Thanks to a handy loan by Kristof’s friend Piet (Congrats on getting married, Piet!) we were able to run our first tests of the game on iPad. It’s looking great! See for yourself:
MageMaze on iPad
We’ve been making good progress lately: We are working our way through the early levels of the game to make sure that someone who doesn’t have us sitting over their shoulder can pick up the game easily in one session. We’re starting to get more and more of the shop/inventory items working too, like the Horizontal and Verical bombs that blow up everything on one whole column or row. Also, we redesinged all of the front end user interface to be much more consistent and pretty. I’ll try to post some new shots of that soon!
Sorry for our lapse in posting. We had some slow months, but lately we’ve just been so busy cranking away at making the game that we never got around to posting here. Sorry. It shan’t happen again.
Anyhow, one of the ideas that Kristof has long wanted to include in the game was a Bestiary that listed interesting information about the creatures who inhabit the maze. We’re finally getting around to putting that into the game now, and it’s called the Svikipedia. Lots of silly information abut each monster, character, and maybe even shop item!
The Svikipedia
Kristof thinks the listings should be as is, with just my funny writing. I think users might like them more if there were some sort of factual information, like hints on how their AI works or how to beat them… but that would make the entries more wordy. Anyone have an opinion one way or another?
The deadline for the IGF – the Independent Games Festival – is a week away, and then the other competition we are excited about, on IndiePub.com, is at the end of the month. So we’ve been working non-stop to get a build out for that. I’m really excited about the new build: It’s got a nice smooth progression, none of this throw-everything-we-have-into-every-level stuff. Instead, it walks you through it gradually, so that each new level adds just one new thing or trick or weapon or skill. It keeps the forward momentum going at a nice pace. My friend Joe, who is a designer at Paragon on ‘City of Heroes,’ mentioned getting sucked into the “Just one more level, I want to see what’s added in this one” mode, which is exactly what we were shooting for! How many levels do we have? A full 24! 7 tile-sets, 6 monsters, 2 traps, one power-up, 4 weapons, and a whole mess of dialogue! There’s still a lot to do for the final game, but I’m really proud of what we’ve accomplished so far and how well it holds together.
(Oh, and wait ’til you hear all the new music that Nick’s been working on. It just rocks! (In a Nordic folksy kind of way, of course.))
We’re getting ready for a new demo here, and have been striving to put a lot more polished artwork into the game. I (Mike) wanted to share some of the painted – as opposed to pixel – art that I’ve been creating to help flesh out the game. Here’s the new look for our main menu screen:
Here is a loading screen for going between levels:
To share some process with you, here is some line art for the Game Over screen if you are defeated by Yngvarr or one of his many minions:
…And here’s the final painting done from the line art:
We’re very excited about this latest build now live on mage-maze.com: We’ve got four full levels, each with its own distinct monsters and challenges and tile artwork, new weapon classes, a new soundtrack, new sound effects, and new dialogue. It’s actually feeling a lot like a real game, not just a single continuous level. It’s got us all very excited.
Sorry the blog has been a tad quiet of late. I (Mike) have been working on more particle effects and nothing new to show. Kristof has been doing a lot of UI work and tutorial flow, with a similar lack of visuals to present. But one thing that we have finalized is what the name of our team/studio will be. Allow me to introduce ourselves: We are RoboDojo!
RoboDojoLogo
… and now we have a spiffy logo to insert into the beginning of our game. (Our sound company, Output Audio, has one, so we had to keep up.)
Kristof was asking me how I made such hand-drawn looking effect sprites out of 3D particle effects. I figured that if he’d like to know, others might as well. So here’s what I do:
I start with a particle spray in Max (‘though you can use whatever 3D app you want.) Here I’ve made the particle system render with spheres and set the lighting to be high and centered. I export the entire animation out as separate frames with an alpha channel and bring them into Photoshop to compose this animated GIF:
fight cloud - 3D render
In Photoshop, I come up with an action to turn the sprite closer to the colors that I want. Here I took every frame, adjusted the levels, and multiplied by a yellow-tan color.
fight cloud - processed once
I take that animation and save it off as an animated GIF, mapping down to 4 colors. Here’s the GIF with the very limited palette:
fight cloud - mapped to 3 or 4 colors
Lastly, I re-import that file back into Photoshop and hand-paint the rest. I add a single pixel-outline, I adjust the colors more, and I make it look all nice. The clean-up can be a tad tedious… but it beats animating the entire thing by hand!
fight cloud - cleaned up
This isn’t the final sprite for the game: In this instance I’ll layer other puffs and things on top of it. But it does show my process for getting 3D particles to fit the style of the game.
Hi, all! Kristof and I thought it might be a nice way to kick off the blog with some concept artwork, something you haven’t seen in the game demo yet. Here are some sketches of Svenn in a few various poses, nothing we’ve used anywhere yet, along with the nice full-color portrait for the dialogue screens.
Here is our arch-villain, Yngvarr, along with a bunch of face doodles that I went through before ending up with the final version of him in color in the upper left.
Anyhow, hope you like. Thanks for dropping by to see what we’re up to!
Finally, our development blog for the game MageMaze is up and running!
MageMaze is a small indie iPhone game developed by Kristof Minnaert and Michael Dashow, two veterans in the game industry who have joined forces to create a unique game with the emphasis on fun gameplay using traditional sprite-art techniques. As we are both huge lovers of the sprite games of yore, we decided it was time for us to have a go at it ourselves!
Turned-based strategy is the core of MageMaze’s gameplay. You’ll need to think strategically to navigate the maze… but don’t take too long, as the monsters won’t hold off forever. So stay on your toes! The wrong move can result in a painful death, whereas the right move could bring you fame and glory… or at the very least, more funny dialogue and advancement into deeper levels of the catacombs.
This blog is to be our main development communication channel towards you delightful people who want to know more about our brave speech-impaired hero Svenn the Svaliant, his vile arch-nemesis Yngvarr the Ynvoker, and what comes to play when developing a game for a device such as the iPhone using Unity3D.
Keep checking this blog for updates on Art, Code, Design and much more!
And in the meanwhile, you can just keep playing MageMaze on the almighty intarwebz! (Click the image)
