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2016.08.07 Boss 101: UI Work and Sweating the Details!

You asked for it and you got it! Welcome to the Boss 101 update where we sweat the details and share the secrets behind the making of Boss 101 the game.

Speaking of details, this week we’re looking at more of the little touches we think make Boss 101 a special game. Things like interface cleanup as well as various UI screen niceties to enhance your game experience are covered. We feel the ONLY way to bring Boss 101 into your life is by giving you OUR VERY BEST EFFORT and then some. We also believe the way to make a mark, give you value and bring you back for more is to put forth an effort so spectacular you can’t ignore the joy we had making it.

Every day we look at ways to make each element of the game as fun, engaging and charming as possible. No screen, character or BUTTON is immune to this thinking. It’s not enough to have a great gameplay feature or some neat looking loading screen. We feel each part of the experience must match up and equal the rest. We have themed the entire game around the Boss 101 look so let’s check out samples of what I am blabbing about shall we?

Main Screen Options Panel

Once you get to the main screen panel you can access the base options for the game. Among other things you will be able to configure your keyboard controls. Let’s talk about that for a second.

When we first looked at this panel we had static icons to represent the various controls you were going to remap. That’s all well and good but how much cooler is it when the buttons move and activate? MUCH BETTER WE SAY! Check out the screen:

Work in Progress Movie Room Icons

You can see here in the movie room the start of the process for labels. We are adding in animated icons for the movies you can replay. Again, a static icon would do just fine but that’s not us and we think we can do better FOR YOU! We’ll post more in progress images here as we go forward.

The room! The work in progress area:

Close up


The Endless Boss Win Warp Screen

Winning a round in the Endless Boss mode will toss you to the warp screen where you can catch your breath and ready yourself for the next round. Here is where ROB and the Cosmic Clicks ship will meet you for a refueling stop. We thought about this room and felt ROB would definitely want to be on this journey with you so we had him join you in the win area.

Of course the gophers show up to give the Clicks ship a bit of polish and top off the fuel tank. YOU KNOW!

OK – that is it for the week’s highlights. Hope you enjoyed seeing the plan come closer to fruition. Boss 101 will be released sooner than later and though we can’t put a pin on the EXACT DATE we can tell you this – it will be the most fun, most charm and the very best value we can possibly give you. YES!!!

Take care and remember to LIVE YOUR DREAMS!

-Tim

2016.07.30 Boss 101: World Building the Main Rooms

Welcome to the latest Boss 101 update!

Let’s talk some more about world building in Boss 101. Specifically we are going to talk about the way we setup environments in the game and make them consistent during your stay in the Command Center.

Let’s look at how this evolved. We have the Start Screen and early on we wanted it to have a variety of environments (rain, night, day, etc). The idea was to give you a sense of time and life in the game. You leave, come back and time has passed.

Well, you can imagine that opened up a rabbit hole of possibilities for us. The moment we had a changing Start Screen we talked about changing the pet window in the Command Center. Of course, once you do THAT you start to think about all the other screens built off there which would likely have the same environment.

Start Screen – Sunset

Ok – so we looked at Kite Hill and thought “That’s in the same area but maybe off to the left or right from the start screen.” It wasn’t long before we hooked up that location to have the same type of environment (with slight tweaks) as the start screen. From there we ended up going through all the locations you can access directly from the Command Center and creating custom but similar looks for you to see.

Kite Hill – Sunset from another vantage point

We have the Endless Boss Launch area. The Clicks ship in there shows and open sky that now reflects the rest of the Command Center. Pet Hill as well as the Options and the Credits Movie area are all part of the main game environment you see at the beginning.

Endless Boss launch area with opening to sky

Pet Hill

Options Screen WIP

The thing we wanted for you was to make something special and interesting when you played. A lot of our time is put into making the game feel like a place and the people you meet as interesting as possible.

Examples with a Rainbow Sky

Pet Hill with Rainbows!

Endless Launch rainbows

We really do believe it is ALL of this which adds up to make a special game. As we heard Racer X once say “When YOU care, THEY care” and who are we to argue.

Thanks again for stopping by and remember to LIVE YOUR DREAMS!

-Tim

2016.07.24 Boss 101: Hats, Costumes and more!

Hey all, this is Tim and welcome back to another Boss 101 update!

Here at the Donley Time Foundation we think about you! Now you might ask yourself “Self, what are those wacky people at the Time Foundation up to this week?” The answer, we are up to our necks in polishing Boss 101 FOR YOU! We have been tightening the screws, checking the paint, smashing bugs and tuning features so you can have the very best Boss 101 game we can muster.

This week we wanted to talk about a feature we lovingly refer to as ‘the hat collection’ though it is MUCH more than that. You know we have hats! You know you can buy them and get special powers. You might also suspect something we are going to verify RIGHT NOW. Those same hats show up all across the game while you play! In cinematics, the Command Center and all throughout the main storyline. So if you are dressed as your fav character from our wide selection of costume hats then you will see that character interact with everyone in costume.

We have superhero themed hats, hats that make you mythological characters, hats that make you sci-fi stars or even robots. Let’s look at some of the variety shall we?

Mister Cyclops has his day! Go on and visit your brother as a classic Greek monster, he won’t judge.

Getting ready for a warp jump with your one eyed avatar…

Snack Time..

Maybe you want to change it up as a super hero type person…

Into Space!

Perhaps purple haired Sasha?

Maybe something a little more ‘solid’?

Maxine in space!

Maybe even a forbidden robot…

Picnic as Alice…

If all else fails go classic…

Ok – the whole point is we want you to have fun and play the way you want. Boss 101 is about your stories. The hats, weapons and bosses are there to bring you an adventure and we hope you will find our efforts worthwhile. There are a lot of little touches you might not see right away but don’t fret! We feel it’s worth the time and effort to make things special.

General Update

This was a pretty big week for us. A lot of the systems were checked over for thoroughness and bugs. We fixed a few little niggles to make your experience better and added in more storytelling hooks. Overall – things are moving along well!

Check back with us next week for more news and until then…

LIVE YOUR DREAMS!

-Tim

2016.07.17 Boss 101, Gopher Space Station

Welcome back to the Boss 101 update!

The GSS

This week we are talking about the latest and greatest upgrade to the Map Room in Boss 101 – the Gopher Space Station (GSS)! You heard it here first, the gophers are building a space station with a special warp gate during the course of the game.

As you already know the map room is where you go to select your next planetary mission. It’s also a place to chart your progress towards Boss 101 himself. During your adventure you will get to see first hand the gophers constructing the mighty GSS. Each level of your progress is a step in their progress. It will be your efforts driving the construction forward.

Check out this early stage of with the construction at its earliest. Here we have the superstructure just up and the framework laid out.

Now later in the game you will see framework removed and more paint and goodies added. Cool huh?

No work is done in space without the Gopher Space Corp and here are a  few of the people working to make things happen.

Ted Gopher bringing in Supplies from a supply ship

Mary and Angela are welding some of the struts together for extra rigidity

Dialog Advancement

We also wanted to highlight a feature about our dialog system added to make your reading time much more pleasurable. The magical A button. We know many games employ this method and we think it’s a good one too. Basically you can advance dialog with the A button and read at your own speed. Of course if you want to skip dialog entirely you can do that but we do not recommend missing out on all our hilarity.

We also test dialogs for errors in the debug dialog room. In an earlier update we highlighted this room and its ease of use in making corrections.

Folks, it has been an amazing few weeks. We spoke yesterday at the Indie Games Riot IRX 2016 conference. We recommend checking out the site for their interviews and news. A great crew and worth your time.

http://indiegameriot.com/

Also – we have been working round the clock to clean up and polish the game into something truly special. Speaking for myself (Tim) I feel our team has really brought the art, animation, story and code into a special area YOU the player will really enjoy. All our decisions are based on making things entertaining and fun. Boss 101 is about adventure and being a kid with a jetpack. We are all working our rear ends off putting in every bell and whistle we can.

Thanks for stopping by and remember to always… LIVE YOUR DREAMS!

-Tim

Boss 101 on Steam Wishlist us if you would be so kind. Thank you!

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

2016.07.10 Boss 101, Levels and Fog

Hello again and welcome to our Boss 101 Development Update. This week’s subject GAME FOG!

We are going to walk you through how we are using a simple fog overlay in Boss 101 to clear up the action. This makes the game not only more visually appealing but arguably more fun for you the player.

First off let’s look at what we are doing here. Below is a sample screenshot of a forest themed level.

Everything is working just fine in practice and the level looks great in the screenshot. Thing is, you will be playing the game in motion and when bullets are flying and minions are dodging all over the place you want every advantage possible. For that we looked at the background area and wanted to push it more into the ‘background’. This was for a couple reasons. One – it would add depth to the level by giving things and atmospheric haze. The next is it would help clear up the difference between what is important and what is more eye candy.

Be warned, we are getting into a subjective area. This is really about what you want for YOUR GAME. This is not a cure all for every game. Let’s move on…

Testing out the theory
So we took the above screenshot and blocked out the boss and the player like so. This was to have a quick testbed for what we wanted to do.

We then looked at adding in a gradient fog to the level. Mind you this is something we want to add in order to unify the background and pop the foreground action. The idea here is a light wash over the whole background and nothing that drops everything into a San Francisco type pea soup.

Above you can see the sample fog effect. It’s dropping the saturation down on many of the brighter objects and still keeping the nice art in place. That’s what we wanted to see started working on more levels.

Some later levels in action with before and after

Robo Egypt Daytime – no fog

Robo Egypt Daytime – fog effect added

Again – there is a subtle drop here of the brighter areas which is what we wanted. The idea behind everything it to make the game fun to play and entertain the player. Fun to play is first so the playfield needs to be as good as we can make it.

Here is Robo Egypt Nighttime – no fog (forgive the gif compression banding on the sky)

Robo Egypt Nighttime – fog effect added (forgive the gif compression banding on the sky)

You can see here the fog helps give a greater sense of depth and unifies the scene. Also – I love Robo Egypt! HAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!

Hope you enjoyed that look into the game and look forward to more as we head towards our ship date.

-Tim

Boss 101 on Steam Wishlist us if you would be so kind. Thank you!

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