The Update: Update Edition
So it's been quiet for a long time around here, and it has been that way for a couple reasons. The major reason is that when Flashbang self-dissolved back in May, I took a freelance teaching job that sucked up most of my time and resources in exchange for putting some good money in the bank so I can continue to do fun stuff (Aztez). A couple month break is fine, but when that came to a close recently (and I found myself ready to rock again) my dude Matthew Davey was crazy busy trying to run his business, feed his family, and spend a little free time preserving his sanity. You know...big kid stuff. So after talking about it and amicably reassessing the situation I made a personnel change; I'm now rocking this thing out with Matthew Wegner, aka the head of Flashbang. You might be familiar with our previous body of collaborative work from when we (and a couple other badasses) made awesome free web games in Unity for two years straight and put them on Blurst.com.
It's a perfect fit because he is 1. down the street from me, 2. itching to have a rad game to work on since he is also freelancing, and 3. we've already made a whole bunch of games together. In the little bit of time that he has been involved a lot has happened and I'm feeling pretty invigorated by his involvement. While there still isn't anything to show off, we're getting into some nitty gritty implementation details and that means more technical blog posts about how we manage these issues and solve the real problems. So thanks for hanging out and expect some more fun stuff here on the blog real soon.
GDC 2010 Highlights
I just got back from the Game Developer's Conference and like usual; it was amazing! As far as Aztez is concerned, I had some very relevant and insightful conversations with some very talented people and I want to share them with you.
It turns out that there is no known doctrine for the creation of beat-em-up games. I had a really great conversation with David Sirlin (please investigate his body of work! He has a lot of really interesting things to say about competitive gameplay and is also a talented designer) about what a beat-em-up looks like under the hood and how fighting games and beat-em-ups are very close relatives. I expressed to him my deep concern that legitimate reference material on the creation of deep combat systems does not appear to exist and he reassured me by saying that most of the designers out there who have made seminal beat-em-ups did the exact same thing I am doing now; intuitively reverse engineering the good combat that has come before them. It's a bummer that there is no reading material on the subject, but that's all the more reason to continue doing what I am doing and to keep exposing it publicly.
I also talked to Robert Velazquez (one of the lead in-game character animators on God Of War 3) after he gave a great session on Sony Santa Monica's animation and design pipeline. I asked him very directly if there were any combat designers that would be willing to talk to me about combat design and he said there very well might be! It turns out there are a good handful of them on the God Of War team. I'm going to contact him shortly about this and hope that one of the uber-talented combat designers there is willing to impart some knowledge on us as we move forward. Hopefully they'll recognize how serious we are about making sure that Aztez is deep and impactful.
Anyway, GDC is over and it's back to business as usual! I'm gonna spool up the blog machine once again, but know this! It's about to get pretty technical around here as I start to talk a little bit about the combat engine we're trying to build! As always, we encourage discussion and the sharing of knowledge so make sure you jump in there with us and help us make Aztez as great as it deserves to be!
Aztez On Facebook
Just in case Facebook is your preferred contact point for the games you can't stop thinking about, go ahead and take advantage of our Aztez page on Facebook! We've added a button on the sidebar at the top (you can't miss it, it's the only blue object on the site) so you can jump to it from here with the swiftness of a thousand peregrine falcons.
The Bridge To Tenochtitlan
I am absolutely delighted to share with you a new environment I have created in which to spill copious amounts of blood within. This is a (liberal) recreation of one of Tenochtitlan's many bridges. It was created using a small handful of the structural building blocks I created for the Marketplace, but with mostly brand new assets. I thought it would be really awesome to stage a battle on one of these thin bridges where you get to see the agricultural happenings of the locals as well as an outside view of the city walls. I want to use this environment to create the breathtaking sensation of what it must have been like to approach the legendary city. Use the left and right arrow keys to run and press the up button to jump.
As with the Marketplace, this environment is still very much a work in progress but the basic idea is definitely in place. That's not to say it didn't get some lovin'! Something I put some serious TLC into is the floating gardens, or "chinampas", in the background water. Because of the heavily aquatic nature of Tenochtitlan, floating gardens like this were integral to Aztec farming. I wanted to make sure these crucial objects were represented so I actually went and modeled some of the vegetables you would have seen in a place like this.
We've got pinto bean stalks on the left, corn in the middle, and amaranth on the right. Obviously there were many more things grown by the Aztecs than that, but these three staples provide good variety to the scene since you don't see them up close anyway. And since I'm showing you these and you can clearly see that there isn't actually any detail on a lot of these simpler objects, I'm gonna show you how I get them textured quickly and easily. I'm employing the exact same methodology I showed you in the Conservative Texture Usage post, except I'm using a startlingly simple texture.
The texture file you see in this image is an exact representation of the actual texture being used on these game objects; one half is solid white and one half is solid black. On the simple objects that don't need any textural detail, I just slap this guy on 'em and he pretty much takes care of everything for me. It's great because when I'm modeling I spend NO time meticulously arranging UV's, I just cram the UV's from the main body of the object into the upper half of the UV space and the outter ink object into the lower half. And since they're all using this material in the scene, I can take advantage of Unitys mesh combine functionality and turn a whole array of simple vegetables into one object. It's beautiful and fast and satisfying. 
The Phases Of The Aztez Project
The current plan with the Aztez project is to create a free version of the game that is limited in scope but showcases what we can do with arcade style combat in a web browser environment. I've been making short form games for Blurst.com for two years now and I've learned a lot of about game "stickyness" and what makes something casual yet compelling. To this day the most successful Blurst game we've made at Flashbang is Off-Road Velociraptor Safari, and to me it's fairly obvious why. ORVS gives you enough freedom to be creative but enough structure to be motivated. Blush was popular for a lot of the same reasons, but less popular than ORVS because its tool set was not as robust. There just isn't that much to do in Blush.
What we want to give you with Aztez is an experience that you can continue to explore and exploit well after your first play through. We want to give you enough game play structure to fiddle with that you can repeatedly see the game with fresh eyes. We want to give you a scrumptious handful of high level treats to seek out, lock down, and feel awesome about. And we want to give this to you all wrapped up in a casual shell that you can mack on for a few minutes at a time and still feel satisfied with. Of course, if you want to play all night and continue to mutilate your opposition until the sun comes up then we won't stop you.
It's just important to us that it's perfectly clear what the first incarnation of the game will have in store for you. It's not going to be an epic adventure with a big story and a ton of different environments to fight in, but instead will be a totally solid combat festival that you can have a lot of fun with and not take too seriously. The way we see it, this is an opportunity to prove to ourselves that we can create the type of experience we want to create without having to worry about whether or not people will buy it, and instead focus on whether or not people will really enjoy it. If we do what we want to do and it rocks your socks off upon release into the wild, then we'll expand the game into something you'll want to spend a couple bucks on. We're calling that "Phase 2". If we get there then that's great but in the meantime we're just going to be concentrating on getting some stylish, violent, pure fun into your hands and making sure you fall in love with it.
Aztez is being made by Ben Ruiz and Matthew Wegner. Unsurprisingly, they are both incredibly violent.
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