T w e n t y S i d e d

Good news and bad news: Yesterday we had an impromptu hangout where Josh played the latest build of Good Robot and streamed the game for all to see. It was supposed to be a simple test: I wanted to see Josh play the game to hunt for bugs and gather gameplay feedback. But then I Tweeted a link to the stream and the internet showed up.

Friends joined in and we had a little party where Josh played through all of the available content for Good Robot. It was funny and fun, although the best part of the show was when Josh got to the end and began using the console to spawn clouds of enemies in an effort to break the game.

The bad news is that Twitch.tv didn’t save the footage. We don’t know why. So the event is gone forever. Sorry.

The crowd feedback was invaluable, and Josh’s skill at finding bugs was… irritating. (But also valuable.)

I’m kind of surprised at how many people are interested in modding or changing the game. It’s already pretty mod-able. I mean, this is the level data for level 9:

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Project Good Robot 20: Gamespace”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

I don’t know if they’ve appeared in any of the screenshots yet, but one of the mechanics in the game is a system of power-ups. The leveling system provides numerical improvements: More speed, more shields, more damage, etc. The powerups provide functional improvements: bouncing laser shots, homing for your missiles, highlighting of obscured enemies, etc. The game is currently set to drop one on every level. If there’s a boss on this level, then the boss has it.

For a while you could only carry one of these at a time, but that wasn’t very interesting. When you picked one up you would drop the previous one. You could pick it up again if you didn’t like the new one, but I quickly found that I liked some better than others and once I had my favorite they were no longer useful as a reward. Since they were random, it was possible to get my favorite on level 1 and then never care about powerups again until I died. (Powerups last until death.) That’s like a first person shooter that gives you the best weapon in the game at the start. It’s just setting the player up for disappointment.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Project Good Robot 19: Unbalancing the Game”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

A small announcement before I get to the post itself: Last entry I mentioned I needed music. I didn’t expect that multiple people would be offering to compose original music for my game for free. I’ve been quiet about these offers for help so far because I didn’t know how to respond, but then composer Fawstoar made this track and I couldn’t say no.

But here’s the thing: I’m really nervous about inviting people to make tracks for the game, because I’m the absolute worst sort of person to make music for. My tastes are lowbrow, but I’m also incredibly picky and I know nothing whatsoever about music. I’m sure everyone has run into the classic Clients from Hell stories, where a client keeps asking for changes because they do know what they don’t want but they don’t know what they do want and in any case they lack the basic vocabulary to even express their preferences. So you wind up with a client repeatedly asking you to change the color scheme of the website and it isn’t until your sixth revision that you discover the color isn’t the problem, it’s that they wanted the buttons to look more “glossy” like [huge boring corporate site that’s looking kind of dated] and they’re actually colorblind and couldn’t even detect most of the changes you were making.

That client? That irritating jackass? That’s me. You don’t want to make music for me. I’m an idiot. I want a very specific kind of inoffensive electronic music, I lack the knowledge and language to explain what it is, and I don’t want to pay for anything. Who would want to deal with that?

While I’m wise enough to see that making music for my game would be bad for you, I’m also selfish enough that I’m willing to offer the chance if you want to try. But rather than asking someone to go out and make music, I’ll just leave the door open for submissions. If you think you have something that fits, just leave a comment with a link to the track on Soundcloud or Youtube or whatever and I’ll give it a listen. If I like it, I’ll put it in the game. If I don’t, I will probably avoid saying why because I don’t want you to spend two days re-working it only to have me still not like it because I gave you bad advice.

Obviously I’m not looking for exclusive rights. I just want tracks that I’m allowed to use in my game. And if you don’t want to do hours of work trying to please an ignorant slob who might not finish the stupid videogame anyway? I don’t blame you.

The mood I’m going for is… uh. I guess pretty much the original Descent:

Except maybe not quite so… 1994 MIDI-ish? (See what I mean about me being a horrible and difficult client?) Perhaps the Unreal soundtrack would be a better example. Tracks don’t need to be epic long compositions. In testing, levels currently only take about five to ten minutes, so a two or three minute track that’s looping-friendly should do just fine. Most players won’t even notice the repetition in that timeframe.

Some of you have already linked to your work on Soundcloud / Youtube / Jamendo. I’ve listened, and I’m considering some of them. We’ll see.

Anyway, let’s talk about the game:

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Project Good Robot 18: More Robots”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.