Apocalypse Cow Title Theme
Yes, I know I've been talking a lot more about Frayed Knights lately, but Apocalypse Cow is still in development. I'm still working on both games.

For the music, I convinced Mike Nielsen, a friend and coworker at Wahoo Studios, to lend his absolutely awesome skills to the task. And I must say, I am thrilled with the results. I asked for "Old McDonald Had a Farm" done in a minor key, and turned into a military march (or more specifically, the Imperial March from Star Wars). It took us a couple of iterations, but he nailed the "main theme," which he dubbed, "The Moosolini March."

And the rest of his music is just as awesome.

Anyway, I wanted to share the awesomeness with you. For your entertainment, here's a mid-quality MP3 of the Apocalypse Cow Main Theme Music:

The Moosolini March

Enjoy!

(Vaguely) related COW-ering:
* Cow Trivia
* Stranger Than Fiction: The Effect of Cow Farts
* How Does Apocalypse Cow Look?
.

Labels: Apocalypse Cow

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 8:33 AM (Permalink) 6 comments links to this post

 
Apocalypse Cow: Stranger Than Fiction - The Effect of Cow Farts
I'm not making this up!

Are Cow Farts Really That Bad For The Environment?

Apparently, cow farts are responsible for 18% of the greenhouse gasses that cause global warming - more than all emissions from all forms of transportation COMBINED. Okay, so a pregnant cow going on a rampage can be dismissed as a fluke. But this... this is a clear sign of global conspiracy.

The Apocalypse Is Coming! Don't say I didn't warn you!


Hat Tip to "the other Jay" over at The Hobbit Hole for the latest sign of the apocalypse.


(Vaguely) related warnings that The End Is Near:
* Cow Trivia
* Pregnant Cow Rages Across Hanover
* Apocalypse Cow Goes Alpha (and yes, it's still there, though much better now)
.

Read Or Post Comments On The Forum

Labels: Apocalypse Cow

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 5:00 AM (Permalink) links to this post

 
Utah Indie Night - Spring 2007
We had another awesome indie game developer night tonight at Wahoo Studios. Or at least I thought it was awesome. I was in my own little world most of the time. Again.

We had just under 30 people show up, lots of pizza and munchies, and several games making their showing. We had some guys (Mike and Victor) demonstrate their XNA game on the XBox. John Olsen demonstrated his completely revised, new-and-improved XNA version of Fish School. And one of our number did an emulator (I think?) in XNA (so you could play Nintendo games on the XBox, if you had their ROM image... how bizarre is that?) I cannot confirm or deny that one though... I could have heard wrong.

I got into a few good discussions with folks, got to grouse a bit about portals and Torque and stuff (yes, I grouse about it, even though I use it. The engine is crazy feature-rich for costing practically nothing, but it's still got its warts and frustration). And while I was at it, since I have just recently (like, this week) been assigned to working on the graphics pipeline on a Wii title we've got in late development, I was able to pick up some optimization tips from another full-time game programmer on Nintendo Wii graphics programming. How's that for the benefits of networking?

Mostly, I watched people play Apocalypse Cow. And took copious notes. Well, maybe not copious. But I was writing fervently while still trying to watch people play. There's something about watching someone play your game that just can't be reproduced any other way. Any time you have to explain something, or you have to answer a question, or you can see them doing something "wrong," (or at least something wrong that will lead them to having less fun), or see them get bored / frustrated, you've got an action item. AND you get some great verbal feedback on what they liked and didn't like that you wouldn't get if they had to take the time to write it out to you in a report.

So though I missed much of what was going on tonight, the night was a huge success for me!

Want to hear some of what I got on my list? Of course you don't! It reads like a grocery list. But in the spirit of my Frayed Knights discussions, I'm going to some of it with you anyway, because this is my blog and I can be dry if I want to.

* Upgrade Dialog: It's not clear to people that it allows you to buy stuff here. It looks more like a report of battle stats. Also, the cost for each upgrade should be labeled "cost"
* Upgrade Dialog: The upgrade buttons need to have a disabled state for things too expensive to upgrade, and need to appear brighter when highlighted.
* (Optional but cool) The artillery should have a speech bubble where they say something like, "Same Team, Same Team!" if you hit them
* Need to have a confirmation dialog appear when you quit the mission.
* Save / Load game information isn't updating after you save.
* Somehow the player is getting extra force fields or smart bombs out of nowhere.
* Typo in Tungsten's briefing for the Baron Cowfred Von Richthoofen mission
* The game needs to autosave every level.
* Upgrade Dialog: The reset button needs to be placed elsewhere, and not say "reset." People were accidentally hitting it instead of "Accept", or were afraid it would reset them to the previous MISSION.
*A notice should pop up when your helicopter is full
* The camera should center on the camera when it lands
* Better helicopter physics
* Scientists need to exit the secret labs more quickly
* The Old MacDonald's sign just teleports to the ground - it needs to have an animated fall.
* The briefing text should be a larger font (gee, it seems large enough to me on my 19" monitor... wonder why people were having problems on the little laptop).
* The game needs some good cow death screams
* The timer keeps counting down even after you die
* There shouldn't be a separate "Story" button and "New Game" button - a new game should always display the (skippable) story.
* Ran into a bug where the player suddenly had 2 forcefields, when they hadn't purchased any.
* Ran into a bug (using a cheat code) where Baron Cowfred Von Richthoofen became invulnerable.
* People laughed at the jokes, and the cow-balloons, and the cows on hang-gliders, and some of the briefing comments.
* The most important feedback of all - people kept playing. Eric Peterson came back and played it some more after checking out some of the other demos. This is a good thing!
* I also got some comments from other people who had seen my early-alpha last time about how much better it looks. And to a degree, I have you to thank for it! So, thanks!
* I had a key mapped to a special effect call, but I'd long gotten rid of the special effect and had left the call in. This was causing a crash when the key was hit accidentally.
* The bosses should generally escalate in power as they take more damage. I tend to keep their difficulty level pretty flat.

Man, I and I thought I was almost done with the programming tasks! There are more comments. I may not address all of these issues / problems. And some of the direct complaints and suggestions might not be at the root problem, but rather at other side effects or symptoms of the problem. If you don't know what I'm talking about, check out Hanford Lemoore's recent article about this phenomenon, entitled "Don't Do What Your Users Say." But either way, this really tells me what people really noticed. In the first six levels. Great red-line analysis type stuff!

So there was my narrow view of the evening. Narrow, but completely worthwhile.


UPDATE: We got a picture! Thank you, Eric Hamilton. No, I'm not pictured.


(Vaguely) related Utah Indie Stuff
* Spring 2006 Utah Indie Night Report
* June 2005 Utah Indie Night Report
* Fall 2006 Utah Indie Night Report
* Summer 2006 Utah Indie Night Report
* Winter 2007 Utah Indie Night Report
.

Labels: Apocalypse Cow, Indie Evangelism

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 1:00 AM (Permalink) 5 comments links to this post

 
The Apocalypse Begins: Pregnant Cow Rages across Hanover!
Go ahead.

Laugh about Apocalypse Cow. Laugh because it seems so very implausible. There's no way the cows would attack and take over the world, turning humans overnight into an endangered species, fighting for our very survival.

It's all just a game.

UNTIL IT ISN'T!

Watch the skies. And the pastures.

Labels: Apocalypse Cow

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 2:11 PM (Permalink) 4 comments links to this post

 
How Does Apocalypse Cow Look?
I wanted to fix bugs in Apocalypse Cow last night (well, okay, "wanted" is perhaps too strong of a term), but I discovered that a single-use object in my "problem missions" (one of three that seem to always break or expose yet another flaw...) had somehow dissapeared from the directory. Nor could I find the original. I figured I could hunt it down on my laptop, but that finally pushed me over the edge to just go and completely revise mission 4.

Mission 4 was in some ways, "my baby." You'd build a bridge over a river, and then a missile truck (which always looked like crap) would come across, getting attacked by cows tied to helium balloons carrying bombs. Eventually it'd get to the other side, and launch a missile at the cow base, destroying it. It sounded like a good idea at the time. And it is one that made people say, "cool."

Building the bridge was... long and boring. And too tricky. The collision was always weird for placing the segments of the bridge. And it looked less-than-stellar. Protecting the truck was okay, but too haphazard. It just never played well, even though it had you do some interesting things in the game.

So now the missile truck has become mobile artillery, building the bridge has been changed to ferrying ammunition and replacement parts across the river, and I'm in the process of shortening the mission to about half the duration. It's going to take some additional work I wasn't planning on spending on the game, but it's one of those things that really needs to be done.

But about all I really got done last night was the mobile artillery. It still needs more work and detail. But here's an actual work-in-progress screenshot from Apocalypse Cow (though the artillery isn't in its correct position yet, and the target marker is pointing at something at the origin in this under-reconstruction mission):


So break it to me... how does it look? I'm not going for photo-realism here, nor cartoony, but something kinda in-between in a side-scrolling, silly action game.

Labels: Apocalypse Cow

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 9:09 AM (Permalink) 17 comments links to this post

 
Cow Trivia
* Gary Larson was right: For many species of cows, the females also have horns.

* Some species of cows can see color. Others are color-blind. In bullfights, they are usually annoyed by the fluttering of the cloth rather than the color. They are also annoyed by advanced technology helicopters bombing them.

* In the strategy game X-Com, certain models of alien spacecraft could be found with a cattle mutilation chamber.

* Boston's city layout was based on cow paths. (And in 2007, they'll take the city back... through violence).

* There are nearly 1000 different species of cattle in the world, with a population nearing 1.5 billion. That's less than a quarter of the population of humans before the cows decide to exterminate the human race.

* Cows really only have one stomach, but it has four compartments.

* Cows emit a great deal of methane gas every (about 200 pounds' worth for dairy cows) - most of it through belching. They can also smell oders up to five miles away. If cows become grumpy and decide to take over the world, smelling each other's methane like that might be part of the cause.

* The first cows were domesticated around 3,000 B.C.

* Cows have nearly 360 degree vision, making it very difficult to sneak up a cow guard armed with a machinegun.

* There were rumors that the original Diablo game had a secret "cow" level. Players tried for months to figure out how to get to the secret level, before it was eventually realized that it was a hoax. However, in tribute to the rumor, Blizzard added a secret (and very hard) "Cow" level in the sequel, Dialbo II. If you don't know how... Wirt's peg-leg and the transformation cube are the keys...

* Cows can weigh over 1,300 pounds. Which means they require rocket motors on their hang-gliders.

* Evans & Sutherland reportedly had a tank simulator that included bulls in the terrain. Once the generals discovered that they could open fire on the cows and blow them up, they became very excited about the project I guess "Shooting the bull" is an important part of business negotiations.

* Apocalypse Cow was in some ways inspired by an earlier project I started in 2005 called "LGM," in which you played a pair of aliens kidnapping cows and humans, flinging them about with a tractor beam, and doing battle against the military. Unfortunately, the game didn't work, and I had to abandon the concept. But for some reason, abusing cattle stuck in my brain, and Apocalypse Cow is the twisted result.


Who says videogames aren't educational?

Labels: Apocalypse Cow

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 1:23 PM (Permalink) 2 comments links to this post

 
Twenty Hours to Level Up
I am trying something new.

Based upon my success (such as it was) creating an RPG from scratch in 40 hours, I'm going to be working on 20 hour iterations on Apocalypse Cow. While the 20 hours aren't going to be necessarily consecutive, the idea is to focus my time the same way I was able to focus it on that micro-project.

Every 20 hours, Apocalypse Cow is going to level up.

The idea is this: I'm going to start working in 20 (working) hour iterations. That's (theoretically) a week for a part-time indie like me. I am going to shoot for having a "release" for Apocalypse Cow at the end of every iteration. Now, "release" doesn't mean a final release to public, but it should be releasable for those working with me on testing. But I am going to be treating it as if it was a release candidate. I'm going to focus and plan out my time and project for every single hour with that goal in mind.

After all, that's the goal of iterative prototyping - with each completed cycle, you have a product that could be labeled "finished."

I'm jumping into some less-familiar territory at this stage due to the amount of work I have to do with content. While I'm getting third-party help for content, I still have to do a bit of it myself. I'm not much of an artist. It's quite possible I'm going to blow 10+ hours at a shot on a single low-polygon model or polishing up an interior level. But that's just what it has to take --- things aren't gonna get any easier with the RPG looming on the horizon after AC is done.

I'm hoping this will really help me focus on actual meaningful deadlines, and encourage me to put in those hours that I need for this final stretch. After all, it's an addictive mechanic in RPGs, MMORPGs, The Sims, and so forth --- so why not real life, huh?

I'll let you know how this goes.

Labels: Apocalypse Cow, productivity

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 7:46 AM (Permalink) 2 comments links to this post

 
I Should Give Up Making Shooters
Apparently, I know nothing about making - or playing - shooters. Not that Apocalypse Cow is really a "shooter." I get my butt kicked by my own game, but apparently folks in Japan are somehow supposed to be able to tackle this without hitting "Continue" 50 times (though it looks like the player here had to do it a few times, himself...)



Yeah, I only make you dodge guided missiles in my games. Not predict miniscule safe areas in moving, overlapping, changing geometric patterns. YEESH!

Apparently, on these kinds of shooters, the collision area on the player's vehicle is restricted to a smaller area - such as the cockpit - which is the only way the player is capable of threading the needle like this.

Hat tip to Brian H. for sending me this link! Incidentally, the game is called Mushihimesama Futari, and this is version 1.5 Ultra. I don't speak Japanese, so I have no idea what "Mushihimesama Futari" means, though I might guess, "Get your butt handed to you."

Labels: Apocalypse Cow, Mainstream Games

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 7:35 AM (Permalink) 11 comments links to this post

 
Apocalypse Cow - What Do I Do Now?
One of the things I discovered watching a new player try out Apocalypse Cow recently was that the suspected need of some kind of an arrow pointing the way to the next (or nearest) goal was going to be required.

While the project began with some of the same gameplay as the classic arcade game Choplifter, I quickly expanded on it to include a number of different mission types and sub-goals to be achieved during the course of a mission. Much of the time they aren't strictly linear, and the interior maps usually have some minor branches in them.

The end result? In spite of the text dialog explaining what the player needs to do, it's easy to ignore or forget, and get completely lost or confused as to what you are supposed to do. So --- I'm adding the goal arrow to lead the way. It won't be there for every mission, and in some maps you may still have to hunt down the routes to get to wherre the arrow is pointing, but for the most part it should help you know what you can do next.

My concern is that it might encourage some linearity where it isn't strictly required. But I guess a player who doesn't like the linearity will figure out that they can ignore the arrow and do their own thing anyway, so long as they achieve the mission's objectives (which are usually pretty simple --- like protect an outhouse in the middle of the arctic for five minutes, which is for some reason the target of a massive bovine onslaught).

The other thing I discovered by taking a step back and looking at the "complete" alpha was a deficiency in the humor department. There's a zillion shooters and arcade action games out there (even some humorous ones), and many of them look very nice. What Apocalypse Cow has going for it is its style (such as it is) and humor. I've been pretty head-down worrying about gameplay for many moons now, trying to keep the gameplay fresh and interesting across all of nearly two-dozen levels, so I've been neglecting the goofiness that's going to make shooting down the evil Bovino Moosolini so fun.

So once I get those last "blinding suck" elements crossed off the list, I'm going to be having some REAL fun with the game. The kind of fun that made me excited to do it in the first place. Bizarre, off-the-wall, good-ol'-fashioned stupid fun with more puns, juvenile humor, fun exploding cow particles, and some visual jokes.

I can't wait! How's THAT for motivation to fix bugs?

Labels: Apocalypse Cow, Game Design, productivity

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 9:10 AM (Permalink) 4 comments links to this post

 
Cutting Out The Suck
You might remember an article I wrote some time ago on "Red Line Analysis" of games. This was based on a trick I heard a professional writers' group use - they drew a red line at the point in the manuscript where they expected a reader or editor to quit reading. They'd return the manuscript, and the original author would endeavor to move the red line back, a little further with each revision.

As noted last year, I think the same thing can be done with games. I can't count the number of times when I've asked someone how they liked a game, and they tell me at which point they gave up playing. Usually it's due to filler making the game too tedius, some really critically annoying bug, or "the straw that broke the camel's back" of minor points of suckage accumulating until the player no longer likes the game. Sometimes it is a point (like a boss monster) where the difficulty jumps to a frustrating level very suddenly.

My favorite was an explanation of why a friend never got very far in Final Fantasy 7. "I quit when the houses started attacking me." I agreed that it was lamest monster in the game, and a very tedious random-encounter sequence. Maybe that was cool in Japan, but it was really lame in

The Suck List For Apocalypse Cow
Apocalypse Cow went alpha last week, which is kind of a fuzzy definition. Traditionally (especially in the hardware world), alpha testing meant that unit and module testing could begin, but that all of it didn't yet work together as a unit. For games, I consider Alpha to be kind of like the "rough draft" of the entire game - the first point at which you can say, "Okay, test this game."

For Apocalypse Cow, I'm trying to figure out how to implement the "red line" analysis on the game. My answer was, instead of a bug list, to create a "suck list." It's not about fixing bugs (though that's part of it) - it's about getting rid of everything that sucks.

To cut out the suck, I'm going through the game, and noting everything that sucks. As I'll be asking anyone testing it for me to do. Then, as with bug lists, there are priorities to be assigned. I'm used to bugs being prioritized "A," "B," "C," and / or "D," which typically mean something at beginning of testing, but in late testing everything gets almost arbitrarily assigned an "A' or "B" priority because everyone knows the C's and D's won't get fixed, or possibly even looked at. A bugs are typically disasterous crashing / game-destroying bugs, and B bugs are "critical."

Well, for the alpha-stage suck-list, this weekend I came up with a different priority scheme for Suckage. It seemed amusing and useful when I came up with it, so I'm sticking with it for now.

So here they are:

Blinding Suckage
Ther top priority is "Blindingly Sucking" problems. Anything issue that would be hard for a tester to see past to look for other areas of suckage is Blindingly Sucking and must be remedied before anyone else even looks at it. Crash bugs, major game-balance problems, and things that ruin saved games are obvious candidates for this category. But since I'm working with volunteer testers - including a lot of friends whom I wouldn't want to jeopardize relationships with by forcing them to sit through hours of annoyance, I also have to include anything that sucks too bad to be ignored by a sane human being. I don't want anybody to have to deal with Blinding Suckage but me.

Examples of Blinding Suckage: The Upgrade UI and the in-game HUD are absolutely horrible and provide little feedback to the player unless he knows what to look for. The player's helicopter jitters (badly on some machines). Missions aren't always ending when the timer runs out. The lighting is broken on some interior levels, rendering them almost unplayably dark (except you can fire your gun and use its dynamic lighting as a flashlight).

Embarassing Suckage
The next priority is "Embarassingly Suckage". These are things that suck so bad I'd be kind of embarassed for anyone else to see it until I get them fixed. They are things that kind-hearted testers might ignore as they push deeper into the game, but would probably leave a bad taste in their mouth to make them less likely to try out a future version. But I might let close friends hammer on a version with Embarassing Suckage without feeling like I am abusing their friendship too much.

Examples of Embarassing Suckage: The Zeppelins aren't dissapearing when they die. The tanks are shooting fireballs backwards and out of their treads. There is far too much stand-in content. There aren't instructions or feedback for some of the more complicated missions. The mid-game story screens need to be in with at least "placeholder art." So does the end-game story screens. Need to turn off dynamic lighting on most AI attacks - they are HAMMERING lower-end machines on the late-game interior levels.

Pre-Beta Suckage
Moving on down the priority list, there's the list of things that "Suck Too Much For Beta." Pretty much anything that noticeably sucks at this point that doesn't make the other two lists goes here. With the possible exception of some stand-in content and some known fine-tuning issues, anything with a known suck-factor must be removed before the game goes beta. Then in beta we'll find a bunch of Subtle Suckage. But that's a whole 'nother story.

Some examples of Pre-Beta Suckage: Dialogs are too wordy - need fewer words and a larger font. Need to fix sound effect priority. Guns far above / below the player in interior levels are still shooting. Player's guns should change visuals as they are upgraded. More powerful AI should differ in appearance from their earlier-game cousins (the ol' "different paint job means different danger!" trick). All sound effects need to be in and getting triggered (even if some sound effects are temp).

Indeterminant Suckage
I don't actually have this category yet (there's way too much obvious, high-priority suckage to deal with), but I thought this last category might be one for things which Might Not Suck. Maybe it's something that people have mixed opinion on, or maybe it's something that sucks a little, but enables something very cool, and you can't find a work-around to get rid of the suck but keep the cool. This would be a category for the sorts of things that need to be investigated further.


The Long Road To Beta
As the examples show, I've got a lot of suckiness to cut out before going beta.

The cool part about it is that during the first half of alpha, I get to clear out a whole bunch of low-hanging fruit. If the game is any good, it is during this stage that it goes from being a lamentable mess that kinda resembles a game to a pretty honest-to-goodness GAME.

Labels: Apocalypse Cow, programming

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 7:52 AM (Permalink) 1 comments links to this post

 
Apocalypse Cow Goes Alpha
Wow. With all this talk about serious games, games as art, games as a protected form of freedom of expression and a powerful medium for communication, I guess I feel a little embarassed to talk about my little game about evil (and explosive) cows.

I guess I'm "Alpha." The game is playable (I think) from start to finish, I have at least stand-in content for every game element, I got saving and loading games working earlier this week, and I'm continuing to get content in place. I'm working on some dialog elements and "punching up" the visuals for the first few levels to get it ready to show on the 18th at the upcoming Utah Indie Game Developer's meeting. Go me!

I probably won't actually give the game to external testers until after the 18th. At this point, everything but the core gameplay is open for discussion, tweaking, scrapping, and overhauling. If the core concept and gameplay sucks, I'm basically screwed.

One of the late additions I put in the game is the ability to upgrade your helicopter between levels. This means spending some of those precious points you've spent rescuing people, defending bases, accomplishing mission objectives, and of course turning lots of cows into hamburger.

Part of the trick to this was adding upgrades without increasing the complexity of the controls. Two of the upgrades were completely new abilities - the "Smart Bomb" (for lack of a better term - it is an attack that damages everything within a certain radius), and a force field which, like the Tempest's special ability in Void War, renders the player completely invulnerable for a short period of time. I decided to make the forcefield fire off automatically if you have any left whenever you get hit. So it automatically protects you from taking at least one hit. They are a bit more expensive than just incrementing your armor levels, but they can be really useful in many of the later levels where you are flying through curtains of flak, gunshots, and guided missiles.

Hmmm... I guess I was probably inspired to do this by my irritation at getting my butt kicked too much by my own game.

Unfortunately, the day job has gotten to be in crunch mode (as I expected), so progress has been SLOW. On the plus side, I'm heading up programming on a new, non-indie console game at work, and having a blast! I wish I could say more, but I can neither say more nor even hint as to when I will be able to say more. Except that it'll rock!

Well, that's it for now. Have fun!

Labels: Apocalypse Cow, Game Announcements

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 9:56 AM (Permalink) 4 comments links to this post

 
Kicked In The Butt By A Metal Cow
Arcade / Action Games are a pain in the butt to create.

Okay, ANY game is a pain in the butt to create. But some games you can balance pretty well with a mathematical analysis. In an action game, it's more about how loaded (or overloaded) the player is with action-choices in a given length of time, and how much leeway is given for errors in either action or timing of those actions. Given the number of variables present in most games, that's something that can usually only be roughly estimated.

Or designed by "gut feel." And then tested.

And there's my problem. As the designer and developer of my game, I am uniquely UNQUALIFIED to test it for playability. I'm not even sure if I'm good, bad, or "okay" at playing my own game.

When I design a level, I start out with an idea. In many cases, especially if it involves modeling interiors, I sketch it out on paper. Other times I just go with it from my head onto the computer. I play through it in "god mode" - an invincibility mode turned on with a single keypress. I desigh, I redesign, I tweak, I note (and usually fix) bugs, I implement new code as it needs coding, and basically get it to a rough level of playability. As the final step, I turn off god mode and play through the level and try to gauge if it's difficulty is about right.

So I'm working on the new game, "Apocalypse Cow." Well, not all that new to me, really. New as in "Newer than Void War", I guess. I'm working on the "Mecha-Robo-Cow" boss level, which occurs 4/5ths of the way through the game. Said boss is a giant metal cow walking on two legs. Her udder fires anti-aircraft shells that explode, saturating an area with lethal explosions. Her left foreleg is an autocannon. She has a missile launcher on her right shoulder. She's supposed to be hard, as the penultimate boss of the game. And she is totally kicking my butt.

Maybe "kicking" isn't the right term. More like "grinding it into a powder and scattering it into hurricane-class winds."

I've been worried that this gal would be too easy. She can be destroyed in about twelve seconds of sustained fire. The previous boss, from about five levels back, is too easy, and needs a minor overhaul. THAT one has a critical weakness that's embarassingly easy to exploit (hover directly over him, far enough that he's barely off-screen below you, and he can't touch you). A weakness is a good thing (in fact, it's practically REQUIRED in making a good boss battle), but not one that is too easy to exploit.

So I made the Mecha-Robo-Cow a bit tougher. She performs her attacks in deliberate, predictable cycles, with a very deliberate pause between the cycles. She changes her behavior when the player is directly above her, but she's also forced to halt her march towards a mission-failing finish line. Tested from the security of an invulnerable god-mode, the Mecha-Robo-Cow seemed to be perfect. Then I turned off invulnerability, and tested the level out "live."

The first dozen times I played, I couldn't even get close enough to scratch the Mecha-Robo-Cow's paint. In sixty tries, I've managed at best to take her down to about 80% health. A hair over two seconds of the twelve of sustained fire. Clearly, she's too tough, and needs to be made easier.

Sure. But how? And by how much?

Every time I find my helicopter doing catching fire, spinning, and crashing into the ground, it's very clear that I made some kind of error. I zigged when I should have zagged. I made this error in judgement at point A, which compounded to leave me stuck in this situation and point B, which I nevertheless could have escaped if I'd done C. It's kind of a high-speed puzzle. It has the desireable quality of feeling that success is just one more try away. This time, I can do it right, make no mistakes, and win. And so I go on to make another mistake - or the same one - fifteen seconds later. It feels like a fair challenge --- one that I keep losing over and over again.

There are probably a dozen ways or more to fix the problem. From reducing the rate of fire, to introducing a pronounced gap between its attacks, to giving the player access to some kind of "second chance" forcefield, to simply dropping the amount of damage the Mecha-Robo-Boss can take before dropping. Or a combination of several.

But which is best? And how much easier should I make it? I don't know. Again, I'm UNIQUELY UNQUALIFIED to answer just how over-the-top this level is. I'm hoping I can get it somewhere in the ballpark, so when I finally open this game up to external testers they can provide me with good feedback and let me know if I erred too far on one or the other extreme on the difficulty scale. If I get half the players saying "too easy" and the other half saying "too hard," then maybe it'll be just about right.

I don't really have a point to this, other than maybe sharing what's vexing me in this day in the life of a clumsy indie game developer.

Though I admit it is kinda funny having my butt kicked repeatedly by a metal cow.

(Vaguely) related pointless mutterings:
* You Can't Design Fun On Paper
* Ways to Be A Better Game Designer
* Elements That Make More Believable AI
* Apocalypse Cow Status
* Apocalypse Cow Boss

Labels: Apocalypse Cow, Game Design

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 6:24 PM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
Apocalypse Cow Status
Well, Chris asked about it, so here I go, throwing my hat over the fence. All of this is tentative... the Day Job is in crunch-mode right now, so it's hard to fit in the time with family and working 10-12 hour days at the office. But here goes - status update on Apocalypse Cow.

I've already blown past a couple of internal milestones by now. It's my own fault. Originally, AC was going to be a very quick-and-dirty little project, whipped out in about six months of part-time effort. But I ended up getting excited about it, and feature creep set in. One of the objectives I set for the game (when it went beyond the quick-and-dirty stage) was to have some new gameplay element in every level to keep the player's interest. I didn't want to just keep scaling up the difficulty. The game is sitting at over 20 levels, so that's a tall order and a lot of custom code. And content. And bugs. And...

And so the game has been taking for-freaking ever, and I alternate between loving it and hating it. But I'm beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel. WHEW!

So what's left to do? In order to get to "Alpha" (a goal I have for mid-December)
* There are 4 levels left that haven't been started on, yet.
* I need to fix mission completion / failure criteria for some levels
* There is one early level that needs a drastic overhaul. I put a lot of time in on it back in April, but it's still just not working. I'm afraid it's going to be scrapped and replaced.
* Mid-game and end-game story screens
* Dialog for the later levels
* Save and Load Game

"Alpha" for this game is a rough draft of the full, completed game. At that point, there's a lot of iteration to clean up and polish the levels, tweak the AI and game balance, replace stand-in content with final content, and punch up the special effects and humor.

Last but not least, I need a finalized title. Maybe you guys can help out on this. The phrase "Apocalypse Cow" is unfortunately a fairly common joke. I'm keeping it in the title, because it's FUN, but it needs a subtitle of some kind. Here are our favorites so far:

Apocalypse Cow: The Revolution
Apocalypse Cow: The Chips Fall
Apocalypse Cow: Tipping The Balance
Apocalypse Cow: Fighting The Bull
Apocalypse Cow: When The Chips Are Down
Apocalypse Cow: Empire of Bull
Apocalypse Cow: Bull Smack

What's your favorite (or favorites)? Do you have suggestions? Please let me know!


( Vaguely) related bits of bovine-bashing:
* Humor and Apocalypse Cow
* Apocalypse Cow Progress
* An (old and untextured) Apocalypse Cow Boss
* Apocalypse Cow

Labels: Apocalypse Cow

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 10:55 PM (Permalink) 12 comments links to this post

 
Humor and Apocalypse Cow
One of the lessons I learned from Void War (too late, unfortunately), is that video game humor needs to be pretty broad. Subtle, tongue-in-cheek humor has its place, but the designer needs to assume that the average player won't "get it." It's hard to convey that in a game, when the player is more concerned about their own interactions. And maybe I just wasn't as funny as I thought. As a comedian, I'm a pretty good programmer, I guess.

But I keep trying. Because I'm stupid that way. Apocalypse Cow is definitely more broad in its humor. I mean, come on, it's got EXPLODING COWS! And groan-inducing puns! What's not to like? Well, a lot, potentially, depending upon how horribly I screw it up.

Fortunately, the artist I'm working with is absolutely brilliant and has packed tons of humor into even his concept sketches, really capturing the flavor of the game that I'm hoping to achieve. I thought I'd share a couple of these here, because I think they rock. Now, these are very rough sketches - so in fairness to him, I'll also post a link to his finished 2D art for the game that I posted up during the summer.

Progress on the game is slow, though I hope to have all the levels "feature complete" within about three more weeks. They are still filled with awful stand-in programmer art which I'll be gradually swapping out as content gets complete. At this point, I can't offer an ETA, as I've blown my own deadlines already and I'm re-calculating schedule right now. Originally, this was going to be a "quick and dirty" game, but I found myself loving the project too much, and found myself really expanding the interactions and challenges. That means a lot more custom code (and new content). And lots more opportunities to totally ruin the game!

But I'm having a lot of fun with it. Which I may use to console myself when the game bombs and I'm mocked by indie developers and gamers alike across the entire world. But I've been there, and done that. But at least it'll have some awesome art.

Labels: Apocalypse Cow

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 8:31 AM (Permalink) 3 comments links to this post

 
Beware Cows!


Those getting the newsletter (check the top of the sidebar to the right) have already seen this.

A picture is worth a thousand words, they say, so this is already too long. Peace!

Labels: Apocalypse Cow

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 11:30 PM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
Apocalypse Cow Boss
I didn't get much work done on Apocalypse Cow this week - I blame Oblivion. :)

So I've gone on all these recent rants about being creative and innovative in game design... and here I am creating a game that is pretty derivative of some old arcade classics. Actually, I'm a little worried about some of the "innovations" I've been introducing to the game actually detracting from the experience. Remember back in the day when graphical adventure games included an obligatory action / arcade sequence? The end result is that it didn't win over any action-game enthusiasts... it only honked off the adventure gamers who had to interrupt their adventuring & puzzle solving for some test of eye-hand coordination.

That's the kind of concerns I'm facing. We'll see how it goes, and once things are truly to "alpha" stage I'm going to have to get some "kleenex testers" to give it a whirl and tell me what they think.

But I've got the first "boss", Baron Cowfred Von Richthoofen, flying. The bosses are tricky because they and their levels each require lots of custom coding. But they are bosses - they should be fairly unique.

I am kind of proud of my Fokker Triplane-esque model, though it is obviously not yet textured. His behavior needs a lot of TLC and polish, but he managed to shoot me down several times the first few times I engaged him.

Ultimately, the only excuse I can give for making this game is that I'm having a lot of fun making it. And maybe that's all that matters.

Labels: Apocalypse Cow

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 11:46 PM (Permalink) 0 comments links to this post

 
Apocalypse Cow Progress
In-between job interviews and Disneyland trips and handling a handful of "honey-dos" my wife has arranged for me during my current unemployment, I've managed to get a ton of progress done in Apocalypse Cow.

I've got three levels "roughed out" and playable now, and I'll be starting level 4 tomorrow. There are still LOTS of details to be taken care of, and additional content to be added, sound, and layers of polish that will need to be applied. So I can't really call them "done." But it's definitely a game now, and progress is now very fast. The Black Triangles are now almost done!

The event scripting has turned out to be remarkably easy. I'm sure I could do it more elegantly than I am, but what I've got is working nicely. Particularly for the tutorial levels, there are lots of events that need to take place in a specified order. One of the powers of TorqueScript is the ability to do higher-level functions with relative ease. You can generate the name of the event handler on-the-fly based upon the name of the level, like "Level_1_Pickup_Event" and make the call. CAKE!!!!

The trick with this is that it's really easy to let the architecture get away from you. I've been doing a little bit of pruning and reorganization as I go, but I've got some more serious overhauling to do in the not-to-distant future. The AI Manager, in particular, has gotten a little bit out-of-hand.

The way I've organized the progression of the early levels so far are as follows (subject to change at any time, of course):

Level 1: MILK RUN - the player learns how to rescue prisoners, shoot things, and transport large objects.

Level 2: CATTLE CANYON - Pure rescue operation, but the player must deal with static defenses - dodging attacks and blowing up non-moving targets.

Level 3: COWABUNGA - The player must deal with air threats that continually respawn, and now has to deal with "soft" time limits.

Level 4: BRIDGE OVER THE RIVER COW-AH - The player must build a bridge

Level 5: BARON COWFRED VON RICHTHOOFEN - The first "boss" level.

One of the design issues I'm struggling with (yes, even for a silly game about flying cows, one must deal with serious design issues) is keeping the player learning and developing new skills and strategies throughout the game - not just ramping up the challenge against the same handful of skills until the end of the game. This means there needs to be far more interactions with the environment (and with the AI itself) than just shooting things and dodging dangers. But I cannot complicate the control scheme with any additional buttons or commands.

The boss levels should then be a test of all you've learned in the previous few levels, hopefully combined in intriguing ways.

And of course, MORE BAD PUNS AND LIVESTOCK HUMOR!

Labels: Apocalypse Cow

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 10:46 PM (Permalink) 6 comments links to this post

 
More Tail-Kicking and Game-Making
We have a Utah Indie Developer meet on the 27th of this month. It's my goal to have several playable levels completed for Apocalypse Cow (maybe not content-complete, but code-complete and fully functional) by that date. Pretty much everything up to the first "boss" (Baron Manfred Von Richthoofen).

I'm pretty much developing-by-the-levels right now. The first three levels are very tutorial-esque, as the player is instructed how to fly the helicopter, shoot things, pick up people, and pick up / drop cargo. I started the second level today, and I intend to have it finished sometime tomorrow. It is visually very different from the previous level, which is exciting to me as a developer. Hopefully it will be exciting to players.

What's really funny about this project was that it began as an almost throw-away exercise. I am finding that a few elements from a project I cancelled in May last year are coming back to find a home here. And it's starting to "design itself" in a few ways. I hope it's a good sign.

Or maybe it's because I have a terrible sense of humor and I'm just loving the chance to use a bunch of really terrible puns in a game.

Labels: Apocalypse Cow

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 7:34 PM (Permalink) 4 comments links to this post

 
Apocalypse Cow
More bits from the game about flying cows. Tentative title: "Cutter Hawke In Apocalypse Cow." The graphics are all stand-in right now, but I think the screenshot conveys some of the action.

As you can see, it's kind of a 2D game with 3D graphics. I'm not going to say that it's wildly innovative, but so far it's very fun and funny. And it's got flying, exploding cows. What is NOT to like about that?

I'm using the Torque engine, version 1.4 plus the Torque Lighting Kit, which has it's own strengths and weaknesses. Since it's an arcade-style game, extremely responsive movement, collision detection, and camera movement in a single-player game is critical, and I've had to do some tricky work-arounds to make Torque responsive enough. On the plus side, much of the game logic can all be handled within TorqueScript, and of course Torque provides great support for 3D terrain, objects, animation, and particle systems.

Most of the interactive objects in the game (except for the weaponry) were created with a subclass of ITEM, of all things. I chose Item because it was a fairly lightweight object. The camera-code is all custom, client-based stuff.

The game still has quite a ways to go, but it's been coming along pretty nicely.

EDIT:

Okay - here's a special effect that just didn't work (still stand-in, mind you): The idea was to have a blown-up cow fly through the air and smack the screen like a bird hitting a window, and then slide down. The problem is, it obscures the gameplay area too much (which I was afraid of, but prototyping proved it to be the case).

Any suggestions?

Labels: Apocalypse Cow

- posted by The Rampant Coyote @ 7:42 PM (Permalink) 4 comments links to this post