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Dev diary number thirty six : A happy new year

Posted by Germain on 12 Jan 2013 / 28 Comments



Jan
12
2013
 28
We’re back!

It’s been a while since the last blog isn’t it? I hope the holidays have been as good to you guys as ours. One thing is certain, we needed a break. We’ve been working full time (at least one of us working) non-stop since last January. So you can guess the fatigue accumulated to a certain point.

Well, we’re refreshed, after a well earned pause. And since we also moved into our new office, this creates a nice clean start for all of us. We moved in last Friday, but since we hadn’t worked during the first few days of January, there’s wasn’t anything to blog about.

But now things have picked up again, and here’s a list of things we did this week:

  • Moved in our new office, as I said. Involved a lot of frantic IKEA-furniture-building confusion, time spent looking for stray bolts and tools, and accumulating a ginormous pile of Allen keys. We will have pictures next week, because right now it’s just a bunch of chairs and a few desks, not much to show.
  • Continued working on GUI interfaces, Radial menus and plans to radically change the way players will interact with the game. Again, I can’t overstate how important it is to get the basic world interaction right before adding new features, so this is why we’re focusing on that at this point.
  • Radically overhauled the way wooden structure blueprints are built. Originally, the wooden blocks were placed much like regular bricks, but since they do not behave in the same way, it was a better idea to come up with something more appropriate to the situation, notably, a cursor that hugs the surface you are pointing at, and merging the vertical log with the horizontal log, and simply choosing one or the other if you’re aiming at a horizontal or vertical surface.
  • Brought back the ladders into the game system. During the Prototype development, we decided to scrap the ladders momentarily for two reasons. There was a bug with ladders and doors that slowed down the game significantly, we deactivated this part of the code until we had time to fix it. This affected the door as well, but we noticed that it didn’t affect the door too much. However, the ladders also weren’t buildable by Bricktrons; you could only place them by hand in debug mode. But now, all of this is fixed. Yay!
  • Integrated our new phantom block shader. Part of it’s functionality is that we can now procedurally change individual phantom block’s colors. For example, blocks that are not currently placeable (ex. block in mid-air) will show as red-orange to inform the player which blocks are currently placeable by the Bricktrons. The colors are subject to change obviously, but it’s really interesting to see new phantom blocks turn blue when their neighbors are built.


Plushies!

This is what 50 hand-made Bricktron plushies look like.

We just received a second trashbag full of Bricktron plushies directly from our talented friend Marjorie Charbonneau. This brings the total number of Bricktrons to 50! Just 10 left until we have a Bricktron for all 60 of our Elite Kickstarter Backers.

As you can see, they are all lovingly hand-crafted, with unique expressions and poses (although I suspect this might not have been entirely intentional, due to the hand-made factor).

But right now, the table full of adorable plushies next to me is enough to make all of us go “D’awww” and I hope the lucky few of you will do that as well.


IGDA Demo Night

Also, we will be demoing our game (with some new features), on stage at the SAT for the Montréal IGDA Demo Night, January 22nd from 6h30 pm to 11h00 pm. We attended last year, demoing our game in front of a couple hundred people, and it was very intimidating but loads of fun!

We will be hanging out after the show, so please don’t hesitate to come up to us to say hello!


View Larger Map


Soundtrack of the week

This is the only album of this artist that I know of, apparently a one time collaboration by two electro musicians, and this makes me angry. Damn you Moderat! Make another album you fools!

‘Cuz this music is good. Like really.

Happy new year! Thanks for reading!

Team Sauropod




28 Comments for Dev diary number thirty six : A happy new year


Tudi
4 months ago


YES. Finally a new diary.

Looking good. Can’t wait for ladders and doors. Will these be added before or after the Beta release?

(Reply)

Tyler
4 months ago


Awesome! I wonder if we (the prototype backers) will be seeing any updates of the new stuff or if its going to be saved till beta

(Reply)

    nightarix
    4 months ago


    i’d wager they will probably update it for the prototypers, they need someone to find the bugs that break the game after all. kinda wish i had stuck with the prototype but eh can’t really change that now.

    (Reply)

lorancou
4 months ago


Courage ! Continuez, faites-nous un beau jeu !

(Reply)

vdrjohn
4 months ago


I am so excited, this is a game I always dreamed of, keep doing this amazing job!

(Reply)

Jean-Michel Bourget
4 months ago


Why it it a tuesday? January 22nd from 6h30 pm to 11h00 pm.
I would have come if it was a weekend.

(Reply)

Big_Ben
4 months ago


Those plushies are adorable. Good luck!

(Reply)

Space Narwhal
4 months ago


YAY!

(Reply)

    Matt
    4 months ago


    The blog’s not officially over until the Space Narwhal sings.
    And by singing I mean yelling YAY!

    (Reply)

      Teknonick
      4 months ago


      Don’t you mean it’s not officially over until the Space Narwhal STOPS singing? Anyway, I get your point. lol :D

Justin
4 months ago


:DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD

(Reply)

Rob
4 months ago


Hi Guys,

It’s sounding great. Just a quick question/thought; when you mentioned the color of the shaders you use to determine if something is place-able or not could you please consider the 10% of us males that are colorblind (and 2% of females) :)

Games like Tropico3 & 4, Battlefield Bad Company, Battlefield 4 etc all have Colorblind modes which allows the game to be easily played by people that have issues with seeing the difference between reds and greens, or blues and purples, or yellows and oranges, or green and brown etc…

Tropico changes the overlays to grey scale when determining fertility, or the presence of different minerals.
Bad Company changes the color of key parts of the UI (target cross-hairs to yellow, enemy/friend colors to blue/yellow etc). I have a friend who isn’t colorblind that used colorblind mode in Bad Company because it was far easier to use.
Good website that can modify supplied pictures or URL’s to approximate what colorblind people see, it also has ideas on how to design web pages to be accessible, so it might be transferable partially to a game:
http://www.vischeck.com/

Thanks very much for a great game, I am enjoying the prototype (of which there are no color issues at all!). Keep up the great work!

Rob.

(Reply)

    Francois
    4 months ago


    Hi Rob,
    That is a very good point. Taking some time to make a colorblind mode or something similar looks like a good idea. No one is colorblind in our small team so we tend to forget about that issue. Thanks for reminding us.

    That being said, we are trying to focus on our gameplay right now so it might take some time before we take that time. Don’t be too insulted if our next update has no such mode, in the long run, I think everyone agrees that it is important.

    (Reply)

      Rob
      4 months ago


      Hi Francois,

      Thanks for keeping it in mind.

      All good, I wouldn’t want it being a reason for someone to not be working on game play and core functionality right now. It’s probably a late beta type of thing or even an after release patch as it would probably depend on feedback; and if you get feedback from people saying there’s no color issues in the game then there’s no need to implement it at all.

      I’m loving the game so far, also I really loved the game building blogs where your team were describing things like AI decision clouds and how you built and imported models etc! I find those articles really interesting to read about, and it makes me appreciate the effort that goes into building something like this!

      Keep up the great work.
      Rob.

Cyberhusky
4 months ago


Okay, I have to ask this.. Did you see any monkies at Ikea?

(Reply)

Myles
4 months ago


Time to claim some hugs!( remember no knife’s, shirts with poo ,mutants and the ZERG.)

(Reply)

Ruben
4 months ago


Happy new year to you to!

(Reply)

RiceKun
4 months ago


I hope someone records the IGDA Demo Night and puts it on the youtube channel. I’d love to see how the game is looking now. :)

(Reply)

Tired of Waiting
4 months ago


Maybe you should take a break after you release the game?

(Reply)

    franck
    4 months ago


    Let`s just lol at this and pass to something else.

    (Reply)

      Gorkam
      4 months ago


      LoL

Ellinas1908
4 months ago


guys great work just one thing PUT A VIDEO TO KNOW THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN PROTOTYPE AND THE STAGE YOU ARE NOW thanks. :P

(Reply)

Everest101
4 months ago


Happy New Year to the Sauropod Team.

Your game is cool as it is but I am sure it will be very different with more depth at it’s new upgrade or release. Keep up the good work. And ALL,, please just be patient. I am convinced the goddies are coming our way soon.

BTY, didn’t I read that you developped and automatic upgrade feature for the prototype? Or maybe that was for a next release (BETA)? Not a big issue but would be nice to have to get online game code refreshability throughout the testing phases.

Rock and Roll!

Now get back to work! :-)

Everest…Out!

(Reply)

Magus
4 months ago


Any chance there will be a way for those of us who found out about Castle Story AFTER the KickStarter closed to get a copy of the prototype or beta or…? I am more than willing to pay for it, either as a partial payment on the final release or as a stand alone purchase. I am sure this has been asked…over and over again…so, please, go easy on me if I missed something.

(Reply)

doodleopaper
4 months ago


hi

(Reply)

doodleopaper
4 months ago


Sorry, the submit was acting weird.
Anyways, the beta when it comes out, you can buy it correct?
Also it comes out February what again?
And where would you be able to buy the game if you can when the beta comes out.
On this website or another?
I thought it was thoughtful that you replied to Rob’s comment about the ones
who are colorblind
I agree with Big_Ben those plushies are adorable.
See you later people
doodleopaper
U.S. Utah

(Reply)

coverdriven
4 months ago


Guys, if you like Moderat, listen to Apparat or Mode Selektor, as it’s a hybrid of the two. Rusty Nails is one of my all time fave tracks. In fact, Apparat’s stuff would be a perfect inspiration for some of the backing soundtrack of the game. Other artists that spring to mind are Nils Frahm and Sasu Ripatti

greetings from Berlin

(Reply)




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