Wow, we still cant believe we started our Greenlight Campaign. We are both excited and nervous monitoring the progress of our greenlight. We chose January 16th, 2016 as the first day of our campaign. Not only a beautiful number that become the reason we pick number, we also have create our own calculation and research.
We went through our first day with weird feeling. Happy, worries, surprises and many feeling occurred when we saw the number for both YES and NO vote are increasing. We are also so nervous waiting for the comment that will be written by Steam player.
Positive comment filled with praise, happy expression and support after reviewing our page or even playing our games create a joyful emotion in our heart. Every trouble and sacrifice we made while developing Ascender since May 2015 has been paid.
While constructive input or even mockery is also become our fuel to improve Ascender. We highly appreciate the sincerity and honesty of Steam’s player with spontaneous and very attentive reaction to Ascender.
The comments do not only come from Steam Greenlight page, a few player come and visit our facebook page and web. Our friends are also both willingly and excitingly send us email containing suggestions and input. Some of them are also game designer, sound designer and game experts.
The words “Thank You” can not describe how appreciative we are to Ascenderians who play the game, voted and comment at the Stream Greenlight Page. We are continuing our journey with sky, giving the best for Ascenderians for the release version later. Keep praying and supporting us through the end of this epic journey.
It’s my first time writing this devlog. I’m Alexandrite, one of the artist, who is still coping with Alan Rickman’s death. Well, I don’t really know how to write but I’ll talk about characters in the world of Ascender.
Designing character is quite tricky, as character is the one who the player use throughout the game, so you have to make the character as lovable as possible, in many ways. Amber, our Art Director, provides me with the early sketches of the main character and then trust with the final design.
Sketches of Sky
The creation of Sky, our little robot, is the easiest since it has been decided earlier that Sky is the “little, dog-like companion”.
Sky Final DesignSketch of Ocean
Ocean’s concept is the typical “Golden hair, Ocean blue eyes” of classic beauty. It’s harder to catch her image since she’s just a little girl. I have to make her as innocent as possible while maintaining her beauty, which is not my forte. So in the end, we give her a weird hairdo with three braids. Her image keep changing, until in-game-sprites where her hair is longer, messier with platinum-blonde color instead of golden blonde, and the rings on her front braids is getting bigger
The final design and in-game sprite.
And beside the main characters, there’s also NPCs, creatures and the random villagers. It’s a new experience to design the GOA Civilization, along with it’s cultures, clothes, physical traits.
Meowl & Gnallo
The creatures, as Garnet has posted, are the fusions of animals. A weird mix, but they are quite cute, aren’t they? Meet Meowl and Gnallo! The fusion of Cat-Owl and Gnawer-Armadillo. There will be quests about them, so, prepare to cath’em all!
NPC: Villagers
About the Villagers, Honestly, i was having a hard time designing GOA Cultures. And then i was inspired by Borneo Tattoo as the main feature of their culture.
Tattoo of Goa
So, what do you think about our Characters? Or maybe you want the high-resolution tattoo design to tattoo your body…. i’ll be delighted since i can’t get myself tattoed.
Before I go, don’t forget to vote for us on Steam Greenlight
Today is a big day for GameChanger team, we have just publish our STEAM Greenlight page. We have been developing Ascender for 7 months, excluding our research and analysis phase. You have been a great audience for us and have helped us giving valuable input.
By opening ourselves in STEAM Greenlight page, we are ready to accept more input from the biggest community of PC Game player in the world. Our greenlight page can be visited at http://bit.ly/ascgreenlight or http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=578620154
Next month, we are going to launch the beta version of ascender as the final version that can be enjoyed by public before we are releasing the game for sale.
That is all from me, a short news with the biggest information from us.
Hi, guys! Happy new year to our beloved Ascenderians!!
Garnet’s here and I want to tell you a tale behind some animals in Ascender. So, it all begins when Amber, the conceptor of Goa’s civilization had a long discussion about what kind of animal should live in Goa. In the talk, I gave my idea that it should be combination with 2 or more animals and Amber added some suggestion to consider about food chain and underground adaptation of those animals.
Where’s the idea come from? Actually, it just flashed in my mind when I remembered about trending post in 9GAG about pokemon! As one of the pokemon gamer, I really love when some people makes fan arts about them. For you guys, who doesn’t know yet about Pokemon (I doubt it, cause at least we heard of it, right?!?) you can check their official web in here. But, here it comes the fantastic fan arts on 9GAG!!
A 9GAG Post about Pokemon Fusion
It is amazingly cool, isn’t it? So, I try to figure it out, when my idea and Amber’s concerns meet. I created the lowest level of the food chain first: The TONABA! This is the fusion of Plankton and Amoeba (primarily the ability to divide itself) that can live either in water or land. Actually, it won’t be visually seen in the game but I placed some images so you guys can imagine what it will looks like.
The Plankton + Amoeba ability to divide itself
The second layer of the animal food chain are a bug and a water creature. Okay, this time the inspiration wasn’t really came from me, the bug part came from Chalcedony in the time that he showed me this picture.
The Anchopper Illustration
So, what is this bug actually??? This is a kind of bug that can live amphibious, which is the combination between an anchovy and a grasshopper: The ANCHOPPER! They love to eat many tonabas one by one till they full , they also can eat leaves. Anchoppers can be found in many places inside Goa and yeah, they are really buggy (annoying) but birds and small animals love to eat them!
The Cattlefish Illustration
Next one comes from my authentic imagination. It’s a mix between a cattle and a cuttlefish : The CATTLEFISH! I know you must be wondering what it will looks like, it’s quite simple anyway: the shape are exactly the same like cuttlefish but they have a pattern on their skin like a cow. Guess what, there is a lot of inks inside cuttlefish (if you grab and squeeze a cuttlefish the ink will pop out, right), but how about cattlefish? They contain milk inside their body! So, this animal not only in the second level of food chain but it also provides the dairy need for GOA’s people! They eat tonabas all at once, anchoppers are also included.
Okay before I get too excited to write all the things in my post, I should give an end here because next our character artist, Morganite, will write about characters and animals that she already sketched and colored from my fusion idea description. Here is the clue about two animal names that Morganite already accomplished : MEOWL and GNALLO. Can you guess what’s the fusion recipe?
I’m Garnet, signing out from GameChanger’s vacation! 🙂
How time flies and suddenly it’s almost a year in developing our epic best game yet: Ascender! We have spent much of our time, thought, and treasure, for this sole reason: to finish this long-awaited game! Oh, the lost of opportunity to go for an outing, watch movies, and even to date …!
As for the time being, we have reached the alpha version milestone, packed with awesome stuffs which we ourselves find it difficult to believe. All of Game Changer crew is actively and wholly involved in assembling the pieces of Ascender.
Story team (Garnet and me) strove in inventing scenario and dialogues not only to match the grand storyline, but to actually become the heart of the entire game. Game design and programming team (Amethyst and Chalcedony) hurdled across challenges to make a fun and intuitive gameplay. Visual art team (Amber, Jade, Alexandrite, Moldavite, and Peridot) scrambled through innumerably difficult sketches and drawings. Audio team (Zircon and Citrine) never had the chance to unequip their headsets in order to produce superior tunes that blend well with the game. Garnet, Amethyst, and me also had to wrestle to make the best decision for the marketing strategy of Ascender.
If we are to reflect on this lengthy and challenging journey we traveled so far, it is suffice to say: Thanks God! The future, signified by this incoming new year, is full of shiny radiant stars of hope, floating in the sky of hope. We have high confidence and expectation to reach them, fulfilling our dreams. We will keep walking, side by side, hand in hand, our beloved brothers and sisters. Together we will keep ascending to realize the testament of Mar (late wife of Prof. Toro Hudo), that is, to give arms and legs for Ocean, their treasured daughter.
It has been sooo many features added to our beloved game, like the Rune, skills, character, cutscene, background paralax, and also the NPC. This time i will talking about Character & NPC Sound Effect.
First of all, did you know the difference between Character & NPC?
We know that Character is someone / something that we controlled in a game. NPC is different with Character. NPC (Non-Player Character) sometimes known as a non-playable character is any character that is not controlled by a player, this usually means a character controlled by the computer through artificial intelligence.
In Ascender the game, we control Sky as a character. Sky is a robot, so when I want to make sound effects for Sky, I had to make the sound as similar as possible to the sound of the robot movement.
Usually I create the sound effect from Fruity Loops Studio software & edit that sound in Audacity. Fruity loops has many great music & sound. So, I took one tune from FL and bring it to Audacity to get a great sound.
When I need a sound but not available in FL Studio, i usually record my own sound effect with simple equpment or I’ll go to the website that provides many sound effect for free license. Emmm, but to be honest I don’t like the way to find free sound from the website. So, even though I usually look for free sounds, I still combine that free sound with other sounds, so I produce a new sound. In other words, I can produce a new sound from 3 pieces free sound. Sometimes I also combine a free sound with the sound of my own record.
I will give you an example of sound effects that I use for some NPCs in Ascender The Game.
Meowl is a combine of Cat and Owl. So, i combine the sound of cat & owl here, but the sound of an owl is dominate here, because the main shape of Meowl’s body is a bird.
And Gnallo , is a combine of Gnawer and Armadillo. They are a rodent animal, so i imagine that they have many teeth, so it sounded like it lol. I don’t know what to say..lol
Hmm, just happy playing and enjoy the sound. Cheers 🙂
Welcome to this entry of the devlog. I am Chalcedony, a programmer of Ascender and also an apprentice in devlogging. Today I shall be your host in journeying through the backstage of Ascender, giving glimpses of what happened off-stage.
Let’s get acquainted first with what’s going on in the screen. As you should have known from this post, we have the so-called parallax background (and foreground)…
parallax in action
The day night cycle system…
day and night cycle
And the quest system…
quest system instance
Do you ever wonder what’s really happening outside the camera’s bounds? Well, it’s pretty ugly, I tell you, but here goes anyway…
look at what happens offscreen!
This log wouldn’t be complete without explaining what’s going on! Let’s investigate them one by one, starting with the parallax thingy.
On a 3D world, these are a no-brainer, you just move the camera and parallax effect will naturally happen. On a 2D world, these are conceptually simple, too. You just need to move the background slower, and the foreground faster. Basically, things closer to the camera move faster. It can become a hassle to setup though. For an instance, this messy setup below shows just perfect on the camera.
what a messy structure!
And then we have the day night cycle. Again, in a 3d world, sunlight can be simulated rather easily using Unity. Too bad they don’t provide 2D light! To make darker scene for night time, I just tint things at different rates. Light from lampposts are faked by shooting spotlights into the scene.
spotlight shot from the camera
Quests are supposed to be interesting. I thought of making generic quest template, but then it will only be capable of serving generic tasks (delivering things, getting x items, etc.). It would be dull and boring, right? Hence, I have to make a different script for every quest available in the game. Don’t forget to check the information provided in the pause menu when doing quests later!
map, showing quest hot spotsquest description
Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes the tour. But your quest isn’t over! Why don’t you stick yourself in the action? Grab a copy of the alpha version now, and let us know what you think!
It’s me again, Jade, the lead artist from GameChanger Team. I’m so happy to see you reading our blog until now, mwah!
So far, Ascender the Game has expanded from prototype version, to Pre Alpha Version. It has been sooo many features added to our beloved game, like the Rune, skills, character, NPCs, animation, and the most important thing is: Outdoor Background ;D
We all know that in side scrolling game, the most important thing besides the character it self is the background. Without a proper & well suited background, players won’t get the feel when playing, so we put most of our effort to create a beautifully hand drawn background.
At first, we just put our background here and there, then just edit the color a little bit and done. But, then we felt that it dosen’t feel “big” enough to represent our wonderful Goa civilization, so Amber, me, and the other artist decided to make the background with Parallax Scrolling technique
So what is parallax scrolling? here’s the sample image for parallax scrolling from wikipedia
A side view of the layers used for parallax scrolling in The Whispered World
A side view of the layers used for parallax scrolling in The Whispered World
It’s a technique in computer graphics where the background images moved by the camera slower than the foreground images, so it creates an illusion of depth in a 2D universe and enhance the immersion for the player. We use this technique to express the beautiful civilization of Goa, under the surface of the world of Ascender. Now I’ll tell you how we make it.
The first step is, we make the focus ground. Amber took charge for all the sketch after disscussing some matters with Amethyst and Calchedony. Then when the sketch done, Peridot divided the layer based from what the buildings and materials.
Raw version
grayscale version
Second, me and Moldavite start to colorize the file from Peridot, one by one, step by step until all done in perfection. We calculate the materials and texture carefully fofr the sake of semi-realism feel.
Finished Focusground. I’m satisfied with the crystal’s color ❤ Moldavite did a very good job!
Third, we polished the color, mood, etc with Amber, then Amber make another sketch for the first, second and third layer of the parallax scrolling. We made the picture while thinking about the concept art of Dolopo, it look fascinating because of the detail of the residence so Amber decided to draw the residence silhouette, colored with brownish orange watercolor for the 3rd layer, reddish orange and brownish yellow for the second and first layer. By the waayyy we colorize this parallax background layer with water color! woooooott
when I look at the water colored background for the first time, i thought it won’t work well with the focus ground. The technique is far different digital and manual, so obvious, right?) the contrast is too off, the texture and feel is different, and so on. But then Fire edit the images with all his might, night and day, and the result were suuper gorgeous when combined with the focus ground.
Implementation of the watercolored parallax background, beautiful isn’t it?
Then we move to the foreground. We made this foreground to deepen the immersive feelings trough the gameplay, add dimensions and enhance the realistic feelings. All the foreground made carefully to not block the players eyes to seeing Sky walking around back and forth exploring the area.
After done with the foreground, then Calchedony set the camera movement for each layers, set the lighting, and so on.
And here’s the result!
Ascender the Game with parallax scrolling technique background
You’ll experience the beautifully done parallax technique for the rest of the game on Pre Alpha Version, so don’t forget to download the game, leave a comment and follow us here and on Facebook for more info about Ascender the Game! ;D
We were invited to attend Game Developer Gathering (GDG) Prime, which is the biggest event attended by hundreds of game developers across Indonesia. All of the studios were showing off the best game they made, whether it has been released or was still in development, to the thousands of visitors. So, it has been a pleasure to us and we are very happy to be in this event. It took a whole month of preparation to make Ascender’s showcase all out.
Three weeks before the event, we setted up some Ascender merchandise bundles with flash disk, mouse pad, and soundtrack CD inside each of it. Appreciating all Ascenderians who already enthusiastically responded our masterpiece and can’t hardly wait for the release version, is our intention in making this bundle.
Ascender Merchandise Bundle for Ascenderians in GDG Prime
The fans were interested in ordering this bundle, though most of them are our friends, hehehe. There’s one funny story regarding this matter when a junior high school who lives in a rural area ordered the bundle because he likes Ascender so much! The problem is he didn’t have any bank account, nor did he knew how to send an electronic payment. The only mean of payment that he knew is money order via post office, which none of us were really familiar of!
We were shocked and moved by this kid. We decided to just send the bundle for our little fan. It is really precious for us, a small studio that has just freshly started to build fan base, considering what this boy had shown, the appreciation, the zest and the interest. Thank you Ascenderians!
We began by preparing Ascender’s booth. By 8 AM, the booth hasn’t finished, yet some visitors had already demanded to play our Ascender’s Prototype! Our booth was always crowded in the whole day, we didn’t get a slightest chance to rest in order to accompany Ascenderians playing our game. We also held a contest to find an in-game Easter egg that specially purposed for this event only.
I think these images are enough in describing the crowd and the gusto in our booth! Check this out folks!
The GameChanger Girls GankzBack Pose of Our Boys GankzGameChanger Team in Front of The BoothLimbless Ocean and Her Imposter.Ascenderians Guys Playing and Watching AscenderThe Artist Guiding Ascender GameplayAscenderians is Trying PrototypeOur Creative Director Watching a Publisher Guy Trying Our PrototypeAscenderian Couple Took a Photo in Our BoothFirst Trio Took a Photo with B.ROSecond Trio Took a Photo with Dolopo Background
We conlude that this event is AWESOMELY CRAZY!!!
The expression of countless people who tried our game can’t be described in words. It really boosted our spirit up to finish Ascender and bring crowds across the world and even the galaxy to enjoy Sky’s enigmatic journey with sweet Ocean! Once again thank you so much Ascenderians!!
Today, I, Chalcedony, the programmer of Ascender, also an intern in devlogging, am going to tell you an important element of Ascender – the rune system. But before we start, let me give you a sneak peek at what feature is being cooked in our kitchen. It’s your turn, Sky!
Yes, drag it along, Sky.
Yes, we plan to extend the usage of hook, so you soon will be able to see Sky happily yanking boxes around Dolopo. Oh, about Dolopo, here’s an animated GIF showing sketches of that city.
Dolopo. Oh, please ignore those odd sprites at the beginning of this GIF. That’s solely for testing.
Enough peeking! Without further ado, let’s get into the rune system! What is rune, you say? Hey, don’t make that what’s-wrong-by-not-knowing-it face! Check this blog post by Amethyst, you will get an explanation why it’s so awesome that it brought us the title “Leading Engineers of Game Mechanics” from Compfest, a prestigious information technology event in Indonesia. Or better yet, play the prototype now!
Alternatively, I’ll just be nice and once again copy-paste his explanation for you.
“So what is Rune? Rune is type of stone that can be found by the player. Each rune can equip Sky with new skill in order to explore the world of Ascender. The trick is that each rune can be only equipped in a limited slot. Player need to figure out how to equip rune effectively and efficiently”.
Rune system
You might have known from the image (or by playing the prototype) that the rune system is placed on a triangular grid. I found that triangular grid suits well with what we need – a simple grid type so anyone would have no trouble fitting the rune in, but not too simple to maintain the ‘puzzleness’ and to preserve some rooms to make it more interesting.
This rune system is appealing, but we want to make it fascinating. We have considered some ideas, such as combining runes to produce new skills, e.g. Fire + Run = able to walk on fire, Strong + Hook = able to pull heavier blocks, etc. We also thought about more rune placement rules, such as which rune must be put close to each other, and which should not, and its consequences.
Along with those thoughts, we also want the rune system to develop as the game progresses. Runes (and slots for runes) will be awarded upon quest completion, and maybe at some other rare occasions.
Now you know the charm of rune system in Ascender, let’s talk a bit about the implementation, a.k.a. the annoying math and programming stuffs. First thing first: How can we construct a coordinate system for this grid? Actually, there has already some solutions on the net, with this being on top of the search result:
Example of a coordinate system for triangular grid
The implementation was straightforward. Here, we choose (0, 0, L) as the origin, and assign the triplet (x, y, z) to each triangle slot, with x and y being integers and z being L or R. Note that for each increment of x by 1, we move right exactly 1 triangle length, and for each increment of y by 1, we move up exactly 1 triangle height, and right by 0.5 triangle length. If z is L, the triangle is upright, but if it is R, it is upside down and shifted right by 0.5 unit of triangle length.
Then another problem jumped out when we needed the rune so it can be rotated. Now how do you map some point to another when it is rotated around the origin by 60 degrees? Try it – you will know that it’s not a trivial process (except maybe you are some geometry whiz, that’s it).
Rotating the rune. Note that each rotation is exactly 60 degrees.
After some hours thinking, I decided to play with some other coordinate system, like this one below.
Some weird coordinate system for the triangular grid
Now, the coordinate only needs x and y, but it omit some points as it is not valid to put a triangle in, such as point (0, 0). All valid points have odd y coordinate. Moreover, we need to derive a formula to know whether the triangles should be upright or upside-down. On top of that, the distance in y-axis is shorter than x-axis (it’s approximately 0.87 times, = 0.5 tan 60)). It looks totally uglier than what we had before. But, by some magic process, I then found a way to map it!
Imagine we are to rotate point (x, y) by 60 degrees. By using rotation matrix, we have the new point (x’, y’) to be (x cos 60 – y sin 60, x sin 60 + y cos 60). But remember that the y-axis is ‘shorter’ by half of tan 60 times than the x-axis! All in all, it turns out to be easier after we done those trigonometry calculations. Aw, yeah! Simply put, convert from integer coordinate to Cartesian, do rotation, then convert back to our integer coordinate system.
Well, that’s one problem about Ascender’s rune system solved. But we still have plenty things to experiment with, and we need your help for that! Remember about making it fascinating? How about some suggestions in these things.
What other platforming skills would you like to see?
Is combining runes compelling? What rune combination do you suggest?
What rune placement rule do you think is intriguing? Are there any game which you must put puzzle piece in interesting ways?
Do you have any ideas to make the rune system (or even the whole game) more engaging?
If you have any thoughts, fill the comment section below and we will be very glad to hear it.
Now, for a closing, check out Ascender’s Starter Bundle: You’ll get the release version of Ascender (when it is released, of course), together with some exclusive rare items, such as digital wallpaper, soundtrack, mouse pad, and a 4GB flash disk! As a bonus, we also included 3 of our games inside! Alas, it’s for sale in Indonesia only, though.
Ascender starter bundle
Whew, this is the longest blog entry so far, but now is the time for us to part. Always keep this blog in sight, though, as future updates might pop up anytime soon! Thanks for reading!
