Genuinely amazed at not just the variety of assets and mechanics, but also how polished and well put together the presentation and UI is as well, incredible.
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It's the end of week 4 and time for another devlog!
overall we're doing pretty good, things are progressing smoothly and we even have a playtest ready build out.
All the ship assets are done, but we still need to make alt skins for the upgrade system, its mostly going to be recolors of the current textures so not a ton of work.
All the maps have had a bunch of work done, we've done some env. dressing, set up AI pathing and out of bounds walls, the last level is still not ready but will be worked on in the final week.
We've been focusing on getting all the major mechanics and assets into the game for the last few days, only thing missing at the moment is a bunch of audio work, ending sequences and a bunch of polish.
We're at a point where we don't want to show off too much before release so we're gonna be a bit quiet from here on.
Next devlog will probably be after we've put out the game, covering how I feel about the project overall and stuff we've had to cut.
So it's the end of the 3rd week of the jam, last week I said our focus was on getting the AI in, and add some proper HUD and ship models.
Thankfully we've had a pretty productive week, AI implementation started in the middle of the week and went pretty smoothly, our first iteration was a pretty basic Spline path that the CPU would follow rigidly, this meant that the CPU felt very static and the handling was completely fake, after a rework and iteration on the logic we've made it so that instead the CPU is always chasing a point on the spline path ahead of itself but its subject to the same physics as the player, before if you slammed into an AI it wouldn't budge, since it was on a fixed path, now you can affect the pathing of CPU ships a bit, though they will always get back on track fairly fast.
Asset wise the in-game HUD is more or less finalized, all the assets and the logic behind them is working as intended, position tracking was dependent on having other racers so it had to be implemented once AI was in, there is still some jank regarding completing a lap and pos tracking but I have a few ideas on how to fix it already.
We're also made some progress on 3D assets, so far we have 5/9 ships in game with proper textures, I'm pretty happy with the work so far, each ship has a ton of personality.
There is still a ton of work left, We're starting to implement audio, and there's a few UI elements left, like the end of match scoreboard and the ending screens.
I feel pretty good about our progress in general but the next 2 weeks will be fairly hectic, we wanted to get a playtest build out this weekend but it's gonna have to wait a bit as there are a few key aspects of the build that aren't really in a playtestable state, hopefully we'll get it out during the week but next weekend is more likely.
Next devlog hopefully we'll have all the ships in, wrapped up the remaining UI and started on finishing the gameplay loop with ending screens.
Oh and I said I would show off some gameplay so here it is:
Hey all, It's the end of the second week and so far, everything has progressing smoothly at Team Hi-lite.
The second and third weeks are always the most stressful, we've started work on mostly everything but nothing is done yet, so it can get a bit overwhelming thinking about how much is left and seeing the list of tasks grow bigger and bigger.
2D art is probably the furthest along, all the characters have concept art, logos and rough vehicle art, we've figured out how we want things to play out story wise for each racer, a lot of UI work has also been completed and is undergoing implementation at the moment, Character select screen is already in game.
We also have animated 2D sequences like the Team Hi-lite logo last week, there's gonna be a few more in the game as well.
We're gonna have ending illustrations for each character and have planned out how they are gonna look but haven't finished any of them yet, we probably won't show them off in the devlogs, gotta keep some things secret until the game is out.
Story will be handled in a pretty different way than we've done before, instead of a linear narrative we're doing arcade mode grand prix where players can play as different characters, and when you beat the campaign you get an ending illustration showing what happens if that character wins, it means that seeing everything the game has to offer will take longer than 30 min but each "run" is far shorter than that.
We originally planned to have a fixed narrative with a specific playable character and more story content but letting players choose who to play ended up being a better fit for this type of game.
I'm still working on how long I want the campaign for each character to be, we currently have 7 playable characters, with 2 unlockable ones, we have 3 tracks with 1 "final" track planned as well, we might have each campaign go through all 4 tracks or just 2 tracks each character so that they feel less repetitive to play through.
We're also thinking about having single race and time trials available for fun, the mechanics are there so it's not a ton of extra work to implement.
We've also started working on 3D art a bit, we have some landscape and foliage assets in game and a few other high priority assets like the modular track mesh and textures.
We have 3 different tracks in the at the moment, there's a 4th final track planned but we haven't started working on it yet.
We still need a bunch of env. art for each map but the main thing missing art wise are the different vehicles, we have some good ideas how they're gonna look but will flesh out the concepts a bit before we start working on the final assets.
We're going for a fairly stylized art style, not quite as cartoony as Death Whisper Diaries but we want the 3D to feel in sync with the 2D art we've been getting.
the CRT and vertex wobble filters have also been implemented, giving the game the old school PSX look we always go for.
Audio is generally handled fairly late in development, we've started collecting some assets and are even doing some voice acting for the announcer and characters, we're still working on the script a bit but have found people willing to contribute their voices.
Mechanics wise there's been a lot of progress, main menu, character select and all vehicle mechanics are in but will all get a bit of iteration later on as polish.
Main missing thing is the AI, our programmer Max has been working on it but we haven't merged it into the main branch yet, there's a few mechanics dependent on the AI so its the next big thing we need to focus on getting in, so we can work on race position tracking, scoring and the grand prix win/lose states.
Overall I feel pretty good about our progress so far, the plan was to have a playable build in the first week and by week 3 I want the game in an "alpha" state, as in all main mechanics are in and you can get from start to finish in some capacity, whether or not we manage to get there depends on how AI implementation goes.
That's it for this week, next week I hope to have some in game footage in video format with the correct HUD and a proper vehicle asset and some AI racers.
Hey all, its Leo on behalf of Team Hi-lite, last year we made Death Whisper Diaries, and World in Ruin the year before.
Fancy new logo render by Shabello
This year Team Hi-lite has grown a bit, some of the team members couldn't participate full time so we took on some extra help to fill in the gaps, LoaMcLoa is working on concept art alongside Esskaden, Lamsjams is working with Shabello on some of the music, Esper is helping me out with 3D assets and Max is helping as a programmer as both our programmers from last year were unavailable this time.
In some ways, having such a big team adds more pressure on us to make something bigger and better than last year which can be a bit stressing, especially since we decided to make something that's a bit different than our older, more story driven games.
We always try to make something very different from the year before and this time we had an idea for a racing game.
Back with World in Ruin we actually started with an idea for a kart racer but it quickly evolved into an adventure game where the vehicle aspect became just a traversal mechanic.
For our new game we wanted to make something that felt like the original Wipeout games mechanically but we have been looking at lots of racing games from the PS1 and N64 era for inspiration.
BBQ Riderz is a hovercar racing game, which means the driving is inspired by games like Wipeout, F-zero and even other more physics based racing games like Wave Race 64
The general idea is that you get to play as racers inspired by the original characters, but there's a bit of early 2000s edge to their new designs.
The character choice being a villain instead of a protagonist meant that letting players choose from multiple playable characters felt like a better fit this time.
Some character design examples from LoaMcLoa
Last year we felt like it took us too long to get the core mechanics playable and therefore we had less time to work on actual content, it meant that DWD was a fairly short experience that didn't really explore the puzzle mechanics deeply, this year we knew that we needed to focus in getting the core mechanics into a playable state early on so that we had more time to iterate on them and create more playable content.
So far we have most of the core game mechanics set up and have been making internal builds to play through as we add new mechanics.
Its all a bit rough visually atm but the focus has been on mechanics first and making sure that the game feels good to play before we make it look pretty.
We have a ton more concept art and other still WIP stuff that we could show but I'll save it for a more art focused dev log post later down the line.
Next week we will work on the remaining game mechanics, finish the character redesigns we have left and start working on some 3D assets.
Hey all, We're at the end of the jam, or at least the submission period.
It's been an intense month for us, the project took a few pivots during development but I am happy to say that we managed to get it out the door with a couple of days to spare.
The final game is mostly a narrative game with a few puzzles and some areas to explore, playtime should fall somewhere between 15 to 20 min which is well under the 30 min limit, overall we wanted to have a bit more gameplay but we kinda struggled with getting our gameplay systems set up in the first half and therefor we didn't have enough time in the second half to make all the levels we originally intended.
We still have the entire story we set out to make but the later half of the game is mostly cutscenes instead of levels to explore.
Ultimately I am very happy with the end result and feel like we managed to put together a very solid and complete feeling game from a visual and narrative point of view.
The original idea we had for gameplay was similar to the one we ended up using but focused more on having objects attract to each other with magnetism instead of just lifting them up and manipulating them like it is in the final game, We had some prototypes set up early but it wasn't until around the end of week 2 that we started to think about when kind of gameplay scenarios we could build around that mechanic, which is where we started to run into issues, eventually we settled on making it work like it does today but it left us little time to wrap up puzzle and level design.
The mechanics we ended up using are good though and in a more fleshed out game they would have a lot of gameplay potential.
Visually I wanted to iterate on the lowpoly retro mixed with modern rendering techniques we had last year, We added extra shader features such as vertex wobble and improved the texture style a lot with dithering and other filtering and made them feel more like they came from a game from the PSX era.
The last week was a mix of setting up the cutscenes and replacing all placeholder assets and level blockout with custom geometry along with some polish in areas we finished earlier, we wrapped up work during the weekend and spent a couple of days dealing with any issues that popped up.
I hope you enjoy the game and good luck to all the other submissions, I've played through a few so far and the level of quality across the board is just insane, every year the bar is raised and it continues to inspire me to improve our games.
Until next time,
- Leo (Leotime0)
Hey all, It's been a while since the last devlog, plan was every Thursday/Friday but the last few days were just a little too busy for us, I just wanted to give a little update on our progress.
The project is going well overall, We have most assets ready and are working on putting together the last few areas and cinematics.
all dialogue has been implemented and Esskaden's 2D art assigned to each corresponding line.
We still have the later half of cutscenes left to make but as all assets are ready we'll hopefully get them up in the next couple of days.
The game is set in a small rural town and the surrounding areas:
We are still missing the last area and a detail pass on all the entire game but overall most level work has been finished.
Gameplay wise all the mechanics are in but we still need to do some testing, the gameplay is mostly exploration plus some light physics puzzles.
Aside from that there are things like UIs, Menus, Options and progression triggers that need to be implemented.
This year it's been a bit harder to keep up on the devlogs because the project required way more planning and iteration on the gameplay mechanics, it took us a while to settle on the final story and our original plans for the gameplay ended up being not as fun as we expected, in the end we managed to figure things out but it has meant that the workload has been a bit heavier in the later half.
That being said, I feel pretty good about our progress and am expecting everything to be finished before the deadline.
Hey all! We're wrapping up week 2 of the jam now and ready to show off a bit more content.
The first week was mostly figuring stuff out, writing a story summary, deciding on artstyle and general vibes, figuring some gameplay elements out etc.
The story summary went through about 3 revisions, we started with an idea that ended up being a little too ambitious so the later revisions took that core idea and scoped it into something more realistic while keeping the same themes and general ideas.
It didn't take us long to decide on the artstyle with Esskaden at the helm, he gave us a couple of potential directions and we all agreed that the more stylized cartoony look in the left was the right one.
I took some time to figure out how to best translate that look into a lowpoly retro 3D look and did some art tests:
There are a few other characters we are using for the jam and have concepts of but I'll show more of that later.
We also started to create some env. assets in that style, most of these are still blockouts but this is the general idea:
We have a bunch of extra assets ready but they're all super spoilery so we're gonna hold off on showing them for now.
We're also gonna have a CRT filter similar to last year so these images are not completely representative of the final look.
Music is also going well, Shabello is working hard on getting a couple of core themes ready this week before tackling level specific ones.
We're not quite ready to show off gameplay systems, we had to rework a few things as our original idea ended up being a little too hard to implement properly in the game jam timeframe while leaving time to iterate and design puzzles so we went with something a little simpler that is getting finished up this weekend hopefully, after that Alli will be focusing on blocking out the levels and puzzles.
The plan is to finish up character assets this weekend and start dialogue and cutscene implementation next week while getting some extra env. asset work done in between.
Overall I'm very happy with the progress so far, we have a lot of assets but are a little behind on content, hopefully we'll have some of the cutscenes in a first iteration by next devlog.
Until next time...
Hey all, this year me and the team behind World in Ruin teamed up again to make a game about Mary Margaret.
The game is Death Whisper Diaries and it's an adventure/puzzle game where Margaret explores a little town solving a mystery.
We've also decided to go by Team Hi-lite this year, as these games have become more than just something that I made with help from others.
Shabello is taking care of music and some additional sfx work, Index is back as programmer and I am writing the story, some game design and 3D assets.
We've also added a few extra team members, Esskaden is working on some concepts for the characters and general artstyle, Alli is helping out with programming and game design and Marinofannar is working on 3D assets.
This means we've doubled the team size but it doesn't mean we're gonna make something 2x bigger, our plan is to have a more visually refined game that is more compact and focused than last year.
We're off to a good start with a lot of great ideas for the story, gameplay and art, things are moving a little slower than last year as a larger team means more planning and coordination is involved.
There's some great concepts, music and 3D assets already made but I'll save it for next time where I hope we can give everyone a better idea how the game plays and how it will look overall.