Tag: boston festival of indie games

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Upcoming Conventions – Luminaut Dev Log #7

vgu convention

Conventions

vgu convention

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 color selector

  • 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

Speedy Blob Run 5
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).

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Developer Blog

Artcade 3000 and Bug Testing – Luminaut Dev Log #4

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:

 

An animated gif of The Apprentice jumping once
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.
An animated gif of The Apprentice double jumping badly.
Double Jump if the jump button is pressed instinctively.
An animated gif of The Apprentice double jumping high.
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!

An animated gif of the Medium Paint Blob Enemy changing colors.
It’s aliveeeeee! (2x speed)
An animated gif of a player clicking on different colored blobs and swinging the brush to show the changed color.
Just click on an enemy to change the brush to that color.
An animated gif of a small paint blob enemy getting attacked, freezing, and fading away.
New and Improved defeated animations.
A loose sketch of the character jumping.
A preview of the new tutorial system
A loose sketch of The Apprentice attacking.
Tutorial sketch

‘Til next time!

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Developer Blog

The Painter’s Apprentice – Luminaut Dev Log #2

The Painters Apprentice Boss Fight
The Mover

[slideshow_deploy id=’289′]

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 Painters Apprentice Boss Fight
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.

level 9 screenshot the painter's apprentice

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
  • Testing out different color picking methods
  • Updating tutorial levels

Art

The Painter's Apprentice Jump Sketch

 

 

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.