Batteries Included Dev Blog

Time Saving Tools One of the original task’s programmers were faced with was to take a repetitive thing like solving math equations and cut down the time people were spending doing them by hand. The fact that programming can reduce the amount of time people spend on tasks is very valuable when considering long term projects like making games. It is easy to get caught up in thinking that things are just the way they are when considering something repetitive and time consuming like iteration during development.   However, when discovering tasks that you or your fellow devs are spending a lot of time on over and over again, it can be valuable to consider that there may be a more efficient way of doing things. And the cool thing about being a programmer and technology in general, is that there is always a more efficient way to do things. Only sometimes the time to develop a solution might take longer than the project will allow. Therefore, it is important to weigh the cost of dev...

Today we're going to take an in-depth look at the game systems in the current version of Batteries Included. Hopefully this will give you an insight into our choices and vision for the game! First up, I'll explain the overarching concept. In Batteries Included, the main game mechanics involve straining player attention in order to drive gameplay. For example, a player might have to very quickly shoot goblins out of a cannon so that they don't fly off in a different direction, lower a drawbridge so more goblins can cross, and pop balloons supporting more of his goblins so they can descend and steal the gold. All of these actions require player attention and some kind of VR interaction, be it moving, a trigger pull, or a swat. We can then build off this concept and obfuscate it by moving the goblins around the map using various other devices to add complexity. The main device the players interact with is our Hex system. Hexes are placed on a grid and make up the general l...

Part-Time Production: Tips for a Ragtag Team Rome wasn’t built in a day, as the saying goes, but neither was it made by a single person.  It required a number of different people with different contributions towards a common goal. Similarly, game development needs people from multiple walks of life all working toward a polished, fun experience.  Managing development, however, can be difficult especially in the case of part-time development. To hopefully help you avoid some of the pitfalls we struggled with, I’ll be discussing some of these trappings and how we worked to overcome them on our VR title: Batteries Included. Development Challenges First, let’s discuss some of the issues we faced on the project’s development … Varied Work Schedules Our team was working on the project part-time, which meant fixed group development time was scarce. Design → Prototype → Playtest Game development requires iterating on ideas quickly … with VR...

Batteries Included was for me a powerful learning experience. I don't say that lightly. When you pour a lot of time into something, it becomes a part of you. As a result, there is a profound sense of personal development that accompanies incremental updates to the project. You commit more and more time, and the pool of progress grows. I'm going to look at how my commitment to the project changed over time, not just in terms of raw numbers but also as a recounting of what influenced my capacity to be committed: factors such as excitement, team dynamics, and simultaneous other class work or events that influenced my personal liquidity. Part 1: Towerscape Back in November of 2017, I joined Devin Good, Alex Bowling, and Julian Povinelli to create a VR game for the Game Workshop classes. This game, Towerscape , would be the first VR game for the program at Indiana University. We had a blue ocean of possibilities ahead of us. Like sponges, we could absorb the possibilities thro...