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2017.07.08 Boss 101 Lore and History, Part 1

Hello and welcome to the Boss 101 weekly update!

Polish, cleanup and bug fixing continue! We’re three people working as hard as we can FOR YOU! Boss 101 is heading your way as fast as we can make it. Some good news is we are getting ready for a friends and family release for further gameplay testing! YAY!

Thank you for joining us THIS WEEK to talk about the LORE and backstory for Boss 101.

Tanya wants to know if you are ready for some battles in Boss 101

Let’s get rolling with some of the basic history of the Boss 101 universe. This is a place of high technology and sentient robotics. As you might imagine from the title of the game – the boss robots are in charge of a large part of the known universe. Earth is part of their federation. Thing is – Earth is sorta viewed as a rural area of the universe. Not a whole lot of technology and it’s really not much of a threat to the ruling robots.

When the game gets rolling you are introduced to Max (from Earth) and Steve (formerly of the Robo Alliance). From here on out you learn about the Robo Alliance, the bosses, the Earth and what exactly is happening to free Earth from the Robo Federation. Now, we realize there may be a few of you who don’t really care for a huge backstory and Boss 101 will allow (where possible) you to zip ahead in dialogs or skip things if you just want to play. As much as possible we designed the game to allow a basic level of fun without the need to know everything going on in the story.

Stickers!

Did you know you bring stickers and toys back from each round to give to Rob? Well you do and he loves them. Here are a few being handed to Rob after hard earned battles!

Visitors in the Command Center 

So you win a battle and end the round. Occasionally you get a notice a new visitor arrived in the Command Center. This normally means you get a few things. One you get to make a new buddy. Two most all visitors bring you a pet! Yay! Last, you will receive a little bit of info about what’s going on in the universe by checking out the info they bring with them.

Passports and The Professor’s Wiki

These are a few of the ways we are adding in details about what is going on with Boss 101. You can always check on the Professor’s Wiki and read the latest entry. He gets updates every time a new person, pet or event happens so it’s worth your while to give it a look at least every now and then.

The Passports – all the visitors in the Command Center will be carrying their galactic passports. These are the main way beings travel about the Robo Federation and use the system of jump gates. On these passports you can see where people are from as well as some character notes.

Mostly – we want you to play the game like YOU want to play it. We know there are a few of you who are excited about the whole Boss 101 universe and we will be giving you as much info as we can about it. Boss 101 (the game) is ideally just the first in the series and with YOUR KIND SUPPORT we want to continue building on this start to bring you more.

Check out some of the images below to see what we have been talking about!

Trigger Newman notification at the end of a game round

Trigger in the Command Center

Trigger’s Wiki with pet he brought for adoption

Trigger’s pet friend on Pet Hill

Screenshot of the day – A boss dying with style!

Thank you for stopping by and more to come. We’re DOING IT! We’re getting Boss 101 done so you can play it! Thank you for your support and hanging in there!

As always – LIVE YOUR DREAMS!

-Tim

Boss 101 Info Roundup
Release Date: 2017
Planned Price: $9.99
Boss 101 Steam Store Page: http://store.steampowered.com/app/380920
Please wishlist us if you would be so kind!

2017.07.01 Boss 101: Arcade Games ROUNDUP!

Hello and welcome back to the Boss 101 weekly update! Glad you are here and hope your weekend is off to a great start!

Wanted to take a detour to review a few of the COOL THINGS we are putting the game for you. We’re still working on the polish and cleanup and in the meanwhile there’s an opportunity to check on some of the little touches you will get in your Boss 101 experience.

The Arcade Room

So, we have Boss 101 but did you know we also have a full featured arcade cabinet with some sweet games you can play on? You did? Well did you know those can be played for rewards, in-game achievements and a ranking on the Steam leaderboards? YOU SEE HOW WE ARE!?!

You got that right folks – we have an arcade cabinet with three games you can play to pass the time and maybe get some bragging rights among your friends. Let’s go over what you can expect then shall we?

The main arcade room entrance from the Command Center

Just go to the arcade machine in the Command Center and you can access the arcade games directly!

From there you can select a game (don’t forget to read the instructions)

So we have three games from there. Let’s look a moment at each of them and what they are about.

First up – Tank War

Bring your twin stick aiming skills into TANK WAR – you have one life and unlimited time. Blast as many enemy tanks as you can before they get you!

Second – Break Down

This may or may not seem like a game you know but I assure you – YOU MAY BE RIGHT! We added a couple Boss 101 touches, cute-d the thing up and added CRAZY powerups to keep things moving! Bounce the ball, break bricks and advance!

Third and certainly not last – Mazard

Battle the evil maze wizard and his minions in the maze of death. Look out because some of the enemies are invisible. You gotta use your radar to find them. One life and that’s it! How far can you go!!?!?

OK – more to come next week. We’re getting there folks – most of this week was general bug fixing, some sound editing and cleanup. We’ve also been testing out the game via Steam with builds uploaded and tested to prep for the final release. Lots of little things, all important and happening for you!

We’re working hard for you people! LOVE ALL OF YOU!

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

-Tim

Boss 101 Info Roundup
Release Date: 2017
Planned Price: $9.99
Boss 101 Steam Store Page: http://store.steampowered.com/app/380920
Please wishlist us if you would be so kind!

2017.06.25 Boss 101 Updates and upgrades!

Hello and thank you so much for joining us for another Boss 101 update! We hope you’re doing excellently.

As you know –bugs and polish continue. This week we have a question from a fan and process ideations to share so let’s get cracking!

Upgrade Room Process

So the upgrade room has all these sweet little stickers to show various upgrade levels. They help with indicating what you are buying by giving a sense of purpose. We’re going to peel back the curtain right now and show you why things are the way they are and how we got here.

Let’s start with the basic stuff. Here’s a bounty sticker and how it’s assembled from various parts. As you  might guess these parts are for interchangeability. We shuffle them around for different upgrades and we get to keep that jazzy layout. SAVES TIME TOO!

Basic setup for bounty

Here’s the various levels of the Bounty upgrade

When you are in the Make a Boss the color of the money is determined by your bounty level. (and corresponds to the dollar sign icon color)

Legendary upgrade – see how it colors the money display golden!

Examples of the shield patterns for the various upgrades

Once ONE upgrade is in place it’s a relatively painless procedure to start laying out the other upgrades. . .

Machine gun

Machine gun with levels

Other upgrade background samples

You see how we are? Making things as pretty as possible and fun as we can!

Here’s the whole bloody thing in action! You even get an achievement for completing the bounty upgrade.

You like that one? We hope so!

How’s the game going? GLAD YOU ASKED!

We get this question a lot because people care and we know you do too! You know you can always head to the Steam forums to speak with us directly. We try to get around to each and every question!

We had a fan ask us (for all the right reasons) about shipping the game NOW and maybe adding in little features after to round things out. Now I would NOT assume this person was asking to rush or crap out the game. I think the intent was to ask about perhaps holding out on some non-essential tidbit or something and just hitting the fun basics. Well, the deal here is Boss 101 has GOT to be our best. You deserve no less and most importantly we need to be true to OURSELVES and BRING YOU OUR BEST.

I gave a long answer to their question in the Steam Forums but I wanted to reiterate one of the general points. It was about something like a quicker release schedule and working in some neat things AFTER we ship.

What about Early Access or major updates to complete unfinished features with patches, etc
Generally speaking the above solutions are basically making you buy an unfinished product. That is not our goal. We haven’t ever had nor currently have plans to do any of those. We want you to have a finished game at $9.99. That might seem a little lofty but how many games have you seen lately which seem to have been rushed to hit a release date? I can think of a few. I can also think of a few games that while they seem bug free also seem feature light. We want YOU to LOVE Boss 101. Ideally, we want you to think “I got a FRICKING AWESOME DEAL and this game is FUN!”

While we know we have a savvy fan base following our development we can’t say everyone would be understanding of an early or unfinished release. You can check YouTube or Steam reviews for many examples of devs getting pummeled by effectively shoveling a game out early. People don’t like that. We don’t like that. We’re looking to avoid it.

Does that mean Boss 101 will be a flawless masterpiece? Hmmm, maybe not but let’s let time be that judge. What we CAN tell you is Boss 101 will be the best game we can possibly deliver given our time, money and resources. We want the BEST for you.

Come on people – we’re doing this not just for you but for us too. When you plunk down your $9.99 we want to knock you OVER with the fun of Boss 101.

Remember friends – be yourself, BELIEVE in yourself and live your dreams!

Best,

-Tim

2017.06.17 Boss 101 Hat Store Sorting

Hello and welcome to the latest Boss 101 update

Work continues towards the final release. This week we look into quality of life interface improvements for the hat store. This is a great example of the little things we look to help YOU with when it comes to playing and enjoying Boss 101.

Sort label for top of store

The Hat Store

As you might have guessed – we have hats in Boss 101. A lot of them. A little over 250 hats and counting. For you that means we have hats for sale, hats you can earn via a quest, hats you own – and on and on. There are a few things to note here, the most important to us being you quickly getting the information you want when you’re in the hat store. Here’s what we see happening and what we are doing.

A Store

Yep, this place sells hats. So you needs to see prices, abilities and any relevant shopping information when you are making your buying decision. This is what the place started as and it evolved from there.

Hats for Sale Sort

A Dressing Room

The hat store is one of the places you can equip your character in hats they own. This is a function closely tied to the purchasing of the hats. We made a decision earlier in development to allow the player both a Costume and an Ability hat for maximum fun.
– Costume Hat: what you character outwardly looks like
– Ability Hat: What abilities from which hat do you want to use. This allows you to LOOK like you want and have the POWERS you want without tying you down to one or the other.

Sort by owned hats

A Quest Room

Some of the hats are only available after completing some missions or tasks. We use the hat store to show you the known requirements and, where possible, we show you the progress you are making

Sort by Quest hat

Sorting and quick jumping around

That is a LOT of stuff going on and we KNOW it. We added a couple quick ways in the hat room to sort the categories YOU want to see as well as jump quickly through the hat collection.

Various Sorting Options in the Store

Jumping through the hats quickly

In conclusion

As you can see, these are the little things we are working on to make the game as fun as we can make it. Do we need to do every little thing like sorting hats into groups or allowing quick movement through your hat collection? Technically no but we thing it MAKES YOUR GAME BETTER!

And that’s what it’s all about right?

OK Talk with you soon and REMEMBER TO LIVE YOUR DREAMS!

-Tim

Boss 101 Info Roundup
Release Date: 2017
Planned Price: $9.99
Boss 101 Steam Store Page: http://store.steampowered.com/app/380920
Please wishlist us if you would be so kind!

2017.06.10 Boss 101 Mini Quest Achievements

Hello and welcome to the Boss 101 weekly update!

We have something to talk about we all love! ACHIEVEMENTS! You love to get them and we love to give you achievements for YOUR HARD WORK IN BOSS 101!

You know your pals here working on Boss 101 made sure you have cool Steam Achievements (which will translate to console achievements when the time comes). Did you also know we have in game quests which have their own achievements and rewards? Some of these dovetail with the main game achievements but some are simple as collecting a new pet. You know what? We want to celebrate EVEN THOSE!

Mini Quests and Achievements
We created these little popup to tell you about adopting a new pet in the Command Center or maybe winning a new hat. Let’s look at the basics here.

We setup a structure with the achievement plate and allowed for text identifying the achievement name and reward name.

Starting with the plate setup and animation in Spine:

Here’s a sample of a few layouts:

We setup these to show up in the bottom left corner and stack if needed. Some examples:

Command Center – Get a Pet:

Stacking example:

When you are in something like the Upgrade room and complete a row of upgrades you can also get a special reward.

Complete Damage Upgrade:

Complete Health Upgrade:

Closeup of achievement:

The deal is we wanted to have some fun with the reward system and instead of just dropping a little “NEW” icon on the menu we went a little further and put some oomph into the presentation. For us, it’s work like this which helps bring you a really fun experience and ideally enjoy the game a lot more.

It’s all part of bring you the best we can!

BOSS 101 Video Peek by RobJ

Rob J Nova did a video peek at Boss 101 earlier this week. We really think he did a great job catching the spirit of the game and the feel we were aiming for. Check it out here:

Boss 101 Video Peak
Link here:  >>> Click Here <<<

OK – that’s all for this week and remember to live your dreams!

Talk with you soon!

-Tim

Boss 101 Info Roundup
Release Date: 2017
Planned Price: $9.99
Boss 101 Steam Store Page: http://store.steampowered.com/app/380920
Please wishlist us if you would be so kind!