I’m afraid much of what i have been doing over the past few weeks I would find hard to glamourise. Really, I’m not sure how to make it sound interesting. Fear not, because Hal’s progress with The Fayju Building yields prettier pictures which follow, but I’ll start with the boring stuff, so hang in there...
World Compilation
This takes place before the frog is even instantiated. I call it 'world compilation' and its the foundation of gameplay, but completely invisible. “World compilation” is chiefly responsible for loading the game environment and now it is also taking networking into consideration. You know things like if the game is hosted or are you joining a game. In previous versions of Amazing Frog? we had “world” scenes which were giant files that contained everything for each of the locations like Swindon, Moon, Sewer etc. This approach made it very difficult to change the content around each time you visit or during gameplay. Since we are now working with day times, networks and the new FrogLife™ system there is so much dynamic data a game needs a little more thought in setup before gameplay begins. So I have been occupied with building the worlds up out of lots of separate and dynamic components and how to make it easier for us to arrange and change that content.
This has been important for us for a couple of reasons. Firstly, Hal and I have been working very hard of establishing a development pipeline … what we used to have was more of a 'development funnel' where we would cram everything in and hope it didn’t explode, like endlessly piping icing onto a cake. (I like cake) Now we have a much more refined setup. It took a while to get there and we are still coming to terms with it. Since everything we are doing is now a lot more complex we had to enhance the way we build and share. A simple example would be that Hal can happily work on the Fayju Building in isolation, change the lighting setup and those changes can be quickly and simply incorporated into the game without issue. The other, perhaps more important reason why world compilation is so important is for orchestrating all the dynamic objects like cars , barrels, weapons, frogs etc etc. We have been moving towards enabling different modes loaded into the same world and this is the key to developing flexibility for this in the future.
The Fayju building
As you can see we haven’t furnished the our office yet, but its looking and feeling much more like the genuine article. Here are some shots I took today, walking around the new building. Some of the doors are still a bit …unpredictable, but its starting to come under control. There is a lot more detail I can't wait to freak out running around it in VR its kind of freaky to be walking around the corridors and staircases that we use every day.
Lighting
Now that we are using texture streaming there is a lot more detail in all the surfaces, but we also have made some difficult decisions about lighting. Switching to deferred rendering is giving us a lot more flexibility with lighting and allowing Hal to really go to town lighting the new architecture. We have been back and forth over the use of deferred rendering for some time over fears that it would become difficult to optimise, but we are pretty sure we have a solution to this and so we made the decision to go with it. Now we can see where we are going with lighting.
Time
We have mentioned before how a day and night cycle is to play a part in Amazing Frog? and now we have resolved our approach to environment lights we can move forward with more confidence into how the passage of time works in SwindonShire and the changing of the world lights. Torches and headlights were our biggest concern, but that looks like its going to be ok, so will show some of that soon. I can’t say with any certainty exactly how the passage of day and night will work in Amazing Frog? and exactly how “dark” night will be, we are still tweaking it to see what feels right, but until more of the game is functioning as usual its will be hard to judge. Passage of time or game time may be something we expose for user control, since it will be possible to host a game and we may look at how a player can have control over this and an environment parameter, e.g. night time racing, early morning pigeon shooting.
More on the New Frog
The Frog is always being upgraded, but perhaps one of the most exciting things we have going on at the moment is the facial expressions (Thats why we made this as the title image) They crack me up.
We are developing some “goto" expressions for particular emotions or reactions or default states for particular NPCs, but the facial expression system is essentially dynamic. We have always believed in little things, like how the frog looks at the camera as it passes or checking out nearby objects as you walk by. Stupid little details are really important to us. Now, aside from head tracking, we also have eye tracking and pupil dilation that can be commanded by code. As with all the FrogLife™ systems we also want the NPCs to have access to facial expression so it has been fairly complex deciding and implementing what makes the face react… we are getting there.
Also on another note, you may notice that all the images we have shown so far of the new frog are only wearing t-Shirts. This is because that is all we have so far. The old frog was reliant on layers of textures to represent costumes (and we still have all of those), but from here on all clothing will have physicality to it, customisable of course, but with physicality… we just haven’t given the frog any pants yet.
Business As Usual
Thanks to every one who nudged me about writing a devblog. If I am honest by the time i get to a Friday and start writing one of these, it takes a while to remember all the things that we have both been doing since the last one. There are so many things going on. Only this morning I was talking to Hal saying I am worried we were spinning too many plates between us, it can be fairly confusing jumping back and forth between physics code, network code, Ai code, environment code, optimisation and more especially when i want them all to work together. Likewise, while Hal bounces between making buildings, clothing, crazy substance systems, landscapes and vehicles… I’m pretty sure he was working on a moped at one point this week which kind of freaked me out. We’re so excited about how its all coming together, sorry its taking so long.
Amazing Frog? Devblog 016 Frogs n stuff
LATE - Apologies for not getting the devblog out last Friday I did say i would try and do one very two weeks. It can get really distracting, there is always just one more thing to program. This week i got distracted with what i would describe as the underlying architecture for my "interactive object system". That sounds really conventional I guess and ... I dunno... maybe it is. Its about three ‘forces' being able to control everything cars, cannons, sharks, NPCs, guns etc... Those three ‘forces’ being a player ,the network and AI. Its something I have wanted to get my teeth into for a long while. I remember on the OUYA we had lorries (Trucks) cruising up and down the main street in Swindon, and cars supposedly driven by NPCs. They were on rails and I hated that. I liked what they did in the game, you know standing in the road and then suddenly a lorry takes you out… but I hated how they felt so incomplete they disappeared to nothing (this is all pre the great wall of Swindon). I said to Hal back then when we started on Steam that I would not put cars back in on rails… The only time you would see another frog driving a vehicle other than a player would be via network or AI. Any way thats the point I am trying to make…? The devblog is later because I got distracted this week with laying the foundations that would enable NPC frogs to ‘decide’ to drive from A to B.
A New Game?
So Development. Often, especially when things get tricky and begin to weigh down on the mind, it can feel like we are making a completely new game. This feeling come from all the completely new models and from rebuilding all the systems from the ground up in order to be configured to work over a network for online multiplayer and work with the newer physics.
We are not building a new game,of course. It just feels like that sometimes. The process is more like transcribing rather than rebuilding and we have been transcribing to Unity 5 for a long while now. While sometimes i look at what is infront of me and I think... oh U4 had this and that and that etc... as some point soon it will all drop into place. But I have to get the basics sorted first.
FrogLife™
The 'Frog Object' is coming along nicely. This time around the NPCs will be using the exact same system as the main frog. This was our original intention when we added NPC frogs with the first Steam Versions. We wanted them all to have the ability to be controlled just like your frog… but it didn’t work out like that and in the end to bump the numbers of NPCs I had to build a different frog object for them. It was a sacrifice we made in the Unity 4 version, knowing we would revisit in Unity 5. Now that we are in the process of rebuilding the frog system I have put better optimisation routines to allow for the same object to be used as an NPC frog and player frog. Aside from having more reliable control over the player frog and network support, it is leading to better AI implementation and allowing the NPC frogs to have all of your abilities. Hal and I have always wanted the NPC frogs to each have a place in the world, its complicated to organise, but before any of that can take place we have to get the underlying frog object right. For example lets say the frog that works in Frog Milk Coffee Co had to be at work at 8am to open the shop but if killed on the way to work maybe the coffee shop will be late opening. If you kill a frog it would be nice if it re appeared at the hospital. Incidentally they have just build a new NHS centre in the game zone in real life… How nice of the real Swindon Council was that! It fits with the game's development plans.
Recalibrating the Frog Physics
Hal made the new cannon, the Fan and barrels etc.. a while back. In fact the newer models were introduced into the Unity 4 version with a separate set of “lesser” materials. But this week He also made a new set of trampolines. One of the first objects ever created for Amazing Frog? One of the main things we are working on now is how new frog physics works with each of these objects. Its not an exact science - more bounciness.. less stickyness… floppier…spinnier... For now, I have a collection of instances of these objects in the main carpark and repeatedly slam the frog’s faces into them to see how things are working. When we feel they are working more of less how we want them to, we will implement the new placement system. This is one of the great things out Unity 5, it's scene organisation. Its not like it wasn’t possible in Unity 4, but it was not as simple to implement as now. We can set up multiple set ups of placements of fixed objects, like trampolines, fans, cannons barrels etc with ease. What determines the different set ups we have yet to decide -time, mission, user etc. But first things first … calibration then i want to do a test where i get a load of NPC frogs to chase me onto the bouncey castle.
Architecture.
The new building is coming along really well and being one of the key areas in Amazing Frog? as when you come out of the hideout its your first point of contact with Swindon, we really want to make it right. Its not just about how it looks, its important that frogs can throw themselves around the interior with wreckless abandon. It just feels very authentic now and a massive improvement on the simple model that had been there since the beginning. Also these screen shots that we put in these devblogs are development screenshots. The lighting on them is not finalised. As you know lighting is a tricky issue for us since we are going for a day night cycle., but we will be aiming to maintain the "feel" of Amazing Frog? but just with more detail.
So In theory i need to put devblog 17 out next Friday, since I was late. I’ll try but for now, we’ll get back to development. I am hoping to come back real soon and update you on this NPC stuff, I’m very excited about how thats going. Also it might be good to explain how we plan to deliver the first beta. In theory I would like it to be a separate build to the U4 version so you can keep both on your machine without having to redownload. I'd be interested to hear peoples thoughts on that.
Amazing Frog? Devblog 015
In the spirit of trying to maintain more regular development blogs, here is a new entry of what we have been doing with Amazing Frog? over the past couple of weeks.
General Development
Game development involves a lot of different processes and disciplines and it seems as we progress with Amazing Frog? that the number of different processes and techniques that we need to employ to achieve what we want increases daily…. Thanks technology ! The project itself is vast and while working in unity 4 we had found it increasingly difficult to provide progressive updates. It had become too much like manoeuvring a single giant ship, rather than commanding a fleet of autonomous self aware boats to achieve the same goals. If there is something wrong on one boat it can be fixed and the fleet moves on or if you add a new boat it can become part of the fleet rather than getting the Massive ship to move around slowly picking up all the new…. er … ideas. Hopefully you get my silly analogy. My point is that aside from changing how we build, program, design the game we have also been working on our development process. By setting up a pretty slick version control system its means in future it will be much simpler to integrate changes from Hal and changes from me and incorporate them into the latest ‘safe’ build that we’ll have allowing updates to flow quicker… BUT we still need to get to that first Beta update from the U5 version first.
Swindon Shire
SwindonShire has been coming along nicely, its always good to spend some time running around as a frog to take closer look It helps check out the variety of detail and what may work or not work. The environment as a whole is evolving and we both spend a bit of time on 'environment stuff' each week. By 'environment stuff' I mean the landscape, the sky , the atmosphere, the sea, the wind, the weather, daylight and whole bunch O stuff. Sometimes the vastness can be a bit distracting at times when it might be preferable to focus on other development necessities, like walking, running, driving, shooting... I guess it is normal as an indie game developer to find yourself bouncing between all sorts of stuff at once. We want to get the look of SwindonShire right, but we also want to have flexibility allowing for lots of weather conditions and day times. As much as I can show them in screenshots I still need to orchestrate how is all fits together in gameplay.
Architecture
Hal’s progress in the Fayju building (Wyvern Theatre) has been really exciting. Its pretty much the most complex building in Swindon so far and the interior is coming on really well and its a big interior. This week I have been using the new building and its interior to test out frog movement and surface interaction which has been a joy compared to the test environment I was using last week.
In the old version you could only get to our office through the window. In this version of the Fayju building more offices can be explored, you can work you way up and down the stairs to the foyer ( which I am sure will have a Frog Milk Coffee Co. area) The Art gallery has been massively expanded in line with our plans for that space. The Swindon fArt Council has always been important to us. If you are wondering why the building is blueish… There are no textures on it yet, I'll show you more images of it when thats done.
New Frog
As you can see the screenshots in this devblog are all containing the new frog. I’m happy with how the new frog is working, but there is still some way to go with it. I guess now that we have introduced eyes, expressions and fingers we should have expected more complexity. Last year, I had made a lot of progress integrating the old frog and rag doll system into Unity 5 and Multiplayer. Our intention was to upgrade the frog at a later date. Although, as I mentioned in a previous post, the behaviour of the physics was becoming a big issue since it behaved so differently in Unity 5. It has not been a total loss, much of that work remains valid, but i feel very much like I have had to go back to basics to get this new frog up and running, jumping... and er falling over again. What seems to be emerging is a much more robust and flexible system. I'll try and out put some more videos as I go along.
Amazing Frog? Devblog 014 (+ Win 32 update)
We didn't really feel in the position to write devblog this week, but I am conscious that you may want to know what we have been up to in the weeks that have passed since f0.2.8e The Swindon Space Program. Development never really stops on Amazing Frog? These past few weeks we have been crunching on the Unity 5 version and there has been, and there will be, a lot to be getting on with. I’ll have a go at trying to explain whats involved in some of these processes.
If you have been following the devblogs then you will know that we started working on the Unity 5 build last year. Our initial approach back then was to bring all the Amazing Frog? content into Unity 5 and begin a process of fixing and updating. This was relentless and left us with a complex and near broken project. It was a bit like cramming all your toys into a toy box and then climbing in to fix them. Eventually we had decided that this was the wrong way to go about it. After 4 years of development and having added loads of content to the Amazing Frog world, many files, objects,systems were in desperate need of refactoring and re-organisation. Since Unity 5 was so different not just in how you make worlds, but how the physics works within them, we decided to strip out everything and only integrate working new assets one at a time, i.e. transfer the toys from one box to another one at a time. This has left the world feeling very tidy and looking much better, but the process is a bit slower. So lets have a think about 3 of such toys being transferred.Basically 3 Core components of the game - Swindon Shire, Swindon's Architecture and The Frog and what you might expect to see from them in The next version.
Swindon Shire
For us, one of the most important features of Amazing Frog? was being able to catapult your self comically over great distances, but one of the biggest disappointments in unity 4 was not having as much control over the variety of terrain in the Landscape as we would have liked. This is partly why its so massive and unvaried. We have known that we would be able to greatly improve on this in Unity 5 and so for the past few weeks Hal has been getting his Slartibartfast on and pushing the geological features of SwindonShire.
The next-gen SwindonShire has loads more surface detail, dynamic wetness and most importantly it brings the ability to add so much more variety. In the past we had started work on areas like 'The Swamp' or 'The Swindon Landfill' but they didn't make the cut in any of the Unity 4 versions. We simply couldn’t achieve what we wanted. With our current tool set in U5 we can now carry on with this. No more flying for miles across endless green. We did always want a bunch of trees to get in the way any way. We have to be careful though. Amazing Frog? is a physics heavy game and its taking a while to optimise the new terrain to work with the game. Creating variety and character in the Isle of Swindon Shire is also not just about the surface but also the vegetation and the wildlife. Part of the reason why we integrated the pigeons in to f0.2.8e was to prepare for the wildlife that would inhabit greater SwindonShire.
Swindon's Architecture
As you can see in The Swindon Town Planning Office there is a table top Map Model of inside the Wall. On that map there are some models of buildings and the rest is flat. Each new or refurbished building in Swindon is represented by a model on this table top map. Going back to the toy box analogy We decided to remove every building from Swindon that is not on that map model and flatten it. Giving each building more purpose. We are basically filtering out some of the older and simpler architectural features in favour of the newer functional buildings with interiors like Frog Court, Fart Gyms, The Swindon Town Planning Office and the Hideout and The Frog Milk coffee Co. building and (not featured in U4) we also have our first highstreet branch of The Bank of Swindon. To get back into the swing of Swindon Architectural modeling, Hal is currently renovating one of the most important buildings in Swindon - The Fayju Building (The Wyvern Theatre in reality).
Featuring more indoor spaces, an underground carpark and an expanded and newly curated fArt Gallery. The Fayju Building was one of the first buildings Hal created of Swindon when we began this quest to build Amazing Frog? so we are so excited to see this one coming together. Also because its the one we work in. Also its fun watching Hal walk around the foyer downstairs taking reference photos while people wonder what the hell he is up to.
The Frog
After I had finished with f0.2.8e I got my hands on the new Frog. A moment I had been waiting for with great anticipation since watching it evolve on Hal’s Monitor a few months back. We had realised earlier in this process that the physics was so different in U5 that much work had to be done with the ragdoll. We had figured that now was a good time to upgrade the frog. This is where most of my time has been spent recently. While there is a lot to develop around the environment on many core systems in AF? like the fPhone, to the new customisable vehicles or the new camera and visual effects system or the weapons, fire system, I have found myself back on The Frog. A new Frog with eyes that look around a mouth that smiles… fingers?? OMG. A frog that wears clothes rather than having them painted on. A multiplayer frog. I would say though -Some of the things I am seeing on my screen currently I do not wish to share… hideous mistakes that seem to catapult this beautiful creation into infinity. But I am excited where its going. So much more expression, so many more possibilities. I'll try and post more about the new frog soon.
I want to try and keep up regular Devblogs, so do feel free to tweet me @fayju or nudge me on Steam to ask me where the next devblog is. Some times both Hal and I get so wrapped up in development its something that we forget.
32 Bit version
Oh - Also I almost forgot. Sorry to all the people who wanted a 32 bit version. I have updated the current build. It now has both a 64bit Windows version and a 32Bit Windows version and I have set it so it should download the relevant one for your system. We do not have a 32bit machine to test this on but it should work , please let us know if it is now working on your 32 bit machines.
Amazing Frog? The Swindon Space Program Update (f0.2.8e)
A new Update available for Amazing Frog?. We are very proud (and relieved) to announce that f0.2.8e The Swindon Space Program Update is now available. After some pretty tricky bugs that popped up last minute… I wonder did we make it in time for Easter? Well we did try. Just so you know the bunny ears expire by the end of April.We added a lot of things to f0.2.8e that we have been meaning to add to Amazing Frog? for a long time. Some of these things you will have to earn or discover like the flamethrower of that contraption on the frogs back, I won’t spoil it. There are also more fundemental things like in-air controls for all vehicles. Cars also have a hop button where the handbrake was and handbrake is on right bumper.
Aside from being the “fire” update which was a pretty big system to implement, the moon is now more explorable which opens up a whole bunch of other things to do including gemsmash and moon buggy time trial among other things. Make sure you start your tour of Swindon with a visit to The Swindon Town Planning Office for further information of whats going on around town and take a peek at the change log.
Aside from all the fun stuff added in the is Update, we also added some more systematic stuff. The Steam detection (big red lazer walls in Hideout) has been rewritten and is now more explanatory on whats happening. We also added some super basic analytics, so we can start to gather what machines people are running Amazing Frog? on. This information can really help us moving forward.We will be ready to make any hot fixes this week so keep letting us know if you run in to issues. I am pretty sure a lot of things from previous version have been fixed like the cathead and tvhead. I think it would be best to give it a few days to see if there are any crazy problems and then i will make a 32bit version of this update for those that require it.Our next goal is to update the store page. We haven’t really updated it since we first put Amazing Frog? on Steam Early Access so it doesn’t really represent the game very well. Also it’s been ages since Hal and I made any videos. After we have done that I will come back and write a devblog about what happening with the u5 stuff, the new frog, online etc. For now… Happy Chocolate egg Weekend and enjoy f0.2.8e - The Swindon Space Program Update.
Amazing Frog? Devblog 013 (SSP)
Hello Again.
Sorry that its has been a while since the last devblog. Lots has been happening and its been getting really complex to explain what and why we are doing. I’ll do my best.
First off we have a rather fiery update, f0.2.8e, that is almost ready. You had the grapple hook, bombs and rc cars in f0.2.8d and we are introducing fire in various forms and a bunch of other things into f0.2.8e. Its a pretty big Unity 4 update again. Mainly it is new mechanics and systems. Its an exciting update. One of the main core new mechanics is Flammable trails….
For example take a can O fuel to your local Art gallery… leave a trail on the floor….
shoot the trail with your gun.
To be honest we haven’t explored all the possibilities of this yes. But we have been making sure the flames have an effect on most things that move.
Also there were some rumours about the Swindon Space Program actually going to the moon, not sure i can say what that is all about. I think some frogs daydreamed about going to the moon while riding a crazy buggy up on a hill.
So Gaz, on a more serious note... the online version and unity 5… Where is it?
Oh its happening. What you need to know is that The Online Unity 5 version of Amazing Frog? (f0.3.0) is coming. Not even Trump can stop that.
To talk about progress on f0.3.0, I should explain why in the last 6 Months of 2016 there was no UPDATE !!
It was depressing to have so long without releasing an update. Seriously, Hal and I love playing Amazing Frog? and a new update is literally a good time to sit down and play it for hours, maybe make some videos, but also to remember why we became game developers in the first place. But after the Big Switch which I mentioned in Devblog 008 we had our work cut out for us.
Its not that progress isn’t happening, its just taking a long time. Longer than we expected. This is beyond being tripped up by our usual blind optimism. This was not realising that pretty much EVERYTHING would need converting and rebuilding. Code and Assets. We never expected to have to change SO much just to get it to work, but we also,never expected to feel so empowered by Unity 5… The possibilities.
There is so much going on in the Unity 5 update that is so awesome, literally so many moments when Hal and I have been staring at the screen thinking shit… thats so awesome, did we really make that ? As arduous as the task is, Unity 5 forces you to step up and be a better developer. The current problem with the Amazing Frog? Unity 5 branch is it doesn’t all come together yet with the same kind of synergy as the f0.2.8 versions have. Its like lots of isolated clusters of a big beautiful puzzle. The unity 4 puzzle may be more complete but it will never be as nice to look at.
So In November after realising that we would find it too difficult to replace the standing unity 4 version on one go, we came up with a different plan. A plan that enabled more output.
Hal has been constructing objects and buildings for the Unity 5 version since before the Frog Milk Coffee Co Update, I think I spoke about this before. By focusing on the likes of new weapons or mechanics like the Grapple hook and active trails, it gave us the opportunity to start building new content that was Unity 5 safe, but would also work in Unity 4 again. These things are more related to smaller code driven objects rather than the new architectural features which define the Frogthropology™, like the Bank of Swindon. Each of the businesses and institutions in our Swindon are important to the ongoing development of Swindonshire. Objects and buildings are important, but its the social and Frogeconomics that will drive infrastructure of the FrogLife™ecosystem. If that makes sense to you, then great you now have an insight into our ambitions.
So the unity 5 development continues. Yes through December and January The Unity 5 development process slowed to give way to f0.2.8d and f0.2.8e but it did not stop. We have had to bend little with Unity 5. The physics is very different. Better basically. However, to get it too feel as fluid as Amazing Frog? we are having to make some changes. On the plus side… melee should be part of the basic frog actions, like we always dreamed, more on this after f0.2.8e
Also, On the grapple hook screenshots…. wow.
Amazing Frog? Holiday Update f0.2.8d SSSP
Its time. I’ll keep this short but we just made f0.2.8d available.
Yes thats right, we have done an update... Its not the unity 5 beta .. no not yet. And its not the online version. This is a gift from us to the community to say thank you for all your patience and also for making Amazing Frog? possible.
I won’t say too much about the Update other than there are more secrets as usual and you can unlock 12 holiday gifts. However, I will say this , the challenge will expire on the 12th day of Xmas as the decorations are taken down.
I’ll leave you to explore the update yourselves. Happy Holidays and Thanks.
So If you are still reading down to this bit, heres some more information about whats going on.
Lets call it the Devblog-y Bit of the post
Firstly, Why have we done another Unity 4 update?
The short answer is because the Unity 5 version is not ready and we couldn’t allow Xmas to pass without putting a festive update out… its just not how we roll.
The longer answer is along the lines of what I mentioned in the last devblog, although progress on the Unity 5 build is exciting, the feeling of the gameplay is not quite right yet and it has become increasingly necessary to reprogram a whole bunch of fundamental froggy stuff (F.F.S). Once I had got past my initial instinctive fears of change, it became very clear to me that this process is having an increasingly positive effect on the overall development. This is mainly because it is allowing us to reorganise some of our key fundamental systems. Key Systems like driving and access to cars, weapons and where to get them, currencies and where to spend it, apps and how to get more out of them, citizens and what they are doing, police robbers etc. We are not looking to lose the “open” nature of play in Amazing Frog? but after spending a couple of years developing and adding its been good to refine and organise.
How did we do it?
We have been working exclusively in Unity 5 for the past few months, so to make this update possible we again brought some aspects of the newer game into unity 4. This is why you may find that gift number 12 is fairly experimental.
Expect spelling mistakes. I know that the new xmas drink in the FrogMilk Coffee Co has the incorrect price on it its says 88 Frog Milk Tokens when it it actually 8. Also feel free to play spot Gaz’s rushed typos.
We never hold content back that is ready, we always want to get it straight into your hands. Since its is just the two of us we have nothing to gain really from holding back content that is ready to play. because once something is ready to play we are working on the next bit, we don’t have any level marketing strategies or anything like the bigger games companies. We embrace that this is Early Access and keep progressing the Amazing Frog? world.
I want to make one thing clear - The Unity 5 update will NOT be ready before Xmas… :(
We just don’t feel that its ready to be played. We have been doing some really cool stuff that I desperately want to share with every one, but its not ready as a whole. Hal has been busy fleshing out the high street, for the new businesses that will occupy the new buildings and we have made a lot of progress with multiplayer and the overall environment , but the physics is just not “Amazing Frog?y” enough. And to be blunt its going to take more time. On the positive side this means that when we do make the first Unity 5.0 beta available there will be a lot more new content than originally planned. Thank you for bearing with us.
Secret Santa’s 12 Secret Presents
We just felt that it would be lunarcy not to put out an update for you guys to play over the holiday period. We wanted to give you something special. We pulled up the Unity 4 version and started prototyping some of the unseen goodies we had been working on for Unity 5 and felt we had just cause to let you win access to them through SSSP (Secret Santa’s Secret Presents) Last year we dropped the Xmas update on Xmas Eve…So for 2016, we are going to try and get this one out a bit sooner :)
The next devblog will have a much more in-depth look at the upcoming beta. It has been a chaotic past month, working in both Unity 4 and 5, simultaneously again, and it can be difficult to find the time to put what we have been doing into words. As i mentioned before, sometimes the Unity 5 version feels like we are making an entirely new game, "Amazing Frog? 2" if you like and grappling with the conversion issues demands a very serious approach to development. Having some time to focus purely on making fun content has been incredibly refreshing for us. Helping us to remember why we are building this game that we love so much. I don’t want to spoil the surprises by saying what is in f0.2.8d, but we put some hidden stuff in there that we think is out of this world.
Also - I'm sorry I have been quiet in the discussions, but I want to express how grateful we are to everyone in the community for helping each other and making it such a cool place. Especially Zeron and Pootispaghetti who have also been super helpful bring things to my attention and sometimes I think they know more about Amazing Frog? than I do.
I will post here again when Secret Santa’s 12 Secret Presents is ready to play.
Amazing Frog Devblog 011b Making Progress
Status
Firstly Amazing Frog? Unity 5 conversion Status update - Well its all feeling a lot more like Amazing Frog? finally. Everything is finally coming together again. Many things we have been forced to work on is isolation, like the new Models the completely rebuilt car system, upgrading the buildings inside and out or the huge task of having everything in one optimised world so you can carry objects between the gym and swindon … I mean who doesn’t want to shoot all the lovely folks at the gym? Basically, Its a lot of work and even though there is still some way to go, finally we are starting to see the light.
So look, I am sorry I have not written a devblog for a while. I don’t update you all as often as I should. When I write these devblogs it takes me quite a bit of time, partly because I am rubbish at writing, but mainly because there always seems to be one more thing i can program or one more thing i can fix.
I always grab screen shots of exactly how the game is at the time i write the devblogs. Before we went to Steam Dev Days most things were not working due to some underlying changes I was making. This time all these screenshots were grabbed through friday night. It can be tricky deciding what to show or talk about as there are so many things. Also somethings we don’t want to expose just yet or perhaps we are not even sure if they will make it into the game. For example - the clouds from some screen shots in previous devblogs…
On the way back from Seattle as I was gazing out of the airplane window at the blanket of cottonwool clouds beneath and I could almost see Amazing Frog? being thrown up through them, impacting with the wing of the plane, farting, sliding back off and then falling beneath the clouds again… as you do. I said to Hal, we can’t have clouds unless you can jump over them, what would be the point? Some of the visuals we were working on looked good, but were being counter productive to gameplay, also destructive to our process. So with that in mind, I thought I would talk a little about what have been some of our major challenges over the past few weeks.
Recent Challenges.
A month ago, we were so excited about all the effects, and rendering techniques that were now available to us in Unity 5. We got seduced by them. New Cloud rendering, Water rendering, Day night Rendering - the possibilities !! But the more we got excited about these new possibilities the less pragmatic we were becoming about how they were effecting the gameplay and our development process. It turns out with the water and clouds we were using, there was no way we could get split screen to work and they were draining too much cpu. We had to abandon ship. After we returned from Steam Dev Days we took the drastic decision to start again with the water and completely rethink the sky. We needed to focus on things that work directly with game play and were not counter productive to aspects of the game that need to remain intact, like Split screen local multiplayer. We simplified everything it is much more stable and are now much happier with it. In short, we had to make sure everything new could work with everything you are already playing in f0.2.8c and more. So we are now being more brutal in how we edit what we put in. If it doesn’t work with multiple camera locations (split screen) and it cannot work with dynamic lighting (day night cycle) Then its not going in. As I write this…I am not sure if I can keep the rainbow yet :( but I really want to, but will update you on that next time.
The Day Night Cycle.
When cutting down on some of the new things we did keep the day night cycle as it was important to our overall plan for Amazing Frog? moving forward. We have not yet finalised how it works yet, but we definitely feel like time will be as important for the game as currency.
Using a Day night cycle has been a pretty steep learning curve for us. Until now we had only felt with scenes that had fixed lighting. Even on the OUYA night time version we had a fixed scene for that. Having a whole 20km world that has constantly changing light involves getting into a new way of thinking. Like how do we get time to feel natural? Thankfully Unity 5s lighting system with a bit of experience is frikkin' amazing. As i mentioned, until recently, we haven’t been able to bring all the “moving parts” of the game together, so getting a full picture of how light works with that has been difficult and full with problems. Its likely we will still spend some more time tweaking this over the coming weeks, but this is what it looks like at the moment. Here are some screen shots of swindon at dawn, dusk and in the moon light. Check out the paint on the road marking in the moonlit one.
Lets not forget the road markings!
I often write these blog posts from my perspective, but I should mention the road markings. While its a detail that may seem fairly insignificant, it has been a pretty huge problem with a lot of history, especially for Hal. Originally (back in 2012), Hal build the first model for Swindon as a super low poly model, which was originally intended to be seen only from above. (This was so we could throw frogs into the car park from the top of the Fayju Building.) As the game evolved the road markings have been an aspect we have wanted to correct. In earlier versions on Af? even on Steam, the original low resolution road makings from the first model were still present. Then when Hal made the new concrete roads in Unity 4 earlier this year, disappointingly, it was not possible to add road Markings onto a detailed tiled material. Now in Unity 5 it has been finally possibly for Hal to craft them in a way that he is happy with. And you can see from some of these screen shots how much detail there is in the roads inside The Swindon Walls now.
Also, everywhere the detail is much higher. If you look inside the new VROG you can see how much detail there is inside. I think at some point I will need to do some evolution screen shots, or perhaps we can set up an exhibition in game of the evolution of Amazing Frog?
All this detail does create another layer that worries me- Hal does have a habit of hiding things in the game environment and with this level of detail everywhere, well...
Fart Gyms
Something else that happened this week is that Hal passed me back the upgraded Gym that you can move freely in and out of from Swindon. It has seen an upgrade to the detail and without going into much detail… it has been expanded and there are more, functioning doors, leading to more .. er rooms...
Among other things, this week Hal will be spending some time on the task of integrating the Sewer and Lab into the larger world. One of my many tasks will be to fill the pool and get the gym frogs functioning in their new environment. Each of these processes will inevitably create other tasks, some if which i don’t know what they are yet.
Causality
Yup, I’m not going to lie, sometimes I wish I was more organised, but its not how I am wired. What I do know about the way i approach problem solving is one solution can easily lead to so many new possibilities. So its a positive process.
One major problem I had over the past few months in Unity 5 was that every time I allowed the NPC Frogs to be activated not only would the build crash with no explanation, but also the Unity Editor would crash. It really stumped me. I knew it would be something small as these things so often are, Ii put it to the side and carried on with all the other things that needed doing. I even went to speak to Unity about it at Steam Dev Days, but I actually found the cause while in Seattle. It was, as i suspected, a very simple thing, literally one line of code that had worked fine in Unity 4 and even in some versions of unity 5, but not any more. When fixed, the Frog citizens of Swindon became active again. At this point I realized that further optimisation was needed since Swindon was about to receive a lot more frogs as the sewer and gym areas were now also going to be active in the same world. I had built a bunch of helpers that define “zones” of activity , but they had always needed refinement. Now seemed like a good time. I soon realised these zones could be used for other forms of optimisation, such as rendering. Zones to guide the rendering choices the camera makes. This led me to tidying the camera code in a lot of ways, recreating the camera manager, enabling more control for camera take overs, more versatile movie cameras, more variety of vehicle cameras, the updates to the cameras then had an effect on how the on screen interfaces would be displayed, the messages, etc this sequence of events and changes goes on and I am not sure if I can pin point all the benefits that followed the fixing of that bug but they were plentiful and helped us make some interesting toys.
The Little Things
I guess the summery of this devblog is to say its all really coming together now. All the little things too, like the traffic cones. There is actually a lot more going on with the development than I have mentioned in this DevBlog. I haven’t even touched on whats happening with Online and how thats going to work or whats going on in the community. I will, but for now I think thats enough for today. Its going to be a nightmare writing the change log for the next version :/
Amazing Frog Devblog 011a - The Balancing Act
Part I
Often, I throw images at these blog posts so you can see what we have been up to. Today, I think, this is going to be a word heavy post. This is because most of our time recently has been spent working on solutions to existing problems.
It might seem at times that most of the game is inplace and that all we should need to do with updates is just add more stuff. To a certain extent this is true or has been true, it's a balancing act. Imagine you have been riding a unicycle for some time and you have become really good at it. So much so, that while you are unicycling, you can carry quite a few boxes and then some more boxes. You want to keep carrying more boxes, but sooner or later you'll need to rethink the unicycle or you will end up in a mess on the floor.
The "unicycle box stacking thing" is a metaphor where the boxes are new ideas and features and the unicycle is the existing engine or framework of the game. Put simply, you can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs and in this case the unicycle which represents many of our underlying architecture for the game... is eggs.
If you are thinking,
"This is an announcement that Hal has built an unicycle and Gaz has programmed so you can carry boxes while riding it",then I am sorry... but the metaphor had to come from somewhere, so I am not saying we haven't thought about it and thinking about it I do love eggs.
As you know, if you have been following these devblogs, our main focus is Online play and we are happy with how this is going, but the systems that we have built up over the past few years are not conforming well. Many are having to be completely restructured to accommodate the change. Change is good because it means improvement, but it is time consuming.
Amazing Frog? is a physics based game and its important to us that we aim to keep as much synergy between what objects are doing on every ones machines as we can. For us, this means that we are integrating online capability to all objects at as low a level as we can and this has involved a major restructuring of virtually all "frog" systems.
A bit like upgrading a unicycle to a BMX.
Its taking longer than we had hoped. But its looking better than we had imagined.
Its Steam Dev Days, I am writing this in the early hours of the morning before it starts ... I think I have jet Lag...
