Batteries Included Dev Blog

How we designed the Trampoline, Wormhole, and Alchemist hexes in Batteries Included     Designing on a time limit is difficult on its own, but it gets worse when you add VR into the mix. In this blog post I wanted to showcase the processes that I myself took to create and design some of the hexes in Batteries Included . First of these movement hexes was the Trampoline hex, in a shortened version what it does is over a distance of one hex launches toys in the direction they came from. In my original designs I had thought of it as an item similar to the launch pads in Fortnite , as simple place able hexes that launch toys forward without having to be rotated like the cannon.  This slowly dropped the place ability of the hex to it being solely in one place at the start of the level. The reason for this was the need for quick playtesting to find the "fun" in these hexes. Unlike the trampoline hex, the wormhole design was one that I had already had in mind for the pr

A Programmers Perspective: Dealing with Cut Content and Canceled Games As any game developer would tell you nothing feels worse than working for weeks, months or even years on a something just to have it cut or cancelled. In this blog post I’d like to share my experience dealing with this and how you can salvage your work. My experience with having major components I had worked on cut, began mid-way through the development of Batteries Included , which at the time had a tentative title of “Imaginarium.” The design for the game was very different at that time and needed complex AI with access to a lot of information from the current world state. It was my job to create an efficient system that would gather information about things like where concentrations of enemy and allied units where as well as keep track of obstacles and goals for the various units. A good way to collect and feed this type of information is through an influence map system. An Influence map is essentially a

To all our caring readers, We are back in action with new blog posts coming out weekly now! We sincerely apologize for our absence and are happy to have you back following along with our development. We have gone through a lot of changes since we last posted; a member graduated then moved to a new state, we lost a sound designer, we gained a new music composer and we now have a dedicated art team! Over the summer and fall we changed/pivoted our design into something that is simpler and more cohesive than we have ever had before. (I will explain more about that in a bit!) Welcome back and welcome to anyone reading for the first time! We hope to provide a few helpful anecdotal stories from our development and release cycle specifically tailored to those making VR games for the HTC Vive. So quick synopsis time... We fumbled a bit with our summer development. Hindsight is always 20/20 but we were hungry and ambitious to make the biggest game we could as our goal. Our daily and wee