Background Aesthetic Thoughts

Right after Zach and I set out to rebuild Magbot in Unity, I decided to change the in-game perspective to a slight downward angle. I'd be lying if I said the decision wasn't partially (if not mostly) due to playing Rayman Origins at the time, as well as my endless admiration for the art of Bastion. But it felt so much nicer to be working with solid shapes and depth!

As it turns out, finding a practical and good looking way to construct landscapes out of reusable assets is a lot harder to fudge when the ground plane is so plainly visible. A few of the asset experiments and notes are posted below:

A Return to the Character Design

Magbot's updated character design!

First and foremost, I'd like to apologize for the extended silence here on the Development Blog! Following our productiveness low point during the summer, Zach began running a game development class at Brown and I moved across the country to work at Cartoon Network in LA. We've both had quite the jam packed schedules, but now that things have calmed down a bit, we're getting back to it!

Unexpected Struggles, Pushing Forward

Magbot development has been undergoing some major changes.

Our big plan was to sprint for getting all the mechanics polished by the end of the August. It seemed to be a reasonable goal that would keep us focused during the summer. Plus, I had plans to move out west mid-August, which would make organizing team meetings a hassle. 

Prototype in Progress – Green Grasslands

The team's begun working on what we're hoping to be our final prototype before we start working on our alpha build. We're testing out a new approach to the level design, making it more modular and interactive.

Also in the works are two new features – magnetic jumping and magnetic hold and rotation, which are both rather hard to control at the moment. At the moment it looks like some interface might be needed to understand what Magbot's affecting or vice versa, though as the controls get tighter we might not need it. Only time and testing will tell!

Background Concepts

One of the most notable bits of feedback we received from the "Falling Ground" demo was that the level just wasn't engaging enough. The boxes were fun to play with, but the rest of the level just wasn't there yet, so we're aiming to fix that with a new approach to level design in the next build!

"Falling Ground" Demo Video

Our first playable prototype is finished!

White Woods Test

With the game engine (relatively) ready to go, out next big milestone has been building a playable level mockup. Expanding on one of the color keys, we started making the "White Woods" level in an effort to test platforming, parallax and basic magnet mechanics.