It's been a while since Amazing Frog? devblog 025. There is a lot going on in development and it gets difficult to explain. I am sorry and I should update you all more frequently. Amidst all the tasks we have been working on, it really doesn’t feel to us that much time has passed since the last devblog. Every day is Amazing Frog? for us.
My brain feels a little fried from working on 3 versions of the Amazing Frog? simultaneously, the sheer variety of types of tasks can leave you feeling all muddled up. It's important to leave a trail of breadcrumbs to find your way back to what it was you were trying to solve a day, a week, a month ago. Sometimes you just want to open your laptop and make weird stuff happen in-game and have a laugh, but in-between all that fun is a lot of technical problems that demand resolution. It's so important to think into the future when developing Amazing Frog?, especially V3. Our plans are big and I know I said it before but without the right infrastructure, we won't be able to realize those plans. In the past we have often sidelined some of the core system issues to fast-track new content. Often, when things were not quite right in V2 we would say, "well that will get fixed in V3". But as I mentioned before V3 broke everything and we started fresh. ............ somewhat as V3 being fully network-based and having completely new graphics has brought its own problems, so for many V2 issues we now thing resolve it in V2 so when it goes into V3 the transition will be smoother.
So whats been going on? Well, there are 3 major channels of development for Amazing Frog? and from week to week we switch back and forth between which one of these we concentrate on, or indeed sometimes Hal focuses on one and me on another.
These Development Channels are:
V2 Pocket Mode
I think I’ll start with Pocket mode (The working title for the iOS version). If I was in your position, in our beloved Steam Community, I’d probably be thinking, "why are those two dum-asses working on an iOS version when they need to get us the V3 Multiplayer version out which has dragged on long enough already?" It's a question that comes up virtually every day between us, should we drop it and move on? or keep moving forward slowly? We have a very clear purpose. A long-term purpose. A Plan. I may not always be able to explain what the plan is, but it always seems to make sense to me. I’ll try and explain why I feel we HAVE to do pocket mode and indeed more V2.
First off, Striking back and protecting our game. It drives me nuts seeing all the fake versions of Amazing Frog? on iOS and Android. It also bothers seeing all the fake versions of a lot of cool Steam Early Access games. I know people do worse things in the world, but it just grinds my gears when I think of people getting ripped off thinking they are getting Amazing Frog? when they're just paying for a fake app that shows you an add and crashes :( The two ways to solve this would be to chase each app legally or just release the real Amazing Frog? to this environment. We chose the latter.
Next, The Tech Clock is ticking. Tech is changing every day, the big changes in Unity really threw us last year invalidating most of AF? development. Being so deep into V3 with all this crazy new tech (I’ll touch on in a bit), the temptation was to abandon V2 altogether and just move on, which is what happened to V1 (the OUYA version)… we abandoned V1 so we could progress in Steam Early Access. we want V2 to reach its potential, after all, we will be working on V3 for some time and the more success we can generate from V2 the more it will help the development of V3. This would also be helped by a more definitive and polished version of the V2 system.
For Pocket Mode we created a new landscape, simpler but more refined. Naturally, this will be available on Steam as Pocket Mode (and most likely on Steam first). Having a smaller less demanding island for Pocket Mode in V2 not only helps it run better on mobile devices and less capable computers but also allows us to create a slightly alternative experience, ie giving you more things to do in V2.
V2 The Definitive Version
V2 Definitive and Pocket Mode are linked in development. Since Pocket Mode is generated from V2, but quite separate tasks. Overall with the V2 system, there were so many fundamental issues and things we needed to resolve. As I said earlier anything we skipped in favour of more content. The Z Fighting on posters the way the sea looks crappy from distances among other things required deep fundamental changes in how we do everything. Our first thought was: let's stick the V3 blimp in and fix those bugs once and for all. In the end that kind of felt like a good plan for pocket mode, but for V2 on Steam, we wanted something a little more special in this next version before V3 takes over. We just felt that apart from fixing it and making it look better V2 needed some fresh secrets, more experimental features and the ability to unlock some of the things you may have already seen but not yet been able to use. It's a big Update, with a lot of enhancements.
‘scuse the balloons, they really are the best way to get around when you need to take screenshots :)
We can talk about V2 when its ready….
V3 The Newer Version
Oh boy, I wish we could develop this faster. The more complex or detailed a thing the more time it takes I guess. It's funny, thinking back to the games Hal and I used to knock out in a matter of weeks to where we are now. I love it, I love building something that that is ours, that has so much scope. As a developer working for someone else you don’t always get the chance to feel that sense of joy from your efforts. Having said that, the newer versions of Unity have been really inconsistent environments over the past year, which has made things difficult and disheartening at times. We have often been finding ourselves progressing in one area to then find that another area has become invalidated. Thankfully everything seems more stable now. I guess Unity had to figure some things out.
There are so many topics on V3. SwindonShire alone is one of the biggest tasks we have ever committed ourselves too. Building a sustainable, detailed and exciting world. We put a lot of thought into the SwindonShire. I’ve touched on various plans for the world over the course of these devblogs, and our plans can be fluid, but ultimately they hang around a core set of ideas. This image should give you a bit of an insight, it’s a map of SwindonShire that we use to discuss development in areas for V3 (a “redacted” version, don’t want to give too much away)
Although the landscape is essentially the same, Hal has been refining his process for the terrain. Now with a much higher resolution, it makes it much easier for Hal to sculpt detail, we’re so excited about it. I took these shots from a build I generated today. Currently, we have the terrain covered in a grid to help us understand things like scale not just in terms of size, but also in terms of movement so we can limit the physics etc. My version will probably be a grid for a bit, while Hal works on implementing all the details he has been working with. Like most of the development of the game, it's important to get a solid foundation that can support future iterations.
It took quite a long time for us to gain some control over the lighting. We almost abandoned a Day/night cycle altogether. Weird inconsistencies with multiple scenes, global GI not doing what we expected, I could go on. For V3 Day and Night was something that was really important to us. A lot of our plans for gameplay revolve around it. We needed to make sure that we were in control and we were not just getting "cool effects" that look great on one building but don’t translate to the area next to it.
Also, playability at nighttime is important, you have to be able to see what you're are doing...
Time like just about everything else in V3 needs to be defined and controlled by the host. Unlike V2, V3 is completely networked as a game. We have explored and implemented so many ways of doing networking over the past year. If I am honest with you, I couldn’t say that I am sure that the route we chose is the best one. It's probably more difficult, but It is most certainly the route we are the most comfortable with now. We tried third-party network solutions, we tried Unity's solution and they were all great, but we wanted more control over what was sent and to who. Things are a bit barren this week in V3 screenshots because I am implementing the host signing the objects to the scene. Everything dynamic or controllable needs to be allocated by the host. eg there is a box on the floor because the host says there is. It moves and the host has to be aware of that.
The great thing about that is that the host is always taking snapshots of data of the world, which makes it really easy to save data - just about everything in the game. ie it would be possible to play one day and come back to the same stuff the next day rather than a full reset like in V2.
I hope that's a good explanation of whats going on with development. Here’s a rundown of what my next few sets of immediate tasks are after posting this. in V3 Implement a moonlight (it's too dark at night), elbows ..there is something wrong with how I redraw the elbow and knee positions over the network looks kinda funky, touch controls sticking on IOS fix and test in another build.
So I'm going to jump to it.
Thanks for reading, updates coming real soon.
Amazing Frog? Devblog 025
Hi, It’s been just over a month since I last updated you all on whats going on with development for Amazing Frog?. To be honest I don’t even know where to begin this devblog as we have been doing so many different things. Our core mission is the same and V3 as a whole is still moving forward. The V3 online Test world draws closer and a big definitive V2 update will come alongside it, After that, an iOS version and a run of V3 test updates will follow, all the while in the backdrop the main V3 Amazing Frog? continues to grow. So to follow on from the last devblog (024)- I still have not started Mario Odyssey and Hal is no closer to facing Ganon, but we have done a load of Amazing Frog? development. :)
V3 Testworlds
The multiplayer code for V3 is coming along pretty nicely. Don’t get me wrong, it has been super complicated and I do have a tendency to over-complicate things for myself. Now I feel it coming together. I have restructured the whole process several times, as it has to form the underlying architecture of pretty much all aspects of V3 Swindon. There are many challenges involved, but one existing challenge is the logistics of testing.. there is only so much I can test on my own set of machines, so we are going to need some help with that very soon. There are still a few crazy things happening that I need to resolve first, but my confidence in the integrity of the system is growing. *farts..
SwindonShire
Often when I look over at Hal’s screen I see crazy substance setups for all sorts of different surfaces and plant things. I Just think they look interesting so I got him to screen grab a couple for the blog.
We never really got to make the “SwindonShire” that we wanted to make before. We had always been too busy with other aspects of gameplay or world creation. But we are making "The world" a priority in V3. Hal has got a serious new machine for some intense world building and development shenanigans. We are very serious about it… but it is going to take time to create the "new world” in v3, but we think it will be worth it.
V3 Anatomy
We first put a skeleton in a game in Goldilocks and the 3000 bears and laughed our heads off about it for ages. Goldilocks was a kind of ragdoll shooting game that we made a demo of a few years back before Ouya, and hope to return to one day. As V3 is so much more detailed it needed an update to frog anatomy. Heres an example of the new skeleton… but Hal didn't stop at just bones….There are going to be some squidgy surprises too.
So A Definitive V2 Update ?
I guess in general the right game dev advice would be to move on from V2 completely and just go into V3. V2 its old tech, Unity don’t really support it anymore, but still we haven’t moved on from V2 and you may be wondering why.
It's not just about fixing problems in V2 like the Z-fighting on the sea and posters, or the lack of atmosphere and depth, there is actually a lot we are doing in V2 that we can move straight to V3. Also because V3 is moving so far ahead of V2 we just couldn’t leave it behind without tidying some things up. It's good that I got a new laptop at the beginning of 2018. I can comfortably have both V3 and V2 open simultaneously. Unity used to fatal when I was working on them both and I used to think that I was running out of memory. Turns out that it was just Unity crashing…. Thankfully things seem a lot more stable on that front recently. I did yet again have to completely rebuild the v3 project base from the ground up but things have been working well. Basically, there are so many game systems that I can prototype and build in V2 for V3.
Beyond that, we really wanted to make a definitive version of Amazing Frog? V2 One that could stand on it own as V3 continues to grow. Many graphical glitches have been solved, but at the expense of a bit of a restructure, especially to do with player assignment and cameras. This work has allowed us to implement v3 camera and player assignment systems and design a more stable structure on how to do that. Successfully prototyping the way forward in V3 gameplay.
I'm pretty sure I haven't covered everything today. Like the way the frog can hold a pose in ragdoll form in V3 when you jump and hold jump, I had been meaning to make some screenshots to show that. Or that after a chat with Zeron last week I decided to push day-night cycles into the test worlds. Or that we tested a few good builds on iOS and its looking good, but it needs more work and the next Steam update will certainly come before that. Or that the new blimp controls are much more stable, but I still have a bit of work to do to ensure objects can be transported inside. I guess more next time. Thanks for playing Amazing Frog?
Amazing Frog? Devblog 024 Bugs n' pebbles
Yup, we spent most of our time in front of our computers developing and we haven’t been anywhere game related since 2016 (Steam Dev Days), in March we went out and met people, we even took business cards. That didn't change the problem that the development of Amazing Frog? V3 over the past few months has been particularly challenging. So this one is going to be a word heavy devblog…
We recently went to GDC 2018 (Game Developer Conference in San Francisco), we met a lot of companies and learned a whole bunch of Game Development Stuff. One of the main reasons we went to GDC (other than to feel like real Game Developers) was to discover and explore new technology to support the ongoing development of V3. In particular the two most important aspect of V3, the multiplayer networking side of things and being able to automate and grow a complex landscape, rich with vegetation and er… “stuff”. We need as much help as we can get. We went to lots of talks at GDC, mainly the "how to make AAA games" talks rather than the" isn’t it great to be an indie” talks (as we got the gist of them in 2016). It was definitely good to get an insight into how some of these massive games are put together, even if we struggled sitting through a one hour talk about how a guy designed a brick wall in Mordor. That one was hard work, not sleeping through that while feeling jet lagged. We got through it and I think I may even have learned something. Most of the speakers we saw all came from big teams, in fact, we met a lot of big teams at GDC and it was interesting to see how they approach things. For us, it's about how we understand what they are doing and refit it to how we work when it's just us two.
As an ode to the guy who gave the talk about a brick wall surface for an hour, here is a snapshot of what Hal has been up to today. He has been working on procedural materials. Today it was pebbles. The first pass on his procedural materials for pebbles happened when we started V3 in Unity 5. Technology seems to move on faster than us, so here's what his new version looks like in comparison to the version we never even released.
For a reference of the V2 version of pebbles just imagine a greyish smudge. Basically, when it comes to SwindonShire, Hal has been dealing with an impressively large task. His main focus for V3 is now bringing the world of SwindonShire together. To help this process he has also been looking at introducing Hoodini to our pipeline - a very powerful tool for making game development tools, and we can use it with our core toolset of Unity, Maya, and Substance.
I have been playing with a few multiplayer solutions. Most of them I feel are only really needed after the first beta push since the betas will be small test worlds, but when we integrate to Swindonshire as a whole, we are going to need some bigger scale solutions. It was good to meet the people involved so we can move forward a bit and then reconnect when its time to scale up that side of things.
Overall we came away from GDC feeling positive and recharged, but I have to say of all the companies we met, the most disappointing was Unity3d…One of their guys laughed at the fact we were using Unity 4 for V2 Amazing Frog? I explained how we had had to re-develop the entire game over the past couple of years as they had changed so much. A game that had taken us over 3 years to get the feel of the physics "right". I don’t really know what I was expecting talking them, there really is no point talking to “evangelists” most of them don't seem to have development experience and I have always found it hard to connect with Salespeople. It felt very much like Unity was more interested in getting new users to subscribe rather than helping existing developers. It was just difficult to deal with since V3 development recently has been very challenging.
gulp....
I know… I KNOW, that there is an element of us making things difficult for ourselves by being overly ambitious and honestly I am OK with problems we make for ourselves, that's all part of the journey. We have always been big supporters of Unity (and still are) and what it stood for, flexible scalable development, but I just find it odd that the most stable version of the Unity Editor that I work with is still Unity 4. I can’t even begin to process how their editing environment has become less stable with each increment. I mean seriously, I have been through multiple hardware setups and platforms and it gets less stable. I think what Unity can empower you to do is truly amazing, but it seems that all that glorious awesomeness comes at a price. Ultimately, they expect you to be in bigger teams. I think you need at least one developer to flag Unity bugs and converse with them on a regular basis on how they are going to fix it. Unity 2018.1 ( the new version coming ) looks very promising and much more futureproof than what we have been dealing with up till now. Thankfully, all the physics that we had to rebuild for V3 do work in the new beta, so all seems OK on that front. It has even fixed some things which broke in version 2017.3 like my UI for handling online connections. But the beta editing environment is still far from stable … it likes to crash a lot. Anyway...
I shouldn’t really rant about Unity too much, (if you want me to, I can and for hours) we still love it (the software) and V3 is still moving forward and when it works it just feels so exciting. We’ll just have to find a way of expressing our anger in a mature and responsible fashion …like maybe hiding a Unity shaped turd in the upcoming V2 update. That's how we deal with our issues... yeah…and maybe when you put it in the toilet it crashes the game :P
V2 News
We have no intention of stopping V2, aside from the new blimp and the camera improvements that we mentioned in the last devblog (023) we’ve actually got quite a lot of interesting things going on with it. I was actually hoping that I could be writing this devblog alongside a V2 update, but it's not quite there and we don’t have a title for it (sorry).
Pocket Mode
One of the things we had been improving in V2 was pocket mode. I wanted to establish it more separately. I often get emails from players who have accidentally turned on pocket mode and found the floor outside the wall is missing. We set out to make it so it was on a smaller island with less physics stuff and I am setting it up as a completely separate mode rather than a toggle in settings.
While we were in the Hotel in San Francisco we thought, what the hell, let's see if we can get the pocket mode island to run on our iPhones, it did, just fine as well. Even the main game ran just fine. We had thought about making an iOS version loads of times before, but we had never sat down and made it happen. So then we thought, what the hell lets make some buttons.
After a very depressing chat with Unity, it seems putting V2 on either Switch or Xbox or Ps4 seems like a real longshot. They certainly won't help us to do that, So I think we may just go ahead and make an IOS version of V2 pocket mode. This is something we can control.
I mean our hopes are for Amazing Frog? to make it to other platforms eventually, like Switch (I love my Switch) But I think that we will have to wait until V3 is more developed on Early Access. (Thank you Steam for being the awesome-est platform in existence)
It just makes sense at this stage to put at least a part of V2 somewhere else, while we can. We get many requests for it on iOS and Android and in theory, it could help support future development of V3, especially if we need to employ someone to locate and identify Unity bugs related to Amazing Frog? :)
Update Are Coming!
I know it's been about 3 months since I last updated you all on whats going on. In development time 3 months is not that long, we struggle to find the time to do everything we want to do, but I do understand that it is a long time when you are waiting on an update, (If it helps, I still haven’t started playing my copy of Mario Oddessy and am still trying to avoid spoilers ) Here is the rundown of whats coming soon (in no particular order)
V3 Online beta test worlds (not to replace V2 but be downloaded supplemental)
V3 insight into the new Swindon Shire (we can't release this too soon we need to get the landscape right)
V2 Pocket mode on IOS.
V2 Update with some cool new physics features and a big blimp that won’t suck (I mean seriously, you should be able to fly this one and potentially drive a car into it and drive it ... well I haven't fully tested that bit yet but seriously better blimps all round ).
We have a lot on. I know this, as it feels like crunch time,... It's time to get our Frog on.
Amazing Frog? Devblog 023 - Post Jan Fix Fest
Firstly, OMG I can’t believe people found the Fly Hats. Furthermore, I am getting reports that the space fly hat didn’t appear in peoples wardrobes. How very Fayju :S Fear not, if you have the message that you found the space fly hat in your notifications on the fPhone, I should be able to get it unlocked in a fix in the upcoming V2 update. (We really were not expecting people to go looking for them.)
It has been a bit of a January fix fest for both V2 and V3, now we are in Feb we are starting to see things more clearly.
After putting out a really exciting update just before Xmas we were looking forward to continuing at that pace into January. Unfortunately, it didn't turn out like that. One of the big disadvantages of being just the two of us really hit home in the first two weeks of the year. After Unity make some updates, it invalidated a lot of the progress we had made in V3 and we spent the first half of the month trying to isolate what went wrong and haven’t resolved all of the problems yet. Spending so much time searching for problems, isolating and fixing them, is something we are used to in game development, but for small teams, this has a massive impact on progress.
In comparison to V2, the V3 set up is now incredibly complex. Swindon has fully dynamic lighting to cater for the Day/Night system, high resolution texturing, where details are streamed in dependant on whats in view, PBR materials that react correctly to lighting, occlusion culling, a whole range of post-processing effects, kick-ass water, LOD setups, Network integration and a whole bunch of other components some that we made, some that we bought, some that are just complex bits of Unity that we need and had to learn to use. So when some or any of these complex components stop working for any reason .. (...often because we updated Unity… ) development takes a real kick in the Charlie's Angels. Spending all our time fixing rather than making is the downside of us being just two. Don’t misunderstand me though, we love the challenge and we are so excited about V3 more than I can say, even if it sometimes feels like its getting the better of us.
On the other hand, The Magical Mystery Toilet update reminded us of the advantages of being a small team. Because V2 has a more stable base and set of unchanging components ( also no more Unity updates for V2), it allowed us to rapidly put together a whole load of new content. If we weren’t spending most of our time building up a reliable base for V3 we would have been putting out updates much more frequently with V2 in 2017. That's why getting to a stable base in V3 is now so very important and our main priority.
We still recognize the value of V2. Having spent more time on it recently we were reminded that there are lots of issues in V2, most of which we had abandoned because we figured, "meh, that won’t be an issue in V3". Things like physics optimization, the flickering of decals and the stripyness of the sea at altitude (Z fighting) and sea not being great, the lack of distance fog and post-processing effects and that the blimps are not great to fly and could be much better if they tipped less and carried stuff. All these issues we just figured would be resolved in the development of V3. Things are different now since V2 and V3 are very separate projects. They both have their own lives. So in the spirit of The V3 January Fix Fest, we figured, let's spend some time investigating the possibility of fixing some of these outstanding V2 issues. And we found a few ways we could make it better.
It makes sense that V2 could have a few things added and fixed and tweaked, it could help it stand on its own and not just on Steam. We often have requests to put AF? on other platforms not to mention all the scammers charging people for fake versions of Amazing Frog? on mobile platforms. We had considered this before and even made mobile versions of Amazing Frog? at different stages of development. But we always abandoned it because we didn't want anything getting in the way of V3. In fact one time back in 2014 pre Steam, we showed V1(from OUYA) to Nintendo, but at the time they didn't think it was right for their platform.
After the balloons and the lunar lander were added and we found ourselves flying around more slowly and it was more difficult to ignore the terrible Z-fighting and even though its V2 we had to do something about it.
There are still a few things left to do on V2 before its next release, with updates camera and rendering system also you may be able to spot some of the of the newer systems from V3 creeping into V2…. But that should drop pretty soon.
But Hey Gaz,.. V3...What about V3? Remember V3…?
Feeling a little skeptical about V3?…. don’t be. We still work on V2, but we are all about V3. That's the mission.
It's been difficult trying to do everything at once in V3 and constantly spinning all the plates that keep SwindonShire whole has frequently got in the way of us reaching what we would think is a distributable standard on builds. Too much to resolve at once. Imagine Hal is “Slartibartfast-ing” SwindonShire, Messing with the sun to grow vegetation, but now he has to stop gardening because I need his help changing the lightbulbs in the Fayju building, because I can’t see what I am doing with the doors. It's a crude example… but there is a massive chain of interconnected dependencies in a large world and often major shared components either break or demand to be changed if they don’t fit with the latest addition. Simply put, you can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs.
So we had to come up with a better strategy. After feeling really let down by the collapse of the project after the post-Xmas Unity update process, we decided it was imperative to form smaller environments to enable focus on independent chunks of the game. To protect ourselves from these kinds of issues in the future. I guess we had skipped this step before, as we know where everything needed to go in Swindon. We figure that if we begin releasing builds using test worlds, rapidly built for the purpose of bouncing about and shooting each other, it would help give Hal the freedom he needs to break and mold “SwindonShire” and me the space to focus on bouncy shooty multiplayer stuff. Also in our new test worlds, we can both focus on each of the new asset systems with more clarity, like the guns, clothes, cars...
A New Blimp System?
The asset side of V3 has been growing steadily. The all new blimp system in one of our next major undertakings in that area.
The Blimps have always been a major feature in Amazing Frog? We are building on this in V3
You may have spotted it in the new V2 pics too, while in V2 it won’t look as detailed, the blimps in V2 needed an upgrade so we thought what the hell.
So, that's about it for now. I’m sorry this devblog took so long it's been tricky. I actually wrote most of its last week, but when we got around to taking screenshots both versions were not compiling properly since I had completely changed the cameras in V2 and was sharing the code from V3. I didn't manage to fix either till Monday. Well, we took the screenshots today and it shouldn't be too long before we have something else to share.
Amazing Frog? Devblog 022 + Hotfixes f0.2.9a
Firstly I hope you are enjoying Amazing Frog? : The Magical Mystery Toilet. The second set of hotfixes has now been uploaded. We addressed some problems we saw in some videos and of course the community has been really helpful in spotting stuff which has gone wrong.
Some of the things the new hotfixes resolved were cars exploding as they get flushed, jumping through withheld objects going a bit weird, no reward on red Megladon…various rewards not triggering. sorry.
We really do try and test like crazy, but its difficult testing a magical toilet that you can put almost anything in, also we added way more stuff than we had time to control…I mean seriously, we had "shark cannon" on the list…. Either way, we had an awesome time making The Magical Mystery Toilet Update and it just wouldn’t be Xmas for us without a last minute Xmas update.
It's been such a long time since we updated the store page too. not even sure what game I am looking at, we really need to update the store page artwork and trailer… heh and the Splash screen. There are so many great screenshots in the community I think we are just going to have to use some of these on the store page. That is if we can organize ourselves enough to do it... A couple of days ago I went through the screenshots of the f0.2.9a and I ended up downloading over 70 …There were loads more that I liked too! So that's why all the screenshots in this devblog are yours. The ones I downloaded from the steam community.
There are so many that are great for all sorts of different reasons. Some show achievement and dedication, some show off the game well, some alert us to bugs and some just make us laugh like crazy.
Also, its a great place to see the weird and wonderful things you guys have been getting up to in Amazing Frog? Often there is a lot of activity we hadn’t even thought of.
(this feels like it almost simulates soft bodies)
(This is one of my favorites, not just as a cool screenshot, but as I was shocked to see you can pick zombies up by their legs… I mean I must have programmed it to do that, but I had just forgotten. I may have to make it so you can pick up the other NPCs by there feet too.)
(…)
We’ve been making hotfixes, and billboards etc, but we still slowed down a little over the Holidays and these past few days gave us a chance to reflect on the past years development. It was fun being back in V2, in fact, we had a lot more fun than we had anticipated. We had been so wrapped up in the newer looking graphics and more capable physics of V3 that we had almost lost sight of fast-paced nonsense. Developing V3 is a much more careful process, demanding more time and precision, but working in V2 reminded us not to lose our fluidity. For example, if I want balloons I should just get on and build it and not worry so much about if I am going to break everything (I mean it did break a quite a few things, but not everything). V3 is our main focus and will continue to be so as we enter 2018, but there are some items on our V2 Update list that didn't make it to The Mystery Toilet update and hotfixes and I don’t think we are going to be able to resist the temptation to make them a reality in another V2 update very soon. Even if we just spend a bit of time here and there on V2. Also, since we have built better controls and input in V3 it's really been bugging me that you can’t click on the menu or phone with a mouse in V2. So I may need to do something about that in the near future as well.
This Next Year
For the most part of 2017, we have been intently focused on the development of V3. We did not venture out of the studio at all in 2017. In 2018 we are planning to get out a bit more, although before we can do that, we have some development targets we need to hit.
The most important first target is to get the V3 online beta playable. We want to have both V2 and V3 playable. So V3 will not replace V2 it will be downloaded with it. Every day we progress V3 feels more and more like a separate game. (A separate game that Steam Early Access players will always get.) As we move forward its likely that the first V3 beta releases will be test modes and we will shut off the main game until we feel its ready. Much of the progression in V2 was built retrospectively and it's not very clear that there is a purpose (i use that term loosely) or direction ( another word I use loosely ) Essentially, we felt that we made mistakes as we made in V1 and then subsequently more mistakes in V2 and we want to make sure V3 benefits from our recognition of those mistakes.
Its been a great year, though. We are really excited about what we have made, and what we are working on, but without the release of Amazing Frog? in 2017 as an Online Multiplayer game, it feels like something is missing...
Its close, real close, but it's not today. We wish everyone a happy new year, Stay tuned for some more updates in Early 2018.
Amazing Frog? f0.2.9a The Magical Mystery Toilet this is a V2 update for Xmas.
So we made a toilet and tried to flush everything down it. Seemed like a really good idea at the time, then after we were half way through we were like… what the hell are we doing? You can put anything in there... But we persevered and saw it through..mostly. Its probably one of the strangest and most experimental updates we have made. Since it was a V2 update it made sense for us to lean towards the more experimental. If I am being honest we have not tried all the possibilities with the Magical Mystery Toilet (there are so many) so we expect to make some amends additions and changes.
I haven’t had time to fill out the change Log, sorry so it might be difficult to know what to look form but thats all part of the mystery, but at least there is a new “Need Help” fApp on your fPhone :) That should guide hopefully guide you a bit
We’ve fixed a lot of stuff from f0.2.8e The Swindon Space Program. We’re very sorry about these things. For example the grapple hook having an undo button really helps get more use out of it as a tool. It was bad that we left them like that for so long, its just that since the last update we have just been so wrapped up in V3 which is a completely different environment. (Wondering what V2 and V3 means? please check out the previous Devblog 021)
I won’t write too much now
Just some images…I’ll write a proper devblog after I have done the hot fixes.
Without going into too much detail, since most of this update is focused on experimentation and secrets. We will most certainly expand on this, we really had a lot of fun making it. Its been healthy for us to have a month where we have focused exclusively on messing about because when building V3 we had to be very strict with ourselves not to get carried away and its imperative to get the foundations right..
Happy Holidays All, I hope you enjoy.
Amazing Frog? Devblog 021
Getting Fingered
Since we last spoke we’ve been picking up a lot of stuff. I mentioned last time that we were having some issues with how to hold certain items. We had dealt with this in previous versions with the “holster” button. This was more of a workaround rather than an actual solution, mainly due to the "pick up" button and "get in" button being the same. Now getting in or out is prioritized above picking up. This means you can get in and out of cars while holding objects or take an item to other spaces, like fart gyms or the sewer. Also, smaller held objects are more like an extension of the ragdoll so this will result in less craziness**.
**(absolute removal of craziness not guaranteed)
Portable items not just about guns, of course. There is a multitude of new items we are building to use, but what we also discovered is they all need to get fingered. It really came as a shock recently that when you add a level of detail like fingers ... things get complicated real fast. It's great having extra detail and, with hindsight, we should have seen this, but the extra work that comes with that extra detail can become overwhelming. Every portable item on pickup will sit in the hand differently… try it, try picking stuff up in your office, your kitchen, your garden, your toilet... we do. Everything needs to get fingered and standard hand pose stuff doesn't really cut it for our 3 fingered friend. So a system was needed.
Its not all bad. We tend to rely on IK ( inverse kinematics) for how we carry most objects and have done for some time. I mean we wouldn't be able to make an animation for how you carry each of the items in the game. It's not feasible for a small team to make individual carry animations for each object…we'll leave that to AAA farms. So we use IK to map hand positions to targets or map targets to hand positions. Having hand pose data for fingers enhances this and inevitably opens us up to a new level of froggy expression.
There are quite a few new objects we have been preparing for the new Amazing Frog? some you will not have seen before, but one of my favorites from the new batch has to be the torch.
Physics Stability
We can certainly see the benefits of the more stable physics system that unity has brought to the software, but for a game like Amazing Frog? fundamental improvements can cause headaches. Capturing the essence of the previous Amazing Frog? without losing the “floppiness” or "floopyness" has been one of the hardest challenges I have had to face in programming this new version and is an ongoing concern.
Previously, I would concede that some of the essence of the "character" of Amazing Frog? was derived from the inherent flaws in the underlying physics system. For us, it's important that movement feels fluid, but also floppy(sorry I can’t think of any other words to describe it at the moment, but I know what mean) Each day we spend a bit more time just fiddling with the ragdoll system. However, as much as the new stability has created headaches it has also brought other exciting opportunities. We have been experimenting with the idea of holding your pose in flight, tightening your ragdoll for more control while falling its new for the system so we are not sure how to present it yet, but its looking promising.
Certainly one obvious benefit of a more stable underlying physics system is actually being able to "ride" the dumpsters, dumpsters with closable lids in a more determined and predictable, yet chaotic manner.
Accidents do still happen of course.
Does everyone call them dumpsters? we sometimes call them wheelie bins… but you get my point.
Wildlife
When we added pigeons to The Swindon Space Program Update earlier this year, it was something we had been meaning to add to Amazing Frog? for a long time. Hal's original super low poly pigeon was in fact made for the OUYA version back in 2014, but we couldn’t get a bunch of pigeons flying about on that tiny little cube… in the end, we put a pigeon on a skateboard for a laugh. Either way, wildlife, vermin or rodents were always systems we wanted in and around SwindonShire. As much as the FrogLife, the rubbish or post system, it is another ecosystem to interact with, collect from or just use for target practice. For this new version, we thought we had better get the new bird assets in sooner rather than later.
Aside from the new pigeon models Hal also made some seagulls which we have added to vermin life. Of course, we’ll need more.
Swindon Sign
So whats been going on outside of Swindon? The Swindon sign is a major feature in the SwindonShire Landscape (not sure why I visited it naked in this screenshot I tend to take these screenshots in the middle of the night and I guess I just forgot to get dressed). We had always wanted The Sign to feature more as part of the gameplay, but it never really had a level of detail high enough that we wanted to build on... until now. Like the golden pug, building up these architectural assets as more than just points of interest in the landscape is our intention.
3 Years on Steam, Looking Back...
This last week saw our Steam Early Access anniversary. Thanks to everyone who nudged me about that. We released Amazing Frog? on Steam Early Access Nov 2014. We’re so grateful every day to be doing this. We really love this game I get a kind of emotional fart brewing when I think about ithow far we have come … With that in mind, now might be a good time to have a quick look back over the development of Amazing Frog? which hopefully should explain whats coming next...
The way I see it, is that Amazing Frog? development to this date has had 3 major versions. Describing them as versions should also help when I am writing these blogs
Version 1: The OUYA version (and the never released iPhone and Android versions)
Version 2: Steam Early Access version PC, MAC, Linux (in Unity 4) up to f0.2.9e The Swindon Space Program.
Version 3: The full rebuild with integrated online multiplayer (f0.3.0).
Version 3 actually began development in the middle of last year and is without a doubt our primary concern and what we spend pretty much all of our time doing. Last year, however, there were problems with our approach, we make mistakes and try to learn from them. Originally, we thought we could “port” from version 2 to version 3, but I don’t think even unity was ready for that process. So we decided to make version 2 more complete by adding features we were working on for version 3 such as fire, tethers and the moon and a bunch of other stuff. Following that, since May this year, we have been developing Version 3 exclusively and purging anything that was still left over from version 1. Version 1 graveyard includes things like the multi-story carpark, hideous low res textures, old buildings one poly thick walls. We have been creating completely new assets for just about everything, like the new car system, new weapons, new vehicles, new buildings, new creatures, new landscape and most importantly a new Frog (and frog system) All of which designed visually to work towards better graphics and systematically to work at core with the online multiplayer system.
So, yeah, version 3 is like a rebuild (kind of) or I guess you could call it a full Strip down clean, enhance or replace followed by a reconstruction…rebuild is easier to say. We have no intention of losing anything from Version 2. Version 2, or -"f0.2.9e The Swindon Space Program”, let's just say we like the game as is, but to progress, we had to bring break a few eggs.
So where am I going with this?
Our intention and indeed goal is to get the first Online Beta available before the end of this year. I need to be realistic about what this means. This would be a stripped down unoptimized build of version 3 with online capability for testing, that players can start messing about with. And into that beta, we will drip feed the new assets. As we move forward we will be spending most of our time housekeeping and fixing version 3 and certainly be spending much more times watching the forums and not in a development crunching cocoon.
Let's face it to properly test multiplayer we need players in the system and considering Fayju is just me and Hal, well lets just say we don’t have enough people in the office. We‘re working really hard to achieve this.
but also… since it almost Xmas….
Version 2 still very much exists. Version 2 and 3 will coexist in your Steam library and maybe at some point next year Version 2 could even exist on other platforms, provided nothing gets in the way of version 3! So in the short term, considering that we are a bit crazy, we figured what the hell? Let's also do an update to version 2 and call it f0.2.9f - The Magical Mystery Toilet. Which should be available in December before Xmas. Is it an opportunity for us to loosen up a bit after some rather intense and challenging periods of development and add some more strange shit to Amazing Frog?
Thanks again for following this. I hope we are getting better at explaining whats going on… but for now, back to development and will post again before Xmas.
Amazing Frog? Devblog 020 The Bank of Swindon
Things are really starting to come together for f0.3.0. Its been a long road, but the decision to do a full rebuild is certainly starting to show that it was worth it. It gets to a point when you have been reprogramming game from the ground up that it all starts falling into place rather quickly. There are many things that we have done in previous iterations, that in redoing, we benefit from our previous experience. All the mistakes we made in the original are also influential and helpful on the path forward, but thats a whole other conversation about development in general. The bottom line is we do want to do everything to be so much better than it was and be futureproof. Not only that, but f0.3.0 will be the first multiplayer version of Amazing Frog? and that is at the core of the rebuild. Its likely that the first few versions we make public will not have all the features of the previous versions as it will take time to convert them in. But each feature will have loads more depth.
Weapons
Customizability has been another incredibly important theme in the rebuild such as with the new clothing systems and the car modifications and in the spirit of creating more customisable assets we have moved on to the AKs. I mean lets face it you are going to want to shoot stuff and each other. Hal has been playing around with gun skins on the new gun models. I guess he better get on a build a gun shop pretty quick.
I've still got a few issues with the holding certain objects, like what to do with them while driving. (Obviously we want you to take them with you, but not while they are poking through the windscreen)
SwindonShire
I went up the Golden pug because its a nice view from up there with a bit of morning mist, perhaps I should have gone at sunset as its quite pretty then.
SwindonShire in general, its starting to feel much more stable visually. We are having some issues with nighttime water rendering that we will need to find a workaround for because the Day night thing is pretty important, as will come clear pretty soon. The landscape, in general, does feel much more expansive and you get a much better sense of scale and distance. It is still a work in progress, but improving all the time.
I saw a question come up on the last devblog about if the images we show are renders or screenshots. We take all these images while the game is running. I tend to take them all at once and then start writing. Basically, we run the game on my laptop, its an ASUS ROG with a gtx 960m graphics card. its some years old, but still pretty good. I run the game as it is at that point and try and look at the new stuff that we have put in recently and then hit printscreen at the right moment. Every now and then there are some images like the one of the guns, that Hal has set up with newly created assets in Unity and screen grabs it from there, but most of the time its screenshots taken from one quick session. It means that we take all the images pretty much on the Friday I start writing the devblog… Lol which is why I am typing this stuff at er… well its gone 2 am.
The Bank of Swindon
There would be little point making all these “customisable” features, the clothes, the cars, guns.. etc without the facility for currency and this comes curtosy of the Bank of Swindon. We always said that we couldn’t introduce money until we had a branch of the Bank of Swindon to facilitate it. The Bank branch is now added to the high street, next to another curious building in blue .. but we talk about that one next time. I suppose you could argue that we could have introduced currency before building a local branch for the Bank. We could have had a number at the top of the screen displaying your money or even used online banking on the fPhone, but thats just not how our minds work. That's not to say that the Bank of Swindon won't have an fApp, but you'll have to go set up your account first.
Now that we have quite a few functioning locations of multiple purposes, the town is going to come alive very soon especially with the new FrogLife™ system. Beyond that, we take a lot of pride in some of the little things. I mean check out some of this pretty impressive furniture Hal has been making and after I have written this devblog I intend to spend a bit of time making these new seats functional.
And obviously we have been adding the odd secret here and there.
Thanks for following this, we really appreciate it. I can’t say it enough, but we do really love working on Amazing Frog? each day we are getting closer now and to think that at the end of Nov we will have been on Steam Early Access for 3 years.
Amazing Frog ? Devblog 019 Dick Lovett
First off, did I mention last time that I was working on User interfaces…? I don’t really like working on interfaces, because it reminds me of building websites and boring advertising stuff that I used to have to do every day before I was able to focus purely on making games. Nonetheless, I am thankful for my history of building “boring” applications as it is incredibly helpful in getting the new user interface set up for f0.3.0. So I had to start with fOS 2.0
fOS 2.0
As I have said before getting the foundations of this version right are incredibly important. A flexible user interface is at the heart of delivering all the new capabilities which are coming to f0.3.0. In the previous version the fPhone was responsible for most “UI” stuff, like navigating, controlling and modifying the game. It was not our intention for the fPhone to become this. It was supposed to be just one of many interactive gadgets rather than the core navigating and interacting device. Unfortunately, the way it was originally built, specifically the UI behind it was quite limiting and we just didn't have the time to make it more flexible and to deliver more complex user interaction outside of the fPhone. Also lets not forget that in the versions before f0.3.0 the user interface only worked on the Dpad (and IJKL), no mouse click! This is no longer the case and I’m quite proud of the new system. Not just how can use all control devices (including a mouse finally!), but its not limited to the phone screen like before.
And its more flexible.
I don’t really know how to explain how or why it was so important to create a new interface system or why i rebuilt fOS 2.0 for the fPhone, other than to mention what we are about to do with it. Because until the UI could become flexible enough for our demands it was like a developmental bottle neck restricting our creativity. The new system is enabling things like the more advanced apps needed for multiplayer connectivity (e.g. f inder and frogBook working titles), fMaps 2.0 with more detailed realtime info viewable not just on the fPhone, interactive cashpoints and other electronic devices, outfit and car customisation, in car menu, the coming inventory, phone driven remote control er..stuff... , playable fApps… I could go on we have a massive list of stuff and i needed to ensure the UI would work reliably and efficently for all of them.
But for now, lets look at some world stuff.
Dick Lovett
Dick Lovett is a working title for the Car Showroom. We may not call it that (google it), that is the name of the local car dealer in Swindon , yes thats right there is car show room called Dick Lovett in Swindon and across the West Country of England. So we probably shouldn’t use it. (We’ll probably end up calling it Swindon Discount Motors or Swindon Bargain Basement Autos, We’re still thinking it through. (Suggestions welcome)
So why do we now have a car showroom? As I have touched on before coming soon is the Bank of Swindon. Frog Milk coffee co was our way of testing out currency as a mechanic pre f0.3.0. Its always been important for us to get money in the game. What better way to spend your hard earned 'frogbux' than to buy a car and mod it. The exact workings, how much car cost, what parts upgrades you can buy etc, is still being considered.
The Mod Shop
So did I mention car parts?
You are also going to need somewhere to customise the cars too. The first beta may not feature the full extend of this as car customisation is a big undertaking and what with all the new costume, Ai, finance and multiplayer stuff I can’t say exactly how much will fit in f0.3.0. But f0.3.0 is just a beginning. As we mentioned before, back when Hal spent a few weeks building parts for the vRog - cars have a lot of parts and add ons and we want this to effect the drive too and that gets complex. So here is a glimpse of the interior of the new Mod shop. (Its on the other side of Swindon to Dick Lovett)
The new buildings are really starting to come together. Now that we have established a pipeline with how the lights and volumes and LODs work in the game the architecture is coming together nicely.
I think thats it for this devblog. As i said earlier I am feeling pretty positive at the moment. I think the news is going to get more exciting more quickly from here. Sorry for the wait to this point, thanks for keeping with us on this.
Oh yeah we got the Pants I promised to show you last time… well they are in a lot of the images here today. But heres an image around there back of the car show room.
Amazing Frog? Devblog 018 Details Details
I wrote most of this devblog a couple of Fridays ago and then i selfishly went on holiday without posting it. This past week I have been wrapped up in programming, but today I thought i should make some additions to it and post already!
Looking back we have noticed how writing devblogs has started to be really helpful to us. We spend so much time spent focused intently on small corners of the game, that stopping to write a devblog forces us to step back and gaze at the bigger picture. With a wider view of everything its a good opportunity to check in on the overall presentability of the game, but also to help us to refocus on the main task of creating this world. One task always leads to another, for the past few weeks i had definitely lost sight of where i was heading. Fortunately, i tend to trust my instincts and while sending myself off on a series of tasks I can always find my way back to where I was heading by completing them. Each smaller task being a breadcrumb in a trail that brings me back around to a larger more important task which i had forgotten about. When i get back on track its almost like… oh yeah I remember why I started doing that seeming unrelated thing now and I understand why my previous self sent me off in that direction.
So one of my biggest distractions recently is a new User Interface system(UI) I have been building. Basically, we want more customisation throughout, from clothes, to cars, to weapons, to modes, to servers, to quality settings and so on and so on. We need a unified UI to make this happen. Its important that we have something that can scale with the game as it grows, by working as a prototyping UI and also a finished UI. I needed to make a system that we can use productively in development to perform all these different types of operations, but will also work for players in game. Also, we need a UI that will work for all input devices and in a much more coherent way that the UI was in previous versions. Think fPhone 2.0, or something like that. Feeling really positive about it and what its going to mean for the possibilities for the future of Amazing Frog?'s continuing evolution. Although as I said to Hal yesterday, "I just spend all day programming away like Jessica Fletcher from Murder She Wrote and all I have to show for it is a button that disappeared when I pressed it". Sounds bad… but actually it was a good day as it proved to me that the new system works… Next I can use it to displaying interactive connection data or rapidly build a clothing moderator or settings manager … well I will decide tomorrow.
Level Of Detail (LOD)
As you can see from screen shots we have posted over the past few months, The level of detail in the new Amazing Frog? is much higher than before. Its not just about the models and textures, but also the surfaces and lighting. Hal has been improving how we see the buildings from distance, by manufacturing more accurate lower Level Of Detail(LOD) instances of everything. This is all very much about optimisation. Rather than having all the buildings in view in high detail with loads of polygons and materials being rendered, we make simpler versions that you see when you are further away and then how the low detailed object is displayed is based on view location and quality settings. We have also been doing this kind of optimisation on the shadow casters and reflection probes. We have so many active lights in Swindon now, all capable of shadow casting, that it was imperative to cull that activity.
Concrete
As I mentioned in a previous post, we were doing away with all the old style models and assets some of which dated as far back as the OUYA and some were even originally made to run as background assets on an iPhone 4. That included most of the architecture, but their physical presence in the space is quite important. Instead of removing them completely we have "concreted" them. This is to allow them to still function … you know as big blocks of mass and to help you navigate er… vertically. We felt this would be a better way to represent the missing architecture of the old style temporarily, while Hal is working his way through them. Although currently he has been focused on covering the frogs lower regions.
Clothing
Really excited about where the clothing is going. Hal has been making it much more physical and the library of items of clothing to be worn in combination is growing steadily. No trousers (aka pants) in the screenshots, but we've got them too (will show you next time) There is a puffa jacket and some hoodies now. A larger selection of clothing is what we always wanted for Amazing Frog? especially as we become an online game. We wanted enough variation to create your own unique frogs. This extends to how we have been recreating other features too, as you have seen with the cars. We know there is a big wave of customisation coming to Amazing Frog? This is why I mentioned earlier about the necessity for the new UI system and why it has been important to create a solid foundation for it.
I just like this image with the sun rays… I’m really excited to show you what we can do with the day, night and weather systems… but I think static screen shots don’t really capture it that well. Don't worry about all these image effects too, the intention is to make many of them optional in quality settings.
So I guess we should get back to it. Sorry for the wait on Devblog 018 , Thanks for all the positive comments it means a lot to us, while development can sometimes feel a little overwhelming, we kind of live for this and don’t want to be doing anything other than making Amazing Frog?
100 more years Amazing Frog Development … .dot com.
Happy Holidays All, I hope you enjoy.
