[FINISHED] Akiro the squid <3

Wow, just goes to show how different something will be by the end!

 

I haven't had the time to work on Akiro as much as I've wanted lately, so I thought I could share some of the first designs I made, and tell what my initial thoughts were. (err, "designs").

The first name I ever gave the game was "FlipFish". My project folder is still named that to this day. The whole reason I started creating this game is because I thought the movement function sounded fun, so I wanted to try it. Here is some of the first images (some not even screencaps, just with a phone) and it's quite fun to see how it has evolved.

This right here, is the first photo ever of the game. There was no functions, only that image drawn in one minute and just imported into Unity.



At first I had no idea what the game was going to be about. Because of the fluid movement, the very first thing I wanted to try was making the main character a fish. Slightly after that I scrapped that because I sucked at drawing fish from top.

Here's some of the first sketches, whereas I tried to find out what the theme was going to be:

From left to right: TestBug, Car (was thinking of naming it "Dodgy Drift" for a while), Beetle, Squid(!) and another squid.



Here's another image. I should have added this one right after the pink, seeing as I used this character before the blue bug. Oh well. At first I did not think about using enemies at all. I wanted static colliders: lily pads, or as seen in the one under here; white placeholder bubble-thingies. I will add more early images later on, as well as the two first videos... recorded with my phone.

 

Worked on User interfaces. FYI, to start the game again you have to press the pause button again.

New build added:
Akiro (06.06.2015)

 

The slightly larger screen size plus the better collides make is so much easier, instead of getting 3 i got 8.

 

Awesome, RavenOfCode!

I'm thinking of having a tutorial at the beginning, whereas there's only one shrimp on the screen, and that one moves towards the player, and after that the enemies spawn. (Probably gradually, but rather steep seeing as I want this to be a "pick-up-and-easily-play-anywhere" type of game, not a tedious tutorial each time the player dies.

Also, does anyone have any pointers on the music? Both tracks are old tracks I made myself. They're don't have the feel I'm after at the moment, but I think they are semi-fitting as well. Probably need a little more upbeat.

 

The music is quite good, yes, I agree that upbeat would be better, but these for whatever reason have that kind of underwater vibe. I like the sound effect, however, being nit picky, I feel like i would like it more if it was a tad lower pitch, try doing a quick pitch change and see which you like more

 

Yeah, for now the sound effect is a placeholder. I quickly made it using an online 8bit SFX maker. I will later on try to make it bit more of a... ehm... "nom" sound.

 

I'm unsure if I want to random the colors, or let the players choose. Random sounds really fun, but I think the player would feel more attached if he/she could choose their favorite. Here's Akiro's colored after the color wheel:



What if this is the basic selection, and I could implement some sort of achievement system that could unlock more special skins. For example "retro Akiro" (grey colors), "Akiro Boy" (game boy colors), etcetera. And what if there's just a button click in the "character selection" that says: randomize colors?

All the posibilities.

 

How have I not commented here yet? This thread is awesome! Really cool seeing your game coming together.

I played it for about 10 minutes. My best score is 6. Is that any good? For the first couple of minutes I couldn't even get a single shrimp but after a while I could get at least 2 fairly consistently. The movement is absolutely brilliant and feels pretty darn perfect. You did an excellent job there!

My biggest complaint has to be the restarting music. In a game where you die every couple of seconds this can get annoying really quickly. Also while I think the game looks pretty darn nice the screen feels a bit empty. Some particles or some kind of gradient would do a lot I think. Maybe little bubbles every time your squid changes direction?

As for the colors, I think I'd prefer getting a random color after each try. That way every run would feel a little unique.

BTW, I really like how you have a little squid on your laptop in your profile picture Now that’s what I call attention to detail!

 

Thank you for the comment inko! I find it amazing that you saw the Akiro on my profile picture! The profile picture is a drawing my girlfriend drew for me, and I requested a small akiro as a logo on the laptop.

6 score is not bad at all. It's certainly one of the higher numbers I've heard lately. I tried twice a couple hours ago as well, and managed to get to 19. It's hard balancing the game, so I really appreciate you trying and telling me the score. It makes it easier for me to see just how hard it is.

I will fix the restarting music soon. Thank you! I shall also try find some more visual goodies to play with. Particles or more variation in the background. Bubbles is a good idea! Very early I did have some particle effects - I'll go ahead and try adding bubbles again soon.

Thank you for the feedback, it's always very welcome in this thread!

 

You're about to witness something very silly. Here are the first quick sketches of a couple unlockable skin ideas. I'm not even sure if I want unlockables yet, but I liked the idea so I just sat down to draw. I'm confused about my next step in programming, so why not just play around with some designs.

Akiro Boy: Inspired by Game Boy colors. I think this could be a cool one.


Boom goes the squid: reference to creepers from Minecraft. I think it looks super cute. This wouldn't be considered stealing, right? The last thing I want is to get sued.



Chocosquid: Just a chocolate colored Akiro. Looks decent, almost like any other design... Just chocolate.


Sandwich-Akiro: Meh... It sounded good in my head, but it looks so awful. Should experiment more.


Rainbow-Akiro: This also sounded cool, but after doodling for 5 minutes I couldn't get it to look peaceful. Now it just looks like an error... HEY! ... Error skin?


Let me know your thoughts! Should I include parody skins like the minecraft one? (Also interested in making a blooper one) - or keep it more natural?
Liked some of them? Got any ideas for other unlockables?

 

YEEES! 2 digits! whooooo!

 

Congrats! I might be wrong, but I think you are the first one to get to double digits.

 

I got 12 @inko - You got the high score on the asteroids thread. Your not getting it here! I'll fire it up at work if I have too.
I got 12 followed by a series of 1's and 0's. I think it may have been communicating to me in binary - telling me not again.

Hey @Mothil - just an off the wall thought - maybe a transparent version, just the outline and the eyeballs. That might be kinda weird/cool.
Or semi transparent white ghostly look.

I think it'd be cool to unlock the colors. Select one initial color for 3-4 options then unlock based on different milestones met. Score - times played. Time played without dieing. Number of hours played. etc.

 

I thought of an idea for one but I don't know if you feel its worth it, if you do a series of 'pulsating squids' but you would need to make multiple sprites for the animation
Keep up the good work

 

I must say, very addictive

 

A pulsating one sounds very cool! I love drawing pixel art, so when the time comes I will probably upload tons of different designs, so feel very free to come with tips - just like you did now.

Inspired by your pulsating idea, I thought I could make a "steel-akiro" one as well. Maybe he has a little shining piece on him?

Oh, and what if all the special skins had different death animations?
Steel = falls heavily down the screen
rainbow = pops and makes a rainbow
creeper = goes pixel boom

 

Guys, it just occurred to me that I might not need a pause button. I was playing around, seeing if everything works, and I just kept mashing the pause button, and doing that Akiro could be made into a tactical game sort of. Pause and look, do half a turn, pause again, so on and so on.

The more I think about it, the less I want, or even _need_ a pause button. The high score could be shown at the death screen.

Thoughts?

 

First of all, I like your ideas on the alternate skin ideas and their death animations
And I agree with you on the pause thing, in game where you are playing for 5-10 seconds most the time, why would you need to pause? Also, it breaks the immersion in my opinion

 

Removed the pause button, and added a death screen instead. Very basic, and the position on everything is a bit weird.

Newest build here (09.06.2015)

 

I'm liking it
If I may say, the GUI buttons seem to be vertically stretched
And in my opinion, I think it would be good if on the death screen you can still see akiro, let them despair at the enemy which ended their game

 

That sounds very reasonable! I will work a lot more on the GUI design soon. Seeing Akiro and the enemy on the death screen is a very good idea. I will have to try that later.

 

May re-consider the pause screen also. I believe your going to have a diverse audience - some more experienced gamers - liking the difficulty and ease of play, others less experienced (casual) gamers - who may need to pause briefly to take care of something.
Maybe just re-think the pause - how to keep it without it being used by the player to 'game' the system? @QFSW just incorporated a blur effect into his menu screen. Maybe something like that, or in the same theme of your game. Make it a near instant pixelated transition or something. Just a couple other thoughts to bat around.

 

Ah yes thank you for that @theANMATOR2b, that was something I over looked, being in the midst of a good game and needing to quickly go do something like answer the door
Your suggestions are pretty good, @Mothil, if you are really concerned people may try to exploit it, you can always have a backdrop or some kind of static image in the back when you are paused, this will eliminate the pause exploit, but may cause some issues if people come back and have no idea they were right next to a swordfish
But yeah I agree with @theANMATOR2b, a pause is something you would need, I just overlooked the reason for it in this game.

 

Also this is a mobile game isn't it? Given that I can imagine you would need a pause so they can quickly switch apps or reply to a text, pause their music etc.

 

Very good points guys! I will definitely try adding it back in. Having a blur / image over sounds like a good plan.

 

Working a bit more on the GUI. Made some new buttons, but most importantly: gathered all the button drawings so they are not in two files, but one. Productivity yay!

Here's the current layout. I don't like it, but it's an improvement:
My thoughts:
Pros: simple style
Cons: Slightly poor colors, bad attempt at shading



Will improve them soon. Any ideas how, and what kind of colors I should go for?

 

I must say, GUI is looking *much* nicer now, well done!
Hmm, maybe to fit with the ocean theme you could go with a nice cool blue?

 

I will experiment with colors later. I'm wondering if blue fits, cause the background is going to be blue. I guess I'll just have to try a bunch of different things to see what sticks.

 

Yeah I understand the background will be blue, but some times if you use all the right colours you can make something look good where its all one base colour (eg you can make it look good with all blues if you use the right blues)

 

I've been so lazy this week. Mostly because of this. I have no idea when I will finish making Akiro, but I do not feel like rushing it, so I'd rather spend more time fiddling with it, experimenting and such. The game has gotten quite a lot of positive feedback, and it would be a shame not to let it all sink in and shape it for the better.

 

Character selection in the making! The plan for this is making the Akiros rotate when the player taps the sides. The 12 original colors are heavily inspired by the color wheel, and I think it would be a cool character selection screen if the Akiros rotated around. In theory this sounds pleasing, seeing as the core of the game is rotation.

 

The Q in quit looks like an O. :0 Maybe take away the "bad attempt at shading"? Its looking good though I still cant get past 5...

 

Recolored the interface to a light blue yesterday. I also removed the shading while I was at it.
I'm hoping to fix a larger portion of the character selection today.



What do you guys think about the colors? I for one like them a lot more than the orange, but I'm still not convinced it fits enough.

 

Just worked with a rough layout of the character selection. For some strange reason it starts to move on the X-axis when I rotate... I will find out the problem soon enough. Here's the character selection in action: (no functionality yet implemented)

 

Hey man! Liking the selection wheel!
But you should really pick a different font. Your current one looks weiredly stretched. It looks good on your logo but on the buttons it looks out of place to me.

As for your question about the x position:
In unitys new UI system every child object gets positioned relative to its parent bounds rect(as far as I know).
If you use a non-ui element as a parent it will change its x and y coordianted because the bounding box changes size, therefore needing to reposition itself in order to stay at the same relative position to its parent. It's a bit counterintuitive but it's intendet behaviour.
At least I think thats whats going on.

Anyway, I'd say it's bad practice to use standart transforms as parents for ui objects anyway. You may want to use an empty rectTransform instead.

/smartass mode

Oh, and I will get that highscore and if its the last thing I do! ;D

 

I will look into changing the font, thank you for the suggestion!

Regarding the UI system, interesting. I will experiment with this tomorrow and see if I understand it fully. I appreciate the info!

Your enthusiasm to get the high score makes me want to maybe create a high-score table real soon. Maybe that's on the list right after character selection.

 

Well... It's buggy but it kind of works. Right now I'm using an empty Rect Transform holding the sprites, so I have no idea why it behaves like that. Keep in mind that the sprites aren't perfectly placed, so it's easier to see the movement on the arrows in the middle.

 

Hmmm... that is odd indeed. Just tried it out myself and it works like a charm for me. It might be a scaling issue? Always make sure UI elements have a scale of 1,1,1. If thats not it, it might be your rotation code? It kinda looks like it's rotating around your UI pivot.
Also, when working with RectTransforms try to work with areas instead of points. Make sure your empty rect transform contains all squids and is approxemately square.

What really baffles me though is that is looks like it's moving on the Z position based on the rotation. I have never seen anything like that

I'll send you a pm if I can think of anything else. Doing lots of UI stuff myself currently so I have some personal interest in this problem

 

I ended up adding a rigidbody to it and locking the x and y rotation and position, haha. It works now, but my gut says I should avoid having a rigidbody on a UI element. Checking through scales now.

 

I ended up just giving up on the UI, seeing all the problems I was faced with. Don't get me wrong, I will use UI character selection if I have to, but I believe the character selection can be made just using normal objects. Here's a screenshot of the current progress (using a circle to find the correct distance from the middle..)

 

I've been through a good mix of procrastination and vacation right now. I have worked a bit here and there, but not at all as much as I did earlier. I'm still on vacation at the moment, but I feel obligated to update more on social media - especially the devlogs (this one and TIGsource).

I will soon start writing more again. Most likely the posts will gradually increase in the following two weeks.

 

I really like this game! Very addicting and attractive. Couldn't pass 7

 

Hello Grimbyte! I'm happy you found it fun to play. Feel free to hang around and ask questions or give feedback - I'm always looking for what other people think. 7 is a great score! If you read back in this log you'll see you are definitely amongst the highest scores. Well played!

 

I'll definitely be keeping an eye on this. I really like the idea of unlockable skins, it'll provide a nice incentive for achieving higher scores.

 

That's what I'm hoping that it'll do!
I've had to put that objective on the shelf for some time now though, seeing as I'm not at home where my 'correct setup' is. I'm travelling and brought my laptop - certainly possible to work on, but hard to stay focused on the harder topics like character selection GUI.

If I'm going to guess, my next posts will be about redesigning the behaviour of some of the enemies, and/or redrawing them. Any and all feedback regarding the enemies is very welcome. My main thought is scrapping the piranha, and possibly giving them a more dynamic movement. Just a straight line kind of works, but it seems so... predictable I guess.

It's hard finding the perfect balance there, but I'm going to work a lot on it. I won't give up on the game until it feels super comfortable to play.

 

I'm ashamed of how little I've worked on my project lately, but I've been very busy with work, packing and getting ready to move. It almost feels like abondoning a piece of my soul (not as brutal though) but close to, haha! I'm trying to get back into routine very soon though, but as for now I have very hectic days.

I'm still on my laptop. Mac to be precise, so I don't have a gif recorder. Yet.



I fixed the Akiro positions, so they are now perfectly alligned when they are rotated. (Post 138 shows how they were before).

Looking forward to actively picking up this project again very soon.

 

Back to sketching!

As of now I do not like most of my enemies. I'm happy with how the puffer fish works, as well as the shrimp. I'm not convinced with the other ones, so I grabbed my sketchbook to see if I got any better ideas. And I think I have one! While they all could be good, one I liked particularly much is the sea turtle.

Imagine it like a flipped Lakitu from Mario. He swims into the screen, tries to get right under you and after a while jumps into his shell and floats up trying to hit you. I think that sounds pretty fun! ... And intense. I do need some more casual enemies as well though, but I don't know which yet.

 

Here's the rest of the page! Mostly just scribbles to see if something sticks.

 

Don't worry, everyone ends up taking breaks from things, people only have so much time in their lives, as long as you know you are gonna work on it again you shouldn't feel bad
I quite like the sound of that enemy, and your sketches look quite good and interesting too