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2016.11.26 Boss 101, Release Notes, VFX and MUCH MORE!

Boss 101 – BIG FAT RELEASE UPDATE!

Good news everyone! We’re going to talk about the upcoming Boss 101 release date, pricing and even the Boss 101 Soundtrack! YOU HEARD RIGHT!

Boss 101 Price Target – $9.99

Yep, that is what we are planning on selling Boss 101 for on Steam. Less than 10 bucks! A BARGAIN AT TWICE THE PRICE I SAY!

There are nuances in the reasoning for our price but the overriding factor was to hit a sweet spot which put Boss 101 in as many hands as possible AND give us financial breathing room to continue working on the Boss 101 franchise (i.e. Boss 102, 103, etc).

We thought long and hard about a higher price point and though we love to image a glorious deluge of purchases at ANY price we felt $9.99 was just the right amount of “wow” and value YOU NEEDED to want to buy Boss 101. You are getting a ton of our blood sweat and tears for that price but more than that – you are getting a ton of game entertainment! Check them dev blogs for evidence!

We have put everything in Boss 101 we felt was needed. The main storyline, equipment, stores, WIKI, mini-games, PET FRIENDS, collection, arcade action, gopher buddies, and THE JOKES!!! It’s all there and you get it for what we think is a great value. Ideally this price will bring you a lot of fun and ZERO regrets. Also – wouldn’t it be nice if you recommended Boss 101 after you played it too?!?! THANK YOU!!!! HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!

Release Date News – or “When can I buy the gol-darn game?!?”

Let’s ease into this one first. As you know we are ENTIRELY self-funded. We didn’t do a Kickstarter nor are we being subsidized by any publisher or third party. That’s right folks – we’re what you might call INDEPENDENT! HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

That said – we have only had one main commitment to Boss 101 and that is to make sure YOU get the most value for your money. That means putting our best into the game and making sure things are as amazing as we can make them. Many times this pushed the date out a little further but the end result is a MUCH better game. If we had stuck to the original release schedule we would have been in development for about six months and Boss 101 most likely would have been a glorified web game brought to Steam. Maybe that would have been enough for some developers but it was not enough for us.

We looked at Boss 101 as it was coming together and thought “We have something special happening here and with some more ‘oomph’ it could be VERY special.” So we put in the time and polished features. We added gameplay we felt we needed. We added in the story elements that helped fill in the universe we envisioned. Then we spent (and still are) a lot of time polishing.

It was NOT enough to just ‘make a game’ and put it on Steam. We want to bring you a game with fun, entertainment and a high content value. To that end we have been working hard and waiting till we felt we were close to talk about a final release date. Well, that day is finally here.

The target right now is the beginning of 2017. This would be ideally end of January or beginning of February. Yes, it might be a little saddening to hear the game won’t hit Christmas but check this out. We COULD have hit Christmas and probably given you a pretty decent Boss 101 game. After all – we are mostly polishing and tuning the game. The thing is we didn’t want to rush into a late November or December ship date and get buried under a mountain of gaming press for every release around that time. So we looked at the game, the calendar and decided we might as well keep the focus on polish and cleanup over the next month and wait till 2017.

So yes, we are on track for a release. Yes, we are only on polish and sound (more on that below) and YES we feel you will be getting our best effort which is WHAT YOU DESERVE! As always – we reserve the simple right to hold things while we tighten the needed bolts and fix the needed bugs. It’s important we bring you our top effort.

So, Boss 101 Release – Early 2017 with a rough target end of January or early February. We’re getting there folks and we will keep you posted regularly. If you have any doubts about the game or are wondering where all our time and money are going then please take a look at any of our devblogs. We have well over two years of TWICE weekly updates and you can pretty much see we aren’t sitting around.

YOU KNOW WE LOVE YOU!

Soundtrack for Boss 101 and Album info!

We have been quiet about the music for Boss 101 but that doesn’t mean we aren’t ACTIVE. We have been speaking with a CLASS A fellow named Martin Millar for over a year now. He has been in touch regularly, is supportive of Boss 101 AND a top notch composer.

Martin will be providing Boss 101 with a musical foundation. That will mean themes, background music and various tunes you will hear throughout the game. He’s a longtime composer with a ton of talent. Check out his work here:

Martin Millar on BandCamp

We’ll be posting samples of his work but in the meantime visit his site – really great work. Additionally we are working with Martin to create a Boss 101 album that you can purchase separately (if you so desire).

Store Update, NEW VIDEOS, SCREENSHOTS AND MORE!

Of course – expect some new videos about gameplay in the coming time leading to release. We are aiming for a new one before the end of the year and think you will enjoy it A LOT! After that we are planning more ‘snapshot’ videos which highlight various parts of the game – EXCITING!!!

Check out the ongoing update at our Steam Store!

Ok – onto the update!

VFX and More!

We are hammering away at VFX touchup and came across a great little utility called Geon FX for GameMaker. In short it is a standalone particle editor for GameMaker and it is VERY nice. For where we are in polish it really nice to be able to load and edit VFX tweaks. Let’s look at something we just fixed shall we.

Damage States for the Bosses

As you damage the bosses they show the damage externally. What this means for you is a set of sparks, smoke and flying debris. What we did was setup all the bosses with bones that would be used as ‘damage bones’. When the player does enough damage the boss has a small chance to have a bone smoke, spark or something exciting.

Here’s a sample of the early setup. You can see the bones are all lit up here. Mostly this was done as a sample so we could tell things are work..

First pass test of the VFX Bones

In Game sample

Here’s a setup in Geon FX – this is where the smoke and VFX magic gets made!

Let’s look at some samples of Smoke and Fire VFX for the bosses. ALL GOOD!!

Fire example 1 – sample from editor

Fire example 2 – sample from editor

Sample Explosion

Wrapping up for today

OK – HUGE update – hope you enjoyed it and if you have any questions, drop us a line.

As always, we appreciate your support and look forward to bring you Boss 101. We hope you are looking forward to the release. It’s happening folks!

Talk with you soon and remember to LIVE YOUR DREAMS!!!

-Tim

Please put Boss 101 on your Steam Wishlist us if you would be so kind

http://store.steampowered.com/app/380920

Thank you!

2016.11.19 Boss 101, Arcade Games, Options and Cleanup

Welcome to the Boss 101 update!

Hope your day is going well and thank you for checking in on us. Let’s get rolling shall we?

Mazard – the arcade game of Mazes and Wizards in Boss 101

We’ve been looking at some of the other arcade games you can play INSIDE Boss 101 and here is yet another. It’s Mazard and it continues in our theme of retro arcade action. We have some work in progress shots for you to look at.

The rules are simple – destroy all the aliens to survive. You have a maze, your gun and a bunch of bad guys to deal with. The problem is some of them are invisible but FEAR NOT! You have a radar to spy them out.

Check out this sample of the maze in action

Our hero going through some of his animations

The maze is a tough place and pretty unforgiving. Think you can get the high score? MAYBE YOU CAN! We will have to see when the game launches.

Another WIP of the Maze art

High Scores and Global Leader boards

So we know you might want to compare some of your rankings with OTHER friends. In addition to local high scores we have your friend’s leaderboard as well as the global leader boards for all the arcade game. CHECK IT!

Sample of the various leader boards (note, some scores are ridiculous for testing purposes)

Pet Hill Art Wrap up

One of the last things in Pet Hill was the addition of the various new and vacant signs to identify the pet friends you have and don’t have…

Good News Everyone – Options on every screen!

It’s likely this is more an expectation than an exception but we added the ability to access the options panel from near every screen in the game. We also added an insta-pause if your game was to lose focus. YAY!

Thanks again for stopping by and thank you again for your support and letters! We appreciate it!

Remember to LIVE YOUR DREAMS!

-Tim

Please put Boss 101 on your Steam Wishlist us if you would be so kind

http://store.steampowered.com/app/380920

Thank you!

2016.11.12 Boss 101 UI Upgrades across the year

Welcome to the latest Boss 101 update.

Let’s talk about some of the UI improvements and touchups we have done in Boss 101 over the last year. What we are going to do is look at a build of the game from ONE YEAR AGO and compare it to today’s build. What I would like to point out is how many things have remained the same and touches we have done to make things clearer and easier to understand. Overall I feel YOU will enjoy the changes and rest assured we are making sure the WHOLE GAME has as much polish as we can muster for the release.

Upgrades Room

We spoke about this one a while back but here’s a refresher. Upgrades are on the second floor of the Command Center and they are where you can go for basic overall improvements of your main character and weapon. Additionally you can invest in a construction project to get access to ROB’s secret store.

So – we have a snippet here of the game tutorial giving you an overview of the upgrades in the room. Notice even BERL is hesitant to talk about the Debug upgrade! Guess you will just have to get down there for yourself.

Health – then and now

The Health upgrade section is a pretty good example of what has been happening. The old version wasn’t bad but we wanted a new one with the information a little clearer (more on that later) and a little more in line with the Boss 101 game aesthetic.

The old version

New and Jazzier

So – some of the reasoning here is we wanted to leave space for dropping in numbers after all the tunes are done. You’ll notice we have levels of upgrades but the idea is we have left the door open for tweaks in the way the information is displayed. Once all the final gameplay tunes are in and balances then we will come back here for a last pass on the display. The same will go for all the upgrade sections.

The Bounty section

This is where you adjust your end of round bonus. In here you can give yourself a health boost in cash. As with the health – this will be revisited once all the final values are in. The current setup allows for a really easy change to this display.

Old

New

Main Gun Damage

Personally I think this upgrade benefited GREATLY from the UI improvements. This is the indicator of the damage your main gun will do. The old was a simple bullet and icon coloration. Now we have all the different machines guns YOU WILL SEE IN GAME represented here. It’s pretty clear what’s happening, right? HA!

Old

New

Debug Store

This was another one long in the works. The debug store was always a tricky concept to sell in this room. The original idea was we had a totally secret room that you had to buy to ‘discover’. You would not have been given any information other than this obscure looking upgrade slot. As you dropped your cash down you would have been slowly building a button on the command center controls. Well, the idea is still there but we make it a LOT clearer what is going in with the design of this upgrade, the tutorials and the actual in-game displays.

Old

New

Wrap up and release date

We’re working on a release date announcement (sooner than later) and a final series of gameplay videos for your enjoyment as we head into the last part of development. It has been a LONG, long ride and no one wants this game in your hands as much as we do – TRUST US!

Realistically though – we will not put this game out there before we put our all into it. We’re right next to the finish line, the end is near but this is the time to keep a steady resolve to BRING YOU OUR BEST! You will be adventuring in Boss 101 soon people – THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT AND HANG IN THERE!

And….. remember to….. LIVE YOUR DREAMS!

-Tim

Please put Boss 101 on your Steam Wishlist us if you would be so kind

http://store.steampowered.com/app/380920

Thank you!

2016.11.05 Boss 101, Breakout Games and Art Re-use

Welcome to the Boss 101 Update!

This week we continue the talk about the arcade games you will find in Boss 101 as well as the reuse of existing game assets to not only save time but unify your game’s look!

Breakout/Arkanoid Work-in-Progress

First off let’s talk about the Breakout (or Arkanoid) like game we put inside the Boss 101 arcade machine. This is another example of something you can do in between game rounds to pass the time and maybe earn special prizes.

So we would access this from the main arcade booth in the Command Center.

From there we can go and select the game and proceed to the actual gameplay (after an intro screen).

What we have here is a work in progress shot of the basic gameplay. The art is going in and you can see a lot of the cute-ness and fun are well on their way. As with the other arcade games we are installing, we want them to be fun and straightforward moments of gameplay.

We will be allowing you to share your high scores with friends so you can see how you do against them. We also are looking at global Steam leaderboards. Regardless the idea here is you can sit back for a little while and enjoy some arcade action while contemplating the next big boss attack!

Look how happy this guys is!

The Wise Re-use of art you already have!

This is another work in progress look behind the scenes at how we do what we do! The story here is we needed to create title and end screens for all the arcade games. These would be places for instructions and high scores respectively. Of course we wanted them to look cool so we needed some idea for how the backgrounds might look.

Make a Boss to the rescue!

Check out this sweet background from the Make A Boss – that’s a pretty neat effect right? I wonder if we changed the shapes up and the glow pattern? Maybe we can reuse it for the arcades.

Work in Progress Arcade Screens.

So here we have the first pass of the arcade screens. This is basically the same underlying tech as the Make A Boss. It’s been re-purposed with new art and a new glow pattern. Still to do are color passes to make it more inline with the arcade game as well as some tweaks to the glow color and speed. Overall though this is MUCH faster than creating a whole new look for something. The added benefit here is we get to make another piece of art that helps unify the overall look of the game. NEAT!

Ok – that is it for this update and thank you again. We appreciate your support, letters and comments. Please check back for more updates and info about the upcoming Boss 101 release date!

Remember to always – LIVE YOUR DREAMS!

-Tim

Please put Boss 101 on your Steam Wishlist us if you would be so kind

http://store.steampowered.com/app/380920

Thank you!

2016.10.29 Boss 101, Arcade Tank Battles and more

Welcome to the Boss 101 update!

Today we are talking about some of the ALTERNATE things you can do when you play Boss 101, specifically, using the ARCADE MACHINE!

The arcade machine is on the Command Center top floor and it’s a place you go to blow off steam between rounds of galaxy saving action. The arcade machine has three games for you to choose from. Today we will be talking about the “tank battle” (working title) game.

Check out the progress from the first pass arcade title screen to the latest version…

First WIP

Current version

Moving onto the game itself. The current gameplay is about surviving as long as you can versus up to four tanks. Sounds simple but the difficulty ramps up fast. All the arcade games inside Boss 101 are about quick action and your skillage as a gamer. Think you can stay alive long enough to get the high score?

First pass WIP version

Current art version

The latest art versions add the effects and emerge animations for the tanks as well as the new art for the player and enemy vehicles. Still on our list is polishing up the instructions sheet, title cards and a few other minor touchups. Overall things are moving along well and we are looking forward to you getting a look at the final game!

Gopher WIKI with Pet Pages!

We added MORE information to the WIKI so you can read up on your favorite pets. That’s right people – each of your pet friends has its own page with background info, names and even a look at the home world of the pet. EXCITING!

Here’s a shot of a few of the pets and their info…

OK – that wraps up today’s update and join us again for the next look. Look for upcoming updates to bring you more looks at Boss 101 as well as release info.

Thank you again for stopping by and remember to LIVE YOUR DREAMS!

-Tim

Please put Boss 101 on your Steam Wishlist us if you would be so kind

http://store.steampowered.com/app/380920

Thank you!