Glitchspace
Final Dev Log - Soundcapes of Glitchspace
Glitchspace Is Compiled For A May 5th Release
Hey all
So the bad news is we missed April.........
But the good news is we are actually releasing next Thursday May 5th:
Here is the launch trailer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btUfMV6Hl0U
We'll be updating the store page details next week. I may put in one more dev log before launch. Also might do a post-mortem of some sorts on the experiences we had in making the game after the game is out.
EDIT: On the price point: It's not being changed for the full release. There is also NO launch discount in case you're worried about that either. So you can happily buy the game then with no price diff if you're worried about that.
See you very soon!
Space Budgie.
Glitchspace Is Compiled For A May 5th Release
So the bad news is we missed April.........
But the good news is we are actually releasing next Thursday May 5th:
Here is the launch trailer.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btUfMV6Hl0U
We'll be updating the store page details next week. I may put in one more dev log before launch. Also might do a post-mortem of some sorts on the experiences we had in making the game after the game is out.
[EDIT: Somebody asked about the price point: It's not being changed]
See you very soon!
Space Budgie.
Update on Full Release
So a couple of weeks back we announced the release window for Glitchspace as April 2016 through social media: so there's not long to wait! Here's the GIF that we posted out for it:
We've been meaning to post an announcement about this on here as well, but we've been incredibly swamped with prep for GDC, getting the last of the game's content finished and polish that we haven't been able to do so; apologies for that!
In terms of updates, our original intention was the have a beta 1.0 release last week, but as all of the build prep eats into our dev time we chose to combine that update with the full version next month. We know that going two months without new content won't be ideal here, but this decision was purely so we didn't have to delay our launch window further unnecessarily. Currently we're working on the finishing the ending area now, putting in the last bits and pieces of art and the game soundtrack, so this way it'll be a very substantial update for you all to get your hands on.
Thanks for everyone's support throughout dev, and here's to the final push!
Space Budgie
Dev Blog 26 – That Pause Menu
Now that’s out the way and let’s get right to business of work. Over the last couple of months my work has been split between Concept artwork, UI iterations, Level Editor UI, creating New and iterating icons and the ingame Pause Menu.
I just stuck the images to show I am working hard, see.
Moving along, I am going to stick with the Pause Menu for this blog post. I’m going to try and make this exciting, so here we go…… I think I am going to fail with the exciting bit. One of the last parts of the game that needed an overhaul and it was a long time coming was for the Pause Menu, it is one of the last remnants left in the current build of Glitchspace and I think you can still see it in the Legacy version. I’ve added a couple of screenshots to remind me.
Looking back on it, I am not a fan of the original version as there were a few problems: the text was centralised and it looked like the pause menu was in a bad mood and shouted at the player, besides the look of it did not match the rest the game’s visual style and the font was all upper case and. But in defence, it was done quickly and the team kept meaning to get back to it and eventually we did.
For the new version I had the idea for the Pause Menu look on my mind for a while. The Menu itself was an extension of the Front End menu and Ingame Null Canvas, it made it easier to quickly create a few mocks ups and there were a couple of mocks up I liked, a semi transparent white version and semi transparent darker version. My preference was the darker version as the white version caused eye fatigue and eye strain…. Something I did not like to experience.
With a moderate success for the Pause Menu, I created a Pause Menu diagram, just to help place and to keep track of where everything was in the menu and more importantly to keep myself sane. I know, it does not look exciting.
After that, I blocked and created the rest of the Pause menu pages, to see how they would look
One problem I was concerned about was the contrast, because as the game environments varied from dark purple to light blue I had to double check if it the menu worked, I took three screenshots from the game, then Pause Menu design was overlaid on the three backgrounds.
Like so:
Light Background
Medium Background
Dark Background
And I was relieved and happy to say that it worked, phew. ….. It may not be exciting. However, these are important things to be checked and rechecked, if need rechecked again.
The next step with the Pause Menu was to optimise and reduce the file assets sizes, this is good practice and because the programmer asked me to do it and I could not refuse. The icons were created and checked in illustrator, then used its 9 Slice Scaling options to check if they was no distortions to them, once that was done, we used Unity’s 9 Slice Scaling option on the sprites and they still worked with no distortion or issues to the sprite.
The image below has the example of the original square sprite using the 9 slice scaling and scaled to the rectangle with no issues, easy…… But don’t tell anyone about this, somehow I forgot about this, don’t tell the rest of the team, I am trying to be a consummate professional here and I pretended to know that…. shhhhhh
The current state of the Pause Menu is that it has been implemented and it is working, it will to need to be fine tuned, elements fixed, font sizes and layouts sorted and corrected with additional testing and further iterations to spot anything overlooked and missed, which usually we find something we missed.
I am happy with how the Pause Menu looks and it has come a long nicely. So for now, I bid you all adieu for now, I bow out here to get back to work and get more stuff done. If it is needed to make my next post exciting, I shall do it with a motorbike stunts of some sorts. Keep an eye out for the new Pause Menu on one of the upcoming updates and my post ends here…….. for now.
Alpha 2.3 Release
Hi guys! We hope you're all having a fantastic 2016 so far. Here at Space Budgie we've been working hard since the new year on Glitchspace, adding levels, refining puzzles, polishing aesthetics and generally working towards improving the overall Glitchspace experience as much as we can.
Today we're very excited today to be releasing our new Alpha 2.3 update! Due to the increasing number of potential conflicts we are having with developing the new system on top of the old, this update will only available via the beta branch (see end of blog post for more information about how to access the beta branch)
So what's in the update I hear you say?
New levels:
As is stands we have most of the game's main chambers designed with basic aesthetics and lighting in place. In this update however we are just adding chambers 1-21 which encompasses Transformations, Collisions and Physics (next update we go a little crazy with If and Mathematics but we are still tweaking a bunch of the puzzles so they aren't quite ready yet). These new levels we've added are still subject to design changes however, so don't be surprised if next update there are some differences (even playing through it earlier today I noticed a bunch of things that i'd like to tweak here and there).
New Visuals:
We've also added a number of new visuals into the R&D build. The most noticeable is the new dataflow! New UI elements are also present as well as some more geometry changes here and there.
Bug Fixes:
Finally we've fixed a mountain of bugs we were noticing from the previous build. There are still going to be a large number, but with each update we're trying to reduce these as best as possible. If you do find bugs please don't hesitate to contact us with the details. We will aim to fix as many as possible, but some take a little longer than others.
We are in full work mode here at Space Budgie! Mus has another blog post ready for you guys next week, so keep an eye on our social media so as not to miss out!
[Accessing the Beta Branch]
- Right click on Glitchspace in Steam
- Go to properties
- Go to the Betas tab
- From the Dropdown menu select Alpha2.3 – R&D Build Only
- Close properties and wait for download to complete
- Re-launch Glitchspace
Dev Blog 25 - Progress Update And Sound
Hello readers,
So we've been lacking lately in the blog department with other development duties having to take priority. As it's been a while since our last blog I figure that it would be a good time to update everyone on what's been happening at Space Budgie HQ.
With regards to the next update, we're having to hold it off until January. We were hoping to put it out this week before Christmas break, but unfortunately too many things broke at the last minute and it didn't give us enough time to test the update. Once we're back in the new year we'll put it out for release ASAP.
In other news, we've also finalized our release window now for coming out of early access. We're not ready to share the date just yet, but people won't be needing to waiting too long (relatively speaking at least!). What I can say is that you can expect the release date to be announced in the next several months, with not too long to wait after that. The mechanic of the game is close to where we want it to be, so we'll be spending the remainder of our time adding the rest of the levels to Glitchspace and polishing everything up for the release.
So for this behind the scenes look, I figured we'd revisit the sound department of the game, as it's been a while since we've had a look at it. Aside from my other studio duties, I get to jump back into it now and again and I've largely being working on finishing the remaining sound effects left for the game as well as replacing placeholder assets. Here's some examples of what I've been up to (some of them aren't in the game yet as other work has taken priority, but they'll all be in for the next update):
The Fountain
At the moment the game has a lot of empty space and as the environment is very abstract we thought that taking an abstract approach to how the game world sounds would compliment it. We're using these sparingly as they're designing to work with set pieces in the game.
Take the game fountain. This was initially tricky to figure out, as it spews out squares (and how does a fountain of squares sound like?). I just went with a literal translation here and just focused on the water, the light sources and using a trickling sound for the squares. This trickling was the sound of bacon sizzling being recorded (so yes, there is bacon in the game...). I've split up the elements into three separate audio tracks below (the middle one is the bacon if you're interested...). The end file is for when the player is close up to the fountain: here I wanted the player to feel like they really were standing under a fountain and getting splashed somewhat.
https://soundcloud.com/ronanquigley/the-fountain
Atmospheres
Some other constructions in the game lend themselves to more environmental sorts of sounds as well. Here I put together rainfall and some stormy-like wind for one of the chambers (you'll hear this one in chamber 6).
https://soundcloud.com/ronanquigley/atmosphere-example
The Light Shaft
At Space Budgie, we're all about shafts (sorry, bad internal joke...), and another abstract example is... the light shaft. Initially I just had the drone here, but I decided to layer in this bird-like sound on top of it to draw your ears more. Interestingly it isn't actually birds, it's just short high pitched noise bursts with reverb on them:
https://soundcloud.com/ronanquigley/light-shaft-example
Animations
There's a number of different animations in the game (some more environmental ones are still to go in), but I figured that I'd show these two for the chamber where you pick up the toolbox. Earlier versions of these are already in the game. After putting them in, I decided to beef up one and tone the other one done (the earlier version of the animation before picking your toolbox up sounded a bit too sinister so I chose to pull it back a bit)
https://soundcloud.com/ronanquigley/animation-examples
Ambiences
I split the background audio loop into two categories: a loop for the purple areas of the game and a loop for the blue areas of the game. I tried doing a more cyberspace drone a while back, but it just sounded like you were on some sort of space-ship so just went with these more organic ideas instead. I wanted the blue one to make you feel high up, with the purple areas feeling dark and low.
https://soundcloud.com/ronanquigley/world-ambience-examples
Ther's others that I haven't shown, but hopefully this gives you a better idea of how the finished soundscape for the game is coming along. There's not too much left for me to do in this department: once that's done it'll be a case of writing the last music and getting all of that into the game's new story mode (which will result from the R&D mode that we're developing).
Thanks for reading and have a great new year!
Ronan
Story Mode Fixes
So a number of people have informed us that our previous hotfix to address some issues has resulted in players not being able to progress in the alpha 2.0 story mode. We have updated the game just now with a fix for it!
Thanks
Space Budgie
Alpha 2.2 Release
It’s been pretty busy here in the Space Budgie office; we’ve been hard at work removing irrelevant things, fixing and rejuvenating old things and adding a bunch new things to Glitchspace! With the release of Alpha 2.2, there’s a bunch of changes coming to Glitchspace that we thought we’d spend a little while talking about.
Legacy Mode
It is with a heavy heart that we announce the removal of Legacy Mode from the main game. Whilst it is a nice feature to offer both old and new players the chance to play an older version of Glitchspace, it was becoming harder and harder to maintain. With each new change made to the current build, there was always a chance of conflict with the older system, which has subsequently cost us many working hours finding and fixing issues. Unfortunately with so much work to accomplish on the main game in such a small amount of time, we believe it in our best interest to lay the Legacy Mode to rest with the release of Alpha 2.2.
R&D
In it’s place however we are adding a new R&D to the main menu. This R&D build works off of the system introduced in Alpha 2.0, and is a taste of the direction the new gameplay and puzzles are going. We are going to be regularly adding and changing the R&D build so keep an eye on our social media pages to see what new features get added.
We were very proud of the release of 2.0, however it was pretty obvious after release that there were some issues that needed to be address. We did a handful of designs and prototypes on some of the more major issues and the current R&D build is the result of said changes in practice. Let’s take a closer look at some of the issues and how we’ve tried to address them:
The tutorial was ineffective
In alpha 2.0 the tutorial, put simply, didn’t work. Play testers weren’t understanding what the animations on screen were doing (sometimes thinking them to be actually part of the puzzles). The glitched nodes that were designed to reveal information slowly to the player proved to be confusing and a lot of players didn’t notice the widget in the bottom right that displayed the axis.
This has been the biggest headache for us over the last few months; Effectively conveying all the information a player needs to know about playing Glitchspace (from the UI, to the connecting of Nodes, to the interacting with red Cuboids in the world). And this is all before we’ve even begun to touch on the huge amount of actual functions the player can add to the canvas and how they interact with one another. It’s a task that has been done and redone countless times, but we believe we are finally getting to a point we are happy with.
They say a picture says a thousand words, but in this instance we believe words say a thousand words. We’ve incorporated a step by step walk through to the first couple of Cuboids that each touch on a different UI and gameplay mechanic. These are usually one or two screens of text (accompanied by an animation) followed by an interactive step by step. Additionally we have added prompts that appear on both the tool and in the world that inform the player of simple things (like avoid data flow or pickup etc). Finally we’ve added a toggle-able help icon on the NULL interface that when clicked on will try and explain the various nodes you have added to the canvas.
The Puzzles Felt Very Binary
There was usually only one way to solve each puzzle, and it could eventually be figured out through trial and error. Whilst this is sometimes the case for a lot of puzzle games, it was not in line with Glitchspace’s core design; we want people to come out of the game with a better understanding of basic scripting logic and it was common in Alpha 2.0 playtests (particularly in the tutorial) for players to simply connect nodes together without really understanding what they were doing.
The general design mentality for Alpha 2.0 was simply “solve the cuboid and progress”. With R&D we’ve tried to change it to put more emphasis on the goal being to reach the end of a chamber to the portal. Obstacles prevent the play from simply walking there and thus the cuboids need to be manipulated in ways to overcome these obstacles.
In Alpha 2.0, the player’s “inventory” of functions was tied to individual Cuboids. Each Cuboid would offer a variety of available functions specific to that puzzle. The reasons for this were to limit the player in their choices so as to avoid potentially breaking the puzzle (e.g. sending the cuboid 500 units off into the air), and to try and force the player into using a variety nodes. If the player could use Translate to solve every puzzle, Glitchspace would get dry very quickly. In R&D, we’ve changed it so that the “inventory” is an ever growing library attached to your tool. Your toolbox will display every function you have obtained up to that point and rather than removing certain functions for individual puzzles, the tool box will reconfigure during certain chambers. When reconfigured, some functions will appear glitched and will be unusable whilst in that chamber.
Tool Upgrade
Back in Alpha 1.82 you might remember that in the final stages of the game you gained the ability to fire code out of the gun. This feature felt somewhat underdeveloped and appeared very late in the game. In the R&D build we decided to isolate one of the more interesting elements of this mechanic (specifically firing a programmable cuboid from the tool) and bring this functionality to the forefront, introducing it much earlier to the player and ingraining it as one of the core mechanics. In the R&D build, creating a cuboid is now introduced during the tutorial as an upgrade to your tool. Creating cuboids and programming them separately to the ones in the world is fundamental to solving the puzzles. Think of it like your own Companion Cube.. oid.
There are various other features and changes present in the R&D build and we’d love to hear what your thoughts on them are. Send any opinions, suggestions, and bugs to us either via our Steam Community page or various social media outlets, we’d love to hear from you. Alternatively we shortly be adding a link in the main menu to a feedback form that will allow you to share you thoughts directly to the development team.
Known Issues
The R&D Build is very much an in development build of Glitchspace and is likely to have numerous issues. Some of the one’s we’ve noticed and are working on fixing include:
- There may be issues regarding Oculus, feel free to send us a message if you experience any problems
- Occasional frame rate drops in R&D
- Some minor UI issues
Level Editor
On a final note, we teased a few months back that we were working on a level editor so that you guys could start building your own puzzle chambers. A working build is almost there and we hope to have a basic version out to you guys soon. It unfortunately won’t have Workshop support on release, but we hope to get it implemented shortly after. Keep an eye on this update as we’re super excited to see what you guys create!
DevBlog 24 -Tutorial Animations
Hi! Robin here!
You know what I love to do? Animate. You know what there hasn't been much call for for a while? Animations. This makes me sad, so when Graham turned round to me and said we need a whole bunch of animations for tutorials, I was on it like a shot.
As you may know by now our game has been quite difficult to make tutorials for. We've tried a number of approaches but all of them have been lacking in some way or another. Nothing seemed to be able to replace the ability to stand next to you and show you how things work in person so we thought, why not show you with a mix of well chosen words and simple little animations that clearly (hopefully) show you exactly how to do things!
I decided that while these animations needed to represent the information clearly it would be nice if they were executed in a way that mimics blueprints, as they're showing the core workings of the game. I really like the aesthetic of blueprints and while I needed to leave off the construction lines, the white outlines on a coloured background would work nicely.So here they are!
What's quite nice about this one is that my animations can then feedback into animations in the actual interface.
This one might need some revision. Not sure if the mouse is clear enough. What's the best way of showing right click?!
I like the little jiggle the nodes do when they unhook.
That's all for now! I have other animations to get on with.
Robin