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Hello again and welcome to our Boss 101 Development Update. This week’s subject GAME FOG!

We are going to walk you through how we are using a simple fog overlay in Boss 101 to clear up the action. This makes the game not only more visually appealing but arguably more fun for you the player. 

First off let’s look at what we are doing here. Below is a sample screenshot of a forest themed level.



Everything is working just fine in practice and the level looks great in the screenshot. Thing is, you will be playing the game in motion and when bullets are flying and minions are dodging all over the place you want every advantage possible. For that we looked at the background area and wanted to push it more into the ‘background’. This was for a couple reasons. One – it would add depth to the level by giving things and atmospheric haze. The next is it would help clear up the difference between what is important and what is more eye candy.

Be warned, we are getting into a subjective area. This is really about what you want for YOUR GAME. This is not a cure all for every game. Let’s move on…

Testing out the theory
So we took the above screenshot and blocked out the boss and the player like so. This was to have a quick testbed for what we wanted to do. 



We then looked at adding in a gradient fog to the level. Mind you this is something we want to add in order to unify the background and pop the foreground action. The idea here is a light wash over the whole background and nothing that drops everything into a San Francisco type pea soup. 



Above you can see the sample fog effect. It’s dropping the saturation down on many of the brighter objects and still keeping the nice art in place. That’s what we wanted to see started working on more levels.

Some later levels in action with before and after

Robo Egypt Daytime – no fog



Robo Egypt Daytime – fog effect added



Again – there is a subtle drop here of the brighter areas which is what we wanted. The idea behind everything it to make the game fun to play and entertain the player. Fun to play is first so the playfield needs to be as good as we can make it. 

Here is Robo Egypt Nighttime – no fog (forgive the gif compression banding on the sky)



Robo Egypt Nighttime – fog effect added (forgive the gif compression banding on the sky)



You can see here the fog helps give a greater sense of depth and unifies the scene. Also – I love Robo Egypt! HAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!

Hope you enjoyed that look into the game and look forward to more as we head towards our ship date.

-Tim

Boss 101 on Steam Wishlist us if you would be so kind. Thank you!

http://store.steampowered.com/app/380920


 

Screenshot of the Day - Moon Time

The moon is sleeping on the job! Who's going to wake him?



Talk with you soon!

-Tim

Welcome to the latest Boss 101 update and thank you for stopping by!

Making Weapons in Boss 101. In our quest to bring you the most variety when you battle bosses we are again peeling back the curtain to look at the creation of our bow weapons. You heard me correctly – you have bows and arrows in Boss 101! HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!

We start with the basic idea which was adding a relatively hard hitting special weapon  for the mid-game. Many of the weapons in Boss 101 are grouped in a classes which in turn have three or more levels of upgrades to them. Each level representing more power or other advantage. As the player you will be giving the choice to use ANY weapon based on your preferences.

We also have basic player upgrades and hat bonuses available for the player’s character. These would arguably allow you to take a weaker weapon and buff it up through bonuses granted via items. Ok – that was a mouthful so let’s look at the bow and its three upgrades

First there is the Class 1 bow weapon – the regular bow and arrow! A solid weapon all around.





Second up we have the Class 2 Compound Bow – upgraded from the regular bow in nearly all ways.





Last up is the Crossbow Deluxe, a Class 3 weapon – top of the line!





Here are some shots of the various bow weapons in action







Lest you think the fun ends there we also are working on BLADE WEAPONS. Now why would we do that? For you - we want you to have choices! These blade weapons are all of the throwing variety. Below are two quick snaps of some of the things you can see.



Some debug shots of the basic throwing knife – you can see some of the draw outlines since we are running in debug mode here. Another quick shot:



And if you succeed in taking the boss down over water you'll see him drop into the deep blue. YEAH BABY!



Thanks again for stopping by and thank you for your e-mails. We appreciate your support!

Remember to live your dreams!

-Tim

Boss 101 on Steam Wishlist us if you would be so kind!

http://store.steampowered.com/app/380920

.

Weapon tuning in Boss 101. Gordon isn't the only one who knows how to use a crowbar. You do too! This and more will be yours.

Welcome back to the Boss 101 Update!

Debug Screens in Boss 101 or “How do we do the voodoo we do?”

You might have noticed a few of our  debug screens popping up in the updates. These are the screens we use to test the way things work in game. If you are working on your own game you might already have something like this in your working builds. 

Bosses and enemies in the game have tons of animations and abilities to test. This room is where we can see how things work in-game and test specific bosses on specific levels. For us, it makes a difference in development to constantly test out our work in-engine. 

If you ever use a “god” mode in a shipped game you are likely seeing the same kind of thing in effect. Giving the player a ton of ammo or unlimited health are the kinds of things developers do while testing. Clearly, it’s really useful to jump into a game and dink around with various values to test things. If you don’t already do this check out some benefits you might be missing.

First off – we can use the room to check out the fit of all the boss parts with each other. Here we are testing how all parts match up. We use the random button to cycle through bosses and the boss part buttons to check the fit and finish.



Here’s a shot of us testing out various boss main weapons. Note that we can trigger any major animation from this room.

We can also check on minions and their firing animations. Once everything is tested we can jump into the game and play around with the same bosses and minions in actual levels.



There have been a few times where we needed to re-import a lot of bosses and minions in order to implement a new feature. Having a room like this to test out hit boxes and animations makes things much easier. As you may imagine, we implemented this room pretty early in development. 

Here’s a shot of us going straight from the Debug Room into the game.



This brings us to a pretty basic point – as much as possible you want to be working in your game engine versus Photoshop, or some sort of editor that’s NOT your engine. You want to see your work where it will be when your game ships. From there you will want to get your game setup (via debug testing and the like) and AFTER that you will want to just play your game like a regular person would. 

It’s easy to get used to having unlimited health or one shot weapons but the player won’t have all that obviously. Most of the time I play the game outside of the normal debug mode just to experience it as you would. 

In the end – it is about making the game for YOU and keeping you entertained. All the work we are doing is about the experience we want to bring for our friends and fans. 

Hope you enjoyed this look at the development of Boss 101 and remember to LIVE YOUR DREAMS!

-Tim

Boss 101 Screenshot

Professor Gopher guide panels for the Command Center. If you need help getting around you can call him up.

He's your friend!

Boss 101's Devlog won a Favorite Project award on TIGForums. YES!!!

You can check it out here directly ** Boss 101 Devlog on TIGForums **

Thank you for your support!

-Tim

Welcome to the latest Boss 101 update and thank you for stopping by!

Polishing a Weapon in Boss 101

Today we are taking a look at the process of polishing up one of the many boss weapons. As we’ve mentioned there are a lot of bosses and you will be able to create your own boss to battle. In game you use the Make A Boss to assemble a boss from parts available. The specifics of how this is done depends on the game mode you are choosing but needless to say there are a lot of possible breakdowns.

Here is a look at a debug breakdown of just a FEW bosses you might see. 



Did you know there are over ONE HUNDRED MILLION combinations of bosses possible? Neither did we, until we did the math.

The Tiger Gas Weapon

Despite all the combinations we create bosses as grouped units and allow them to be broken up. Here we have the Tiger Boss as a complete unit. Note the weapon on top is his dreaded poison gas weapon.

From the debug screen…


So initially he sprayed a gassy cloud from his back onto the player. We have below a VERY early version of the weapon. You can see the gas cloud looks quite a bit different from a lot of the regular pixel art in the game.

Early version of Tiger Gas Weapon


Well, that look stood out a little too much so we did tweaking and created pixel art for the gas. Ended up with something looking like this…

Revised gas pixel art


Ok – that is a little bit better but there was still a problem and that was the gas firing out of the weapon. This make some BASIC sense but the issue was gameplay and we were noticing the player was normally out of range of the cloud unless we made it linger for a very long time or move somewhat fast. That wasn’t the direction we wanted to go.

Inspiration soon struck though – we had ANOTHER boss, the T-Rex whose weapon created fire breath to blast from any bosses mouth. Kind of like a Godzilla thing. Here it is in action. The main flames coming from the T-Rex mouth here are being generated by his back weapon.

Sample of T-Rex boss unit firing main weapon via the mouth…


Well, it wasn’t a big jump to take the idea there and re-work the Tiger weapon to fire a gas cloud from the mouth of a boss like so.

Sample of the gas weapon update


Of course – since this is Boss 101 you might see these weapons on a variety of bosses…

Example 1 - Gas


Example 2 - Flame


YES! Once again we’re peeling back the curtain for you! These decisions may seem obvious hindsight but sometimes these thing elude you until you see it all in action. Hope you enjoyed this look.

TIGForums – Devlog Gold of 2015 Results - We got a Favorite Devblog Award!



Did you know the Boss 101 Dev Log placed third in the FAVORITE PROJECT category? We did! Thanks to you and your support. Check out our TIGForums Devlog here: Boss 101 Dev Log

As always – remember to live your dreams and thank you for your support!

-Tim
 

Max & Steve enjoying ice cream, cake & music between rounds! These guys know how to relax.