Progress

First of all, happy holidays to everyone!

This past 6 months have been long for me as I've been back at University. I have been working hard in my spare time on the game, but I've since moved into full production since the semester ended a while back.

I didn't want to post until I had something big to share with all of you, so here goes.

Firstly, we've listened to the feedback that has been given by people who have played the builds we've uploaded, and the biggest complaint is that its a little hard to know what to do. Because of this, I will be designing and adding a mini-map with objectives and fast travel system.

Secondly, I've been working hard on new areas, some of which are far enough along to share, others are just concepts (mainly other dungeons are still works in progress).

That being said, please have a look at the new areas. We have a Saloon, Inn, Sheriffs Office and Chapel. I'm still working on polishing them, as well as the characters in them.

New interiors:

Other things we've been working on include swapping over to a terrain editor instead of the old system we had. The results are amazing for us from a workflow and consistency standpoint. We've also swapped over to a more standard linear HDR rendering setup with double the roughness sensitivity and complete utilization of reflection probes as well as new cinematic image effects and a full GI pass. What this means is that we have far more range in colors, roughness and light. It also means the PBR and shadows are more accurate and realistic.

New renderer / new textures, objects etc:

Over all, the game should look far better. It should have more realistic properties (even though it is stylized) and it should have a more modern and film like look to it.

OH, before I forget. I've also coded the grass and vine shaders to blow in the breeze so that the environment looks more living.

Our plan for the coming weeks is to implement the mini-map and objectives, as well as the new characters and the first bit of the story, dungeons and side quests.

hope you all have a great holiday. Hope to share more soon.

Ramblings

We've been really busy lately with university work again, but progress is still being made (slowly) for The Ballad of Crater.

We're working hard on a complete overhaul of some of the more outdated aspects of the game world. For example, we're re-doing the terrain and foliage to have a fully simulated wind system, as well as performance optimisations.

We're also working on finishing the hub world and adding new dungeons / finishing the one we have already.

Anyways, we hope to have more to share soon.

OH, and We're making some progress on testing on Mac. Its harder than we thought, but we're doing our best.

New build to download!

There's a new build out for The Ballad of Crater!

Not much has changed, its just small fixes and additions and such. If you haven't tried it, feel free to give it a try!

We're always looking for feedback so we can make the game better!
Hop you enjoy.

Link: https://www.dropbox.com/s/gemy8l7z9f8u04d/Ballad%20of%20Crater%20%28vertical%20slice%29.rar?dl=0

The Ballad of Crater Alpha 1.04

The latest build is done!

The Ballad of Crater: the small town at the end of the world is the story of a small town and the adventures of you, the player, as you explore the post apocalyptic land.

This is a Pre-Alpha public build of a vertical slice. It's meant for testing and feedback before release as an Alpha demo.

This demo was made by 2 university students over what has been 7 months of development time with no funding.

THINGS THAT HAVE CHANGED:

- NEW HATS! Simply equip them using directional keys in the main menu!
- Multiplayer now has a red hud flash when the player takes damage
- New Bat and gun sounds in multiplayer
- Multiplayer has now had a reverb mix

- Fixed multiple glitches in the shop relating to spending too much gems or not being able to buy upgrades

- Hub world has now had a reverb mix
- New Bat and gun sounds
- Pause menu now works with keyboard controls
- Many small tweaks and changes to gameplay, controls, hud and ai according to player feedback

- Lava sounds have now had a reverb mix
- Zombies now have a reaction sound and particle when they take damage
- The player has a red flash on the gui when taking damage

- The dungeon has also had a reverb mix
- Tweaked some hud elements to eliminate a glitch where some speech bubbles had button prompts when they were not meant to
- Increased the speed of the day / night cycle
- Fixed another save game glitch
- Tweaked the amount of HP the side quest mini-boss has

- Tweaked the sound of the dragon raw
- Tweaked bridge sounds
- Tweaked side mission mini-boss sounds

- Some extra prop placements in emptier / under-polished areas

THINGS THAT ARE COMING SOON:

- Intro story cinematic!
- Due to unforeseen technical difficulties, the cinematic did not make it into this build, but its coming soon!

Download Link: The Ballad of Crater Alpha 1.04 DOWNLOAD

Final Alpha demo release progress

We're working hard on wrapping up the final build of the alpha demo for the Ballad of Crater.

We've taken feedback into account and adjusted / added things accordingly, as well as finished adding in the stuff we were still working on.

Almost everything is finished now, in fact, we are just finishing up the intro cinematic story cucscene and then we will upload the new demo! Therese no new areas or anything like that, its still just a vertical slice of what we hope to achieve with the full game, but we hope that its polished to a high standard thanks to the little feedback we did get.

Thanks so much for the input you guys gave us! Its helped loads to make the game better.

The next demo will hopefully be finished and uploaded today sometime, so keep your eyes peeled!

Progress Report

Work on the next demo is going well.

We just finished capturing and editing the 4K stills for our intro cinematic and will start putting them together in a rough cut soon (hopefully still today)

Other than that, we have only 1 or 2 more things to fix / change in the game before the next demo, so I'm extremely optimistic that we can launch the next demo by the end of the week!

Some 4K stills for our intro cinematic:

The Ballad of Crater demo Pre-Alpha 1.03 (free download)

The upload is done!

I hope everyone can give this a try and I hope it works for everyone! It's a free download, so there's no reason not to give it a try!

Windows version: https://www.dropbox.com/s/qkt1kdj7y2tiqkh/Crater%20Alpha%20-%201.03.rar?dl=0

Mac version: https://www.dropbox.com/s/cn1g5k6g6ayiq3f/Crater%20Alpha%20-%201.03%20%28MAC%29.rar?dl=0

Linux version: https://www.dropbox.com/s/uhb34loxnv0z5e2/Crater%20Alpha%20-%201.03%20%28LINUX%29.rar?dl=0


This brings us 1 step closer to the release of the full demo! I hope you enjoy it and please, if anything comes to mind when playing it, we'd love to hear your feedback!

We hope to have the next demo out soon, featuring more changes according to player feedback and new additions, such as a story cutscene.

*Note: We are looking into an issue causing the Mac version not to boot. Feel free to try the current Mac version regardless and let us know how it goes for you.

Please send ANY feedback to this email adress with the subject line 'feedback': ecto1.gamedev@gmail.com

New demo

I'm uploading a new build of the Pre-Alpha for The Ballad of Crater.

This time I'm uploading a build for Mac and Linux as well as for Windows. I hope it works for everyone, as I've personally only tested the Windows version.

We've fixed and changed a lot for this next build and we continue to work hard on the final build of the Pre-Alpha. We're still working hard at implementing recommended changes, as well as adding in a new story cutscene so that players can get an idea of whats going on.

Please give us any feedback so we can strive to make the game better before its final Pre-Alpha thats coming up soon.

Hope things are going well for everyone and I hope to post a link to the download as soon as its uploaded!

(Early concept for cutscene)

Ramblings

It's been quite the journey to do what we do.

This blog started off as a requirement for my Game Dev TAFE course where I needed to post some stuff weekly to earn a grade. Looking back at those early days, its easy to see just how much I've learned. I look forward to looking back 5 years from now and thinking how much I've learned from now.

My first independent game was made over a weekend, just to see if I had my head around putting up and charging money for a game with save files and menus and all the intricacies of publishing a game. Its only sale (that I know of) was to me so I could test if it all worked. It was a proud moment.

The second game was obviously On Call. We worked hard and tried to understand how developing for a closed platform could help with optimization. It was my first time coding AI and Missions/Objectives. On Call was made in only 3 weeks, and while I know its not amazing I'm still proud of all we achieved and learned while working on that. I just wish we had more than 3 weeks...

Now we're working on Ballad of Crater. This time, learning from On Call and our wish for more development time, we've spend around 6 months on this one so far and I cannot believe that we've come so far. At the same time I'm humbled by the support of the people who play our games and give feedback and get involved. Hopefully w can all work together to make this game something special ;)

Thank you all so much for everything
We'll keep working hard on Ballad of Crater to make it the best game we can!
Hope to have a new demo out soon for everyone to try and enjoy!

Progress Report

We're getting close to our next demo release!

We've started contacting various groups and talking with them about getting some more exposure, as we are tiny, we need all the help we can get.

Things are going well with the demo. I've found a few massive bugs that resulted in the player spending far too much at the shop. Some upgrades were charging glitched amounts of gems, and I've fixed that now.

I've also added a button to delete the save game, so that players can start the demo again from scratch if they so chose.

There's also a dedicated button now to swap button prompts from Keyboard to 360pad.

We're currently working hard to create a short intro story cinematic so that players can get an idea of what the story is, as so far we've been more focused on gameplay and level design, its important now to get the story up and running.

Other than that, we're busy on smaller things, like making textures line up on the map and such.

We hope to have the next demo out soon, this time we are looking into building for Mac and Linux as well as an online web player demo, so more players can try it out.

Progress Report

Working hard on the next demo. Things are going well and seem promising.

We're working hard to improve based on feedback. Things like Mission and Objective Markers, button prompts, better / fixed keyboard controls and a 24 min long day/night cycle.

Hope to have the next demo finished and uploaded within a few days for everyone to try.

For now, here are some shots of the Day/Night cycle and new Objective markers:

Ramblings

So I guess I should start with good news. Development for the next demo is going well, I cant wait for everyone to get it in their hands and see all the changes and fixes we've made according to their feedback.

This was an extremely early build and I think it will show when people play the next, more polished build.

The next thing is that Its always a little disheartening when people take a pre-alpha and do not understand that it is essentially a broken or unfinished build. Negative feedback that isn't helpful but rather just tells me that the game is broken and unfinished and shit doesn't help at all. I don't mind if you don't like our games, but please understand that these builds are not finished, so don't treat them as such.

Lastly, I found out today that my first ever game, while not having any sales to date, has actually been pirated a good few times and sits at a rating of 4/5... That's not bad and to be honest I'm just happy people got to play it and that they liked it enough to even get a few clones on the Play store.

On a side note. I'm considering making some artwork in my spare time so I can improve my skill. It will be fun and give me a chance to make some art for shows / games / comics that I enjoy.

Well, that's me rambling on. Hope everything is going well with everyone and hopefully the next demo will be out within weeks and everyone can give it a go and see how much better its coming along!

Refinement

I'm busy fixing and changing many things thanks to some feedback, I hope to have a new build uploaded soon.

• Controls - MANY changes and tweaks, especially on keyboard (mostly changes to stupid mistakes that come with adding keyboard controls last minute, like having Accept in menus on Shift... Could have sworn I put it on Enter...)
• Gui/Hud - Adding elements such as prompts so the player knows when something can be interacted with
• Mac build - I don't have a Mac, so I cannot test the build, but I will build it and rely on feedback
• Visuals - Color and effects tweaks
• Sounds - New sounds, tweaked some old sounds
• Polish / prop density - More areas are polished, expect to see more grass and such in areas that were empty
• AI - Small tweaks to the AI to balance gameplay a little more
• Gameplay - Small tweaks to gameplay for balance

That's all for now. We're working hard to bring the game up to an amazing standard. I'll post a link here to a new build in a few days, until then we will gather more feedback and make more changes.

Hope everyone is enjoying what we've put out so far. We hope do have new build out soon before a full demo.

First Demo

Our first demo is done!

If you decide to download this demo, please note that its not finished. This is an old build that has already been made better. The purpose of this build is to get some feedback from the people who play it so that we can make the game better. Many games go through 3 test phases before their design is set in stone. The first phase is internal testing. The second is this test that I'm presenting now. As a developer, we do this test because we have no idea what others think. We are so close and absorbed in the idea that we literally don't know if we have made a bad game.

So we would love for you to give it a feel and let us know what you think! Any constructive feedback is welcome!

Hope you enjoy! Once again, I cant state this enough, this is an old build of a game that 2 people have worked hard on for a few months. Its not final in any way, but rather an early demo to try to show everyone what we're trying to make.

Dropbox link: https://www.dropbox.com/s/jthc6703a8tc6z1/Crater%20PreAlpha%20-%200.01.rar?dl=0

Ballad of Crater - Progress Report

Progress is going well!

There's so little left to do before we start testing. After that we just need to polish and upload the demo to everyone so they can play it!

Things are shaping up well. The level of polish is starting to make the game look really nice with new effects such as depth of field and a nice interactive chromatic aberration that reacts to the teleporter.

As well as that, we're nearly finished with the dungeon, side quest and NPC dialogue. Sound effects are also starting to make their way into the demo as well with some great effects adding to the ambiance.

Progress Report

Before I say anything else, I'd like to announce that our first trailer for the game is nearly complete!

I cant wait for everyone to see the game in action and see what its all about! We haven't decided on a final name yet, but we've taken a liking to "Ballad of Crater: the small town at the end of the world". Its a long name, but we wanted the name to have a sense of quirkiness that the length gives it.

Any ways. We've been working hard on several things. We're working towards releasing a demo soon that will give people an idea of all the concepts and things that are in the game. We're also working hard on a 4 player split screen mode and polishing everything to look and feel great.

We want to have a massive amount of quality for the game, and hence we are trying our best.

Here are some screenshots of our work in progress:
(Top 2 shots are lowest and highest settings. Just to show that I am making the game scalable)

Multiplayer

Our trailer is nearly out of editing, so I cannot wait for everyone to see our project in action.

For now though, I thought I'd show off the rough progress I'm making in the offline 4-player split-screen multiplayer for the game!

We're exploring fun ideas for multiplayer, such as co-op and such, but for now its just a 4 player deathmatch.

Hope you guys enjoy and we cant wait to show more soon.

Creating the trailer

We're working hard to make our first trailer for the new game!

Work is going well and we expect the trailer to be done within a few more days. After which a free playable demo for everyone will be close on its heals.

We will probably setup Twitter, Facebook and YouTube accounts for the studio, so that we can be a little more professional about all this.

Can't wait to hear what everyone thinks!

Shopkeeper

Just finished the mesh and texture for the shop keeper today.

Tomorrow I shall rig and animate it!

Polish Progress

We've been working really hard to polish the central town area. It's coming along really well. The assets are done, so now we're just polishing them. Adding things like grass and other decorations. We're also polishing existing props and assets, such as the textures.

Everything is drawn / modeled / placed by hand and it's all still a work in progress, but the town is shaping up extremely well and we're proud to show it off today.

After the town is polished we will be polishing the first 1/3 of one of the 6 dungeons in the game for a nice demo that will be available for everyone to play.

The demo, as you may have guessed for the numbers I've just quoted, wont be massive, but it will give you an idea of how big the game will be when its done.

Hope you enjoy the screenshots and I hope to share more soon.