Assault Android Cactus - twin stick shoot-em-up (PC)

I feel bad. Upon seeing your sketches of the various androids, I've been doodling a bit, and I realized part way through - I've absorbed some of your style!

Game is looking great...can't wait to lay my hands on it.

 

Haha don't feel bad, my style is a culmination of all the different art styles I've liked over the years, I'm glad to be an influence in turn

 

Things have been a little quiet, been making steady progress, but mostly in areas that don't make good screenshots. I thought I'd talk about the process I'm using to model the weapons though.

I star with a loose sketch on tablet and use that as a guide to model the mesh. Then I'm throwing them through Roadkill to unwrap them, neaten and arrange the UV's back in MAX and texture from there.



Been under a lot of pressure to do my models very quickly, although I was really happy with how this one turned out! Inspired by the laser in Akira, which I think is one of the coolest guns in anything ever! A lot more compact though, to fit the dimensions for Cactus weapons.

And here's a pretty render of Starch, the character that uses the laser!



And finally, a complete playthrough of Capacitor, the fourth level in the game!

 

That was a pretty boss video! This looks awesome.

EDIT: Rewatching a time or two, and the tutorial let's play, it was a good idea to add the "Battery Here!" announcement on battery drop.

 

TB just did a WTF is of the game.

 

Thanks! And yeah, there's been a lot of continuous refinement, watching people play the game I felt that people would let a time expire (thus putting themselves in jeopardy) without realising what had happened, and when they fail the level it wouldn't register where and how they went wrong.

So now the character announces when the battery drops and also when it is missed. (in co-op its the closest character)

Yes! Was super excited to see this, I think we fared quite well! It's also brought a lot more attention to the game which has been greatly appreciated.

 

WOW, three people ??? dang you guys are amazing. I have a team of 15 and we are barely half as good as you guys . Kudoos to you guys well done, I for one am very impressed. Good luck in the future .

 

Thanks! I've been fortunate enough to pick up enough different skills that I can handle a lot of roles, although I'm definitely feeling the acute lack of manpower, especially now I'm trying to get more content into the game.

Robot Universe looks quite slick though, I dig the robot models I saw over on your facebook page, it also sounds like a much more ambitious project than Cactus!

 

Working on a new enemy variant today, sneak peek!

 

this is one of the most professionally-looking projects here. When is the game coming out and what price point?

 

Thanks! I feel quite unprofessional at times seeing some of the larger projects that are around with bigger teams and funding behind them, but I've tried my best to keep things clean and polished!

We're aiming to wrap up the game in the later part of this year, and are looking at a $10-$15 price to keep us comparable to other PC indie titles.

 

I voted YES for the Steam green-light and left a comment... do you know how far along it is to being approved?

In the meantime, can we buy this game directly from you guys using credit card (PayPal) or something? The game looks great, I can't wait to buy it!

 

this is awsome! any change relese ios?

 

Marko325 - Thanks! I appreciate it!

By the looks of things, we're not close to getting green lit, but even if we don't it won't be the end of things.

We're still hard at work on the game at the moment, although we've been looking into options for early access. (both through portals, and more directly)

But whatever happens, the final game will be available through various means, including directly from us. (DRM free and all that)

annnd here's another animated gif, because they're fun to make!

 

Thanks Gorlog! No, we're not planning to do a mobile version.

 

ooh anyway it's realy great job im waiting for this

 

I'm going to try something a little different - I'm starting to work on the mesh for the second Boss of the game and I'll be posting updates as I go for anyone who wants to follow along. I will dip a bit into my progress and try to explain my logic.

The second boss hangs out in the green and white world with the plants. It's has a sort of combined lab / hydroponics / medical function and my concept for the boss of such a zone was a "regal gardener".



So I'm clearly liking the spike hat, but does she have hands? Claws? Clippers? The most interesting concept is probably the bulb dress. It's built out of plates that can wrap around her and encase her in a protective sphere as part of gameplay, so it's important it works visually. I want to start modelling so I sketch up a neater front and side that I can use a guide when I'm working in 3D.



Sometimes I get asked for modelling advice by beginners and the number one thing I tell them is "draw stuff first". Generally they make some comment about "pttht, I don't have time for that" and ignore me, which is a shame because it's the single biggest time saver I know.

Reference doesn't always have to be precise either - this picture is not exactly my best work but I know I'm the one that'll be working off it so I've just drawn what I need. Which is the shapes and forms. This stuff is generally easy to work out with a pencil but a pain to invent in 3D. She also has a curve to her spine which is important for humanoids - characters should be modelled to look comfortable and a character that's modelled in a stiff t-pose will look stiff when animated. I've also given some thought to how many segments the dress has given the torso is pitched forwards.



I crop, adjust and slap some quick colour on the scan. Maybe she'll be green? I'm not really deciding right now, but it helps me think about the characters. For Embryo, I left the placement of his lights till texturing, this time I want to have a bit of a better idea of where they will go. (all enemies in Cactus have health indicator lights that transition from blue to red)



Finally, I make a plane with the same aspect ratio as the image and assign it as a material in 3DSMAX. I snip up the plane and reposition it so it aligns with the zero origin so I can model in the front and side easily. (I have back facing turned off so you can't see it, but the side plane is flipped and on the left-hand side too) That box at the origin is about to become the character!

Next time : Hopefully some 3D!

 

Just a quick update with a couple of work in progress pics. When I'm done with the modelling I'll write things up with more detail.

 

very good!

 

Woah that is amazing! are you using 3ds max by any chance?

 

Thankyou! Yes, it's the program I'm most comfortable with.

Here's how the mesh came out



I'll be texturing her tomorrow, but for now I put a bit more information over on the blog.

 

very cool, can't wait to play it

 

You're doing a brilliantly at keeping things polished. Every time I see AAC screenshots it's a reminder that even as an Indie, I've got to do everything I can to keep everything as tight as possible.

Out of interest, what's the time frame on modelling the character you uploaded? How long do you allow to skin it? I never know if I'm budgeting myself too long or too short a time

 

The Queen was modelled over the course of a day. For the actual skin-weighting I'd give myself an hour or two, the fiddly parts are shoulders and faces, which are both pretty limited in this case. The rigging is probably going to take a while though, since I want the dress to curl up I'm thinking of using spline IK (my fallback is FK, but I'd really rather not) and I'll need a basic mouth rig.

Texturing will take some time, probably most of a day, then a day or less for animation!

These are more estimates than budgets though, I feel like in the long run I'll just have to give each character as much time as they need, and hope I'm working efficiently!

So she's got some UV's now and I blocked in colour and added the lights to make sure their positions work.

 

Wow, a lot of stuff came up! Finally back on making the boss! I updated the blog with part three



Mouth rig



and she finally turns into a ball!

 

that's some crazy cool animation! I would maybe add a little more detail on her texturing imo.

 

Amazing Game. Keep it up!

Edit: what 3D program are you using if you don't mind?

 

3dsmax, telling from the viewport shots.
(The bones are converted dummies, if you are confused by the rig.)

This project looks so awesome... no words

 

Nice piece of work and a great little gameplay demo there. I think you will do well.

 

Thanks! She's currently untextured, those are base colours so I can see where things line up. Here she is standing next to the first boss for size comparason but you can get an idea of the texture style I'll be going for. (well, she won't be so grubby...)

3ds Max, as rbx775 spotted

No dummies as bones in this rig, although I have some point helpers inserted between bones to absorb rotations. I tend to switch all the bones to Display as Box because I find them easier to work with that way.


Thanks everyone! I really appreciate the feedback and the kind words!

 

Woah, everything's been pretty crazy, last weekend I was in Adelaide for AVcon and this weekend I was in Melbourne for PAX Aus!

I had always planned to show Cactus at AVcon, but we got a last minute opportunity to have Cactus at PAX too! I'm planning to get back to working on the Queen boss this week, but for now I've got some photos up on our facebook page of how the conventions went down

Cactus at the Indie Games Room, AVcon, Adelaide

Cactus at the Frag Labs booth, PAX Aus, Melbourne

Different experiences but both amazing! It's one thing to build a game, it's another thing to set it up in front of the public and hand people the controller!

 

wow nice, if no secret did you have to pay anything to participate in these events?

 

No. The Indie Games Room supports students and indie developers, and at PAX we were fortunate enough to be invited to show the game at Frag Labs booth.

Obviously we had plenty of transport, accommodation and equipment costs but we didn't pay for space at the events themselves, which was super lucky since it would have been well above what a small self funded team like ours could have managed!

 

Just posted part four of the making of the next boss over on the blog, I've been animating and hooking up behaviours!



Her main behaviour is curling up into a ball and then rolling around dragging wasps behind her! Visually it's all a bit placeholder art at the moment, but the gameplay is feeling good! Am really looking forwards to getting a chance to finish off the texturing and build the boss environment.

 

I gotta say this game looks really nice. The gameplay seems very smooth, though I fear that it might get repetitive after some play. Still very nice work. Keep it up!

 

have been a bit quiet lately, but here's a gif!



Also I have some exciting news, we've been working with Sony and we're on track to release Assault Android Cactus on Playstation 4 and Vita next year!

We're also getting close to a purchasable alpha for PC, and hopefully I'll resume the dev diary stuff once I have a few more things sorted out.

 

Really good news for a really really nice work ! congratulation !! I hope your modelers worked with enough polygons!

 

haha well I'm the modeller... I've stayed pretty conservative with the polygons, I figure it's more important to put a large number of enemies on screen and maintain a constant 60fps than having any one character look crazy detailed.

 

hehe .. it was a joke
I am one of the "old people" who like large pixels and large polygons! All I ask is a great atmosphere and lots of fun (and that's a lot!)

I really enjoyed watching all the videos and visuals of your project. This is a great adventure!

 

Thankyou! For the most part I've been avoiding using the newer systems as they often have an undesirable cost.

The particle effects (and a lot of other effects) are Legacy particles, I like how easy they are to manipulate in script.



Enemy pathfinding is done with a simple path system I wrote that uses a coarse network of handplaced nodes. Those eyeball icons are my path nodes.

I'm using the Legacy animation system for everything, Mechanim seems like it's designed for complex character behaviour or variable rigs, and with the amount of animated meshes I put on screen at once, the overhead would be unacceptable.

My lighting is also pretty rudimentary! It's all real time (too many weapon effects / level transformations to take advantage of baking) and I use a single shadow casting directional light because it's used for gameplay (the shadows grounds characters and show the 3D position of projectiles) These are the typical 'layers' to lighting in a level :



As I'm using Deferred Rendering, I generally use a lot of small non-shadow casting lights for things like weapon fire, missile impacts etc.

 

Looking Good

 

For a while the in-game UI was text meshes and custom geometry. Recently I started using NGUI mostly for it's excellent font and atlas system.

The issue with projectors is the way they work involves duplicating the geometry they touch, which means their performance cost stacks really fast. So one projector, no problem. 20 projectors, and suddenly the game is grinding to a halt on a machine with an older graphics card.

Currently I use projectors for the Shutdown effect (blue ring spreading outwards) and the battery spawn effect (green ring contracting inwards) and I'm careful with which layers they can affect.

 

Congrats on getting into the keynote intro!!

 

I stayed up to 2am (local time) to watch it, I was so stoked when I saw the game on screen!

 

So they didn't even tell you that it was going to be in there??

 

DUDE You're on IGN! You already probably know that but here is the link for anybody else that wants to see it:
http://www.ign.com/videos/2013/09/04/assault-android-cactus-gameplay-commentary

I was so surprised when I saw that! Lol anyways, congrats and good job on the game!

 

Wow! Thanks for sharing, really nice graphics. Can you share what kind of shader are you using for the characters and environment?