Ahoy! So much time has passed since the last update. These past weeks have been a rollercoaster. Some good things happened, some not so good also… Whatever. Today I will talk, among other things, about cholulaje. Cholulaje is an Argentinian lunfardo (or colloquialism) word that means something like celebrity junkieness, or screen personality fandom.

It all started quite suddenly one day. I woke up, made some coffee and started my morning routine, which involves checking mails and checking Facebook for like half an hour. I had two mails and Facebook messages stating the same thing: we had appeared in Rock Paper Shotgun! That was incredible, we couldn’t believe it. We had never sent anything to any media outlet, but there it was, a beautiful article about Okhlos! (Here is the article)

It was amazing. Suddenly, we had a lot of tweets. People following our twitter account (here :))! And our owns accounts also. Lots of people retweeted the article.  Also, we had a few comments on the article, and I could argue with the public for the first time!

A few hours later. Mail from Kotaku. Chris Person wanted to do a Let’s Play of Okhlos. We were beyond words. We worked a lot in order to have a semi stable version for Chris. Setting a deadline always helps to keep the rhythm and prevents from getting too relaxed, so the pressure of having to send them something quickly ended up being a good thing .

Some days later, when everything was sort of OK, we sent him the version. What a thrill! (sounding like a little school girl). A week after that, during my morning routine, I noticed that we had a lot of musician offers, some mails and lots of tweets. The reason was obvious, Kotaku had published the article. 

Finally, IndieGames on Twitter asked developers for .GIFs of their games. After a few technical details, I prepared some GIFs and sent them. Thus we also made it into in the article for #GIFriday!

After that, I talked to John from IndieGames and he told me that he wanted to do a series of GIFs explaining the game, we were thrilled, and we started to work on more GIFs. If anything can go wrong, it will go wrong when you are talking with the press. My PC started to freeze when I tried to convert the video into gif, the hardware acceleration in photoshop suddenly decided to stop working, and our first 480px gifs ended up with a size of 20mb (which is not a good thing). Fortunately, we managed to make the gifs, and of a reasonable size. I will not post them here, because the article hasn’t came out yet, and I don’t want to spoil their exclusivity. But I will post them on future updates.

Here is the first post of IndieGames showing Okhlos!

Also, to add more to this media coverage / cholulaje account, a cambridge P.h.D. specialized in ancient philosophy wrote about Okhlos in his blog.  Which is as terribly cool, as completely off topic.

PS: In order to have more images (c’mon, we know you just look at the pictures), here in the bottom is a sneak peak of the changes we are making to the HUD

So, that’s all for this week! As always feel free to send us your feedback about anything you want!

A new year started. We can now talk about Okhlos’ development in terms of years. Many things happened throughout the first year of development, good and bad. While it usually is a good idea to recap the year we found it too cliche, so we did something else and took the time between last update and this to rest.

The result was this update about a topic I usually hate: logos.

Nowadays, designing a logo seems to be about following a series of strict steps. A lot of logos are very similar to each other. Looking at a small sample of logos, we can see the following characteristics.

• Letters with gradients.
• Broad strokes to make the title stand out.
• Leters in perspective.
• Metallic.
• Illustrations framing the design
• Constrast between colors (mainly primary colors)
• Vector friendly
• Easy to read (this is not the case)

Some excellent designs came out from following these guidelines. Even Gravity Fleet didn’t escape from them (although that doesn’t make it a good example). But there have also been lots of logos that are very formulaic.

Many of you know my background. I am an illustrator, not a graphic designer, so I have enough of an aesthetic sense to realize when something is wrong but it would be hard for me to find a way to fix it. So I end up fixing it by trial and error, which is both costly and tiring.

We have a mini-rule for a lot of our deicisions regarding Okhlos: doing the opposite of what we did with Gravity Fleet. Taking that into account, I decided to not priorize readability above everything else and focused on making the logo in a pixel art style that went along with the game’s aesthetic, at the same time making it a nice image by itself. I didn’t follow guidelines for design, readability, color contrast nor anything like that, simply an image that says “Okhlos” and that the splash suggested the game’s context.

I started the most obvious way, by making stone letters.

This is the first draft. Perspective, stones with some cracks and the design inside the letters that have a little Greek touch. The romboid-shaped “O” were something that I ended up taking from my research on different fonts.

These are some of the fonts that I researched. From this list I took various characteristics that suggested Greece.

Found the characteristics, I started scribbling different ideas about a more polished logo. With ornaments, styles and other embellishments.

The problem with these approaches was that the letters , although they were made out of stone, didn’t have much weight. Somethign was missing.

I decided to made the letters in 3D, change the font and play around with the camera to make it look like something stupidly huge seen from ground level.

This brought me to this next version, which let me start the pixelation and gave me a clearer vision of what I was working to acomplish.

To make the 3D I ran into a series of problems. Mi idea was to take my strokes from Illustrator to Max and work them there. They were horrible hours of trial and error, checking what could be imported into Max, because almost everything that I exported from Illustrator was rejected by Max. Finally I found a way to save an .ai as a Legacy (Version 8 ) and that solved my problems using Max to extrude the shapes from Illustrator. After that, it was all camera effects.

This is how it looked on Max. The image above shows the first part of the work where I start drawing over the letters, separate them and correct some imperfection, etc.

Once I have this as a base, I started pixelating this but at double the resolution I should, making me waste some hours. Finally, I ended up with the 3 options that I show next. Although none of them are finale, they are close to what we believe could be a good logo/splash for Okhlos, always taking into account the idea that we want it to work more as an image than as a logo.

This one, after a lot of failed tries that I haven’t posted (from all the stages of design, there are a lot that I think should not be seen by humankind), is the one that had that illustration component that I was looking for. I cleaned up the rocks quite a bit, take off the lines (that in this case makes it more readable) and added a few city things in the background.

Although I think that unfortunately we can’t close the chapter on logos, we are closer to what we are looking for.

Any feedback is welcome! And yes, the name from the update it’s inspired by this song.

As the end of the year gets near, you know it’s a tradition to start making lists, lots and lots of lists. For some, it’s a way to look back into the year that’s about to end and see what has been accomplished. For others, it is a way to look back at the things they’ve missed and swear that next year will be the year. For others, it’s another chance to remember the good moments that passed, the joys that the year brought. And for others, it is a way to not having to think in a proper update. Of course, this is not our case.

These are bugs that (while they may have been annoying, difficult, easy or anything in between to fix) brought at least a smile to our faces when we saw them, made us look at the rest of the team and go “Hey! Look over here! This damn thing is broken again!”

So first we start with numero seis.

6. This is thriller, thriller mob

Once we found out that the mob would turn to face the wrong side while moving or not turn at all, as we can see here in an extreme case. At the time we had more pressing issues, so fixing this bug was a bit low in the queue and we ended up having a moonwalking mob with us. And someone would always start whistling Thriller while playtesting. That was the worst part, I think.

5. Oedipus summons an otherworldly horror

The horror! THE HORROR! It seems that time travel, cloning people, being the father of your brothers and sister… these kind of things aren’t without consequences for your sanity… and Oedipus knows this very well. At some point, he tried to escape this torment by splicing DNA from the people he cloned to create a vessel for a Great Old One to inhabit so it would wreck havoc on ancient Greece. Or maybe he just created copies of animated sprites that got stuck together at 0,0,0. I still think Oedipus is not to be trusted, but the guys will still use him in the game. Iä! Iä! Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn!

4. Oedipus has gone too far…

This is a last minute addition to this list! It happened this morning, and both Sebastian and I agreed that it deserved this spot.  We were working on being able to replay a level with the same mob when we realized that crossing your own time line leads to unfortunate situations like that one. And Oedipus hadn’t said anything to us. Yet another reason not to trust him.

3. Apollo uses his Rapid Shot Feat

Ouch, that looks like it hurts. A lot. Poor philosopher. Now imagine you are testing, battling Apollo with your mob. Then you pause it for a moment to check some variables and stuff, to check if everything is behaving as expected. Then you go back to the game to move on to the next critical moment aaaaand… this welcomes you. A bunch of arrows shot rapidly by the god Apollo. It’s not fair, is it? Also, notice how they are arrows and not cats? Damn Roque.

2.Perseus goes Garry’s Mod all over Delphi. Or just slithers around. One of those.

Many are Perseus’ exploits, as we all know, but it seems griffons have a funny effect on him. When brave Perseus was attacked by one of the majestic beasts and later rescued by the rest of the mob, he never recovered from the experience. But he gained the ability to phase through buildings and stuff, so there’s that.

1. Hallelujah, it’s raining philosophers!

And this is the top of the list! The best one! The philosophers rain! Why the background is dark grey, you ask? Because this happened among a complicated series of things breaking one after the other, including the level not loading and the action phase getting stuck in “spawn player”. But seriously, I think this picture speaks by itself. So behold the best bug of the year!

And that’s it. There were more bugs, of course, but those were more of the “AAARGH!!!” kind and not memorable at all. I hope this list has made your life 780% percent better (±780).  Enjoy the upcoming holiday, celebrate responsibly and don’t aggravate Santa by throwing rocks at the reindeer.

Last week Roque wrote a little bit about heroes in Okhlos. Today I will keep on writing about them. Why? Because heroes are a key part of the game.  Getting the right heroes in your mob can make difference between drinking spiced wine over the ruins of mount Olympus and getting squashed like an insect under Zeus’ flip flops.  Not only that, heroes will make each mob different, will make you play in a different way, will let you build up different strategies. Heroes are everything.

There are several ways to get heroes.  As it had been said, some heroes may be found while exploring the levels and other through the hero market. Yet other heroes you will only find after defeating certain enemies: for example, you may be able to free a hero from the clutches of an evil monster and then add them to your mob.

Another things that makes heroes different from the rest of units is that heroes do not die.  They can be knocked out, yes, even the mighty Heracles can be sent out of combat by direct blow from Ares, but unlike regular people Heracles will rejoin the mob when you start the next level or when certain other conditions are met. So heroes are somewhat immortal but can still be temporarily disabled and leave the poor helpless leader alone at the mercy of an enraged cyclops.

There will be lots of heroes, so we divided them into five categories:

1) Super Units.  These heroes are an enhanced version of the regular unit types.  Hero warriors will be much stronger and hit harder than regular warriors, hero defenders will be much tougher, and hero slaves will be much more … err … enslaveable? Well no, hero slaves will also be much better as units than their regular counterparts. Heracles, who was presented last week, would be a perfect example of this, as he is the über warrior.

2) Kings. Rulers increase your mob limit. At game start, your mob can’t have more than 50 members, without counting animals and heroes. But the kings increase that number.

Take Lycaon for instance. He was king of Arcadia, quite a big shot at his prime. So much that he thought he could fool Zeus. To do that he devised a cunning plan. A cunning and incredibly, ridiculously twisted plan. He invited the lord of Olympus over for dinner and, to test if he was really all-seeing and all-knowing, he chopped off one of his own children and served him as one of the dishes. The god of thunder noticed this and was not very happy (he is a picky eater). He immediately turned Lycaon into a wolf-like creature and killed the rest of Lycaon’s children (he had like fifty of them, which may be why he thought that the best way to test someone’s omniscience was to serve them one of his kids but still…).

Currently in the game Lycaon increases your mob capacity by 25, which is  a 50% increase from your starting value. He is the king that gives the highest increase in mob capacity so far, but this comes with a high cost: when Lycaon enters the mob, he will immediately kill 25% of your people. So… yeah…

3) Healers. Do you remember Asclepius from last week? Well, he was a healer. He is THE healer, actually. The demi-god of healing and medicine. Nobody does it better. But there were many others that were also versed in the ancient mysteries of medicine, and this category is where they belong. Like Hippocrates.

You may remember Hippocrates from oaths like the Hippocratic Oath that doctors all over the world take and uphold, even up to this day. Not only was he the greatest physician of his time (and you could say he kept on being the greatest physician for centuries, since his teachings were regarded as perfect and for a long time no one even dared to seek further improvements), he was also a badass. He was imprisoned for his then radical views on medicine, and held captive for twenty years (during which time he never backed down and instead spent the time writing medical treaties). He was the Mandela of medicine but bald, and he could heal more units at the same time. So if you have an injury… if no one else can heal you… and if you can find him… maybe you can hire… Hippocrates (cue in theme music).

4) Unit Enhancers. These heroes just make other units, usually of a certain kind, be better at their stuff. So, like a super unit that makes other units neat units. For example:

Leonidas, king of the Spartans. He is remembered for leading the fearless 300 Spartan warriors that almost managed to single-handedly stop the huge invading Persian army at the battle of Thermopylae (and for lots of internet memes after the Zack Snyder movie was released). In Okhlos, Leonidas is a warrior enhancer: he increases the damage output of all the warriors in the mob like, a lot, but at the same time he reduces their defense. All warriors thus become very lethal killing machines under his command, but they may end up having supper in hell after the fight if they are not careful (they will not be).

5) Special Abilities. These heroes are the cream of the crop. The best of the best. The awesomest of the awesome. The … ok, you get the idea. These heroes each have a unique ability that is what separates them from the rest of the crowd. Not a even a programmer that has learned to code using Pascal can fit them into any category other than this generic random mix of a category that is Special Abilities. One example of a hero that has a unique special ability was Oedipus, with his cloning. Another one is Perseus.

Perseus is a another mythological figure that you may recognize from the movies. He was the main character in Clash of Titans for instance. And he killed poor old Medusa. Perseus was one Zeus’ sons (one of his many, many, many offspring) so he had that to his advantage. But he was an illegitimate child so he had… issues… with his father’s wife, Hera. Let’s say that Hera was not fond of the fruit of her husband’s escapades. Among the various wondrous items Perseus got during his adventures and travels (think half the table from the DM handbook!), he had Hades’ Cap of Invisibility. His ability in-game comes from this item, because he is able to turn the whole mob invisible to enemies until they attack (it’s an artifact, its powers are ill-defined at best).

And this is it for now. There will be more heroes, of course, hundreds! But we have to keep some surprises from you. So we bid adieu to you all until next week, when we will talk about paternity tests in the age of haruspices and meddling lightning gods.

This week we will start with an ongoing series about heroes in Okhlos.

What are the heroes?

The heroes are special unit, that are going to be scattered all over the game but that you will also be able to buy with different units.

Originally, the heroes were only going to be available for purchase with slaves. The goal was to use slaves as coins, a kind of critic to the class system in ancient Greece, and the slaves would also have another function, to carry items. We realized that those two functionalities were too important in the game, and that putting that much into a single unit type would make the others less relevant. If the players wanted to buy items, they couldn´t buy heroes. And when they bought heroes, they lost all items they were carrying.

The system was unbalanced, giving too much importance to the slaves. The best strategy was simply to gather as much slaves as possible, forgetting about the rest of the units. That is why we decided that is was best for the slaves to keep the item-carrying functionality, but that the hero-buying part would be something that could be done with any kind on unit. Now each hero costs a certain amount of units, depending on what it does. For instance, Leonidas, king of the Spartans, is going to be able to be purchased with warrior units.

Each hero is going to have special stats and characteristics.

OEDIPUS

Oedipus  is based on the hero of the same name, but we took some liberties translating him into the game. Basically he is the king that blinded himself after he realized  the great sin he had committed, which made family dinners really awkward, and made Freud rich. However, in Okhlos, his power doesn’t come from the myth, Oedipus doubles the number of people that are added to the mob. If you add a slave, you will get two slaves instead.

This is pretty useful, but is also makes it very easy to reach the mob limit fast.

Even though this seems like a non-sequitur between the myth and the in-game ability, we justify it with a Borges quote: “Mirrors and paternity are abominable because they multiply and affirm it” (“Los espejos y la paternidad son abominables, porque multiplican al hombre al infinito“).

HERACLES

In Okhlos we are constantly lobbying to get this hero called like he should be. It’s Heracles, not Hercules.

He is the son of a god and a mortal (remember that if something moved, it was very likely that Zeus would want to bang it). Heracles possess and incredible strength and can resist almost any impact. He would the archetypical tank unit, if not for the fact that each of his blows deals more than the rest of the mob combined (not true).

SPARTACUS

The Roman slave, turned leader of a popular uprising. Kind of a classical Che Guevara. Spartacus role is basically to make the slaves stronger.  Each slave will be stronger and tougher if Spartacus is in the mob.

Spartacus is like getting all your slaves on steroids. However, we condemn the use of non-virtual steroids.

ASCLEPIUS

Asclepius heals units. He is also Apollo’s son, which makes him a demigod. It’s always useful to have a healer in the mob. We still have some fine tuning to do, to see how much he will heal, and how close the other units need to be to be healed. As it is now, he is terribly unbalanced, but it’s a matter of fiddling a little until it’s right.

Ahoy there! This week, I will introduce you to one of the more important changes that we’ve done to the game so far.

Here is the thing: After a careful planning and analysis, we came to the conclusion that developing 12 levels will take me (Art only) a year and a half. The cost was too damn high! Also, in a few playtesting sessions we found that players didn’t seem to fully understand the objective. In addition, we found that the challenge in the mechanics was not sooo much fun.

So, the problem was: Making levels took an incredible long time and effort, and  creating different challenges for every level felt inconsistent (like we glued a lot of different things altogether). What’s the solution? We don’t know for sure, but we found an easy way to test a new system.

Basically, using cities divided into small areas and building them up procedurally. Each world (we call each city a world, Delphi, Sparta, etc. would all be different worlds) is composed of two to five areas. You have to complete (usually, destroy) an area, in order to advance to the next one. When you reach the final area you will face the god of the world, and after you defeat the god, you will advance to the next world (Tebas, Sparta, Athens, Vegas, etc.).

This is a chunk. -Say “Hi” chunk. -Hi chunk

Each area in turn is composed of chunks. Each chunk will have data on the type of enemies that it will hold, also if it has hazards and environment stuff.

This is not only to help us deal with level design far quicker, but also pushes us forward to be able to take a lot of design decisions. The end result with this approach is that it gives Okhlos a much more arcade feeling. That’s incredible good. It feels faster, more challenging. Also, it gives us the power of infinity in the level design. That could be a lot (or absolutely zero). But definitively give us a game which is fun to replay,  where you can find new things in each playthrough. And that is amazing.

This is ye olde static delphi.

This could be the new Delphi, or not! It will always change! Science!

This could give you an idea of how the cities are gonna be. It’s composed of 3×3 chunks. Each chunk has 10×10 tiles. Each tile can have anything (enemies, props, houses, shops, hazards, etc.).

Well, all of this makes a tremendous change in the game, but we are quite enthusiast about this. We see a lot of potential for this decision, and the current build we are developing, looks amazing. As always, thanks for reading!