Updating the user interface

Hello there, readers!

We're now in the progress of going through the assets, and giving them the polished look that they need. One of the first things we're going to update, is the dialogue screen.

From the above you can see the new design on its graphics. We've beefed up the size on the dialogue, and given the portraits these little animations. Now the characters blink, move their head, or do some little movement like that.

It's weird and exciting to see the new dialogue screen in-game, as you've watched the previous version for so long. Every day of gamedev requires constant testing, running the game with different fixes and seeing what's fixed. The former iteration of  the dialogue screen just seemed like an alpha version of the design, and not something that belongs in the full game.

One of the major things that we're updating is the main menu. We're not only giving it a graphical re-haul, but adding some features like the Horde mode, Art gallery and Encyclopedia. The horde mode will be an extra survival-type game mode, where you can visit a couple of the environments from the actual game in a different, alternate timeline. 

In this timeline the corruptive forces have spread much further, and all the locations are crawling with enemies. The environments will have a different look in this playmode, and will be redesigned to fit the mood. In horde mode, you will collect powerups and top your high score, as you survive further against the enemy onslaught. 

Our inventory screen is also going through a new iteration, along with the objectives and map screen. The old version was never meant to be shipped as a part of the finished product, and was made only to display all the important information. We're trying to enhance up the UI elements, but also trying to keep the simplicity of it. The hud should represent the theme and evoke the right kind of feeling about the gameworld. 

The paper doll graphics of Bob also needed to be redone. The previous one was intended as a placeholder from the start, and was waiting to get replaced. As our character designer Vesa-Pekka is currently busy with the last animations of Bob, I had to take on the task of creating these little images. 

We might do another iteration of the Bob picture seen above. It really depends on how much time we'll have late in development. We have this principle that we'll focus on the assets which are most regularly seen during gameplay, and give those a facelift. We will also go through the scenes, write some new stuff for them, and add some new interactive objects.

There's still no set release date, but we'll deliver the finished game by the end of this year. After that, we'll see if there's still something that needs fixing and patch it. We can't wait to get the game to players and hear their feedback. Although we've had internal testing and QA on the game, it's impossible to predict how the game will work with a larger audience. 

Friday diaries #7: Midsummer 2016

Hello everybody! I know it's been three weeks since the last friday diary. Today is the eve of midsummer, which is a huge festivity here in Finland. This is the first weekend in a very long time, when I won't be doing gamedev.

The time during last three weeks has not gone to waste, because Kalaban has taken huge leaps forward. I've been scripting all the current scenes to make them playable and connected to the main storyline. Now we have dialogue between NPCs and Bob, consistent story progress through the scenes and some new AI behavior for the enemies.

We currently have two of the non-playable characters functioning in-game. Some of the dialogue will branch into different paths, and your actions affect how the conversation will play out. We've kept the number of NPCs quite small, compared to some typical role-playing games for example. We've constantly tried to focus on depth, and not tried to create a huge, endless gameworld, which would ultimately feel empty and shallow.

During the last couple of weeks we've also added the map screen to the game. It shows you important bits of the scene, and puts NPC blips on the screen after you've encountered them. On the picture above you can see the gas station scene seen through the map screen. Next step is to get the to-do list and quest tracking properly featured in the UI.

The werewolf monsters now have something to do, besides just aimlessly wandering around the playfield. When they're hungry, they search for food, and start munching once they find it. They're also more aggressive and faster when they're hungry. I'm personally very fond of the idea that monsters in the game could be NPCs, which have their own goals and will during play.

Now that the NPCs are in the game and you can interact with them, it starts to feel like the game we visioned it to be. The open world exploration and inventory also plays a huge part in the Kalaban experience.

Game development is a lot of trial and error, and although you would design the perfect game on paper, it might not translate to screen at all. It's only when you have the game running in realtime, and you get your hands on the gameplay that you start to see what kind of product you have on your hands. After that point you have to take a look at the design, and chip away all the useless stuff which no longer fit the whole.

Initially, we didn't anticipate how big of a role the combat would play in our game. The original concept for Kalaban was "an open world survival game, where you can interact with every item, pick up every rock and examine everything". After we got through the first buggy pre-alphas, the game transformed into a topdown story simulator, and more of an action adventure type of game. It also became a reality, that we cannot draw and simulate every single twig and rock in the gameworld, so we have to focus on the things that truly matter.

We'll continue our work after the midsummer, and keep you guys informed about the progress. Kalaban still has no official release date, but you can expect the finished game during the year 2016. See you all soon!

Friday diaries #6: Making progress

Hello again!

Last week we didn't have a new friday diary blogentry, because I was working on the inventory hotbar. Now that it's finished and working, I thought we should do a little overview of the project.


Bob exploring the massive graveyard of rusty car wrecks.

Inventory system

Like mentioned, the inventory now has a working hotbar, with hotkeys from 1 through 0 on the keyboard. We wanted it to be like this Deus Ex / Diablo style, where you could quickly switch through the items, and the hotbar would fade away from view.

All the current items can now be picked up and dropped, maintaining the right amount of them, and they stay with you from level to level. The save game system also had to be reworked completely, but more from that in the future.

The game is probably going to have one constant savegame, which tracks all your progress. So choosing one side quest or choosing a certain NPC dialog will also stay with you until the end of the game. The game is quite forgiving on the whole, and it's not the hardest game ever, so this could work out without major frustration.


Arming Bob with the pistol at the inventory screen.


Bob finds out that the junkyard has already been infested with horrible abominations.

New scenes and new locations to explore

Since January, we've made three new scenes into the game. Every one of them is still more or less "work in progress", but it's a huge leap from what we had before. In addition to this we've converted the original scenes 1-4 to the current gameplay engine.

The game consists of eleven open world style maps, plus the end sequence. Currently we have eight of them up and running in the engine. In this month we will go over all the scenes one by one and complete their scripts, NPC dialogs and story elements, to see how they all play together.

Up to this point we've been rushing to get all the scenes done and playable, not really getting into the fine detail yet. After we're done with all the scenes, we will assemble a quality assurance team, which will go through all the scenes and pick out their bugs and errors. Like they say about art: never judge an unfinished work.


Bob facing off against Spitter monsters at the water purification plant.

The vats filled with mutated mass give out an eerie glow.

Weapons & combat

We currently have the axe, pistol, sawed-off shotgun and flamethrower working in the game. Our character designer and artist Vesa-Pekka Koivisto is working on new animation sprites for Bob. The enemies now react to the weapons correctly, and we've fixed the lighting bugs with the projectiles. In the earlier versions the bullet light traces and spitter's glowing acid spit didn't always function properly.

Next up we need to add the other weapons to the game, and add some crafting elements to it. We haven't yet discussed the full depth of the weapon customization, so we currently don't have any in the game.

We've talked about adding simple perks to the game, enhancing the weapons abilities. Kalaban is not a full-blooded RPG, although it shares some similar features with the genre. The perk could be partially learn-by-doing and partially just killing enough monsters. Maybe opting for a certain weapon, like for example the axe, would give a small choice of additional bonuses.


Inventory hotbar and item selection in-game.

That's all for this week, folks! This was more of an informative overview than a casual rambling, and I hope you enjoyed it. Stay tuned for more updates!

Friday diaries #1

Hello!

This time I thought I might take you through the pain of what it's like to develop Kalaban. Not to be too whiny here, but just an insight to the things we struggle with all the time:

1) Y-sorting 
Because Clickteam Fusion 2.5 is a purely 2D engine, it cannot handle the Z (depth) dimension in its code, only the X (horizontal) and Y (vertical) dimensions. This means that overall it's much simpler to handle than a full-blown 3D engine. But also, that when you're creating an isometric game, you'll have to pull all kinds of tricks in order to get the depth effect by using just the Y axis. We mostly use the 'Layer object' in Fusion, but that only works well with moving objects and not the environments. Luckily though, with careful planning and a bit of case specific coding, you can get pretty stable results. The method we're using for Kalaban could never be replicated for a Diablo type of game, with randomized maps and environments.

And then, something like this happens:

After hours and hours of scripting, it still breaks down. Well, occasionally anyways. Just a small detail in the overall game, but a very noticeable at that. Of course, every one of these bugs can be fixed, but it just requires a lot of time and patience.


 2) Creating the environments
A problem, or more of an integral part of the whole development, are the custom-made environments of Kalaban. We chose to keep the size of the game world smaller, but opted for a completely unique look for all the areas. This means that all of the maps are created by hand, with very few assets being re-used. Well, it is quite obvious why this creates a lot of work for development, not only with the art creation, but also scripting all the individual areas. In addition to this, we chose a unique perspective for the whole game, which is not purely isometric.

 To make things a little easier, a lot of the props and map pieces are first modeled in 3D and rendered to sprites, using a virtual camera that has the right distorted perspective. After this, the rest of the environments are mashed together, painted and partially created from scratch in Photoshop.
 

  An example of the gas station scene I'm working on now. Notice the touches that have been made to the original 3D pieces. The final part is of course bringing these environments to the game engine, and giving them the proper lighting.


3) Inventory & UI 
This was special pain in the butt for us during the early days of development. Tagging the inventory items to specific places in code requires a ton of work. There's also the scripting which is required for item interaction, dragging and dropping, using the items, etc. All this has to be done as many times as you have different inventory items. For this reason alone Kalaban will never have 400 different objects named "dirt", "trash" or "scrap", in the style of Fallout 4 or other Bethesda open world games.

Well, I could add a few more items to the list, but I think that's it for now. For now, have a great friday, everybody! :)

New features under way

Hello there! We're currently developing the pre-alpha version 0.2004. So far, the light and shadow system has been a real issue and challenge for us. Now we've made another re-work on it, and revised the flashlight's light circle with more directions. Current light sources in the game include the flashlight and the torch. The shapes of the light have also been made softer in the newest version.

 
The circular shape of the torch light.

The problem with the light/shadow system is to make it as fluent and optimized as possible. And also visually as good-looking as possible. If the game would not be targeted for a very wide range of computers from very low to high end specs, it would be easy to just jam in a system which would require a huge amount of memory and CPU power.

We're also working on a new inventory and also a map screen at the moment. They are only visual at the moment, and have no interaction coded in. The map screen will feature a Scene and Act map, and also a short objectives list.

   
Shots of the incoming inventory and map screen.

Heading towards a playable alpha demo

Hello there!

We've held a meeting with our band of four dedicated indie developers. We've decided to give the UI a bit of a rehaul. Currently all the inventory slots and other elements are on the screen at once. Next version will include a separate inventory screen, with adjustable weapon slots and quick item slots. This way the player can pause the game to hassle with the inventory items and doesn't have to drag them realtime.

This will be made especially with the later combat scenes in mind, though the game starts with some slow exploration and horror parts. The game also needs a separate map screen, which will have the Scene map and the Act map, which show the local map and the whole gameworld.

One month from now, the end of May 2015, is our target for a playable demo version of the game. It is not yet decided if it's going to be public or not. We are itching to get the players in on the Early Access, but this will not be that version. We're aiming to produce a coherent demo with four scenes in it, which will feature all the important mechanics of the finished game.

Right now we're knee-deep at work with the third scene, writing scripts and putting the assets in place. As you probably know, the background art does not consist of a few dozen readymade tiles. Instead, all of the scenes will be hand-made to feature an individual look. This is not a new idea in itself, since few games have had it before. One example being the Sanitarium game, which is a huge inspiration for us.

That's all for now, cheers!