Monday 29 June 2015

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:




Monday 22 June 2015

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)


Monday 15 June 2015

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.




Thursday 11 June 2015

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:



Monday 8 June 2015

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!

Saturday 6 June 2015

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.

Thursday 4 June 2015

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