Author: Matt

Devlog XI: The Excess of Rome

Written by Matton

Ancient Rome was excessive and so too is the notion of making a 3D game like this in Gamemaker. This post explores some of the excesses of our processes such as boss battle design, new effects, props and music updates. A lot of these aspects could be simplified and still suffice under the guise of being retro but we hope that the depth and attention to detail will be visible in the final game. As a final excess, this update is even longer than usual!

Boss Encounters

Originally we didn’t have plans to include bosses in the game – instead there would be the gradual introduction of new enemy types to keep the gameplay fresh. Economically, this would make for more interesting encounters since we wouldn’t be designing single use bosses that only appear on one level. Additionally, a lot of games don’t have very fun bosses – scripted events, weak spots and cheesy sequences can be tedious, lazy designs. Even worse, damage sponges that are essentially normal encounters with higher health pools can be even more uninspired. Doom didn’t really have bosses, Quake barely had them and so why would a retro fps need to stray too far from some of the best in the genre? Well, because they are a ton of fun. Boss encounters should be a climax and lazy designs are a let down – if you have fun levels but a boring boss, it would be better not to include one as you are signalling a peak to the player but delivering a disappointment. Bosses are great but are also risky if implemented poorly. The prior criticisms listed about boss stages still stand. We have endeavored to make interesting confrontations that are fun to play and continue the frantic pace of the rest of the game. Since levels are fast and full of action we didn’t want to do any ‘puzzle bosses’ that slow things down. Boss fights should be frenzied and promote constant movement and reactions that toy with the standard rules of the game. Sequenced attacks turned out to be a good way to evolve these challenges since more standard move and attack behaviors of normal enemies felt a bit mundane. To avoid repetition the variety of attacks as well as their orders are varied with good flow between states. At this stage we have four bosses designed and for the moment are revealing the first encounter: The Cyclops.

The premise of the Cyclops is that he is slow moving but has incredible range with his club. He also has a theme of explosives and throws fire pots while the senator the player aims to assassinate is mounted in a basket on his back. The player enters this stage with the sling as their weapon (a la David and Goliath) and must whittle down the boss with its stones. The superior approach however, is to throw a stone at one of the pots the Cyclops hurls at the player: this can be done with pots that miss and remain on the stage but a skilled player can explode them as they leave his hand. This theme is continued with flaming pigs that can be baited and detonated within his radius. This makes the fight an interesting balance where a player can slowly brute force the encounter but also make more risky plays to dispatch the enemy (explosives hurt the player too after all!). Variability and progression are created by allowing these attacks to evolve over the course of the stage: initially only one pot is thrown but it later evolves to two or three.

    • The main combat states of the Cyclops are:
    • Chase (move towards the player
    • Club attack (short range sweep if the player gets too close)
    • Throws explosive pots (various quantities)
    • Sounds his horn (to summon explosive pigs)
    • Quake slam (club slams the ground and large radius, a ‘quake’ moves out in a cone)
    • Collapsing rubble (hits ceiling with his club, rubble falls on the player’s position)
    • Tornado attack (spins with his club, very gamey)

Each phase involves a sequence of these actions in various orders and durations to create learnable repetition with enough variety to prevent the encounter from becoming stale. Phases progress as the Cyclops’ health gets worn down so players will combat sets of behaviors as the battle continues. This allows for the more elaborate states to be saved for later in the stage to build tension. Ordering attacks differently can create interesting interplay as well: a pot throw followed by a chase makes it easy to dodge and damage him but that same throw followed by a club slam is more difficult because there are now multiple things to dodge with different timings. Additional dynamics are created when the puffs from slam attacks push existing pots towards the player. To keep ammo stocked, the close range club attacks spawns stones up from the ground, forcing the player to get dangerously close to fuel their ammo supply. In many ways, the elements of this boss are simple on their own but it is the variety and relationship between each of them that keeps the stage interesting. There is an enormous aesthetic value in creating an encounter like this and we are happy that as well as being a cinematic moment, the fight itself is engaging and fun to play.

This design may stand out as a departure from other enemies that are more grounded in reality – the premise of the game is surely fantastical but beyond Casear’s resurrection and perhaps the priest enemy type, everything else fits comfortably into a low-fantasy world. After designing a number of somewhat realistic enemy types, scaling encounters into later levels starts to get more difficult. It is definitely possible to continue adding stronger looking soldiers with different weapons but the spectacle of Greco-Roman mythos was hard to resist! As players progress towards the end of the game they will start to encounter opponents that are more mythological in nature.

Matt
With the addition of bosses came some animation challenges. So far the entirety of the game’s characters by Ivan and creatures by myself, have been animated in FK (forward kinematics) a style of posing for animation. This method is generally slower and thought of as more primitive than IK (inverse kinematics) which is more modern and widely considered the easier way of posing a rigged character for animation. The choice for completely FK style workflow was chosen initially for speed. Simply FK is faster to set up. And this extra control that IK would give didn’t matter at the low resolution that the characters are rendered at. Would this hold up for bosses with bigger sprites? More challenging but yeah. FK was born of speed but when it got slow it stayed for the style. Personally I feel while actively working in FK, the kind of style the animation gives off feels more in line with the game’s aesthetic. A more primitive method of posing to go with the retro and technologically primitive art style. This idea is what enforced FK in my mind as it provides a more accurate animation style that is faithful to the retro FPS genre.

The idea of applying restrictions like this is something I have been fascinated with throughout the development of the game. It is amazing how much impact doing something a particular way or with a restriction will effect an outcome. This process can be exploited by choosing the same restrictions that your game’s predecessor had, resulting in an output that feels much more faithful.

STATUES

Matt
When we think of the civilization that was Rome in its entire greatness and vastness, an image of culture appears; a culture full to the brim with achievement and advancement, an ancient metropolitan scene painted in our mind. So to this I propose that in any form of media, Ancient Rome deserves fair, just and uncompromised treatment in its representation, worthy of such a legacy. An upgrade to the density of detail in the form of set dressing is in progress for our levels. This does not compromise the retro fps style of the game but breeds life into the settings and makes what were once cold empty streets bustle with the many artifacts that illustrate the great Excess of Rome.

Ivan
Ancient Romans chose to venerate their heroes and historical figures in marble and bronze. Bronze being the cheaper alternative, often a direct copy of the ancient Greek statues. Romans had a unique combination of scientific progress laced with superstition and strict religious observance. Many of their myths had been borrowed from Greece being that Aeneas, one of the heroes of Troy, was a prototypical patriarch of Rome. As much as Rome loved pomp and grandeur they also strove for ruthless efficiency in military conquests, art and architecture. To represent this in our game over the last several slow months of development I have been toiling to create a base mesh to use to create Roman statues. The method of getting the statues into the game changed as the tools we use have been updated. A combination of Blender and 3D Coat to pose sculpt, auto-retopologise and bake the models, with the final step of using a 360 render scene to export the 8 or 16 sides into a sprite sheet.

MUSIC

Jordan
I’ve written plenty about other tracks for the game but haven’t taken the opportunity to delve more deeply into the process. This new song, ‘Blood White’ is my favorite so far so I thought it would be interesting to take a look behind the scenes.

This particular track was played on a Ltd F-250. Given the thrash metal focus of the soundtrack, most of the songs have a focus on guitars in terms of composition with other instruments augmenting but never dominating the sound. All rhythm guitars (red and orange) are double tracked to add heft to the progressions as well as a better stereo image. Double tracking is a technique where the same part is recorded twice, both takes tightly in time. For the end listener, it may sound like a single guitar but the result of this method is much richer, wider and allows the producer to mix and amplify each signal separately (in this case to create a heavier rhythm section). In this song there are a few separate lead guitars (yellow) but they don’t overlap too much and exist mostly for different amp and EQ settings. Some of this could be automated but I find it easier to work on a few different lanes to quickly test newly recorded parts under different aesthetics. My workflow involves recording a raw signal input from the guitar through a usb preamp, then using a vst to amplify the sound. In all of the songs for Caesar’s Revenge I use Amplitube 3 for both clean and distorted tones.

Although I have previously enjoyed recording bass, I have moved to using a virtual instrument (MODO Bass) to speed up recording since we need a number of songs to flesh out the soundtrack. Initially I thought that if I were doing an album in and of itself I would go back to live recording but I’ve enjoyed this process so much that I plan to stick with it for other projects. The bass line (green) is also enhanced by a distorted synth playing the same part to shape the sound further. In the final mix you barely hear this synth but it does a lot in providing dynamics to the sound without dominating it to a point that the track starts to feel electronic. Drums on this song are also virtual (Steven Slate 3). A good sample library is essential for writing this kind of music because I want it to sound believable as real instruments. The other tracks floating around the project are various pieces of ear candy, feedback noise, atmosphere and samples. These additions help to build tension and stop repeated parts from sounding too identical.

In terms of writing process, I normally start with a collection of guitar riffs and try to arrange them in ways that make sense. Since the player will hear these songs repeatedly I am also careful to move the composition forward without lingering for too long in one section. In a stand alone song the idea of a long built up repeated part can work really well but the sporadic stop and start nature of the game demands fast riffs and quick changes to keep the pace flowing. In this sense, most of the songs for the game have more riffs than I would normally be inclined to include but this is essential given the amount of time players will hear them for. Interestingly, it also gives the songs a unique style in departing from more traditional structures.

PROPS

Matt
In addition to the introduction of statues came new pieces to dress the scenes: over 300 original 3D modeled and rendered Roman themed props. The initial 300 are committed to dress Act I, with some more unique and thematically suited assets planned in addition for the adventures abroad in Act II and the wild ride of Act III. The new props feature many of the generic artefacts known to categorise the period including vast varieties of pottery, baskets, linens, scrolls, books, candelabras, bronze vessels and ornaments, weapons stands, foodstuffs, both musical and non-musical instruments, armor and weapon stands, glassware, straw, farming, storage and utility items to name a few. Despite this not feeling like a big change gameplay wise, what it does impact is the aesthetic, feel, depth and quality of exploration in the game.

Additional discussions also took place on whether these props should be destructible. There were a lot of factors that played into our final choice. In the end we decided no. Having non-destructible props means we can make more props, so this benefits the dressing of the game and improving its settings. This choice also means that our environments will keep their visual integrity and look like Rome, rather than rooms full of destructible rubble. We already have destructible exploding and fire pots that allow from more combat opportunities and the fact that these do destruct in comparison to the decorations makes their purpose clearer and their use intentional. The nail in the coffin was our intention for the gameplay, Ceasar’s Revenge is a game about combat and speed. Generations of games have taught us to smash props in search of reward; this is the opposite of combat and speed. We do not want to encourage this instinct to smash, that propels players to systematically destroy every prop in the level in a fruitless search for something that is not there. This distinction proves to be a very important choice to guide the kind of gameplay experience we intend. And is why the decorations are purely aesthetic.

EFFECTS

Ivan
As most of you know, in the first person games turning your enemies into a pile of guts and gibs has been a staple of the genre. This led us to create one of the best and convincing effects in Caesar’s Revenge. Currently in the game there are a number of ways to dispose of your enemy to make them gib, one method is shooting explosive pots with any projectile. What we used to create this effect was just Blender 2.8, a combination of particles and also cloth. Due to the limitation is frames that we have the timing of the simulation always gets adjusted in post. A simulation is created, rendered out, sped up and cropped.

One other advantage of large explosion is that it hides the pop transition from enemy to gore sprites. On the aspects of timing I had noticed how much of a drastic impact the small rebound of the gibbs on the ground had on the overall effect. With our game we are dealing with very few frames for each character and animation, we also need to convey and pack as much information as possible into very few pixels. This is where the 3 frames of hitting the ground, bouncing up slightly and landing back on the ground show that this matter has a certain spring and restitution quality. Coupled with a the blood update from the last post the effect as a whole is rather convincing.

One of the enemies of Caesar are the noble priest class who must have naturally colluded against him during the assassination. Now that Caesar is back the Roman priests use their dark arts to raise the dead, provided the enemy unit is still in a single piece. Having them run around would have down played their magical powers, for this reason in the game they float around and also teleport away when you get too close (the cowards). We needed two effects: one of the rejuvenation of the enemy troops and also one of the teleport. We had a considerably nice placeholder for a long time so I put off updating it for a while. The effect for the teleport is smoke rendered in Blender 2.8, the smoke is coming of a particle simulation and as with the gibs the timing is edited in post.

The particle system for the raise effects is also particles from Blender and the looping is created in post. The process for this is creating a particle render that has a clear start (nothing on the frame) and end (nothing on the frame). After the goal is to duplicate the rendered image sequence and offset the timing by half, this creates the effect of looping. The offset animation can be also repositioned as to not to look like it’s playing twice, the goal of the offset is to fill the first and last frame with identical information where before was nothing on the frame.

Water

Water is one of the basic elements of nature and a trickiest effects problems to solve. For a long time I have held a belief that an effects artist is a problem solver first and operator of tools second. The more tools you know the better off you are, as this might speed up your process or give you a slightly better result. The challenge with a pixelated Doom, Hexen, Wolfenstein inspired game is what does the water look like in this world? Another inspiration for us have been many films and TV shows set in the period, this specifically applies to the gritter rendering of the Roman period. Further issues, as with the smoke and blood, are how much information is the minimum amount to convey what we need. What we settled on is murky water to save us and Game Maker from doing tricky caustics calculations. The looping of the water both as a tile and animation loop was not avoidable. For this reason we settled on 30 frames water waves with a certain fidelity of noise as to not make it too repetitive. Any larger waves as with this Blender ocean example will start to look too repetitive.
We have recycled these effects to create poison purple water, clearish water, and desaturated murk on the darker levels. It is quite satisfying creating an asset that with small adjustments can be propagated across a range of different contexts.

The End

Matt
Thanks you made it to the end of blog number XI! Caesar’s Revenge is steadily developing. Although the productivity fluctuates wildly as we work in our free time, rest assured that with the addition of final gameplay parts like our bosses and the introduction of so many set dressing elements, we are now entering the polish phase for Act I. If these rarer big breakfast style blogs ain’t enough for you; be sure to check out some extra WIP stuff that will not always shown in the blogs on our Discord – come say hi!.

Devlog X: Desert Map Spotlight

Written by Matton

Matt
Desert is a weird level, especially when considering Caesar’s design. Generally most of our levels consist of linear paths or multiple linear paths/loops; the challenge comes from reacting and learning the patterns these challenges present. Overcoming these and learning from mistakes feels good, the flow of going through the motions and perfectly completing a level from start to finish, where all your work pays off in that last run feels epic! The feedback is consistent and you know what went wrong and exactly where to go to try again. Desert differs in the fact that it is completely open. There is no defined path, only a fortress in front that requires three keys to enter. There are multiple copies of each of these keys strewn throughout the desert, each with a small encounter to boot, the catch is you have to explore and find them.

The fog is partially to blame, but exploration in a completely open scenario is not fun when you can’t see more than five meters ahead of you, and although the concept of being lost in a sandstorm in the desert is cool, in practice its shit. Especially in contrast to how fast paced the rest of the game is. I knew it was bad when both Ivan and Jordan didn’t finish it, too much walking around randomly hoping to find something. The challenge then became how do you make things discover-able in a sandstorm? Here is what I came up with: (SPOILERS if you want to figure this all out for yourself when you play)

  • A rough perimeter wall (this way if you walk out you will likely find it and if followed leads to encounters)
  • Subtle difference in ground textures (paths in the sand that lead to encounters)
  • Consistent language regarding props (following bushes, rocks and props will point to neighboring encounters)
  • Looping Room and fog increase (if you walk too far out you will walk back into the other side of the map and likely bump back into something + fog increases the closer you are to the edge)

The combination of these make the level much navigable once these things are noticed, the idea of backups, as in both ground texture or prop following lead to everywhere you need to go making it easier to discover the trick. The biggest change of all though is scale, though a mission, I moved everything in as it was all just too far away (seen in the diagram above). Having intermediate pieces that are visible between the goal and encounters are really important. Once the pattern is recognized the level becomes much more learnable as each encounter is consistent. What’s cool about it in comparison to the rest of the game is that it is completely open to what order you want to complete it in; you learn what each encounter encompasses then there is a choice of how much you want to gear up before going in and choose what to avoid. In the end, after ironing out the creases it turned out well and although being one of Caesar’s more unconventional levels it provides a much needed break and a variation in gameplay.

Soldier Variant

Ivan
During the project we have introduced multiple enemies in order to facilitate balance, one example being the introduction of a Slinger as a weak Archer. We knew that the Archer enemy felt and played well but during play tests people found the unit far too difficult in the earlier levels. This directly led to the creation of a weaker projectile enemy. Now we realised the basic Swordsman was a unit that needed changing, the main reason for the change was the three slashes that he performs at a frenetic pace as it is hard to read where the blows are landing. This is only multiplied by being flanked by multiple Swordsmen at once. Considering we liked the animation and the size of the Swordsman we decided to create an Elite Guard enemy type. The Elite Guard will use the original animation of the three slash attack while our basic Swordsman will have a slower attack landing only a single blow over the 16 frame flipbook.

The next issue was trying to figure out a colour scheme that will make the Elite Guard stand out from a distance to differentiate the two. The secondary challenge was making him not look so different that it would imply a drastic change in behaviour. We settled on a darker armour set with large shoulder guards, shin and forearm armour.

We operate by the philosophy of getting it right the first time but also not being too precious about work that we can’t scrap it if it doesn’t play well. Animation even though recycled for the most part has been edited; for example lowering the sword to the side while running. Making the game in this fashion has helped us to avoid polishing one element past the usefulness of said polish and improves the turnaround of assets generated.

Weapon UI

Jordan
We have added a weapon and ammo display to the corner of the screen. Players don’t normally have too many weapons at a time to make this entirely necessary but it allows fast changing of weapons without having to wait for the animation to play to see what has been selected. More experienced players will likely swap to what they want using the number keys but this will help new players and also anyone crazy enough to play on controller.

Music

This track features a middle section that deviates from the normal motifs towards a slower, more atmospheric pace. There is enough of a lead up to this section that it still supports frantic gameplay while bringing some variety to the structure of the overall soundtrack. So far I have found too much lead work to be a bit distracting, instead favoring more sporadic rhythmic composition – this song however has ended up pushing that envelope with a lot more lead guitar work. Though a lot of it hasn’t been posted yet I’m also happy to announce that the soundtrack has hit the thirty minute mark! There won’t be a unique track for every stage but I do want there to be a nice variety as well as enough content to support an album release as well.

Armageddon

We recently exhibited the game publicly at Armageddon Expo. The weekend was very busy and it was great to see so many people come through. It was interesting to play test some new and old levels as well as see how changes we made after the last showcase have worked out. One thing we experimented with was giving players ‘lives’ – this allowed those not used to FPS games as well as younger players to make further progress without needing to practice too much. A takeaway from this was that a fair number of players used half a dozen lives to beat what was supposed to be easy levels – we don’t want to use this system in the final game but it has given us a good indication of areas that need a balance pass. A big thanks to the NZGDA for organising the booth.

We have been posting even more updates and work and progress things over on our Discord – come say hi!.

Cretaceous Carnage 48 Hour Global Game Jam Post Mortem

Written by Matton

Over the weekend Pixel Barons set out to create a game in 48 hours. The project ended up being Cretaceous Carnage, a dinosaur fighting game inspired by Dino Rex, Primal Rage and classic 2D fighters. The game features four playable characters, three different stages and both arcade and verses modes in the vein of traditional fighting games. In this post the team takes a moment to reflect on the project and the process we undertook to create it.

Ivan
Modelling, texturing, rigging, animation, UI, environment art
On the modelling and texturing side of things I wanted to challenge myself. Last year’s game jam we attempted to do something that would push the art from a quantitative point of view. This year we wanted to step it up – the challenge was as many dinosaurs as we can model, texture and rig in the time available. We went out of our way to tell people that it would be eight unique dinosaurs knowing full well that falling short would still leave us with an ample selection and something to be proud of. One of the philosophical approaches to the game jam for us is the pressure cooker or stress test. Most systems never go through the intensive testing of speed or quality, for us, speed was the priority the quality level was intended to be of a 90’s pre-rendered game, cheesy 3d tv show or gumby claymation (of which Matt was unaware). Matt and myself have recently taken to Blender 2.8 which has some rather robust rendering tools of real-time rendering. The ideal was model and UV layout in Blender and texture in 3D Coat, after bringing the model back to Blender to be rigged, animated and rendered.

For the most part, the process worked well we had some hiccups along the way with saving from Blender not working as intended (user error) and normal map green channel needed to be flipped and a considerable portion of the animation had to be re-rendered. If I have to change anything I would have used more projection textures when texturing in 3D Coat. FX are always a big part of a fighting game and even though I love making FX they took a back seat on this project after the core and didn’t make it into the final game jam version of the game. The biggest take away is testing the process and personal approach is extremely useful and allows for a great leap in growth while highlighting false assumptions about own speed. If someone told me a year ago that we would try this I would have laughed.


Matt
Animation, UI, audio, environment art
We decided I should animate: I enjoyed animating the Rat, Lion and Elephant for Caesars Revenge and thought it would be fun to come up with all kinds of wacky attacks necessary for a fighting game. I’m not an animator by trade but when Ivan suggested modeling, rigging and animating the dinosaurs on his own I suggested a pipeline where Ivan would model and rig and I would animate and that’s what we went for. I ended up animating three of the characters (T.rex, Triceratops and Ankylosaurus, Ivan animated the Sloth) each has approximately 20 animations for attacks, movements, deaths, etc. Animation was all done in Blender using FK and I utilised offsets where possible to make the animations look fluid. Although I was originally unaware of Ivan’s vision for a claymation style aesthetic I’m glad the rendering and low frame count brings this out in the animations. When it came to designing the attacks I wanted variation in two things, speed of attacks and the hitbox of the attack controlling space. The main influence for this idea was a video here: Super SF2 Turbo Beginner Tutorial by David Sirlin. Traditionally I have not been into fighting games so the ideas presented here really helped me understand how to make combat interactions interesting. Controlling space is super important for making different characters play uniquely. Illustrated below:

Ankylosaurus is dangerous on the horizontal plane + a horizontal plane because of how his moves allow him to control this space. The T.rex alternatively is dangerous differently because he controls space in a tall but shorter roughly triangle shape in front of him (see above). Because of these danger zones you can play to keep the enemy player in range of your attacks and if you are aware of these you can position yourself out of danger and between controlled spaces safely.It was my first time using Blender since 2016 and my first time using Blender 2.8, so far I’m really enjoying the controls and workflow for animation, next time I would spend less time on the animations, I feel like they are overworked for a jam game. I would also like to experiment with IK for legs which would speed up the process, but I do feel the FK adds to the old school looking animation so we will see.

Trex Animation

Jordan
Programming, environment art
I wanted to program a type of game that would be a challenge to finish in the time frame. I played a lot of fighters when I was younger and it is something I always wanted to make. Our friend Adam told us a fighting game isn’t that hard: ‘it’s just inputs and hit detections’. This made me realise that the game had to have AI to make it the challenge I wanted it to be. The entire system is state driven with both AI and players working in the same way – this means the AI is simply reading the situation and simulates button presses in response. There is a base template with each dinosaur having slightly different weightings to actions in order to play to their own advantages. There is of course, a little bit of RNG in addition to a realistic reaction time to make it feel more human. It would be interesting to make this process more procedural where a move list is read without any need for finer tuning but I am quite happy with how it turned out given it was one of many parts that made up the weekend’s work.

Design wise I was inspired to reduce execution barriers – making the game more fun in versus mode and causal settings where it was more about strategy and spacing than memorising movelists. An interesting feature of the game is that it features quadrupeds (not all of who can even jump in the game) which is a bit of a departure from normal fighting game design. This meant that the overall flow of combat emphasised spacing and timing quite heavily from the start – in some ways it plays a little like Bushido Blade minus the one hit kills. There is still a lot of development to be had around balance – test playing and adjusting characters is tricky enough in a game jam but the strong connection between move design and animation meant the overall process for making adjustments is more than just tweaking values.

I’m not sure what I’d do different next time beyond typing faster. Learning how to code a fighting game was challenging enough but getting the fundamentals implemented more quickly would be good in order to get more time to polish on the last day. There was a bottleneck at the last minute in that we could have had an extra character artwise but there wouldn’t have been time to implement it effectively. Still, the success of this project was its scope – on the one hand it was insanely ambitious but on the other, we also didn’t over complicate things and worked within some technical constraints. For example, we wanted throw moves implemented but chose to leave them out in favour of unblockable heavy attacks which serve the same purpose of breaking guard without as much animation and programming overhead. Even simple things like foregoing a round timer, draw matches and using the same number of parallax background layers on each stage all added up in making the project more feasible for the timeframe.

Now that the jam is over we are still having a lot of fun playing game and are planning to add more to it (verses mode in particular is a blast). First we will be doing an overall update pass, attending to some things we ran out of time for as well as ironing out some bugs. Following that, expanding the stage and character roster will be a focus. Depending how that all goes, more game modes and fleshing out the single player content would be great to explore.

Play Cretaceous Carnage over on itch.io and let us know what you think!

Devblog VI: Fort, Optimizations, Music and Caesar.

Written by Matton

Matt: The Fort is one of the first level layouts I slaved over after being introduced to the Ceasar’s Revenge level editor aka the Gamemaker GUI. It has a troubled past and had been in development longer than any level. They said I should let it go but I just couldn’t let my firstborn die. Instead it has been ripped apart and rebuild from the ground up. Constantly remixed through development and has changed vastly in its flow, game play and aesthetic.The Roman fort or Castra are temporary sometimes permanent fortifications often built in the outskirts of the empire to control territories with overactive native populous. Often build out of local timbers and earthworks, these forts are used to house Roman legionaries and defend against the native uprisings that come with conquest of foreign land. Depending on the size of the force assembling, these forts they could be built incredibly quickly within a matter of days. This fort is located somewhere to the northwest of Rome in Caesar’s new Gaul or perhaps the wilder Britannia. Dark and dreary, damp pine forests surround the fort. It’s not the kind of place you would expect to find a senator, the likes of which spends his time usually lounging in warm Mediterranean summers. But those backstabbing rats will scurry all over the empire, try any hiding place, but there is no escaping Caesar’s Revenge. Woe are his betrayers.Fort A the original level was a laggy, directionless, unbalanced and oversize-ed mess. Fort B is everything right with fort with the negatives stripped away. Certain elements were kept from the original design were retained while others completely overhauled (see below). I overlaid the map layout of both versions so we could get a clear look at what had been deleted; the most interesting part for me is the three separated parts showing the “deleted”, “salvaged” and “added” sections. What was salvaged is actually very little, more then 75% of the level was deleted and the only new volume added is a small new starting section (the top section of the blue), the rest of the new blue overlaps the purple salvaged section and adds to the level density with new enemy encounters, decoration and set dressing, rather than adding more scale. Despite the reduction in level size the density and additional gameplay makes up for the loss and the playtime to complete is significantly higher. This is all with a smaller cap on instances – instances are the objects placed within the Gamemaker room. The original Fort A had upwards of 6000 instances while the later optimized Fort A had 3000. The current new Fort B has only 1000. 1000 instances is our arbitrary limit, it serves as optimization for the sake of lower end machines and works towards a more limited level object saturation to aid in that old school stylishness.

Optimisations

Jordan: The early prototype stages of the game were mostly interior and felt much more like a dungeon crawler than what the project has become. One of the initial reasons behind this was to allow for aggressive culling and deactivation of objects – corridors and low roofs definitely have the advantage of obscuring more of the environment from the player. Fort is a good example of a larger scale outdoor environment that pushed our optimisation forward as there are a number of open area encounters that require a greater number of AI entities to be active. One way which we have approached this issue is by enforcing an internal object cap to give us a target to work towards. Additionally, the game culls any drawing of objects out of view or beyond the fog. As far as behaviors are concerned, the region beyond the player is deactivated and checked every 60 frames but only if the player’s position has moved enough from the last check to avoid updating unnecessarily. A hard deactivation at the fog distance would be noticeable and open to abuse so the threshold is further back out of sight. This makes for an interesting balance in that we are optimising to avoid moment to moment lag as well as that which comes with the update frame to recheck positions across the level. Right now everything runs smoothly on current levels though the real test will be when we do a proper pass for lower spec systems once we have gameplay and art in a final state.

Bellow is a call back to some concept art by Ivan from 2017 when first talking about the fort idea and a screenshot of a similar vista in the level.

Music


There are actually a number of tracks in the game already but this is the first completed one which I have felt was suitable to share in terms matching the style we are looking for. Inspiration has come from older thrash metal albums. There is certainly a lo-fi quality to the game in terms of its resolution and pixelated gore that is cohesive with early entries in this genre. I have intentionally gone for more of a dirty, gritty and piercing sound than an overly effected and polished approach which better suits the aesthetic of the game. This track incorporates a few ancient sounding instruments which is an area I would like to explore more in an attempt to reconcile 90’s metal with the Roman setting. Something I particularly like about this track is the driving pace as well as the contrast between melodic and dissonant elements. At some point it might be interesting to do a post breaking down whole the production process but for now here is the first released track titled after the Julius Caesar quote: “Alea iacta est” or “The Die is Cast”. It is said that this quote comes from Caesar as he marched his troops across the Rubicon into Rome in defiance of the senate – an act that would eventually lead to the demise of the Roman Republic – an apt title indeed.

Gaius Julius Caesar

Ivan: The production is plodding along behind the scenes, we have been looking into new weapons like the falx, making levels and talking about what other assets we will need in our post-Roman Republic future. At this stage, we have had a pair of floating arms wielding the deadly weapons and issue justice, but what we did not have was a model of the world first true dictator, leader, general, Gaius Julius Caesar. What else would signal excess on this project that is striving to be the paragon of pixel grit but a multimillion polygon 3d sculpt of our fearless leader? I present to you multimillion polygon Caesar.


This model will be retopologized and textured, most likely be used in the trailer and maybe reposed for some statue sprites. The head model itself peaked with 20 million polygons at one point. The head was modeled separately from the body has just been merged in. For some historical facts, Caeser was 5 foot 7 inches (170.18cm), by some accounts, his hair was brown as were his eyes. Considering our Caesar will be re-animated it will most likely be white head of hair and evil glowing eyes. Hope you guys like it.

Caesar’s Revenge: Weapon Wednesday – VI

Written by Matton

Yo its weapon Wednesday! This week we got the big hook thing which strikes fear into the hearts of any Roman legionary. This guy is the: Dacian Falx or Thracian Falx or just Falx. In history it is described as an anti-Roman/anti-armour weapon with a punch. It’s shape is perfect for hacking at Roman troops hiding behind shields. The blades themselves had different degrees of hook to blade proportions, lengths and angles and came in one handed and two handed variants. The two-handed variant is the one you will find in Caesar’s Revenge. These two-handed Falx often had a handle at a similar or matching size to the blade. This gave a lot of leverage and power to the wielder but use of this weapon would cost protection due to the two-handed operation of the weapon using a shield is silly. This trade, however unorthodox, did pay off and was devastating when matched up with a classic Roman shield and Gladius style of combat. The superior reach plus the power and design necessary to punch through and over Roman Armour particularity the shields made a lot of common Roman fighting techniques and strategies useless.
Fun Fact: Roman helmets received modification during Trajan’s Dacian wars with the addition of cross-bars across the dome of the helmet, this change is often accredited to falx and its effectiveness at punching holes in Roman heads.

Falx Ceasars Revenge
But why is Julius Caesar using this heathen weapon? Lets just say when Mars gives you lemons you make lemonade. The Falx has become an iconic and infamous anti-Roman weapon in recent times and although its actual effectiveness and use in history is disputed the legend of its effectiveness provides the perfect alibi for the powerful, heavy hitting, shield splintering and armor breaking weapon type Caesar needs on his conquest for revenge.

Gameplay: The Falx like all our weapons has two attack types and primary and a secondary. The primary attack is is a powerful overhead strike from above, this is the shield splintering one! it ignores an enemies shield and deals damage directly , perfect for pesky Roman soldiers turtleing behind shields, it also applies a knock back. This attack due to its over the head nature is powerful but can only target one enemy at a time. The secondary attack is horizontal sweeping attack like the Gladius. A sweeping attack does not break armor as effectively but does apply knock back, it can target double the enemies of the Gladius currently a whopping 6! both attacks are balanced by longer wind-up and cool-down times. Attacks also slow you down to a walk while triggered, this means you have to tank a lot more damage while attacking. That’s the payoff to such great power. What I like about this balance is that it does not make the weapon “just a stronger Gladius” like we originally feared, but instead it it performs a different job completely. The Falx needs to be used with a different style of play, more patience and planning is involved in a Falx strike than with any other bladed weapon currently in the game.

Unique feel and divergence between the look and gameplay of each weapons is important in Ceasar’s Revenge. As always mechanics and visuals are subject to change as we tweak the Falx further but I hope you have all enjoyed this chunky sneak peak. You can check out the 3D model on Sketchfab below, plus let me know what you think.

He is here!

Written by Matton

Rats of Rome: This week’s Weapon Wednesday has been overrun with an infestation of Rats! So unfortunately, no weapons. But Instead, I will present to you our newest enemy: the Rat. Rats are the first animal to be added to Caesar’s Revenge. Rats were a common site in ancient Rome and still thrive in modern Rome today. Rats are excellent survivors and opportunists and flourish around cities due to the abundance of human waste. Ancient Rome was no exception! Rats could be found anywhere from the slums and sewers to granaries and markets. Thriving on the excess and vastness of Rome. Rats in these conditions have been known to grow bigger and bolder than wild counterparts. In Caesar’s Revenge rats are a menace in the backstreets or Rome and will no hesitate to try take a bite out of undead Caesar. Although the Rats grow bolder, a rat is no problem for an experienced warrior. If you can hit em!

Rat Stats:
What a fat rat model! a total 1256 Triangles, how disgusting (and excessive). His coat is made of 1x trashy 1024×1024 diffuse. Ratty was made quickly to render as a 16 frame run animation at 8 directions as 128×128 sprite (once of these directions can be seen below). A benefit of working with the lower resolution of this retro project is how it presents shortcuts in the modeling, animation and texture processes. shortcuts that would not be acceptable in a modern 3D pipeline become available and speed up development time.

Rats In Gameplay: below you can see an example of the Rat sprites in-game (behaviors are not final and could change). Rats much like in real ancient Rome are found in levels that are set in lower tier areas. Rats have always been destined to be the weakest enemy in Caesar. There attack is weak and they die in one hit from many weapon. But they do have some redeeming factors. They are small, many and determined! these abilities attribute to a slightly “hard to hit” combat style. Alone they are the weakest enemy in Ceasar’s Revenge……. But watch your back buddy.


Ratty Run: I during that animation process I looked into how rats move an discovered that rats have an interesting gait. One kind is called a Half Bound, this type of gait is an asymmetrical “true bound” found in rodents predominantly rats: “True floating phase (extended position only). Hindfeet land before forefeet take off – this creates a brief period of 4-point support/contactHindlimbs take up as much as 90% of propulsive force. Forelimbs function more for shock absorption and steering.” Info courtesy of the Animal Movements guide for animators by sumid very cool reference animating animals. I find it very helpful not only to follow a pose to pose walk/run cycle reference but to learn about the locomotion of the animal itself. this entails: where pressures are being applied like push and pull and importantly the pattern of the footfalls. knowing this gives you a better idea about what your subject animal is actually doing rather than solely relying on copying poses from reference and hoping for the best.

if you wanna have a close look at Ratty, check him out on Sketchfab below:

-RIP RATTY-

 

Caesar’s Revenge: Weapon Wednesday – IV

Written by Matton

Fire Pots are the grenades of ancient Rome. Clay Pots full of Flammable liquid. They are the perfect solution to a room full of archers that you just don’t want to deal with. Just light it up then smash it directly over traitorous heads or simply roll one into a room full and wait for the screams.

Fire Pot gif
An overarm throw is the first alternative attack. This powerful throw will explode on impact with the ground or an enemy. The second attack is a gentler underarm throw. This attack causes the pot to bounce along the ground. The pot will then explode after a time when the wick has burnt down. Both attacks can be charged up for a longer throw by holding down the corresponding mouse button. Be careful not to take any damage while charging as this will cause you to drop the pot at your feet. I’m sure you can figure out why that’s not a good thing! Check it out in 3D below:

Caesar’s Revenge: Weapon Wednesday – III

Written by Matton

The spear in Caesar is a hybrid between a more traditional Roman javelin (pilum) and a leaf-bladed spear. This choice was made to aid in the readability of the spear in gameplay. The pilum-shank in historical pieces is very thin and this makes the end of the pilum hard to see. A large flat leaf-blade spear shape made more sense and enables you to easily see where you are stabbing. Pila were used most commonly by infantry and were thrown at an advancing infantry/cavalry force to thin them out before advancing with gladius. Soldiers would often have multiple pila for multiple volleys before engagement. Pila could also be used in melee, but his is rarer due to the frail nature of their shank. Thus the thicker leaf-bladed spear hybrid is a superior weapon for the one man army Caesar.

Spear GIF
The Spear like all planned weapons in Ceasar has two alternative attacks. The first is a jab or stabbing attack. It Is slower than the primary attack on the gladius but has a longer range. This attack only targets one enemy at a time but will knock enemies back away from you as well as dealing damage. The second attack is a throw, at any time in combat you can opt to throw your spear. The spear throw is devastating and can be used to kill a large number of enemies in aimed correctly. An airborne spear hurled by Caesar will travel indefinitely until it contacts a wall. This makes spear throwing an excellent way to make shish kebabs out of any number of foes. Spears are accumulated as ammo and cannot be picked up again once thrown, so use your spears wisely. Check out the spear model on sketchfab: below:

Caesar’s Revenge: Weapon Wednesday – II

Written by Matton

The Roman composite bow was the principal weapon used buy the Roman Auxiliary: Sagittarius. It was used commonly in both infantry and cavalry units. A popular weapon in the outer edges of the empire, especially in the east. Caesar was a big fan of archers and used them as a defensive tool, laying down fire to protect flanks and thin out charging enemy attacks.

Bow GIF
The bow is the first ranged weapon added to Caesar’s Revenge. In Gameplay the bow will fulfills the same combat roles as historical archery. The bow is excellent for thinning out groups of enemies before engaging them in melee. The bow like the sword has two attack types. The first, a singular arrow that is drawn then shot. The second attack will enable Caesar to load three arrows into the bow. These arrows can be shot in a wide spread potentially hitting multiple targets or focused with a longer draw so that all three arrows will fire towards one target. The bow uses ammo, this sets it apart from the Gladius. Since arrows are limited they must be used strategically and sparingly. Check out the 3D model for the Bow on Sketchfab below.

Caesar’s Revenge: Weapon Wednesday – I

Written by Matton

The Gladius is the iconic sword of ancient Rome. It is distinguishable by its length and shape, short and stout in comparison to more modern swords. It’s an excellent chopping and thrusting weapon, common in any Roman military force. These attributes combined make the Gladius an excellent candidate for the primary weapon of Caesar, you will be seeing a lot of this guy.

Gladius GIF
The swordplay is evolving as we develop and add new features and mechanics. In its current state it reflects the qualities of the historical equivalent. Caesar’s Gladius has 2 alternative attacks. The first being a quick horizontal slash, it’s fast and it’s perfect for gutting multiple enemies if you can line them up. The second, a slower windup followed through with a powerful stab that is sure to cause devastating damage, that’s if you are pro enough to land it.

 
The 3D weapon models in Caesar are created with modern next gen standards in mind, we then render and compress them back down to assure a retro/modern quality of art. Check out the Gladius model in 3D on Sketchfab above.