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.
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.
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!
We finally meet again. It is me, Amethyst, the lead designer of Ascender. Today I would like to share an amazing news for all of you. We have just competed at one of the biggest IT event in Indonesia called COMPFEST or Computer Festival 2015 in One of the category that is Indie Game Ignite. It is a tough competition, other finalist have a good game but we are very happy that we eventually received 2nd place 😀
The Awards
As the game designer, one of the best moment is when the game also receive the title Leading Engineers of Game Mechanics. The title means that our gameplay mechanics has impress the jury compared to other games. It boost our confidence for what we have designed but also give us more pressure to maintain the quality of the game.
One of the feature that is being highlighted by the jury is the rune system. They thought the system is unique, even though some other game use a similar system. They said that similar mechanics never really implemented in a explorative platformer.
Rune Console
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.
They also mentioned that we have to be careful in puzzle based game. We have to make sure that the puzzle is both challenging and interesting to the player. We also need to really focus on the PC audience and look on what kind of successful game that use puzzle as the main theme.
It is an interesting experience for us, we are glad that we received a lot of input from the jury, our fellow finalist and also visitors to our booth. Before I end this post, In commemoration of our win in COMPFEST 2015, I announce that the prototype of the game is now available to download in IndieDB. Don’t forget to download, play and the most important thing is give us your feedback.
