Hello and welcome to the Saturday Update for Boss 101

The Gopher Recovery Pad – aka the end of round ambulance

So, you just fought a hard battle against the bosses and despite all your best efforts you don’t come out on top. Well, what happens then? Easy, your gopher buddies come to your assistance with a lift back to base. They do it in style too with the GRP – the patented Gopher Recovery Pad.

We needed to design a swift pad for bringing you back home with style and here’s what we did. First there was a look at the type of style the gophers would use. We created a sheet to outline the kinds of things the gophers would build. Here’s the first pass design. 



Most all of the gopher tech is supposed to have a nice level of charm to it. Nothing too harsh or angular. Most of it is fun and open looking. 

From there we made the art and animation. Below are some looks at the way it was animated for the game. The pad has lots of lights and whizzy stuff. For us it’s important to bring a level of entertainment to everything you will be seeing and experiencing in the game. Lights and animations are just one way we do it.

The idle for the GRP – check out all the cool action



Of course – it’s important to be able to activate the sirens in case people are in your way.



Here’s a closeup of your driver and the gopher nurses who will be along for the ride



So once that was all done we brought the GRP into the game and placed it at the end of the round. We set up the game to allow you activate the sirens.

In the image below are two bottom of the round UI bars. Top one is for victorious rounds and the bottom one is for the rounds you lose.



After all that is done we give it tests to see if everything is working as expected.



Once any system is put into the game we allow it to sit and gel for a little while. The idea behind this is any feature will need to settle. During that time we just watch and see how things work in actual gameplay. A lot of times features will get further modified and occasionally changed from the original. For us those are normally good changes since they are organically created and come about through testing. For the player it represents our efforts to make the world a real place and bring you the best we possibly can.

You win either way!

Thanks again for stopping by and as always – remember to live your dreams!

-Tim

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

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

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Boss 101 confronts the Robo Council with some of his problems. Do they even care? HA!

Check us out on our Steam Page –> Boss 101 Store on Steam

Welcome to the latest Boss 101 update!

Phone Calls in the Command Center

We didn’t forget about last week’s update with the Robo Council! They will return soon.

We are here this week to show you some of the latest tech in the Command Center for getting your missions and important information. You might know about the panels in the Command Center for dialog but we have added a new feature to allow you to interact much more with them. You can now take important phone calls when they arrive! Not only that, but the phone machine saves the most recent message for you to listen to again. 



Check out some of these swift components. The phone will now ring and you can select it when you are ready. You might not want to wait too long or the message might be lost. So select that ringing phone.



Once you jump into the Command Center area you only need to highlight the phone and hit the action button.



If you look up at the top of the dialog panel we have an indicator to show you what is going on. The idea here is if you are in one of the other main rooms you will see the call and be able to answer the phone. A lot of times when we are putting in features the main question is “How can we make this fun for the player?” 



Most every single feature in Boss 101 will advance the story and ideally entertain you while it is happening. The phone system was a logical extension of the way we want you to experience the game. It worked with the current system and when we added in the dialog panels we felt it was a pretty organic thing to make the phone work with it too.

One thing about the dialog panels and the phone system is we can give you a lot more focus on what is important when you are bopping about in the Command Center. Before any of these modifications the messages were somewhat continuous and honestly a bit overwhelming. We are hoping with this addition we can give you a little more breathing room to read and enjoy the messages as well as the rest of the Command Center.



Talk at the Indie IRX 2016 Expo

I (Tim) will be giving a talk at the Indie Game Riot IRX 2016 conference. The best part is it will be online and viewable for you wherever you might be. Check out the link below for more information:

http://indiegameriot.com/indie-revolution-expo/indie-revolution-expo-panels/

Also if you are an independent developer and want to show your game or perhaps host a panel – you can sign up right here:

http://indiegameriot.com/indie-revolution-expo/

Indie Game Riot is a great place and you should give them a look if you haven’t already!

Talk with you soon and remember to live your dreams!

-Tim

Boss 101 Command Center work - Added in the new dialog panels to the top of the Command Center.

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

The Bosses’ Boss

In the world of Boss 101 there are bosses and there are BOSSES. The big wigs, the real movers and shakers are the Robo-Council. They are the ones effectively calling the shots and making your life harder than it needs to be during the game. Who called for Earth’s moon to be blown in two? These guys. Who is making the warp gate highway to allow unlimited robotic expansion? They guys. When Boss 101 fills out a TPS report it is sent to these guys. 

When we sat down to design them we thought about some of our favorite movies and the big villains behind the scenes. People like the Emperor in Star Wars and the Master Control Program (MCP) from the OG Tron movie. Heck even Thanos from the Marvel movies series is shaping up to be a master manipulator.

When designing the council we started with current Boss 101 scenes on his planet. Below are two snippets from conversations between Boss 101 and some of his subordinates. 

One with TERRA and Boss 101


One with Mac and Boss 101


The Council

For the council we looked at making them seems a little shadowy. The thinking here is they are dealing with a lot of stuff in the robo-civilization. Boss 101 would have a special reporting room and it would be a more glitzy than the normal run of the mill holo-screens used.

First pass layout


This is the initial sketch layout for how the area will look and work. The robos images hovering in the background. We also wanted to conserve art and animation so Boss 101 would be used in the foreground and set to interact in his usual manner. Once the base council robos are designed we will add effects and make the scene look like a futuristic transmission.

The Robos art – first pass drawing


Robo Council headshots


Once all this was done we could break down the council and start experimenting with the various ideas for effects. Here’s a black and white pass on the ideas for the council’s transmission to Boss 101



The next steps for us are to color them and lay in the colored effects. All this is handled in Photoshop and you might be surprised to know we generally do not use transparency effects in Boss 101. By this I mean we tend to draw the effect at full Opacity and just design it to play on top of things. Fire, energy effects and even water in boss 101 are mostly just a hand drawn effect played at 100% opacity. That is strictly a design decision to make everything look a little more cohesive and give the game a set look.

There is always talk about when designing a character or machinery if we are making it ‘in the style’ we want. That style is mainly a colorful animated world with a lot of visual consistency and congruency. 

Ok enough blabbing! Check back next week for more progress on the council and other news!

Boss 101 on Steam

Wishlist us if you would be so kind!

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

In the meantime remember to LIVE YOUR DREAMS!

-Tim

Boss 101 Screenshot, the guy's shameless self-assessment. Believe in yourself!

Welcome to the Boss 101 Update!



Hope you are doing well and thanks for stopping by to check in on our progress. This week we have a couple things to show you. Touchups to the Map Room and the special Pet Room. 

Pet Room for your Pet Buddies!

You know you have pet buddies but did you even realize they can live with you!?!? Not only do they live with you but they have a nice little hill with mini houses they sleep in. They can fly around when they like and take naps if they need to. Also – they have all their pet friends to play with. 

Here’s a sample of the hill



Of course the weather and time of day will change as you play. Pet Hill is right next to Kite hill. If you were to travel there you would see this.



And if it’s sunny then this!



See how happy they are! They love you too!

Map Room Touchups

We decided the Map Room needed some gopher-ness so we added a little bit more gopher tech from the Professor and Rob. The old map room was cool and all but it was built early in the project before the Professor and Rob were more central to the rebuild in the Command Center. Now that Rob has his own room and since we are in the polish phase we looked at where else might need some ‘oomph’.

The Map room got a bit of a shine with some gopher tech. Here you can see some of the layout instructions for creating art. 



We thought about a nice place to insert the new tech and thought the top right corner fit with the game and the theme of the room. The game backstory involves the gophers and Rob building the area. Their work was to create a home base for the player and also a place to store goodies from the player’s travels. The map room is the main point of travel in the game. As you might guess this is where the player decides where he wants to go and what planets he will visit. 

Animation Setup Part 1



Animation Setup Part 2



It only makes sense the gophers would monitor progress from their command posts. Check it!

In Game



OK – more to come and stay tuned. Things are going quite well and we are excited to bring you this game. It the product of a lot of love and passion and we are really enjoying the development process. What really is amazing is you will be playing the game and we would like to imagine you having as much fun exploring and seeing the world of Boss 101 as we had making it.

Boss 101 on Steam

Wishlist us if you would be so kind!

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

Talk with you soon and remember to LIVE YOUR DREAMS!

-Tim

Boss passports! Beat bosses and reveal their images...

(also find out a little about what they like)





 

Welcome to the Boss 101 Update once again! Hope you are doing well on this awesome weekend. Let’s dive into the latest shall we?

Galactic Passports

Before we dive into the Boss 101 Galactic Passport system let’s talk about a game from the early 90’s, Street Fighter II: The World Warrior for the SNES. Remember that one? No problem if you don’t. It had this little printed manual which came with the cartridge. One really cool thing was the fact the fighter’s various pages had these little bios on them. Basically you got to see their ages, blood types and learn a little bit about each of the world warriors. To this day I recall looking over that and seeing interesting tidbits about the people in the game. It was pretty awesome and I felt Capcom did a very cool thing taking the time to put that into the game. 

Example from Guile’s page:



So now let’s talk about Boss 101’s Galactic Passports. They’re our nod to that great idea with a Boss 101 flavor. What we are doing is having visitors arrive in the Command Center. While they are there you can click on them and see their passport. From that view you will get to know some of the people a little better. The idea here is people get around the various star systems is with some sort of identifying travel pass. Like a driver’s license for space travel. 

We think it’s a fun way to show you a side of the people you might now know about. Like the old Street Fighter manuals some of the info might seem irrelevant to the direct game but it’s all part of the Boss 101 universe and in that sense – it’s important to us.

When we are working on Boss 101 we are constantly asking ourselves about the characters and what they would do based on their personality. Everything starts with ‘Why would he or she do this?’ We want you to see this too so the passports are one way we peel back the character curtain for you. 

Let’s look at the making of them. 

Here’s the Command Center where you can move around and select various interesting things. In this case we are clicking on Tanya, the current visitor.



This pops up her passport with little details about her. Did you know she likes chicken pasta?!?! NOW YOU DO!



Passports are made and animated in Spine and then brought into Gamemaker. We setup a template for things to be standardized.



Since we have a template it’s easy to create and add more people.



Closeup of the character and passport animation



So there you have a look into another one of the world building moments we are adding to Boss 101. It’s important to us we create an interesting place for the game to take place. We feel the games we remember most tend to have stories, characters and gameplay which resonates with us.

Ideally – you will enjoy Boss 101 as much as we enjoy making it.

Wishlist us if you would be so kind!

Thanks for stopping by and look for much more as we continue down the road to ship. Also, if you would, please take a moment to put us on your Steam Store wishlist here:

Boss 101 in the Steam Store: http://store.steampowered.com/app/380920

Remember to LIVE YOUR DREAMS!

-Tim

Action Hero Hats - Put on a hat in Boss 101 and become the hero you are. Lids for everyone!