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Welcome back to the Boss 101 Update and thank you for joining us!

The video series with BERL continues! These are all hosted by BERL and this one is all about the Boss 101 Upgrade Room, or at least HALF of the upgrade room!

Watch BERL max out an upgrade and show you some secret stuff about editing the user interface in Boss 101. TOO RIGHT!

The video is up on YouTube right here. Check it out!

>>> DIRECT LINK TO THE BOSS 101 Video Series – Chapter 4 – The Upgrade Room <<<

Some images from the video!

Boss 101 Info Roundup

Release Date: Early 2017
Planned Price: $9.99
Boss 101 Steam Store Page: http://store.steampowered.com/app/380920
Boss 101 December Gameplay Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkMQ1CrYeac
Please wishlist us if you would be so kind!

Up next are the Map Room, the Gopher upgrades, the Hat Store and the Make a Boss and more! So keep checking back. If you have any ideas or suggestions we welcome them! Feel free to comment or reply below.

We appreciate your support and enthusiasm for Boss 101! It means a lot to know you are rooting for us.

As always… LIVE YOUR DREAMS!

Talk with you soon!

-Tim

Welcome to the Boss 101 Update

Polish and cleanup. That has been an ongoing theme for the last few weeks and will continue to be one for the foreseeable future. You see, Boss 101 could be done and wrapped up in a few weeks. It COULD be in your hands sooner than later. The only problem we have with that is the game would not be our best effort and that is not acceptable.

UI touchups

Something important we are working at the moment is making certain the UI is understandable and readable. The way we are doing this is, well, playing the game and having others play the game. You might image how easy is it to make a game and get used to the controls you install. After working on a game for over two years it is easy to think “Oh, this little control makes enough sense! Sure, it’s a little odd and I have NEVER seen anything like it before but PLAYERS WILL GET IT!”

Well, I have news, they probably won’t get it. It’s actually very likely they will not understand any scheme which deviates to far from logic of the norm of game controls. In those situations it requires a dedicated team to address the issues and correct the little weird things. I can’t say everything we ever did will be perfect but I can assure you we thought of YOU at all times. We looked at our game and asked “will someone who has never seen the game understand this in context?” We put ourselves in your place as much as we possibly can. It’s really the only way.

Let’s look at some of the things happening this week…

Rob’s Store

Here we have an update to Rob’s special store. In it you can find all sorts of odd guns and hats. We’ll talk more about how you access it but in the meantime let’s look at the design of the place.

First we have the current store. Pretty nice and there is a neat look happening. In a lot of ways there is nothing wrong with it on a purely aesthetic level.

Here is the remodel work in progress. We added space for UI elements that clearly explain what you are doing and show the controls a lot better. We also lightened up the area so you can see the products better. This is a great example of taking something that was working and simply making it better for the player. We could have shipped with the old one and players would have figured things out (we hope) but when we played the game it was pretty obvious clarity would help.

Something to remember is a lot of times you can get caught up in what looks good versus what works well. UI needs to work well first and foremost. The looking good will mostly be a function of the efficiency and thematic clarity you create (ie – form follows function)

Help Panels

We added little help panel overlays to all of the main Command Center pages. The idea is to give you an easy assist if you are still learning the ropes or need a refresher. Also – we didn’t want to intrude on your game so we made the overlay and activates as innocuous as possible.

Command Center

With help on and off

Upgrade Room

Help on and off


Gun Shop

Help on and off

There you go! A quick snapshot of this week’s work and much more to come. The goal of our development at this point is the same as always – give YOU the best game we can. You deserve it and we aim to deliver.

Thanks again and always remember to LIVE YOUR DREAMS!!!

-Tim

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

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

The Robotrains are always running in Boss 101! Check out our latest game development blogs if you get a chance.

Screenshot of the Day – Moon Time

The moon is sleeping on the job! Who’s going to wake him?

Talk with you soon!

-Tim

Boss 101 Screenshot

Professor Gopher guide panels for the Command Center. If you need help getting around you can call him up.

He’s your friend!

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

Polishing a Weapon in Boss 101

Today we are taking a look at the process of polishing up one of the many boss weapons. As we’ve mentioned there are a lot of bosses and you will be able to create your own boss to battle. In game you use the Make A Boss to assemble a boss from parts available. The specifics of how this is done depends on the game mode you are choosing but needless to say there are a lot of possible breakdowns.

Here is a look at a debug breakdown of just a FEW bosses you might see.

Did you know there are over ONE HUNDRED MILLION combinations of bosses possible? Neither did we, until we did the math.

The Tiger Gas Weapon

Despite all the combinations we create bosses as grouped units and allow them to be broken up. Here we have the Tiger Boss as a complete unit. Note the weapon on top is his dreaded poison gas weapon.

From the debug screen…

So initially he sprayed a gassy cloud from his back onto the player. We have below a VERY early version of the weapon. You can see the gas cloud looks quite a bit different from a lot of the regular pixel art in the game.

Early version of Tiger Gas Weapon

Well, that look stood out a little too much so we did tweaking and created pixel art for the gas. Ended up with something looking like this…

Revised gas pixel art

Ok – that is a little bit better but there was still a problem and that was the gas firing out of the weapon. This make some BASIC sense but the issue was gameplay and we were noticing the player was normally out of range of the cloud unless we made it linger for a very long time or move somewhat fast. That wasn’t the direction we wanted to go.

Inspiration soon struck though – we had ANOTHER boss, the T-Rex whose weapon created fire breath to blast from any bosses mouth. Kind of like a Godzilla thing. Here it is in action. The main flames coming from the T-Rex mouth here are being generated by his back weapon.

Sample of T-Rex boss unit firing main weapon via the mouth…

Well, it wasn’t a big jump to take the idea there and re-work the Tiger weapon to fire a gas cloud from the mouth of a boss like so.

Sample of the gas weapon update

Of course – since this is Boss 101 you might see these weapons on a variety of bosses…

Example 1 – Gas

Example 2 – Flame

YES! Once again we’re peeling back the curtain for you! These decisions may seem obvious hindsight but sometimes these thing elude you until you see it all in action. Hope you enjoyed this look.

TIGForums – Devlog Gold of 2015 Results – We got a Favorite Devblog Award!

Did you know the Boss 101 Dev Log placed third in the FAVORITE PROJECT category? We did! Thanks to you and your support. Check out our TIGForums Devlog here: Boss 101 Dev Log

As always – remember to live your dreams and thank you for your support!

-Tim

Max & Steve enjoying ice cream, cake & music between rounds! These guys know how to relax.