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Devlog ~07: The Result - Voting. Choosing

noreply@blogger.com (vichelyna) — Wed, 09 Apr 2014 06:46:00 +0000

Hellow! Vichelyna's here. How are you fellas?

Me? I’ve had so much trouble with internet connection lately. Ugh.. It’s like I’ve been in the middle of cave in the mountain nowhere -,-“

Ehm! Back to the topic. I’ve brought some news for y’all. First one, we’ve got the title for [anuStar]. We’ve named it, Stellar Arms. *SFX: clapping hands*

Why "Stellar Arms"?

We’ve done voting to choose the title (literally).

There was 5 choices and we’re getting narcissists enough to choose the-one-with-‘stellar’ in the title *LOL-ing*. And the ‘arms’? I don’t think another part of our body can do better than “arms”. Stellar Head? Stellar Belly? Stellar Armpits? Errrgghh.. Should I stop now?

Long comments directly from Lazcht:

We had weeks to gather title candidates to replace [anuStar] codename. I myself had to think about the universe and background story for this, then look for a suitable, memorable words and unique enough for this project.

I was thinking Sol’s weapon name, or something related to fire and water/ sun and rain, radius, umbrella, weapon, or name of the place the game sets on. I proposed some latin names like Solis (latin for sun) which hipondisliked because it sounded like chemical things haha. My favorite idea was Solis Arms. Arms stands for the term for umbrella-weapon Sol’s using.

Clea said “Whichever the name we choose in the end, it wouldn’t be as good as anuStar.” So actually he didn’t really gives a fuck, but he has good point.

Hipon proposed Sword & Scattergun, Solis Edge, Weapons of Umbra. Solis Edge was quite interesting, but sounds too close to Soul Edge, haha.

While Reijubv proposed some words translated in different languages, coolest one is Exilio something. But then again it’s sounds too “foreign”.

At last day we decided to make the title fix, we brainstormed once more, and get Stellar Arms.

Then moving on to logo. This was hardest game logo i have made so far, hipon was asking for a logo which focus on typography and he gave me references like these:

I personally don’t like a symmetrical or bended/stretched both sides likeGradius. I have posted this previously though, you can see all of my attempts on this:

and above was an idea sketch from Reijubv. he cleverly used the two fingers and a thumb for L and A, lol, but unfortunately it lacked “action” and seriousness i want to project.

Hipon kept on saying it was okay but didn’t quite like it and didn’t play with typography much, almost frustated, he then said, "Well maybe the references i gave was not your style after all, so do what you think is good."

Then i came up with the last logo, then i pixelled it out (why? because i want this project full of pixel!) and gave it little bit of colorful touch.

concepts i want to maintain was: fingers (for goey fingers), umbrella and jellyfish. I want them to look kind of sporty, simple, futuristic and funky. I’m now quite satisfied with the result! :D

now go back to Chel, i got enough space hijacking on this devlog.

Okei, at last but not least, we would say thanks to Cem, Aditya Sumantri, and Rendi Kristyadi for the fan arts. We’re quiet surprised with all of the fan arts. We love you, bros! :D

That’s all for today. Thank you for reading and the supports! And for the hijack-post by Laz ;)

[anuStar] devlog ~06: Enhancement

noreply@blogger.com (vichelyna) — Wed, 09 Apr 2014 05:51:00 +0000

It’s been a while since the last devlog, yeah March has been a busy month for us, we’re working on multiple projects at the same time and it does affect our work on #anuStar. But it’s been around 2 weeks since the last devlog, so it should show some updates right? let’s get into it.

New Ability

We have tested and played this game for thousand times and we felt that we need to add more ability to our hero, Sol. At first, I didn’t agree with this idea because it would break the balance, but since the idea was quite interesing, I gave it a try.

So the new ability is called “Gallop”. It’s basically a dash move like megaman, the difference is that it does some damage and knocks enemy back. it is a multipurpose ability that could be used for dodging and breaking goey chaos.

It’s quite hard to implement this ability and it also needs a lot of changes until it feels right. It’s time consuming but it fits the gameplay well and it feels good knocking back enemies with this move.

Boss Rush

Project #anuStar concept is high-intensity action sidescroller with some comedy. This game is more like Gunstar Heroes or Contra 3, if you expect highly platforming action like megaman X you wont find it here. #anuStar has very minimal emphasis in platforming, it’s boss-heavy game like Contra 3 where every 2 screens a boss appears.

We have been working on 2 minibosses so far, I personally quite satisfied with the result. As the boss designer myself I tried to add some elements from classic games like pong and tetris in designing boss patterns. Why did I take some elements from classic games? Because classic games usually has very distinctive style and it only uses simple movement, it’s easy to make and feels unique when mixed with #anuStar.

can you guess the reference?

Phew, that’s already a lot to share. I didn’t expect I would write this much..

Until next time!

~hipon

[anuStar] devlog ~05: Goey? and news

noreply@blogger.com (vichelyna) — Tue, 11 Mar 2014 17:50:00 +0000

Another weekly report is coming~
Last week, Hipon still tweaking the game balance, level design etc. Some things are getting better now. The mechanic become more solid and the dynamics are getting greater. The spawner system comes so satisfying too. But we still discussing for the balancing. Quite hard to finish dat one! Phewww~

But anyway, we're going to make it chaos and lot of humor! You'll find some unique motions from Goey. Like this one ;)

Again, Reijubv must make another sprites for Goey, and Laz still fixing some particle. Clea must compose draft for sfx + bgm stage, and Hipon should implement sprite and next-map-transition. SO much things to do!

Hope everything will done perfectly soon! And see you next week!

[anuStar] devlog ~04: Finding Harmony

noreply@blogger.com (Rico) — Wed, 26 Feb 2014 14:42:00 +0000

Last week was quite tough, it's not because we worked really hard, if we look at the current build it may look quite stagnant compared to last week *at least, gameplay wise*. Actually, it's tough because I was tweaking the game balance, level design, etc and it seems I will keep tweaking this until it feels right.

Like I said before, this game overall style takes a lot of inspirations from one of Treasure's games, Gunstar Heroes. However, after I implemented the spawning system, it turns out to be very different, which is good! But, since the feel now differs from Gunstar Heroes, I can't use some techniques from Gunstar Heroes, I need to develop my own, in other words, I need to work harder XD.

I guess that's all for today, I don't really have much to reveal right now, even though the game might be different compared to first time I potrayed in my head, my goal still be the same, the gameplay will be chaotic, boss-heavy, and very retro :D

thumbs up from Goey

see you next time!

~hipon

[anuStar] devlog ~03: TL;DR on visuals

noreply@blogger.com (Lazcht) — Sat, 15 Feb 2014 19:59:00 +0000

Ah, Saturday. My turn to post some updates here...

What have been done so far (by visual)...
This post contains many ~~awesome~~ interesting graphics and less texts, so get ready.

Character/world concepts

Character concept came from a walk in a flooded road, we brought umbrella with us and i thought an umbrella would be a great idea for the character. Then, "parasol" word came to me, then "sol" as in "sun" for the elemental aspect of the main character, thus is fire, and flamethrower. I gave him name "Sol" for ease of use, though maybe there is already too much character named Sol, out there, haha.

That's all unintentional, were randomly picked, came naturally. Also as we don't bother much/picky (yet) with story, i go for my instinct and current interest. As for the enemies, i plan to make them using water-related elements/ symbolism. So it will be like fire vs water.

Some sprites done

(scrapped)

(used and work in progress)

Tileset/map

Early test of tileset/map mock, at first i thought i would revamp Plato project and used the characters and turn them to a bit futuristic, but hipon disagreed with that, but without world concept, i was getting hard time getting idea for the assets, then hipon said "Just make simple a grassland tile." Oh k den, lol.

But later when i came up with umbrella guy concept, hipon came up with city ruins, i came up with sunset and jellyfish.

And here is one of the latest mock screen i made, the color still need correction and tilesets still ineffective. I'm working on it right now.

Bonus GIFs

goeyranger dance for the lulz by reijubv

We got help from reijubv for this project as additional spriter, so i got more time to focus on other things like tilesets and such. Last week i got sick and couldn't really contribute anything so i just dump all old things available, next week hopefully will show significant change. Well this concludes it, i hope we could interest you more with this amount of stuff today. See you next week! (hopefully in time too)

~Laz out!

...oh another GIF bonus for ya, because i'm awesome. :P

slowly showing even more custom(crappy)placeholder, better than ripped placeholders though..

[anuStar] devlog ~02: The Origin of anuStar

noreply@blogger.com (Rico) — Sun, 09 Feb 2014 13:26:00 +0000

Helloo, it's been a week since I revealed project anuStar for the first time here. Actually we've created a devlog thread on tigsource and we update regularly. However, since I can't leave this blog empty, I should write something on here too...and you can follow me @ricolemba to get extra updates there :D

Actually, I started this project as a side-project, I was playing Gunstar Super Heroes at that time and really enjoyed it. I think I haven't said this, but I'm really obsessed with level design and Treasure's games really excel in that, and I haven't made any game that focuses on level design since Sword of August. I was thinking, it's been a long time, why don't I try making another one? then I made a prototype and Lazcht finally want to take a part. After that, this game now becomes one of stellarNull's official project. yeahh!

This game will mainly focus on level design and boss battles, I try to add unique elements to the game and at the same time I try to not too depend on gimmick. We will mostly innovate in level design, boss design and of course art direction and audio.

We haven't gave a lot of thought about the storyline and I don't think we will add story that much. I originally planned this game to be classic style sidescroller, but we'll see in the future!

I guess that's all I could share for now, see you next time!
~hipon

[anuStar] devlog ~01: and hipon's 2014 greeting

noreply@blogger.com (Rico) — Mon, 03 Feb 2014 10:39:00 +0000

Hi guys,

hipon's here, a lot of things have happened and *unfinished...* in 2013. Stellar's latest game, PIXLE II, has been completed its development phase and we're still looking for sponsor right now, if everything goes smooth, the game will be released Q1 this year.

Actually, I wasn't much involved in development of PIXLE II, I was focusing in porting Koutack to iOS and for a newbie mobile programmer like me, it's really time consuming and sometimes, it gets reaaally boring because I work with optimization most of the time.

And for the other members, they usually have a lot of freetime after development phase is done.Well, to tell you the truth, I also have some spare time these days.

So, what am I doing in my spare time? please take a look at a gif below..

(some assets credited to Gunstar Heroes and artists at pixeljoint)

the details will be posted later! :D

~hipon

PIXLE II devlog ~02: We missed you!

noreply@blogger.com (Lazcht) — Thu, 23 Jan 2014 09:13:00 +0000

Happy new year, folks. Lazcht tuning in!

It's first post since 2014. What's up there? In Jakarta when i live in, some places are still flooded, but luckily not my place (yet).

Been a while i'm not writing here, well we got Chel to cover us up and tell some development shits so we can slack a bit now lol, -edit- Chel is going off for certain time due to some personal problems.

So yeah i was kinda losing my ability to blog or doing networking etc since months ago. Lot of things happened IRL too as i need to adjust stuff to improve my productivity to even better than before.

Currently i'm being greedy working on multiple small projects after PIXLE II is done. some artbooks, collab game, prototype, and Montage Roux (i'll reserve my time later to post about this project, i swear this time)

Also this has been forever since the devlog~01, so maybe you want to read it again (as well myself).

Progress

It's done. Now looking for sponsor, so it might be slight change due to requests (if any). We put some stories to spice up the content, adding more achievements, and 100% completion medal. Fixing tutorials, putting up ingame hints for total newbie.

If you're a sponsor and interested with PIXLE II (and want to try the demo), please contact us right away! ;)

Trailer (oh fuck video editing!)

IT IS DONE OMG. i've been through hell editing with minimum processor and RAM, rendering and re-rendering the video, it's good i got helped by blue_mc. I had fun composing the content though, but i don't think i'll do this again until i get a better equipment.

check the result please! :D

Website for launch

Yeah, a PROPER website at last. i was very thrilled there was actually a web programmer helped us out to make a proper site (blue_mc, it's him again). I loved the result (esp. the credits section HAHA) and i hope you do too!

http://pixle2.stellar-0.com

Something else you might like to see

Developer Note

coming later on devlog ~03!

That's all for now.
~Laz out!

Late Weekly Report for Loooong Weekend again

noreply@blogger.com (vichelyna) — Mon, 04 Nov 2013 18:37:00 +0000

Heyaaa!! Vichelyna's here on weekly report *again* *doh*
Anyway, on Oct 31 2013, Stellar Null was on JCC, Senayan giving some speech *ahem* for Jakarta Game Show 2013. Clea and I were talking about game trend :D *we will upload the slides soon* *after approval* heheee..

(Left to right) - Moderator - Vichelyna - Clea - Anton from TouchTen
Jakarta Game Show 2013 @JCC Senayan, 31Oct'13

But anyway, how's Koutack doin'? We are working hard on Koutack for iPhone 5 resolution support, and new look on menu. We added more menu transitions so it'll be cooooooollllll~ After all, stellarNull reached around 30% better performance for iOS ;)

We really did some good jobs for this week! How bout having some beer to celebrate it? *beer*

Long Weekend Report

noreply@blogger.com (vichelyna) — Tue, 15 Oct 2013 11:29:00 +0000

Heya folks! Vichelyna's here~
Hufftt.. Today is the last day of our long weekend in Indonesia and I'm still in front of my laptop and bring Stellar Null's weekly report to you~

Well, in this week, PIXLE II and Koutack for iOS are still going well. Laz and blue_mc still polishing PIXLE II and Hipon was doing some testing for Koutack iOS at iPhone 4. Looks like the tiles must be bigger than before. Still with Koutack iOS for iPhone 4, Hipon still optimizing the menu screen.

What did Clea do? Ah, maybe getting long weekend like people usually do in Indonesia :D

What about you, guys? Are you having long weekend like us? ;)

The power of Expectation

noreply@blogger.com (Lazcht) — Fri, 11 Oct 2013 12:03:00 +0000

Hi folks, today i'm bringing personal topic once again, i will write something motivational, or demotivational, or just something people already know, depends on perspective. I am an enthusiastic life observer sometimes, and i do care about psychological thingy, and personality developments.

This post will be asking you lot of questions, but you answer it yourself, or you can share it below (in comment section) if you interested :)

Expectation

courtesy of google search

From the beginning, the moment we were born, or even before we were born, usually people already expect us to be A, B, C, so on. If not our parents, others do. So basically we can't avoid them being there in the first place. We've been living with it, some people need it as motivation, some treat it as great pressure, some other doesn't give a fuck, or choose to not think about it to save energy.

Interested with the topic? Read on! ;)

What people expect about you?

Let's talk about family first, or if you don't live with one, then people that lives around you, close to you emotionally or physically, people who raised you. I'll refer them as "parent".

Every parents expect differently toward their kids. Every family members expect something to others. Some parent hopes their children to inherit their business, wealth, education levels, ambition, etc. Some parent hopes their children to overcome financial hardships, even get revenge (just like in the movies -.-) to someone or to something bigger like a family, community or sect, a country, and so on. Some expects children to be at least can take care of their parents in future. Some just let the kids do what they want, at least they don't become bad guys. I guess that's all related to the reason why people wants a kid in the first place, but let's skip that for now.

"Boy, you must be a smart and successful person, therefore study hard, make me proud."
"This kid is talented, I bet she will become successful someday."
"Dear, we are very poor that we're struggling to pay your school fees just to make our future better."

Sounds familiar?

I think not few case either that people seems to be "just do whatever you like I'll support", but in reality it's far different from it. They expected A but say B, or they expected the kids to expect their true expectations.
How fucked up is that?

They can add more expectations in future as the former expectations got fulfilled. Just like collecting a virtual medals by completing a quests or achievements, one done, and another one come out endlessly.

"You got A? You're indeed my child. Now I want you to B. I know you won't disappoint me."
"You can get A so why you can't just get B, it's not that hard. It's for YOUR own good"

Questions:

Really? Is it really for yourself?
Do you really want to achieve what people expect you to do?
Are you happy living on people's expectations?
Are you just scared to disappoint them?
Are you okay to be frowned upon by someone, your family, or even.. lot of people outside?
How much do you care about this matter?
Have you ever think about it?

How do you see them?

From my point of view, since we can't avoid expectation, it's just a choice between [we care] and [we don't care] about it, or [both care or not care].

1. We do care.

So we (consciously) choose to care, or we can't just get careless about this, or we still have too much time dealing or giving a fuck on how people talking bad about us out there.

How expectations will affect our life?

A. Trust
What is trust?

trust
noun \ˈtrəst\

: belief that someone or something is reliable, good, honest, effective, etc.

How do you start to trust people? I think it's either you know this person from a long time and know they are trustworthy. You expect them to behave like you believe they will be, right?

The same thing goes to ourselves, do you need to get trusted by people? I think every social beings do. Personal relationship started off with trust.
"Will this guy be a good friend, or he just want something from me?"
"Would she keep my secrets if I share my personal problem?"

Promises also made of expectations. People expect promises to be kept. If we don't care, no one will ever want to hear our promises again, same goes with your words. Do you often promise something to people?

Business, do you start business with someone you can't or don't trust? You sure don't, unless you love to do random gambles so much or you just like to surrender your life on karma.

B. Motivation

mo·ti·va·tion
noun \ˌmō-tə-ˈvā-shən\

: the act or process of giving someone a reason for doing something : the act or process of motivating someone
: the condition of being eager to act or work : the condition of being motivated

: a force or influence that causes someone to do something

This is still related to trust, if people expect you to be a good, reliable, skilled person, that means they put some trust on you. This sounds almost all good, but wait..not really. Why?

It works like a double edged sword. Once you fulfill their expectation, they hope to see you level up, or at least don't go down or back. The problem usually is, are you ready or able to keep up with that? Naturally a person has a cycle of productivity level, sometimes you're burning and shining and all you do looks great, and pleases lot of people, sometimes your stamina drying up and you just want to laze around and do something for fun, and this time, people will go like "Huh? Why are you not doing as good?" or even "Look at him, he is getting lot of better, while you're staying the same."

You might want to always improve yourself and use it as your improvement fuel or your motivation, but is it because of others' expectation toward you, or you really want it yourself?

I think relying to expectations too much is unhealthy, i believe you should observe what you really want to do inside, is the pace correct for you? Are they (expectations) pushing you too much or too fast?

C. Life direction
Yes, your life... Driven by people's expectations.

Important question: Do you like it?

Literally, do you like being what people want you to be?
Or are you just forced to be the person people ask for or expect you to be?
Imagine if you live without any expectation from outside of you.
Imagine you live by your own will, without parents, friends, neighbors, relatives, anyone, anything who would expect you to become someone who do something. Without obligation from "outside", anyone or anything get in your way of life.
What would you do?
Would you still be the same person as now?

Can you answer that directly without thinking much?

As for myself, i found out that my life kind of driven by them. If you have read my previous post about how i am said having talent with art, that's one thing driven me until today, and i'm happy with being myself now, expected by lot of people to do this and that, and using--no, EXPLOIT them as my motivation.

If you can answer the first question with a YES without any "umm", "hmm", "err," then perhaps you have no problem, continue, and go on, and have a nice life. But if you can't, or you would boldly say NO, then you gotta change that condition somehow for your own good.

How to change that?

Observe who you are. What do you want? Accept your situation, even it's hard and hurt.
Then ask yourself: Do you really want to change the condition? (e.g. you feel terrible living your life because you're forced to live somebody else's life). Who's responsible for the risk if you change it? What if it's fail? It's all on you. You don't blame anyone else, it's you. (or you can blame me for the provocation lol.)
Change the people around you (you kick them away from your life, don't care how, or you scram from them). I don't like living with people who influence me with negativity, or just dominate my life too much, but sometimes i know it's just seem impossible since they're your family, parents, or someone you also care about, but they just don't or can't understand what do you want.
Change the people's expectations toward you, explain well that you don't like it, you feel bad. Don't fake your intentions, don't expect everything will be smooth, still keep your critical thought about yourself, what really you want to do, and do what you want.
If no one of the above points work, then try this. Change your mindset/ perspective, so you can grow liking what you expected or forced to become, and stop to think that you're forced to be so, start to say to yourself, "I love this." or at least "Slowly I want to get interested to this". A friend said, don't use the word "must", because it's give impression of pressure, or forcefully to your inner-self or unconscious brain, haha.

2. We don't fucking care.

Can we? Depends on until what level you can ignore them.
We care or not, your life is going on. Everyone else's live also do. You just don't think about it, you exclude it from your life, your brain, you throw them away, the good and the bad side. If you have read carefully until this point, you should be already noticed the good and the bad side of expectations, may it be encouragement, or it be source of your stresses. It depends on how you see it, and handle it.

3. We both care and don't care.

You get multiple different expectation from many people around you. Some of them ask you become A, the other ones against it.

So how to deal with it? You choose it! You can decide which expectations you want to care which one you throw. Eh? How? Ask yourself once more: what to do you want? If you wanted A, screw people who against it. If you don't know, maybe you go with majority, or just toss a coin (one of my favorite habit).

Then, is it better that way? Or you become to unmotivated that way? You choose.
As for me, i choose to care some good ones, and i choose to use the power of expectation for my spirit booster.

Expectations from yourself, toward yourself

You can't forget this, right? You have them too (or not?). You expect yourself to be something in future, today, tomorrow, next month, next year, to be a good or a bad one, a unusual, ordinary, rich, poor, beautiful, ordinary, so on.

You like new year resolutions?
You like deadlines? Targets?
Future goals? Dreams?

Sometimes one expect much, sometimes one expect less, or not expected anything. This works the same to other kind of expectations, but since this is coming from you, it should be easier to control or handle. At least it's supposed to be easier. If not, maybe you'll have to treat this expectations of yours like others'.

You still can use this beneficial rather than frustrating or life-pressuring, depends on how well you're using it, not being used by it.

Why do i write this, and conclusions

Man, this article is just too hard to write you know, it's been months (or a year?) since i first try to write this, i'm not usually like this, but i was doubting if my writings truly express my own opinion. My personality and perceptions toward life, expectations, people around me, changes a lot.

I'm having hard time re-read this writings over and over again, because structure is bad, haha. But I just hope this long writing can be mind opening, rather than confusing.

I see friends being unhappy, problematic about life and their expectations and expectations towards them, I find a lot of people confused about how they face life, or just ignore them until life become their threat. I see some people living unwanted life, frustated, given doctrines they don't agree with, but they just can't do anything about it, or even they can't complain because it dangers their life. Their inner-self say NO, but they expected to say YES. It's realistic, it happens every time, but i find it sad.


random art i did for contest. how's this related to post? who cares lol

I want them to be happier, and live positively. I'm not seem so, but i am still a good person, haha. (right?)

I wonder if people can be fully (or at least mostly) aware of their mind, their will, can they find a way to happiness?

So, this better ends here before i go nuts about not finishing this post in years, haha.
Have a nice day, be happy, or happier than you always are.

~Laz out!

I Just Wanna Say "HELLO" ! and some weekly report

noreply@blogger.com (vichelyna) — Sun, 06 Oct 2013 16:21:00 +0000

Attention please~
Hello! Vichelyna's here. I'm the newest member of Stellar-0 ;) *cheers*
What am I doing here? Emm.. Just playing around and reporting some of their work~ HAHAHAA*poke their asses*

Oooouwwkeeeyy.. Let's get into the weekly report..
What did Laz do in these 3 months? This alien doing some designing-work on Koutack with Hipon. Yknow, doing some perfection on anykind of game will never be easy, takes time and some foods *nyahaha*. Every tiles on Koutack must be bigger than before *it's for iOS if ye wanna know*. And Laz must re-touch Koutack's title screen too. The last one is doing some minor graphical enhancements & revisions for PIXLE II! Believe me, it'll be cool! Yay!!!

How 'bout Blue_mc? Ah.. He's doing good laaarr.. He's discussing all bout PIXLE II's debug with his head and computer. He doesn't event forget 'bout mute & pause implementation on PIXLE II. He's so skinny and I think he really need more sleep and more foods..

Back into the weekly report!! *ehm!*
Clea's turn isn't it? He's fine. Now Clea is busy with testing & balancing and making sound effects for Koutack iOS. Just one project? No! He's composing sound effects, mixing and mastering songs for *just call it T.P*

What's T.P? Just wait for another spoil from us! Ciaoo~

Ehh.. Wait! How bout clicking Like button on Stellar-0 FB Page and follow us on twitter ? Sounds good, eh? ;)

PIXLE II devlog ~01: Whoa hello!

noreply@blogger.com (Lazcht) — Fri, 26 Jul 2013 15:45:00 +0000

screenshot of PIXLE

Been a while like usual, folks! It's me Laz, as usual, reporting things that happens lately. ;)

Remember PIXLE? It's our game that released last year. It got lots of positive feedback, also some great inputs to fill holes in the game design and execution we thought it'd be good for a sequel.

Now we're making this project a sequel! It's more like an enhancement though. As we want to maximize PIXLE's potential without changing too much design.

We're collaborating with blue_mc, the same guy who ports PIXLE to android (port project will be continued after this if things goes as planned). What's hipon doing anyway? Ah he's doing fine in "Koutack iOS" project (not sure if its title will be changed later though), with me as the artist too.

Oh? Why PIXLE anyway?

Yeah that's one of our smallest scale (also quite casual) project we made so we thought why don't we try to make another one while we have fun and do potential collaboration with someone new XD.

The problems

As the original PIXLE was coded by hipon, making new code design/algorithm from scratch for the tunnel/seed/crystal generator is quite taking much effort, also the hard part is we need to make sure everything is following one game design direction, which is a new experience for us --a first collaboration also a sequel project with other coder, also new experience for blue_mc, to work with us handling a project from scratch (yet still a sequel though).

Me as an artist is currently working simultaneously with multiple game projects --PIXLE II, Koutack IOS, Montage Roux, it's a bit frustating sometimes i have to provide all the assets while directing art, and sometimes managing too, at the same time hahah and...which is why also i never write blogs lately! Urgh.

Project's progressing a bit slowly though, since almost all of us has multiple projects to work on.

What's new?

Team formation changes of course! Clea is fully in charge on game design this time, making sequence variations for the generated level design, calculations, also audio direction as usual. Me, Laz, not much difference than usual, but i'm having more control, such as menu transitions animations (which is usually hipon's task), also the ability to compile the game myself to test how my assets work in the thing. While hipon is keeping his eyes on quality control (?) like a boss.

Blue_mc is handling all the code work, his working speed and ability is quite remarkable, not to mention we were working online (now partly online). Oh note that he has a knack on aesthetical aspect (graphical mostly) so he managed to give me lot of feedback.

Trying 60FPS... we had to pump the performance up for this, as the project was lagging on some parts but now it gets even better.

Some new features of course! Expect more challenge to the game. Maybe we can reveal it on later devlog.

The progress

Almost all core feature of original PIXLE implemented i guess? Now we're in debugging and testing new features. Menu and main game flow is not yet decided tho. Here have a screenshot leaks:

title screen mock up, because it hasn't fully implemented

Some testimonies from us about the project :P (clea and blue_mc gonna pay for this later! lol)

Lazcht
Well, as in graphics, i made more variation of the background, more detailed animations and effects, theme's still the same i guess, it's dreamy, nature, mystical and enchanting, and putting more blueish color theme rather than purpleish. Also as i am lately into abstract/surrealism paintings, i'm putting some abstract-ish design inside, haha, and i hope you can enjoy them as well. And i have listened to clea's draft BGM, we can't post it now but it gotta be awesome, lol!

hipon
The art direction of this game looks pretty good in my opinion, it feels more 'dreamy' than the previous games, and the music is really good too. I think environment design and sound design of this game play a bigger role in the gaming experience than the previous game.

That's all for now, until next spoils! *waves*

Projects news

noreply@blogger.com (Lazcht) — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 08:58:00 +0000

Long time no see!
Okay, so i just want to inform you guys about our current projects and what's our current plan with them:

Linoveus Cube

Surprisingly, we plan to suspend this project, due to the stress of the design and code mess, hipon said some things about the game should be changed otherwise it will be a failure. But to make that change, means almost to redo all the code from the start, and we decided to not force the project to continue, at least for now.

This is the sneakpeek record from us, personally (it's me Laz) i think it's a beautiful project, but it lacks of balance in ...the design depth. Even though the game was intended to be a Ludum Dare (3 days dev) game, then it transformed to a week game, then to months game, it's feels so hard to finish. Why? Lot of features were being cut down, and we were actually planning to pack it just like that, yet hipon didn't feel right to continue it, so we decide to suspend the project and start something else more manageable.

Let's just hope this project could be rebooted sometimes later.

HA!

Grand Steam

Still suspended for now. Project has a good potential, but we need to prioritize something else for now.

just a little reminder for you of how the game looks like.

Montage Roux

Ongoing, slowly but if everything's going according to the plan, it's going to be an interesting project. ^_^

PIXLE mobile porting experiment (collaboration with blue_mc)

He said he didn't want anyone to know yet, but i just don't feel good to not mentioning this project at all. It's still an experiment, so he doesn't want us to expect much of its completion (maybe?). So far so good though. XD

So what now?

What we want to focus most for now, is bringing Koutack to IOS platform. Hipon's doing research on starling and started to prototype things. So pardon us for not showing updates from the time being ^^;

Cheers,
~Laz

Koutack viral release!

noreply@blogger.com (Lazcht) — Mon, 04 Mar 2013 08:01:00 +0000

Hey, another news from us. Koutack is now available to play at our own portal, and...basically everywhere else, lol. We also uploaded new version that has some bug fixes and optimizations, also more quotes!

We're glad people actually like its challenge, and some of them even made video and text walkthrough, haha, deep gratitude to you guys! *salutes*

Play at Null Game Center

Play at Kongregate

Play at Newgrounds

Play at deviantArt

Play at Armorgames

And yeah, a free soundtrack for you! ;)

Sell music on Amazon at ReverbNation.com

See you later!
~stellar-0

Koutack released!

noreply@blogger.com (Rico) — Fri, 22 Feb 2013 07:57:00 +0000

Play the Game!

Finally, Koutack is released! It's my first #1GAM (One game a month) game and surprisingly, it turned out good :D

When I started to work on game design, I wanted to make a game that has "minimum design and maximum gameplay". It took me several days to find some inspiration, I got inspiration mostly from traditional game, I didn't remember how exactly the gameplay is, but the goal is to get rid of balls or something until there's only one ball on the stage. After doing some calculation, prototyping and stuff, I'm satisfied with the final result.

Clea also did really good job in Audio, I thought clea would make a bit cheerful music but it turned out really different, but I like it so far, it gives unique feel to the game :D

More screenshots:

Anyway, I'm planning to write a post-mortem of this game, if everything goes smooth it would be here soon!

Hope you enjoy the game!

~hipon

One Game A Month! Ready folks?

noreply@blogger.com (Lazcht) — Wed, 30 Jan 2013 14:13:00 +0000

Actually i planned this (literally) back on 2012, yet after some discussion, we plan to NOT make games each month. We were planning to make more serious/deep games on 2012, which estimated would done in about 2-3 months. And TURNED OUT, we didn't deliver anything actually. Well, PIXLE, Wonderland Cosa Nostra and Late Lino were released last year, but two of them has already done on 2011, so i'd say, they don't really count.

So our new game at 2012 was Grand Steam, Montage Roux (suspended until this February), and Linoveus Cube. I keep apologized to not be able to pull out the deadlines we set on our own, but we keep on missed it. Grand Steam was firstly planned to be done within 2 weeks, Montage Roux within 1 month, Linoveus Cube within 3 days (extreme!). You can laugh now, i actually laughed a lot on this too, bahahah.

Main problem was, as we discussed together, the game design documents/ planning was not really done properly, it was bad, and some of them even didn't have game design document. Also, hipon's working availabilty was sometimes still unpredictable, mainly because of his college business.

Problems:

Grand Steam case

This game is a collab project between hipon & reijubv, this game started as a side-project but ended up being one of stellar main project, a lot of things has happened *we had the full story posted in our previous post*. This project is still ongoing though, we work really hard on this project, but since our main focus is now on Linoveus Cube, this project will continue its development process after Linoveus release.

Montage Roux case

This is a collab project with Enthrean Guardian (or soon will be changed to Prospera Enthrean), hipon's not on this project, so we didn't even posted a single post about this project, sorry. So much things happened on this one, like, programmer change, the guy has been busy for months and lot of months, and said he'll be ready on this February.

Linoveus Cube case

This game was planned as a Ludum Dare #24 entry, so it was executed the moment we decided the genre, also a little writings on google drive. Bad. Really bad. Workflows are messy too.

We didn't even realize what features we're gonna make, what kind of trouble, hardships we will face, potential bugs and gameplay failures. We were optimistic (much likely super cocky) like hell and it actually broken after we faced the reality, haha.

So, moral of the story: we need better game designing and detailed discussion before execution, less random move, and discipline (getting side tracked is way too easy).

But hell yeah, all of them are continuing, so look forward to our devlogs.

So back to our post title, if you're an indie game developers, you must know this event. One Game A Month, or known as #1GAM at twitter hashtag.

I, Laz, thought it was a serious event with tight rules, like we must enter a dozen of games (literally) to qualify, and it's wrong, this is just an event for fun, free indie gamedev party. So in the end, we signed in @Lazcht, @ricolemba (hipon), and @stellarNull account as participators.

What are we planning?

Hipon already started his 1st 1GAM project, it's a simple puzzle game, more informations will be posted by himself~

Next, we're gonna enter Linoveus Cube. This project's actually near finish now (we're not sure what to face later, but hopefully, it's on 80~90%).

We also planning on some collaborations with fellow gamedev in gamedevid.org community to help us deliver more exciting games on 2013. (hopefully for 1GAM too)

Late Lino released! and testimonies~

noreply@blogger.com (Lazcht) — Tue, 01 Jan 2013 12:20:00 +0000

Howdy folks, this is our first post in 2013, happy new year! Had quite fun in 2012? We did. And this is another game for you, from us.

click here to play the game!

As mentioned before in previously, Late Lino was actually game for Ludum Dare #22 entry, 1 year ago (2011). We made some minor changes and actually publish the game for new year gift. Good luck for you, have fun, and let us have even better new year :)

Crew's testimony

hipon

This game is our first *post* ludumdare game, it was a fun event, I don't believe we could make a simple game in 48 hours although the development process was a mess.

Actually, I wanted to make a generic game since I didn't have much time for game design, but at the end I came up with an idea, It was very weird but I think it's worth to try, I made a prototype and see how it goes, It looked okay, but somewhat it didn't satisfy me enough. Since we only had about 24 hours left we decided to continue with this design.

I'm always optimistic about level design, but this time I only make simple AI for enemies, they all basically have same pattery. Honestly, I had gathered some materials for enemy's pattern, but implementing that would prolong the development time haha, so I decided to stick with only one pattern.

clea leshlick
It's a new experience for me, it's a genre I'm not familiar with. A simple survival action game, which ended up with a weird twist. Ended up tweaking the candy amounts, enemy stats, enemy distribution, powerups, mood per second changes, etc. Did a lot of revision and testing on those numbers, but I'm happy with the final balance, haha!

Inspired by the world setting & the graphics, I wrote 3 winter themed songs with comical/cartoon-ish feel for this game. The songs mainly use Piano and Strings, and is quite simple structure-wise. I think that they have a refreshing and childlike feel to it. Listening to them now, I feel that they are kind of rigid. I got to work on improving my fluidity of expressions lol.

As for the sound effects, they are light and simple. When I created them one by one, they didn't sound too great or special. But after all is put into the game, played and combined in a quick pace, they shine. The jump, stomp, candies, present box, ghosts, and powerups! They blend quite nicely with each other, and with the music. Did some revisions regarding volume balance, EQ, and a bit of Chorus effect ^ ^

Lazcht

I had fun making the worlds, characters and Santa themed game. I love Santa claus even though i never celebrate christmas myself. I simply picked Santa theme because it was December and i thought we could make it for christmas game. I merged santa theme with the Null on stellar-Ø symbol, if you noticed Lino's hat and the "moon" shape. Speaking about the world design, i plan to reuse the universe for Linoveus Cube project, which might has correlation with "Lino" name.

I also made the SFX for LD version (because we didn't think clea would want to join) which is pretty...rough in quality i could say haha, it was too loud! Actually i made a joke of myself being department store or --locally-- toserba (toko serba ada) because i provide almost of anything that time. I had to open Google docs, Adobe Photoshop, SAI Paint Tool, Graphics Gale, Exgen, FL Studio, sometimes Adobe Flash, Filezilla and Dreamweaver at the same time. LOL that whole 3 LD days were tiring, nuts and awesome days.

Side note: i love hipon's light-controlling game design concept and love how the musics turned out.

Oh, here is a bonus:

<a href="http://stellar-0.bandcamp.com/album/late-lino">Late Lino by clea leshlick</a>
~stellar-0 out!

Some greetings in late 2012

noreply@blogger.com (Lazcht) — Tue, 25 Dec 2012 18:27:00 +0000

yes, Rob is still working on holiday, except now with mercy.

Happy holiday, folks!
(we still develop stuff tho, lol.)
Late Lino'll be here THIS year.
~stellar-0

End of year news, anyone?

noreply@blogger.com (Lazcht) — Thu, 13 Dec 2012 18:49:00 +0000

Long time no blog folks. We're not dead or anything, haha.

I've been too busy lately (it's Laz) for even maintaining the Facebook Page. This is already almost end of year... I never forget our projects like Grand Steam, Linoveus Cube tho. But seems like time is running out for us to wrap Late Lino first for christmas and new year.

So most likely we won't launch Grand Steam or Linoveus Cube project this year yet. (I miss Grand Steam!)

Since hipon was busy with college lately which why i didn't update the log as often lately, i made some projects myself (lot of them still concerns stellar, of course).

I started a collaboration project for fun, Sword of August artbook project (i invited some guest artists to join), and a solo, Null: Artleaks I artbook project (compilation of art assets of our games). The Null Artleaks most likely will be free to download.

Here, for rainbow puking:

courtesy of Kurosaki Keroro de Arimasu fukyeah, all traditional arts.

I tried to open e-commerce shop with clea for us stellar to sell anything we want later. (not yet ready)

Coded mobile website. (try to scan the QR from your mobile device)

Produced a little amount of stellar-0 T-Shirt. (thanks guys for the orders! ^^)

Rebuilt illustration gallery, since we moved host service. (yeah, major pain)

Some outsourcing work project, Musica Sphere.

And i started a little game project myself, i'm not really sure i'll be able to even make half of this tho, but i don't really care haha.

Also i want to share one of my longest facebook status, i thought i like it very much:

"So you said you have ideal dream you want to chase. Let's say you have big ambition, and i heard lot of people beg for more hours to be added to 24hours/day. think you have done good enough time management for a day? Think again.

> how many hours a day you spend browsing at fb, twitter, youtube, 9gag, etc?
> how many hours a day you spend looking at tv show and its commercials?
> how many hours a day you spend on fanboy/girling something you love?
> how many hours a day you spend on hanging out/ chatting?
> how many hours a day you spend caring your physic/mental health?
> finally, how many hours you spend a day, working for (or walk the path toward) your dream project?

*reminder to self*"

Bahahah, that's all coming back to me now.

That's all news i could bring you guys right now. I hope to release Late Lino sooner, or later.

See you around!
~Laz out.

Late Lino

noreply@blogger.com (Lazcht) — Sun, 04 Nov 2012 04:04:00 +0000

The start

Lino

It's been long time since we started to develop this game and actually finish it. So why now bother to share? Last year we weren't this active updating blog, so we didn't bother to post anything about any progress we made, nor gamedev logs/ diary, though we have posted some teasers to our Facebook page & twitter.

We noticed that we need to share a lot of things since we want more people to know what are we doing right now, what games will come out, even what do we think about life, jokes, etc. Above all, this way we can learn more to communicate with our potential players/ fanbase. As a small indie game developer team, without publisher/ sponsor we ought to promote and publish the game ourselves, so this is one way to gain exposure, as much as we can.

Alright, back to topic, this game, Late Lino, was started as an entry for Ludum Dare #22, 16th of December 2011. Thinking back, we were keeping an eye on the themes since theme voting, so we had a bit preparation of what theme will be out in the next day. We had little speedy game designing exercise a day before it.

What's this game about?

Well LD22 theme was "Alone". Had we created PIXLE, a little bit experimental game made us somewhat addicted to make something out of box again (lol), and something endless and score based.

Oh yeah, the original title was Saint Lino. (the title came out last though!)
The concept actually was inspired by moon theme. We control the moonlight and try to guide a little boy (Lino) who is alone in the dark. Main objective/challenge is to survive as long as you can, by scouting invisible ghosts (you reveal it with your light) chasing the boy, and in the end score is determined by the total of candy cane dropped from ghosts he jumped on--with your instruction.

So, naturally you need good timing, reflect, awareness to play. As you survive longer, more ghosts came to you.

The LD22 version of Late Lino finished just like the design above, with 1 music, 1 stage. You can play the game here.

We can't embed the game anywhere else because hipon had it sitelocked and lost the Ludum Dare version's project file (had it replaced with the extended version, look below) =_=

Ludum Dare judging result

Late Lino (formerly Saint Lino) ended up being one of best 50 of 891 Jam entries (woot!). We never expect that though so we were delighted!

yeah bad game description is bad :))

Extended version

now i forgot whether this is a mock or screenshot

So we decided to improve the game as the LD version is being too hard and not being fair.

Things added are:
1. Wish system: every fixed duration, there will be a judgement from mother of god, if mood meter shows good sign Lino will gain good effect (healing, instant enemy kills, etc), bad sign he will get kind of punishment (paralisis, decreased stomp range, etc).
2. Now Lino has 3 Lives, more types of ghost AI.
3. Level/stage system, precisely now we have 10 stages, more candies (each stage requires some lists of candies to be cleared) and of course stage selection interface.
4. Achievement badge each stage, submit score.
5. Some dialogues at intro and ending.
6. Almost forgot, jump cooldown, so now, no one can exploit the power of random jumping haha.

When the game will be up to play?

Last year we finished this game a bit late, and because it's seasonal game (christmas-new-year theme) we had hard time seeking sponsorship because we didn't get the right momentum. Think we'll save the game for the next christmas, (if we couldn't get sponsor as well, we'll go self-publishing), and hopefully on time this time! And maybe we need a few adjustment later to launch the game.

I think this will be a fun game for everyone who love to challenge themselves, this game doesn't need stats grinding like leveling, but player ability--response and concentration-- grinding, haha.

Okay, see you next time! Out!

Wut? Main website is down!

noreply@blogger.com (Lazcht) — Fri, 12 Oct 2012 01:11:00 +0000

Experiencing missing links and images?

We got some trouble regarding hosting service so www.stellar-0.com is currently out of service, you could contact us directly to stellar0.mail@gmail.com at the moment. Hopefully could fix this today. Sorry for the inconvenience!

Cheers folks~

Linoveus Cube ~part III

noreply@blogger.com (Lazcht) — Sat, 29 Sep 2012 14:58:00 +0000

hmm now to think about it
he looked like Yuan Shao from DW7

Linoveus Cube has been developed for 1 month. SIGH... We missed 1 week deadline so hard guh. See previous devlogs/report here.

Last update/changelog at our facebook page was:

bigger screen dimension to 700x500 (old one was 560x400)
scroll-able overall map
bigger building/object grid
more system implemented such as day/night
animated buildings added

Hmmm, not much change for the assets since it's almost all done (still need to add some more new things though). Musics are 2/3 done i guess, more interesting SFX are coming too.

Here are our graphical spoils (some already there in Facebook photos /twitter)

testing testing

performance test, building spaaam

Systems implemented/updates :

building health /maintain
day/night action difference
much optimization
looot of balancing & adjustments
game design enhancement

We tested the game yet we thought something's missing then we brainstormed whole night to decide some things and cut some things to make things faster. We plan to add more features to fill the potential design flaws (some of them are being made):

NPC, the guy
macro management
trading system
new resource
guiding missions
random events for fun

And some fun pics to be shared gahaha, i hope you guys could enjoy it as much as i do.

early designs/concepts

placeholders at early dev stage,
see, Legend of Mana assets XDD

Actually i'm sleepy so i don't have much things to say, so bear with me this time.

OK, stay tuned folks! Thanks for coming. :)

~Laz out!

OH OH GUYS i should remind that we have subscribe box here (actually just beside the blog post) -- just in case you didn't noticed it.

How I produce my songs

noreply@blogger.com (clea leshlick) — Mon, 10 Sep 2012 07:44:00 +0000

Music production?

Hi everyone, clea leshlick here. In this post, I will talk about my music making routines. I do it in my bedroom, which is soundproofed(although not perfectly). I use FL Studio as DAW and Tascam US-122 mkII as the interface. Sometime I'd use my midi keyboard, which is a humble M-Audio Oxygen61, and sometime I would only use mouse and the typing keyboard.

My speaker is a good old 2.1 Altec Lansing. Bought it around 8 years ago, and it's still in good shape! Headphone is Philips SHP8500, not too expensive or high quality, but it's decent. I use both of them as I play PC games, watch videos, listen to music, and of course, mix my own songs.

A bit about FL Studio

I've been using them for years, since FL 5. The distinctive GUI and the demo projects got me hooked. Liked the step sequencer, playlist-mode with pattern blocks, and easy to use mixer. If you are thinking of purchasing FL or any other image line products, you can use my discount link here. It will give you a 10% discount, and give me a small percentage of your purchase, I don't remember how much lol.

Ok, I'll break the steps/processes and explain each one of them. I hope that they are not too technical or geeky. I want to share the joy of music production to you, even if you are no musician. It's not as hard as you think, and it's crazily fun ^ ^

Idea/Inspiration

Most of the time, I already know what type or mood of the song I'm going to write, so I play/fool around with instruments, sounds, chords, or sequences until I find something interesting or 'cool'.

There are also times where I lay down, turn off the lights, and just listen/imagine. Usually I will hear something nice in my head. From there, I can observe passively and let it go free, or I can actively change or alter that song. Song tempo is decided here, and yes, I always use metronome/fixed tempo.

Song Structure

Most of the time, I start with a sequence of chords. 2, 3 or 4 chords in 4 or 8 bar. After that, I would add the bass, the beat(drums and or percussion), then finally the lead. For me, the lead doesn't have to be a melody. It can be rhythmic. It can even be an ambiance.

As I add or try out instruments and samples, I assign them a different/new mixer track each. It will help me to maintain volume balance, use effects independently, control panning and so on.

After that, I lay out the structure for 30-60 seconds of song length, consisting of 2 or 3 parts. Intro-Verse-Riff or Verse-Riff, usually it's one of them. The song genre and style is decided here.

Filling in the holes

Holes, yup. There will be holes everywhere in the song structure. Fills at the end of a bar, accompanies, sound layers, harmonies, intro, ending, looped/not looped. If you have good sense of musical details, you will know or feel where these holes are. Sudden changes, rough passages, bad sounding instrument, squeaky treble and muddy bass are what you'd normally want to avoid.

Usually I will add several new instruments or sounds to fill in the areas where I feel is lacking. Could be a synth, piano, guitar, percussion, even a drumloop or an effect. If I were to record or insert a recorded live performance track, this is the time to do it. Could be a vocal, guitar, or a bass.

Polishing and Finishing

Here is the stage where I do lots of balancing and mixing. Volume, panning, EQ, compression, automations, etc. I listen to them repeatedly, often isolating each mixer track with solo function, and make sure that each track sounds good as a solo. This method, I find to be rewarding because it will save me much time from digging/finding out who sounds bad, at later stage when the song will be full and crowded.

Song structure and arrangement is also revisited in this stage. Removing boring patterns, adding variations, improving and smoothing expressions.

When I feel that everything is good, I stop for a bit. Then I listen to the song from start to finish, checking if there are any artifacts/problems, checking if the song was enjoyable, and checking if it flows or loops smoothly.

Meanwhile, I turn on my mastering plugin and tweak it around. I aim for a clean and polished sound, setting it to be loud enough without participating in the loudness war. I want every instrument to have their own place and be heard clearly without eating up each other.

Ending

Finally, I render the song to a wav, mp3 or ogg file, check the graphical waveform on FL and play it on winamp. Why bother checking the graphical waveform? Because it's a fetish of mine. Not only the song have to sound good on ears, it must also be good looking, waveform-wise! Look at this:

If you ask me, track A looks so much better than B. The highest peaks do not touch the bottom/ceiling. Now look at track B, ewww... so brutal, so inartistic. These days, there are many songs with even higher gain/compression than B. Not only they look fat and ugly, they SOUND fat and ugly as well.You can hear them getting crammed in a place that's about to explode.

I once heard a saying: "If I like the music I hear and I want it to sound louder, I will turn up my speaker."
This, is a striking truth for me. Music should be an art, not a sound pollution. Same goes to audio/video advertisement.

Well, this concludes my post about music production. If you have any questions, requests, or comments, feel free to express it below. Thanks a lot for reading, clea leshlick out~

LudumDare#24: Linoveus Cube ~part II

noreply@blogger.com (Lazcht) — Sun, 02 Sep 2012 03:00:00 +0000

Continuation of Game development process

screenshot taken at 26th Aug, the second day

See previous part here!

Laz: Okay actually we should have noted what we have done in separate 3 days, because they (clea and hipon) already forgotten what was going on =_= Why the hell i am the only one who remembered the development process?

hipon's part

The development process went smooth, and i was very optimistic that I could get this done before the deadline. I made the core system ( tilemap, basic input, HUD, etc ) without any problem.

Side note: I really liked the art concept, laz took a lot of references from surrealism painter such as Salvador Dali and Vladimir Kush, and the result turned out pretty cool.

Anyway, that reminds me to my side-project “Dream Cube” my entry for GameJolt Contest, the art concept was inspired by Joan Miro, which is also a surrealism painter. What’s with me and surrealism these days? x_x

The problem came out when I was working on Road connector system, it’s kind of a connector of each building, where the workers walks. The road determines the distribution of the worker to warehouse, and amount of workers in the warehouse determines the efficiency of resource collecting. Things got complicated when you connect multiple buildings, I had to check a lot of possible combinations. Well, I think it’s not that hard, but in 2 days. I don’t think so. Besides, I still had a lot of things to be done! In the end, I managed to complete about 60-70%.

Lazcht's part

What i have done in first day (as i remembered):
1. gathered references for surrealism theme, fonts
2. got a mock main screen done so we can get the grasp of it, at least.
3. temporary HUD, map has been made and cropped for placeholders
4. a character designed for *potential* citizen

I was optimistic of my drawing speed (afterall i am the one that always finished my tasks first lol), so i don’t really worried about graphics, instead i got bad feeling about the code and game design, but since hipon is still optimistic, i didn’t really care.

characters in case needed

Second day:
1. wrote random story concepts behind the theme (hate me but for me this is a necessity for designing)
2. designed some more characters (ended up unused in LD version)
3. designed buildings, started to make them into sprites.

Was getting confused on what to draw because of some part of game design still not fix. Later i was started to think animated sprites is not possible within the remaining time left, so i better to focus on anything else (at least everything are looking nice first).

Last day:
1. revised story
2. designed and made temporary icons
3. title screen design
4. enhanced interface assets, sprites

I was getting tired because of dropping stamina (lol i was catching cold & cough), and found some bugs but hipon still struggled with his road connecting stuff so i just continue my stuff as i can.

clea's part

........clea forgot almost all part of the process, so i'm gonna write it instead =_=a. (it's me Laz again) So first day the formula/ parameter/ database spreadsheet was being made. Second day, we made sure of some game design, filling out the spreadsheets with details and dummy numbers, last day, 2 background musics came out.

Knowing that we have to bail out of LudumDare #24

It was already 3 o’clock (deadline was like 1~2 more hours to go) and we still have looot of things unfinished and less likely to be so in the remaining time. We thought rather than submitting something unplayable/ full of bugs, we accepted our failure sincerely. In 4:44 AM of 28th, we finally ikhlas (lol) it's like we stop to deny that we failed, and start to think about what to do with the project (see below). Then we went to sleep in peace.

Next LudumDare is still right there, in case we want to get revenge or something.

Future plan of the project

Overall, we, like hipon mentioned above, have done about 70% of the progress, and we can still enhance the aesthetic a bit more and most likely game design revision, then testing, polishing, balancing, balancing, and balancing.

We have discussed it that day, that we’ll challenge ourselves to finish the game within a week, and now, Linoveus Cube IS an official distraction of Grand Steam project, we’ll try to have fun with this project as much as possible.

Evaluations

What went wrong

We were a little bit too optimistic (cocky). Some veteran game jammers suggested to make the game you’re best at, but we still wanted to experiment and trying new things...~~owait, they could be wrong because we’re the best at trying something new yet we failed. :V~~

We didn’t expect the game would be that deep and we also had no experience in making this kind of game, so we tried to do a lot of trial and error, and it’s really time consuming.

No preparation, unlike last year, we were actually plan to join even from the voting days, this one was too impulsively being made, we designed it on a whim and developed it anyway.

What went right

~~One step closer to Sid Meier!~~ Tried a new genre we never had done! We always try every new things possible for new project, it’s very interesting and fun. We always wanted to make more simulation/strategy games like Outsmart! yet we didn't get the chance yet, but we got it now.

We also quite satisfied with our accomplishment, we managed to complete the 70% part of game in 2 days. We thought it’s something to be proud of. This is a failed LD entry, but from that, we know better of our current capabilities in game developing.

Ok, that's all for now, and see you on the next blog! ^^
~hipon, Laz out!