DEVLOG#32 – Designing the Puzzles

Hello Ascenderians,

Can’t believe that it is my turn to write, it has been a challenging weeks toward the next version of our game.

During testing, some players said that the “Boss” Puzzle in Ascender is quite intense. Well, as a designer I never really think that the puzzle that they describe is actually a Boss puzzle. I like to all it Intense Puzzle where player is given a task to complete a puzzle with a pressure (it can be time or annoyance).

I use Intense Puzzle is used for two purpose,  first to validate that user know how to use certain skill and the second is truly a challenge for the player to face in order to progress the game.

The first example of Intense Puzzle is B.RO Puzzle in the beginning of the game. I use the puzzle to validate the skill that is newly acquired skill (Double Jump and Hook) and let B.RO chase them down in order to heighten the intensity of play. We even test the player to use the skill accordingly in order to get away from B.RO

Run !!! Sky… Sun !!!

After this player are tasked to finish not so obvious puzzle, and I call it hidden puzzle. This type of puzzle is where player probably saw an item but can not get into it. Some puzzle can not be directly solved since some of them uses skill that player may not have yet. In the public preview, there are a lot of these type of puzzle that you can found.

Well, I need the box to jump higher.

Player will not also find many type of puzzle, there are also quest that is affected by circumstances of the world. This quest includes a race with nippytron, capturing pet called gnallo and many more. Try out the public preview in order to find more type of this gameplay.

Let the race begin!!!

There are more type of puzzle in Ascender but mainly it is the variation or combination of puzzle that I just mentioned above. I guess that is all from me right now, see you in another discussion.

 

Best Regards,

Amethyst

DEVLOG#31 – Creating the Dynamic Environment [Intern’s Journal]

Hey guys, I’m the new intern on the team. They call me Hessonite in the team and this is my first time writing a blog. So, on this very first blog, I’m going to talk about what am I doing on the team. Here I go!

So, let’s imagine a game take place in spaceship with some monitors. Then imagine if those monitors shows some numbers,  blinking lights, and maybe a rotating cube. Those animated monitors is what you want to call as dynamic environments. Don’t you think some moving objects could make an environment look more real and lively? Well, that’s what dynamic environment is all about. As you can guess by now, I’m in charge of dynamic environment for Ascender, and I’ll give some examples of what it’s going to look like.

Linear Glow for Open Mustang Puzzle Environment

This animated line is pretty simple to make actually. You just need to make a line with pen tool on After Effects and give that line a trim path effect.  What does trim path do? It gives the line a write on effect by manipulating the end value. If you set the end value to 0, the line will look like this.

Linear Glow – Frame 0

And if you set it to 100, the line will look like this.

Linear Glow – Frame 100

If you set the 0 value at frame 0 and set the 100 value at frame 100, your line will move exactly like the animation above. Pretty neat isn’t it? It doesn’t look all that great, does it? Well, that’s because I have limitations of how big the file size can be. It is understandable if you count all of these dynamics I have made for the game (more than 20, and it’s increasing). Just Imagine if every of them have the size of 100 MB, Ascender  size will become big, so big that you have to spend more time to download it. #sizematters

Here’s some of the dynamic environment that I have made for Ascender.

Medical Center Screen

Static Noise on City Board

I think that’s it for now. I have said what I wanted to say. See you later guys.

DEVLOG#30 – Irritating Implementation of Platforming Predicament, Part IV: Shader

Oh hello there, guys! Here already? Come on in! There are pictures to feast on and stories to savor, so pick a comfortable place to sit and eat well.

Haven’t I introduced myself yet? Well, if you follow this blog from the beginning, you surely must know that I am Chalcedony, one of the programmers of Ascender. Well you know what – now I’m not an intern anymore in devlogging – I am a full-fledged one!

Here we go, the appetizer: sneak peeks! The never-ever-seen-before scenes are ready for your eyes only! [*Plays awesome sound effect*]

Firstly, we have the tendrils. Sky can jump on and off it. Note how they react accordingly to sky’s movement.

Do the villagers climb on them too?

This kind of trampoline is also fun for some boing-boing. Hold the jump button for more air time.

Trampoline image just for placeholder.

How defying gravity sounds? You can climb wall and even fall into the horizon.

The house is still in repair, no worries.

For today’s special, we serve shaders. What is a shader, you ask? Wikipedia says “a program that tells a computer how to draw something in a specific and unique way”. Shader is used for special (and not-so-special) effects, like these.

Remember this big robot? His laser effect was my first shader creation (not counting failures, of course)!

The rune stays intact, so why sky does not?

The layer where sky is standing is affected by the light from the lamp, whereas the background and the foreground are not. Just shader.

Villagers have nothing to do, so they spend the whole day standing there.

Even simple menus need shader to clip the items so they are not rendered off-window.

Why so many tasks for so little robot?

Look closely, the water distorts the scenery behind it. How to do it? Shader.

It distorts my sanity too.

Contrast to C# in terms of language, one should use Cg/HLSL language when creating shader in Unity. The scripts below both are for B.RO, the left one is written in C# for controlling the movement, and the right one is in Cg for you know, shading.

These are among the first scripts for this game! Bad, bad scripts.

 Those two look alike, but in truth are quite huge in difference! Debugging is especially a hell in shading. You will often end up with this kind of result…

Error in shader equals magenta for you. My favorite color!

Of course without you knowing what’s wrong. For some cases, Unity will be a good guy and tell you (approximately) which line caused the shader into haywire. Granted, I am by no means a master in shading, but still, when you went to fix the line, then it goes boom…

Very menacing water.

Gah! Dealing with these stuffs always drives me to my boiling point!

Anyway, that’s all for today’s meal! Did you enjoyed it? What now, you need dessert too? If you are still craving for more, be sure to play our public preview now, and let us know what’s on your mind!

Wow, it’s been ages since my last post, but now we must apart once more. Fret not, we will prepare more special dishes for you to relish, so stay tuned, and eat well. Bye!

 

DEVLOG#29 – Perfect Fifth: Power of Beauty

Hey hey it’s me again, the music composer. Zircon’s the name, I think. I don’t really know what I wanna talk about right now, so I’ll just talk about whatever I’m doing right now. Good luck reading this.

 

Well things are kinda rough right now. Aside from being an <sarcastictone>awesome music composer</sarcastictone>, I have these other annoying responsibilities in my life as well. In fact, most of the team does. Well some of us are full-timer, but the rest have another job for a living. Lecturers, teachers, librarian, even college students are doing their best managing their time. Me? Not so much. Lately my focus is too unevenly-divided. I still come to the studio, ideas for music still come to my head, but I have these other things and projects I can’t stop thinking about. To be honest I’m kinda jealous of the other who manage to focus 100% to whatever they’re doing lol.

 

Oh I mentioned about ideas, didn’t I. I’ve been experimenting recently. Mostly about instruments, some about music ideas, and some about technical things. Since I’m still struggling to find what I want to talk about right now, maybe I’ll talk about those.

 

You see, the songs I’ve made so far don’t really have much variation for the instruments. I mostly use strings, harp, flute, percussion, and some guitar riffs for quest songs. All songs you hear in the alpha version only have those. Of course I did make plan for the future that contains more than those, but I still think there’s something missing. Shortly we’ll release beta version and there will be more area you can explore, which means more songs too. I think there are like 4 or five more songs, I forget. But the thing is, the atmosphere for the new songs more or less is similar to the songs you’ve already heard in the alpha version. At least to me anyway. People in the team haven’t said anything so far, so maybe it’s just me. But still, I’m not satisfied. That’s why I started experimenting on new instruments.

 

Dolopo in the alpha version has not fully revealed. There are more areas you can explore in Dolopo when the beta version is released. There are different songs when you walk in certain areas, and these are what I’ve been experimenting on. One song I’m really satisfied with is the song for government area (yes, there’s a government area in a game about quadruple amputee blonde girl and a bipedal Roomba). In this song I only use three instruments, flute, viola, and harpsichord. If you have watched some movies where there are kings and evil kings and dragons and castle and stuffs, chances are you’ve heard what harpsichords sound like. They look like pianos, but sound thinner and more trebly.

Inverted key color is not mandatory

I always wanted to do something with the harpsichord just because I think it sounds really beautiful. For the government area I wanted the song to have a bit medieval feeling in it, so I was sure this instrument was what I just needed.

 

Now let’s move on to the music itself. I use dorian mode for this song with a LOT of fifth harmony. This type of harmony is what you get when you combine a note with the note that is four notes away in the scale. For example, let’s say you have a C major scale, which consists of the following notes: C, D, E, F, G, A, and B.

The last C is not mandatory

If you played an F note and wanted to add the fifth harmony of it, just count to four from F. So from F it would be G-A-B-C. So the fifth harmony for F note in C major scale is C. Play both of them together, and you get the fifth harmony. There are a lot of these pairs. You can combine one note with another that is one note away, or two, 3, 4, and so on and so forth. Usually what you hear in the radio or MTV (wait, does MTV even play music anymore?) just use the third harmony, which is two notes away. This is fine and I use them a lot too, but fifth harmony works much more beautifully for this kind of song.

 

The fifth harmony is also known as the perfect fifth. It’s the most “stable” and “colorless” out of all the harmonies, hence the name. If you play guitar and people often struggle to read the logo of your favorite bands, you’re probably already familiar about the term “power chords”. You know, that chord when you only play two string (usually the 6th and 5th or the 5th and 4th) and mute the rest?

Pink beard is not mandatory

Yeah, that’s an application of the perfect fifth as well. If you play it, it will still sound like the root note, albeit “bigger” sound is achieved. It doesn’t color the sound in a certain way. It’s just “perfect”.

 

Well, I think it’s enough for now. Other songs in the beta version are pretty much just old ideas I had, so this is the “newest” one I’ve made. For beta version, that is. Of course there are more to come, but I think you can only hear them in the full version, so be sure to check it out when it’s released. That’s it folks, you can close this now. You really need to finish those assignments you left hours ago. Good luck and be happy, okay? ❤

DEVLOG#28 – Let The Story Begin…

For hundreds of years, harmony has left the world of Ascender. It was once a captivating habitat for celestials, humans and creatures that live in unity. These humanoids were living in magnificent environment made by placid surroundings and they work together in balance. However, there is no such thing called perfection…

The Celestials, felt their existence threatened due to being outnumbered by humans, combined their power and bring the lands towards the sky, calling it Atlas, and creating their own civilization. Below Atlas, they created a barrier called Ut by bringing up water terrains. Enraged by their action, The Scientists decided to build a floating island using science and advanced technologies in order to reclaim their beautiful land. They call this floating island, Spunk Island. The rest of the civilization was left on Ataran, the cracked ground full of sulfuric gas.

Civilization Divisions Concept Art

Professor Toro Hudo was an inventor and key person in Ataran’s civilization. He was betrayed and deserted by Spunk Island developers, but his big heart and wisdom has kept him away from revenge. With his wife, Marr Hudo, he decided to stay in poisonous Ataran land and help others by making equipment for them. Both of them didn’t have any child, they were living in modesty and humble life with one goal: everyone in Ataran can get a better life. They invented survival tools for individuals, families, humanoids, and animals in poisonous environment, then they get foods and raw materials supplies in return.

Ataran’s Concept Art

One day, Professor Toro Hudo was on his way exploring Ataran, he saw a shiny light in the shade of clouds. A golden-haired limbless baby was going down rapidly from the Ut direction straight to his standing area. He caught her and saw her eyes, strong intense feelings made him hug her tight and tears just came out. Realizing that the baby couldn’t survived long in Ataran, he took the baby to an undiscovered area deep down in the world of Ascender… to a mythical area… to a place where it all starts…. Goa…

Dolopo – The Central Capital of Goa

DEVLOG#27 – Playing with Water….

Hello all, it is now Amethyst writing the blog and we finally meet again to talk about game design aspect of Ascender. Lets begin and get wet!

One of the new element in Mustang that will be part of game play element is water. The water element is inspired when I played Splatoon, I love how they incooperate splating ink into the game. For those who don’t know the game, you can check out video below and if you have a Wii U you should consider to put the game into your collection.

Mustang is the center of farming  activities of GOA’s civilization. After thinking and experimenting a lot on creating water based puzzle, we decided that water is going to be one of the hazard that the player need to avoid. We are also able to control the flow of water in some part of the water to solve the puzzle. Well, water is going to be a central theme for puzzle in Mustang.

Well, lets see the water in Action 🙂

View post on imgur.com

As you can see the water is flowing down as it is triggered. The question is why does Sky need to do it? Well, we can actually move item from one place to another using the water 🙂 So you need to be witty in order to finish the puzzle.

Here’s a variation of puzzle where sky not only need to figured out how to get to the lever but also need to figured how to do it before the water is flooding up. Wait, what is that box with a target in the middle of it? Well, it is another new puzzle element to play with 😀

I want to show more but we can’t wait for all of you to test the puzzles yourself. We are currently preparing something for all of you to test, hopefully next week you can try it all out.

Cheers,

Amethyst

DEVLOG#26 – Alaka-Zoom!

Hello there!!

It’s Kunzite here, junior programmer in GameChanger Team and another first timer writer in this blog. In this team, I am responsible to merge and organize the game contents and for today I am the host for this tour of development of Ascender.

As you guys have already seen, we have a team of great artists who have given their wonderful hand drawn artworks into this game and it would be wasted if we don’t display it into the screen, right? In the other hand, we can’t (and we won’t) display everything in the screen so you won’t see the bad side parts off-screen (secrets of the puzzle in the game :3). To do that, we need to adjust the camera in some parts of the game to give you just a perfect view and not ruin your pleasure playing this game. I am doing it by separating the scene by different regions. Then we gave those regions some identifier and attributes so the camera can identify which region it’s belong to. Each region has their own attribute and one of them is called “camera size”. When the camera enter a region, it will access the region’s camera size attribute and the camera will slowly move to that size either it’s moving forward or backward and give a great sensation. If you want to learn more about camera in 2D games, you can check this which gives great information about 2D games camera. Here is the view of the zoom effect I was babbling about.

Alaka-Zoom ~~

Now I want to show you Sky’s new ability. If you played our alpha test (I’m sure you guys did), you will know that Sky can swing around by the hook, right. Now, there is some special skill where he can pull himself to the hook, hang in there for a while, then launch to a destined direction.

Go Sky !!

Well, that’s all for now guys. Stay tuned in this blog, there will be something special soon. Don’t let yourself miss that. Keep calm and peace out.

 

Kunzite.

DEVLOG#25 – Mustang It!

I’m not sorry for that title. Hi! The name’s Peridot and I’m part of the Art team here, nice to meet you all. Today is my first time writing here, more like first time ever writing something like this, so I’m going to try my best. Today’s topic’s about the new district: Mustang (Duh!), especially the art part (or that’s as far as I can go).

First of all, happy D-1 valentine’s day! I’ve never celebrated it, but I do understand that there’re several ways to celebrate this day all over the world (Fun fact: I just read the Wikipedia, LOL). Based on that, thank you for following us up until now and on behalf of the team I’d say, we really love you and here’s a poem for you:

“The rose is red, the violet’s blue,

The honey’s sweet, and so are you.
Thou art my love and I am thine;
I drew thee to my Valentine:
The lot was cast and then I drew,

And Fortune said it shou’d be you.”

-Gammer Gurton’s Garland (1784)
(Yes, I’m a lazy person)

Back onto business, before I start explaining, I want to refresh your memory regarding Ascender. This is the concept world of Ascender, written by the art director Amber. Also, Ruby, our scriptwriter told you about the districts exist in Goa, here.

Now that your Ascender’s memories have returned and you have basic info of Mustang, let’s talk for real. As written by Ruby, Mustang’s the source of food for the citizens of Goa. If you’ve played our alpha game (which can be found here), you’re playing the district’s below Mustang called Dolopo. You could see that Dolopo has a lot of brown colors with all those metal-thingamabobs whereas Mustang has a lot of greens, due to, yes, you guessed it right: its farm fields among other things.

Mustang Focus Ground

Dolopo Focus Ground

 

 

Can you spot the differences?

There aren’t a lot of buildings here (compared to Dolopo of course), because the farms are the main feature in Mustang. Its farm fields based on an agriculture technique called ‘terracing’. I helped with the drawing on the farm fields behind the focus ground using traditional watercolors with a little digital polishing (We do have technology). Oh yeah, to be able to make the crops grow properly until harvest time, they used an artificial sunlight. Well, I don’t know what to explain anymore about the Mustang situation, so here are more sneak peek of Mustang.

More Mustang PIc

More and More Mustang

Terrace Rice Field in Indonesia

Now, let’s talk about the animals that live in Mustang. Now as stated before, Mustang’s the place for food for the citizens of Goa which mean a lot of animals live here, heck you can find most animal species in Goa here! For example Tonaba, it’s a (not)precious microscopic creature that helps fertilizing soils here. Also there’re Garsels which help with transportation individually. Mass transportation handled by Millithropode et cetera et cetera… I don’t want to give out too much spoiler, let the others do it for me LOL. Anyway, below are sneak peek concept of the creatures I mentioned before:

Tonaba

Garsel

That’s it for today! Stay updated, and if you haven’t tried our game, do try it and tell us what you think! Any feedbacks are really appreciated. We are trying our best! Thanks~

Last, but not least, again thank you very much, see you again and have a wonderful day!

Signing off,

Peridot

DEVLOG#24 – Quick tour of Dolopo from within

Hi!! I am Moldivite from GameChanger Team, I am a junior 2d artist. Today, it will be my task to deliver you some of insight regarding our game development. I will give you a quick tour of inside Dolopo.

Our art director, Amber, given the task to develop the Interior of Dolopo to Fire (the intern) and me.It will be the last task for Fire and we will be missing him for sure. Now lets start talking about Interior!!!

In the process of making it unique we have to know what is the purpose or intent of the buildings. It does not need to be complicated, the building purpose can be simple. Such as, hotel is the place to stay, hospital is where citizen have rest and treatment, and post office is where people send letters. Knowing how the building works also help us creating more details in the interior. We can design items that is present within the building. I will give some interior breakdown in Dolopo, for now which interior get my breakdown list is, post office, medical center and research center.

 

POST OFFICE

Post office dolopo city

The first to breakdown is post office.

First thing to do is draw a sketch of the post office, this is done by Fire, with direction from our art director, Amber. Following picture is an early sketch of the post office, early sketch by Fire is only the focus ground.

Sketch of post office

Can be seen on sketch, there are registration desk, a delivery room and  letters and meowl placefor takes rest, meowl itself is the sender of the letter in Goa.

after receiving the focus ground, it is my turn to digitalize the post office, following picture is the results of digital.

Digitalize post office

After converted to digital, post office look more attractive isn’t it?

You can see the top right spot for meowl, I added some hay there. Because that is a place for meowl to rest and gather (after a long journey full of peril to deliver mail), so I though that place should look comfortable enough for meowl. And don’t forget about background in the interior.

Here’s backround that has been applied to the focusground.

Post office with background

At the center of the background right behind the registration desk, there is a map on the wall and a closet containing a stack of books and letters, the map on the wall is to facilitate the mailer in showing their destination.

Now let’s look at the space coordinate the delivery at the bottom left. On the walls there are little notes which contain details of shipments. This is done in order to not misdirected the sending all packages or letters in sent order, because if something goes wrong the blame is on poor meowl (lol, jk)

Overall background made darker because of the geographical location of the post office itself is located at the bottom of town Dolopo.

 

MEDICAL CENTER

Medical center dolopo city

Just like post office area, we get started with a sketch first.

Medical centre sketch

In the sketch, there are two mattresses rest and space registration or space for registration. There is also an upstairs room, but the upstairs room is not accessible. The upstairs room was made to show that at the medical center is not a small building which have some medical tools that can not be seen on the 1st floor, such as wheelchairs and oxygen tanks on top.

Digitalize medical center

After I finish with the digitalization, I made the top room that can not be accessed darker. So players can focus on the bottom ground. The interior is quite small this time, because the concept of this medical center is not a hospital but just a health center.

RESEARCH CENTRE

Exterior of research center 

If we look at the research centre exterior, we can imagine that this building will have a large interior with a more advanced technology than the other buildings in Dolopo.

Therefore, Fire make escalator in the interior, because the research center itself has two floors. Let we see the research center sketch by Fire.

Sketch of research center 1st floor 

Sketch of research center 2nd floor

This time we get a two sketch from Fire, on the first floor focus ground sketch directly exposed to the escalator. Fire itself received a referral from Amber that sky is not too explore part of the 1st floor and was immediately directed to the second floor.

On the second floor, the escalator was immediately arrived at scientist’s room, there is a research table with reaction tube, bookcase and a computer along with the server. At the top there is a box containing the material, tools and equipment for research.

The following image is the digitalization of the research center

Digitalize interior research center

After digitalizing and combining 2 floors you’ll see a different, yap right, there is an additional 1 room below focus ground 2nd floor, and a tube in it side. The addition of the interior is done because if  directly added and incorporated into Unity program there will be gaps at the bottom 2nd floor and under the gate on the 2nd floor, and make the focus ground drift.

Even after, digitilization is done the room still looks a little less so visible as a research center of the building. That is why we are now strengthten the background so that it looks more to be as research center.

Interior research center with background

Well, after I give a background to that picture, is that starting to look like a research center isn’t? The emphasis of the research center looks at some of the tubes in the first floor which coated glass. Glass coatings emphasize that there’s research on the unknown danger that awaits and not known by the scientist by doing that research,

With background tubes and glass,we can show that this is indeed a big research center just as seen on the exterior. Background wall that seemed neat and simple make an hygienic impression on the interior. Hygienic itself is one trait that is guarded by the scientist.

So….

Differences in the making exteriror environement and interior environment are in the manufacturing background. Interior does not as complicated as GOA exterior creation that uses parallax, it only uses one background image file.

So this is all from me about  interior in Cental Capital Dolopo,

Stay tune in ascender devblog for another interior breakdown from me moldovite

Moldovite over and out.. 🙂

DEVLOG#23 – Ascender Has Been GREENLIT!

Big thanks to the positive and enthusiastic support from the Community. Ascender: The Enigmatic Journey has been Greenlit in 2 weeks and will come to Steam marketplace in the middle of 2016!

Thank you for all the votes, shares and comments over the past weeks. The game has come a long way with over several months of development time and we’re so excited to finally complete and release it to a wider audience.

We don’t have the exact release date, but we’ll post a new announcement here as soon as things are set in stone. In the meantime, if you’d like to receive our regular updates, feel free to follow Ascender’s Facebook Page and Twitter ..

~ Captain