Had the opportunity to collaborate with UMBC’s game developer club, where they helped test the split screen multiplayer mode. lots of things broke, and lots of things performed really well. an all around great test/QA session.
Now that the core architecture of the game has been built including game modes, base character classes, level info systems, wingset & weapon systems, pickup base classes and a couple prototype levels, finally diving into the environment design with more detail. The single player campaign consists of 16 levels, and follows the travels of a butterfly as it just grows its wings, finds its grove destroyed, and is taken on a journey through valleys, swamps, caves, mountain tops, and ancient forests. One of the boss battles is a transition from the icy mountain tops back down into the ancient forests below. This image includes a few screenshots from the process of transforming a world machine sketch into a stage for the boss battle…
Mapped out most of the levels now to the point where i could start taking screenshots for use in the level preview images for the in-game menu.
While most of the chapter titles are play on words with either idioms or pop culture, they allude to either the objective of the chapter, or general direction of the narrative in the game.
Diving into character design. Took a basic base class spider concept and started creating permutations inspired by the narrative and 5 overall themes in the single player campaign. The ‘Arachnids’ are ground based enemies that excel in anti-air combat.
Tail end of the week has included the study of custom depth buffers and stenciling based on Tom’s tutorials here.
Have also built the base classes for the destructible objects and structures scattered throughout the environment. I’ve included a list of random things they can spawn when destroyed. In this case it’s randomized between parasitic swarms and bonuses. Will eventually replace the demo level with this one, but lots of things to populate and build before i do that. Have currently included a handful of marketplace assets with some custom variants to create the basic city plan for the environment. Was having a tough time with stenciling, so have used a single blendable effect in the custom depth buffer, but will eventually differentiate between enemies and destructibles with different stencil values.
Hey there, I just wanted to say that I have been following this project for a month or so now, and I felt the need to comment!
This is amazing work you guys are doing, so many features! 
Keep up the good work!
Thanks ! Appreciate the feedback. I was checking out your project Arcus as well. Dig the style and gameplay development.
This week’s development involved subclassing more base classes creating new destructibles, environmental obstacles, and integrating the original prototype spline-based environments into world-machine landscapes. Here’s an example of an environmental obstacle where the player needs to divert flow.
Transforming a thumbnail sketch into a game asset…
The process involved modding some existing foliage, modeling the stem and head, rigging it with some IK, and export/import into UE4. The animation blueprint has a simple state machine with the character blueprint primarily just implementing the attack montage animation. The skeletal mesh component rotation is updated at runtime based on whether or not there is an enemy in range. For some reason, the animation is still a little chopping (even though the curves editor in 3ds max shows relatively smooth curves for movement) so that’s something i’m hoping to figure out and re-import in the long run. For now, this is in a good state for gameplay testing.
Placing these characters around the level is part of the general plan based on some process sketching for the level layout…
and the gameplay testing…
Roughing out the boss for chapter 4. Lots of animations to do for this character, but getting the intro worked out in the meantime.
The icicles from infinity blade were repurposed for this spider’s legs…
All of the various modules are starting to fall into place. Have been working on the individual parts and ‘under the hood’ for so long, it’s been really hard to see the big picture, but finally was able to put together a play-through for one of the levels being released with the demo. Lot’s to do in terms of sorting out collision, some tweaking of the mechanics & range detection, and I need to improve a couple of the visual fx & textures. In this video, I’ve spliced together the more successful runs between checkpoints as I died a lot during the movie capture, so part of the process has also been continually gauging difficulty along the way.
Race modes (like this) are primarily survival…the timer is there for debug purposes and pacing studies…and scores are actually supposed to carry over from the saved game, however that has not been implemented yet, as the overall scoring system is being evaluated.
The spiders in this level are stationary, however they spit webs at the butterfly and reel in the butterfly similar to a tractor beam, the result of which pulls the butterfly off course, or forces over-correction into water or the height constraint, both of which are deadly.
Wow looks great! The giant ice spider boss looks great! And on top of that your butterfly can shoot lazer beams!
Building more of the tutorial level content… One of the challenges with the tutorial is to make sure it’s engaging enough for advanced players, but user-friendly enough for new players.
This movie capture is from a water fall / stream area in the tutorial level that the player flies through/over while completing the tutorial missions to learn a command of flight, dash and weapons systems.
Cool! Very artistic.
Haven’t posted any dev work here in awhile, so figured i should post something. Here’s a brief look at a recent rough-out for level 05-2: Roots, Rock Mayday. This is the second to last level in the single player campaign. Sort of a redundant theme of traveling over water in this case, but hopefully by end of development for this scene, there will be much more debris on the ground making the water a minor or subtle aspect of the scene.
It’s been awhile since any Flutter Bombs updates. Have scrapped the 6 DoF content and focused on fast paced twin-stick action which is the core of what makes this concept fun. Procedural game boards provide a new tactical experience each play. 10 Wingsets to unlock each with different themed maps and different bombs. Air-to-air and air-to-ground combat. No-fly zones which change location every map load. Will be pushing this updated content to mobile in an optimized format, and keeping the feature-rich graphics for PC/Console as much as I can depending on the next phase of performance profiling. Local co-op is under consideration.
Updated gameplay:
You’re back! Woohoo!
Knot bed. Nothing stands out, in a good way
To your point, art direction has been a challenge on this project. As a nature themed game, “blending in” is one of nature’s natural defenses, but good game design finds a way to differentiate protagonists and background information (that cliche hidden door in a brick wall comes to mind here). Throughout this project, there have been one or two successful attempts at this from the feedback i’ve gotten, but for the most part everything seems to be too similar. So, now attempting to achieve this difference with slightly desaturated environments, and more vibrant moments of color / fx that draw the player’s attention to dynamic obstacles resulting in somewhat of a Hanna-Barbera effect. Here’s a preview of how things are evolving and hopefully starts to achieve this intent:
Some progress on boss animations…
Pretty fun to look back at this thread from over the years and see how life has changed since the start of this project. The game has seen many forms. We studied this IP concept as a VR game, mobile twin-stick, and PC 6DoF. This game finally found its identity of sorts as a 4 player local coop twin stick for console. Coming to this Spring.
[video=vimeo_share;297963866]https://vimeo.com/297963866[/video]
We just got our game site up as well: flutterbombs.com
Will have a devblog posted in a week or two on that site that outlines development over the years in more detail.
While we’re not out of the woods yet in terms of getting this project ready for release, in the meantime, i do want to say thanks to the UDK/UE4 community, and the folks at epic for their support and encouragement in bringing this idea to life.
We look forward to release later this spring.
Paradoc (Sporx on some forums)
Discord: sp0rx#3782