Dev Blog 57 - Back to work!

Good news - our company page on Desura has gotten approval! Chromacore's game page is still waiting on approval, sound be a few days.



Today I'll be implementing more of Cheyenne's awesome new artwork, working on the respawn mechanics, and implementing user feedback. I'll do another gameplay recording featuring the new work later today. Also should be getting 4 new music tracks later today, can't wait to get cracking on more levels!

Update 1 @ 3PM: Our Twitter ads account performed in the top 30% in terms of engagement! On that note, we just launched a Facebook ad as well, though we're setting a max budget of $50.

Update 2 @ 5PM: Got the new music tracks! Will begin cutting and implementing new levels after I've finished the gameplay recording.

Update 3 @ 8PM: Uploaded another gameplay video, it's the first of our beta gameplay! Time to get started on implementing level 11!

Dev Blog 56 - Quick Update

It's been a few days since the last post, few things:

Chromacore development hasn't seen any progress since Thursday - there was a serious theft of debit cards and personal property at the house I live in, I've been dealing with the police report and such since then. None of my personal things were taken, but there were fraudulent charges on the card and some expensive electronics were taken from my brothers, overall totaling some $2,500.

To be honest, I've been too rattled and stressed out by this to even open Unity and start working. Now that the matter is in the hands of Boston Police Detectives, and out of my hair for at least a few days, I'll start working again tomorrow.

In other, more positive news, our artist Cheyenne has made some KICK-ASS new background pieces. We got some great sounding music in the works from our new musicians too. I'm very excited about the progression we should see this week. Our overall release date projection is somewhere around April 16th-20th now.

Dev Blog 55 - Meeting, interview

Just had another check-in meeting with Casper, got some awesome feedback and suggestions as always!

I am waiting on more music from my musicians, so I can't implement new levels at the moment. For the next few days, I will be focusing on User Testing and improving gameplay. There are a few mechanic design changes that I will be implementing and testing, hopefully to improve the overall player experience.

However, for the next few hours, I will be focusing on preparing for a 3rd round technical interview with a certain game developer this afternoon. I'm pretty nervous because I reaaaaaally want this internship, and it's an hour long group technical interview, so I can't quite focus on Chromacore right now. More to come after the interview is over!

Dev Blog 54 - iOS beta

Spent 2 hours this morning submitting the beta build to the iOS App Store for review. I'm not sure if Apple is mediocre at designing processes, or intentionally made the publishing process hellishly complex to weed out less experienced and patient developers from submitting their project.

Either way, after some needless "awful-Apple-publishing-process" induced headaches, we successfully submitted the beta for review. Hopefully we'll have a beta client available for you iPhone geeks in 1-2 weeks!

No word from Desure yet, I'm thinking that the overall timeline for release might need to be pushed back another 1-2 weeks, at least for some platforms, to give us enough time to collect and implement feedback. Ideally I'd like to have all platforms simultaneously release, but it seems as though Android lends itself to an earlier release.

For the rest of the day I'll be working on the respawn mechanic some more, and probably taking a nap (running on 4 hours of sleep for some reason).

Update 1 @ 2PM: Also working on updating some documentation currently

Dev Blog 53 - Open Beta, Respawn

OPEN BETA IS OUT! I've already discovered 2 issues and just published a fix for them, should be out shortly.

Today I'll fiddle around with the APK issues, maybe write my own APK code scratch and see if that works better. It seems as though a lot of people are saying the Google Play APK Plug-in written by Unity doesn't work anymore in Unity 4.0+, so it might be worthwhile writing something myself. I'm astounded there isn't a wealth of resources on this topic though, or that someone hasn't fixed the plug-in or written a new/better one. This seems like an issue that a LOT of developers would run into.

Additionally I'll be working on redoing the respawn mechanic, I've designed a few great ideas for it.

Update 1 @ 4PM: Added Chromacore beta to Desura to get the PC/Mac/Linux builds out there as well! Waiting for the admins to authorize it, will add links soon.



Update 2 @ 6:30PM: Thanks to feedback from a beta tester, I fixed some checkpoints causing infinite deaths by respawning player underneath level platforms. Also touch input is now disabled in lower quarter of screen, and only works in top 3/4 of screen. This is to avoid Punch and Pause GUI buttons from triggering unneeded Jumps.

Update 3 @ 11PM: Jump animation was still being triggered by Pause GUI button, fixed that. Also fixed up Credits screen to improve visibility on mobile. Also got word back from Desura, they said they have a huge backlog and it'd take a few days to process.

Dev Blog 52 - APKs & Twitter

Still working on the APK Expansion issue, it's fixed for standalone but still having issues with Android.

In other news we got a $50 advertising credit on Twitter so we just launched an ad campaign to scoop up some more followers! Updates to come...

Update 1 @ 3:50PM: Just published another attempt at fixing the APK issues to alpha, used this tutorial this time as a reference. Fingers crossed.

Update 2 @ 4PM: Currently working on balancing the difficulty of Level 10 while waiting for the latest version to show up on Google Play.

Update 3 @ 5PM: Now Chromacore can't even get past the Unity logo splash screen, it appears the sceneLoader.unity scene isn't even loading properly. Refactoring to follow this tutorial instead.

Update 4 @ 5:30PM : Refacotored version has been pushed to alpha

Update 5 @ 6PM: Finished balancing Level 10, pretty much complete with this level! Waiting on update to hit Google Play and test latest APK fix. In the meantime, I'll be working on closing open issue tickets.

Update 6 @ 7:30PM: Same issue, can't get passed Unity splash. Just refactored and pushed another potential fix attempt. In the meantime I added a Credits scene and am currently

Update 7 @ 11PM: Issue remains unfixed, I've disabled all of the APK downloading code and wrote a simple script to load the MainMenu, just to see if it makes it past the Unity splash. Working on redoing the respawn mechanic in the mean time. The good part about this delay is I've been resolving a lot of tickets. The bad part is obviously the open beta is delayed.

Update 7 @ 1:40AM: The good news is disabling the APK downloader code worked, I can play the entire game just fine now. The problem is, if the APK Expansion Files ever fail to download, or download improperly, the game likely won't work. This is a major issue, but for now I'm going to leave this disabled and release the open beta in the morning.

Dev Blog 51 - Open Beta Update

So last night I split the application up into APK Expansion Files (since it broke the 50MB Google Play limit). Using Expansion files is a little tricky and there doesn't seem to be a wealth of information on it. I gave it a crack but got a static blue screen when I tried running it on a friends mobile device. Gunna work on nixing this issue and releasing the beta all day.

Update 1 @ 1PM: Ha! What a silly mistake: The script I'm using to download the APK Expansion files once the game is launched was never actually attached in-game and thus never ran, which is why I just got a blank blue screen (the default color of empty Unity scenes). Just pushed to alpha to see if that's fixed it.

Update 2 @ 1:50PM: While I'm waiting for the v1.33 to show up on Google Play, I've implemented new background art for Level 3 and working on balancing difficulty for Level 10. About to go do another gameplay recording for Level 10 to show off the sexy new artwork, but I'm only gunna show the first 2 minutes of the 8 minute level. Gotta leave something to be desired of course!

Update 3 @ 10:30PM: Tried a few different solutions, but the APK Expansion Files are still giving me trouble. Thus the open beta will have to be delayed until I work out the APK Expansion issues. In the mean time I uploaded a new gameplay video for Level 10!

Dev Blog 50 - Open Beta

Working on finishing Level 10 today, and doing a once-over the entire game before pushing into OPEN BETA!!!! Yay!

Update 1 @ 1:30PM: About 50% done with the level design for 10! Gunna head to the gym for a bit, come back & finish Level 10, then do a gameplay recording, and then focus on OPEN BETA!!!!!

Update 2 @ 6PM: At the final stretch, about 80% done with Level 10. I kinda went balls to the wall with the level design, so I'm thinking I'll have to do a good deal of playtesting myself before calling Level 10 complete.

Update 3 @ 8PM: About 90% done with Level 10 - I'm thinking I'll release the public beta tonight as planned, but without level 10. It needs a good deal of balancing and playtesting, it could very well be unplayable and unbeatable, which is not something I want my beta testers to play and deal with.

Dev Blog 49 - Level 10, Recruitment

Working on designing and finishing up Level 10 today!!!

An update on the team recruitment: I'm meeting with one of the musicians for coffee next week, I think most of the work he creates will be used for expansion packs later down the line. The team is 3 will officially be on board Sunday when we sign a contract to work together, though they've already started working. Not sure where I stand on the last musician, haven't heard back from him in a bit. That's probably a good thing since I'm giving away a lot of 5% rev shares, I'm retaining a little above 50% of the revenue now and I want to stay there.

Our single artist has also started churning out level backgrounds, they actually look really beautiful and fit the theme quite well. I'm very happy with where he's going with it! As always updates to come throughout the day =)

Update 1 @ 4PM: Added one of the new background to Level 10, it looks amazing!

Update 2 @ 6PM: Assigned Notes to their proper backgrounds for correct color transitions. Looks BEAUTIFUL with the new background.

Update 3 @ 8:30PM: Working on the Level Design, Level 10 didn't need much fine tuning. Roughly 25% done, should finish tonight/early tomorrow. I'm thinking open beta will be released tomorrow night!!!!

Dev Blog 48 - Laundry, Level 10, Recruiting

It's laundry day!!! Just finished up folding all my clothes, it took forever. I'll be cutting and implementing level 10 all day, my goal is to simply finish it by the end of the day (which is a lofty goal since it's another 8 minute level).

In other news I've gotten a lot of responses from the IDG and /r/gameDevClassified postings. It's been mostly musicians/composers so far, and one artist (yay!). At this time I think I'm bringing 2 more musicians on-board, and potentially a pre-existing team of 3 musicians on-board for post-release development (making expansion packs, working on the 2nd gameplay mode). I'm still in talks with most of them so nothing is definite, but they all have great portfolios and seem very interested and supportive!

Update 1 @ 3:30PM: A minor set back - so my laptop crashed (which happens every so often) but every time I turned it back on it would crash again before I even got to the Windows login screen. Uh-oh. I went out and got some compressed air, disassembled my laptop, and cleaned it out as best I could. Seems to have solved the issue (because my laptop actually runs now without crashing). I ran some diagnostics to check the integrity of the computer, just to make sure I wasn't partially a software issue. Everything seems fine as far as I can tell. Sunk about 2.5 hours dealing with this, but my laptop seems to be running a little better now. Gunna steamroll ahead and continue working on Level 10!

Update 2 @ 5:30PM: About 75% done with cutting Level 10, soooo close!

Update 3 @ 8PM: Finally done cutting the music for Level 10, onto implementation!

Update 4 @ 1:30AM: Finished implementation of Notes, now all that's left is fine tuning the timing and designing the level challenges. Might take another full day to finish up, then I'll record a gameplay video or two and push out the public beta! ETA on the beta: Saturday!

Dev Blog 47 - Grinding Away, Twitter

Working on finishing Level 9, still got a ways to go but I'll have 9 done and 10 started by end of day.

In other news Microsoft retweeted one of my Tweets on the Incendiary Industries account, and a developer over at StackOverflow favorited another one. Just thought that was pretty rad =)

Update 1 @ 2:30PM: The timing of Level 9's notes is early by about 2 seconds, working on a fix

Update 2 @ 5PM: Added some more Notes to Level 9, bringing total to 145!!! Still working on fine tuning 9.

Update 3 @ 6:30PM: Fine tuning done, song sounds great! Onto level design!

Update 4 @ 10PM: Still working on level design for level 9, almost finished. Will start cutting level 10's music track shortly. In other news, found a cool website for indie game developers to connect and collaborate, created a listing to hopefully find an artist and musician.

Update 5 @ 11:30PM: I'm pretty happy with Level 9, onto Level 10! Might come back to 9 later, or maybe wait for feedback from beta testers next week.

Update 6 @ 12:35AM: Level 10 is about 10% cut, it's another 8 minute song so it'll take a long-ass time to cut and implement.

In other news, I still need an artist to replace Jen and some more music tracks. Andre hasn't responded in over a week, so as of now after Level 10 I am fresh out of music. I created another post on /r/gameDevClassifieds and got a lot more responses, it looks very promising. Should have plenty of music soon and hopefully some fresh level art backgrounds.

Final Update @ 1AM: Level 10 is about 25% cut now, it's slow going but hey it's a big song, lotta game content. Gunna turn in for the night, finish cutting level 10 on the morrow. Hoping to have public beta out on Android Friday or Saturday, and iOS some 1-2 weeks later (since Apple has to pre-approve everything that goes on their app store). Night night folks!

Dev Blog 46 - Levels 8 & 9

Just finished cutting the music track for Level 9, working on wrapping up Level 8's fine tuning and level design now. Goal is to have Level 9 completed and start cutting the music track for Level 10 by end of day today.

I'll also be reading up on how to use APK Expansion Files throughout the day - just from skimming these it looks fairly complicated but these look like very helpful and straightforward guides. I'll actually give implementation a shot once Milestone 4 is done.

This might push back plans for open beta by a little bit, but that's A-OK since we were going to do open beta earlier than planned. Updates to come throughout the day!

Update 1 @ 9PM: Fine tuning on Level 8 is complete, sounds much better timed now. Gunna spend some time on level design and then take a crack at level 9!

Update 2 @ 10PM: Level design is finished for Level 8, on to Level 9!

Update 3 @ 1AM: I updated the DefaultLevel scene (which is what I use to build new levels from) and implemented a basic Level 9. About 25% done with level design and fine tuning, will work for a little while longer and turn in.

P.S. The final Note count for Level 9 is 131, which will take a while to implement and design for. For reference, the longest level is 8 minutes and has only 114 Notes. Level 9's song is 3 minutes long.

Dev Blog 45 - Milestone 4

Been working on wrapping up milestone 4 (levels 6-10 complete) this weekend and all of today. Plans are to move into public beta once this milestone is finished, so I'm delaying it a little bit until I think it's ready. Level 8 has been finished, and the music for level 9 is now cut. Aiming to have 9 and 10 done by tomorrow night, and in public beta later this week.

The reasons for moving into public beta sooner than originally planned is 2 fold - to get more feedback, and to make it easier for testers. Alpha testing on Google Play is only available to users in Google Groups I've given permission to. At first this seemed like a great way of having a private alpha, but has proven to cause some technical issues for some testers. The aim here is to make it easy to play Chromacore and give feedback.

Don't even get me started about the iOS store...it's a pain to publish and alpha test since every push needs to be reviewed & approved by Apple, and it's immediately public to everyone. The plan is to move into iOS for the public beta.

Update @ 01:03AM: Song for Level 9 is now 75% cut - I'm trying something new, cutting LOTS of Notes for this level. So far there's about 150 for this 3 minute song (some context: the longest song at 8 minutes only had 114 Notes). This will affect level design in a big way and will be designed to be quite the challenging level. Depending on how the difficulty turns out, I might make it the last level of the entire game.

Level 8 is about 50% done, just needs a little more fine tuning and level design attention. More to come tomorrow!

Update 2 @ 01:28AM: Uh-oh! I just went to push the recent updates to Google Play and guess what, we broke the 50MB limit! Now I have to learn how to use APK Expansion Files, and refactor some code (possibly the entire flow of how the code functions) in order to take advantage of the 2GB extended limit I get by using APK Expansion Files. Another challenge, I love it!

Dev Blog 44 - Meeting, new gameplay video, Level 8

Had another meeting with Casper today (he's going to GDC next week so we had it one week early) to discuss the grading scheme and level design documentation I wrote earlier this week, and go over progress.

Did another alpha gameplay recording today, currently cutting music track "Smile_3" by Andre for Level 8 - aiming to have level 8 implemented and Level 9's music cut by the end of today.

Update 1 @ 8PM: Level 8 is cut, working on implementation now! Gunna take a quick break an go to the gym, it'll be a late night but I want 8 done and 9 started.

Update 2 @ 12:40AM: Level 8 music track has been implemented, took a lot longer than anticipated. For some reason the AutomaticNotePlacer.cs tool was giving me grief. It worked like charm on level 7, and for some reason refused to sort a list of Notes properly for level 8. Haven't done any level design yet. Getting up wicked early tomorrow to go to Home Depot, I'm gunna have to call it a night. Might be a day or two late on the milestone =(

Dev Blog 43 - Level 7!

I remember a time when Level 6 was my favorite level. The music synced well, it just worked with the gameplay, level 6 is a great level. But no longer my favorite. LEVEL 7 IS AWESOME! I LOVE IT!

Working on the level design now, but god damn I like this one is turning out. More updates to come!

Update 1: Interview today went awesomely well! Optimistic about my chances =)
Worked on the level design of Level 7 for the rest of the day, just finished up at midnight. Gunna get a gameplay recording of it out soon, I am really digging this level. I might have gone overboard with some creatively weird level design, gunna heavily rely on feedback for this level.

Dev Blog 43 - Iterate Iterate Iterate

Implementing feedback throughout the day, so far I've replaced swipe to pause with a GUI button for mobile platforms to improve the usability of the pause function, and improved the GUI button styles across the board.

More updates to come throughout the day!

Update 1 @ 3PM: Replaced the 2 finger tap to punch functionality with a GUI button on mobile only, again to improve usability.

Update 2 @ 5PM: Wrote up some documentation of all the Level Design method's I've come up with to challenge and intrigue players. This documentation was requested by Casper, but will also be invaluable when gauging and charting difficulty to make sure it increases with each level, and will also help identify problem areas when user testing. Only 2 more items left on the feedback todo list!

Update 3 @ 7PM: While testing the new pause and punch buttons, I noticed the beginning of Level 5's level design felt a little boring and too similar to earlier levels. Spent some time re-doing it.

Update 4 @ 10PM: Few things; the last item left on the todo list is a big ticket issue. Redoing the respawning to make it more fun will take some more than slapping some code into MonoDevelop. I'm going to take my time and design a few ideas for this first.

In the meantime, I resolve a low priority ticket (refactoring Level string names to numerical values for easyness) and begun implementing Level 7. I realized that Milestone 4 is due in 4 days, and I'm expecting myself to have levels 6-10 done. I'm going to take a stab at getting these done on time, and taking my time with redoing the respawns.

Update 5 @ 11:08PM: Just implemented Level 7, used the automated tools to get all the Notes created with the proper assignments and x positions. Haven't done any level design yet, but it's a start. I also noticed that the default level (that I use to build new levels on top of, instead of creating them from complete scratch) is a little outdated, so I created a ticket to update that little guy. I've got a big interview with <redacted> (a big game company that will have me sign an NDA) so I'm calling it an early night. I'm excited to give it my all on getting 4 levels done in the next 3 days =)

Dev Blog 42 - Multipost

It's been a couple of days since our last post, here's an amalgamation of updates:

I am currently working on implementing feedback from my last meeting with Casper. It's quite a lot of great feedback, and I think all of it is worth spending time to implement.

Additionally I spent some time writing a grading scheme for the study - Casper and I will share our ideas and opinions on how the study as a whole should be evaluated for grading purposes.

Lastly, I fixed up a few minor issues with Level 6 (Notes #38-44 were off timed, and the background color transitions weren't working properly). Once I'm done with Casper's feedback, I'll do a re-recording of the Level 6 gameplay video (because why not?) with these improvements.

I plan on putting off the implementation of Level 7 until all these items are done, but I'm excited for it. I cut up the music track last week and it sounds grrreat!

Dev Blog 41 - 2nd Gameplay Mode

Ronny is still working on the 2nd gameplay mode, and made some good progress recently. He has a working algorithm to analyze an MP3 or WAV and generate timestamps based on the amplitude of a given song. This is based on streaming the file, which isn't supported on PC for MP3 files, but it works on Android for now.

Moving forward, he'll try to have the solution support other file types, and potentially work for other platforms (or implement a separate solution for other platforms). Now, the next step is to automatically generate an entire level based on these timestamps. I've already written some automation tools, but they require developer input and are intended for use in the editor. With some modifications, I can re-tool these to automatically generate entire levels (in addition to some more tools that would need to be written).

However for now, I am focusing on my goal of generating game content. Later down the line I will begin working the level generation, potentially even after release. One possibility is that we finish the 2nd gameplay mode in time for release, though this seems unlikely. Even if we did finish it in time, it probably wouldn't be as polished as we'd like. A more likely situation is that we will release the game with only stock levels, and release the 2nd gameplay mode as a free update afterwards.

Dev Blog 40 - New gameplay video!

Today I met with Casper to discuss progress and get more advice. As of right now, I'm roughly 2 weeks behind the original schedule, which I had accounted for once we took on the quest to implement a 2nd gameplay mode. Knowing this mode would push the schedule back, I allotted an extra month of development time. After I put the 2nd gameplay mode on the shelf, we were 2 weeks behind the original schedule, so all milestones are now pushed back by 2 weeks instead of 4.

Casper gave me a lot of great advice and feedback today, I've got a laundry list of todo items! Personally I think the feedback and ideas he provided are brilliant and will make great improvements to the Chromacore!

Lastly, I recorded another alpha gameplay video of Level 6! This is my favorite level thus far!

Dev Blog 39 - Level 6

Wrapping up level 6 today, it's turning out great! I perfected the timing of notes, it sounds a LOT better, and I added a few challenges to the level design. Video recording of gameplay to come soon!

Next on the horizon: testing & more levels! Now that I've gone back and improved the existing levels, I feel ready to start having people playtest and provide feedback. In the meantime I'll start cutting more songs and implementing more levels.

Update @ 11:23PM: Just finished cutting another track by Andre "sing rap yes", sounds great!

Dev Blog 38 - GitHub disaster

So yesterday I made a LOT of additions and changes when doing the level design polish for levels 2, 4, & 5. Now because pretty much everything has it's own metadata file, when I went to go commit my changes I had 847 new or modified files. Holy cow.

I thought it would simply take a while to commit and sync with the GitHub GUI client, but it actually took so long that the client crashed. Twice. I thought I was shit outta luck, or that I'd have to commit everything in chunks. After some trial and error (and lots of waiting) I discovered that all I had to do was open up a shell and commit "manually". 2 lines of git commands and everything was pushed, hooray!

Today my goal is finish up polishing levels 5 & 6, maybe knock out a few bug tickets here and there. Update to come later today!

Update @ 7:40PM: Level 5 looks to be all wrapped up. I might come back to it and add more, but I'm moving on for now. Also knocked out an enhancement ticket afterwards. Hoping to get level 6 done by the end of the night!

Update 2 @ 12:08AM: Got some improvement done on level 6, but not yet done with it. I plan to make the level design a lot more challenging than it currently is. The Notes sync up really well with the background music, it's something about the song that makes then extra satisfying to get. So tomorrow I'm gunna make it more difficult to get them and give players a satisfying challenge.

Dev Blog 37 - Polish

Yesterday I recorded another alpha gameplay video of Level 2, with music created and composed by yours truly! I recorded it twice actually; the first time I didn't notice that the framerate dropped off dramatically 20 seconds into the recording, leaving the rest of the video with piss poor FPS. The second time I tried a few different screen cap programs before getting a much better framerate. The re-upload looks much smoother and cleaner, very happy with the results.

Both yesterday and today I spent more time polishing levels 4, 5, and 6. These latter levels have much longer tracks and thus more content to go over, so it's taking a while. Will be spending the rest of the night trying to wrap these up.

Update @ 11:58PM: Level 5 is taking a lot of work, which is unsurprising given it's the longest level (over 8 mins). I'm trying to be extra creative with the level design to keep the player engaged for all 8 minutes and avoid monotonous play. I also fixed a small pause bug that was specific to Level 5. I'm predicting all of tomorrow will be taken up by finishing Level 5 and starting 6, I might work on some bug tickets throughout the day as a change of pace. Bedtime for tonight.

Dev Blog 36

Today I fixed a pesky pause issue that I had inadvertently introduced earlier. I was trying to setup joystick support for pausing (specifically, pressing the "B" button on gamepad to pause) and I had introduced a bug that wouldn't allow the game to be resumed. After realizing this, it was a straightforward fix.

Additionally, I started going through levels 1 through 6 to improve the level design, timing, and overall quality. By the end of the weekend I hope to have these levels ready to publish (pending feedback from user testing of course).

I've also noticed that some Note pick-ups have been dominated by the background track, so I also added listener child to the camera and moved it closer to the player character. This way, I didn't have to move the camera itself closer, and still essentially increased the volume of Notes. However, to prevent the background track from being reduced in volume I had to also attach it to the listener child. So I had to refactor a few lines of code in 4 or 5 scripts to look for the child object of the camera instead of the camera itself. Now Notes sound much more like part of the song.

As per my professor's suggestion, this week I will start user testing on a larger scale (asking friends, family to play and give feedback). I've gotten great feedback from key individuals (my professor, one or two friends) but I now need to move to a larger scale.