[DevLog] My Friend Pedro: Blood Bullets Bananas

[DeadToast]

My Friend Pedro: Blood Bullets Bananas

 

'My Friend Pedro: Blood Bullets Bananas' is an action packed 2D platformer with
highly acrobatic elements which draws inspiration from games like Max Payne and
movies like The Matrix. The ambition of the game is for it's players to truly
feel skillful, rather than feeling like you're continuously triggering cool
looking animations. Oh, and it also features a talking banana named Pedro...
But more on that later!

The game is currently in a pre-alpha stage and is aimed to be released on PC (and probably Mac) eventually.

This is a re-imagining of the greatly appreciated original
Flash-game 'My Friend Pedro', which you can play here:
http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/641215

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GIF Time!

 

 

_  _  _ _ _ ____________________________________________________________________ _ _ _  _   _  

I'm currently the only one working on this project. What you see is the result of about
8 months of on and off development. A lot of that time has been spent on learning Unity
and general 3D-stuffs (both visually and programming), as I've previously mainly made
2D Flash games (excluding games worked on while being employed by a company).

This is the first time I'm having a go at a DevLog and I'm hoping to be able to post stuff
pretty frequently. I'm currently juggling this project with some occasional contract work
and general procrastination

Anyways, enough words. Time for screenshots!
(Click an image to view the full picture)

_  _  _ _ _ ____________________________________________________________________ _ _ _  _   _  

Thank you ever so much for taking time to check out this project!

[DeadToast]

Hello everybody!

Just thought I'd do a quick entry on some of the work I did for the trailer.

Since I wanted a super close up shot of a banana, and wanted a high resolution texture to support this kind of shot, I thought I'd break out my camera and try to snap some close ups of an actual banana. At first I tried to get some shots of the banana, as it were, but it turned out too.. round. It was difficult to capture all the sides as well, since it was so... curved.


Banana 3D-scanning in progress (supervised by my project lead, mr.Pug-Bear)

So what to do?
Well, why not try to UV unwrap the banana, in real life!



It seemed to do the trick and I managed to have that close up shot of the banana in the trailer.
Here's the result in Blender (with added bloodstains):




In other news I also updated my website to draw attention to MFP: BBB. I'll probably update it more properly in the future, but this will do for now. Oh, and I even set up a Newsletter, cuz I'm professional like that.

Check it out!
www.deadtoast.com

[Pampers]

you could have put the banana standing, shouldn't have been any problems scanning it then

also, relevant: https://i.imgur.com/vHRr4TT.gifv

[DeadToast]

Very true! I guess there's more than one way to skin a cat(/banana)

Also, hahah that's totally inspirational. Bananas aint nuttin to f* with...

[DeadToast]

Previously on the development of 'My Friend Pedro: Blood Bullets Banans'...

Here's a bit more catching up on what's been going on before the release of the trailer.
I'm using Unity for making the game and was at first a bit disappointed in the level designing tools in Unity... until I discovered I could actually make my own tools! Now, I'm sure there are plenty of people out there who thinks "duuh, of course you can make your own tools", but this felt huge for me. Give a man a fish and he'll eat for a day, teach him how to make tools in unity and he'll forget to eat.. or something like that.

Here's a little visualization of what I made to help speed up the dressing up of the levels in MFP:

It's nothing too fancy, but it saved me a heck of a lot of time.

It basically checks the size of the bounding object and tries to fit as many wall/floor pieces as it can. For the walls it scales the end bits to fit perfectly to the size. The floor doesn't, mainly because I like the keep the size of the gameplay areas a multiple of a carefully chosen comfortable size. Oh and also because I was too lazy to implement that last stretchy bit for the floors.

There's also a nifty keyboard shortcut for adding windows (small or big) in place.

The main motivator for making this tool was to speed up the dressing of the levels, and having an easy way of trying out different visual styles in different areas. Changing the look of a wall or floor is as easy as pressing a button.

Here are some examples of different visual styles:

Next on the agenda is probably a bit more of 'social-media-type-stuff' like setting up a presskit() and such. Hopefully in a few days I can get on with making the actual game again

Until next time. Toodles!

[DeadToast]

I had quite a few people asking to share more info on the Level Creation tools I showed earlier, and who am I to deny anyone that 

 

Check out this video if you're interested in knowing more (hopefully you'll be able to make some sense of my rambles):

 

In other news I've been putting some work in to my presskit() and am pondering whether or not I should start trying to reach out to various journalists to try and make them aware of the game. I'm also finding out keeping a DevLog and generally trying to draw an audience to what I'm doing here is taking a lot of time. I'm still getting in the swing of things, so hopefully it'll all be a lot smoother down the line.

 

Until next time! Ta!

Edited November 25, 2015 by DeadToast

[DeadToast]

I haven't updated the devlog for a little while since I've been off doing some freelance work and been busy trying to get the word out about this game!

So it feels like it's high time to do a little press re-cap 
The first website to pick up on the game was actually my favorite Swedish gaming news site FZ.se:
http://www.fz.se/artiklar/nyheter/20151126/slow-motion-vald-vapenakrobatik-och-bananer-i-svensk-indieaction

Later another Swedish site also picked it up, called GameReactor:
http://www.gamereactor.se/nyheter/293603/Little+Big+Planet-avhopparen+bjuder+pa+bananer/

I also did an interview for lv.80, which you can check out here:
http://80.lv/articles/my-friend-pedro-awesome-slow-motion-platformer-shooter/

And last but not least, Indie Game Magazine also wrote about it! Check it out here:
http://indiegamemag.com/listen-to-the-banana-in-my-friend-pedro-blood-bullets/


It's so nice to having revealed the game and seeing people talk about it, and actually getting excited about it! Somehow it feels more like I'm actually making a proper game now 

So, now that the initial "marketing-push" has happened I feel like I can go back to focusing more on making the game again. I've been warming up my game-making-muscles with a bit of level design. It felt really good focusing on gameplay again, after having had the focus on the visuals of the game for so long.

I also made another wall and floor theme which is completely "white-box" to be used for making the initial white-box levels, to stop myself from getting distracted from the flow and functional aspect of the level.


Example of a level built in one go.

Currently I'm approaching level-making in two ways. One way is to just start making the level (usually in the middle of the level) and keep building upon it linearly. This way of making levels usually requires me to really 'get in the zone' mentally, and usually gives the levels a better 'flow' feeling to them.

The other approach is to make levels in different "chunks" or "motifs", as I usually call them. This approach is great for when you want to explore a certain mechanic or "hook". It usually involves trying all the different combinations and abuses of the functionally I'm trying to explore. However, putting all of these "motifs" one after another doesn't always equate to a good level. Therefore I like to keep a little library of different motifs that I can pull in to a level that needs some more gameplay sections. Or just starting from scratch and putting together various motifs which might work well together. Keeping the motifs in groups makes them easy to move around to try different combinations.


Example of different motifs ready to be put together to form a level

Eventually I will probably approach level making in a third manner, namely from a visual or "event" aspect. That is, making pieces of level that maybe wouldn't be so interesting if it was plainly white box, but that focus more on the dressing of that particular moment.

However for now I want to keep the focus more on the "pure gameplay" and be sure there's enough good stuff to cover the whole game, and in the process of doing so invent new mechanics to be used for designing levels.

Not sure how long it will be until my next entry. For a while I will probably just be making levels, and not sure how much of that I should be showing at this point 

Let me know if there is anything you would like to know more about, or just any general thoughts you might have! 

Until next time! Ta!

[WABSTUDIO]

Awesome banana game ! We need more "WTF" games xD

[DeadToast]

Phhewiiee... What a week!
I've been busy doing levels most of the week. I now have about 10ish levels with a grand total of about 20-30 minutes worth of gameplay! Hurrah! Though most of these levels are still only whiteboxed, and they will probably be iterated further in the future... but still. Hurrah!

Just for the heck of it, here's a GIF from one of the new whiteboxed levels showing a bit of brutal shotgun action.


It's funny how when you work on something for a long time eventually you get blind to the little things you told yourself you'd fix later... That's why I was really happy to hear feedback from ya'll out there! One obvious thing that somehow I had gotten used to seeing was how the arms used to spin around the back of the main character when aiming in 360 in the middle of the air. But no more!



Now the main character spins to face the direction he's aiming in. It's great because it makes you feel even more acrobatic when playing the game!

[DeadToast]

Another week has passed and progress has been made! This week I've been wearing my coder hat and trying to wrap my head around my previously written code.

The focus has been on small details in the players movement, animation and poses. I've also experimented with a new ability, namely being able to shoot from cover. Check it out here:




After sorting out the major quirks in the players movement that bugged me I moved on to some enemy work.
I always struggled with how to solve the issue of being able to shoot enemies half way through them spawning from a door. However I now believe I have found a fairly neat solution. The enemies now try to take cover in the door opening if you shoot at them before they're fully spawned.



I've also tweaked and added some new animations for the enemies, trying to make them act a bit less... dumb.
They now react when there is a gunshot happening that they can't see, like so:



Next I might do some work on the actual models of the enemies. I've still got loads to learn in terms of 3D modelling and skinning...

[DeadToast]

Christmas and New Years is over... After eating loads, relaxing and actually taking time to play some games for once it's time to get productive again!

It's been a great week. I've shifted focus from small polish to playing around with some new ideas and features. I've managed to get three rather exciting additions to the game.


First off: EXPLOSIONS!


Because you can't have an action game with out it...
The explosions are mainly based on this, with a few slight modifications: https://stevencraeynest.wordpress.com/2013/03/29/easy-volumetric-explosion-in-unity3d/
It was a great first glimpse in to shader-programming! I've never touched shader code before, but I managed to add a "pinch point" to the explosion, making it "stretch" slightly in it's origin position, trying to stop it from looking too round 


Next up: Kicking!


... With the addition of some experimental UI. After making the explosions I made some explosive canisters. After making the canisters I obviously wanted to be able to launch them in the air and shoot them before they managed to land. So, the most fluid way off achieving this seemed to be kicking 

With a bit off skills, you could even pull off this kind of bad-assery:



The last but not least addition: A new enemy!


Since one of your main abilities in this game is the ability to roll, it seemed to make sense to have an enemy based around rolling  Now, you might be thinking this is a bit out of place from what you've seen of the rest of the game. However, there seem to be a plan slowly growing in my mind to explain and allow for these sort of things to fit in to the game  (In reality, I kind of just want to make cool fun stuff and later vaguely try to explain it with some sort of story)

Here's a bonus close up of the little fella:



That's it for now.
Until next time. Have a good one 

[DeadToast]

My goodness... It's been another week already??

I guess it has! So it's high time for another update. Lots of exciting additions have been made to the game!

Here's what's new:



After last weeks implementation of the ability to kick certain items, I wanted to explore that mechanic a bit further. First I made it so that if you kick an item in to the head of an enemy, they get knocked out. Later I figured I might as well make it so you can kick the gibs left behind when shotgunning an enemy at close range. Combining kicking with a splat-attack, you could get something like what you see above 








It seemed like a fun idea to be able to have certain metallic objects (like the frying pan above) bounce off the bullets that hit the object. The bullets actually auto-aim to the closest enemies when shot at, even if it's the enemy's the one shooting at it, which can result in some quite funny moments 








This next one maybe doesn't get a super high rating on the 'bad-assery-chart', however I'm excited about the possibilities it brings to level design. I've made a simple switch system which makes it easy for me to make things like levers and moving platforms or doors. Still got to make some sort of animation for flipping the switch. You are able to shoot the switch from afar to flip it (but only if you're in the correct direction).







After playing around with that new enemy last week, the ball one with the Tesla-charge-thingie-attack, I wanted to make a weapon the player can use with a similar attack. It's a ranged attack that freezes the enemies while shooting them....






... HOWEVER! The coolest thing with the gun is that you can launch the electric-tip and attach it to a wall or another object. You are then able to shoot from that position.







It kind of made sense to make a switch that is activated with the electric gun. Combine this switch with the ability to "shoot around corners" after launching the electric-tip of your weapon opens up lots of possibilities for cool puzzles, I believe.



... Aaaand once again, that's it for this week!
Until next time. Toodles!

[blackdog]

This is awesome! I got your game linked today and opened a topic in the Gaming section... I don't often browse this section so never realised you had this gem going on.

This is very interesting, really like the tool choices you've made.

[DeadToast]

Ahoy, once again!

Sorry for not posting anything last week. I was away on a-bit-of-a-kind-of-a-holiday-thingie. But now I'm back! And I've brought GIFs to prove it!

Here's what's been happening this week:




You used to be able to pull off something like the above before, but it required you to use slow motion and align yourself right, and it was very fiddly and now it's better! Now you can pull off this move by simply walking up to an enemy and jump off of them as you would a wall. The result of this move has changed as well. This used to just kill the enemy before, now however, it merely pushes them back, but stuns them for a couple of seconds.




Lasers! Because everyone loves lasers. Right?
I've made some laser detectors that can be used to trigger all kinds of things, like doors ooor...




... Deadly and intimidating turrets! The idea of this turret is that you want to be aiming for the weak-spot behind the shield, and the turret only moves slow enough for you to do that when it's firing.




There's also now an emitter for those Tesla-ball-baddies.




The main motivator for making the laser detectors is this idea, allowing for people who've mastered the acrobatic side of the game to really shine, but still allow people who are yet to master the acrobatic side to not get stuck.


And there you have it! I believe that's all that's new this week. Might have missed something... I should start keeping notes. Hmm...

Until next time!
Toodles!

[DeadToast]

I can't believe this is DevLog Entry nr. 10 already! It's growing up so fast.

This week quite a bit of time has been spent on "paper design", or just thinking up ideas to make in the future. I've got some ideas for new weapons and ways of combining the various new gameplay elements, which is rather exciting!

However, what I actually managed to create this week is also really rather exciting!




I started by iterating on that Tesla-ball-baddie, making it a bit more challenging and unique from the rest of the enemies. It now "scans" the room from top to bottom, leaving you a clearly defined time limit to shoot it before the beam reaches you.




With the change of the Tesla-ball-baddie-thingie (it should probably have a name...), and 'the way electricity works in this world', it made sense to make this. It's a static wall/roof/floor-mounted electricity-emitter and it turns off for a brief moment when shot. The beam can also be blocked with objects to clear the path. I'm pretty certain this will create some cool gameplay moments when I get around to putting my level-design-hat on.




This next one I get excited about! I did some work on the bullet impact effects and discovered some new tricks in the Unity particle system.




So this got me excited enough to try out this idea which has been growing in the back of my mind for a while. Basically any slow motion game has to have lots of stuff blowing up and things flying all over the place. It also provides some pretty cool gameplay, using those boxes that take a couple of hits before getting torn to pieces.




Lastly here's a little sneak-peak of what's next. The rough idea is that there's a drone-thingie (which is probably trying to kill you, somehow) that you can grab on to and hover around with. Let's see how it turns out!


That's all for now.
Until next time.
Piece out!