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

Updated looks in Mayhem Arena!

Hey all,

I wanted to share the new looks I have been working on for in the game.
There were some small changes made in the main menu.

 These are the new animations for the main menu. I am really proud of my work here!
I did have to redo a tad with the buttons so they would line up correctly, but at least that allows for a nice spin effect.
Also added a simple text display to show what you are hovering over :).

I've reworked the explosions in-game. They now actually change size corresponding to your Mayhem Level when activated. 1 = small explosion. 7 = MASSIVE BOOMING FUN! :D

You can also see the motif of the game again in the newly designed Mayhem Meter in the top-right corner. The bar and the number take on your Player Colour and the circle where the Mayhem Level is displayed in, is in the opposite colour, just to break it apart a tad :)

Then I decided to rework the Held Item Display. I really thought it needed some redesigning as it looked really bad in my opinion (even though I made it myself (it was for debugging purposes to see if it was all referenced properly etc)).

I followed the same motif again, and I wanted to have the item displayed in the most circular part of that motif so that it would be obvious what you, the player, are holding.

For the ammunition, I would put it in the extension of the circle part.

This is the extension part for the ammunition.

I made it a tad transparent so it would be okay enough to take up a bit of space in the corner. It also takes the player colour you've selected, with the ammunition in the opposite colour of what you chose. 

The circle part that will display the item

This is what will hold the display of the item you're holding. This is more of the outline actually, as the item will have a background.

This is the combined look

Put together, without the effect of the player colour, is the base of the Held Item Display.

In-game this is going to look even prettier! :)

Blast Items are displayed in red. They not only damage the characters, but sends them flying into the sky! The more damage they've taken, the harder they fly away!

The current items with this background would then be:

1. Homing Bullet
2. Fake Item Generator

Damage Items are displayed in yellow. They damage characters and increase the damage percentage of the character with each hit.

The only item as of now with this background will be Bouncing Bullet.

Strategic Items are displayed in blue. They don't damage characters, but have a good strategic purpose in-game.

These items would be:

1. Shield
2. Item Stealer

I haven't gotten game play footage of the new Held Item Display as of yet. I first need to rework the image of all the items for them to be applicable with this new display. I've already worked out the Homing Bullet but I will still need to work on the remainder.

The new Homing Bullet Image

I thought I could already show you people the new image for the Homing Bullet so you can have an idea of what it looks like. The reason this is off-centred like this is so it lines up perfectly with the Held Item Display. I've Z-ordered the ring highest, then this image would be underneath the ring and it would all look really slick!

I hope you like the new changes! If you want to share your opinion on the designs then please do so in the comments!

Thank you for your time and I'l see you later!

~ Joris

Hey everyone,

Last night I had an amazing working spree that lasted from 9PM till 3PM, so I worked 6 hours on Mayhem Arena last night... 😪

I'm also feeling a tad under the weather because, hey ho, 'tis the Season for colds again!

Anyway, as I am typing this from my phone I do not have any files to include in this post. I will update about my work later today, but if you're really interested and what to know the gist of it, go to my twitter page at @_Lunatinc.

Give a like and RT to help me get out there more too, if you'd like! 😀

I'll see you later today!

- Joris

Mayhem Arena as of now

Hey everyone,

Mayhem Arena is going really well at the moment. Even with University taking up a lot of my time, I have managed to balance the game a lot more with some tweaks and refining the gameplay.

When you recover, you won't lose the momentum of your air travel and fall straight down anymore! I referenced the velocity before the recovery and applied it again, so the character will keep flying. You actually have to work on your landing a bit more now!

Also, to make the game more fun, with every blast, you will go up way higher. I'll upload a new gameplay footage sometime soon again showing what the gameplay looks like now. Believe me, it is getting really satisfying and hilarious! 😁

Items have a drop rate, making it harder to get a shield but easier to get a homing bullet. No one will spam a shield anymore (at least not as often). I suppose I could script something more, that a player can only get one shield and during that time you just won't get that item from the pool.
I think, personally, that that would be more enjoyable.

AI is still the hard thing to bugfix. No matter what I do, they will keep making out.
"IT IS A BATTLEFIELD. YOU'RE SUPPOSED TO FIGHT, NOT KISS!!!"

Anyway...
University is going great. I have four projects going on for me, and they all have a deadline in end of January, so I will definitely put that first. Next to that it is a lot of designs for Mayhem Arena, and soon enough, it will be modelling objects and characters, and also animate them. I will show you some concepts of the fighters soon as well. My fiancee made some hilarious sketches for potential characters, and I really wanna show you! 😊

I'll see you soon!

Joris ~