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[weekofawesomeii]

Postmortem: Atlas of Extinction

Hi there, this is Will, I did the design and "art" for the game. Overall this was a great experience and worth the loss of sleep and sunlight over the course of the project week. 

The Worst

Losing our artist was a huge blow to the project. This is not a game I would have ever considered without having a dedicated artist on the team, due to the amount of art content required with the modular bioweapon monsters and (cut) multiple tilesets. I ended up needing to do the art for the game, and we were able to make the game not look like a complete visual disaster by editing the excellent and generously free-for-use sprites of Daniel Harris (http://www.lorestrome.com/pixel_archive/main.htm), along with some last-minute character portrait art by the talented Gwayne Li (http://eupackardia.deviantart.com/)

The Bad

Our biggest issue outside of that was just how long it took us to get the gameplay into a fully playable state. It doesn't even feel like we worked inefficiently, just that we spent too much time making tools to create the game's content, and not having enough making the actual content once that was done. 

The Good

Miraculously I do feel like the game is fun and interesting despite being incredibly unpolished, unbalanced and all of the above. At the end of a rush competition project like this that's the best I can hope for. We have a strong enough base now that we can realistically build off of it and hopefully continue development.

I also enjoyed the story and setting we did for the game. While not a lot of it made it into the game due to time constraints, we did manage to put some dialogue between the game's characters into the beginning, and also a last-minute additional scene at the end of the game (though the game is extremely difficult and I don't know if anyone has managed to beat the fourth and final level as of yet).

Here's more details about the game's design process for anyone interested:

After getting the game's theme, we worked down to three main concepts for the game. Of them, we wanted something that wasn't a literal interpretation of the theme (as in using actual toys that are alive). This is how we chose what would eventually be Atlas of Extinction.

The evolution of Atlas of Extinction's gameplay was quite interesting. Originally the game was going to be a strategy RPG with the player controlling a team of bioweapon monsters, as that is a genre I enjoy but find has become quite stale and without sufficient strategy (despite the name). While we considered doing basically a straight SRPG, ultimately we wanted to create a unique variation of the genre, in the vein of games like Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes and Terra Battle. 

We especially wanted a faster-paced battle system, which led to having a single bioweapon monster and being able to move about the map freely without a distinct turn system by using a roguelike-esque movement tick system (where every time the player moves a tile, enemies get a turn immediately after). While I also am a big fan of roguelikes, we still wanted the game faster so it became an action game. And that's how our SRPG became a top-down action-roguelike.

[weekofawesomeii]

Postmortem on Atlas of Extinction

I just wanted to share my reflection on this awesomeness week of awesome 2.

The Worst

Right off the bat, we thought we had an artist that would participate with myself ( programmer ) and Will ( game designer ).

We were not able to find an artist so Will took the lead in the art department.

The Bad

So the worst we had little to no control over the situation, it just happened and we had to deal with it!

What we didn't do though is re-think our system and adjust to the lacking third member. We went with our original idea and still tried to implement our creature customization system and we eventually lacked time due to the high number of features.

The high amount of content ate away the time we had to polish and refine our game. Now the game feels almost unbeatable and some of the upgrades are a NO GO!

The Good!

The game was good! I enjoy the feel of the game, it's clumsiness and everything! Of course it needs hell of a lot of polishing, more levels, more features but in the end, we have a very playable game with a beginning, some gameplay, progression and an end!

We made it! :D

The Awesome!

I learned a lot! No seriously, this was rewarding in many ways!

I used the new GUI system that Unity beta offers.

I made my first level editor.

I made my first character modular creature metamorphosic bio weapon killer whatyouwanttocallit prototype and I LOVE IT :D. This is a step forward to a remake of my dream game : E.V.O.

I made my first ( basic ) re-usable framework over Unity and I intend on making it bigger and better!

The Future

We're planning on continuing work on the game. We have high hopes for the game! 

[weekofawesomeii]

Day 7 (End of day)

Here’s a link to our game : Atlas of Extinction

Enjoy!!!!!

http://weekofawesomeii.tumblr.com/Download

I’ll detail more information on what’s in and what not later

[weekofawesomeii]

Day 7 ( 10 hours left )

Progress :

AI done

Collectible + resources done

Test and debug melee weapons done

Will is making the levels while I'm tweaking/polishing gameplay elements + gameflow. We should have a full level progression in more or less 2 hours!

Go Team TBA go!

[weekofawesomeii]

Day 7 (Beginning)

I'm gonna dress up a list of items I need to complete today and see how things goes. I'll try to do 3 posts today followed by a post-mortem of the whole project

TODO

-Finish the AI so insects are not machine guns anymore and face the player

-Finish the collectible system and resource management system

-Test and debug the melee weapons effects (enemy and player)

-Add sounds

-Add music

-Add credit

-Add explosions, animations on different effects, damage effects, death animations

-Balance the game

-Polish the battle system as we balance it

-Create levels (10?)

-Publish the game (Most likely in a fixed resolution)

This is going to be tough to pull out in ~12 hours !

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jK-NcRmVcw

Honey make me a liter of coffee please :)!

[weekofawesomeii]

Day 6

I’m tired…We’re tired…

We’re very proud of what we achieved in this little week.

We have one last day to push and polish the last remaining things for the game to be awesome sauce!

Tomorow’s focus : FUN!

MACHINE GUN INSECTS!!!

Edit : It's supposed to be a .gif, but anyways it seems tumblr doesn't like the file...

[weekofawesomeii]

Day 5

Hiya!

Will worked on different units and tiles. We finally got them inside the game and working. Also the level editor was finalized today and we’re ready to whip up some levels!

I’m happy to say that our core features are all finished! wahoo! Polish time for 2 days. Here’s our little guy attacking on a brand spanking new tile!

[weekofawesomeii]

Day 4

A lot of things done today!

We officially do not have any artists so Will is going to be taking the units sprite sheet creation in his hands! We'll complete the visuals with open source art / unity store texture packs and most likely animate the game ourselves ( If we get time ).

For the gameplay, I have finished most of the player progression/mutation system. Small tweaks here and there and adding content to the different upgrades available is all that is left. I'm personally stoked on how it looks :)

The Weapon management system is coded and in place.

60 hours left and still a long way to go!

Core features remaining :

-Player melee attack

-Fog of war

-Attribute system

-Levels

-Story / Cut scenes / game ending

Here's one of Will's sprite!

 I'll get a gameplay video tomorrow ;)

[weekofawesomeii]

Day 3

Hey!

We finally decided our awesome team name : Team TBA.

More discussion and progress has been made over the character. I have added the shooting, the health bars and a simple damage, slow, dot, debuff effects in the game.

I'm working with Will to create our spectacular toy-bot-thing more flexible for our core game play elements ( which I will discuss in later posts!)

[weekofawesomeii]

Day 2

A grid layout was asked to place the units and possibly move them around based on the grid's position.

I have started the day trying to implement an isometric grid. Trying out a few techniques, following tutorials online, I have failed miserably... Using Unity with the sprites component in 2D doesn't work unless I scale each tile down to create the diamond shape altered squares.  I had multiple issues with using original sprite sizes and scaling them with the engine, especially with collisions.

I have decided to simply use a grid, without the isometric style view. We also decided to move our gameplay to a more action oriented pace.

Once the decision has been taken, I implemented boundaries, slow tiles, an enemy, a pickup collectible and collisions.

I'll work on attacking, enemy behaviour and character progression on Day 3.

[weekofawesomeii]

Day 1

A discussion took place around different ideas on how to implement the theme into a game that we three feel interesting and appealing to us.

Until a general direction on what the core game play elements were going to be, my hands were tied. I built a simple GUI for the Main Menu and prepared a project on Unity while thinking about the theme. 

Our team eventually hopped on a skype call and we talked about a few ideas and we finally decided to go for a 2D isometric view fast paced strategy game. Having a rough game play in mind, we could all start working on this!

[weekofawesomeii]

The Toys Are Alive!

Brainstorming ideas in progress...