Author: headbang

Here’s the latest to-do list update for the Steam Early Access release of Bad Pad.

– Make a new promo video, make it much cooler this time! – DONE!
– Install Steam SDK, create a build with depots for windows 32b and windows 64b and add install/uninstall scripts.
Status: SDK installed, build and depots created with scripts and content, need to create install/uninstall scripts.
– Add patch and updates support for the game. – DONE!
– Finish up RT+LT cut-scene – 95% DONE.
– Finish up analog cut-scene – DONE!
– Finish up the Steam store page – DONE!

We’ve also added some new assets to the game, some underwater vegetation, more background wall variations for the 2nd floor, portals and missile launchers for the 3rd floor and some UI for the main menu.

The walls and vegetation gave me quiet more work to do, going over all the 2nd floor scenes and water scenes and applying the new tiles and objects in as less patterned and hopefully artistic way as possible, it’s amazing how much impact these little details have over the overall feel and look of the game, they bring the scene to life and should be carefully placed, this is mostly done by trail and error, the decoration for the 1st floor for example went through numerous changes throughout the builds of the game, even small things like moving a patch of vines a few pixels in a given direction can make a difference.
So in conclusion its safe to say that in the first build we’ll release these elements won’t be fully placed in all the scenes 🙂

Check out our page on Steam, see the new trailer and play the demo if you haven’t yet, don’t forget to rate us and share your thoughts!

The last month was mainly about creating some mobile presence for Bad Pad, it’s obvious to me now as it was the first day I started working on Bad Pad, that this is not a game for mobile, the amount of control precision required and multi button pressing is just not cut out for touch controls.
So, my intentions are to create mini games for mobile based on parts of Bad Pad, with extended gameplay and mechanics and of course touch based controls.

About an half a year ago I did a mobile game called Bad Fall, it was based on a scene in Bad Pad where you continuously fall and need to avoid obstacles, it was a nice little game, but it lacked depth, replayability and a general sense of progress, it was just one endless level with upgrades spawning throughout the level, so progress was very limited, I’d say around 4-5 mins top per game, it was all randomized, but still it felt pretty much the same every time.

This time I decided to take it a few steps further and make something that would be a little more worth while playing and rewarding, and so Bad Run came to be.

Bad Run is a platformer runner, it’s based on the playable intro part of Bad Pad, where you run after Evil Pen towards his castle.
In the end of Bad Pad’s intro, evil Pen shoots at Square, then Square is running after him and the playable part starts with the text “A few hours of running later”, Bad Run is what happened in those few hours.

Though in Bad Pad’s intro you can only run and jump, in Bad Run you can do much more, you can upgrade your character in the in-game store with coins you will be picking up and winning from achievements and rewards, there are basic upgrades that will make you move faster or jump higher and there are abilities upgrades, one of them is Air Diving which is already a feature in Bad Pad another is Double Jump, which is not a feature in Bad Pad and I’m not sure if it ever will be, another one is Jet Pack, this feature was so cool that I decided to add it to Bad Pad too, it’ll be mostly in the last floor, which I’m working on now, there is also a continuous jump upgrade, which is not that necessary for Bad Pad, but it does wonders in Bad Run.

Besides the character upgrades you can buy upgrades that will spawn more coins, spawn more valuable coins, spawn more map pieces or spawn more coin magnets and increase it’s duration.

The last section of upgrades is for later levels, there are sections in the game where you fly and the wind is pushing you up and you need to push down against it, for this section you can have a shield around you, which you can pickup during the levels or buy in advance, picked up shields are not stored and can be used only in the level they were picked up in.
The shield are also used for another section of the game where you don’t have control over the character and fly straight and you need to shoot obstacles that are coming at you, for this section you can also upgrade your amount of ammo and reload time, shields and fire powerups are also used for the boss fights.

The last item is revives, revives can be bought only with special coins, there are 3 special coins in each level and you can get more from the daily rewards!, some levels can be intense, having an extra life or two can really make the difference.

I might expand the game more in the future, add more levels or different campaigns, maybe some predesigned levels, but that depends on the amount of interest people will show in the game.

So to summarize the game’s features I’ll just copy paste my google description here 🙂

– Campaign mode including 4 episodes, 40 levels, missions and battles.
– Endless mode, master your skills, collect coins and upgrade your character and buy new items.
– Daily rewards and achievements.
– Bad Pad comics, finish an episode to reveal more slides.
– Original guitar driven music by Avishay Mizrav.
– Supports Landscape and Portrait views.

Did I mentioned it’s free?

There’s also a landing page if you want to share it
Bad Run

…and back to Bad Pad.
We did some more work on the cut-scenes and I closed a list of bugs we made during the gaming festivals last month, I made a few new scenes abd the steam store page is fully setup and ready to lunch, but I still need to finish up a few things before releasing the first build, here’s my todo list,

– Make a new promo video, make it much cooler this time!
– Create the install/uninstall shield scripts.
– Add patch and updates support for the game.
– Finish up RT+LT cut-scene
– Finish up analog cut-scene

It shouldn’t take too long, might be any day now, I can’t promise a date, but I can say it would be before 2017!

The GameIN festival went great, we had a lot of good feedback and reaction from the gamers!
We had a competition going throughout the event, from 11am to 10pm.
33 contestants competed for the highest score in a 15 min run cycle each, most of them played very well some were true gamers, or ninjas as I like to call them.
At around 8pm, Ronen, also known as Ron707, grabbed the gamepad and set the highest score for that day and eventually won the competition and 1st place prize.
Here are the results
http://Bad Pad – Competition results

The results for the giveaway lottery will be publish early next week.

Dear blog,
I know I’ve been neglecting you lately, but fret not, there’s lots of stuff for me to feed you with today!
I hope you kept your appetite…

So first thing first, Bad Pad is going to be on 2 major gaming events!

The first event is GameIN, a gaming festival that takes place on October, 19-20, 2016, Tel Aviv – Convention Center.
I will be showing Bad Pad only on the 20th from 11am to 10pm.
There will be a prized contest, I will be handing out copies of my music CD, you can register for a free digital copy of the game lottery and more!
My Gamepad and I will be waiting for you there!

The other exciting news is that Bad Pad was selected for the Indie Prize Scholarship and will be showcased at Casual Connect on November, 1-3, 2016, Charles Bronfman Auditorium – Tel Aviv.
More details will come soon!

I’ve built a Press Kit Page for these events and it’s a good thing to have in general.

I’ve made some great progress in the music department!
The first one is a track I call “Analog’s Digital Ride”, it is obviously for the analog riding levels, in this one I’m doing a keyboard duo with Amit Sh. check it out!

Here are some new wip tracks for the levels

There were a few more tracks written but not recorded yet.
On a related issue, I’ve been working with this great guy, Jeremiah Kelly of UnderGunned Productions, he’s been recording vocals for the game’s songs, here is the intro with the new awesome vocal tracks!
Check out Jeremiah letting out some aggression in the studio!

And here are some more samples of vocal recordings

As I mentioned before I added language support in the game, currently just a rough translation to Hebrew for the gaming events, but I have a guy working on German, Spanish and French translations and Russian will also come later on.

We’re also working on some new promotional graphics and a new logo, here is a first draft

Aside from all that, I’ve handled the usual bugs extermination, U.I updates, level design, new cut-scenes and more.

That’s about it for now dear Blog, I hope your appetite was satisfied and I promise not to keep you waiting too long till next time, either way know that I always carry some new stuff for you to chew on, even and especially if I’m not around to give it to you.

The last couple of months were all about the creative side of the game, writing the story, dialogues, making some cut-scene animations, writing more music and more.

Lets start with the story, it was important for me as a gamer and as the maker of Bad Pad that it will tell a story, I’m a big fan of adventure games and the story has a big part in them.
But on the other hand, it is still a platformer game, so I didn’t want to overload it with too much dialogues, so I kept it to a minimum and made sure there are funny parts here and there.

The story will be told in a few ways, Intro and Ending will be a cinematic cut-scene synced to a lyrical music tune, some what of a rock opera.
The rest of the story will be told to you by Triangle in 3 not so long parts throughout the game, in addition there will be a few cut-scenes where you meet other buttons that will help you along the way, if it’s by giving you a new power, a new tool, safe passage, etc, these will also include short dialogues, mostly on a comic tone and will probably not reveal any new story elements.

I’m about 70% done with the story and dialogues and I’ve written the intro song lyrics and music.

The intro is about 90% finished and is already patched into the online demo, I’m doing all the syncing, animations, camera movement and effects in code and in real-time.

Some changes made to game:

* Main menu updated, option screen is now more neatly arranged, more options added, button mapping is in a separated screen.
* Starting a new game gives you 3 save slots to choose from.
* Torch item has been decaprated, you now get a new power from an upgrade machine, “super glow in the dark plastic coating”, you get 10 seconds of glow when in dark areas, standing in the light or near a fire recharges your glow.
* Some more level design.

Try the demo and check out the intro:

Bad Pad – DEMO

Here is the latest update for Bad Pad!

Firstly, level design for floor 3 is done, floor 4 has begun! (this is going to be a biiiiiiiiig one…)

We finished the design for Triangle character and added his animations to the arcade scenes.

Triangle will talk to you throughout the game and tell you bits of the story, this will not be FMV cut-scenes, but code based animations, done with face parts, like we did for the UI faces, this way we can “render” endless sequences, with endless variations, for the cost of a few extra lines of codes.

I’ve made a few basic functions for now, stuff like, raise hands, blink, twitch, talk, etc, and we’ll match the expressions according to the text/voice, most of it will be manually triggered but with a little randomness, so it won’t look too repetitive, but I can add some neat tricks like, if there’s a question mark in the text I can make him scratch his head and if there’s an exclamation mark I’ll make him raise his hands, also I can make him do a specific action on a certain words.

Started laying down some more music, here are a couple of demo samples.

Boss Fight Scene 1

Train levels

Playable part of intro + level 1.1

If you missed my previous post check out Swipey – Make your own level, another game I made where you can make and share your own levels for free, also since the last post Swipey was updated with more tools, new UI and few bugs fixed.

About two weeks ago I’ve posted about my new game, Swipey, shortly after posting I’ve noticed some server-side limitation with my hosting account at go-daddy that caused issues with posting big sized levels, so I decided to upgrade, for more control and better access.

Unfortunately, this seem to be simple task went completely wrong and my account was not available for over a week, after talking with the support 3 times and been told it was fixed and that I will have access in about 72 hours (each time in between), finally my account was up, but oh wait, they broke almost everything!, sites and games were not loading, wordpress plugins stopped working and what not.

This time I didn’t bother contacting them again and went a different way, a good friend of mine, Shuky, recommended hosting my own machine at amazon and setting a web server on it and was willing to help me do it, there are lots of pluses to hosting a machine, you have full control over everything, you pay per use (for more than average use it costs about the same as normal hosting) and the hosting is much faster and accessible to users.

The downside, is you need to setup everything yourself and it’s all done by typing through a talent client to the server (linux), I knew this is going to be a task and probably an ugly one, but I was up for learning some new stuff and fortunately Shuky was up for some tutoring, it turned out we both learned a lot in the process 🙂

So you start from all the basic stuff, like installing a talnet client, creating an ssh key, setting up sftp access and your ready!

For a web server to run you need install all the basic, PHP, apache, mysql, etc, we took a little shortcut here and installed a pre-made package ready to be used, in retrospect this caused us some problems with permissions and routing of domains, but we got an handle on that, eventually.

So now that you have a web server up, you need to start pushing in your content and hope it all runs well (I have 5 domains with 3 wordpress sites and a few plain html sites, online games and demos).
First things first, upload all the files (any sftp program will do, I use filezilla), second thing was supposed to be – set files and directories permissions, which we didn’t do and it came back to bite me in the ass later on.

The next step was creating mysql databases and importing exported wordpress sql files, this is fairly simple, 2 lines, one for creating a new database and one for importing, updating a table is a little more complex, searching, selecting, updating is all done manually and can get a little tiresome, I will probably set up phpMyAdmin for easier control over mysql databases.

A couple of hours in and we had the first site up and running, it still had some issues which I took care of later on, but mostly it looked promising and I was sure it’s all smooth sailing from here on.

And then a little shit storm hit the boat, we needed to host all the domains on the same account, which means they all point to the same server IP, and the server manage them by domains name and setting up virtual hosts that points to different directories on the server, this task was the longest of them all by far and kept us busy for plenty of hours, but not because we didn’t do it right, but mostly because of the pre-made package we installed, which had another included file that was blocking our code and it took us a while catching on to that.

Finally all is up and running, aside from a few small issues I still need to fix, everything looks fine and functioning, most importantly, Swipey, which had issues with posting levels and it is now fixed!

We also made progress with Bad Pad, but I’ll be setting up a separated post about it in a few days.

You might also notice I’ve switched domains for the devlog, it is now hosted at headbangames.com.

I’ll start with something a little off topic, a new game/project I’ve been working on the last week,
I call it, Swipey (hence the game’s swiping mechanics).

Swipey is a pretty simple and self exploratory game (just play it), what I rather focus on is the online level builder I made for it, the idea was to create a simple level builder for everyone at all ages to create their own levels and publish or share it with the friends, the game runs inside a website I’ve made and you can publish your levels straight from the game into the website in one click.

Give it a go, make your own level!
Swipey – Make your own levels

And back to Bad Pad, here is the latest update:
We’ve worked on the game’s map and finished the 2nd floor layout, I’ve made some water particle animations, turned out nicely.

I redid and added more decorations for floor 1+2 and we also create some new sprites for the 2nd floor.
New scenes and more work on previous level design.
A few bugs and mechanics improvements.
We got some new graphics for the submarine and the submarine boss level and a few side view animations for Evil X.

Great news, Bad Pad got greenlit by steam community!
We are working now on getting an Early Access beta version of the game and of course setting up the Steam developer account and all the necessary headaches around it 🙂
Hopefully we’ll start running with the beta on Steam somewhere between June and July 2016.
In the meanwhile the online demo is still being updated with new stuff, we’ve revamped some of the old graphics and Floor 3 level design is almost finished!
Stay tuned for more updates!

I’ve finished designing the 2nd floor, that’s another 4 levels with 26 scenes and 2 boss levels, there are also 2 submarine levels on this floor.
I’ve started working on the 3rd floor and almost finished the 1st level, again out of 4.
Note, the online demo is updated regularly with new graphics, features, bug fixes, etc, but it only contains the 1st level, which is about 15% of the game, hopefully when we’ll get greenlit we can push it to the early access program, early access is a cool steam feature where you can presale your game as is, at an alpha/beta stage at a lower price with free updates up to the final version, this is good for everyone, since we’re getting more users and feedback during the development and you get the game for a lower price and get to be part of the development process, that is if you’re interested.

We’re still working on the new game map, it’s looking great so far, here is the latest preview.

Here are some new videos of the latest stuff.