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 f...

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...

Devin Good || Lead Designer Hey all you lovely people! We are in our first full week of summer development and we have a lot to share about where we have come and where we are going as well as how we got here. Before we get into that I want to thank everyone who has been following us and giving us your support! You all are the best! So where to start... WE HAVE A NEW NAME & LOGO! AND A NEW VIDEO! Quick Semester Recap: We have finished our first semester of development and our gearing up to the long haul of summer. It has been a long ride already with lots of bumps and we are here to talk about that now before we get into the excitement of summer. A few quick disclosures: this may get a bit lengthy but hang in there, I promise we may have a few tidbits that could help you out too!  Work Accountability - A big issue for us as a new and quickly expanding company has been work accountability when we do not have the ability to meet every single day. Eac...

Teleportation Play Here's a quick and fun update from the developer perspective... The most exciting changes are the addition of trolls, teleportation, and combat polish. In the video below you can see the flow of gameplay starting to manifest.

Hunter Bobeck | Gameplay Programmer Hello imaginative players! Today I'm bringing an update on scaling in Imaginarium (our new working title!)... While playtesting, we have received two complaints related to scale in the game. The first was that the curves being used for shrinking and unshrinking the player during the tower interaction were a bit off. The second was that the proportions of toys on the table felt wrong when the player shrunk themselves down. We already mentioned the shrinking complaint in the previous update for 1-17-2018 , but I'd like to begin by explaining it further. To handle this issue, I first updated my Virtuality Controls plugin ( available for anyone to use here on Git Hub ) to provide built-in interpolation curve options when performing interpolations. As you may remember from the previous post on Context Changing , interpolation values must be calculated over the course of the shrinking and unshrinking interactions to both reposition the ...

What we are working on... Design: Toy unit designs and environment sketches continue! We are playing with a name change to 'Imaginarium' to highlight the unique magic of your toys coming to life, and not just inert towers, but toys of all imaginations (towers, goblins, bricks, action figures, spacemen, etc.). Development: Chapter Switching and the Room setup preliminary tilesets and units for the 3 Greedy Goblins chapters and the first Abducting Aliens and Plundering Pirates chapters bedtime announcement audio when chapter ends sky changes to darker evening sky when chapter ends fixed holes in the windows added window screens implemented Greedy Goblin Goons and Greedy Goblin Thieves boxes as whirligigs added die whirligig