Author: Taro Omiya

New Ludum Dare game: Artifact of the Ancients

| Taro Omiya

Now that Ludum Dare 36 is over, we have a new game! We’ve attended the Jam (team development challenge) to something a little more familiar: a puzzle-platformer that involves flipping the world upside-down! Our new game is Artifact of the Ancients, created by Taro Omiya, Robert Denner, and Jason Harlow. Oh yeah it’s open-source, too!

Full Description:

Join the archaeologist, Sam, on one heck of a ride as he searches for a mythical lost treasure with his faithful companion, Lucy. You’ll flip as you experience the world from different perspectives and Sam’s life goes topsy-turvy the further he goes down the rabbit hole

This game is funded through Patreon. Many thanks to the following:
* Adam R. Vierra
* Joshua Jennings
* XanderHD
* Tommy Pedersen
* Jacob Clark

Made in Tech Valley Game Space!

If you can, please rate the game, and let us know what you think!

Link to Itch.io: https://omiyagames.itch.io/artifacts-of-the-ancients

Link to GameJolt: http://gamejolt.com/games/artifact-of-the-ancients/184344

Link to Newgrounds: http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/680481?updated=1472773693

Link to Ludum Dare voting page: http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-36/?action=preview&uid=20557

Some screenshots!

Not a Clone Update: Quicker Transitions

| Taro Omiya

Hello, everyone!  Back again with a new update! A new demo version, version 1.4.0, was just released, with one new feature: quicker transitions. Once the player has shown adeptness with a microgame, the game will jump right to the objective (as depending on the microgame, it may change), shortening the transition from one microgame to another by about 30%. To get a better understanding of how that feels, this is how slow the transitions are for beginning players:

longerInstructions

And this is how fast the transition will be for more skilled players:

shorterInstructions

As usual, here is the list of changes with the latest build:

  1. Shortening the transition from one microgame to another as demonstrated above.
  2. Updating Practice to always show the gesture the first 3 games, then skip to the objective for the rest of the games.
  3. Creating minor improvements to the graphics on the WebGL builds.
  4. Adjusting the condition on when the inverted instructions starts appear. They kick-in a little after the shorter transitions kick-in.
  5. Improving the music-to-sound-effect balancing on a couple of microgames.

Not a Clone Update: Mundane Housework

| Taro Omiya

Apologize for the silent treatment these last two weeks. As some of you may have noticed, last week, we’ve updated the demo with the following changes:

  1. Adjusting how the first couple of microgames are selected.
  2. Updating sound effects for…
    1. 8
    2. Ridiculous Pinatas
    3. Bun Ninja
  3. Changing how the microgame’s background music play. It will cut-off if you’ve succeeded or failed in the middle of it.
  4. Making Ridiculous Pinatas bounce less off the invisible walls
  5. Adding a cat on the loading screen.

But let’s get to the meat of things: when are we going to get a release date for Not a Clone? After all, we’ve been saying we’re nearly done with major features in the game; it’s got to be soon, right?

In short, our answer is: “when it’s done.” We strive to provide the best experience we can to our players, and while the game is insanely close to completion, we still have a few more mundane and/or private housework to do. Future updates on this project will remain low-key until we have everything ready. As such, we do not have plans to live-stream the Not a Clone development next Tuesday.

Thank you for your patience!

Not a Clone Update: Taking on Beta Suggestions

| Taro Omiya

We have a short update for Not a Clone this weekend. Since last weekend, we’ve started working on implementing suggestions and fixing bugs reported by beta testers. One of those is improving the tutorial. You may recall the old tutorial, which looked like this:

tutorial

A few testers had pointed out it was difficult to tell that they had to tap on a specific button when this finger appeared. Our new tutorial uses a spotlight effect to bring focus to specific buttons:

newSpotlightGameOver1

Another tester pointed out they never knew they could tap on the Lucky Coin. As a response, we’ve added a tutorial for the rare coin as well.

newSpotlightLuckCoin

We’ll have more of these small-but-important fixes in the upcoming stream next Tuesday, but if you’d like to see how we implemented the features above, we have a Youtube video below:

Not a Clone Update: What’s This? Another Demo Release?

| Taro Omiya

Some of you may have noticed that a new version of Not a Clone Demo has been released. This is quite a rapid turnout compared to the last release, which came out a full month after the demo debuted. What’s going on?

In short, we’ve been syncing the code and assets for the demos with the recent private beta releases so that both will have the latest development changes in the game. This should help us respond more quickly to the comments on the demo and from the beta testers. Of course, since we’re now working on bugs and small enhancements, the changes between the different versions of the demo will be relatively minor.

In any case, we haven’t actually posted the changes made since the first release, so here’s an extensive list on what’s been done so far:

  1. Updated how the loading screen looks to appear more like a text message screen.
  2. Changed the bottom of game over screen to use less screen-estate.  High scores button is now placed in-between restart and home button.
  3. Added a new music for challenge mode.
  4. Added more sound effects, both for pop-up events and a couple of microgames.
  5. Updated credits to include our current beta testers.
  6. Reduced WebGL memory usage by packing sprites into less image files.  PC/Mac/Linux build remains unchanged.
  7. Updated Angry Monkeys’ physics.  The monkeys no longer collides with the slingshot or each other, and the shot-direction is based on the position you’ve let go of the slingshot, not the direction the sling moves.
  8. Background music now fades-in before a microgame starts.
  9. Reduced memory usage on all platforms by loading most sound effects and music on-the-fly.
  10. Clicking on the pause button no longer triggers a mouse-down event on a microgame.
  11. Made challenge mode a lot easier by dramatically increasing the amount of time available to the player.  The previous times assumed the game was played on a multi-touch-supporting touchscreen, but there is now a different time set for mouse.
  12. Fixed a few typos in the loading screen’s text messages.
  13. Doubled the animation speed of Light Tiles.
  14. How the first couple of microgames are selected is a lot less random.  If the player’s best score is below 15, they will always be served with a predetermined order of microgames.  If they score higher than or equal to 15, the first 10 microgames are those that either have low number of plays, or a low rate of winning.
  15. Fixing “Clone of:” label not being translated properly in Pig Latin (fun fact: the language’s purpose is to confirm our localization script works).
  16. The speed-up is calculated differently.  It’s a little easier in the beginning, but gets harder towards the end.

Let us know what you think of the changes!

Not a Clone Update: Keeping it short

| Taro Omiya

A quick update on Not a Clone: as many of you may have noticed, a few days ago, we’ve update the demo build to a new version 1.1. The changes are fairly small for the demo itself–the biggest change is how the loading screen appears–but it also synchronizes the build with where we’re at with our current development. From here on out, we’ll be updating the demo builds more often as we approach completion, so stay tuned!

Our last two live streams focused on general polish. Last week, for example, we updated the price of every microgame, using Google Sheets as a reference:

Last Tuesday, we showed the beginning of updating the randomizer that serves the sequence of microgames to the player:

As usual, we’ll be continuing our weekly Twitch live-stream next Tuesday, 3:00 PM EDT at twitch.tv/japtar10101.