I have to stop using so many music references for the titles. But they are an easy way out, and I’m lazy!

Anyway, very briefly, these past weeks we’ve been finishing up the design of most of Okhlos’ HUD and windows. We had to make a lot of hard choices, and we are still changing a lot of things that aren’t closed yet.

(Our previous HUD vs. the new one. Click to enlarge!)

It’s hard, because you have to anticipate how the player will interact with the given information, so you have to guess a lot.

The most significant change was adapting everything to a 1 on 1 pixel aspect. Every element was 2x in the original pixel art work. We decided (actually, I didn’t consult Sebastian and went on with it without telling him until it was finished) to make everything 1x, meaning to respect the pixel art as is.

This is the Items Thing (technical terminology). It’s function is to show you the keys assigned to each item and tell you if anyone in your mob is carrying one of those items.If you don’t have an item, it will be shown in gray.  The image you see is here is the one that will be shown if you are using a joystick, we didn’t do the keyboard graphic yet. And as you can see, it’s much prettier if you treat each pixel as a pixel, instead of scaling them.

This is the story of the basic buttons. At first, we used to use the Dalek font (don’t know the relation between a Greek font and Dr. Who) and the sprites at 2x. Later, we switched to a more pixel-friendly font. Finally, last week, we took them to the actual size.

Here you can see the mob count tab, that shows the number of people you have in your mob , how it was and how it currently is .

The “1P” in the first  image is a sign of how much more we were focused on multiplayer during the early stages of development. The second attempt added the mob’s rage bar. This bar basically shows how rampageous your mob is,  increasing when the mob smashes things or tramples enemies, and decreasing over time. Finally, I made the third option last week, it’s not final yet, but we decided to show a mob icon/graphic, and separate the bar from the mob count.

(click to enlarge!)

This is the pause menu. This may be the most important window of all. Here, you will see all of your units, heroes, and the mob modifiers. If you have a hero that gives you +10% attack bonus, you will see it here. It’s faaar from finished yet but we think that is important to keep it as simple as possible. Too much information will ruin the window completely, it will frustrate the player when navigating it. So we will try a lot of mockups to see how we can best convey all the information.

And keep in mind that things can get a little crowded.

Yeah, that’s too much information. Feel free to feel overwhelmed by clicking the picture and pressing F11 (In chrome and in PC, don’t know in other systems).

As always, we love your comments! You can reach us in Facebook, Twitter or right down here! We try to answer all of them! (Please stop sending us nude pictures)

Well, as John Green says, Don’t forget to be awesome!

Roque

(Yeah, I know, I never sign the posts, I suppose that I’m very hipster lately)

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.

For the last three weeks we have been “on the road” with Okhlos, doing a little show and tell / playstesting session at a local nerd fest known as Toronjapalooza, giving a talk about the history of CoffeePoweredMachine and independent game development at Buenos Aires’ largest tech exposition, Tecnópolis, and finally some more playtesting at the EVA 2013 (Argentina’s Videogames Expo). They have been extremely busy and tiresome days but also very fun and exciting. And they were also the first time we showed Okhlos outside our offices. And we learned a lot.

ToronjaPalooza

The first day at Toronjapalooza not many people played the game but most of the ones who did were kids. The youngest one was a four-year-old and the oldest ones were around twelve. We have designed Okhlos as a game that we (basically hardcore gamers with two or three decades of gaming on our backs) would like to play, and we never thought about how someone so young would approach the game, so those were uncharted territories. In addition to this the test level we had put together was ludicrously difficult to beat (mostly my fault, I tend to do that, sorry) so I was fearing an epic disaster. It wasn’t. Instead what happened was that the kids started playing the game in a different way that we had anticipated. The youngest one took to exploring, ignoring all the enemies, the hazards, just walking through the map, focusing on going through obstacles and asking the names of the trees (we had a larch). Others started a small competition to see who could get the largest mob. And one of them not only managed to complete the whole level, but when he found out that that was the only level we had made so far, he went on and finished the level again, beating Apollo’s godly ass a second time.

(Click to enlarge the picture. We put this sentence in every picture you can enlarge and still you dont get it? If it has a little hand, it’s clickeable!)

Tecnopolis

The second stop in our tour was Tecnópolis, where we presented a talk entitled something like Making Games for your Boss, for the Audience or for Yourself: the History of CoffeePoweredMachine. I say we, but It was actually Roque who gave the talk (I just sat the there with José Luis while Roque spoke and cheered him on). But we did spent quite some time working on the content of the talk, trying to put down into words (and slides) what we have learned the past few years working on our jobs in the industry, on our previous game Gravity Fleet and now on our beloved Okhlos. The talk may not have the greatest talk ever but it was a first experience and good one at that. It was also a chance to show a little of the game to more people and we even got actual people asking actual questions after the talk! In case you really want to know how the talk went out, it’s up on YouTube. And it has ENGLISH SUBTITLES! Spanish subtitles also, but I think you don’t care about that:

Another great thing about that week was the conference that took place during that time. On the main stage there were speakers like Zach Gage, Nathan Vella, Ron Carmel and Tim Schaffer and we had a chance to chat with them, to tell them what we were doing, asking their advice and simply hanging around these cool people. It was amazing.

This photo is from the party that took place the friday after the talks:

Sad to say goodbye to all our new Argentinian friends! Thanks for making us all feel so at home! pic.twitter.com/j1Fo3En1RT

— Tim Schafer (@TimOfLegend) October 26, 2013

EVA

(Photo by Flauros Geek Photo)

And after that came the EVA, were we sat down with a notebook and a controller and showed the game to the people around, which was mostly fellow game developers and hardcore gamers. Everyone we met was very enthusiastic and we got quite a lot feedback from just a couple of hours of playtesting. The feedback was very useful, especially since it came mostly from people with game development experience and knew how to pinpoint specific issues, but at the same time we approached the playtesting with something that Ron Carmel had remarked in the talk he had given last week. We focused on how people played the game, on why did they do some things differently from what we would do. Why they would see things about the game in a different way than us. Sometimes the feedback they gave us shed some light on this, sometimes it was about completely different things, but we tried to keep our focus on that.

 (Yet another awesome photo by Flauros Geek Photo)

One thing I discovered that was pretty interesting in this regard was seeing how a person who has just played the explains the game to another. Let’s say Joe sits down a plays for a while until Lady Marie Von Teslette comes around, then Joe tries to tell her what the game is about and how you play it. I realized that paying attention to what Joe says is a good way to see which things made the most impact on him, which things seemed more important to him. In addition to that Lady Marie Von Teslette gets to approach the game in yet a different way, that is not either Roque or me trying almost desperately (and almost futilely) to tell her how awesome, interesting and special the game is, nor is it just the game on in itself. It is a bit closer to having a friend tell you about a game or reading something in a blog, which how most people end up coming into contact with a game.

And lastly, another thing I realized these last weeks, perhaps the most important thing, is that it’s great to watch people play your game, have fun, get excited about it. It makes it all worthwhile.

We were working hard to get to the IGF, unfortunately we couldn’t get a stable version on time, also there were a lot of visual things to change, so we decided to give it a try the next year.

One of the things that pushed us back, was a shader problem. We were using transparent sprites, so as to have fade out effects and the like, and that turned out to be a bit of problem when we tried to make the sprites emit and receive shadows. It is not trivial to calculate how a transparent object deals with shadows so that took a while to deal with. Finally, yesterday we did find a work around for this (which ended up being quite simple, our solution was having double sided planes on the sprites and switching shaders). Anyway, this is how the sprites look with the shadows on:

(Click to enlarge the picture)

In the screen, you can see two light emitters: the torch and the ambient light. You can see how the first philosopher receives the light from the torch, how the three characters emit shadows and how the background sprites receive shadow. All the complications we had, fixed in a marvelous picture.

This is a vine version, (I’ve just downloaded the app :P) :

And finally, the incredible youtube version, of a classic day in Delphi: