Tag: dev log

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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

Alpha Testers Wanted Luminaut Dev Log #3 and More

alpha test level 9
Alpha Tester
Image via te52

Call for Alpha Testers

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
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

alpha test level 9

  • 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.

 

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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.

Categories
Developer Blog

The Painter’s Apprentice – Luminaut Dev Log #1

The Painters Apprentice progress

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!

The Painter's Apprentice progress
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:

The Painter's Apprentice 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.