The Other Brothers Developer Diary. I add to this thread whenever I develop something new about this much-anticipated game. Feel free to ask questions and I'll get back to you EDIT: EVERY THURSDAY THERE WILL BE LIVE STREAMING OF TOB. This will take place at 20:30 GMT. www.livestream.com/bjornhurri
So far, I've been working on the ultimate "feel" for TOB. I've been programming for over 25 years, and playing games longer, so I think I've got a good idea how a game should feel. Some of the important considerations are about how responsive it is, on analogue sticks and touch screens. We want the on-screen character to do the opposite of mario: Instead of slowing down sharply when the player moves the other direction, we slow down sharply when you reach the deadzone of the touch input or analogue stick, or when the finger has been lifted from the screen. This works naturally with the time it takes to slide a typical finger across. The result is on-screen you see a seamless and charming little devil rushing around with sharpness and no lag to the inertia - it's crisp and yet not stiff. For jumping, we have some funky raycasts that help us pass through platforms. If you fall off the edge of a platform and just hit jump then, the game gives you few precious milliseconds grace and lets you take the jump. This is not something you normally notice, but it sure is appreciated on touch screens. Another element was that we wanted it to speed up quickly, but not travel very far if the player just edges towards something. We wanted that nippy feel. Likewise, it should not accelerate too slow overall when changing direction. To do this, we use 3 different curves of tweened motion together for different times, which give the character specific rules in how it behaves with physics, and focusses on playability. That's all for now... the next time I post will be about the scrolling!
...The Scrolling. The best (most helpful) scrolling in my opinion is the godlike Super Mario World on super nintendo. Replicating this meant a surprising amount of rules. For a start, whenever you fall, it matches your falling speed, however if you jump up too high, it gently scrolls to meet the player, although this can be pushed if you raise fast enough. Not only this, the horizontal scrolling has a different rule set. It has to allow for being helpful enough to scroll past the player when standing still, to give more view ahead, as well as match the pace of the player should he already be moving. On top of this, there has to be a zone where you can move around in without scrolling, and although this was easiest to get right, mixing it with the other rules proved tricky. But... I've nailed it. One of the challenges of scrolling in a platformer is to figure out a way to do it that does not induce motion sickness. Super Mario World solves this with deadzones and a combination of push scrolling with constant speed, and variable speed when pushing against it. There will be tweaking to do, and some great screenshots of the integration of this new scrolling + feel into the main game branch. You'll be able to get a feel for how things play soon. Watch this space!
Thanks! some art refs for you (the Animation is now what I am working on!) More (fresh) materials coming very soon! Don't forget to follow us on twitter or post comments, I love reading what you say.
Wow! I like this retro style.Art refs is awesome! Can't wait....just want to know release date and how much $ will it cost?
I've been waiting and hoping for this game for some time now. It's nice to see everything's on track again, and I'm looking forward to those fresh materials as soon as you can share them, and any further information on the game's particulars.
The animations are stuning! This is probably my most waited game of the year since Nova is already so close
Hi guys, we have a tentative answer for you regarding the price and availability. 1. We are aiming at the lowest price point of $.99 across most platforms, so that people just buy it once without bait and switch. 2. it will (most likely) be EPISODIC with about an hour's worth of play for the first episode with similar times for each episode. We plan to expand the story arc and the game over time so people REALLY dig the value for money angle. We think this is the only way to make pirates really appreciate it enough to buy. Let us know what you think of this You can also grab hold of me via the support form on our developer site, or here, or via @SquaredApe on twitter if you're interested, but posting here is best as I check it the most.
Public Announcement Hello everyone! Stay calm and don't lose your pixels, we've got some information we'd like to share! Here is our public statement regarding dotBunny: You may have noticed that the The Other Brothers development team has undergone some changes, rest assured that the project is in the hands of it's creators, Bjorn and Thomas and we are working hard to bring you the best platform experience out there. We had to say goodbye to our previous programmer Matthew Davey, he is no longer affiliated with The Other Brothers. In his place, we have brought onboard Simian Squared Ltd who comprise of Robert Cummings and Giuseppe Landolina. We believe that our new team members will be able to bring to you our original vision for The Other Brothers. We trust in our newest additions to the TOB family because their fresh start to the code has already yielded fantastic results in performance and playability! Stay glued to our new and fantastic website because we have some amazing things lined up to show you! www.TOBgame.com Stay pixelated! The Other Brothers Family
Today I'll talk about Ladders, Water and moving platforms. Apparently it takes some developers a long time to figure out something as simple as the humble ladder but it took an hour here. Climbable Surfaces However The Other Brothers ladders were designed with the following: 1. ladders can be any shape or size, and any angle. 2. ladders can rotate (anything can in my code base), and move. 3. ladders can pass through other ladders in an intricate network or ladder-soup. But what about playability? How do you make something as boring as a climbable area, exciting? Here's how! 1. player should be able to jump while on the ladder, and not catch it again until almost half a second has passed. This means there's no point spamming jump to go up ladders faster, and the player is forced to think. This also allows you proper clearance from the ladder when doing risky jumps. 2. the ladder must allow player to pass through platforms. We solve this with some clever collision states. 3. the ladder must allow us to hang from it or attach to it at will, so we can run past it and ignore it or jump through it without a worry. This is solved by checking if the player is pushing up or down when your character passes a ladder. Water Water is a similar system to the Climbable Area. Once the player enters, we want to change how you play. There is no point in water being a sort of big climbable area so the only way you can swim is to tap jump. This makes a stroke upwards. You can swim normally left and right regardless. The physics are changed to make it suitably weighty. Again, water isn't limited to any specific shape or size, and you can even climb up a moving ladder into a pool of water (not that this makes any sense). Moving Platforms It's important to get this right. We want moving, rotating, shifting and falling areas. We want it exciting, unpredictable and varied. This is solved by having a pin cushion concept. Whenever the player moves into a zone marked as platform, it becomes a child of that zone, and inherits the parent's movements. Zones You may have guessed all 3 above concepts sit on something I call a Zone. A zone is a polygon mesh or mathematical shape which can define an area of importance. The work flow for this is really cool in unity, and artist friendly. We can tell them to be anything or do anything - even start up cut scene. Cut scenes?! Yes the cat is out of the bag, there will be many full cool cut scenes to tell the story, but that is for another diary posting! Stay pixelated! -Rob (@SquaredApe)
Facebook Competition Winner #1 announced! A big thanks to our facebook contest winner Gary Norbraten for being such a good sport. Bjorn Hurri had a blast creating him gloriously pixelated! We have all had good laughs at the end result! He ended up being a perfect fit for The Other Brothers! Check out the real mcoy plus others in the gallery for the competition: Our facebook (like it!) http://www.facebook.com/theotherbrothersgame/ Like the facebook page and tweet about us, bookmark http://tobgame.com - keep your eyes peeled for more compos and exciting news! Soon we will announce the second winner of the facebook competition, and this dude... we think you know him! Stay pixelated!
Please note, competition winners ARE actually ingame bosses. Yes you have to fend off an unlimited ninja swarm from this bonus boss. The next competition bonus boss will blow your mind though... next post should be it!
Announcing the best boss in any game in the WORLD! TA's Brad Nicholson! Congratulations, Brad! you may be a runner up, but you're still the coolest retro boss ever made! For more information about The Other Brothers, visit our facebook page, and follow us on the usual social media sites! We will be leaking information regularly The winning shot:
Looks like Brad needs to work on his legs. ;-) Regardless, fantastic boss concept and excellent Brad rendering.
Animation There's two things which will make or break animation in a retro game like The Other Brothers. The first thing is the animation itself. It can suck, and there's not much you can do about that. Luckily the art quality is insane, with artists who are used to triple A work sketching them out at a cracking pace! The second thing is how gently the programmer will treat the artist's frames and even massage them for more amazing sparkling goodness. 1. we have animation states for everything: run, idle, jump, skid, hurt, falling, attacks and more. 2. we play the intended animation - be it a one shot, or looping animation. So what's different? In TOB, I have several variables which track how fast the character is moving, how hard the player is pushing the direction and so on. So we can weave in more frames in between, and play little one off frames to blend everything together. It's painstaking work because it takes a lot of trial and error to get the maximum out of the frames you have. In addition to this, its really important to speed things up or slow them down in regards to animation playback. So to this end we do things like speed the animation up as the character's velocity increases. We also track how long the player has being doing demanding activities, so when Joe or Jim halt for a breather, you see their idle animation play faster, before slowing down as they catch their breath. It's all these little touches that really can make or break a retro title. You can't just fill it with animation frames and throw more money at it. It has to be authentic. We've deliberately left in an easter egg surprise for people who have played old retro games: the classic left and right thrashing of the controls will allow you to spaz out for hilarious dance scenes, if you so choose! Next to come will be some clips and anims you haven't seen, as there's been too much talk and not enough glorious sneak-peaks! Be square (it's cool!) - Rob
EVERY THURSDAY THERE WILL BE LIVE STREAMING OF TOB. This will take place at 20:30 GMT. www.livestream.com/bjornhurri Come and see the developers at work! Remember, Thursday is Tobsday! 20:30 GMT! You can also view previous live stream entries that have been recorded while you were asleep grunting and rolling.
Just a small update this saturday evening for our website! http://www.tobgame.com/ We think it looks pretty cool especially the animations and fade in
Empowering Artists = Great Game Today I'm busy polishing up a small demo for the team to display next Tobsday (see above for what tobsday is) -- so you'll be getting a SNEAK PEAK at the game itself! Work is going at a tremendous pace, and don't forget to leave your suggestions for bosses, ideas and more either over on our facebook page (link on http://www.tobgame.com) or here! Empowering Artists = Great Game What is all this empowering business? Well, typically in game development, artists have to create assets or design levels with huge restrictions due to the code. You'll be stuck with 32x32 tiles (which will look boring in the end) or have limitations on how they can develop the game. We've thrown all that out of the window 1. Artists can just draw whatever they want in Photoshop, at any size, and we'll convert it to a layered animation. 2. Colliders are not linked to geometry so we can get really creative. Artists can just pull out artwork and place it down at any depth in the editor and group them. They can add a parallax script live in editor and see it happen. They can tweak any part of it at any time. 3. There's no limitations on anything. If an artist wants a pigeon to do a little poo randomly with a 30% chance of doing one, then they ask me and I do it. I don't moan, I don't make a fuss, I just get off my ass and do it. 4. Effects and particle systems that are FULLY animated as well - so you can have fully animated hand-drawn wisps of smoke, and fantastic environmental effects without the headaches. 5. They can add anything they want in any part, without any restrictions. So what is the catch? The catch The catch is the programmer (me) is slowly going insane. It takes a tremendous amount of effort and polish in tools and level design ease-of-use, but in a way it can be seen like I am also directly contributing towards the art goal of the project. If I can free artists to just be themselves, it means that they spend more time doing what they do best, and less time worrying about a script or going crazy over restrictions. This increases the amount of art they can shift out... Which means TOB is FULL of unique artwork, just about everywhere! But if I'm crazy about one thing, it's your fun. We need TOB to be a massive celebration of retro gaming, with cues taken from the history of retro games. There's a little bit of influence from everything in here - see if you can spot them. One thing this game isn't is... a clone. Expect the unexpected! Please offer feedback and ideas, you never know, you might be the one to influence a level or enemy. And stay peeled for an early test demo on our livestream this coming tobsday. Soon I will be talking about the render to texture technology the game uses and why, plus some techie AI talk (that's right, these things will be pretty smart!) Our facebook is http://www.facebook.com/theotherbrothersgame - give us a friendly like and post some words of inspiration, we will read every comment
