NeverYear Games, Semester 2, Week 15

Hey all. It's been a while. A whole lot has happened in the past few weeks. Our game has evolved immensely. UI is extremely well-polished, bugs have been hunted, and menu navigation is highly advanced. Last Thursday, we brought WLNA to Tilt Classic Arcade & Ale House and had a blast. Our event brought in a large crowd which made the Tilt staff happy, and we had lots of people play our game and give us great feedback! Dillon laser-engraved nametags for us, along with personalized tokens and keychain doodads. Oh, and let's not forget the shirts! We now have NeverYear Games shirts which are quite nice, and people outside of the team have bought some. There's also now a full-on narrative for single-player which Alex Beauchesne and I went over, tweaked, and added a final cutscene to. All in all, everything is coming together extremely well, and I'm very pleased with the progress of our game.

Thank you and goodbye,
-John Cotto

NeverYear Games, Semester 2, Week 12

I'm super excited that the time to begin working on narrative is upon us. Charles and I have begun drafting out the narrative portion of the single-player campaign progression, and it's looking good. We also had our morale boosting fun night together over at Tilt classic arcade and bar, and man that was fun. We spent a good deal of time just relaxing, enjoying each other's company, and playing games, but also figured out a few things about the game and, perhaps even more importantly, began correspondence with the manager at Tilt. Turns out we're going to have a night dedicated to some sort of event where we will be showcasing our game to the public! I'm super excited for this, and can't wait to see what sort of feedback we get from the event. Oh yeah, we passed Alpha which is nice. But now we've only got two weeks left until polish, so it's going to be hectic. Best of luck to me and my team.

Thank you and goodbye,
-John Cotto

NeverYear Games, Semester 2, Week 10

It's been a while since I've updated this blog. The past two Sundays were spent in San Fransisco, networking and having fun at GDC. Needless to say, there's been a lot of change since last time I made an update. First of all, there's a new panic feature implemented. As a match goes on, eventually the explosions will get larger and larger until they reach 250% their original size. This greatly increases each player's destructive capabilities which in turn increases each player's chance of winning, ending a match more quickly. Another major change: faction upgrades for the Most Equal Collective and the Glorious Imperialist Federation are a go. The introduction of these upgrades also increases players' destructive capability and gives more options to the players when trying to figure out how to best murder their opponent. Testing has been going well also. Feedback is great as usual, and the players really enjoy our game. As for what I've done, the characters in the Grays faction all have distinct personalities now. We also have the characters for the other two factions fleshed out, and soon to be implemented. That's all for now, but Alpha is next week, so soon there will be plenty of stuff to talk about.

Thank you and goodbye,
-John Cotto

NeverYear Games, Semester 2, Week 6

This week we came to the realization that there were far too many levels for single player. While the galaxy map may have looked really nice, we would not be able to make over 50 missions to the quality standard we would like to have. Also, getting all 50+ missions playtested would have been a nightmare, so we're not going to. Instead, there are 4 missions per faction, an introductory mission, 2 upgrade-unlocking missions, and the home planet. This will allow us to make levels at a much higher level of quality, and have them all be unique.

Updated galaxy map

We also had a long discussion about what to do with our UI, and came up with a solution. We took a few of our ideas and picked and chose the best parts from each to make up our newest idea. 

Keeping in mind how people hold tablets, we decided that the most of the non-interactable UI elements should be at the top of the screen so they're not blocked by hands, and that the buttons that players would press often would be on the planets. This marriage of multiple UI concepts produced something that we're all fond of, and should meet the expectations of our testers according to the feedback we've received.

Thank you and goodbye,
-John Cotto

NeverYear Games, Semester 2, Week 5

After last week's designer meeting (with Alex Beauchesne), work output has definitely picked up. We ended up deciding that we would include the Grays as a faction for this semester after all. Thanks to this decision, I had to re-make the galaxy map with the Grays included, and it added some nice dynamics with the way the factions are intertwined. Also, I worked with Mancino to come up with difficulties for each planet on the galaxy map, so there's now a solid sense of progression. We also had a lot of discussion about how to make the shields less cumbersome, and may have come up with a solution. Instead of having a single massive bubble, we're thinking about something more like personal shields for each building that are linked together, so if one shield goes down they all will. This essentially has no effect on the game other than to make it look better and make the shields make more sense.

Galaxy Map with Difficulties

Thank you and goodbye,
-John Cotto

NeverYear Games, Semester 2, Week 4

This has been a good week for NeverYear Games. At a designer meeting, we figured out a lot of the issues we had. Certain things like resource costs, game progression, and over-complication were all discussed, and we made a lot of headway. I also continued working with the level editor, getting more comfortable with how it works so I can pump out missions quickly. Another achievement for this week was creating the galaxy map. Collaborating with Alex Beauchesne and Charles, we were able to come up with how the single-player progression should work. I put our discussions into practice, and voila, the galaxy map was made. It still needs to be made to look good, but the layout is complete. That's all to report for this week.

Thank you and goodbye,
-John Cotto

NeverYear Games, Semester 2, Week 3

This week, I finally started messing around with our level editor, and with good results! I discovered an issue that was rapidly fixed, got to know exactly how the editor worked, and made a series of three levels with some minor progression. I also spent more time working on the timeline, hashing out more key events such as the Russkies reverse engineering technology and first contact with the Greys. Tomorrow is a big day for us, as we will be giving our greenlight presentation. If all goes well, we shall pass and initiate the next phase in developing We Love Nuclear Armageddon.

Thank you and goodbye,
-John Cotto

NeverYear Games, Semester 2, Week 2

And here we go again! Work has begun in earnest on WLNA after getting everyone caught up to speed. After a few meetings and much discussion, we've got a decent direction we're heading in. There are plans in place for a much more refined UI, multiple factions with their own quirks and personalities, advisers from said factions to bring the game to life, and a campaign mode with detailed player progression. Aside from that, there's not terribly much to report, but look forward to next week where there ought to be more information on the three factions in progress.

Thank you and goodbye,
-John Cotto

NeverYear Games, Semester 2, Week 1

It's been a lot of time since I've last blogged about NeverYear Games, but here goes. First of all, I'm extremely happy to say that Alexander Beauchesne, our awesome programmer, has managed to get We Love Nuclear Armageddon working on Android devices. Seeing as this is the first attempt, there are a few issues but it's still a huge boon to the team to get it working on mobile so quickly. On the design side of things, there's been quite a bit of discussion about how faction-specific upgrades will work, what the factions are going to be, what sort of special abilities they'll have, and (perhaps most importantly) how they'll all fit in the theme we're trying to go for. Since this is just the first week back, I'm sure there are a few of us still getting our bearings, but I haven't gotten very much work done yet. That should change this coming weekend, so look for updates in the next blog post!

Thank you and goodbye,
-John Cotto