Alex & Arty - Restoring planet Earth · published
Hi, Gamers!
RolldBox Games development team Today with Ferran, one of our Co-Founders, as well as the Game Designer and Creative Director of the studio at RolldBox Games 👋 Today, the team and I were reminiscing about our experience at the local events late last year in Barcelona, Spain, when we got to see so many of you play the Alex & Arty demo we had back then, and about some of the 'Wow' moments you shared with us.You absolutely loved the Ancestral Creatures and their transformations! And we are still receiving comments about them. So, we have been pouring a lot of love and care into them. Today, we are going to dive a bit deeper into the details of the transformations themselves.
In our last devlog, we talked a bit about ….transformations, sharing the specific detail of calling them the "Artyfied versions" of the Ancestral Creatures.
There are several of these creatures, each with very distinct movement abilities, and we will be telling you more about them and revealing their secrets along the way.Today we want to explain, from a programming perspective, what the biggest challenge with these transformations has been. Our team highlights several aspects, but above all, the trickiest part involved one specific Creature: the Lizynard, a very large lizard species that can climb walls.What was the hardest part?Well, properly detecting the surfaces it can move across—and there are quite a few!—with different shapes and sizes. The Lizynard can traverse all of them, and since it is quite large, getting this right and perfectly adjusted to its movements was no easy task.Our initial approach, based on raycasts, created some really frustrating situations, like getting boxed into tight spaces. When we changed the origin of these traces to take the character's collision capsule into account, we were able to ensure a much more accurate and correct movement. We also applied angle restrictions when transitioning from one slope to another.Oh, but one thing is for sure! We all agree that the most enjoyable part to implement has been its abilities and the transformations 🙂
We’ve dubbed the core action we are driving in the game 'Reverse Combat': When you press the usual shooting buttons, the outcome isn't to kill, but rather to shoot ions with the Ionizer to dissolve the sludge blocks and decontaminate the affected area. Do you like the name?
Will it be easy to pull off? Well, that depends... As Alex, you'll have to assemble the Ionizer to be able to do this, and then upgrade it... because not all pollution is equally concentrated!
A real challenge for us: naming the creatures!! We wanted to use names similar to the ones we use for animals on Earth, given their resemblance in certain aspects, while also giving them a distinct touch tied to Gladness.
We always struggle a ton with this part! For example, with the ones that will eventually be the Dragonoyds... when you're hanging out with one, it feels so much like a pet that the team just started calling it Tabby! Imagination at its finest!
See you in the next Devlog with more and better!
Don’t forget to join our Discord server. Let us know what you’d like us to talk about next from there!See you in Gladness!