KzzzZZZzzT! Update #15 - A Mostly Vertically-Designed Level

First Boss of KzzzZZZzzT! [Concept Art]

Above is concept art I drew for the planned first boss of the game. It should help me visualize how to translate an idea in my head into the computer.

His name is Kranky.

If you don't already know. You can check out my game here: http://gamejolt.com/games/kzzzzzzzzt/166162

KzzzZZZzzT! Update #14 - Chemical Chaos!

New GameJolt Devlog Post here: http://gamejolt.com/games/kzzzzzzzzt/166162/devlog/kzzzzzzzzt-update-14-chemical-chaos-zkku3jra

KzzzZZZzzT! Update #11 - Who left all these goop on the floor?

New GameJolt Devlog Update! Check it out here.

KzzzZZZzzT! Update #10 - Prepare Yourself, this is only the beggining.

New GameJolt Devlog Update! Check it out here.

KzzzZZZzzT! Update #9 - Ridiculous Lab Antics

New GameJolt Devlog Update! Check it out here.

KzzzZZZzzT! Update #8 - Cowardly Scientists and Some Sprites

New KZT update at the GameJolt Devlog. Check it out here!

KzzzZZZzzT! Update #7 - Bubbles! Bubbles! Bubbles!

New KZT update at the GameJolt Devlog. Check it out here!

I'll stop posting full updates here.

Nobody seems to be bothering to read the updates on this blog but rather only on the game's devlog at GameJolt. From now on, I'll just post links to the updates on the game's GameJolt Devlog every week. At least now, I don't have to keep making double posts.

KzzzZZZzzT! Update #6 - The Third Level of the Factory Area

I just finished the initial level design for the planned thirteenth stage of the game. I shaped it to be completely horizontal and it ended up being a really long sausage of a level.

and I mean REALLY long

This level involves riding a moving platform around while also doing some platforming at times and trying not to get left behind.

There are some slow-moving bits

                  and then there are quick-moving bits

It was a pain-in-the-butt for me to calibrate the timing of some time-based obstacles in order to make them do what I want as the platform passes by them. After much patience, one of the longest levels in the game is finally complete. (Well, I still have to work on the backgrounds and the level design can use more polish but right now, it's pretty damn good).

That's all for this week. Next week, I plan to start making assets for the fourth area of the game, The Laboratory.

KzzzZZZzzT! Update #5 - The Second Factory Level

I decided to get back to doing level design again. Today I finished the early level design of the second level of the Factory Area. There are a couple of new obstacle types shown in the gifs below.

Creepy Grinning Piston Platforms

And some fire-y obstacles

 

Just as an overview. I want to show some screenshots of zoomed-out versions of the current factory levels that have been made. The first screenshot below is the zoomed out version of the first factory level which I worked on two weeks ago and the next is the zoomed-out version of the level I just finished this week.

I've been making good progress over the last month but I've still got a lot of work to do. See ya next week!

KzzzZZZzzT! Update #4 - Menus and a Save Feature

I decided not to continue doing level design this week and instead began work on placing the main menu, pause menu and adding a save feature. I haven't made any prettily designed interfaces, though. I'll work on making better design for the interfaces in a future update.

For now, here are some screenshots:

 
BONUS:

As some extra work, I decided to add gems into the game. Gems in the game work in a similar fashion to the gems from Crash Bandicoot. If you've never played Crash Bandicoot before, you had to break all boxes in a level in order to get a gem. In KzzzZZZzzT!, it's a little different. You don't have to break all the boxes, but you need to collect all the floating mini-collectibles (i.e. the crystals) in a level in order to grab the level's gem.

 

KzzzZZZzzT! Update #3 - Area 3: Frantic Factory

This week I've been working on the third of the five areas I plan for the game: The Factory Area. So far, I've only finished building the first level which includes new obstacles like:

Silly Looking Pistons

Conveyor Belts

Giant Turtle Turrets

And More Conveyor Belts. . .

I've also begun work on the game's level select screen. It's still at an unfinished state but you have to admit, the Rotating Level Select Wheel seen below is pretty neat.

That's all for this week. I plan to work more on the main game menus next week first before going back to do more level design because I think working towards making the game more playable even at its early state is very important.

KZT Has A GameJolt Page!

As promised, you can now follow KzzzZZZzzT! on its official GameJolt page!

http://gamejolt.com/games/kzzzzzzzzt/166162

Just make sure you have a GameJolt account, press that big green juicy Follow button and you'll be notified there each week. You can also access a huge library of other people's unique games as well!

KzzzZZZzzt! Update #2 - Introducing the First Prototype Gameplay Video!

It's finally here! After months of work, I've finally produced enough material to make a gameplay video featuring the game's early state. I'm pretty proud of what I've accomplished so far, but there is still a lot more work to do and I'm going to need a bit more support. Here's how you can help:

I've gotten my sights on GameJolt.com being my first and main indie game site of choice to upload the game to. If you haven't heard, GameJolt also allows gamers to follow unfinished game projects and receive updates by the game's developer. I plan to make a GameJolt page for my game within a few days so you can follow the updates there. In fact, I even recommend you follow me on GameJolt rather than BlogSpot if you've been doing that. I can't make a game page immediately, though, because I need to make header and thumbnail art, first. I want to put a little more effort into those.

I don't need fans to cheer me on and compliment the stuff I create, necessarily. I just want people to follow something I'm making if they're genuinely interested in it so it doesn't fade into obscurity, even among my target audience. If you are interested, then you can let me know by following this game's GameJolt page when it's ready.

Thank you for reading, until next time!

KzzzZZZzzt! Dev Update #1 - Animations are Ani-mazing!

In the earlier days of this game's production, I didn't think animation would be something I would give two flying chicken nuggets about. Pretty much most movement by the game objects were stiff and linear. Until I started experimenting a bit and trying some different things with it and I started to see just how much potential it has to improve the game experience.

"Why is this important?" you might ask "I play video game's for the gameplay, not for pretty looking animations!!". That's a valid attitude to have but I believe that good animations play an important role not only on video games but on other forms of media as well such as CGI effects on movies and also cartoon animations, of course. Animations that look robotic or laggy can reduce the suspension of disbelief on any piece of entertainment by reminding the audience that what they're watching is an artificial work and not a look into a different reality.

For example, instead of a vertical wall barrier (seen at left of this paragraph) opening up and closing in a linear way, I changed it to slowly decrease in speed as it rose up. When it is closing, I made it seem like gravity is making it increase in speed as it fell and it would bounce when it hit the bottom before stopping. This makes it a little more fluid, thereby making it's game world a bit closer to its own reality.

(It's hard to see the animation properly because the gif framerate is so low, sorry about that.)

I made another gif to feature the animations better. In the one below. You can see how collected jewels are smoothly animated to move towards the top left HUD section. This makes for a really fluid and less robotic animation, almost magical you might say. Originally, the jewels would just move towards their target at constant speed.

You can also see how landing on a floating platform makes it realistically wobble up and down as if it really is trying to adjust to a new load. Originally, those platforms would remain static when landed on making it look stiff and unreal.

Notice how the platform at the end reacts to the player landing on it

In case you're curious, I was able to add these animations to these objects with the help of a free Unity scripting helper I stumbled upon called iTween. iTween is an easy-to-use animation system that has a lot of interesting features and parameters that can be entered to manipulate object movements to achieve results that would be extremely time-consuming to manually code on your own. It does take a bit of research and practice to learn how to use it though. You can check out the iTween website here. Again, it's free!

In this post, I only talked about movement animations and not sprite animations. Those are two completely different things. So far, I've made some pretty decent sprite animations, enough to give some game objects life, but nothing too impressive.

Before I end this post, I would like to show a couple more gif's I made showing some more early game footage. Enjoy!

A normal day of a character in a platformer

Those pipes look like fun

Additional notes:

• I've already begun adding sound effects to some of the game's events but I still plan to add some more before showing them on this blog for a more complete presentation. I could possibly show the first video teaser next week.



• So far, I would say 6 levels out of the planned 20 levels have complete level design. I would consider this good progress. Many assets required for these levels are already created so finishing the rest of the levels is going to take less and less time with the more game assets I make.
  
• The backgrounds are still too simplistic, I plan to work on them some more but I'm still going to focus on other aspects of the game first so this is something I won't be talking about until I become interested on decorating the backgrounds a bit more.
  
• Expect more updates within the week. :)
   

I'm Making A Crash-Bandicoot-Inspired 2D Platformer

I have been working on this idea I've had for a 2D platformer for over a year now and I have internally refused to make anything about the game public out of worry that it wasn't ready yet. Until today.

What the heck IS this game anyway?

The game's title is "KzzzZZZzzt!" (but you can also call it "KZT's Krazy Adventure").

It is a 2D platformer which is inspired heavily  by the Crash Bandicoot franchise. Each level is littered with jewels to collect and boxes to break. Collecting jewels are not for getting extra lives as you are allowed an infinite amount of deaths. Instead, the jewels, when they are all collected, are used to unlock a second ending of the game, just like in the original Crash game.

Jump and dodge your way through 15 levels, 5 boss fights, and 4 extra hidden levels. The game is divided into 5 game worlds: Testing Facility, Sewers, Factory, Laboratory, and Outer Space. I've included a variety of unique obstacles to complement the variety of game worlds.

Here are a few development screenshots showing the game's current state. Many game objects have already been designed but I have not begin work on background art yet.

Remember, all of these are development screenshots, they do not represent the final game.

 

I'm designing the game to be challenging to most players. It's going to be slightly more difficult than your average indie platformer. But it still can be enjoyed by all gamers of any platformer skill level.

The Game's Story
 I haven't thought about what the game's story is going be that much to be honest, but I do have a bit of a base idea:

The main villian is an evil scientist named Dr. Krazy. Dr. Krazy once discovered some red jewels wielding great electrical power buried beneath a small island in the middle of the Bermuda Triangle. He named these jewels the 'Krazy Jewels' after his own name. Then after years of building his secret island base along with his nephew Dr. Wacko, he decides to test out the jewels on a prototype of a robot bent on world domination. The robot was named 'KZT' and was programmed to be used as a weapon of mass destruction. Unfortunately, the test failed and the robot escaped.

Thus starts the adventure of our main protagonist 'KZT'. Anything after that are just vague ideas at the moment. An engaging story is something most gamers want nowadays so I'll surely try to do I best I can in this department.

I'll get with another blog post next week to update anyone who wants to follow this game on the progress that's been made. Thanks for reading. See you next time!

SeamlessR does a 100k collab celebration

For those of you who don't know who SeamlessR is, he's a kind of a popular but not too big producer in the music industry well known for his constant contributions of tutorial videos uploaded on his YouTube channel. A combination of a variety of tutorial topics and the fact that he's been doing this for a very long time has given him a slow but steady growth of subscribers over the course of his YouTube career.


I want to talk about him because he's so far my most watched YouTube tutor as a hobbyist music producer even compared to other tutorial channels I've watched that are not related to music production. So far I've been a subscriber for about several months I've definitely learned so much from him especially from his FL Studio basics tutorial.

Anyway, he's recently uploaded a video announcing his 100,000 subscriber milestone and started a collaboration project with his fans to submit sound samples that they have to make from scratch where he will select 100 different samples from and those samples will be used to make a free song for everybody to listen to.

Here's SeamlessR's reddit post for more details: http://www.reddit.com/r/edmproduction/comments/4bp9n4/seamlessr_100k_collaboration/

I myself have decided to submit my own attempt at impressive sound design but I personally think I managed to make something that was not too impressive but not bad either. It was just okay. Here's a video showing the sound I made and how I made it:

Retro Game Review: M&M's Shell Shocked

 

Developer: Simon & Schuster Interactive
Genre: Platformer
Sub-genre: 3D Platformer
Platform: PC, iOS, Android
Released on: September 30, 2001

Gamers generally don't like it whenever some random company seems to try to rip-off an existing popular franchise in order to make a quick buck out of it. M&M's Shell Shocked, for example, is a 3D platformer that plays too much Crash Bandicoot. It probably is one of modern gaming's laughing stocks considering how blatantly inferior it is compared to the franchise it tried to rip-off. That said, it will probably confuse you to know that I'm actually going to defend the game. M&M's Shell Shocked is actually one of my childhood favorites and to this day I still hold my nostalgia and despite being a blatant rip-off, I still think it's a very fun and well-made game.

I am a huge Crash Bandicoot fan. I mean I even use Crash as my profile picture around the net (unless I've decided to change it). Especially the first games. Naughty Dog put love and effort into making their game enjoyable and memorable. Some people think M&M's Shell Shocked was the exact opposite of that but I think they had much of the same intent to make a good game but for some reason, just so happened to rip-off Crash Bandicoot's popular gameplay style. The game on its own however is actually pretty well-made and still fun to play.

M&M's Shell Shocked starts with a red and yellow walking M&M's people named 'Red' and 'Yellow' (naming characters isn't M&M's strong point). They area about enter an airport for a vacation from their job at the M&M's factory when Red gets a call telling them they need to come back because of something Yellow allegedly screwed up. Red gets pissed and pressures Yellow to go back to the factory himself to fix the problem.
 

First level is a driving section. you can crash but there is no bandicoot

It's strange Red doesn't decide to fix the problem himself. Yellow is portrayed as a pretty dimwitted character which is why he created a problem in the first place so its weird to send the same inept worker who started the problem to be the same worker to fix it. But whatever, story isn't something important. Just know that Yellow is who the player will be controlling through the entire game. They introduce a Green M&M character halfway through the game but because the entire gameplay only involves the yellow character, the cutscenes can just be ignored entirely.

The game starts with a driving section that's actually pretty fun. It's no Crash Team Racing but it's pretty challenging. The main obstacles here are the vehicles that are hilariously animated to swerve around and surprise the player into almost getting hit. Controlling your own vehicle takes some practice. I personally had no problem with this section when I played it back when I was 7. So this part of the game shouldn't be much of a problem to other players.

 

That's chocolate, not the other thing you might think about

After 3 driving levels, we get into the part of the game where most players would have a big exclamation point appear on top of their heads if that was physically possible in real life because the first thing they notice is that there are boxes and you have a spin attack. This is the only reason why the people who heard of it or played it may remember it because there's an immediate comparison to Crash Bandicoot. I still wonder what the game would be like if they had created their own main gameplay mechanic instead of ripping off Naughty Dog. Would people still call it a bad game? Probably not, it would be mediocre at worst.

There are no Wumpa fruit though and no replacement of them either. Instead you collect mini M&M's trapped in boxes and inside robots for some reason. This is the point where I should mention that Yellow was responsible for letting these mini M&M's in charge of the factory while they were away and they started causing havoc around the factory. There is a huge disconnect from the plot and what's actually going on in the game. Instead, the factory just has a bunch of robots doing a bunch of robot nonsense and some broken factory equipment instead of mini M&M's running around causing havoc. It would be better if we actually saw them doing that in the game but you shouldn't be surprised to know that the development studio and the animation studio that made the cutscenes are completely different.
 So story is not it's best asset, the gameplay is unoriginal but at least passable but everything else about the game, I really like. I've loved this game as a kid and I still like it now and the bad parts of the game I see now hasn't tainted that. M&M's Shell Shocked has one of the most imaginative environments in video games, in my opinion. It's not just any factory, it has a colorful Wonka-style mixed with pseudo-futuristic design that is unique to any other industrial type place I've ever seen anywhere else. Each department has a different style to it. The first part of the factory deals with Milk Chocolate and has rivers and lakes of liquid chocolate that the player can drown in. The second part is all about conveyor belts. The third area deals with Candy Coloring and is presented like a white laboratory but with splatters of color like there was a Splatoon fight earlier. The fourth area is a bit more futuristic with kind of a shiny theme. The fifth part is the place where the Candy is packed into boxes and it's the place that looks the most like Wonka's factory. The sixth part is another driving section but through the company warehouse. And finally the last part of the game is the factory's power generator where it feels like your exploring some alien U.F.O.

 

What's he so depressed about? At least he doesn't have to fix this mess. Oh wait.

The sheer variety in the design choices for the factory is what's most memorable to me as a kid. It gives a sense of adventure through a beautiful place that was built with artistic intent yet designed for robotic manufacturing. It makes me wonder how much better this game could have been if it would just have a bigger budget and had original gameplay of its own because there is still some genius in it as it is.

The music is really good to. Just like Crash Bandicoot, the composer varies the instruments and feel of the music depending on which part of the game your in. There's a lot of variety in it. It's original. But the music in the PS1 version which I'm reviewing here is was actually slightly different from the PC version: M&M's The Lost Formulas. Possibly because the console engine they used couldn't handle the higher quality and longer length of the music from the PC version. Despite that, this has still one of my favorite game soundtracks ever and I still have some mp3's of it in my personal music folder.

Overall, despite most people's apathy over this game, it's still really good. I personally think it's great through an artistic and imaginative standpoint but the developers on the other hand needed to work on making a more high quality product. They also had to make sure the animation studio knew what was actually going on in the game. But it's a really well made game that I don't doubt was not made to be shovelware. There is a lot of effort and thought put into it. It still has uniqueness of its own and is even sufficiently challenging even though it could be a bit harder. But anyway, really great game and I love it.

CANDY QUALITY ASSURANCE DEPARTMENT SAYS