DEVLOG#21 – The People and Creatures of Ascender

Hello. Ascenderians!

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.

The creation of Sky, our little robot, is the easiest since it has been decided earlier that Sky is the “little, dog-like companion”.

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

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.

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!

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.

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

Alexandrite, Log out~

DEVLOG#20 – We are on STEAM Greenlight

Dear Ascenderians,

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.

Regards,

Amethyst

DEVLOG#16 – Irritating Implementation of Platforming Predicament, Part III: Parallax, Day Night System, and Quests

Hi Ascenderians, nice day to you!

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)…

The day night cycle system…

And the quest system…

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…

sebelah — 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.

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.

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!

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!

Ta-ta for now!

Chalcedony

DEVLOG#15 – ParaParaParallax!

Hello Ascenderians!

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

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.

prof house 4 grayscale — 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.

prof house4 demo — 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.

dolopo sample — 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!

ezgif.com-video-to-gif — 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

Untill we meet again!

Jade

DEVLOG#08 – We won something huge.. thanks to our Rune System

Hello all Ascenderians,

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 😀

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.

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.

That is all Ascenderians 🙂

Regards,

Amethyst

DEVLOG#07 – Districts in GOA

Hello Ascenderians,

It is my first time being a scriptwriter. Usually I become a producer which responsibility isn’t directly connected with the game development. The first thing I did was researching information regarding script, walkthrough and dialogue in the game. I also quickly learn about the responsibility and duty of a scriptwriter in the game.

The truth is…. Theory is always different from practice !!

It is not easy to create a story for a complex game with many elements. Not only the story, I also need to create a number of quest concepts that will be implemented in Ascender. After trying some variation of story and quest style, I almost gave up and stopped writing.

However, one day when I researched quest walkthrough of some adventure game, I truly realize the meaning of Ascender. Long story short… I take the basic meaning of Ascender and connect it with my hobby from a long time ago, which was hiking. I research several beautiful mountains in the world and look deeper on its uniqueness. I decided to use Himalaya Mountains as the main inspiration in developing cities in Goa’s civilization.

Why did I start the story development of Ascender from its cities? I did it because I believe that adventure platformer games need to have a clear and understandable world. I am also certain that by starting to develop the city with its uniqueness, it will create a clear and related quest within the world.

Goa is the civilization that is located underground. The civilization provide its power, light and water artificially. The land and ceiling structure is developed efficiently for transportation and other living facilities.

Ascender Sketch

There are eight districts in Goa’s civilization which some of the districts’ name is taken from Himalaya’s mountain area (Everest and Mustang). Everest is a holy district where the citizens do their divine ritual. Mustang is a farm and plantation area that provides food for the whole citizen.

DOLOPO (Central City)

It is the residential, educational and business central for all Goa’s citizen. DOLOPO name is taken from regency in East Java, Indonesia. DOLOPO is the center where people gather and commune.

MAGALO (Ancient Districts)

MAGALO is the ancient civilization that provides the technology for DOLOPO. There is no historical information regarding about the city.

RANESH (Forging Area)

Physical and structural condition of Goa’s civilization relies on metal such as iron, aluminum and other mineral. It is also used to create various utensils for household and industry. RANESH provides a workshop to produce such tools.

HYMLA (Mining Areas)

As mentioned before, Goa is located underground. No wonder, there are a lot of minerals found in the area. HYMLA is the place where mineral is primarily mined because it contains the richest mineral in Goa’s civilization.

HELION (Techno Area)

The ancient technology used in Goa can control and maintain many facilities in Goa. It is computerized which contradicts its surrounding. HELION is comprised of servers and system maintained by technician. The area has become the backbone of the civilization.

RAJUMLA (Energy Area)

RAJUMLA area contains a unique mineral called onyx rune that is different from what being mined in HYMLA. Onyx rune contains special energy to support whole Goa’s activities from small daily chores to a complex task of maintaining public facilities.

That’s all from me…

Cheers,

Ruby

DEVLOG#05 – Irritating Implementation of Platforming Predicament, Part I: Basic Character Control

Hello Ascenderians!

I’m Chalcedony, the programmer of Ascender, also a part-timer in devlog writing. Programming Ascender has been a great challenge for me as none of my previous projects are of this level of difficulty. Having said that, I would like to share how complex to code Ascender is, a task that might look simple, but really it isn’t.

As you might have known by now, Ascender is a 2D explorative metroidvania-like game, with a dash of RPG elements. Well, there is actually so much to code. Besides the usual main menu, pause function, etc., which are found in almost all games, some of them are (in no particular order):

Character movement (how he moves, including his skills such as double jump, wall jump, etc.)
Environment (moving platforms, floor switches)
Inventory
Dialogues (managing who talks what given current condition, e.g. possess an item, undergone a quest, different talk between night and day)
Quest and event system (trigger cutscene or unlock quests when certain condition occurred)
Camera movement
AI for monsters (mainly bosses)
Input management (interfacing different input methods: keyboards, joysticks)
Rune system

FYI, rune system is an element unique to Ascender. Think of it as a crossover between jigsaw and skillset manager… You gain the abilities by placing the jigsaw pieces! This feature is so *IMPORTANT* that it deserves its own page… Keep your eyes peeled for information on future updates!

In-game rune system

Ascender is a platformer game, and I’ll be nice to copy-paste Wikipedia about the definition of platformer games (after all, that’s what all programmers are master at – copy-pasting).

A platform game (or platformer) is a video game which involves guiding an avatar to jump between suspended platforms, over obstacles, or both to advance the game. (taken from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platform_game)

Now, there is this guy named Rodrigo who wrote about platformer types. The original article can be found in http://higherorderfun.com/blog/2012/05/20/the-guide-to-implementing-2d-platformers/ . Summarised, depending on the implementation, there are four ways to create platformer games.

Tile-based (e.g. Lode Runner)
Smooth tile-based (e.g. Megaman, Super Mario, Metroid, Contra)
Bitmask (e.g. Worms)
Vector (e.g. Braid, Limbo)

The four means of implementing platformer games

Pop quiz. Which approach did we take?

Answer: Look at those masterpiece created by our artists! Of course they won’t go easy on us programmers – we have to implement their wildest dreams! By far only option 4 satisfy them.

Having chosen option 4, there is one critical question before we proceed any further. Will you use an existing physics engine, or will you write your own physics engine? For those who are feeling bold, option 2 may yield better result, but for time-constrained project like we have right here, we took the first approach and use Unity as the game engine.

Now I shall introduce you the very first element we have to implement: How the character moves. Moving left and right on a flat surface is as simple as it gets, you just have to apply acceleration until you hit some maximum velocity so your character won’t run too fast.

The problem begins with slope. Let me give you pointers by showing some cases that you *MIGHT* want to consider if you’re going with physics.

Slopes, expectation vs. reality

Running on those slopes launches your character into the air? Hey, snap out of it, physics! Now how do we cope with this problem? Use raycast! That way you can prevent jumping off the slope problem.

Raycasting helps on ground detection

In fact, raycast might be a good solution for many problems you might encounter in developing a platformer game. Detecting switch? Shooting a projectile? Pushing blocks? If none other works you should look into raycasting. Take a look at this example showing how you *must not* push a block.

Hey, I’d like to tell much more, but look at the time! I’ve written too much for today, so let’s talk about the other game elements later! Now it’s your turn to write your thoughts on the comment box below, and hit subscribe! That’s all, folks, thanks for reading!