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Playcrafting Summer Expo – Luminaut Dev Log #11

Playcrafting Summer Expo

Playcrafting Painters Apprentice
Guests playtesting The Painter’s Apprentice

The last time we showed off The Painter’s Apprentice at a Playcrafting event, we didn’t have it on mobile devices and there were a lot of problems with the responsiveness of our jumps and UI. After showing it off at the summer expo, we’re a lot more confident in the direction of our game thanks to the positive reception and constructive feedback we received. Many of the problems that stood out to players we haven’t even noticed, especially since we have been playing the game for so long. Some of the issues people noticed are:

  • Jump button registering upon release of jump button not on tap – leads to feeling of lag and unresponsiveness
  • Dash button shouldn’t be attached to directional arrows as people often dash to their death when edging to the corner of a cliff.
  • Loading screens need to be implemented (we’re already working on this one)
  • Updating color picker method (we’re already working on this one too!)

Overall, most people really enjoyed the overall concept, artwork and general gameplay. We’re getting much closer to perfecting our user experience. Once we implement and test out some new UI, we’ll be ready to start a closed beta testing. Speaking of which, we’ll likely be ready in a few months so if you’re interested in being a beta tester and shaping our games and level design email contact [at] luminositymobile [dot] com.

We also found some other really cool games at the Playcrafting Summer Expo that you should keep an eye on including:

  • Heart Catcher – by Emma Larkins. A two player card game based on bluffing. Release date Q1 2016.
  • DestinyQuest Infinite – by Adventure cow. An interactive gamebook
  • Cultus – by CRAM Games. A card building game where you built up your cult to gain credibility. The person to get to 12 credibility wins.

Playcrafting has been one of the major indie game supporters in the past few years, so we were super excited to hear other groups are picking up the mantle to support indie devs. One group we found was Kill Screen. They do events every couple months at the Ace Hotel in New York. Hopefully we can show off The Painter’s Apprentice there as well to increase our reach.

This past week we’ve been experimenting with the UI and cleaning up a couple issues. Our biggest hurdle is still finding the perfect color picker method that is both intuitive and fast. I We’ve finally come up with an option that I think will definitely make the gameplay much smoother. We’ll be posting screenshots of these in the near future on our social media sites, so be sure to check us out on Twitter and Facebook!

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Developer Blog

Upcoming Conventions – Luminaut Dev Log #7

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).