Devlog #7 Smelting the Alpha level into a playable demo.

Posted on 2022-05-05

Creatures Of War fans,

Over the last four weeks the team has been hard at work attempting to get the trailer and alpha closer to the finish line. For the trailer we need to create all of the art assets that will be showcased. For the Alpha we need to rig a couple of features that are lingering. We also need to perfect a few remaining bugs on existing systems. This has been quite the task as one of the new features that is being rigged is an “Item_Drop_System”. This system focuses on analyzing the players inventory and deciding on what regents, ammunitions, or treasures to drop for the player based upon a number of gameplay factors.

Think about playing a game where you killed a ton of enemies, but you also used up all of your bullets. If the game did not read the inventory of the player, every enemy death would have an equivalent chance to drop either health, bullets, or treasure to the player and the odds would never tip in any direction. If the algorithm never adjusted and a player ran out of ammunition, they would have the possibility of running out of ammo, and then possibly not being able to beat the game. It is for this exact reason that we need an algorithm to run over the inventory periodically to determine the needs of the player. If a veteran of the game is always stocked on bullets and regents, then more treasure would drop as the algorithm would lean that way. This in turn would then reward strong gameplay mechanics by increasing their in-game money which is then used to upgrade their weapons.

Another fun feature that we have been working on is getting the player to traverse the level fluidly via the use of ladders, ropes, elevators, and ziplines. These systems are currently in working order, but they are a bit crude when it comes to varying velocities. For example: The player can enter the rope midair by walking, jumping, and catching the rope midair. The transition into grabbing the rope midair will be a slow transition because the x velocity was determined by the player walking. On the other end of the spectrum, we have the player enter the rope midair by running, jumping, and catching the rope midair. The transition into grabbing the rope midair will be a fast transition because the x velocity was determined by the player running. While we have two distinct scenarios here, at least we do not have variable velocities like some games if running up hill! That means that if we have trouble coding an algorithm that determines animation mixing based upon the players X velocity, it will be ok. We can always hard code in two edge cases.

Anyways you can see that the programming features can get a bit complicated. The team is working hard to iron out all of these coding bugs as well as get the SFX’s, art, and music in their proper places come alpha testing time. If you are interested in testing out the Alpha of Creatures of War, please send an email to Tim@creaturesofwar.com

Until next time,

Tim @ Chaos Entertainment

Devlog #6 Rigging Audio Hooks and Camera Bounds

Posted on 2022-04-01

Hello everyone,

I am very excited to discuss the current state of Creatures of War. In the last month we have been working very hard to rig the camera and audio systems. One of the joint goals I shared with my sound effects developer was to achieve realistic audio effects throughout ones playthrough. Ironically, we are able to achieve this affect while tackling our camera bounds system. The remainder of this blog post will be going through these two systems and the upside they offer to the player experience over traditional systems.

The audio effects we are rigging are based upon realistic audio events that occur in our everyday world. For example, if you fire a weapon outside, the sound of the weapon disperses into the air and albeit the sound is loud, the sound has little echo and disperses rather quickly. If you fired that same weapon in a small room in a house, the sound would bounce off of the walls many times producing large amounts of echo. In our game engine we are creating artificial overlays on top of each of the areas the player will be visiting. This means that we will be overlaying large outdoor areas as well as the smallest crawlspace the player can squeeze through. The effect will be created by adding in custom amounts of reverb to all sound effects that occur based upon the size of the location you are in. This will give the sound effects a 3D quality to them even though these events are taking place in a 2D universe.

An added benefit of creating artificial overlays on top of each area is that the camera systems can hook into these bounding areas we have created. One of the primary benefits is that the camera will follow the player until the camera reaches the end of a bounding area. The player will then have to venture into the next area for the camera to move again. This is great for creating suspenseful areas where ambushes can be set up as the player will not know what is behind the next door. Insert audio events that will allow the player to listen to the idle sound effects of a velociraptor waiting to pounce on unsuspecting prey here.

These systems are currently being created and still need to be stress tested to make sure they work fluidly. I am very excited to get these systems working perfectly across the entire alpha level. Looking to the near future we need to rig environmental triggers so we can fire the ambushes I referred to earlier in this post. The Alpha will be nearly complete once we have the audio hooked in, the camera responding intelligently to player actions, and we have events firing correctly.

If you are interested in ALPHA testing Creatures of War, please send an email to tim@creaturesofwar.com

Until next time,

Tim @ Chaos Entertainment

Dev Log #5 Scoping in on a full game loop!

Posted on 2022-02-25

Over the past few months, the emphasis on getting a working vertical slice has been pushed extremely hard. The workload ranges from getting doors operating, audio events firing, smoothing out combat, adjusting weapon scopes, adding in level art, adjusting art layers, etc. The list is very long and is outside the scope of this post. What is important is the progress that has been made.

In the next few weeks, we will be tying up a lot of loose ends. These are low hanging fruits, many of which were listed in the previous paragraph. While each individual loose end does not take a long time to accomplish, when you add them all up together, the task becomes exponentially more time consuming. What I am most excited about is the fact that we are getting the level traversing systems implemented into the game. The player is now able to operate elevators and climb up and down ropes. The last remaining step is enabling the player to climb up and down ladders. These are all basic features that many games share, anything spicier?

We are excited to announce that night vision has been fully rigged and implemented. The player is going to be venturing into dark rooms and the night vision goggles will help traverse these dark corridors without too much worry. They work by targeting all of the pixels on the screen. These pixels are then modified to have enhanced green values and light values based upon previous recorded value settings. This is great because the player will be staring at an extremely bright screen when wearing the night vision goggles in a lit room. Thus, making them strictly work in dark spaces, just like in real life. Awesome!

Slowly the ambience of Creatures of War is coming together. A gel of horror, action, and exploration. The addition of lighting effects, custom sfx’s, and a harrowing soundtrack breathe life into this thrilling world we are so excited to share.

While the artwork for the Alpha level / Demo is 99% complete, here is a quick look into half completed sprite for the far background of the cave level. Enjoy!

If you are interested in ALPHA testing Creatures of War, please send an email to CREATURESOFWAR@GMAIL.COM

Until next time,

Tim @ Chaos Entertainment

Dev Log #4 Closing In On A Highly Polished Level

Posted on 2022-01-26

As you read in the title, we are closing in on our first completed, highly polished level. This marks the biggest success we have achieved thus far. Let me walk you through what we have been dealing with and what it took for us to overcome these issues.

When first developing a tutorial / demo for Alpha testers to playthrough before the release of the game, I had a lot of internal questions to answer. How large should the level be? How many enemy types should we put in? What outstanding features should be displayed in this short playthrough?

I found myself wanting to deliver on so many different fronts that it took quite a long amount of time to realize what my first important task was. I needed a gripping level that would make people want to keep playing before introducing any of my amazing features. I had to first conceptualize the art assets to be created, actually create the art, and then import them into the project. After importing the artwork, we had to see if everything fit together. This became a big headache for us because of our lack of pixel perfect alignment tools in Unity. In photoshop you can create assets that lineup pixel perfect, everything flows the way it should. After importing into Unity, every sprite (imported art assets from photoshop) has a soft edge, making lining things up perfectly like you did in photoshop an impossibility. So, if you create a building that is 25 times the size of the original building piece given, and every building piece is slightly off, you find yourself with a building that is out of alignment.

So how does the creation of a large building affect the enemies to be put into the level? How does this affect what feature you will be putting into the level?

To answer this question, I have to revert back to my original intentions as to why the building was so important to construct in the first place. This large building is going to be the epicenter of testing the players abilities at the very beginning of the game. The first heavy weapon will be acquired here, the first ambush will take place here, the list goes on and on. Many unique features take place in this large building! After getting the foundational artwork figured out and understanding the layout of the building moving forward, I was able to focus on my art-oriented tasks such as lighting and accenting. The building slowly over the past two months has started to come to life and now looks amazing. Part of the level accenting process is something as trivial as, “Ok we now have a fully rigged Procompsognathus that can go into the level. Should we have a small hole in the wall where these creatures can spawn?” Something a bit more tasteful can be like this, “I want this area to be a combat zone. Let’s put a lot of dead researchers in the area and to make it more dramatic and frightening, let’s have a few of the lights flicker on and off as well.”

I wanted the building to be constructed because I felt it gave me a greater chance to display everything the game currently has to offer, in its best light. Not every feature is going to be a different game mechanic such as a scoped rifle firing and zooming in vs a fully automatic rifle. A feature of a game can be something as simple as a flickering light with a frightening corridor to walk down. I felt that a tight environment was my best bet.

Now I have not touched upon the fact that there is quite a lot of jungle environment in this level to explore before and after reaching the large building. The scope of this demo / tutorial kept increasing. As the level became prettier and more complex, I have started to have doubts about the length of this level. Is it simply too long? The answer will reveal itself during the Alpha testing of this game. Alpha testing will take place in March.

Anyways to close out quickly, the bottom line is that the game is headed in the right direction. The first time you take apart and build an engine back together takes forever. You have to learn all of the ins and outs of the engine before you can properly hook things back together. We can confidently say we have achieved this. We took a long time to figure out how to develop environment pathways, building sizes, sloped rooms, etc. Now if we want to rig a new room we can create the art asset, import it, and prefab / place the asset in 1/5 the time. Essentially moving forward, I expect to create levels 300-500% faster than we created this tutorial. Quite frankly that makes me very excited, and I hope it makes you guys excited too.

If you are interested in ALPHA testing Creatures Of War, please send an email to CREATURESOFWAR@GMAIL.COM

Until next time,

Tim @ Chaos Entertainment

Dev Log #3 Powering Up Through 2022!

Posted on 2021-12-24

Wow 2021 Was A Crazy Ride!

Creatures Of War through 2021 changed a lot. We rigged many enemies, produced countless art assets, implemented tons of new combat features, put dynamic lighting into effect, curated hundreds of custom sfx’s, produced many new songs and rigged everything together with passionate nerd glue. Looking back on this year I am proud of my team and all of the hard work we put forth to make this game a possibility. We are starting now to see the pieces fall into place. The artwork is starting to add up, the levels are looking quite beautiful. The combat system is on the brink of working smoothly. The SFX’s library is vast and brings out the personality of the island while the music produces sweet notes of fear and panic while exploring this crazy world.

Looking forward to 2022 we can expect a lot of huge milestones. The combat system is expected to be fully rigged and will be tested vigorously to make sure the AI is up to snuff. The Demo is expected to be fully operational by March, everyone will get to play the game in a short vertical slice! On top of this the game’s art will be getting a surge in productivity as we bring on an additional artist to help with the workload. Oh, and did I forget to mention that I will be significantly reducing my hours at my other business to enable me to pump even more hours into this game?! I am already working full time on Creatures Of War, but I think it is time to power up to sixty hours a week or more. This extra time will be used to make sure that everything comes together smoothly. Also, in 2022 it is time to complete a trailer and to start spreading the word about Creatures Of War. A soft announcement was made in 2021 in October when the game was announced. In 2022 I am looking to create lots of hype around Creatures Of War so people are on the lookout for this game when we plan to release in 2023.

Well That All Sounds Good But Isn’t That A lot Of Work?

I have been planning for years now that 2022 was going to be the year of putting my head down and knocking this project out of the park. I am going to be posting more regularly come March across my social media platforms. I have thought about potential burnout as an issue but there is one thing going for me here. I am working on a video game, my video game. As combat comes together and things start moving along, I am no longer working on back-end systems that can take a week or a month to materialize. I get to focus on playtesting, balance changes, visual effects, you know the fun stuff?!

What Is Your Favorite Part Of Creatures Of War?

My favorite part of Creatures Of War is the fast paced, brutal combat. The Dilophosaurus is the primary dinosaur we are testing everything on before transporting his AI to all of the other creatures of similar structure and design. He moves fast, hits hard, and is intelligent. The Dilophosaurus is the equivalent to a mini boss in many other games. Guess what? He is a moderately difficult creature in Creatures Of War. The difficulty ceiling in this game is based on mastery of the given combat variables. Grenade usage, dodge and sprint timings, weapon accuracy, exploration / treasure recovery and upgrade effectiveness. A comprehensive combat system that integrates all of these components is going to deliver an immersive experience that makes people beg for a sequel. That is what I am hear to do. I aim to blow everyone away with a game that is difficult but fair, complicated yet simple, beautiful and immersive. You will have to wait until March before you can see for yourself.

Bring It On 2022 I am ready.

Cheers,

Tim @ Chaos Entertainment

Devlog #2

Posted on 2021-10-16

Creatures Of War was announced across my social media channels through both a steam page and the website you are currently on now. The question that everyone is probably thinking is, “Where the hell is the trailer?”. Well to have a robust and captivating trailer that most people will approve of, I need to accomplish a few of these listed points in no particular order.

• Art work is needed across a few select biomes.
• Combat was working nicely but then sadly had to be broken to implement many new features, getting combat wired back in is a must.
• Creating all the necessary SFX’s for the desired units in the trailer is needed, most are complete but a few stragglers remain.
• Polishing the VFX’s from grenade explosions to blood splatters needs some attention, not a lot but it’s current state is not acceptable.

A More Detailed Breakdown

The past three to four months has been a wild ride for my artist. She has been pulled in a million directions at once. One minute she is working on the flooring of a building in the compound, the next she is creating the cover image for the game, after that she goes back to the compound flooring… psyche, nope now she is creating all of the art assets for the website. Basically she has spent hundreds of hours creating assets for anything but the game itself. Now that she has knocked out 98% of the promotional materials she can focus on what is important, the game.

Combat in Creatures Of War is on the mend. The player is currently a bit janky due to animation transitions breaking which occurred as a result of implementing many new animation states allowing for proper level traversal. The idea to initially flesh out combat before level traversal was this, if the combat sucks, why work on anything else? So that is what we did, we created a combat system that is energetic and alive, flows naturally, and is gritty as all hell. Now that our attention is back on getting the trailer ready, combat should be operational shortly, I cannot wait to show you the result of all this hard work.

The SFX’s are actually quite close to being completed. I knew a while out that we needed certain sounds to be created for certain creatures, weapons, and of course the player. The creatures in the trailer are almost entirely finished with their SFX’s, the weapons have been polished off for a while now, and the player needs a proper voice actor to give us the necessary sounds for his star role in this game.

The VFX’s are all completed, they just lack that level of polish that a publicly released game requires. These visual effects include the grenade explosions, muzzle flashes, etc. They are all very close though, not a lot of work (Or so I think, I always say this and bite my tongue).

How long Did You Say?

The time table for the trailer to be completed is approximately sixteen weeks to twenty weeks. I not only want combat to work but I need it to be very responsive, thus playtesting is going to be extensive to ensure the game is ready to be shown in it’s best light. The art will not take long as a lot of the art assets already exist. Building out a few new assets and layering them to showcase a larger area will not take long. The SFX’s need another month or so before we have the required lot for the trailer. The VFX’s will likely take less than a week to fully polish. Not much of a concern there.

But wait there’s more!

I need to hire a professional to create the Creatures Of War trailer. The amount of time it takes to create a trailer can take anywhere from a few weeks to a month. This includes breaking down key gameplay areas, displaying NPC interactions, all of the editing, storyboarding, recaptures, etc. Understanding the time it takes to create a trailer is why I think this will take twenty weeks to complete, the game could be ready to go but the Game Trailer Editor may need up to a full month’s time to get the trailer just right. Remember I only get one shot to make a really solid impression on everybody.

Quite a lengthy post but I wanted to be transparent about the game development process with everyone from the beginning. Topics for the future will include an in-depth breakdown on the art development process, how SFX’s are created, how we capture the essence of the game through Creatures Of War’s musical score, and of course anything else that I think is awesome!

Cheers for now,

Tim from Chaos Entertainment

Devlog #1

Posted on 2021-06-07

Creatures Of War has been announced! When developing this game I wanted to focus on tightly controlled tense combat situations requiring precise dodge mechanics, speed burst / grenade usage optimizations for creating space, and of course high powered weaponry that can bring down even the toughest of enemies.

When I thought to myself about creating a 2D combat system I knew that the gameplay was the most important aspect of the game’s development process. I have spared no expense here. I am making sure that enemies are fast, agile, and intelligent. Focusing too long on one enemy and not enough on another will result in a swift death. I want people to die over and over due to lack of tactical understanding, not to a singular attack that hits way too hard. After playing through the game for a few hours and slowly introducing new combat elements strategically, I am hoping that people will master the combat loop by splitting up hordes of enemies, creating space, aiming, choosing which weapons are better for killing certain creatures, and simply knowing when you are outmatched, yes retreating is sometimes the best move.

As of this writing the player has a boatload of weapons to choose from. The weapons are labeled and will be carried on the player in this manner. Pistol, Heavy Weapon Left, Heavy Weapon Right, and Revolver. Grenade slots will eventually populate the player as the game progresses. These weapons will all have advantages and disadvantages. The focus with the weaponry put into the game is that I want every choice you make to be impactful. Upgrading a weapon early will make the short term goals easily achievable. Later on you will have less resources to spend on weapon purchases or weapon upgrades, your choices matter.

Enemies will have certain traits associated with them. For example one enemy may have armored skin that has an exposed weak spot. The skin may reduce damage taken by 80% while the exposed area will take 100% of your weapon damage or potentially 120%. Tactically choosing a weapon that deals high amounts of damage but also has good aim is crucial against such a foe. I want people to recognize the different enemy subtypes and approach them differently. If you attempt to beat the game without swapping weapons, it will be possible, but you will be missing a major chunk of the ebb and flow of the game.

AND…. that is all for now, I wanted to give everyone some insight into what is most important to me, the gameplay, combat loop, and upgrade / purchasing system.

P.S. I truly love video games and I made sure that all of my contractors love video games as much as I do. The art work, sfx’s, and musical score are all topics of the future that I am very excited to share with you.

Tata everyone,

Tim from Chaos Entertainment