Bootdisk Revolution

This week continued the editing/tightening process for the game by moving on to level 3! A friend of mine asked me to define “editing/tightening” in more concrete terms, and I think this week’s work provides some pretty concrete examples.

Maybe it sounds tacky, but I find most games have taken on a life of their own as I’ve developed them. The more I build and play around with Bleed 2, the more I develop my understanding of what makes the game challenging and fun, and the better I can tailor it to play to its own strengths — at least as I perceive them. So “editing/tightening” is me going back over my work with this new understanding, making the whole thing stronger and more unified.

This post contains a few large gifs, so most of those are after the break. But, here’s a snippet of how Level 3 used to play:

I have a strong love of shmups like Gradius and Ikaruga. Most of Level 3 takes place in the air on the hull of a ship, so it seemed natural to pay homage to some of those games. Enemies come in familiar Gradius-esque formations, and would contain patterns of purple and yellow that mirror Ikaruga. But playing it now… it’s pointlessly cute and not too relevant to what Bleed 2 should be. The enemies are so slow and are barely threatening, there’s not a lot to reflect or dodge, it’s not very stylish and attacks come pretty much from one angle at a time. So…

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Special note! World-record holder Noobii_TV will be speedrunning Bleed for The Fast Force Marathon 3 benefiting Doctors Without Borders today at 1AM CST! If you’re up then, the action will be at this Twitch channel.

Level two has finally reached a quality where I’m pretty much done with it, so hurray! I spent the week refining cinematics, tweaking enemy placement, difficulty balancing everything, and putting the finishing touches on all the bosses. I’m feeling accomplished, and am hoping the next couple levels don’t take quite as long, since I had to re-do so much of this one. I guess we’ll see.

 

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All the changes I made last week meant a complete re-design of the second level’s layout. It’s been a fun process watching it go from an embarrassment to something I’m having fun with, and it’s got me thinking about what constitutes good level design. I’ll take you through my thought process so far, and maybe it’ll apply on a broader scale (but probably not, haha.)

First, I had to think about what purpose non-boss segments are actually serving. Bleed 2 is an action-packed boss bonanza, so it’s tempting to dismiss everything in-between as a formality of the genre, or the filler between the main events. However, I’d argue these sections actually improve boss fights because they break them up — if the game was just back-to-back bosses you’d grow numb to the thrill of fighting them, and they wouldn’t feel as special or exciting.

So in this case, the non-boss segments are a palate cleanser to get you ready for the next big fight. Once I understood that, I had to figure out the best way to create segments that perform that function. I decided on some key points: they should be short, easy to navigate, maintain interest, and above all make the player feel powerful. I’ll briefly explain how I tackled each point.

 

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So, at this point I’d say Bleed 2 is close to an alpha state! …you know, kind of. I left the final level half-finished to create the demo for TCAF, but that aside the story mode is playable from start to near-finish. The only problem is that it kind of sucks right now, but don’t worry (yet) because that’s part of the plan.

Rather than an “alpha”, I’m considering it more of a “first draft”, like I’m writing an novel. Now I get to “edit” it, going level-by-level refining and tightening until it’s a slick, cohesive package. I’ve already finished the process for level one since I had to prepare it for TCAF (yay!) so this week was on to level number two.

The second level is where the Kitties and Lil’ Guppies make their re-appearance, but they’re mostly physical attackers. There isn’t much to dodge or reflect for the whole level and as a result it feels pretty boring… so, I redesigned some things:

The Kitties barf up big energy balls instead of hairballs now, so at least you can reflect those! They also wear bandanas so you can tell their colour before they attack.

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As I mentioned, I spent the previous week exhibiting at TCAF! After the madness that was getting everything ready and then showing the game, I was totally beat. I’ve taken the week off to recharge so I don’t have a ton to report, but maybe you’re interested in hearing a little about the ups and downs of exhibiting from the perspective of a newbie like myself.

The Booth

Pros: Everything was hooked up to my laptop on the other side of the monitor, letting people see the game from either side of the booth. When not in use, the main menu would display action shots to try and get people interested in playing, which seemed to work! Sometimes passerby would seem to be on the fence, and in that case politely asking if they’d like to play was enough to tip them over. I also had a few little signs printed up at Kinkos, which helped tell people the name of the game and differentiate the first and second-player controllers.

Cons: I had no merch — not even postcards or buttons or whatever. I have some on order, but almost three weeks later and they still aren’t here — I guess the lesson is to order far in advance! Without them, people who were interested in my game and wanted to remember it had to take cellphone pictures and stuff. Not cool. Also, I didn’t have a tablecloth until I saw other booths looking mighty fancy with theirs. I rushed out to the Dollar Store to get one, but it would have been nice to be more prepared and have a bit better presentation.

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Woohoo! This weekend I’m exhibiting Bleed 2 at TCAF! The show is as awesome as it is free, so come give the game a shot and say hi if you’re in the area!

Something I managed to add for the exhibition is a co-op mode! In the original Bleed, co-op was basically a hack I put in at the last minute because I thought it’d be fun. I know there were a lot of issues with it as a result, so I’ve tried to improve it in several ways.

Better Camera

Previously the camera followed only player one, but now it’s weighted to take player two’s position into account. It’s not an even weighting — it strongly favours the first player — but it is there, and I can always fiddle with the bias to see if it helps.

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This week I playtested the first level of Bleed 2 at Bento Miso! It was a really positive experience — everyone there is creative and intelligent and super nice, and I learned a lot about how my game will be understood by new players. I figure this is as good a time as any to go over some changes I’ve made based on playtesting.

Cutscenes

The game features a few (very quick) in-game cutscenes to move the action along. I’ve done my best to make these as seamless as possible, but in some cases they’re apparently too seamless — it took a while for some players to realize when a cutscene had ended. To combat this, the HUD is hidden and the game is slightly letterboxed during cutscenes. Hopefully this makes the distinction clear.

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This week I finished the menus for the demo, re-worked some bosses, did a lot of difficulty balancing, and also added tutorials!

This may be a familiar concept to many, but I’ve built the first level to slowly and (hopefully) organically introduce Bleed 2’s mechanics. In case you don’t know what I mean, check it out:
This is the first, very small area of the game. Wryn wants to run outside and see what’s happening to the city, but this elevator shaft is in the way and needs to be jumped over. It forces the player to either prove they know how to jump, or learn the skill.

In a game with more traditional controls I’d be tempted to leave it as-is and force the player to figure it out, since it’s pretty simple. But I don’t think it’s fair to expect anyone to guess that right trigger is the jump button, and I don’t want to frustrate anyone (especially not at an exhibition.) So, if the player can’t figure it out after a second or two, Wryn pipes up to tell them what the jump button is.

The rest of the level’s first half continues in this way. I try to introduce concepts one-at-a-time, and then incorporate them a few more times later on to keep the idea sticking in the player’s mind. For example, you have to keep jumping over the gaps between buildings (but there are fire escapes that come into view to catch you if you fall!)

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