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: Quality control

Hello there!

A big part of game development is refining stuff that you've already created, be it code, sound effects or graphics. Sometimes it's also taking stuff out permanently, bits and pieces which don't fit the narrative or overall story.

This week we'll take a peek into what's been left on the cutting room floor, and what features or assets have been altered during the process. Of course we'll be talking about the highlights, not every single thing that has changed during development. 

Background art

The home road scene from one of the first builds, circa February 2015.

Comparison shot from one of the background assets.

Especially the early scenes, which have been there from the start, have gone through many iterations. The graphical style has been re-hauled a couple of times, and that has required  some drastic changes. At first, we created the environments in this very fantasy-like fashion, with crazy lights and mostly prerendered stuff. 

During the spring of 2015 we moved to a more serious tone with the background art, and revised the areas to look more realistic. Trees looked like they could belong in the real world, and ground looked more realistic. Of course there's still this comic-book style flavor to the assets, but now they at least  represent actual real-life scenes, instead of this very abstract and game-like environment. 

The third version of the background art came when we decided to set the game permanently at night, or at the hours of dusk. All the lights would be pre-set in the locations, and the sun would never come up. An eerie fog rolls over the scenes, and there is an ominous glow to some areas. Most of the areas look very different, than they looked during daylight. 

Art style 

Original design of the big house on the left, and current version on the right.

Screenshot from the current version of the game; the abandoned gas station.

This is partially related to the earlier point, but this one is about the big picture. In the very first draft our game was designed to feature a fully top-down view. Then, we tried to create a sidescrolling concept, but that lacked all the fun and engaging gameplay that we wanted to achieve. After that we settled on this slightly slanted bird's eye vision. It was supposed to function like a top-down game in the code, and reveal a bit more about characters and environment, but it soon transformed into this isometric type of deal. Now we have to deal with things being behind other things, walls to become transparent once you're inside the building, and avoid player overlapping things.

When we finally got past the initial birth pain, I took some time to sketch stuff out, and think about how I wanted the whole game to look and feel. In the spring of 2015 I had recently watched the Nirvana documentary Cobain: Montage of Heck, which featured these beautiful hand-animated sequences. Those became one of my main inspirations in creating the look for this little mid-nineties Finnish town. 

Another key inspiration at that time was the wonderful artwork done by Simon Stålenhag. He has created some really unique vistas, which perfectly capture the bleak and beautiful nordic atmosphere. 

Enemy design

The old enemy design in motion. This build is from the summer of 2015.

The evolution of the Bruiser design.

One character asset, which has gone through most iterations, is the 'Bruiser' monster, also known as 'The werewolf monster'. The very first version was this demon-like hairy blob of flesh, which was inspired by Warhammer chaos miniatures. Then, we took the design to a more standard humanoid / werewolf form, which is more streamlined and clear visually. 

The writing 

One of the more grislier bits of Kalaban, seen in the current version of the game.

Oh yes, even the core of our storytelling has changed quite a bit. Kalaban was originally set during the winter, in some generic American little town. The town was overrun by demons and monsters, but we then decided to make the story and setting more personal. The date was set to be in 1995 in early development, and frankly it could've been set in -94 or -96 as well during that time. Somehow just setting it in the smack center resonated with us, especially with the cultural transition happening during that time. For example, the album Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness by The Smashing Pumpkins, and films like Se7en coming out that year.

All the dialogue and interactions in the game are written by either Tuukka or me. We've discussed about the tone and the themes endlessly. If something needed to go, it was axed. If something had to be added, we worked it into the game. Earlier this year we did a huge re-haul to the story, and decided to add the NPCs into the game, with their own little side quests. Now, it would be impossible to think about the game without those characters. They are an integral part of the experience. 

User interface

Original UI from early 2015, where inventory bar was always visible and in real-time.

Comparison between the old icons, and the new.

The UI in Kalaban has been through a lot of changes. Originally, we started the game as a purely horror-themed adventure game, and then moved more towards action adventure genre. We needed to add the inventory screen to the game, so that players could manage their hotbar and the items they're carrying, all without interruptions. 

This gave the game more action RPG type of flavor. The changes and reworks took a long time to refine. We started planning the new inventory in October 2015, and at first it was going to be a drop-down menu like in the early Fallout games. We then opted for a more standard grid-based view, but that meant scrapping the previous system entirely. 

Not only have we redesigned the interface over and over, but we've also thrown away the old icons. They were created in the early stages of our development, and they no longer represented the overall visual fidelity of the project. The current ones are better in line with the present art style.

Initial sketch art of the drop-down style inventory, with old icons as placeholders. 

Current version of the inventory screen, with ammunition counters and the classic paper doll. 

But it was the right call, and that choice gave the inventory a lot more clarity, without having to scroll through the whole list, and sub-tabs. Ease-of-use and speed are everything when you're creating the UI, and that's what we went for. 

Now you can drag & drop items to your hotbar, like the health items and weapons, and equip them in real-time. The inventory screen pauses the whole game, so you don't have to worry about enemy attacks, as you read through the flavor text. 

 Sound design

We can't present you the current sound fx, so we present some moving pictures.

The original sound design in Kalaban was godawful. It was just a bunch of freeware and stock effects cobbled together by me. They were only meant to give you a general idea of what you might hear in the game. For the longest time, we did not have a real sounds for any of the inventory items, or effects for the UI. Those details were only recently been added to the game. 

The enemy sounds in the game were particularly awful in early development. The werewolf monster taunts were recorded by me, and I made them as total placeholders, so that they could be replaced at any time. Now, finally after a long wait, our audio mastermind Eetu re-designed the mutant sound effects. And my god, they're a thousand times better than the old ones!

Combat with the Blow-up mutant. 

In other news

Our game was finally launched on Steam Greenlight on Halloween. Some people have missed the point of our very retro intro cinematic, which is not that surprising. I do understand, that for those people who have not grown up with PC games of the nineties, that cinematic can be really confusing. Some people thought that it was just laziness to create such visuals, or that perhaps we don't care enough to put more effort. 

But in fact, the cinematic looks pretty much exactly like we wanted it to look. We wanted to faithfully re-create the cgi videos from the mid-nineties, and all the details in that animation was done with this in mind. The game in itself is done with a quite serious tone. We wanted to have a bit of fun with the trailer, and show our love for the old cinematics, and their wonderfully cheesy nature.

I think people have different kind of ideas about nostalgia. A show like the Stranger Things is set in the 80s, and takes story cues from the old Stephen King stories and Spielberg movies. But at the same time it has very modern visuals, with CGI effects, and all the frames looking polished and perfectly lit. That's what viewers today expect, not the authentic retro quality, which would actually represent the era truthfully. And that is totally fine. We've been taught to expect the certain kind of visuals, no matter what the subject.

Anyways, our game is on Greenlight right now, so go give it a thumbs up, and help us fulfill our dreams: Kalaban at Steam Greenlight.

Friday diaries: The Road to Greenlight

Hello there! This Friday I decided we could have a general look at the project and where it's going. As many of you know, we're launching Kalaban on Steam Greenlight on Halloween 2016. We're all really excited to finally get this project to public knowledge, but it demands a lot of hard work.

The promotional picture for our Greenlight launch.

I've been adding new features to the game like crazy over the past couple of weeks. One of these include the new lumber mill scene, where you can meet your former employer, Keijo. Changes and updates have also been made into the user interface. You can now instantly check your enemies' health by hovering your mouse over them.

 Showcasing the enemy health bar. 

We've finally added a couple of bigger boss encounters into the game. These characters will appear at the high points of the story. Both of them can be approached in the way that player chooses, by trying to avoid them entirely, or facing them head on.  

You encounter a huge, wobbling monstrosity near the purification plant.

I've also added lots of story stuff into the game, most of which I cannot show you without spoilers. Keijo now has full dialogue, and many of the quest events have now been fleshed out. This week I added one silly piece of interaction into the game: you can access a computer terminal and write text on it. I think little things like these make the environment seem more alive. 

 The very retro terminal screen at the purification plant.

We currently have Kalaban in early access at GameJolt. This really is the current development version of the game. So if you're really curious to see what the game looks in motion, then head over to GameJolt and get your hands on that version. 

 The first scene of the story currently in game.

Next week we'll publish the last 'Games that inspire us' article. It will tangle one of the most important games for us during the development of Kalaban. We're gonna wrap up with the nostalgia pieces after this and crank up the crunch factor to get this game actually finished. 

We're constantly looking back and reviewing how our vision and scope has transformed during the project. This is necessary so that the big picture doesn't get lost in the bug-fixing, details and new features.

One of the recent props which I've designed. It's this sort of an eighties, early nineties slot machine, done with (almost) historical detail. 

Most of the really important stuff has survived the process, plus the mood and feel which we envisioned for the game to have from the beginning. The game still is an adventure game, with lots of detail, and it has open-ended gameplay. With one of the most important elements: player choice matters. That's the stuff we're pushing towards.

Brawling against the mutated locals.

We also value depicting the mid-nineties Finland, and all the flavor that comes with it. We're not aiming for absolute historical detail, because after all, we're creating an alternate history game. Kalaban is pretty much a dream project for us. But creating your dream game also means that you have a huge pressure to deliver both to yourself, and also to your audience. 

That's all for this week. Thank you all for tuning in, and farewell!

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!