Images

2015.10.31 Boss 101 Finding your Gopher Buddies

Happy Halloween and welcome to the weekly Boss 101 update!

Over a Year of Weekly updates!

Did you know we have been doing the weekly updates for over a year now!? Just for you, each week we put together our progress reports and share with you what we hope you find interesting and useful about not just Boss 101 but gamemaking.

THANK YOU FOR STOPPING BY!

Gopher Buddies

This week we are talking about GOPHERS! Gophers and their magical ability to build things and help you out. One of your gopher buddies is the Professor and he is there to help you build up the Command Center and upgrade your weapons but you know what?!? YOU CAN HAVE MORE GOPHER FRIENDS!

Yep, once you have cleared a round once the gophers feel safe to emerge and leave their hiding spot. All you need to do is go collect them and bring ‘em back to the Command Center. In the game there are 25 gopher buddies scattered across the game. Among those 25 are 5 main types of gophers who handle different chores back at your base. Let’s meet the types:

Those are the five types of gophers you collect and when you bring them back to the Command Center they get to upgrading the machinery inside the Upgrade room. Here’s a look at the base setup for the upgrades.

The machinery goes here and improves as you bring in more buddies to improve the place.

While you’re collecting things the game will helpfully guide you to the levels your buddies are still waiting on. And when you collect a gopher you get a SWEET achievement medal in the map room! Look at that little guy – sitting on top of the world!

I think the big question is what exactly are your buddies working on? Well, you will have to collect them all to find out. Whatever it is– they sure think it’s important. So get on it and bring them all together.

Boss 101 folks, it’s got drama, adventure and gopher saving. What more could you ask for.

Destructoid Column Started!

Fresh from my series on How to Make a Game come a new series starting up at Destructoid. Check out the latest blog here:

Destruction Column Link – Making Games and More

Thanks for stopping by and remember to keep checking back for more updates and always LIVE YOUR DREAMS!

-Tim

2015.10.24 Boss 101 Weather Systems

Welcome to the latest Boss 101 update!

Today we are on the polish bandwagon and talking about weather. OK, so weather in Boss 101 is mostly about adding atmosphere and a nice look to a level. We have talked of course about lightning storms affecting the player and other interactable moments but for today we are going to focus on weather as it accentuates the look of our levels.

How we make types of weather

Not surprisingly the weather I am talking about is all done inside our particle system. Our main man on the tech side of things – Joshua – came up with a brilliantly simple way to create effective and low cost weather systems with a setup even I can understand!

We start with the particle itself (snow, rain or perhaps a bit of newspaper blowing down the street). This is created in Photoshop or some pixel program and then animated if need be for color variance or rotation (more on this later). For things like a newspaper bit we animated it in place and spinning in various cool ways. Three simple animations named idle0, idle1, idle2, idle3, idle4, idle5. Those are all saved off and stored for use in the particle system.

Animation setup

When the setup for the particle happens we create an object (in this case a newspaper bit object) and then have it play one of its three animations. When that animation is finished it selects a new one randomly from the same list. OK, still with me? GOOD!

The particle system grabs that object and moves it across the screen in whatever direction we specify. Left, right, up or down. For newspapers we move them right to left to simulate the effect of blowing down a street. Easy huh? When you add in the effect of the random spinning animations it really helps sell it. We also drop in fade in and fade outs to help further the illusion.

Particle weather called from a level script

Now you may be asking yourself “Self, why don’t they just do all that spinning and stuff from inside the particle system?” That is a great question and it is entirely possible to do this but it would have meant more coding. Joshua’s time could be put elsewhere since adding those little spinning animations is easy AND the ability to grab from random idles adds a new dimension to the possibilities of the weather system. We could have added wind streaks for instance and used the random animations to have swirls and gusts at a small cost.

So there are the basics of the system and check out examples below for more shots of how we do it!

Newspapers blowing at the beginning of a round

Rain in the forest – same system as above with different configuration

Snow effects

Ash falling in the post apocalyptic worlds

Pause Menu Screenshot
Boss 101 – an in-game break while working on exit menu in the pause UI. Even when we pause we don’t pause!

Thank you again for your time and remember to live your dreams!

-Tim

2015.10.17 Boss 101 Update Fireworks and Hyperspace!

Welcome back to the weekly Boss 101 Update! Thank you for your support and your time!

We have a whole bunch of things to talk about so let’s get rolling. As we mentioned previously, we are getting deep into the polish phase. By this we mean many, many of the systems are in place but need a tweak here and there to get them up to the quality we think you deserve.

As always – Boss 101 is about bringing you the best entertainment and fun we can. Every single thing we do always starts with a reason involving fun. In today’s update we are looking at the various little touches we are adding to spruce up otherwise straightforward end of round statistic screens. Check this out!

Fireworks, Warp Levels and Flying with the Clicks Rocketship

We have the in-between round setup for the Endless Boss mode. Last week we spoke about fireworks and we dropped in the first pass of the controls and effects this week. In the series of photos below you can see Max and STEVE flying around in the warp space (just like you will too!). During this time you can  check your stats, contemplate the next round or, best of all, set of fireworks to celebrate your win! YEAH BABY!

Basic Firework Test in Warp

Flying around the front of the Cosmic Clicks ship

Flying around the engines of the Clicks ship – look at those things flaming up!

End of Round Loss

So when you lose the round the robots kindly sweep your unconscious body off the street for later recovery. Isn’t that nice!? Haha

Screenshots of gameplay tests and tunes

Trying out a mid-level superMax bomb on the Boss. You get these bombs over the course of the game and they can deal some serious damage when fully upgraded. Here you can a first run test of the art and effects. Things are only looking up from this point forward.

Dodging a flaming pterodactyl head!

Another sky high Boss battle in the clouds

Gopher Wiki WIP.

Working on the latest offering from Boss 101. The Professor and ROB bringing you the best info for getting the job done. The Boss 101 built in gopher WIKI is your one stop to find out about the Bosses and the tech you deal with. Use it!

Thank you again for check us out and thank you for all the positive notes and emails. It’s very appreciated.

Remember to always live your dreams,

-Tim

2015.10.10 Boss 101 – Warp Gates!

Boss 101 Warp Gates

Did you know warp gates are how the bosses (and you) get around in Boss 101? Well, it’s true! One of your missions is to shut down all the warp gates leading to Earth. I guess we should clarify, you’re not shutting them down exactly, you’re taking control of them.

Active Boss Warp Gate in the background

That is correct! Once you defeat a level boss you and your team of scientists come in and reprogram the gate for YOUR OWN USE! This means you can now use it as often as you like. Come back to the same world and look for things the bosses left behind. Sure, you can continue on with the battle against the bosses but maybe if you spend a little time cleaning up the mess they left you can learn more about what happened and perhaps get a little bonus reward for your troubles.

Gameplay ideas

We wanted to bring you as much story and gameplay as possible. One of the things we are doing is giving you rewards and reasons for replaying levels. One of them is the visual sight of seeing some of the before/after boss life but another is certain surprises will only arrive AFTER the main boss is gone. Ideally you come on back when you want and at whatever power level you prefer. We are encouraging it sure but you can always play as you like. Either way – the basic story stays intact.

Giving you fun things to find and discover is one of the most fun things we do. There is a lot of discussion about what things will make the most impact and sense as well as give you the player the biggest bang for your buck. Our goal is always to keep you entertained!

Check out some sweet shots of the boss gate active and the transformed gate you control. Care to guess which is which? HAAAAAAAAAAAA!!

Before

After

Cosmic Clicks Endless Boss mode

We mentioned this before but the Cosmic Clicks ships makes and appearance in Boss 101 with ROB in command no less. In between boss battles you will jump to warp to meet up with ROB for a score assessment and some breathing room. While you are there you are free to fly around next to the ship and set off some fireworks to celebrate your victory. You heard me correct. Check out that screenshot! You can trigger fireworks! YES!

Thank you again for stopping by and remember to live your dreams!

Best,

-Tim

2015.10.03 Boss 101 Hat Store Magic

Boss 101 Weekly update – setting up the stores

Welcome back to another weekly update and this week we are looking at the Boss 101 Store fronts, specifically the Hat Store. The hat store, as you may guess, is where you buy all the sweet lids for the game. These can give you various powers and increase your ability to do battle.

The OG Store!

Let’s start with we have come a LONG way since the first version of the game store. Back in the day we were integrating everything together including the room for the guys. Back then the store was a pretty straightforward thing with not a lot of zazz. That was OK but we knew we wanted to evolve it to have more features and be able to display more information. Also – the hats this time around could do a lot more so we wanted to feature more of what you get for your money.

The first step was to arrange to store as both a selling and storage unit for purchased hats. We have over 200 hats in the game currently. As tends to happen in games with lots of inventory the design is based around the player buying a steady progression of hats as they move through the levels. Hats get more powerful and more expensive and in an ideal situation there is something for the player to buy at all times (or at least look forward to purchasing).

Some hats get locked out due to level or money requirements. In an earlier version of the hat store we had a ‘closet theme’ going but it didn’t seem to match up well in terms of art and look for the rest of the command center. We modified it up to look more like something the gophers would have made and it is a LOT more in line with the game now. Check it!

Also – here is an example of some of the buff icons you will see attached to the various hats as well as a rating for each. Using this you can see what a hat is good for an how powerful it is. Helpful when picking the best hat to battle with.

Store Buff Icon Examples

Examples used in the Store!

Sneak Peak Weapons of destruction – the Ultra Gun.

Lay the serious smack down!

Thanks again for stopping by and we hope you enjoyed this look behind the scenes.

Remember to always – LIVE YOUR DREAMS!

-Tim