on this title. Fortunately, I have grown enough to see the weakness in my work, and divulged the opportunity to make things better while the game is still in early development.

Over the past two weeks I've been revamping nearly all the graphical assets with a much greater focus on defining the overall style and staying consistent by sticking to a few key design points. The first point is the character's physique. I've decided to make the characters more stocking and 'game-like' without sacrificing realism. The next point is color. This time around I've been much more careful about color selection as I build and refine one consistent palette. The final point is to push the animation further by making everything more bouncy and lively. I'm hoping these points will help give the graphics a distinct flavor.

The shot below exemplifies a little bit of everything I've been doing to improve the visuals.

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New tiles are not only attractive, but keep focus in the playable area.

I was especially troubled by my first attempt at the character designs. Some of these new designs are still being developed, yet the improvements from the bland old versions are apparent.

Great improvements have also been made to the tiles and environmental sprites. The color palette is doing well to supplement colorful accents to the predominantly brown hues.

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Another new addition is progress on the bird character. This particular bird's flight abilities were handicapped by a life in a cage. However, By pressing and holding a button the player can fly for a short time before a stamina meter depletes.

Lastly, I want to show a sample of revised animation for the human's idle animation. While simple, it captures the lively spirit I want to infuse into all of the animation. Don't mind the working color scheme.

That's all for now. Hope to have more animation to show you next time.

Remnant: Devlog 1

Since early January 2015 I began my first game dev project after making a partnership with an aspiring programmer via twitter. I've been wanting to somehow get involved with the game dev scene for quite some time, so I jumped at the chance. Since that time, progress on Remnant has been up and down, but overall steady.

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Remnant is a two dimensional puzzle platformer, with a twist. In this darkly wondrous world, the player receives a mysterious necklace from his dying grandfather. Rune magic imbued in the necklace allows the player to shape shift into various animals. The unique abilities of each animal form must be used throughout the game in order to progress through a subterranean labyrinth and uncover a shocking secret that won’t stay buried forever.

As the game is based in 2D pixel art, my first task was making 32 x 32px tiles for the environment. As simple as it seems, making a cool looking texture for dirt in such a small space definitely requires a special sense. Fortunately, my lifelong passion of gaming has instilled me with such a sense, however, I still have much growing to do.

Beyond making tile sets, this learning experience has expanded to involve me in character design, animation, level design, story telling, concept art, and really all faucets of game design outside of actual coding.

look forward to future devlogs detailing more specifics about the game as it develops. Follow me on twitter to get the most current peak at new content.

Quest of Fury: Devlog 1

I was only 7 years old when I made the original Quest of Fury; a board game with light rpg elements where the players must build their armies and assault the opposing side. Even for a 7 year old's invention, I remember the game being surprisingly fun, as it was often played among friends and family. Eventually we all grew up and the whereabouts of the actual game elude me to this day. But with a clear memory of the game, I decided it would be a great design project to try and remake it. While I've added several new features, the core concepts remain unchanged. Sure enough, it's still fun!  Fun enough to possibly hit your table some day.

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The world of QoF is divided between the Light Side and Dark Side. Which will you choose?

Landing on a sword or axe icon results in a battle. Each side of the realm has 4 different levels of monsters. The monsters are represented on battle cards below.

Currently I have yet to design cards for friendly units and items. Updates and further explanation on how to play the game coming at a later date.

Pulse City

What started as a simple study in perspective quickly exploded into a vibrant sci-fi world, as I became inspired to make it a plausible concept for a city builder/alien invasion defense game. Behold, the Pulse City.

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For this isometric study I used an exaggerated perspective by making nearly all the vanishing lines at 45 degree angles. This technique offers efficient production of geometric forms. However, the repetition of shapes tends to make things look flat. While flat graphics can be charming, I wanted to convey a great deal of depth. In order to do so I used overlapping, vertical hierarchy, and even some atmospheric perspective by varying the level of detail.

In the images you can see a great deal of the process. I started by simply designing one building at a time. Once I completed a handful of unique structures I began playing with the composition. From that point on it was just a puzzle of finding the perfect placement for all the structures, and building new ones where needed. I used the same process to fill out the background with dozens of unique ship designs and the orbital defense colony.

Prints and more!