DTF Admin

Welcome to the latest Boss 101 update and thank you for stopping by!

Making Weapons in Boss 101. In our quest to bring you the most variety when you battle bosses we are again peeling back the curtain to look at the creation of our bow weapons. You heard me correctly – you have bows and arrows in Boss 101! HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!

We start with the basic idea which was adding a relatively hard hitting special weapon  for the mid-game. Many of the weapons in Boss 101 are grouped in a classes which in turn have three or more levels of upgrades to them. Each level representing more power or other advantage. As the player you will be giving the choice to use ANY weapon based on your preferences.

We also have basic player upgrades and hat bonuses available for the player’s character. These would arguably allow you to take a weaker weapon and buff it up through bonuses granted via items. Ok – that was a mouthful so let’s look at the bow and its three upgrades

First there is the Class 1 bow weapon – the regular bow and arrow! A solid weapon all around.

Second up we have the Class 2 Compound Bow – upgraded from the regular bow in nearly all ways.

Last up is the Crossbow Deluxe, a Class 3 weapon – top of the line!

Here are some shots of the various bow weapons in action

Lest you think the fun ends there we also are working on BLADE WEAPONS. Now why would we do that? For you – we want you to have choices! These blade weapons are all of the throwing variety. Below are two quick snaps of some of the things you can see.

Some debug shots of the basic throwing knife – you can see some of the draw outlines since we are running in debug mode here. Another quick shot:

And if you succeed in taking the boss down over water you’ll see him drop into the deep blue. YEAH BABY!

Thanks again for stopping by and thank you for your e-mails. We appreciate your support!

Remember to live your dreams!

-Tim

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

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

Weapon tuning in Boss 101. Gordon isn’t the only one who knows how to use a crowbar. You do too! This and more will be yours.

Welcome back to the Boss 101 Update!

Debug Screens in Boss 101 or “How do we do the voodoo we do?”

You might have noticed a few of our  debug screens popping up in the updates. These are the screens we use to test the way things work in game. If you are working on your own game you might already have something like this in your working builds.

Bosses and enemies in the game have tons of animations and abilities to test. This room is where we can see how things work in-game and test specific bosses on specific levels. For us, it makes a difference in development to constantly test out our work in-engine.

If you ever use a “god” mode in a shipped game you are likely seeing the same kind of thing in effect. Giving the player a ton of ammo or unlimited health are the kinds of things developers do while testing. Clearly, it’s really useful to jump into a game and dink around with various values to test things. If you don’t already do this check out some benefits you might be missing.

First off – we can use the room to check out the fit of all the boss parts with each other. Here we are testing how all parts match up. We use the random button to cycle through bosses and the boss part buttons to check the fit and finish.

Here’s a shot of us testing out various boss main weapons. Note that we can trigger any major animation from this room.

We can also check on minions and their firing animations. Once everything is tested we can jump into the game and play around with the same bosses and minions in actual levels.

There have been a few times where we needed to re-import a lot of bosses and minions in order to implement a new feature. Having a room like this to test out hit boxes and animations makes things much easier. As you may imagine, we implemented this room pretty early in development.

Here’s a shot of us going straight from the Debug Room into the game.

This brings us to a pretty basic point – as much as possible you want to be working in your game engine versus Photoshop, or some sort of editor that’s NOT your engine. You want to see your work where it will be when your game ships. From there you will want to get your game setup (via debug testing and the like) and AFTER that you will want to just play your game like a regular person would.

It’s easy to get used to having unlimited health or one shot weapons but the player won’t have all that obviously. Most of the time I play the game outside of the normal debug mode just to experience it as you would.

In the end – it is about making the game for YOU and keeping you entertained. All the work we are doing is about the experience we want to bring for our friends and fans.

Hope you enjoyed this look at the development of Boss 101 and remember to LIVE YOUR DREAMS!

-Tim

Boss 101’s Devlog won a Favorite Project award on TIGForums. YES!!!

You can check it out here directly ** Boss 101 Devlog on TIGForums **

Hello and welcome to the Saturday Update for Boss 101

The Gopher Recovery Pad – aka the end of round ambulance

So, you just fought a hard battle against the bosses and despite all your best efforts you don’t come out on top. Well, what happens then? Easy, your gopher buddies come to your assistance with a lift back to base. They do it in style too with the GRP – the patented Gopher Recovery Pad.

We needed to design a swift pad for bringing you back home with style and here’s what we did. First there was a look at the type of style the gophers would use. We created a sheet to outline the kinds of things the gophers would build. Here’s the first pass design.

Most all of the gopher tech is supposed to have a nice level of charm to it. Nothing too harsh or angular. Most of it is fun and open looking.

From there we made the art and animation. Below are some looks at the way it was animated for the game. The pad has lots of lights and whizzy stuff. For us it’s important to bring a level of entertainment to everything you will be seeing and experiencing in the game. Lights and animations are just one way we do it.

The idle for the GRP – check out all the cool action

Of course – it’s important to be able to activate the sirens in case people are in your way.

Here’s a closeup of your driver and the gopher nurses who will be along for the ride

So once that was all done we brought the GRP into the game and placed it at the end of the round. We set up the game to allow you activate the sirens.

In the image below are two bottom of the round UI bars. Top one is for victorious rounds and the bottom one is for the rounds you lose.

After all that is done we give it tests to see if everything is working as expected.

Once any system is put into the game we allow it to sit and gel for a little while. The idea behind this is any feature will need to settle. During that time we just watch and see how things work in actual gameplay. A lot of times features will get further modified and occasionally changed from the original. For us those are normally good changes since they are organically created and come about through testing. For the player it represents our efforts to make the world a real place and bring you the best we possibly can.

You win either way!

Thanks again for stopping by and as always – remember to live your dreams!

-Tim

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

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

Boss 101 confronts the Robo Council with some of his problems. Do they even care? HA!

Check us out on our Steam Page –> http://bit.ly/1TjdNMY