But having elevators should open up more possibilities other than another mode of tranversing the level, for example: cutting the wires above the elevator or squishing mooks with them, otherwise, most of the time they don't help that much.
Edit: My bad, you can destroy the top blocks and drop the elevator.
@Paperscythe Damn those pink blocks! Well spotted!
Yeah, I feel that the elevators aren't very interesting yet. I like that there are elevators (for the city theme), but I don't feel like they add much that ladders didn't already add. Maybe if terrorists could use them they'd be cooler. Collapsing them is fun, but it's not all that effective right now... Maybe once there are some other machines in the city level more interesting gameplay might emerge.
EXCLUSIVE BUGS FROM THE PREMIUM DEMO : * When you push a crate towards a door, the crate pass through it as if there were no door. * I had the exact same bug as Paperscythe on the exact same block of the exact same level. What a rebellious block. * I launched a Molotov Cocktail on the devil near the end flag, he fell to the lower plateform but didn't die. Nevertheless the helicopter came to rescue me. Is it a bug or is it because the devil was not in the flag area anymore ? * Dogs can't pass through doors unless they are confused. * Grenades can pass through the elevators ceiling and floor. * You can't break vent openings if you're under them.
We tried the Death Match with my bro, and it's REAAAALLY cool. Obviously some bros are a lot better than others (Brobocop... surprisingly enough :3 ). I would suggest that at the start of every level in Death Match, you get clearly located by some bro-colored arrow or aura, because I always take several seconds to see where my bro is :p oh, maybe darken the entire screen except for the cages where bros are confused by Brononymous or Bro McClane's special.
I launched a Molotov Cocktail on the devil near the end flag, he fell to the lower plateform but didn't die. Nevertheless the helicopter came to rescue me. Is it a bug or is it because the devil was not in the flag area anymore ?
That is really bizarre. I saw a bug where a dog would jump off a cliff and land on the ground but not change his frame to a death frame... maybe it's the same problem. If the helicopter comes down then the devil is definitely dead (according to the game).
I would suggest that at the start of every level in Death Match, you get clearly located by some bro-colored arrow or aura, because I always take several seconds to see where my bro is :p oh, maybe darken the entire screen except for the cages where bros are.
Okay... We weren't sure how tricky it'd be to spot the bro. We've been changing the timing back and forth... We've actually gotten pretty good at spotting our bro... but maybe the answer is highlighting them more strongly (like you suggest).
I think @Tuism also mentioned that when we played it with him, and a couple of our friends who've played it with us at the office also said they had a problem.
Yeah, especially cos starting positions are randomised. I say drawing a line from portrait to bro, or giant coloured indicators, or something DEAD obvious.
And probably leave the portraits on the corners corresponding to the player throughout a series of games... Like P1 top left, P2 top right, always, etc.
More bugs : * Bro McClane's grenades effect can pass through doors. * In Death Match we discovered a map with no terrain at all. There was grey clouds and rain falling... and bros exploding as they continuously fell to their death :D EDIT: in fact the bug continued through the whole DM game. We had to restart the game to fix it. * In DM, when a player wins and the others start spawning on the map, it is still possible for the defeated players to kill the winner with their knife. Is it intended ?
In DM, when a player wins and the others start spawning on the map, it is still possible for the defeated players to kill the winner with their knife. Is it intended ?
The Phantom should be a member of BROFORCE. I was a 90's kid, he defined my childhood. Also, he rode a horse. If that's not cool then I don't know what cool is!
The trouble is, the more realistic style of the current avatars doesn't work for larger animations (like full screen cutscenes). It's just way too much work. So at the moment we end up with 3 art styles in the game (the tiny playable characters, the avatars, and any larger illustrations / animations).
So we need a unifying style that can be used everywhere except the tiny playable characters. So we're testing a more geometric style.
Aww man. I love the detailed avatars. Is there any reason why you couldn't just do cutscenes at an insanely low pixel resolution, basically animating things at the same size as the avatars and then just blowing that up to full screen? I don't think it would look bad at all, maybe even add to the retro feel for the game... Plus then you could do recaps when players came back to a game after a while and it would just play the cutscenes at the same time all tiled next to each other on the screen, at normal non-blown-up res. That would look confusingly badass ;)
I agree with @dislekcia, I think we're at a time where people can actually appreciate retro for what it is, and see the fun instead of count the pixels, especially when you're unabashedly upfront about being made with pixels :)
Though I also like the idea of blowing up the original pixel sprites and updating them a bit to be the cutscene versions, kinda like flamethrower Baracus there.
One more related thing. Shouldn't the ridiculous fishing style be going into vector... So that the 45 degree lines remain lines instead of stairs?
I love the detailed avatars. Is there any reason why you couldn't just do cutscenes at an insanely low pixel resolution, basically animating things at the same size as the avatars and then just blowing that up to full screen?
Even if we don't increase the resolution... and that's an impossible amount of work. The heads are 32 X 32, so with even just torsos they would be 70 X 55 pixel animated characters with detail and shading on nearly every pixel. Can you not guess how much work that is?
The detailed avatar style would be far more work than the simpler styles we've tried in the past for cutscenes.
That's not to say I'm happy with the more geometric style right now.
Though I think the style looks quite nice in pixel art (and doesn't need to be vector... though obviously I love Ridiculous Fishing's graphics and Revenge of the Titans' graphics).
Hey guys, Its not that we dont like the current avatars, we aren't reworking things because we are bored with the last ones or we think they look bad.
If you look at the ingame characters, and then you take the old characters, the fedility increases bunch, so if you blow them up a bit, the fidelity needs to increase by the same amount. You can't really get around that.
look at another worlds cutscenes. Also look at interstate 76 (old but awesome).
We arent trying to be rediculous fishing btw. So don't think thats what its gunna end up like because its gunna be quite different! :D
I think animation is always going to be a lot of work. I was just trying to suggest a way that means less work maybe than full-screen pixel-level animation but lets you keep the in-game avatars relevant.
Maybe you could do something else like have individual bros remembering mission briefings and events on the way to a mission, then each bro would have a different style of remembering AND they could be low-detail/fidelity and silly for extra humor. Like BA remembers everything as comic strips, MacGuyver remembers everything as crayon scribblings, etc.
Also, have you thought of going a motion comics style instead of doing lots of frame animations?
Danny I think we have already prototyped most of the things you said, if you look back in this thread a bit (except for crayon mcgyver. thats dumb :D <3 we are definitely leaning towards motion comics stuff. The thing thats scary with broforce is that people don't actually realise how much fucking content its gunna have on release. So we just working smart now so we don't fuck up later.
DD feels like it's got a billion content too... For some people that seems to be a good thing. The rest of the time, it feels silly to have developed all of this stuff if loads of players aren't ever going to see it :(
I think the crayon scribbling is freekin hilarious! If I was to recommend doing large amounts of comedy animation work I'd go for talking heads to get the most bang for buck: I'm going to call it the UTAH http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/550285 Johnny's style could lend itself well to broforce cut-scenes, but then again I don't know what you have planned... so maybe not. I can also see the motion comic style working really well! can't find the reference of a x-men motion comic that I thought was particularly well executed, but I do remember it having very "little" content, it made use of long holding parallaxed shots with faster transitions for action, like crash zooms to close ups of the eyes. Keeping the frame alive with smaller easier background loops. Whatever you decide to go with I'm sure you going to nail it!
What if the cutscenes were handled more with in-game stuff with, say, speechbubbles, different backgrounds, props, dialogue, etc? I think there's value in interspersing in-game cutscene stuff with as little focused yet short animations as possible. That one trailer by Klei for Incognita was great at it - I realise that's REALLY high production value but it could have been MUCH MUCH higher.
Alright, almost missed out on this important design discussion... I'm very much partial to the little BA design we see above. It has similar proportions to the tiny sprites, and I feel would go well with the game in general. All in all, I think it'd be a pretty great style for some basic cutscenes. BUT, I must say that for avatars, I really like the detailed ones, though I understand your reasons as the designers for wanting something that you can use in cutscenes as well, and super realstic avatars don't work for that. Now, although I am in no way qualified to even have an opinion in this situation, I think there might be a compromise here that would actually fit with the game rather well. First of all, of course, decide on a basic style you want for the cutscenes. Then, take the head of the character that would be in the cutscene, and detail and shade the basic head so that it has a sort of cartoony realism. Although you've changed its appearance notably, if done right it can still be the same shape and it will still be apparent that one is built off the other. I can't find a great example of what I'm thinking anywhere on the internet, but these are the best things I can find.
This one is a bad example for exactly what I'm thinking about, but its a good example of maintaining the same general shape.
And although I know you aren't getting this detailed, or really changing resolution, but I didn't find many examples of my meaning online, so the opposite of this is also kinda what I'd mean? I'm grasping at straws as far as pics go, I'm just trying to find a visual representation of what I mean. Hopefully you understood what I'm trying to say.
What if the cutscenes were handled more with in-game stuff with, say, speechbubbles, different backgrounds, props, dialogue, etc? I think there's value in interspersing in-game cutscene stuff with as little focused yet short animations as possible.
Obviously we're going to do that. Look at the beginning of Mega Man X. Look at the interactions with all the enemy characters in Gun Star Heroes. The current playable version of Broforce has had placeholders for months where the camera focusses on the badguy and the badguy gives the finger. It'd be unconventional not to have in-game cutscenes / story telling in this type of game.
But we're worried about the art style right now, not story telling delivery.
I'm very much partial to the little BA design we see above. It has similar proportions to the tiny sprites, and I feel would go well with the game in general.
Yes. And as far as avatars go, I suppose I'd be referring to using something that's just another step more detailed from the face of the left one, and using that. Not saying increase its res, just make the shading a bit more realistic (while not changing the overall head shape), kinda like how the shading is on the existing avatars. Now I know that because those aren't what heads are really shaped like it'd look silly, but that's part of why I think it'd be a good solution. ;)
So I guess I'm just saying add more detail (mostly shading) to the cutscene face and just use that as the avatar.
But we're worried about the art style right now, not story telling delivery.
I see what you mean, and thought it was the style that was gonna get in the way of storytelling because it'll be too much work?
The flamethrower Baracus I mentioned earlier looks like the right way to go, and could even facilitate gratuitous zooming in and out of the action a la action movie explosion slow-mo shots :)
I wonder if it is possible to simplify the current avatars we have, like perhaps make a plainer image with less shading and details, but still roughly keep the shape? How about something like this? It is simple, but yet it looks gorgeous, and even atmospheric. Though the character isn't the most sophisticated thing in the world, it does look great.
@epicfailnot Yeah, Hyper Light Drifter looks fantastic. I might be partly due to having very attractive colours.... (Maybe) ...
I think the next test we post should place the avatars over the gameplay, because the avatars looking good on their own isn't nearly as important as the avatars helping the overall appearance of Broforce looking good and consistent.
A little bug we've came across in Deathmatch : the player who has won the previous game is granted a star above his head. But if the second time another player wins, the two of them will have this star above their head.
@epicfailnot The avatars were too easy to hide behind. And we found that no-one was using them anyway (even before we started clearly using player colours).
@Douzeju I'll have a look into that. Originally the matches would last way past best of three (they were best of infinite), so keeping track of the leader was important. Right now the gold crown above their heads is not making any sense.
Oh yeah, I get that. But even in Alien lore (albeit often the extended lore) there are different kinds of xenomorphs, and there are various different interpretations in Contra, so I was just wondering if other types of Xenomorph-like enemies might appear regularly, besides the 2 kinds you have up there. (I am assuming, one way or another, the mooks will be mixed in as well at some points.)
(I am assuming, one way or another, the mooks will be mixed in as well at some points.)
Yup! I think we'll definitely have a bigger alien that comes out of the big terrorists... and probably a particularly acidic (exploding) alien that comes out of suicide terrorists.
I'm not sure how much farther we'd take it than that (besides bosses). It might depend on how tricky implementing just the basic alien variations is.
We definitely want it to feel like Aliens tm lore... which means different kinds of aliens.
We also want tentacles... but I'm not sure how we'll work that in... ???
Comments
Buuuut... I though that Death Match was the Choppa Run, God Damn it!
Just release a BETA of that Choppa Run too! That will be great to play if only 2 players available.
MERICA!
For those who don't remember he's the "official" link:
[video]
But having elevators should open up more possibilities other than another mode of tranversing the level, for example: cutting the wires above the elevator or squishing mooks with them, otherwise, most of the time they don't help that much.
Edit:
My bad, you can destroy the top blocks and drop the elevator.
pink block appearing where the vent opening should be, even after its broken.
Yeah, I feel that the elevators aren't very interesting yet. I like that there are elevators (for the city theme), but I don't feel like they add much that ladders didn't already add. Maybe if terrorists could use them they'd be cooler. Collapsing them is fun, but it's not all that effective right now... Maybe once there are some other machines in the city level more interesting gameplay might emerge.
EXCLUSIVE BUGS FROM THE PREMIUM DEMO :
* When you push a crate towards a door, the crate pass through it as if there were no door.
* I had the exact same bug as Paperscythe on the exact same block of the exact same level. What a rebellious block.
* I launched a Molotov Cocktail on the devil near the end flag, he fell to the lower plateform but didn't die. Nevertheless the helicopter came to rescue me. Is it a bug or is it because the devil was not in the flag area anymore ?
* Dogs can't pass through doors unless they are confused.
* Grenades can pass through the elevators ceiling and floor.
* You can't break vent openings if you're under them.
We tried the Death Match with my bro, and it's REAAAALLY cool. Obviously some bros are a lot better than others (Brobocop... surprisingly enough :3 ).
I would suggest that at the start of every level in Death Match, you get clearly located by some bro-colored arrow or aura, because I always take several seconds to see where my bro is :p oh, maybe darken the entire screen except for the cages where bros are confused by Brononymous or Bro McClane's special.
That's all for now ;)
I think @Tuism also mentioned that when we played it with him, and a couple of our friends who've played it with us at the office also said they had a problem.
And probably leave the portraits on the corners corresponding to the player throughout a series of games... Like P1 top left, P2 top right, always, etc.
* Bro McClane's grenades effect can pass through doors.
* In Death Match we discovered a map with no terrain at all. There was grey clouds and rain falling... and bros exploding as they continuously fell to their death :D
EDIT: in fact the bug continued through the whole DM game. We had to restart the game to fix it.
* In DM, when a player wins and the others start spawning on the map, it is still possible for the defeated players to kill the winner with their knife. Is it intended ?
I was a 90's kid, he defined my childhood.
Also, he rode a horse. If that's not cool then I don't know what cool is!
You're scaring me
So we need a unifying style that can be used everywhere except the tiny playable characters. So we're testing a more geometric style.
Sad Baracus makes me wanna pat him on the head!
Love that you guys are nipping potential problems in the butt/bud and experimenting :)
Though I also like the idea of blowing up the original pixel sprites and updating them a bit to be the cutscene versions, kinda like flamethrower Baracus there.
One more related thing. Shouldn't the ridiculous fishing style be going into vector... So that the 45 degree lines remain lines instead of stairs?
The detailed avatar style would be far more work than the simpler styles we've tried in the past for cutscenes.
That's not to say I'm happy with the more geometric style right now.
Though I think the style looks quite nice in pixel art (and doesn't need to be vector... though obviously I love Ridiculous Fishing's graphics and Revenge of the Titans' graphics).
Its not that we dont like the current avatars, we aren't reworking things because we are bored with the last ones or we think they look bad.
If you look at the ingame characters, and then you take the old characters, the fedility increases bunch, so if you blow them up a bit, the fidelity needs to increase by the same amount. You can't really get around that.
look at another worlds cutscenes. Also look at interstate 76 (old but awesome).
We arent trying to be rediculous fishing btw. So don't think thats what its gunna end up like because its gunna be quite different! :D
Maybe you could do something else like have individual bros remembering mission briefings and events on the way to a mission, then each bro would have a different style of remembering AND they could be low-detail/fidelity and silly for extra humor. Like BA remembers everything as comic strips, MacGuyver remembers everything as crayon scribblings, etc.
Also, have you thought of going a motion comics style instead of doing lots of frame animations?
Workload low is my new motto.
Johnny's style could lend itself well to broforce cut-scenes, but then again I don't know what you have planned... so maybe not.
I can also see the motion comic style working really well! can't find the reference of a x-men motion comic that I thought was particularly well executed, but I do remember it having very "little" content, it made use of long holding parallaxed shots with faster transitions for action, like crash zooms to close ups of the eyes. Keeping the frame alive with smaller easier background loops.
Whatever you decide to go with I'm sure you going to nail it! >begins drooling.
Totes agree for workload low.
This one is a bad example for exactly what I'm thinking about, but its a good example of maintaining the same general shape.
And although I know you aren't getting this detailed, or really changing resolution, but I didn't find many examples of my meaning online, so the opposite of this is also kinda what I'd mean? I'm grasping at straws as far as pics go, I'm just trying to find a visual representation of what I mean. Hopefully you understood what I'm trying to say.
But we're worried about the art style right now, not story telling delivery.
So I guess I'm just saying add more detail (mostly shading) to the cutscene face and just use that as the avatar.
The flamethrower Baracus I mentioned earlier looks like the right way to go, and could even facilitate gratuitous zooming in and out of the action a la action movie explosion slow-mo shots :)
How about something like this?
It is simple, but yet it looks gorgeous, and even atmospheric. Though the character isn't the most sophisticated thing in the world, it does look great.
I think the next test we post should place the avatars over the gameplay, because the avatars looking good on their own isn't nearly as important as the avatars helping the overall appearance of Broforce looking good and consistent.
A little bug we've came across in Deathmatch : the player who has won the previous game is granted a star above his head. But if the second time another player wins, the two of them will have this star above their head.
@Douzeju I'll have a look into that. Originally the matches would last way past best of three (they were best of infinite), so keeping track of the leader was important. Right now the gold crown above their heads is not making any sense.
But we're going to be interpreting it kind of like the way Contra interprets Xenomorphs. (not like how Metal Slug does aliens)
I'm not sure how much farther we'd take it than that (besides bosses). It might depend on how tricky implementing just the basic alien variations is.
We definitely want it to feel like Aliens tm lore... which means different kinds of aliens.
We also want tentacles... but I'm not sure how we'll work that in... ???