MegaMare X — MegaMare X Dev Update – Dec. 2016

August brings with it a development update! And it’s a special one, because it’s been almost exactly 3 years since MegaMare X made its debut at BronyCon 2013. So it’s a tech-demo anniversary update.

But first to the development at hand. Summertime for most of our team members, with its sunshine and baking temperatures, has brought with it an unusual set of personal situations. July was especially slow due to this, which, while not good for making progress, doesn’t mean that we’re at a standstill.

We have another alpha update, our 103rd, and a related second in the pipeline for additional bugs, fixes, and scripting support. Our present goal continues toward building out some small pieces of the content for the main portion of the game, and then we are moving on to further design and content milestones. These next milestones to reach will delve into the final stages, their bosses, and the unfolding plot therein. While some decisions need to still be made, the coming months will have some answers and a rough completion of the alpha.

We’ve come so far, and there’s more to do, but let’s go back 3 years to August 2013 to when our tech demo first hit the public!

Our team decided to get together and setup all we had on a table at BronyCon. MegaMare X had only been in development since the end of 2012 – but we were able to make a somewhat rushed (and often buggy) tech demo that made us realize just how much people enjoyed what we had created.

It was at a peak time during the fandom, and among other activities around us, we held down a table for the full three days over in the Salt Block Lounge. Helping everyone get a turn, listening and recording your feedback, and discussing where things might go.

It may have been a small table, but it often drew a crowd.

This was an exhilarating part of our early development that the team remembers fondly. Not only did it bring us together, but we had an overwhelmingly positive response to the demo, which encouraged us to dive into making the full game.

Looking back over the 3 years since, we’ve continued to have wonderful interactions with our fans. You guys help us keep this project going, and we couldn’t be more thankful for your support.

Did you know you can see the tech demo? We had an exclusive MegaMare X demo review by Phoe if you’re looking to check out what it was like back then:

April brings another update and a return to convention season. Another internal alpha is in our hands, and we have been working on new changes since. This one is our 99th, meaning the next marks our 100th alpha! We’re not sure what to do in celebration, but it certainly means something special.

Following our regular alpha playtesting and review, we’ve made some steady progress as a team towards improving our level design. As mentioned in our prior update, we are seeking to make fun and challenging stages. So, over the past few weeks, we’ve been exploring different things we can do in them. Part of this has been trying techniques for using the camera and effective enemy placements, but we’ve also gone into further explore our icy and water terrains. Mostly, these have been focused around specific *encounters* with enemies, which involve a specific combination of mechanics and enemies in a small area. Lately we’ve added some scripted platforms to these encounters, and will have those included in our upcoming build.

Meanwhile, we got feedback on that 99th alpha from a lucky playtester, who provided comments regarding difficulty, secrets, and visual cues. It’s always pleasant to get some hands-on playtesting where we can actually sit down and see what we miss. As expert players and the creators we have a skewed perception and always know what’s coming. In terms of challenge, we want it to be tough but fair, and accessible to a wide range of players and ages.

Over the next few months, the conventions are coming, but we aren’t making any official appearances. However, if you keep an eye out and catch the updates, you still might catch a chance to play. We’ll be sure to post where we’re headed and what to look for.

TL;DR: Almost at the 100th alpha mark, making fun challenges through stage encounters, and we aim to have the game interesting for experienced and new players alike.

After a slow period during the summertime months, development has picked up following the joining of some new team members. We’ve welcomed @shinsart​ and Xujints to our ranks and they’re off to a good start. Shintari, as a sprite/pixel artist, has already begun making tilesets, while Xujints has begun on the dialogue and is helping with game design.

Spurred-on by by these team additions, we have produced three more alpha versions and are up to 106. These add placements for some missing items, change the intro boss, fix various gameplay issue, and improve our scripting capabilities for cutscenes. We just completed recent work on our underwater stage’s layout, and finished parts of our upgraded armor sprites, of which half are in-game already. A number of new intro cutscenes have been added, with more cutscenes in progress for the armor parts hidden among the stages.

Now that the exciting stuff you wanted to hear about is over, here’s some boring details on the team’s overall status:

Some of the slowness has been due to a lack of availability with the volunteer nature of the project. So, over the past couple months, we’ve been working with individual members to reduce the amount of churn. Although we are still lacking some of the needed talents for the amount of pixel art the game requires, we hope speed of work will pick-up gradually and be more reliable for continued development. There is also some hold-up with game-design decisions for latter parts of the game that are only roughly written out. So iterations are now in-progress on finalizing details to move those forward.

TLDR: We’re still at it, but nothing looks good in screenshots yet. But it will soon with our new team members!

The last day of May brings a late update, but with more to come! Over the next few days, we’ve got some follow-up posts for various improvements you have been hearing about from our alpha builds. There’s also some artwork to show off as part of them that we’re excited to share.

This month we’ve had not just our 100th alpha build, but our 101st in quick succession. In addition to some fixes to the bosses, one of our weapons is now complete, and we have platforms that fit many of the designs we’ve been working on in the stages. Enemies will get some changes over the month of June, since there are many spots we need to fill throughout.

Lastly and most excitingly, these two alphas bring us the ability to write our cutscenes and script the events that unfold throughout the game. We’re thankful to have a new writer make a review of our dialogue and are now putting our first draft of writing into the game.

Our follow-up posts will be coming soon, so check back over the next round few days!

Late in the Fall season, we’re back with an update! We’ve had 3 internal alpha builds since the last, and were spinning our wheels on stages without much progress for a short while. However, progress has picked-up with a focus on process and mechanics.

Through the development of our latest alpha builds, the remaining details for the LXU Armor are complete with the all the palette changes for weapons, new teleport and death animations, and capsule upgrade cutscenes. And several issues were resolved that caused overlay and transparency issues with the sprites.

Lightning Bit palette of the LXU Armor

LXU Buster Upgrade animation

In the most recent alpha, we took a hard look at enemy behaviours and boss moves and rewrote some really troublesome ones. Chrysalis has always been a solid boss, but one of her attacks was in need of improvements to really shine. On the other side of the spectrum, Sombra’s been sitting sadly broken for quite some time, so we’re rewriting his broken attacks and making him more powerful to boot.

Sombra’s Crystal Shards attack in-progress.

One of the more crucial things lately has been polishing the core mechanics around dashing, wall-jumping, buster shots, and Lyra’s controls. An example of one of these is the dashing hit-box, which was previously fixed to Lyra’s full height. It’s now shorter when dashing, allowing Lyra to deftly dash under projectiles. To be satisfied in making enemies interact with Lyra in fun ways, the enemy encounters we’re designing have to be well-tuned to those mechanical specifics, so we have to get them just right. We also have to fine-tune the mechanics around movement, like how slopes and the slippery ice work in our snowy crystal stage.

Tileset floor perspective tile examples

In-progress for the stages are some test tilesets which we’ve begun painting into our Lake stage overtop the associated art sketches that outline the detailed elements. There’s nothing else that makes a stage feel alive than adding the art, so even the roughest tiles can start to make the stage seem lively. For the next steps to give the stage some depth, we’ll be adding more tiles and some background layers behind them.

Regular posts continue to be our weak point as development goes on. But there’s some questions in our ask box we’ll get around to answering. And we are still working out some boss designs to show in the future.