Only Days Left! -- Week Ending 21 Apr

The art flowed this week, and many of the assets are now in place, not to mention a slew of hilarious sound effects! Brandon modeled a sweet new level for our upcoming alpha demo, and it looks great in the game engine. There's a great vertical element to it, and it should be a blast to see in action once the engineers finish laying the pathfinding system onto it.

In addition, all sorts of smaller (yet necessary) features have been implemented from the engineering side. Four of us put a ton of work into cracking out a fun menu GUI, and now the project actually feels like starting up a software product and jumping into a real video game. It's incredibly rewarding to see things falling into place.

And it's a good thing that they are, because we give our official presentation to the original MGS cohort in a matter of days! Jesse and I are going to spend some serious time hammering out the best presentation we can, and we plan on letting our fantastic team's product speak loudest of all.

We're excited to put the final touches on the alpha build of Last March of the Dodos, so keep an eye here for its official debut!

The Physics of Fun -- Week Ending 14 Apr

Chain reactions in Last March of the Dodos are awesome! The engineers have implemented the ability for players to combo Dodos from trap to trap. This includes everything from the physics of knocking the Dodos throughout the game space, allowing them to be hit with successive traps as they flop around, and keeping track of increasing score multipliers with each trap collision--until they finally come to rest and poof out of existence. With just the physics of some of the traps alone (the mine, for example), it's a blast to send a group of Dodos flying in every direction, and then to watch them bounce around the environment like ragdolls. Other enjoyable scenarios we've discovered include shooting a Dodo with a cannonball so that the force carries it up and off a ramp into space, luring Dodos with bait up a ramp so that they fall onto a mine as they drop off the end, and simply watching them repeatedly run into player-positioned walls until they figure out they're solid and adjust their course.

The individual features involved in these reactions will, of course, require a hefty amount of tweaking to make the experience as fun as it can possibly be. At the moment, the force of many collisions is on the high side, so it's somewhat difficult for a player to precisely calculate where to place the various traps in a chain. Further, creating engaging level designs has proven to be part of the challenge in this process (not that it's ever easy) since there are so few limitations with how players can use their traps at the moment.

Additionally, art assets keep coming along, too. We now have models for the boot, ramp, walls, mine, bomb, environmental fixtures like island huts, and--of course--the impressive Dodo! All the pieces are coming together nicely to make for an incredibly promising alpha build of the game.

Can't wait!

- Troy

Good Thing We Planned for Debugging -- Week Ending 7 Apr

Don't be too scared by the title of the post. Things are rolling steadily forward with Last March of the Dodos. The game is in great shape, and the player can now easily make selections from a clean, focused drop-down inventory to place a wide array of traps in the Dodos' paths (or force the Dodos out of their paths to trigger said traps).

Unfortunately, some of the new functionality of trap chaining has added a bit of extra work to programming the physics of those chain reactions. The engineers are on top of it, but it will take an extra bit of time to get everything in perfectly functioning order. Luckily, we scheduled an extra week of development time strictly for the purpose of overcoming such challenges and debugging everything until it runs smoothly--silky smoothly.

In addition, we've got even more environment, trap, and Dodo modeling completed, as well as a basic map of the menu and gameflow progression. The game marches forward, so check back next week for a new video demo of Last March of the Dodos in action!

- Troy

Alpha Is Imminent! -- Week Ending 31 Mar

Last March of the Dodos is in great shape! Significant progress was made this week by every member of the team. We've got several new mechanics ready to go (chaining, scoring, and more), not to mention several additional trap types available to the player.

In addition to the direct development of the game, even more of the design details have been solidified as our process has evolved. Trap chain potential has been fleshed out to the point that we can now envision emergent gameplay beyond our original designs; that is an exciting prospect!

More models and concept art continue to come to life as well, and it's fun to see how the aesthetics are shaping the gameplay itself.

Another playable build is on its way, so keep an eye out on Last March of the Dodos!