Mar 20, 2013
Product Update - Valve
March 20th, 2013
Update Name: OhNoILostMySpacebarAgain
We’ve been continuing to integrate your feedback into the game. Here's the latest:
GAMEPLAY: We’ve taken two of our levels, and put you in control via the Genetics Lab. When you unlock cities Five and Six, you’re able to control the level's DNA via three variables: FATNESS, SPREAD and SALT. Take some screenshots or videos of what your levels look like; we’re looking forward to what you guys come up with.
FEEDBACK: We’ve temporarily replaced the proximity sensor (the big circle on the screen) with some pretty awesome particle effects that show up when you get close to stuff. We also added some popups to show you when and where you’ve done some stunts. How does it look?
VISUALS: Michael just finished laying the groundwork for a new background visualizer. At its very basic level, it allows us to easily animate the background color of the world as you’re flying through it. It also will let us create some animated and awesome background imagery to further enhance your experience. If you have any ideas for visualizers, please feel free to share them.
ANALYSIS: There was a last minute improvement to BeatBox, our song analysis tech. This update helps us *much* more accurately detect beats for EDM and bass-heavy songs.
One last thing: we’re playing with the idea of letting you rotate yourself within the world. Press the mouse buttons to rotate left or right. How does it feel? Do you think that’d be a fun addition for gameplay? We’ve got a few ideas we’re going to keep under our collective hats right now. Did you notice that Dave was wearing a hat in our video? He always does that.. what’s he hiding under there?
As always, tell us what you love, what you hate, and what you’re doing this weekend. (We’ll be at PAX East!)
=============================================================
March 1st, 2013
Update Name: The Fattest Baby is the Cutest
Hey everyone!
Some gritty details of our work:
- Stunts! Nine of them! Build up a huge combo, but be careful to not risk it all!
- A level select, and three different levels for you to play in. Tell us what you like about each of them, and which ones you like most.
- Performance improvements to balance out the crazy colors that we've been throwing into the game.
- You can take screenshots now, just hit F12 at any time. They'll be in the "Screenshots" folder in the game directory.
- A proximity sensor. A segmented circle shows up where nearby things are to you, and how close you're getting to them.
- Caching for some of our level loading stuff, so you should be seeing faster load times.
- Three new songs! (Two from Morgan Packard, and another one from Hybrid Mind Studios)
The feedback from you guys has been absolutely awesome so far, development continues to move along. We decided to take a chunk of time and dedicate February to really refining where we want the gameplay to go. This build should show a great base for where we're going.
Previously we had you collect two different types of pickups. One for Signal, which increases your multiplier and beautifies the level, and another simply for points. Some of you mentioned wanting to do more than that, so we took that feedback and folded it into a brand-new stunt system!
It builds off of some gameplay reminiscient to Aaaaa! If you pass by an object quickly, you get a buzz. If you pass alongside an object for an extended amount of time, you get a groove. As you build combinations and perturbations of these movements, you'll be able to discover up to eight different stunts we've thrown in, AS A START.
We're pretty excited about this whole thing, we think it's going to open up a whole new way for you to re-experience and explore your music. Tell us what you think.
Known things:
- Unicode song names still doesn't work.
=============================================================
February 1st, 2013
Update Name: Task Master
Changes
Ichiro says: Our goal was to bump the fun up one notch and get the music-to-level connection up one notch. (We ain't there yet, but we're closer!) We've started looking at individual songs and considering how they should look in the game. For example, we wanted Enya's A Day Without Rain to feel open and free, like a toddler who's simultaneously discovered the twin concepts of nudity and running down the street. So, when the game hears a song that's low-energy, the playing field opens up all big-like, and the obstacles leave.
We're also just now starting to make different songs feel different in other ways. We run what we call a mutator over a level on certain tracks, so if you try a handful of different ones, you should see some variation between them.
Known Issues:
- The game still chokes on files with unicode characters. You’ll have to rename it in order to play it for now, sorry.
- More excuses incoming!
=============================================================
January 25th, 2013
Update Name: Nasty Butler
We hope you guys had a great new year. We spent some time chewing on your feedback, drinking far too much eggnog, and stretching our legs with the tools that we’ve built so far. This update continues to focus on making gameplay more fun, and making visuals feel even more visceral.
Changelog:
- New Mechanics! Collecting signal truly plays into the visual feel of the game now, and affects the multiplier of our brand-spanking-new secondary point pickup. Max out your signal and grab as many points as you can. Point multiplier from 1x to 3x depending on your signal %. (Twist: Signal drains slowly during normal gameplay.)
- The level constricts and expands depending on the feel of the song you're listening to.
- Added mousewheel scrolling to the filebrowser
- No less than 537 optimizations. The game should run beautifully and smoothly on your toaster.
- Added a crosshair, and tweaked the movement and camera angle a good bit. (Protip: We’ve added three different crosshairs. Press F1 to toggle between all of them. Tell us which one is your favorite.)
Known Issues:
- The game still chokes on files with unicode characters. You’ll have to rename it in order to play it for now, sorry.
- E-mail rshenoy@dejobaan.com with a convincing complaint about all the Reddit spam he's been putting out. The most convincing person will get an alpha key to Drunken Robot Pornography, because why not.
- That’s it, we’re only allowed to have one bug in the game.
=============================================================
December 21st, 2012
Update Name: Rabid Wumpus
That's two updates in one month. We are not kidding around here. Our focus at the moment is SPEED. Does the game feel like it's more fun than the first build for its fastness?
We'll make it more fun in other ways as well -- more mechanics, better controls. Maybe WASD or gamepad, as Wuggly says. But right now, think "speed." Thanks for reading.
Changelog:
- Fixed FileBrowser Bugs (see previous thread)
- Speed Improvements for slower systems.
- Signal Level is displayed on the screen UI during gameplay.
- More visual feedback when you level your signal up.
- Gameplay speed moves 3x faster.
- Added two new sub pattern types (Doom Hoops and Death Elbows!)
- Stopped signal pickups from moving.
- Don't allow signal pickups outside of bass tube.
- Slowed flower pieces movement speed and amount.
- Increased amount of initial signal to pickup when game starts.
- Reduced number of pieces in outside bass tube.
- Reduced amount and size of debris field type patterns.
- Reduced size of star field patterns.
- Spicy Mountain Lion
- Other misc balancing tweaks to the level to adjust for faster gameplay speed.
=============================================================
December 19th, 2012
Update Name: Alex Is Nude
Ladies and gents, may I present you with the first playable Steam pre-release build in about 50 billion years.
Details:
- Lots of research on Procedural Content Generation (PCG).
- We re-wrote the game from the ground up in Unity. It's now all in Unity + Python, making it moddable and wonderful.
- There's a new music analysis engine called BeatBox, which Andy Eiche created. We're just beginning to make use of this.
- The guys from fellow Boston indie studios Zapdot (Michael Carriere) and Hybrid Mind Studios (Dave Evans) are working with us full time now. Michael's focused on Unity, and Dave and I are focused on the PCG side of things.
- In the past year and a half, we've tested dozens of mechanics.
What you're seeing is the very first Unity build we're releasing to the wild. Let us know what you think.
NOTE: We're trying a few new things out in this build. Some will be awesome; some, we'll want to change.
Let us know what you like and feel we could improve.
Update Name: OhNoILostMySpacebarAgain
We’ve been continuing to integrate your feedback into the game. Here's the latest:
GAMEPLAY: We’ve taken two of our levels, and put you in control via the Genetics Lab. When you unlock cities Five and Six, you’re able to control the level's DNA via three variables: FATNESS, SPREAD and SALT. Take some screenshots or videos of what your levels look like; we’re looking forward to what you guys come up with.
FEEDBACK: We’ve temporarily replaced the proximity sensor (the big circle on the screen) with some pretty awesome particle effects that show up when you get close to stuff. We also added some popups to show you when and where you’ve done some stunts. How does it look?
VISUALS: Michael just finished laying the groundwork for a new background visualizer. At its very basic level, it allows us to easily animate the background color of the world as you’re flying through it. It also will let us create some animated and awesome background imagery to further enhance your experience. If you have any ideas for visualizers, please feel free to share them.
ANALYSIS: There was a last minute improvement to BeatBox, our song analysis tech. This update helps us *much* more accurately detect beats for EDM and bass-heavy songs.
One last thing: we’re playing with the idea of letting you rotate yourself within the world. Press the mouse buttons to rotate left or right. How does it feel? Do you think that’d be a fun addition for gameplay? We’ve got a few ideas we’re going to keep under our collective hats right now. Did you notice that Dave was wearing a hat in our video? He always does that.. what’s he hiding under there?
As always, tell us what you love, what you hate, and what you’re doing this weekend. (We’ll be at PAX East!)
=============================================================
March 1st, 2013
Update Name: The Fattest Baby is the Cutest
Hey everyone!
Some gritty details of our work:
- Stunts! Nine of them! Build up a huge combo, but be careful to not risk it all!
- A level select, and three different levels for you to play in. Tell us what you like about each of them, and which ones you like most.
- Performance improvements to balance out the crazy colors that we've been throwing into the game.
- You can take screenshots now, just hit F12 at any time. They'll be in the "Screenshots" folder in the game directory.
- A proximity sensor. A segmented circle shows up where nearby things are to you, and how close you're getting to them.
- Caching for some of our level loading stuff, so you should be seeing faster load times.
- Three new songs! (Two from Morgan Packard, and another one from Hybrid Mind Studios)
The feedback from you guys has been absolutely awesome so far, development continues to move along. We decided to take a chunk of time and dedicate February to really refining where we want the gameplay to go. This build should show a great base for where we're going.
Previously we had you collect two different types of pickups. One for Signal, which increases your multiplier and beautifies the level, and another simply for points. Some of you mentioned wanting to do more than that, so we took that feedback and folded it into a brand-new stunt system!
It builds off of some gameplay reminiscient to Aaaaa! If you pass by an object quickly, you get a buzz. If you pass alongside an object for an extended amount of time, you get a groove. As you build combinations and perturbations of these movements, you'll be able to discover up to eight different stunts we've thrown in, AS A START.
We're pretty excited about this whole thing, we think it's going to open up a whole new way for you to re-experience and explore your music. Tell us what you think.
Known things:
- Unicode song names still doesn't work.
=============================================================
February 1st, 2013
Update Name: Task Master
Changes
Ichiro says: Our goal was to bump the fun up one notch and get the music-to-level connection up one notch. (We ain't there yet, but we're closer!) We've started looking at individual songs and considering how they should look in the game. For example, we wanted Enya's A Day Without Rain to feel open and free, like a toddler who's simultaneously discovered the twin concepts of nudity and running down the street. So, when the game hears a song that's low-energy, the playing field opens up all big-like, and the obstacles leave.
We're also just now starting to make different songs feel different in other ways. We run what we call a mutator over a level on certain tracks, so if you try a handful of different ones, you should see some variation between them.
Known Issues:
- The game still chokes on files with unicode characters. You’ll have to rename it in order to play it for now, sorry.
- More excuses incoming!
=============================================================
January 25th, 2013
Update Name: Nasty Butler
We hope you guys had a great new year. We spent some time chewing on your feedback, drinking far too much eggnog, and stretching our legs with the tools that we’ve built so far. This update continues to focus on making gameplay more fun, and making visuals feel even more visceral.
Changelog:
- New Mechanics! Collecting signal truly plays into the visual feel of the game now, and affects the multiplier of our brand-spanking-new secondary point pickup. Max out your signal and grab as many points as you can. Point multiplier from 1x to 3x depending on your signal %. (Twist: Signal drains slowly during normal gameplay.)
- The level constricts and expands depending on the feel of the song you're listening to.
- Added mousewheel scrolling to the filebrowser
- No less than 537 optimizations. The game should run beautifully and smoothly on your toaster.
- Added a crosshair, and tweaked the movement and camera angle a good bit. (Protip: We’ve added three different crosshairs. Press F1 to toggle between all of them. Tell us which one is your favorite.)
Known Issues:
- The game still chokes on files with unicode characters. You’ll have to rename it in order to play it for now, sorry.
- E-mail rshenoy@dejobaan.com with a convincing complaint about all the Reddit spam he's been putting out. The most convincing person will get an alpha key to Drunken Robot Pornography, because why not.
- That’s it, we’re only allowed to have one bug in the game.
=============================================================
December 21st, 2012
Update Name: Rabid Wumpus
That's two updates in one month. We are not kidding around here. Our focus at the moment is SPEED. Does the game feel like it's more fun than the first build for its fastness?
We'll make it more fun in other ways as well -- more mechanics, better controls. Maybe WASD or gamepad, as Wuggly says. But right now, think "speed." Thanks for reading.
Changelog:
- Fixed FileBrowser Bugs (see previous thread)
- Speed Improvements for slower systems.
- Signal Level is displayed on the screen UI during gameplay.
- More visual feedback when you level your signal up.
- Gameplay speed moves 3x faster.
- Added two new sub pattern types (Doom Hoops and Death Elbows!)
- Stopped signal pickups from moving.
- Don't allow signal pickups outside of bass tube.
- Slowed flower pieces movement speed and amount.
- Increased amount of initial signal to pickup when game starts.
- Reduced number of pieces in outside bass tube.
- Reduced amount and size of debris field type patterns.
- Reduced size of star field patterns.
- Spicy Mountain Lion
- Other misc balancing tweaks to the level to adjust for faster gameplay speed.
=============================================================
December 19th, 2012
Update Name: Alex Is Nude
Ladies and gents, may I present you with the first playable Steam pre-release build in about 50 billion years.
Details:
- Lots of research on Procedural Content Generation (PCG).
- We re-wrote the game from the ground up in Unity. It's now all in Unity + Python, making it moddable and wonderful.
- There's a new music analysis engine called BeatBox, which Andy Eiche created. We're just beginning to make use of this.
- The guys from fellow Boston indie studios Zapdot (Michael Carriere) and Hybrid Mind Studios (Dave Evans) are working with us full time now. Michael's focused on Unity, and Dave and I are focused on the PCG side of things.
- In the past year and a half, we've tested dozens of mechanics.
What you're seeing is the very first Unity build we're releasing to the wild. Let us know what you think.
NOTE: We're trying a few new things out in this build. Some will be awesome; some, we'll want to change.
Let us know what you like and feel we could improve.
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