On the backburner...

Hey everyone,

You might have wondered why I haven't posted a blog for quite some time even though the deadlines of my assignments have already passed.

Where I thought I would have every opportunity to work on Mayhem Arena, a LOT of other issues arose again. 🙃

First, my partner's health got really bad, and it took a lot of time from anything else. But I hope you guys can understand my family comes before anything else, right? 🤔

Also, we were given new assignments at the same time, so doing work for all that distracted me from Mayhem Arena.

The biggest problem me and my family are facing, is that we are being evicted from our property. We have till April 11th to sort our stuff out, and things don't look pretty for us at the moment.
It is basically essential for Emma and the children to stay in the neighbourhood, since the kids have made important friends, and ripping them out of their safe environment will devastate them. Both my daughters need extra help, and moving away from friends and family will upset them greatly. The same thing goes for Emma. She needs her family close and the right environment for her to heal properly :/

Because of all of this, I have decided to leave Mayhem Arena on the backburner. The game is simply too large to finish and then maintain, and my family needs the money, basically.

I'm considering starting anew with a simpler andriod/iOS game which will be free to play, with some ads. Not gonna say too much about it yet, as it is in baby shoes, but it will fit the universe I am creating for all of my games. 😊

Mayhem Arena will be completed, but I'm afraid not this year, but who knows...

I do want to ask of you before I end this post, to check out Emma's book which is now available on kobo.com. If you buy a digital copy for just £1,99, you will already help me and my family a ton!
https://www.kobo.com/gb/en/ebook/project-reboot-terra-firma

Thanks for reading. 😊
- Joris

In the meantime...

Hey everyone,

How's everyone's new year coming along?
Mine's going PERFECT so far, especially because I have been very ill for a couple days now and with the deadlines of uni creeping up I am literally dragging myself from time to time to work.
It isn't too easy with a banging headache and a need for moisture and the loo every hour or so (the list of ailments is non-exhaustive either)  but I am resilient. No way will I let it get the better of me.

But I do need to give myself a break from work, so what better way to get a break from uni work and work on something else, eh? Haha, just kidding, but I did want to share some of my uni work with you guys in case you are interested in knowing what I am doing. 😄

I have been working quite hard on some animations and some of my models this week.
These are my animations:

This one is better watched on a loop.

The looping animation might have a small jitter in it because of the looping interval some players could have, but it doesn't happen in my editor and VLC. 

I have also worked on some models, which need to follow a style and centre around a workbench of someone.

I haven't got to properly texture them, but I have been testing their UV maps with simple textures.

I suppose you can tell what they are. 😉 Can you tell what style I am going for (imagine darker tones and colours (these are just testing colours to see if everything is in place))? 

There is still way more to do, and this is just two out of four modules. I'm still very busy... and the deadlines are on the 25th, and for modelling it's 1st February, but it needs the most doing.

I might be able to extend my deadlines if I need them to, but I'm hoping I can fight through my illness, or fight it off completely. Hopefully the latter. 😷

Thanks for reading!

- Joris 

Happy New Year & new plans

Hey everyone,

Happy 2019!
I hope this year will destroy every remains of 2018...

I have been thinking a bit lately, and I have decided to change some of my plans for Mayhem Arena.

Mayhem Arena will undergo a metamorphosis, and look completely how I want the game to look and sound. That includes maps, characters, SFX and the like. It will have to be completely robust as well with a few tweaks and having the spectator work and such.

This means that any idea of multiplayer is going to be put on hold...



When Mayhem Arena is released as an alpha release, you won't be able to dominate your friends right away in an online match.

The reason for this decision is funding. I cannot afford a server at this time, at all, and I am actually starting to financially suffer...

Also, I want people to dip their toes in the water that is called Mayhem Arena, to give them an idea of the game and have them more involved in the growth and development of this game. An active community is something that will really help me and motivate me even more.

I am still planning on making the game multiplayer, of course. It's just really hard to maintain a server for that ideology.

For the first release, I am planning:
- four maps
- four characters
- speech for characters
- better and more SFX
- tweaks, tweaks, tweaks
- some bug removals
- visuals finalised

After the releases, I will work on a campaign for singleplayer as well, but that is just a shelved idea for the more distant future.

Who knows, maybe I can get the first release done a lot faster now? We'll just have to see how things unfold.

Also, the deadlines of uni are creeping up, so that is going first...

Thanks for reading and till next post!

- Joris

Project Reboot: Terra Firma

Hey everyone,

I hope you have had a nice Christmas and made your new-year resolutions already. (Mine is 4k, harr harr).

What I haven't shared on my blog yet, is that next to university and Mayhem Arena, I have been working on another thing, which is my partner's book called Project Reboot: Terra Firma!

I wrote the Fables in the book, with the corrections and input of my partner as well of course 😊

The synopsis:
A strange bright light evaporates all man-made objects and returns the Earth to a state where no man has spoiled it's riches.

Follow Ava, a 19-year-old girl that suffers from anxiety and depression, who makes unlikely friendships and encounters all kinds of dangers along the way on this reborn Earth.

What would you do to survive?



You can get a digital copy of this book here:
https://www.kobo.com/gb/en/ebook/project-reboot-terra-firma
It is just £1,99 with Kobo's deal, and with 8 hours of reading and 94k words, that is a great deal!
If this isn't your first time buying an ebook from Kobo, then it'll be £4,99 which is still amazing for the size of the book! 😁

It'll be really helpful and extremely appreciated if you check this book out!

(It also helps in developing Mayhem Arena! 😁)

Thanks for reading and have a great 2019.

- Joris van den Broek

Pre-Alpha Playtesting

Hey everyone!

I have reached the milestone for this year with Mayhem Arena!

The Main menu is now the way I want it to be, bar the camera angles and the like. The buttons and their animations are done. :P

There are also a lot of tweaks that I made within the gameplay:
- items now have a drop rate mechanic
- recoveries from blasts are not abrupt anymore (you will keep the momentum even after recovery)
- explosions are reworked
- camera shakes when you're close by an explosion
- HUD reworked completely

And quite some other things, which I either talked about as well, or am forgetting right now, because it is quite late whilst I type this out :P

Here is the YouTube video of my playtesting:

Hope you enjoy!

Consider subscribing to show me support! :)

I'm sorry for the low quality video. My laptop is pretty powerful, but I suppose running all of this when recording is too much for my old laptop to handle. 

As you can see, each map will hold a maximum of 8 fighters, AI and real people combined.

I was actually struggling playing this. Not because of framerates and such, but because this game is still tough for me (as I debug cheated to quickly debug all kinds of things :P).

Seeing all the explosions around you, and hearing the AI scream their statements constantly makes it, to me, really enjoyable. The ragdolling through the sky add some comedic effect to everything too.

All the items, AI, item generators and everything works so well with each other and it makes me feel really proud. If I can make the AI stop kissing one another, and added a jumping mechanic for them (I know how, just need to set it up) and make their actions feel really fluid, then a match will run as smooth as silk.

I haven't implemented Multiplayer yet, but I really cannot wait to add it! I am actually planning on adding that at the end of the deadlines I am currently facing with University. I will have to follow one of my courses again that is specifically about multiplayer, so that'll be covered soon enough. :)

Anyway, it is the Holidays pretty soon and I won't be doing much on Mayhem Arena for now. I will also have to work on some modelling for an university project, and animations for another university project. That deadline is nearing, as it is in January (R.I.P.) so that will be my main focus for now.

At least with the modelling and animating I might get enough experience to apply that to Mayhem Arena, and actually make some nice characters with nice animations for the game, which is desperately needed I'd say! :P

I'm also really happy to see in my version control, SourceTree, that I have just made my 95th commit. That is quite close to 100 iterations, and that is actually baffling!

I started developing this game begin March this year and it literally started with the default map of Unreal Engine all the way up to this point. I'm suffering from the same ailment that every developer has or will face, and that is for the project to lose it's "magic". I'm glad I haven't given up on Mayhem Arena, because even though some parts during development have been a big pain in the behind, the end product is really worth it.

I hope you who is reading these development blogs feel the same enthusiasm as I do. It is honestly quite hard to get myself to be known and out there, since the traction is very slow. I want to make this my living so I can provide for my family, so if you could share my work with as many people as you can, that would be extremely awesome and I will be forever grateful. :)

If you want to playtest this version of Mayhem Arena yourself, then you can download it through here!:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/oj89sxi1qf93595/MayhemArena%20v0.3.zip?dl=0
I also found out you do NOT need a Dropbox account, so downloading it will be a bit easier I suppose!

I haven't got a feedback form set-up for you guys, but if you find something you want to share with me, or just talk to me, tweeting or commenting is a good way to approach me. :)

Make sure to read the README file in the .zip you've downloaded, the (newer) controls are explained there, with some playing tips & tricks. :)

I hope you have a happy holiday, and a great 2019 (which has to be the year this game will be released in!)!

~ Joris

New looks!

Hello everyone!

I have been working on quite some new looks again for Mayhem Arena!
First off, the item images for in the display have been reworked to fit the newly made Item Display.
(Also, just to make them nicer for the eye :p)

Bouncing Bullet

Fake Item Generator

 Homing Bullet

Item Stealer

Shield

In the last entry I was talking about the background colour of the items. They represent what Type of item they are.

Blast

Launches characters & damages

Normal

Damages characters

Strategic

Doesn't damage but has special behaviour

Next to that, I've worked on the Damage Display for all the characters as well.

The motif takes on the colour of the character it represents. You can also tell the name, the amount of lives and the damage the characters have received. The damage counter gets bigger the bigger the damage is. (Much like SSB)

Next to making the game look prettier, I've also been refactoring bits and bobs everywhere and tidy the coding up a lot. This is to prepare myself for the next stage in scripting, and that is Multiplayer! :D

That's all, so thanks for reading!

~ Joris

Mayhem Arena Title Art

Hello everyone!

I have been busy making the title art for Mayhem Arena and I am really happy with how it turned out! :)

I'm not going to beat around the bush, here it is. :P

It's sleek, on fleek, and made by a geek,

I'm actually enjoying making art for the game. It never used to be something I am good at and I am very grateful for Photoshop tools, fonts and plugins!

I just have to do a bit of altering code so the animations run nicely through the new art, but that is not a challenge, but more of a time consumption. After art is actual character modelling and animation, which is going to take quite a bit of time on its own. I mentioned before that I had some character sketches ready, thanks to my lovely fiancee, but I do not have the pictures of them on me right now, and it is quite late as I write this entry, so... soon enough I'll share the sketches with you guys! :)

Since I have no experience in multiplayer games, it is also going to take a little while to implement multiplayer functionality to Mayhem Arena.

You have probably also heard about the new Epic Game Store that is rivalling Steam and Origin, with his 88% share in revenue for creators. Mayhem Arena was originally planned for Steam, but now plans have changed and it will come out on the Epic Game Store instead! I don't know how to implement their multiplayer functionality over their platform, and I most likely need to have a server set-up for that myself, which I hope I don't need actually. I haven't read up on it yet, so I will have to do that first, of course!

Mayhem Arena is getting so close to it's initial release on a platform and I am super excited for it! I hope you are too! :D

I'll see you later!

~ Joris