Whew, it’s been a busy week! Artcade 3000 wrapped up this past Sunday and we displayed The Painter’s Apprentice there. Unfortunately we didn’t really get a chance to go there as we were busy working on the prototype for Phase II of the Boston Festival of Indie Games digital showcase submission. We got it in three minutes before it was due. Now we wait to hear back from them if we have been accepted, which should be around mid-July. Keep your fingers crossed for us and hopefully we’ll see you in Boston in September!
There is another upcoming convention we’ll be attending – the Video Gamers United Convention in Washington D.C. It might be a relative newcome to the convention circle, but it already has some pretty big name sponsors like EA, Gamespot, Gamestop and Alienware. We’re super excited to take exhibit with them though we’ll have a pretty small booth (5×5, hey that’s big enough!). We’re always on the lookout for some great conventions so if you know of any near New York City or San Antonio, TX shoot us an email at contact [at] luminositymobile [dot] com. And of course in July we’ll also be taking part in the Summer Expo held by Playcrafting.
Luminaut Dev Log
With all of these conventions coming up, we’ve been making some great headway in our development process. Most of our time has been spent fixing some bugs and making more artwork. If you didn’t catch it this past Saturday, we did another live testing of the current levels we’ve created over on our YouTube channel or Twitch. As well, if you want to say hi and ask us questions while we’re developing, be sure to subscribe to our Twitch channel. We stream every Saturdays at 7pm ET. Anyway, on to the highlights for the week:
Programming
Updated main menu system so it fits more naturally on the screen.
Changed color picker menu – now players just have to click the palette then click the color instead of pressing and sliding their finger to the correct color.
Made UI larger for better user experience
Art
He looks like Woody Woodpecker
Levels 3, 5, 7 tiles completed
Finished animations for Speedy blob and Bludgeonblob
We’ve been scrambling to get things done this past week due to all of these deadlines, but we’ve got a little time to relax now that the next event isn’t until July. Hopefully this will give us plenty of time to refine our gameplay, levels and fix some more bugs that crop up (as they often do).
We’ve been keeping this on the down low for a while but we’ve actually gotten a new tile artist – Krzyzstof Dycha. Our previous artist had to leave due to health issues. While we loved her art there’s no way we can push her to do more. Health comes first! So we reached out to Krzyzstof and he’s been creating some new tiles for us. We debated whether we wanted to simply copy the previous tiles and simply complete the leftover tiles or start from the beginning. Ultimately, we decided it would be best to start over again so Krzyzstof had full reign of the art. I personally am glad I made this choice as the tiles look great! They’re very flexible and I’m super excited to start using the new tilesheet. We’ve finished up to World 5 so far so only 3 more worlds left. Right now we just have the basics for the different worlds, but I might end up adding in a couple more obstacles to ramp up the difficulty in later levels.
Bugs
Just last week I ran into a serious issue where all of my prefabs lost their tags and layers. While I was able to easily fix this there’s a new issue. Now the Apprentice is getting stuck on invisible walls and ceilings. I’m not sure exactly what is causing this. I have created a new scene and even then the issue is still occurring. I’m still trying to figure out the issue but hopefully it’ll be resolved soon as we have to submit the game to Artcade 3000 this week! Keep your fingers crossed so we can figure out the issue before then.
Luminaut Dev Log #5
Besides this, we were all super busy this past week. Saturday we all finally played League of Legends together. Most of us were relatively new to the game except for our programmer Alex. To make it fair the n00bs were on one team while Alex was by himself (except for the last game). Even with those odds, Alex managed to win 2 out of the 3 games. Guess I better start practicing! You can watch the video over on our Twitch channel and don’t forget to subscribe! We stream every Saturday at 7pm ET.
So what have we been up to game development wise?
Music
Sound effects – Jump and enemy die
Finishing up Level 4
Art
Completed UI
Draft of Bonus level
Finished World 1-5 tilesheets
Painter rainbow attack animation completed
As you can see it was a bit of a slow week but we’re still progressing quite nicely. Hopefully we’ll have a working build ready to test by the end of June. Are you interested in being an alpha tester? Subscribe to our newsletter and we’ll contact you first to be a tester.
One of the hardest things about creating a game is how to incorporate a tutorial. For a lot of old school gamers from the Nintendo era, a hands off approach seems to be the best option. The game itself teaches you how to play by forcing you to perform certain actions. For mobile games, however, the players are very different. Many don’t necessarily have the time or patience to learn the ropes. At the same time, they also don’t want a long and involved tutorial. It’s a pretty difficult balancing act and it can really make or break the flow of the game. For The Painter’s Apprentice, we decided to go with a mainly hands-off approach. Rather than have walls of text explaining the buttons, we devised simple plan that also weaves back into the art theme – tutorial sketches. If you’ve been following our our Twitch channel you might have seen us create a couple of these sketches.
Tutorial sketch telling you how to jump
We wanted to keep the tutorial as simple and streamlined as possible so players could immediately jump into the game and get a handle on the controls. As well, it melds perfectly with the story and theme.
How to attack an enemy
Developer Log
A lot goes into the creation of a mobile game. While the game might seem simple, we actually have a full team working to make the game as amazing as possible. To give you a glimpse into the game development process we’ve asked team members to give us a glimpse into their work. On a previous post we had Ray, our composer, tell us how he created his music and sound effects. Now we have Grace Yang – our background artist – provide us with a cool video and little bit of background.
What got you interested in becoming a concept artist?
I’m one of those artists who grew up in a town where people thought that all artists were either fine artists or art teachers. So I grew up thinking that art was meant as a hobby. It wasn’t until senior year in high school that I found out (through picking up a Halo concept art book) that there were other kinds of jobs for artists, and that this type of profession might be worth looking into. I always loved video games and animation but my knowledge of the process behind their creation was very limited and I didn’t know where to start. I decided to apply to an out-of-state art college in Los Angeles, where the heart of the entertainment industry was and I got accepted. As a Digital Media major, I was able to discover more about the artist industry in general. Though I learned about the many other types of jobs in the process of creating a video game or film, my one true love has always been drawing and designing so I have the most fun being a concept artist!
What is the first piece of artwork you created?
I’ve been drawing since I was very young, so I can’t say for sure what my first artwork exactly was. I loved Sailor Moon and Pokemon, so I drew a lot of fan art, and I also loved animals, so I drew the animals from photos from my favorite books.
Naive Art
Explain your general process when creating the backgrounds for the Painter’s Apprentice.
Since I would be working in different artistic styles, (some which I’m not familiar with at all) the first thing I do is to research and look for reference photos of paintings or pictures done in that style. After all that research, I finally start on the background assets. First, I start off with the sky and ground, and adjust the colors based on what I think best suits the current art style. After that, I go through the list of the other assets, such as the trees, shrubs, flowers, houses, and clouds, and depict them in the current art style. After all the assets are done, I clean them up and do minor color adjustments if necessary to make the level look cohesive. I then show a mock-up of an in-game background level to the director (Jasmine Greene) and then either edit it some more or move on to the next level.
How was your experience working with different art styles?
It was really fun! I have experimented with different art styles before but this was my first time trying to imitate specific art styles. Researching the art style before I started was very useful because I had to figure out how brush strokes were made (in traditional mediums) and imitate that digitally. I also had to figure out color palettes that suited the art styles but were not a direct copy of an existing painting. Some art styles I was initially not familiar with but became some of my favorite to work with were Fauvism and Neo-Expressionism. Overall, it was also a great learning experience.
Do you have some words of encouragement to aspiring artists/designers?
I feel like my advice will be pretty similar to what others have said, but as a concept artist, I think it’s especially important to always keep drawing everyday. It could be drawing from life or by mind. Either way, you’ll naturally improve. Other than that, what has personally helped me the most was going to art college and being able to immerse myself with fellow artists (which was a pretty new experience for me), learning from them, and learning from teachers in the industry. If college isn’t an option, signing up for individual classes could be useful too. Lastly, know what you are truly passionate about and don’t hold back. Art should be fun!
First off, some housekeeping. The Painter’s Apprentice is going to be at Artcade 3000 in Brooklyn, NYC, June 5-7. Stop by and play a demo of our game along with a whole bunch of other amazing games. Come say hello on June 5 from 8-10pm for the Designer Opening if you want to ask us questions about the game.
We’re still looking for some awesome artists to feature in our bonus levels for The Painter’s Apprentice. If you’re interested in being featured, please contact jasmine [at] luminositymobile [dot] com for more information.
Now, onto business.
We got our submission video for the Boston FIG Digital Showcase done this week. See below for your viewing pleasure.
On our weekly stream this past Saturday we played The Painter’s Apprentice live on our Twitch channel. We went into the stream focused on showing off the game and finding bugs, which we found, but we also ended up with a lot of realizations about the overall experience we’re trying to create. If you missed the stream it’s on our YouTube page, but here’s the highlights:
single jump
The double jump feels strange. To get more height you hit the jump button twice early and in quick succession to get height instead of at the highest point of the jump. This is counter intuitive to anyone who’s played a platformer before and should probably be finessed a little. The game should feel good to play.
Double Jump if the jump button is pressed instinctively.Double Jump if the jump button is hit twice quickly.
We discussed adding a pan feature so players can see where they should go, but decided it’s better to make the player figure out where to go for the most part. There will be places in the level where you could make a blind jump, but if you look around a little you’ll find a more obvious way to go. This will require some levels to be redesigned with this principal in mind. This retains a level of exploration and difficulty in the games.
Not a bug, but the music is sounding great!
We have some UI problems with the menus scaling/stretching and covering up the great home screen background we have.
We want to add some more buttons to several of the UI menus like a retry from checkpoint or retry from beginning.
We don’t want the store to seems so intimidating, so we’re going to rename it to fit the theme better, like Art Supplies or Painting Supplies. The idea being that the store will have some optional real money elements, but real money will not be required. Plus, we don’t want to scare people away.
There is a 3 star system currently in the game. One star for completing the level, one star for completing the level in 60 seconds, and one star for completing the level without taking damage. The level exit doesn’t appear until you defeat all the enemies. We talked a lot about using the star system to unlock levels, which brought up a lot of discussion about the goal of the game. We decided on keeping the main levels unlocked because we don’t to locked the experience behind a “wall.” The Painter’s Apprentice does not require hardcore skill. That being said, there will be bonus levels featuring guest artists that require a high number of stars. This should appeal to players who are more into completion or challenge. As we say in the biz, gotta catch ’em all. In all seriousness though, we want The Painter’s Apprentice to be accessible to different types of players.
So, as you can see, we still have quite a bit of work to do, but it’s so exciting to do a big play like that and see the game get better.
Otherwise here’s some pictures of everything we’ve been working on this week!
It’s aliveeeeee! (2x speed)Just click on an enemy to change the brush to that color.New and Improved defeated animations.A preview of the new tutorial systemTutorial sketch
Since we’re getting pretty close to finishing up the main parts of The Painter’s Apprentice we’re looking for some alpha testers to help us “break” the game and find some bugs. Interested? Sign up for our newsletter and we’ll email out an open call for alpha testers when we’re ready, complete with instructions.
Dev Log
The past week has been pretty jam-packed as we prepare for our video submission to the Boston Festival of Indie Games digital showcase. We’ve been messing around with some UI and, of course, creating the tiles the other levels so we can showcase them in our video. We’re pretty excited with our progress so far, now all that’s left is creating the video!
Programming
Gif of the dialogue box in action
Completed two different color picking methods for the paint
Updated AI branching trees for enemies
Created dialogue events for in-game cut scenes
Unlock more advanced gameplay techniques throughout the game versus everything available in the beginning
Art
Updated enemies to be black and white for easier color changing
Brought on new Tile Artist to finish remaining tiles.
Besides that we also had our weekly Twitch Stream on Saturday. If you haven’t checked it out you should! It’s a ton of fun. This time we had our composer – Ray Flores – explain the process he goes through when creating background music and sound effects. Did you miss it? You’re in luck as we created two highlights for both music composition and sound effects creation. Check them out below to get a more in-depth look at what goes on behind the scenes.
We’re really excited the Painter’s Apprentice is coming together so quickly and we can’t wait to get it out to you! If you’re looking for something to fill the time between now and our release, might we suggest trying out Once Upon a Runner? It’s available on both iOS and Android. We’d love to hear suggestions on improvement as we’re working on a huge update that should be coming out in a couple months.
And finally, a little classified ad. We’re looking for some artists to feature in The Painter’s Apprentice. Our plan upon its inception was always to features some modern artists and their work as a backdrop to a level. If you’re interested in being featured, please contact jasmine@luminositymobile.com for more information.
On April 29, 2015 we showed off The Painter’s Apprentice in front of 300+ people at The Spring Expo hosted by Playcrafting NYC and Microsoft. Leading up to the event we were really burning the midnight oil. Luckily all of those late nights weren’t in vain as we got a lot of positive comments from the attendees. Everyone we spoke to loved the idea of The Painter’s Apprentice and were interested in trying it out further down the line. We also received some excellent feedback on how to improve the game as well and we’re already busy implementing these updates. So a huge thank you to everyone who tried out The Painter’s Apprentice! We’ll be at the Summer Expo in July and it will definitely be much more polished by then.
The Mover
Speaking of upcoming conventions, we’ll be submitting The Painter’s Apprentice to a couple places. The first deadline coming up is for the Boston Festival of Indie Games in September. The digital showcase submission deadline is May 15 (eep!) and requires a 3-5 minute demo of the game, how it works and what makes it unique. We’ll be bringing you the completed video once it’s done. Fingers crossed we get accepted! The next event we were invited to was the Artcade 3000 out in Bushwick Studios happening June 5-7. We actually met up with the organizer – Jan-Luc Van Damme – at the Spring Expo and he was impressed with how we tied art and videogames in The Painter’s Apprentice and wanted to know if we wanted to exhibit. The answer is of course! So if you’re in the neighborhood during that time, stop by and say hello. We’ll be hanging out with fellow devs and gamers.
We had a lot of updates the last week since we were scrambling to get everything working for the Spring Expo. This week we worked on fixing some bugs and getting some more artwork completed.
Bugs
Fixed UI configuration so it adjusts to the screen size
Removed area of effect on dive attack
Programming
Added adjustable gameplay button UI so players can adjust size and location of buttons
It might seem like a slower week than last but we’re still making some pretty steady progress. If you want to watch us make levels, create animations or make some music, you can tune into our Twitch Stream every Saturday at 7pm ET.
For the past week our team has been prepping for the upcoming Spring Expo held by the Playcrafting group. After a couple pitfalls, we are well on our way to completing a workable demo of the first couple levels and a boss fight for The Painter’s Apprentice. The last couple of weeks have been intense with many long hours, but the end result is shaping up. We’re steadily making progress and now it’s just about testing. So what have we completed? A whole lot!
Look at all that green! That means we’ve gotten all those tasks completed.
Programming:
Completed win, lose, home, level select and options menu.
Implemented small and medium enemy AI.
Fixed a couple bugs where player was not detecting collision boxes during dive attack.
Updated attack to be continuous.
Tutorial level completed.
Players have all attack options available (dive, dash, regular and paintball).
Art:
Background artwork for all levels completed.
All player animations updated.
Mover boss animation finished.
Final boss concept artwork completed and approved.
Music:
Level 1-4 music completed.
Basic sound effects approved.
Game Design:
3 levels completed.
9 levels designed.
We continue to forge ahead at a fairly even pace and while there will likely be some other bumps and hiccups along the way, the path forward is relatively clear of obstacles. This upcoming demo will be the first time we allow others to see The Painter’s Apprentice. It’s a bit nerve-wracking, but these events allow us to get priceless live feedback.
For those in the New York City region, stop by on April 29, 2015 between the hours of 6-9pm. For a limited time only you can get tickets to the Spring Expo for $9 instead of the standard $16. You’ll get to play The Painter’s Apprentice and 74 other indie games. You can also meet two of our team members: Liz Phillips, our marketing and community manager, and Jasmine Greene, the President of Luminosity.
For many people that have followed us back when we were SaltyPepper Games, you might remember our Kickstarter campaign to raise $5,000 for Once Upon a Runner. The objective was to help recoup some of the payments we had made out to artists and, of course, to drum up a little bit of interest in Once Upon a Runner before its release. We were certain we could reach our modest goal. After all, there were plenty of other games that collected ten times the amount. For those that don’t know, we didn’t reach our goal though we were still able to release on Android and, just recently, on iOS. So what went wrong? Why couldn’t we raise $5,000 on Kickstarter?
Late Marketing
I read plenty of articles on how to run a successful Kickstarter and the tip that always made the list is to start marketing early. In my mind I thought I had. A month before we actually launched our campaign I had created the press release, written up the content for our page, started handing out some brochures and increasing our activity and engagement on social profiles. The problem is, a month is just not enough time to grab someone’s interest and build up a fan base. Everything was kind of rushed, especially when contacting media outlets to get some coverage on the campaign. While we still did get a handful of articles it certainly wasn’t enough to really get people interested in our game or company for that matter. As well, our social media efforts were also futile. Without a group of loyal followers there was no way our campaign would get the social media boost others might enjoy.
So what should you do? Start as early as possible and really engrain yourself into these communities. It’s really never too early to start marketing. Yes, even if you do not have a product yet jump into a couple groups and start contributing. Engage in conversations with other group members and be as helpful as possible. The more you interact the more people will check out your campaigns/links when you do post them. After all, you’ve already built up a strong relationship and hopefully gotten them excited about your game during the development process. It can take a long time to build up this rapport but once you do you’ll have a group of people who will help spread the work about your Kickstarter and game to their friends.
Poor Planning
As much as I don’t want to admit it, the truth is we didn’t plan out our Kickstarter as well as we could have. We didn’t have specific milestones for each day nor did we really have any idea what to put up for our updates. Not only that but our campaign ended around a holiday, not the best time to make that final fundraising push. Our video was also a bit all over the place in terms of graphics, our message and sound quality as well. We definitely should have spent much more time with the recording to present something that would really excite viewers and make them want to contribute. As well, we also should have spread out the news coverage over time to have a more consistent flow of traffic and backers.
If you want your Kickstarter to be successful you need a plan of action. Write out a script for your video and rehearse it until you don’t make any mistakes. Have several people provide feedback on the video and its message. Are you actually conveying a sense of urgency and telling viewers why they should back your project? You should also plan your updates in advance. Maybe not all of them, but you should have a basic idea of what to post to keep your backers involved and attract new ones. This could be as simple as showing off concept artwork, posting a dev log or even offering a special “gift” when you reach $x. The more you have planned out the less you need to scramble to come up with ideas.
Visuals
Although we did have some gameplay videos, the most successful game Kickstarters also used gifs creatively whether they were short loops of gameplay or animated sprites of their in-game characters. It might seem unnecessary, but these visuals do a great job engaging visitors because it gives them an idea of how the game will play and what it looks like. The more high quality images, gifs and videos you can provide the better. This includes adding images of your rewards in the body of your campaign, using sprites/gifs instead of text for your different campaign sections (About us, Description of game, etc) and posting pictures of your team members. Put up as much of the game as you can in your Kickstarter so people know exactly what to expect. The better you make it look, the more likely they are to back.
Kickstarter Retry
Just because we failed doesn’t mean we won’t try again. Many Kickstarter creators have failed at least once before finding success. The trick is to learn from past mistakes and apply those lessons to the next campaign. The next time we find ourselves on Kickstarter we have no doubt that we’ll be able to raise the funds. But before then we’ll make sure we have all our ducks in a row.
Have you any of you failed on your Kickstarter? What did you learn? Tell us in the comments below.
Hello and welcome to Luminosity Mobile. We are a dedicated team of mobile developers working on games and productivity apps for Android, iOS and Smartwatches. We’ll be updating this blog with information on our development process, some game development tips we’ve learned over the years and, of course, updates on our project. If you would like to be even more involved with our community and help shape our apps, please sign up for our newsletter as we’ll be offering closed alpha and beta prototyping in the near future. As well, be sure to follow us on the following social media sites:
