Initial Ramblings

Hello Great Void!

I have begun the process of flinging words into you. This is a thing I do from time to time. It's kind of like therapy except I don't feel guilty for not changing anything after it. I'm here because, as you know, at some point in a person's life, they must reckon with the idea of mortality. No, I'm no concerned about death. I'm mostly concerned about time. Time has this habit of moving forward in ways that my personal goals do not. And when this happens, the stress of not accomplishing the things you feel you're fully well and capable of doing begins to create a palpable sense that if you don't do something RIGHT NOW, you are a huge failure and you're probably terrible at all the other things you thought you were good at, too. But, as we all know, accomplishments are a culmination of the concerted effort of doing little things every day. So, the best thing to do, probably, is just to do little things every day until those little things add up into a slightly bigger thing and then you can finally revel in the knowledge that, by doing something slightly bigger, you're probably making someone else feel like they've failed in the process. Circle of life and all that.

I don't know exactly why I'm telling this all to you, Void. You're just a void. I don't say that in a disparaging way.You exist to ... not exist, mostly. I guess it just feels nice to speak a truth that exist in my mind outside of my mind. And by writing it down, it's kind of like a 'little thing' that could maybe add up into a kinda-bigger thing. Maybe.

Look, I'm just glad that you're here, Void. Sometimes it gets lonely being lonely around all these people. At least feeling lonely around you is perfectly normal. You expect absolutely nothing of me, which is kind of freeing in some way. None of that cognitive rubbish about whether you like me or my writing. Just pure, unadulterated apathy.

So, thanks, I guess. I'm just glad that you're here. I know I've said that already, but I just want you to know. Okay, well the tea is ready and there's a re-run of Charles in Charge playing in the tele, so we'll chat later.

Sincerely,
Cam

Mothership completes her journey

As of March 16th at 4:45 PST today, Mothership has been submitted to the Google Play and iOS App Stores.

This is a big moment for us at Commonwealth Industries. What started as a 48-Hour Ludum Dare prototype has transformed into the game you're able to see today.

We'd like to thank all the folks who helped get us to this point. Everyone who helped play test, the people in the Reddit community who submitted their faces, and all our family and friends who tolerated us on this really time consuming and, sometimes, seemingly never-ending process of creating something from nothing.

You can download Mothership from the Google Play store HERE

You can download Mothership from the Apple App Store HERE

Thanks again to everyone!

The Long, Long Vacation

Wow! It's been half a year since the last blog update. So much has happened in the team's personal life that we set Mothership aside for a few months until after the New Year. And, it's that time again for another update!

First, we've brought on a new team member, Jimmy! Jimmy will handle the testing and QA for Mothership as we work down toward our first release.

Second, we've re-designed the upgrade dialog and added a new dialog to show post-battle summary information. Here, we can show how the player's doing compared to previous battles and give a bit more life the the individual heroes.

Third, the next installment of hero portraits are ready:

Finally, on a more personal note, congratulations to Jacob on getting married, Stryker on getting into a Master's program at the University of Essex and living on the other side of the ocean, and for me on surviving child birth and rearing! Go team!

Iterative External Feedback and Upgrader UI Re-design

Dual Revolving Feedback Loop (or The Double-Pen Combo)

One thing that's been immensely valuable during the development of Mothership is having a group of external valued opinionators to evaluate iterative changes on a bi-weekly basis. It's something that +Josh Sutphin (@invicticide) and +Lyle Cox (@LyleCox) set up and were kind enough to include me in.

Since inception, Mothership has been meeting weekly. Every Saturday for 2+ hours we go over what we did the previous week week, what we like and dislike about the changes, what needs to be done / changed for the upcoming week, and, usually, what happened in Game of Thrones. For side-project game developers, this is often enough to keep us motivated and productive, but sparse enough to avoid getting overwhelmed. And this system has worked pretty well so far.

A couple of months ago, Lyle approached me about getting together with a couple of local game developers to critique each other's projects. Every two weeks, we meet up at a public library, bring our builds, go over what's changed, play test the new builds, then give honest and, sometimes brutal, feedback. It really helps break up the tunnel-vision echo chamber that occurs when working with the same team and the same ideas in the same space for so long. Another benefit is that, as a tight knit group, other benefits spawn from the relationship (such as the Utah Games Guild).

Upgrade UI Cometh!

Something that spawned from the bi-weekly meetings was that the UI for upgrading sucked. It was something we knew from the weekly meetings, but didn't have a real good solution until Josh and Lyle dug their design claws into it. The final result can be seen here:

Trees! In order to re-enforce the idea that Minion upgrades stick to a Port and have a linear upgrade path, a tree/graph structure was suggested to retain current port state as well as showing the upgrade path in a clear manner. This same paradigm can be used (without the edges between odes) for Mothership repairs and (maybe!) Mothership upgrades.

Also, three new pixel portraits were added this week by Stryker. A huge thanks again to all the brave souls who donated their faces for the cause.

GDC, Mothership Feedback, and Pixelated Faces

I went to GDC for the first time this year and it was pretty awesome. Beyond general social anxiety, I met a lot of cool people, saw a lot of awesome upcoming games, and received tons of amazing feedback on Mothership.

The first change we're making to Mothership is to add Minion upgrades. We're toying around with different types, but these are the ones we have implemented:

Minion Types

Normal Minion

The minion you know and love. Deals 1 hit damage, normal speed, normal hit count. Your trusty companion.

2Hit Minion

The 2Hit minion can survive two hits before being destroyed. This minion has several strategic uses including dispatching of missiles and causing damage and helping get past the frustrating Juggernaut's tri-laser and hyper beam.

Seeker Minion

The Seeker minion does one thing and does it well: it changes it trajectory to collide with the first non-laser projectile that enters into its radar radius. This is great to handle those pesky hard-to-time projectiles as well as damaging a moving Hero target.

Speed Minion

The Speed minion is pretty straight forward. This minion travels much quicker than the standard minion, making zipping around projectiles and collecting scrap (more on this later) much easier.

Split Minion

The Split minion breaks apart into 3 pieces at the end of its path, taking out multiple projectiles, collecting scrap, and dealing damage to whatever is in its path. Damage for each part is 1/3rd of a whole minion, meaning it's not as effective against the Hero.

Finally, a Resource Management mechanic!

So, now that we have all these upgrades, we need something build them with, right? That's where the new scrap system comes in. When a Hero dies, he drops Scrap instead of health. Scrap can be used to purchase or upgrade to different minions types as well as repairing damage to the Mothership.

After each battle, the Upgrades screen will appear, allowing you to purchase or repair your Minions or Mothership. This setup even opens up the possibility of adding upgrades to the Mothership as well. Also, to add a bit of continuity between battles, scrap will carry over between deaths. So, if the player is having trouble getting through the battle, they can do a run without spending scrap and use it in the next battle.

First Batch of Faces

Stryker finished up the first batch of our reddit-curated Hero portraits.