Post Mortem - SMDP

I figured I might as well do a post mortem, or a development review/critique , of the process of making Super Monster Dance Party. I'll go over several different aspects of the development cycle, namely Team Forming/Brainstorming, Development, and finally Quality Assurance/Publishing. I'll give an overview of what happened in each stage, then give some suggestions on how to possibly improve the step for the next time.


**Warning- This is will be a long post. You have been warned!**

Here is a two sentence summary if you don't want to read it all: We set out to make a pseudo-rhythm game featuring various monsters destroying towns around the world. The development phase went smoothly, but we needed to allow more time for concepting and testing.


Team Forming/BrainStorming:

Overview:  This stage went pretty smoothly. Dave Troyer came up to David Fuson and me and said he had a concept for a game involving a monster destroying city to music. It started out as a very simple, one button game where notes, or rings, would come in from the sides and you tap the button when the notes go through it. Over the course of around 30-70 minutes we had a more fleshed out version that had the possibility of multiple buttons, several monsters, and several different modes. After we had a stronger concept we recruited Corey Farmer to work on the songs for the game. The rest of the team were kind of picked up along the way, I'll go over that more in the development stage.

Suggestions: I don't really have any suggestions for this stage, it went really smoothly. If I really had to pick one thing it would be to establish an art style before work starts on the art assets. I think spending more time doing concepts to lock down a style will help reduce the amount of assets that need to be redone when the art style changes.This would also include concepting out menus, page backgrounds, buttons, and other aspects of a game that often get overlooked.

Development:

Overview: We started off pretty strong on this game. After Dave proposed the idea and we elaborated it a bit, I started prototyping the engine that would spawn the notes and had a working version within a couple hours. By that time, David Fuson had concepted out 5-6 different monsters and presented the art style he had in mind for the game. We spent the next couple weeks refining the art and engine. Due to certain limitations we ended up cutting the infinite mode, due to how Construct2 handles loops. We also decided to reduce the amount of monsters from the 10 we originally had down to five, as well as the amount of songs.

This was where we changed up the team quite a bit. Corey decided he had enough on his plate working on our school project, and withdrew from the group. To fill the sound void, Dan Langford stepped forward and took on the task of making sound effects and music for the game. Since he was still learning some of the digital music software, he only had time to complete one song, as well as some voice acting. Since we were approaching our target release date and were lacking the amount of songs we needed, we resorted to bringing in a third party composer, DJ SynthR, to supplement the missing songs. We also added Ben Mjelde as a backup artist to work on the buildings for the city.

Onto the art style and art assets. As mentioned before, partway through the development cycle we cut back on the amount of monsters the game would feature. We had to go through and pick the monsters we liked the best, and that had the most diversity stylistically, so they wouldn't all look the same. Once we got those decided on David started putting together the sprite sheets for the animations for Dave to set up in Construct2. Dave ended up redoing the monsters since the previous ones had some issues once they were actually put into Construct2. The only problem with that is that Dave and David's art styles are substantially different, where David was leaning towards the pixel art style with rough edges and shading and Dave had made crisp and shiny new ones. To alleviate some of the differences Dave worked some magic in Photoshop and got his pixelated. They still looked different, but not nearly as much.

Since a lot of effort was being put into the monsters to get them squared away, other aspects of the game were being ignored. We were still lacking a cohesive menu/button scheme, and till right up at the end we were running with the placeholder images I had made so I could set the pages up. These took till the day of release to get finalized, which is not the time to be deciding on layout styles for a game. As we got towards the deadline it seemed like trying to get art assets became increasingly difficult. What I mean by this is when an art asset needed to be updated with new information, or just a tweak to make it look better, there was some resistance to actually update them. I realize that they had already been made, but it should be expected that art assets need to be tweaked/updated. It is frustrating as a developer to be met with an exasperated sigh when we need an art asset before a major deadline, and then receive something that is vaguely what you had asked for.We did manage to get everything updated though, so that was good.

Suggestions: The major thing I think of is to diversify what a group is focusing on. For instance, instead of focusing the entire art team on getting monsters animated, have someone start working on the menus, page backgrounds, text, and stuff of that nature. That way we have more time to refine/redo those assets if we're not satisfied with them on the first go around. When it comes to redoing assets/code/sounds we need to remember that things will need to be adjusted, and just do them. This is especially true if the change would take minutes at most. Sure, you already did the work once, but the assets aren't finalized until the game has been released(And sometimes not even then!)

Another thing that would help the team is to don't take on more than you are willing/able to work on. This was a major issue when it came to our songs, we had the game very close to being done, yet we had no music(which is a major part of the game). It wasn't until several weeks into it that we found out Corey wouldn't be able to do the songs. If the team is relying on another team member to get them something, the team member should let the rest of the team know as soon as they can that a different person will have to work on it. This would avoid a lot of frustration for the remaining team. By all means, if it turns out you have less time than you thought you would have or something comes up and you can no longer work on it, then let the team know. We understand that things come up, but  it should be brought up as soon as you know you can no longer work on it.

Quality Assurance and Publishing:

Overview: This portion of the cycle was entirely too short. Since it took so long to get the songs and remaining art assets we had very little time to test the game with all of that stuff in it. During this process we learned that each browser handles HTML5 different, especially when it comes to audio. Audio support for HTML5 is sporadic at best it seems. Part of the time sound would work great on Chrome, then others it would only work on Firefox. We ended up doing a lot of last minute testing right before we started the publishing process. We also should have tested the game on more types of phones, since apparently every Android device handles HTML5 differently just like a browser. We had the best results on the latest version of Android, and very mixed success on older phones. We also found out that there really isn't anything we could/can do to fix a lot of those issues, since the browsers haven't decided on web standards for HTML5 yet. If we knew Javascript we might be able to smooth some things over, but that is beyond our team's capability at the moment.

Publishing was quite a new experience for Dave Troyer and myself. We ended up spending around 4 hours going from exporting the game to actually publishing it to Google Play. We had crash courses on how to sign an .apk which is needed to upload to the marketplace. Now that we have the process down it should be really easy for future games, but it took a little bit to find a tutorial/explanation that was detailed enough for us newbies to figure it out. Thank you to whomever made this tutorial over on Scirra.com, it was easy to follow!

Suggestions: Main thing would be to allow way more time for testing and to have a wider testing base for mobile. I think that would solve many of the problems that arose during this stage.

Project Overview:

Overall I think this project went pretty smoothly. There were a few hiccups here and there, but we did finish it. Main suggestions would be to: Know your limitations, be prepared to redo stuff, and allow a bunch more time for testing. I would also recommend a longer concepting phase, or at least not just focusing on the main aspects of the game. I feel that would help the game as a whole be more cohesive, and provide a clearer goal for the different teams to work towards.

P.S.: On a side note, after the release of the game we have had reports of features(mostly sound) that are not working correctly. These issues appear to be with how Android processes HTML5 and varies between different versions of Android. I apologize for the inconvenience. We recommend trying to get the latest version of Android. If we receive enough sales we might port it to Apple devices, which are supposed to handle HTML5 better, but that is farther down the road. Thank you for all of your support!

First Official Release! - SMDP

Hey guys!

I'm excited to announce we have published our first game, Super Monster Dance Party! It is on the Google Play store, just search Super Monster Dance Party and it should be the only one(See the logo below for comparison) Sadly it is only available on Android for now. If we get enough sales to cover the development fee to publish on the Apple Store then we will probably release on IOS as well. It's only $1, so why not give it a shot?

Overall I'm really impressed with our game and our team. Sure the game needs a lot of polishing and possibly a stricter hand at keeping within the art style, but for our first completed game it is relatively bug free!

Our team consisted of:
Producer: Dave Troyer
Creative Director: David Fuson
Lead Programmer: Jacob Vermillion
Featured Music: DJ SynthR (Matthew Le Blanc)
Secondary Music and Effects: Dan Langford
Additional Art: Dave Troyer, Ben Mjelde

I do have to make an apology to Dan Langford; your song wasn't used as much as originally intended because I was trouble shooting a last minute sound bug and missed two places where your song should have been called. If we do an update(Which we probably will) your music will be implemented as originally intended.

Other than that, the only bugs I know of(game not being centered and music restarting after the game is paused) both are hardware issues, and out of my direct control. I hope these don't interfere with the players' experiences too much.

I have to give a big thank you to Dave Troyer for staying up with me till the wee hours of the morning while we were trying to figure out how to digitally sign our app so we could publish it to Google Play. Finally hit the  sack at around 1:40 this morning!

Remember! Check out the Facebook and Twitter pages to keep up to date with what's going on:

Pixel Jargon: Facebook Twitter
SMDP: Facebook Twitter

Happy Gaming!

Good News Everybody! -SMDP

Hello everyone!

I have some good news, Super Monster Dance Party is on track for its end of April release! I started playtesting last night with the music in, and its working pretty good. I did run into one major bug, the animation would lag for a couple seconds during a level. I've tracked down the issue and am currently working to resolve it. In addition to that is a couple little things, like assets that need updating and minor code changes. We should be able get those updated pretty quickly. We'll keep you posted on the progress of the playtesting as we get through some more.

Here are some images from the game:

Pixel Jargon's logo

Freeplay mode with the FloBros

Monster selection in Freeplay mode

Mission selection in Story mode

Speaking of keeping you guys posted, we now have a Facebook and Twitter page for Super Monster Dance Party as well as Pixel Jargon(The company developing SMDP) that will be updated with the latest news. Feel free to ask us questions about either on their respective pages and we'd be happy to answer them for you. Here are the links for them. SMDP: Facebook and Twitter. Pixel Jargon: Facebook and Twitter. They're a little bare right now, but that should change soon.

I would also like to give a huge shoutout to DJ SynthR(Matthew Le Blanc) for providing the music we are using for the levels. Head on over to his website to check out some of work. He did a fantastic job on the songs, and I'm glad we found him.

That's all I have for now. I'm pretty excited for playtesting and the upcoming release. Don't forget to check out our Facebook or Twitter pages!

An Uneventful Week Or Two

Hello everyone! Sorry I haven't posted in quite a while. I've been in somewhat of a lull in all the projects I'm working on, so I'll catch you up on what has happened.

For Umbra, Ryan Olson said he has Zone 1 ready to rock with enemies. As soon as we get it packaged up and distributed to the class we can begin playtesting while he places the enemies into the rest of the zones.

As for the crating system, well I decided to take a break from it before starting on the larger inventory system that I want before I finish up the crafting button.

Super Monster Dance Party has been pushed back a couple days due to lack of songs. We ended up having to purchase some songs to use, since both of the guys working on the music ended up being too busy to complete the rest. We do have one song that Dan Langford did complete, and it sounds pretty good. We are waiting for  permission on two of the other songs that we want to use. The other three artists got back to us within a day granting us permission to use their songs. Nice of them to let us use the songs, thank you! Other than that we have just been working out some of the last bugs and cleaning up some of the art assets. We should be still on track for our end of the month release, it will all depend on how smoothly it exports and works on different phones. Dave Troyer finished up the final monster, so here is a menacing picture of him:

Kind of creeps me out...

I guess that is all there is for now. One of these days I'll write up my thoughts on some of the...management, for lack of a better word, of several projects the group is working on at the moment.

Until then, farewell!

Sorry For The Long Post - SMDP, Umbra, GenericMenus

Hello everyone!

I have a couple updates on Super Monster Dance Party, Umbra, and that crafting page I was working on.

I'll start off with Super Monster Dance Party. We're inching ever closer to completion. Dave Troyer has been working hard getting the animations for the monsters done. So far he has 4 out of the 5 monsters completed. Here they are:

As you can see the art style is quite a bit different from the one the monsters were originally styled in. Due to animation limitations Dave decided to go with this style for the monsters.

While setting up the animations to play at the right times in the levels I came across a pretty nifty piece of code for Construct2. It's an expression called tokenat(Variable, Index, Deliminator). I'll explain the three parameters in a second.

If you want it to be more dynamic put tokencount(Variable,Deliminator) in random() instead of a number.
Then it will always update if you add new items.

• Variable: What this does is you declare the names of the strings you want to access in a global variable. In my example  I am putting the names of the animation sets for the confetti, so I have Red:Blue:Green:Yellow as my text variable separated by a : 

• Index: For the index parameter this is which substring you want to pick. For instance, if I wanted to get the Blue substring I would have to put 1 as the index(It is a base-0 system where the first object is object 0). If I wanted it to pick a random name out of that list I could put int(random(4)) in the Index spot. This will pick a random number from 0-3 which corresponds with how many names I have in the variable. The in() just converts the random number to an integer, so we don't have decimals since that would throw an error.

• Deliminator: The Deliminator parameter is pretty simple. It is just telling tokenat() what character(s) were used to separate the substrings in the main variable. I chose to use : because it is easy to put in and it looks nice.

This makes it really simple to play a random animation. The way you would have to achieve the same thing would be to have this setup: 

Takes up a lot more events. That's bad if you are using the free version.

Forward unto Umbra! I figured out that changing the loading video is pretty simple. All you have to do is replace this movie with a Bink video with the same name, or change the name one of the default properties(I'm not sure which one).

If you add a different movie don't forget to set in the default ini's

To make a Bink video you need to download Bink video converter from Rad Game Tools, it's free. Then convert your video, there are several tutorials out there that explain how to do it. Beware: it seems to be pretty picky on what videos it can convert. I've had no luck converting any movies, though my roommate has been able to convert a few. It says it prefers uncompressed .avi or QuickTime videos, though I didn't have any luck with any of the 5-6 video formats I tried. 

Also note that just replacing the movie will not get rid of the tips and map name that show up on loading screens. To do this you have to create your own ViewportClient class and stub out the DrawTransition() function, like so:

class UmbraViewportClient extends GameViewportClient;

// Don't draw loading hints or "Precaching..."
function DrawTransition(Canvas Canvas)
{
}

defaultproperties
{
}

Then assign your new ViewportClient to be the default in DefaultEngine.ini:

[Engine.Engine]
GameViewportClientClassName=UmbraGame.UmbraViewportClient

If anyone knows how to stop the loading map from switching maps right after the next map is finished loading I would love to know. In other words, let the Bink video finish playing before it changes maps.

See my awesome super-quick models?

I made quite a bit of progress on the crafting page since my last post. I started off with making sure the SWF file updated the resource and recipe inventories correctly and only allowed the player to pick up a maximum of 5 resources and 3 recipes. Once I got them to display correctly(that took a lot of frustrating work, trying to igure out how to work with arrays in both AS3 and UnrealScript) I was able to start working on getting the crafting system in working order. Now you are able to place a recipe in the recipe slot, then place the appropriate resource slot. if a resource/recipe is in use by the system it will be grayed out and unclickable. 

Adding the last iron needed

Once you have the recipe and all the ingredients you'll be able to hit "Craft! and create the item. This feature is still in the works, though I have the base code for it already. I'm waiting to implement this until i get a second dedicated inventory screen, that way you'll be able to see what you crafted. I did implement a drop feature which allows you to select a resource/recipe and drop it on the ground. 

I think once I get this done and I'm feeling a bit ambitious I'll shift most of the work over to UnrealScript instead of shared between both, since UnrealScript is quite a bit faster than AS3. I should have been doing that from the start, but for some reason I was duplicating work again. At least it is working so far, that's the main thing right?

Well, that's all I have for now. Till we meet again!

Been A While! - SMDP, Umbra, Generic Menus

Hey everyone, sorry it's been a while.

I don't have too much of an update on Super Monster Dance Party. After doing some more testing and research I found out that PhoneGap would not work for us. It seems that the sound issues we were encountering is a pretty serious issue with it and so far there haven't been too many effective workarounds. I did find a good workaround for the sound issue using CocoonJS, it was simply a matter of changing an action from "Silence" to "Volume -200db" The only problem with just using the volume is that with "Silence" it would mute and stop further sounds from starting, but this is so trivial for our game that is won't be an issue. After we got the CocoonJS file exported I got to test SMDP on several different phones, which was pretty exciting. So now I'm taking a step back and letting Dave Troyer and David Fuson add in all of the art assets so we can see how much left of the game we need and what needs refining. I think we are still fairly on track for our end of April release, I just hope we don't run into many bugs once we get everything in.

We're in our last quarter for school, and Umbra is getting wrapped up as well. We got Zone 1 to our lead programmer of sorts, Ryan Olson, so he can start putting enemies in and testing them. After they get in all that is left content wise is playtesting and any tweaks we need to make from there. While that is being set up Andrew Talarico has been working on getting some pretty cool looking animations for the main intro, as well as the ending scene. Currently, I'm figuring out how to add our own custom loading screens and getting the streaming between levels working correctly. Should be pretty easy I think, just making a loading animation and replacing the existing video with ours.

Since I'm not working as hard on SMDP as I was previously I decided to start working on a custom crafting screen using ScaleForm. I ran into all sorts of things I have/had to learn in order to get this working. I ended up having to figure out how to add my own inventory system so I could reference my items correctly. I also ended up making some new pickups and gained a better understanding of how extending classes works. One interesting thing I found was how to pass an entire array from UnrealScript to ActionScript3. The process involves a for loop that goes through all of the items in the array, saving them to a temporary array which gets shoved into a GFxObject and passed to ActionScript3. Here's the chunk of code for it:

function UpdateResourceInventory()
{
    local byte i;
    local GFxObject DataProvider;
    local GFxObject TempObj;

    //Creating the array that will be passed
    DataProvider = CreateArray();

    //Setting each element of the array to include all the variables in
    //In the Item struct. i is what elment of the array we are on.
    for (i = 0; i < GP.ResourceInventory.length; i++)
    {
        TempObj = CreateObject("Object");
        TempObj.SetString("ItemName", GP.ResourceInventory[i].ItemName);
        TempObj.SetString("ItemType", GP.ResourceInventory[i].ItemType);
        TempObj.SetString("ItemSubType", GP.ResourceInventory[i].ItemSubType);
        TempObj.SetString("ItemDesc", GP.ResourceInventory[i].ItemDesc);
        TempObj.SetInt("ItemID", GP.ResourceInventory[i].ItemID);
        DataProvider.SetElementObject(i, TempObj);
    }

    //Setting the ActionScript3 array "resourceInventory" equal to 
    //DataProvider
    RootMC.SetObject("resourceInventory", DataProvider);

    //Calling the function to update it Flash-side
    ActionScriptVoid("_root.updateResourceInventory");
}

Overall the inventory system is pretty hacky, but it works. I'll have to go through and look at the basic inventory system that UDK has and see if there is anything I can take from that and adapt it. I'll post updates as well. If anyone knows of a good tutorial for that sort of stuff let me know!

Till next time!

Progress! - SMDP

Hey guys!

Just a really quick update on Super Monster Dance Party. Still testing out some of the different exporters. So far PhoneGap has proved the most reliable, but it still has some issues with the sound. I need to look into it a little more to see if there are some workarounds that we can use. Seems like the exporting for mobile is still a little new. Other than the sound I think PhoneGap will be our best bet.

That's all.

Some News! -SMDP, Umbra

Over the past week for SMDP I've been going through the events and trying to optimize them more. I also did some preliminary testing with the CocoonJS, as well as the AppMobi, export options. Both had some issues that may make them unusable as export options for this particular game. We're still trying to work it out, and I still have to try exporting with PhoneGap. That probably means very little to anyone, but oh well. Yesterday we decided to take the infinite mode out of the game due to the event system not being able to processes it exactly as we want. If we have some extra time I'll try a theory I thought of while typing this out.

Speaking of extra time, we has set an expected release date of April 14th. That's pretty soon, but the events are almost completely done and the David Fuson is working pretty fast on the art assets. There are only two things that I can think of that will delay the release date. One is not being able to work around the exporter limitations, and the other is if we don't have our music and sound assets ready. Both Dan Langford and Corey Farmer have been pretty busy with schoolwork lately and we're not sure how far they've gotten.

As far as Umbra is concerned, we have it mostly done! Last week we started compiling all of the zones together. All the zones are nearly done, mostly just waiting to get the enemies placed so we can start testing. We did run into quite a few issues getting maps to open on other computers. We are going to try and put it all on one computer and see how things go from there. I'm still waiting for the intro anims so I can finish up the zone 1 intro. Corey was almost done with them a couple days ago, so I'll have to check up on them.

We're getting there!

A Quick Update - SMDP

Just a quick update on Super Monster Dance Party. I got the story mode done as much as I can(I'm waiting on the songs from Corey). I also got the save system fully working and implemented. In addition to saving which missions have been completed it will also save if the boss has been unlocked and your personal highscore for each mission. Speaking of highscores I also made it to show a "New High Score!" graphic when you beat your previous best score.

Now I'm on to setting up the end events to show different stuff depending on your percent hit. For instance if you got 80%-89% of the notes then it would show the "Good" end message, where as if you got 60% or below it won't show anything. Once I get that finished up I plan on working on getting the Infinite mode working how Dave wants it to.

And to wrap it up here is the logo for the game, also made by Dave:

Umbra and Stuff! - Umbra, SMDP

Hey there!

Over the past week or so I've been working on both Umbra and SMDP. For Umbra I have the intro to Zone 1 complete except for getting the custom animations for our main character. Once I get those from Corey Farmer I should just be able to plug in the names and be 100% complete. Once I get them I'll try and figure out recording from Matinee and upload the intro.

I think I've made a lot of progress on SMDP in the past couple days. I wasn't satisfied with its performance, it had some issues that didn't really hinder gameplay, but were pretty annoying. The main one was when you clicked on a button and there was another button in the same spot(Like on page that was getting switched to) it would hit that button as well. Because of this I ended up restructuring the entire infrastructure of the game. In the end the execution of the code is cleaner, though there is more stuff in the editor. I also added the rest of the story mode levels and made it so to unlock the final boss for use in infinite and free play you have to beat the last level in story mode.

Thanks to David Fuson we have quite a few of the art assets done. Dave Troyer has been working on getting the sprite sheets all set up so the monsters dance in the levels. Corey has been working on composing some songs, and is off to a great start. I'm currently working on getting the game to save and load your progress. I have that working for one stat, now I just need to add them for the rest of the levels.

Well, back to work! Thanks for reading!

Features, Features, and More Feaures! - SMDP

Since my last post I've been working on getting the formerly known Super Happy Monster Dance Party(now just Super Monster Dance Party) features implemented and working. So far I refined the story mode, allowing players to unlock the next mission after achieving a high enough percentage in the previous mission. Today I got all the game setup done for Infinite mode, including map selection, difficulty, and monster selection.

Now I have to set the free mode to use the game setup screen and fix an issue where buttons are accidentally getting hit when hitting other buttons. A silly mistake that I should have seen before.

Here is the monster select screen with some temporary graphics. As you click on the small portraits the one in the center will change.

David Fuson has done a great job of designing the characters and bringing them to life in the pixel art style. Dave Troyer has started turning all the sprite sheets that David F. made into animations in Construct2. Everything is coming together pretty well. We'll see how this one turns out!