It's been a while since we've written a blog post; everything has just been so hectic in the studio that we haven't really had much time to write any. But now that the initial buzz from alpha 2.0 release has subsided, we are able to get back into the usual stream of work. Since the new release back in late August/early September, we've have loads of feedback and certain design changes are currently being tested to improve the initial flow of Glitchspace. One of the biggest issues that has haunted Glitchspace for the beginning is the first time user experience; having the player do and understand exactly what the designers want them to etc. With Glitchspace; getting them accustomed with both the mechanics and the interface quickly and seamlessly. It's something that is a never ending job for designers and an especially large and important one for us at Space Budgie.
Attempts in 2.0 showed animated illustrations intended to demonstrate the possible interactions the player has with the nodes, however this was often found to confuse many play testers who believed them to be part of the actual puzzle. A lot of play testers were also not noticing the little axis widget in the bottom right. This was a big problem as a number of the puzzles hinged around players knowing which direction to translate or apply force. We therefore decided to approach the initial tutorials with a little more “brute force”. Currently testing in our R&D build, we are restructuring the initial stages with a step by step tutorial on how to use the interface as well as briefly teaching some of the basic functions and how they interact. The aim is to spoon feed this knowledge early, so that players can make intuitive conclusions later without our help. On screen help prompts are also being added to offer players a little more help with direction and we're adding a little toggle-able help button that will explain certain nodes to the player should they need that extra information.
We've also been playing around with an exciting new feature that has been getting very positive feedback from play tester. We don't want to give too much away just yet as we're still refining the design but let's just say it is an expansion on a feature that was briefly introduced in the alpha 1.8. We also have an exciting announcement coming up in the next few weeks regarding a release later this month, so be sure to keep an eye on our social media!
Graham out!
Alpha 2.1 Update
Hello everyone!
We're excited to announce another update this week; Alpha 2.1! The most noticeable change with this update would be the addition of Sandbox 2.0; an updated version of the Legacy Sandbox (don't worry the original is still there as well).
Changes to 2.1 include:
Addition of the new Sandbox 2.0.
FOV slider added to the visual options.
Functional updates to the connectors (you can now click on the tail to auto-attach it to the cursor)
Addition of Loading screen.
Updated the visual options so that users must “Apply Changes” before a new Resolutions / Quality setting will take effect.
Added a button in the main menu to reset all Saved Data and Settings.
Fixed a bug that allowed the user to skip one tutorial puzzle.
Fixed activation distances of Tutorial Cuboids.
Fixed a bug which displayed the Level Select option in the Legacy Sandbox Menu.
Fixed a visual bug which would cause the cursor to permanently display scissors.
Thanks!
Space Budgie
Alpha 2.0 Hotfixes
Hello everyone!
We just pushed a small update to Alpha 2.0 to fix a couple of issues people mentioned (hopefully...)
- Fixed issue with all of the geometry being displaced in the final area of level 3
- Fixed crashes with changes to graphics settings in the menu caused due to anti-aliasing
- A temporary workaround for our vsync not working due to Oculus: vsync is enabled on qualities medium or above.
Currently looking into the CPU usage next that one person reported.
Thanks!
Space Budgie
Alpha 2.0 Released
Yep so it finally happened. We updated Glitchspace. And the game now requires your input and bad puns:
Here's the change log:
- Everything has changed
End of Change Log.
[though more pertinent, we got the windows 8 and windows 10 crashes fixed]
Any issues, bugs we missed, feedback etc just let us know. Now go play and help us spread the word about the update! Tweet, like, whatever it, and help us pay rent!
Here's a new site for the game too to share around
www.glitchspace.com
Thanks everyone for your support and patience. We've learned a lot from 2.0 that we'll hopefully be able to apply to future releases.
Space Budgie
Alpha 2.0 Complete
So we've been pretty quiet for the past several weeks but...
I have been a very busy body.....I think. In the last couple of weeks, I've worked on designing and concepting the Front End Menu for the game. It's something that we secretly wanted to go back and work on and with my work now completed on 2.0, I've been able to do so. Right, let's get started with a torrent of images. So, remember this image that's used for the Front End of the game currently?
The 2D artwork was going to be replaced with a fully 3D environment a while back. It was all built, however, it was put aside and forgotten about.
Yep, we've moved on from there, to get things going, the next step was to create a new version of the Front End menu and for the time being a quick concept was created.
Design wise.
Since the start of project we have always wanted to have this menu be a fully 3D environment, with all the buttons existing as part of the game world. The other aspect we wanted to have was a "real world," where the player starts the game. Then the next step for me was to design the Front End from the ground up and as I already had it gestating in my head, it was easier to quickly sketch out a plan of the room and get going.
From the plan, an isometric view of the room was created and as it was vector art, it was easy to flip the room around and focus on each of the areas.
Once the room has been built, the next step will be to play test a few variations of navigation methods that we have in mind and to find out what does and what doesn't work with the controls, find any issues that we may have missed while designing/making the room and to especially avoid any nausea for the player with the Oculus.
Concepting
After the plan and design of the room was created, they were taken and the concepts were fleshed out more to get a better idea of how the room would look it in game. Enjoy some of the concept work below:
The next step is to build the 3D environment with all working buttons, then play test it, fix problems, play test again, fix problems, tweak controls and Art, playtest again and then when it works, we'll add it into a future update.
Graham here! Whilst the others in the office are working non stop to get everything ready for the Alpha 2.0's release, I have been tasked with writing this week's blog post! (To my left, Gaz is having a blast testing the VR mode with the Oculus, and I'm here... typing... alone...I never get to wear the Oculus Rift).
This last month has been so frantic I'm not too sure as to where I should begin. First off we've been busy QA Testing almost every inch of 2.0 so that it's as bug free as we can possibly make it. Just when we think we're in the clear another random issue will pop up which, when fixed, subsequently causes two more issues, and fixing those two... well you get the idea. Safe to say though, we now believe the build is relatively bug free (although if any of you meticulous players out there find anything game breaking – and somehow you always do – don't hesitate to send us a message via steam or social media and we'll be happy to fix it asap!)
I personally have been play testing the build with player's who haven't had exposure to Glitchspace before. Hearing people's feedback as they play, and watching what they do is always interesting. It's been a real eye opener for me to see some things that I assumed would be pretty simple, have people scratching their heads over. It's all part of the design process; Design, Create, Play test, Refine. And it doesn't even stop after release; As soon as 2.0 is out, we're right back into development looking to create new levels, refine older ones and improve a number of tutorial features we believe are still a little awkward for new players (no rest for the wicked). Expect more changes in the future of Glitchspace as we try endlessly to create a refined and polished experience!
We've got some great new features in the pipes for future releases of Glitchspace. I've been playing around with some new levels and functions, pushing the function blocks further than originally designed. Impact forces and conditionals are on my radar, and the thought of making some funky physics puzzles is awesome! Here's a sneak peak of some of the R&D I've been doing.
Playing around with physics blocks is... Phun! (Unfortunately that's all you get, I've been limited to 1 pun per blog post)
The day is fast approaching where we reveal to you what we've worked so hard to achieve over the past 7/8 months or so! We've rebuilt the game from the bottom up based on feedback from you and we're nervous and excited to see how you react! One of the major things we haven't unveiled yet is our new branding! We felt that the existing branding while recognisable never really fitted with the rest of the game and despite effort originally to help tie it in more through the menu screens it still wasn't sitting right.
This blog post will take a whistle stop tour of the process we went through to design a logo when we haven't really done that before (so be prepared for some horrible trial and error initially)
The things we liked about the initial logo
Things we didn't like
With this in mind we drew up a list of rules that the new logo needed to have
To start with we tried to keep the original font so that it still had an amount of recognisability with those that have seen the product before. For colour palette we aimed to stick with colours that could be seen easily against the game itself with an accent of red to mimic the editable objects. We also experimented with having more of a glitch effect on the text but for the most part we found that a lot of the details of the more favoured concepts were lost quickly when the logo was shrunk down.
After a little more experimentation we realised that we were probably going to need to lose the current font. It was worth playing around with some much more abstract concepts to see if anything would stick. So here's the wildcard page and a few mock ups using the most extreme light and dark environment tests.
Some of the thinner fonts were interesting but again were lost when the logo was made smaller, however the introduction of the shapes found in the new geometry gave us the spark of inspiration we needed. In the end we came up with this mix of shapes and we think it looks pretty good and checks all the boxes! Let us know what you think though!
And a little something extra that mimics the toolbox too!
I thought I'd give you lovely people a wee sneak peek at some of the aesthetic work I've been doing for 2.0. I hope you folk like lots of pictures and screenshots pictures, if not you're in for a bumpy ride!
Alright, initially this level was very closed in and compact, this worked as it being one of the initial levels you play through but I felt that the pacing was a smidge off and as such basically expanded the whole thing. I tried to break the level up with a few more manageable sections which more intervals between puzzles, allowing the players to view the environment and brace themselves for the next puzzle. Although as this is one of the initial levels I wanted to keep it fairly simple and not overwhelm the player with lots of platforming sections, especially as this is an aspect that, during playtesting, a lot of people struggled with. The main struggle was finding a balance between platforming and bridged sections so that it wasn't boring.
The other levels aesthetics have gone with a very distinct theme and this level is no different, although for I have opted for a cleaner and simpler overall visual aesthetic. Taking a lot of inspiration from more modern architecture designs. I kept the decorative trim fairly simple with a few key features in the level for added interest. These key features helped give additional interest to sections where there was less puzzles or platforms.
As this is a rather dark level I took this opportunity to play with light wherever I could, in particular using the main level light and level geometry.
Sometimes playing with the geometry just didn't work and areas were consistently stripped back and redone such as the section below. This is one of the reasons this was such a big workload for me as it was important that we were able to finalise on something that felt right with the rest of the game and we wanted to get it right.
On top of this I've also been working towards designing the lights for the game (random spot lights with no apparent source wasn't the greatest look).
The lights went through many iterations till we decided on something that worked well.
The strip light look worked nicely for some aspects of the levels but it ran the risk of looking too clichéd sci-fi so had to be used sparingly if at all. They also didn't quite have the same effect of light as the others did and left rooms still rather dull, which was undesirable.
This was a more accidental modern look that left our level looking more like a hotel hallway than the abstract and mysterious world we're used to! So naturally, these lights were scrapped.
Finally we moved more towards the sunken floor lights. Now these take some tweaking but overall they don't get in the way by cluttering up the level and manage to give out a good amount of light so that you're not lost in a sea of purple gloom.
Although we've settled on these lights for now we will probably be expanding on our array of various light sources, to keep things interesting. Lemmie know what you folk think!
That's me for this weeks folks, I hope you enjoyed my tale of aesthetics and lights. Till next time,
I've been part of the Space Budgie team now for just under one month and what a crazy month its been! Getting up to speed with a product mid development can be an exhausting task. I must have played through Glitchspace almost a dozen times in my first week alone.
My specialty is in level design, however with almost all of the design for 2.0 nailed down and solidified, small tweaks here and there were all that was needed. Attention has instead been directed towards the aesthetics of the levels; audio, detail, lighting - all the fun parts of level design that you have to resist doing until sufficient testing and iteration has been done.
Whilst detailing the levels, it was suggested that each level could have a “theme” to help create a little variation in the environment (because let's face it; Regardless of how engaging the puzzles are, staring at the same arrangement of blue colored blocks for hours might get a little fatiguing). With this in mind, we've started experimenting with various themes for each of the levels. Numerous play testers had made comments in the past on the Aztec vibe they received from the Collisions level, and through some experimentation, a Gothic theme emerged for Forces. This opens up the opportunity to create narrative set pieces to build around the puzzles that are memorable to the player. Whilst I've been darting back and forth between various levels, (and even prototyping some brand new stuff!) most of my focus has been on the Forces level and one such set piece that has emerged is what I've grown to call “The Courtyard”.
Its built up around the first three puzzles the player encounters in Forces and resembles a manor garden (water feature and all! – sorry I get a little excited over the water feature). Whilst building it up, I found myself subconsciously making up a narrative ; “what would people have done in this section?”, “where would this staircase have led?”, “why is there a nice water feature inside?!” We want to imply a narrative in these environments, to immerse the player into the world and let their imagination run.
That's all for this week, best be getting back to work!
