Games Battle Splash - Tactically soaked in Chaotic Water Shooter (Pre-Alpha available)

Hello everyone! I've been working on this game for a long time, and now I want to show you guys some progress that I’ve done. I’m an avid fan of many great shooters on PC, especially arena classics such as Doom, Quake, and Team Fortress 2, but not quite fond of violence elements like blood and gore. With that in mind, I decided to spend 4 years with my own programming skills to make a little game called Battle Splash.

Pre-Alpha Download Link:

• GameJolt: http://gamejolt.com/games/battle-splash/23666
  
• Itch.io: http://dranyastudio.itch.io/battle-splash

Battle Splash is a third-person shooter which takes inspirations from water fights, featuring action-packed, fast-paced water fights in peaceful and relaxing environments. In this game, I want to include the elements that defines 90s arena classics (something like Quake with bright colors, water splashes, and no violence) with class-based elements. Players can choose one of 4 cheerful girls with same weapon loadout, while having distinctive stats for creative playstyles. Furthermore, each girl carries an exclusive item that serves their co-operative role. Currently, I’m optimizing the game so that up to 32 players can join in large playgrounds for water fights. I’m also planning to support modding tool that allow everyone to customize their own water fights for their own preferences.















I’m also making a Greenlight page of Battle Splash for Steam submission. If you find this interesting, please visit my greenlight page and vote "yes". That would be a great support for me!

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=804737940

Thank you very much for taking a look of my project. I hope that you guys are interested in my little game, as well as leaving feedbacks to improve it. Have a nice day!

 

Visually the game looks like it is coming along nicely.
The upper body of the Temiko animations is kind of stiff. This might be a stylistic choice, but it looks stiff even for a simple non-stylized female character.
Usually the body raises on both the passing poses, and dips directly after the initial contact poses. This is exaggerated with male and lumbering characters and minimized with female and light characters.
But with female characters the hips and upperbody usually move in a graceful ribbon/snake like motion, in a figure 8 pattern, and they have more twist at the hips which moves in an opposite sway of the shoulder motions.

I'm not saying this is needed with your animations if this was a stylistic choice to exclude this natural motion, but it's noticeably lacking - and looks stiff.

Nice work on all other aspects. Keep up the solid progress and please update here along with your other development locations.

 

Many thanks. As for your feedback of animation, we'll consider it carefully because the project is still in state of WIP. We admitted that the animation is still stiff, but we may change it during the time of development (of course with careful choice of style and gameplay).
Hope you enjoy the little bit of our projecet and support us by following our progress.

 

And now for the latest development update of Battle Splash!
Although this is somehow a little bit rehash of our previous images, we would like to put Temiko into the Countryside map as a test of compability between the character and the environment.









Feel free to give us comments, feedbacks or thoughts about our project.

 

Hey! I'm loving the look of your environments. I'd definitely encourage your team to add this to madewith.unity.com when you get a chance. You can create your profile here.

 

Thanks! We'll definitely check that

 

We would like to show you the archived images of old prototypes in Battle Splash. These early versions of our project was created by using the former Unity 4 engine. After the transition of Unity 5, we have to take lots of time to convert our project in terms of new implementations.









And here's the assets of Suburban Town in the old prototypes. We had made it by ourselves by using Blender as the main modeling tool.

 

Winter is coming! *plays Game of Thrones tune*

Actually this isn't Game of Thrones, but a new exciting and dazzling environment that will make an appearance in our game, Battle Splash. Enjoy!

 

(Foreword: The following development post is written by the project lead of our studio, Mr. Mai Nguyen Binh Hung (a.k.a Delta Kangara). He has discovered new techniques to generate the terrain in easier ways, as well as opened new potentials for our game, Battle Splash)

The concept is simple: A big map, with a lots of stuffs! Well, technically, YES, it's that simple, let aside the map design, stories line, assets, art style or whatever. However, "THAT SIMPLE" comes with a great price:performance and resource management. Imaging a huge world with a lot of trees, rocks, houses, and many more "little things" like barrels, fences, or even some interior item like cup or spoon (Skyrim, yes?), and all of them fits into a single, resource limited computer. I'm not talking about some players or developers' machine with 16~32GB RAM, core i7, GTX 9XX and so on, I'm talking about much lower rig, something likecore i3~i5, Intel HD, 2~4GB of RAM, etc... Of course, some of you may think that: nah, that's just a common office rig, not suitable for gaming or something. Yet, if the game can "run", or can "barely run" on those machine, I believe it can perform well on high-end machine (I've been expected it to be 40~60FPS with maximum settings on medium rig) as well as its efficient in term of quality scaling.



To deal with the concept, several approaches have been listed out based on my knowledge and my research. The very first approaches is very simple: do a single experiment that uses only a single, huge terrain object and see what is the cost of a terrain. I've been tweaking around Unity and try to make the biggest map as possible. So far, the countryside map is the biggest playable map that I've created, but as for the scope of the experiment, I've created a single terrain with the size is 100 times bigger than the Countryside map. To make it clear, the tallest character of Battle Splash is Quadra with the height of 1.8 meters, while the biggest map's diameter that I've tried is around 7692.3 times larger than her height. Therefore, I believed that the actual map size is around 169 square kilometers (theoretically), with 200k trees from 3 different types. And here is some actual rendering with that big size of the map:



Here are some statistics for Nerd:

• Resolution 1920x920 (Unity GUI prevented full HD in editor)
• Average FPS: 65 (capped). Actual FPS: ~250FPS
• Tree types: 3. Trees in terrain: 200k
• Terrain and trees only, wind effect included.

In other words, I'm very surprised with the result. The draw distance was about 277 meters, and even when I tried to increase the draw distance and camera far clip plane to around 10 kilometers, average FPS still exceed 60 compared to the previous test. Unity terrain system did it job in simulating such a huge area. And as for the memory, the map take up to more than 100MB. Of course, this test doesn't mean it is possible to make a 169 km2 map out of the box with Unity, in terms of both technical and content development. However, it doesn't deny the fact either, that it is POSSIBLE to make such map if suitable methods are applied. Let's dig in and find out how!

The test showed that it is possible to achieve 60 FPS in rendering such terrain. However, the maps only contains trees and a single terrain object, and no grass or terrain foliage, so the FPS can dramaticallyincrease. In addition, there are only 3 types of tree, which were highly optimized and used in the Countryside map, thus there should be no problem rendering thousand of them (if there was, perhaps I had to re-optimize those trees again).



The thing that I did not mention before is the workflow to produce a map. Well, things often start from map concepts, then design, then sculpting the terrains (or importing height map), then placing assets (both procedural and traditional), etc... For this test only, all I've done are placing trees automatically, setting up splat map and then try to sculpt the terrain. There are some problems to be considered. First of all is the visual representation of the map itself. The map was too big, and navigation was really such a pain. It's hard to find the right place to sculpt and also there is no pivot that helps identify the correct height or shape of the chosen areas. The way to solve this problem is kinda simple (which I will discuss in the next part), yet the other problems seems to be way more serious than this one.



The picture above represents the Navigation map for a much smaller map (59 square kilometers, less trees than the 169 km2 one) and it took me almost 20 minutes to finish all the calculations. The size of this navigation mesh is about 70MB, compared to 6MB of Countryside map. The process used up almost 1.5GB of RAM, and you can imagine what would happen if I baked 169km2 map instead of this one. And there is not much assets just yet, so if there is any problem with navigation, then re-baking it might be a greater pain. Oh, about Occlusion Bake, you asked? Nah, my computer is NOT gonna last.



And for the final result, well....



The above picture represent the final image of the map, which was applied several image effects. To be honest, I'm quite satisfied with the result. Unity does a very good job with the terrain system in terms of rendering. But it's just the graphics, let alone physics, game logic and ton of additional assets. There will be plenty of problems such as: memory management, navigation (yes, huge map might lead to performance spike), Occlusion Culling, etc... Still, our workflow for such huge map is unclear at the moment, so I'll continue to dig deeper into it in order to make sure the balance between performance and quality.

 

After long and careful works, we're proud to bring you the revamped version of our new map, Paper World.

 

The beauty of [water] launcher in the map of Medieval Town with slow mo effects

 

The peaceful atmosphere of glowing tree in a revamped Paper World

 

Finally, it's here! The first in-game sneak peek of Battle Splash in‪ #‎ScreenshotSaturday‬. Prepare to get immersed in a world full of vivid sceneries and water splashes!
(The following trailer is a representative of actual graphics and gameplay of current work-in-progress development.)

 

We also bring you a handful set of new in-game screenshots featuring girls with water guns in the fun of water fights.











After the trailer had been posted on last weekend, our game has just reached #1 rank of Most Popular Game in IndieDB for the first time. Many great thanks for your support that contributing to our success! You can check our latest article in IndieDB with the following link:

http://www.indiedb.com/games/battle-splash/news/first-in-game-preview-of-battle-splash

 

During the in-game preview, many people concerned that our game haven't shown much gameplay, despite the fact that the trailer was made with in-game graphics and we did put a small portion of gameplay in the end of the clip. We acknowledged that because we don't want to take a risk of burning everything and ruin the surprises. In responding to that, we want to show you guys some of the footages from actual gameplay in Battle Splash. The following clips are recorded directly from a stressed technical test session. This session was a multiplayer match consists of 32 AI-controlled characters in 4 different teams shooting each others. This test was served with purpose of checking the synchronization across the server and the client, as well as optimization between quality and performance.

 

Your game seem to have a huge scope. That's dangerous for small studios. With this style of graphics you will be compared to top MMOs. That's risky as well. Good luck!

 

Continue from the Player-vs-AI Test Session, includes HUD and put in direct perspective of a gamer.

 

Additional in-game footage with various characters' activities and water splashes

During the development of Battle Splash, we always want to extend the maps with larger sizes and more variable sceneries. At first, the maps were created by manual work with basic terrain tools, hand-placed models and foliage. However, we've created a procedural generating tool with simple algorithms so that it can automatically set the foliage in a large area. Not only did the workload reduce significantly, this tool also enabled new potentials of making huge map in a short time. Its application will be expendable from multiplayer maps to single-player/co-op campaign scenarios, even to the point of open-world scale (only implemented in multiplayer maps at the moment). More info of this tool are mentioned in our 11th devlog in IndieDB.

Battle Splash Dev Update #011 - Procedural Terrain Generation

Here are some size comparison of our maps in Battle Splash (the following images are representing the map layouts, not actual in-game graphics)



Paper World: 172,544 m2



Medieval Citadel: 172,544 m2



Medieval Town: 234,852 m2



Small Town: 306,745 m2



Countryside: 479,298 m2



Experimental Map (created with the self-made generation tool): 47,928,994 m2 ~ 47 km2

 

Concept render of Trianga, one of 4 playable characters in Battle Splash and have an important role in the origin backstory. Made with Blender.



Also, we would like to introduce you some latest in-game screenshots of our current Work-in-Progress map, Medieval Citadel. Comparing to the old versions that we've shown you before, the map is added additional models and details to achieve its overall aesthetics and balance in multiplayer.

 

We would like to show you our first implementation of water reflection in our game's environment. This is an experiment that using the real-time reflection method to the point of having crystal-clear water quality. We're also testing the water's different amounts of distortion and opacity, whether it fits the game's overall experience and style.

 

4 years of continuous development come to this fruition: Our very first gameplay video of Battle Splash. Everything you're about to see in here are what you can expect when playing this game.

Oh, and don't forget to vote our game on Greenlight. Thank you!

Battle Splash Greenlight Page

 

Our voting campaign in Greenlight has ended successfully as the game is officially Greenlit after 16 days, right in the end of year 2016. Therefore, thank you very much for supporting us and we'll do our best to create the finest experience in this water fight game.



Right after being Greenlit, we've started experimenting and making new features in Battle Splash. "Balloon Hop" (a.k.a "Water Balloon Hopping") is the first mechanism to be implemented in this year and it's a really fun one. This mechanic requires precise aiming and timing in order to be successfully executed. A series of perfect "Hops" will keep player leaping very fast.

Along with the "Balloon Hop", we also decided to remake our Medieval Town map based on the community feedback. The buildings are re-modeled and the color tone is being adjusted in order to unify the overall aesthetics. At first, we tried with the tone of fresh green with examples below:









This is the comparison between the original version (upper) and the remake version (lower)



However, many feedback shows that most people prefer the orange/yellow color tones that implemented in the original map. So we decided to mix the original colors with new building models, which resulted in something fresh right here.











Comparing to the prototype made one year ago, this is a tremendous progress that we've done during the development









These are still Work-in-Progress, which you'll expect more changes to be made in time.

 

This is how Battle Splash evolved after 3 years of development, 8 Unity versions, 10+ prototype builds, and many hours of bugfixes after upgrading newer Unity versions.

And here's what we discovered while testing the shield item for one of our girls. In fact, we DID have a full ping-pong match by only using that item.

 

After a long period of preparations, we're proud to bring you guys the very first Pre-Alpha build of Battle Splash - Non-violence Third-person Water Fight Game on PC.

Download Link:

• GameJolt: http://gamejolt.com/games/battle-splash/23666
  
• Itch.io: http://dranyastudio.itch.io/battle-splash

Take your water weapons and challenge with/against your friends. Feel the frenzy as water splashes from your weapons can accidentally wet your opponents, your allies, and even yourself! The aim of this game is to create a fun, intense, and exciting shooter with no need of violence. Everyone, regardless of ages, can enjoy Battle Splash as much as they can.

Players can choose one of 4 character classes with different traits and stats for wide range of play styles. These classes are equipped with a special items based on strengths and advantages of the characters. Moreover, Battle Splash allows players to wield a set of 4 weapons with no restriction for more fun and frenzy experience. The game will also feature AI bots to provide more challenges to the players.

Pre-Alpha Features:

• Large playground with the theme of Medieval Town
• Team Free-For-All game mode
• All characters and weapons are available
• Single-player and Multiplayer via LAN up to 32 players
• Challenging AI bots for comp-stomp

System Requirements:

• CPU: Intel Core i3
• GPU: Intel HD Graphics (2nd Generation)
• RAM: 3GB
• HDD: 1GB
• OS: Windows 7 32-bit
• Keyboard & Mouse
• Network card for LAN Multiplayer

We're really happy if you can come along and join the fun of water fights with Battle Splash. See you at the playground!