Behind The Planet

Level design in the highest heart

2012-02-20T01:05:00.000-08:00

The development of the Highest heart is steadily going forward. Most of the work right now is level design and making interactive objects.

At this point there will be only made a minimal amount of graphic design. I want the game to play and feel right before graphical work begins. The main reason is that tweaking and tinkering with graphics can distract from coding work quite a lot.

Have look at the first prototype levels. I wonder if you can guess the different objects by color :D

Off to Casual Connect

2012-02-05T14:23:00.000-08:00

I'm heading off to casual connect 2012 in Hamburg. Let's have a look what other professionals think about Hollow Grounds and my masters thesis. I really don't know yet what to expect, but I'm sure it will be worth a visit.

Germany has a much bigger games industry than switzerland, I'm quite excited to see how professional those meet & greets will be held there.

I'll be back next week with first impressions of "The highest heart"

The iTunes promo artwork

2012-01-23T14:43:00.000-08:00

I once heard you should always have a promo artwork handy in case you get picked up by Apple for their elusive lists of "What's new" or "What's hot" etc. Sure, the chance of being picked up is close to buying a lottery ticket, but it might be nice to have it ready anyways?

Here's the one Hollow Grounds would have

First full review of Hollow Grounds

2012-01-23T02:23:00.000-08:00

BigNSide has postet a nice full review of Hollow Grounds. Being German it might limit the appeal a bit, but it recieed quite a bit of praise and a gold award. Which makes me very happy :D

The review you can find here

Facebook Fan Page started

2011-12-23T02:41:00.000-08:00

Today I started the Facebook fan page. I'll post all blog updates and similar things in there. Also it might be a a nice place to get some feedback about the games or the production. I'd really like to hear as many opinions as possible.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Full-Color-Planet/196158347145580

Production Artwork exhibition

2011-12-23T02:08:00.000-08:00

I thought we'd share some of the drawings that were made during the production of Hollow Grounds. Most assets were drawn digitally, however, all of them were drawn at least once with pencil and ink on thick paper, to get a feel how the digital version should look like.

I usually work with 0.3 mm HB pencils, Rotring Tikki Graph Inks and just pasic drawing paper from the supermarket. However, I really wanna try out bristol for the next project, I heard a lot of good things about it.

The website changed, again

2011-12-20T12:01:00.000-08:00

Another revision for the website. The last one was nice, but the dev blog didn't stand out enough and the colors were a bit laid back. This is definitely fixed in this version :D

Shooting the trailer tomorrow. Excited for that to say the least. Got to have a nice idea to present a game that you can't film while its flat on a table.

Even more screenshots

2011-12-20T10:56:00.000-08:00

Here are some more nice screenshots of the game. Enjoy!

iTunes Screenshots

2011-12-13T06:49:00.000-08:00

The task of doing the iTunes screenshots kind of give me a headache. On one hand you wanna advertise what the game can do, but then I don't want it too like like a total ad.

I feel like there is no way the idea of turning the iPhone could have be achieved without placing an iTunes graphic in the screenshots.... or was there?

joyride

2011-12-08T09:40:00.000-08:00

There is nothing better than spending your time, cruising with friends

The whole GUI

2011-12-08T01:54:00.000-08:00

Now that the wrong way system is in place, I think finally all the Buttons hare now finished. Theres quite a bunch of them.

Unity supports Options to create custom GUI without having to individually draw every Button. However, that Option is very heavy on the draw calls and generally not recommended if you only display a few Buttons. EZGui, a middleware from the creator of Sprite Manager 2 might be a good solution there, But I haven't been able to check it out yet.

Until then, here are pretty much all the Buttons of Hollow Grounds

Some screenshot impressions

2011-12-06T01:06:00.000-08:00

Almost done, fixing bugs, painting sky squid. Here are some impressions

The home stretch

2011-12-05T08:30:00.000-08:00

Hollow Grounds will definetly be submitted this week. There were some evil bugs that came to my attention, but they will be erradicated with all might.

Sleep tight old queen of worms, your time will come soon

Icon Evolution

2011-11-23T08:56:00.000-08:00

Th final two weeks are here. Everything has to get absolutely polished here. It's really difficult handling all special cases. The statemachine tends to be all over the place with Unity, since the touchscreen recieves multiple button presses sometimes.

The icon has undergone another change, the seventh so far. Here's a small picture on how it has evolved till today.

Lensflares

2011-11-11T01:04:00.000-08:00

Here, the animated lensflare that will never be...

I'm working hard on the animations for Piris arrival and the jump. There wont be much time left for a december release, but I think the game is good on track. Sprite frames timing is a hard thing, time to learn it properly

The Postcards arrived!

2011-11-02T07:21:00.000-07:00

Just in time for the Next Level games conference: Here are the Postcards. the colors turned out great.

Have a look at the original file here

New Design for the Website

2011-11-02T07:18:00.000-07:00

Next Level Games Conference is this week! For the first time there will be Hollow Grounds playable in its almost final form.

I wasn't too happy with the website for this event. So here is a never, more colorful version. I like it a lot

Ouch

2011-10-26T06:24:00.001-07:00

Harsh Landing so far

The warnings signs were everywhere!

2011-10-17T04:32:00.000-07:00

At least now they are...

Getting the webpage ready

2011-10-14T08:00:00.001-07:00

FullColorPlanet needs to open it's eyes now. I'm making a small template for a website that can be launched as quick as possible.

The reason is because Hollow Grounds will be playable at the Next Level Games Conference in Cologne on the 4th and 5th of November. I'm really crunching this thing to get it done on time. I really hope for some nice beta testers there.

Rebuilding the plants

2011-10-14T07:52:00.001-07:00

I'm finally done rebuilding all the plants in the tracks. Look at this, ain't it pretty?

I still would like to add some living things into there... i wonder if I can write some really weird animal for these tunnels.
Also the stone worm doesn't count

Track building in action

2011-10-14T07:49:00.001-07:00

The track builder is progressing nicely. It can attach all the pieces into each other and form track during runtime now.

You can see here where the player is actually flying if he plays Hollow Grounds

Rawr, I'm a stone worm!

2011-10-14T07:45:00.001-07:00

Run away!

More details on the Story

2011-10-14T07:43:00.001-07:00

The story of Hollow Grounds is very brief and simple.

You have this planet, Ella, who would like to tell you a tale. She once knew a small inhabitant of herself named Piri.
Piri was a cartographer. His dream was to create a map of the whole desert of Ella. But since Ella is a msall planet, it didn't take him long to accomplish that goal. The only thing missing from his map were those deep, deep black holes all across the desert planes.
So one day, Piri did something really curious. He decided to put a wooden plank on his back and jump into one of the holes. Foolish as he is, that would have been his demise, if Ella, and the player, wouldn't have decided to change gravity mid-flight for him to safely reemerge at the other end.
However Piri didn't stop there. And as the number of traversed holes grew, so did his followers that believed him to be a supernatural superstar.... Could this tale actually end in a happy ending?

Some impressions

2011-10-14T07:37:00.001-07:00

It's been a while till I shared some screens from the iPhone. Here are some impressions from the status of Hollow Grounds.

The name changed from Hollow Planet to Hollow Grounds because it would be stupid to have the name planet in both the series title and the first game. Also Hollow Grounds is a play on words because Piri will get more and more snobbish on his journey. More on that in the next update

Piri has a Truck

2011-10-14T07:26:00.001-07:00

Piri finally got his Truck. I sliced up the sprite to be able to animate it in the main Menu.

The top one is the raw version with the initial colors, However I changed them to the colors of piris clothes afterwards in the bottom one, spliced up version.

Implementing Sprite Manager 2

2011-10-14T07:22:00.001-07:00

Ok, time to do big change. I've been approached with a wonderfull middleware called Sprite Manager 2. I essentially builds atlases for you and reduces the ammount of draw calls on Unity iOS. Also it animates really well. However that meant i had to trash all my plants (*sniff) to create sprites instead of my panels and then rearange them again in the curves (*double sniff) since all the old ones got deleted.

The middleware is great, the implementation still took a few days. Heres a screenshot of the sprites. There is no difference to be seen though.

Physics Finetuning

2011-10-14T07:13:00.001-07:00

Still working on a good mechnic for the physics. The newest one doesn't work that bad, but on some collisions it still can get wonky.

Heres a new screenshot of the first drawing from the character, Piri. He is flying upside down on this screenshot, legs spreading behind him. Also Particle Effect on wall collision, sweet!

New workflow

2011-10-14T07:08:00.001-07:00

It took a while, but I have a new way of creating the custom colliders, backgrounds and panels. The trick was creating screenshots of the chicanes in Unity, getting them into a vector program to make paths, using the Cheetah 3d modelling too to create planes and meshes out of the paths and then reimporting and arranging them in Unity.

That wasn't time consuming at all.....

Fail!

2011-10-14T07:04:00.000-07:00

Ok, maybe the idea of using only squares to make the boundaries wasn't such a brilliant idea. Got to get a new plan

Cave & Desert Flora

2011-10-14T07:02:00.000-07:00

Here is the sprite atlas in its unoptimised form.

I drew all those plants here at my cintiq, replicating the first drawings from a few weeks ago. In the tunnel, cool shades of green, blue and purple dominate, with some few eyecatchers.

On the overworld everything is tinted in hues of orange and red, once again giving a contrast between underworld and overworld

Horizon

2011-10-14T06:57:00.000-07:00

I'm going back to a yellowish look on the horizon. But the bigger idea is that he is now curved. It will be a bit of a challenge to create background layers that have the same curve in them, but for now this is quite pretty

Next step: chicanes & plants

2011-10-14T06:45:00.000-07:00

In the net step I want to do some nice curves and special set pieces.

The tunnel will be buildt by code, meining by telling the code what to build it can freely build a tunnel out of all the lego-like pieces it knows. Straights, Curves and special pieces. Next thing will be to create some special pieces that work well with the mechanic

A better look at the concept graphics

2011-10-14T06:42:00.000-07:00

Last look was a little shoddy. The images looked horrible, thats part fault of the lighting here in the atelier and the bad mobile camera, but it's also because I'm a bad photographer

Here are some nicer pictures that show the concept graphics

A little less light please

2011-10-14T06:37:00.000-07:00

More progress in the graphics department. The tunnels were a little bringt in the last version, so to let the plant glow more here is a never version with more contrast and less brightness

Some more concept screens

2011-10-14T06:34:00.000-07:00

I've been having a lot of time lately to really make the first concept pictures. they are hanging at a wall bhind my back as I type this. I want to share some picutres of the wall here.

First Tunnel

2011-10-14T05:30:00.000-07:00

The Tunnel Walls and the background are just plain 2D planes with the same texture on them. I put some smaller cave flowers between them to have a look how they are perceived during motion

The lighrays give a nice feel of paralax scrolling since they are all on different depth level.

Small Colortest

2011-10-14T05:26:00.000-07:00

I buildt a first set of a few plants and a tunnel to test out the colors and how the paralax scrolling would work.

I'm testing different physics models here, its in the 3rd revision so far. There are several approaches on how to do the falling mechanic and I'm still unsure which one to use in the end. Lots of testing and deploying

It's getting round

2011-10-14T05:14:00.001-07:00

Ok, so the 45 Degree Angle approach didn't really work. So here is the new idea. I was building some round tracks to test if the motion worked well with that. To my satisfaction it works a lot better than before, so that is good.

Logo final concept

2011-10-14T04:57:00.000-07:00

I redrew and fleshed out the logo a bit. The idea is this:

The logo is adaptable so it can resize for any resolution it would be needed. In its smalles Form it has 2 Rings and 4 Elements. On its biggest 5 Rings and 10 Elements. The elements represent different locations and settings from the games itself. The size of the planet now is depending on where the game is deployed. iPhone 3G with 320 px? 2 Rings. iPhone 4 with 640? 4 Rings. Webbrowser with 1024 width? 5 Rings. Like this it has always an equal size depending on its platform. It could also be animated to randomly generate the elements upon each start

The whole process how the Logo came to be

2011-10-14T04:51:00.000-07:00

Today I made a small graphic showing the whole process of how the Full Color Planet Name and Logo came to be.

All the graphics on the outer line are first concepts and drafts. The more you advance into the center, the more fleshed out the idea became.

How do you like it?

2011-10-14T04:44:00.000-07:00

This is the combination I'd like to present at the next Semester-End meeting. I think the logo is nice, the font might grow on people, but it is kind of unique.

Planet Logo color variations

2011-10-14T04:41:00.000-07:00

Allthough I liked the initial color scheme of the "Logo"...

(Yes I know, it's not really a traditional logo.... it is very detailed, doesn't work well in grayscale, works even worse in black/white.... also it doesn't have those horrible graphic logo design rubishes on it)

Anyways.. I really liked it but here are some other color scemes. My personal favourites are the 1st, 6th and 8th.

Advancing Kaleidoscope World

2011-10-14T04:33:00.000-07:00

I think Kaleidoscope World was a good idea. Not only can all games then take place in the same universe, linking them at its lowest level, no it also shows what they are:

Like a Kaleidoscope the small iPhone games are timewasters, colorful and just for fun. Or at least that's what I'd like them to be.

I wasn't totally sure if Kaledoscope was the right way to go here, so right now it looks like the name I wanna go with is "Full Color Planet", giving more focus on the universe and the color aspect.

Here is the idea sheet

Experiment in Handwriting

2011-10-14T04:26:00.000-07:00

Well, since I want the game series to be something peronal, I thought handwritten texts might be good idea to give it a personal note. I've been trying different words, backgrounds and other stuff today. Here is one of the graphics.

The first color of the highest heart

2011-10-14T04:19:00.000-07:00

After the red "Title Card" of Hollow Planet was one I really wanted to apply the techniques used there on the highest heart.

I'm currently drawing the other title card. This might take a while, but I'm capturing the whole process of it in a video so I can make another speed-drawing video for my account later at some point.

Another book done

2011-10-14T04:17:00.000-07:00

Finished ready Gute Marken, Böse Marken today. I really hoped to be able to pull more out of it, but in the end it was "just" a fun read.

Stefan Kuzmany wrote a pretty funny book here on ethics and our perception of good and bad brands. So if you like the subject, i think you get the small paperback pretty cheap.

Finetune, finetune

2011-10-14T04:13:00.000-07:00

I continued to work on the colors today. I think I wanna go more into a contrast of red and blue to make the overworld and underworld be very destinguishable.

There is also a new type of building here. The old one looked to much like a smurf mushroom so this time I wanted to go more into aesthetics of old 60ies road diners.

There was color

2011-10-14T04:10:00.000-07:00

From the initial drawing I decided to try out a few colors today. I want the game to be very saturated and full of color. The background is keept in lines to have the same aesthetic as the ground, in a way

Some thoughts on surveys..

2011-10-14T04:07:00.000-07:00

I thought it might be a good idea to take a survey today. However the topic doesn't seem to be as easy to grasp as I initially thought. It is incredibly easy to influence survey questions through your own perception. As a result, all my questions about indie games must have made it look like I'm a ravaging snob who thinks independent games are the new messiah.

Also registering in forums to take a survey might have been not a clever idea either.

Ah well, lessons learned.

iPhone part 2

2011-10-14T03:43:00.000-07:00

And again here it is running on my iPhone. Thats good, now i can once again give it to some people to test and evaluate.

I think the mechanic will need a lot of fine-tuning, it doesn't look like it will be easy to anticipate and fastly react to the sharp turns. Maybe the octagon idea wasn't all that brilliant...

Prototyping II

2011-10-14T03:42:00.000-07:00

Ok, time to build a prototype with the falling mechanic. It would be cool if every angle in the game is 45 degrees. That would give it an octagon look in everything; structures, powerups, interface, level design...

First concepts

2011-10-14T03:36:00.000-07:00

I had some time to make some drawings for Hollow Planet. You can see the planet and the big tunnel shafts that go through it. How they came to be is pretty unknown, but it probably has something to do with giant stone worms ;)

The first drawing shows the planet and one of the tunnels going through it. The second then shows the main protagonist ready to jump in, and lastly there is a drawing of what the gameplay could look like mid-flight.

Next game idea

2011-10-14T02:38:00.000-07:00

Ok, heres the next idea. Highest heart seems to be working very well and the prototype is well received. But it looks like it can't be a project that will be finished in a small timeframe of 3-4 months. So this time i wanted to narrow a mechanic a bit more down to make something simpler.

Hollow planet is the story of a small cartographer that jumps into holes to find out where they lead. these holes go straight through the small planet he lives in. The player has to use the iphone to change gravity so no harm comes to him.

I want to make a game here that will have you turn your iphone even more than 360 degrees sometimes o you constantly have to readjust your grip.

Heres the concept poster

Just an idea

2011-10-14T02:32:00.000-07:00

Here, I tried something new out. I just watched the new FEZ pax teaser and I just love how it mashes up pixel graphics with modern art & shader techniques.

So Here I wanted to get some blocky logo design into the game. I loved it, people didn't... tough luck, might be a dead end. :(

iPhone

2011-10-14T02:30:00.000-07:00

ok, so here the prototype is running on the iPhone. I had some Mentorings today. That means I met with the teachers that are coaching my masters project.

The prototype was very well received, so tomorrow it is time to make a second game idea.

The challenge is that I really want to make a game that utilizes the mobile phone platform well. I really don't like games that just display a digipad on the screen since it both is distracting to the visuals and noever working as well as a real pad input. So the game idea has to use the touchscreen, motion sensor, gps or other native functions well to truly be a mobile phone game.

The walls have spikes

2011-10-14T02:26:00.000-07:00

I tried a fourth level today. Here there are dangerous walls that warp you back to your last platform you were standing on.

it works pretty well. you are going from left to right. The last jump you need to finetune your flight to not hit any of the walls

Closeup

2011-10-14T02:22:00.000-07:00

Heres how the prototype would look when you play. again, the yellow Cube is a harpy of course

The green fields give you back the amount of jumps, or times you can use your wings, while in mid air you can either just fall or steer your flight.

Prototyping I

2011-10-14T01:53:00.000-07:00

Ok, so heres a first Unity3D prototype out of boxes. If you can't tell, that yellow box is a harpy (obviously, duh). The red box is the level goal and the pink boxes are just small collectables. Maybe those might also be experience orbs, that would be a good idea.

Concept visual

2011-10-14T01:50:00.000-07:00

Hmm, looks allright, maybe a bit too pastell. Could use some stronger colors. You can see the level goal on the top. No protagonist in here yet though

The Highest Heart

2011-10-14T01:48:00.000-07:00

Ok, here is the idea:

I took a bit out of the style book from the mana series and came up with this. The Highest Heart is the story of a small Harpy, getting falling out of a huge tree. So her first day born she spends falling down this huge tree. The rest of her life she then tries to get back to her nest and her mother, the highest love she ever knew.

During her journey she get older, grows up, get stronger, falls in love and gets pregnant. All while climbing this huge old oak. And finally once she gets back to the top she realizes it was her mother that kicked her of the nest and downwards, because that is how harpy woman get strong enough to survive. So she lays an egg and does the same and the game beginns anew

I got an idea for the mechanic, it is kind of a "Jump & Glide" mechanic where you cant move on platforms but steer your flight that get stronger and stronger.

You said the games are important daddy! :[

2011-10-14T01:43:00.000-07:00

Well, always saying that the games are important but not doing any game concepts and prototypes must be the dumbest thing I've done in a while. Starting tomorrow it is time to actually plan the games!

Kaleidoscope World

2011-10-14T01:41:00.001-07:00

Heres Kaleidoscope World

Shades of Iris

2011-10-14T01:40:00.000-07:00

Here is Shades of Iris

Just touching games

2011-10-14T01:38:00.000-07:00

Heres Just touching games

Pixel Plantage

2011-10-14T01:36:00.001-07:00

Heres Pixel Plantage

Enough of these branding books

2011-10-14T01:35:00.000-07:00

Ok, back to the drawing board. I want to try and visualize four names for the next mentoring.

I decided to try out
- Pixel Plantage
- Just touching games
- Shades of Iris
- Kaleidoscope world

So, new designs, coming soon

The not so good book...

2011-10-14T01:32:00.001-07:00

The 22 immutable laws of branding must be the worst made book I've ever seen. Sure it looks nice on screenshots, but the paper is thinner than toilet paper and it feels really, really cheap. quite puzzeling for a book on branding, except I'm missing the point here...

The good book?

2011-10-14T01:30:00.000-07:00

I read Wally Olins Brand Handbook today. Olins seems to be one of the godfathers of the branding ideas.

The relationship between Branding and Marketing is actually quite fascinating. Both principles are guidelines for product handling, but one argues on spreading out on the market while branding teaches narrowing down till you become best in your niche.

So I decided to do the same thing I did with Vetter and apply Olins guidelines on my project. While not as enlightening it really helped to find out that the focus of the game series needs to be the games, since other aspects can't really shine as much without the product.

Well, If you can't beat them...

2011-10-14T01:24:00.000-07:00

Still, I took a bit out of the book of traditional identity design today and decided to try and apply the rulebook of coande on a game identity.

If nothing else it really helped to clarify what the my needs for my first own game series has to be. Generally I always "knew" what I wanted to to do, but I never wrote it down. So even though I don't wanna create the new Vanish Oxy Action it really helps to define the identity you are creating to narrow the project down.

Independent Game Identity

2011-10-14T01:20:00.000-07:00

Independent Identity seems to be an oxymoron. A corporate identity which first goal doesn't seem to be success but more honest communication of a person and its products seems to be unheard of.

I talked to Peter Vetter from coande about the subject and he told me that indeed the only related subject is identity design for charity corporations. I'm not too sure if that is the approach I'm going for. Time to organize thoughts again.

Name generation mind map

2011-10-14T01:12:00.000-07:00

Hmm, it's hard to organize thoughts sometimes. I decided to do some mind maps with all the artist names ideas that came to mind. Categorizing them and highlighting favorites might help to pick a winner out.

On that note: xMind is a really nice mindmap tool. I'm not really into productivity tools, but if you ever need to visualize, try it out... it playfully generates very pretty mind maps.

Don't worry, you'll see some more soon!

Some first logo ideas

2011-10-14T01:05:00.000-07:00

Time to do some logo drafts. I read some really interesting blogs about game company random generators and weird band names. All pretty funny stuff, but I doubt genius ideas will come out of it.

In the next step I might have to look the other way and find out how traditional corporate identity design works.

Shades of Iris Plan

2011-10-14T00:57:00.000-07:00

This was the rough Timeplan for the Proposal. I, II & III are three iPhone games that will be the whole Shades of Iris series. First though I'd have to do research in corporate identity, branding principle and how these principles can or can't apply for an honest surrounding like the indie games scene.

It is tough creating something that is both exciting and honest. I mean in one way I'd like to show people what my games will be about, on the other I don't wanna lie to them like a carpet salesman. it's quite a juggle really.

Shades of Iris Masters Draft

2011-10-14T00:53:00.000-07:00

This was the first draft of the plan for Shades of Iris. It is a small draft on the research idea for the study course.

And so it begins.... again

2011-10-14T00:48:00.000-07:00

Welcome to the Start of the Development Blog for Full Color Planet!

Full Color planet is a small game series of iPhone games, all playing on the planet Ella. It is also my Master of Arts in Design project on the University of the Arts in Zürich. The study course will continue till next summer.

I'll start by recopying all the old stuff from my private blog at shadesofiris.tumblr.com . This will illustrate how the project I applied to the university with, called Shades of Iris, became Full Color Planet it is today.

I hope you have a good read and you can look forward to regular updates about the state of the games and how they are progressing