There we go! Through these blogs I am sharing the development process, changelogs, and anything interesting towards making this game knock your socks off! Have a look at the most recent gameplay video above.
The past weeks have been crazy busy. As I’m a student Game Design/Development, I have responsibilities as a student, besides working on the games I really want. It is a constant struggle of finding the time & energy, to really work out some features. I am pretty satisfied with the results so far.
About Deciball
Deciball is an audio driven 3d sidescroller platform game. You bounce & roll with a ball through colorful worlds, that change on the frequency of music. By changing music, you can interact with the world, solve puzzles, and collect musical notes, to exchange for upgrades, and unlock more features. The real goal of the game, is to explore and have fun.
Development process
I am learning alot of the development process, as I’m progressing towards something that looks like a playable demo. At the moment I am working alone, and do all the design, modelling & scripting myself. After testing my own game for thousands of times, you create somewhat of a black spot, because you can’t see the flaws. That’s why we invented ‘Game Testers’. Thank God for game testers. There have been several test sessions, and all of them were very valuable. Some lessons I’ve learned through this process, is to ‘kill your darlings’, and to focus on the core of the game. Making sure the controlls work smooth. I’m not THERE yet, but there have been great improvements over the last couple of weeks.
Dutch Game Garden
I have presented a beta version of Deciball at the netwerklunch of The Dutch Game Garden, which recieved alot of positive feedback, and smiles. Next week I will be there for another showcase of the game, hopefully resulting in more valuable feedback. I have also been looking for people to work with, as I would love to work together with motivated people, and new input is more than welcome. I might have found some people to join forces with, time will tell!
Change log
- Changed the ball, to a smooth sphere, with electrical rays around it.
- Smoothed out the movement of the ball & camera movement (this still needs some perfection)
- Added shake phone function on mobile device, to revive, if ball’s bounce falls dead
- Mapped to Xbox controller
- Made walkbehind walls, so ball becomes white if it’s behind an object, thus your player is always visible. It’s a pretty cool effect, check the video
- Added an effect to acceleration, plus controller shakes.
- Removed the trail that was constantly behind the ball (it just didn’t make sense!)
- Removed some puzzles that weren’t inventive
- Added new GUI system (see video left-under) When nearing an interactive object, icons appear of what you music-state change does to the game.
- Added score (number of collected music notes) You lose notes when you need to respawn.
- Worked on the visual presentation of the game, through lights and fog.
- Changed some particle effects on the background of the game.
- Added a jump controll. When you roll, glide or just don’t bounce, you can make a little jump
- Cleaned up my scripting, and categorised everything. Programming can easily get messy. Bring in those //comments! 🙂
Thank you for your interest in Deciball. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me!
Back to work!
Lots of love,
Peer Olthof