AI Vendetta: all about the Green Lights

Hi and welcome back!

Last time we blogged about AI Vendetta, we had only just embarked on our journey to the Steam platform through Greenlight. This has been a very exciting journey and with great pleasure we can say that AI Vendetta has been successfully greenlit by the community and has been recognized by Valve as an official Steam Game. We want to thank Everyone that helped us in the process, whether you voted for us, shared or are a long time follower, your love and support made all of this possible!

With that being said, AI Vendetta is not finished just yet and we still have a long road ahead of us before we will be shipping the game out to a Steam Store page near you. As we previously mentioned most of the game is actually technically finished and all of the levels have been created in (at least) a block-out state. The part where most of our focus will lie in the coming months is tying everything together, creating a lot of artwork and filling in the levels with their final artwork and story elements and of course we will be doing a lot of quality assurance. However, even in this stage we are still open for any feedback and suggestions, so feel free to leave your thoughts below in the comments or on your preferred (social) medium.

And again, thanks so much for your support!

You may be thinking "why not get the artwork for the project started earlier?", there are actually various reasons for this. The primary one being that we value the quality of the gameplay above anything else, focussing on the technical and design aspects of the game allows us to better evaluate the gameplay and iterate on it. Secondly, as you may have seen, our team background and expertise is also stronger on those points. We do have input from external visual artists, but we also do most of the modelling/UV-ing/Texturing, etc. ourselves, it just isn't our speciality. However, you can rest assured that we will not stop working on the game and it's visual appearance until we are completely happy with it!

What can you expect from us in the near future?

* We still consider the game to be in Alpha state until everything has been tied together, but we do expect to reach Beta stage around June, for which there will be an official blog.
* We are currently working a lot on improving and expanding the artwork, about which we tweet weekly, we may also dedicate a blog to the world of AI Vendetta soon.
* Our very own Rens is creating the soundtrack for AI Vendetta, which will be available on steam next to the game itself. However, we are also making it publicly available on YouTube and we introduce a new song every now and then, so stay tuned! (Find them here)
* Previously we talked about our development process, level design, programming in C# 101, the sound and UI overhaul for AI Vendetta. We still have blogs planned for the mechanics and art of AI Vendetta, which you can expect in the future. However, should you have any questions for us, or want us to dive deeper into a certain topic, feel free to suggest and you might find just that in our next blog!


That's all for today! Thanks again to those that voted and shared for us on Greenlight, your support means the world to us! Again, feel free to leave any questions, feedback, suggestions or remarks below in the comments, your preferred social media or send us an email! We consider any feedback we get and will try to answer them as quick and correct as possible!


Thanks for reading!

~Thom, Catbyte Games

Going Green

Yes! It finally is happening, AI Vendetta is now live on Steam Greenlight!
We want to thank Everybody; Friends, family and people from all around the world for your time, support and feedback. We could not have done it without you. Yet again we rely on your voice and your support:
Please help us get our game onto the Steam Store by voting for us on Steam Greenlight using the following link:

Feel free to leave a comment or further feedback on Steam.
We will keep you posted on our progress as we go and we will of course try to answer any questions you may have!

For those that have been following us this announcement may be a little bit surprising. We've been planning for Steam Greenlight for a while now, but when Valve announced that they would be replacing Greenlight with Steam Direct, we knew we had to act fast. The reason we prefer Greenlight is that we really are interested in the voice of the community and we feel that we would lose that connection with Steam Direct. While Direct is still a completely valid decision of Valve, which we also support, we personally feel that having a real connection with our players and their feedback is more important than (nearly) guaranteed deployment on the Steam store through Direct!

Again, thank you so much! Please help us share AI Vendetta with the world by voting for us on Steam Greenlight!

~The Catbyte Team

More on Steam Direct

We appreciate that Valve is taking steps in improving their gateway to the Steam Store. Greenlight is an amazing place where lots of indie game gems exist and where everyone can have a shot at getting their creativity and hard work out there. It also gives people a voice and puts them in control of the way games are submitted to Steam. However, there are just so many games out there right now, some which are just not quite there yet and it's just too much to demand from your players to control the flood of submissions every day. So we respect Valve's choice in putting up a slightly larger barrier to allow only the games that have the right quality and funding behind them. We will definitely miss the community's voice but our only real wish is that small devs will still get their chances and opportunities in this new system.

Valve's Announcement: http://steamcommunity.com/games/593110/announcements/detail/558846854614253751

UI can do it! A new interface design for AI Vendetta

Hello and welcome back!

Today we have a new blog for you, all about the importance of a good UI in video games and how our UI evolved over the development of AI Vendetta. So first of, what is an UI? It is the collective interface which you present to users of your application or game, it often plays a very big role in the way users interact with the application/game and how they perceive, process and input the exchange of information. Often when we talk about games, we also talk about the HUD. The difference between these two is that the HUD, or Heads-Up Display, is typically only the information you see on screen while playing the game. Think about your health bar, score, progression, ammo, power-ups, all different kinds of stats and maybe even a minimap. While the HUD is important, it might only be a small part of the UI that you find in some games.

What makes the UI so important?

As we discussed before, the UI plays a big part in how people exchange information with the game. Especially if you consider games which rely heavily on their interface, think about the majority of (classic) role playing games. In modern games, MMORPGs typically have a very expansive interface for you to customize your character, moveset, quests, etc.

There are specialized people who design these user interfaces, but besides that they also care a lot about the User Experience (UX), because a well designed UI is both efficient in conveying information and immerses with the game's visual appearance and thematics. Some games even incorporate their UI in the game world itself, think about having your ammo counter on the weapon/tool you use in game, a health bar that is integrated into the characters armour (Deadspace) or the appearance of the UI is as if it were inside the helmet of the playable character (Metroid, Republic Commando).

So how did we design and integrate the UI for AI Vendetta?

At first we really didn't start out with an elaborate UI. We just had the main information that we needed on screen and I think a lot of indie developers probably go about it the same way. There wasn't really an overlaying menu structure either that led into the game. When you start out building a game, especially as an indie developer, you want to get a good feel for the content and gameplay value of the game so you start out with the bare basics for your UI. Over time it gets polished and touched up to make it more pleasing. But there comes a point where you really need to think about "how can we make this UI look good, make it fit with the game's art style and most importantly make everything readable while not distracting". We also needed to think about how the menu structure would work, the player must be able to do all the necessary steps, but as efficient as possible, after all, it's about playing the game, not about looking at menu screens*.

*Please note that there are games which rely more on the usage of elaborate UIs which convey a lot of information. For example strategy games and RPGs in general. AI Vendetta, as an action/puzzle platformer, doesn't really offer that much information through UI, more through environmental story telling.

So then... you end up with an UI design and/or Game Flow, it may look something like this:

After several iterations we ended up with an interface that we like, it has the right visual feeling to it and draws just the right amount of attention to it. As we are working with Unity, we also decided to upgrade from Unity's legacy UI structure, which is completely code driven, to Unity's most recent UI solution "Canvas". Canvas has been out there for a while now (since Unity 4) and has been receiving improvements ever since. The advantage of Canvas is that it really exposes the way a UI can be built to artists and designers, which are typically the people who will design the UI in the first place. Instead of having a coder rebuild their designs or creating tools that can port their designs, they can now build it directly in Unity. This makes the whole process a lot smoother and really enables artists to tweak and edit at their hearts content. There is still some coding involved, but due to the actual draw calls being abstracted away by Unity, you are really only left with the actual functional code for controlling the UI, which makes the code a lot cleaner.
So overall, Canvas does not just add some improvements over legacy, it really gives power to the right people.

So this is how our UI looks now:

   

   



This a comparison shot to see how our previous HUD looked and what it looks like now in Canvas:

That is all for now! I hope you enjoyed this post, if you want further information on our UI or general help with your Unity Canvas experience, please feel free to get in touch. Send us a message or leave a comment below if you like! We have more articles on AI Vendetta here on our website, as well as the recently released soundtrack and an alpha stage demo of the game (with the old UI unfortunately). If you have any feedback or questions for us, please let us know and we'd love to get into contact!

We also have some more exciting news coming up early next week, so please stay tuned!
Thanks for reading and hopefully till next time!

~Thom, Catbyte Games

The Sound of AI Vendetta

Hi!

Welcome back to another blog!
Today we would like to share a little bit about the music that makes AI Vendetta sound the way it does. And not just that, there is a bunch of sounds and effects that together make the world come alive. Because we love sharing, we put all the songs from the soundtrack (those that have been announced) here on our website for you to listen to! Of course you can also visit our YouTube channel for the soundtrack and other videos or find them here on our website using this link.

For those interested, there is also a short story on our experience with creating the soundtrack of AI Vendetta below. If you liked this article or any the work we do, please leave us a comment. You can also play the AI Vendetta alpha demo using the link in the menu bar. Of course we would love any feedback you may have on the game and we would very much like to get into contact so leave us a message or follow us on your favourite social media!

Making the sound of AI Vendetta

So how did we get to creating the soundtrack and what inspired us in the process? That can be best explained in the words of our very own Rens van der Meijs, who works on the project as programmer, but is in charge of anything music related in the project as well!
For this project we really had to sit down and define what it was that AI Vendetta is; What mood and setting do we have, what message are we trying to get across, what is the story of AI Vendetta? A lot of the immersion in a game comes from sound because besides being very visually oriented, we as humans are also tuned into hearing a response from the actions that we take and from events that happen in the world. The best sounds are often those you cannot hear or notice. They are the subtle noises that make the world come alive and sound natural. Think about footsteps, the wind, the sound of a passing car. You know they are there even though you don't always conscientiously perceive them.

With AI Vendetta we are also spending a lot time just adding sounds and effects to everything, not to make them stand out, but to make them fit in. It is really important to do this because otherwise nothing would feel real. Something really interesting to do, is to play a game and turn off the music. Just listen to all the sounds that are happening. Suddenly it becomes apparent that there is such a rich soundscape in many games, sounds that you didn't notice before but would really lack if they weren't there. A good example of this is to play an open world game such as the Witcher 3 or the Elder Scrolls: Skyrim.

The story of AI Vendetta and also the general mood is very dark and gloomy, almost desperate. But it is also a story about adventure, exploration and bravery. We also have the robotical theme going on throughout the game which needed to be present in the soundtrack. So we took a lot of inspiration from existing games and movies to get to know what feels right in which situation. For example, we really like the soundtrack of Portal 2 because it had the experimental and adventurous theming to it, but also was set in a more futuristic setting (with robots!). For us most of the time it really comes down to what message we want to get across and we try to fit the music to that specific setting, thus every song was tailor made for a specific usage and message. You may also notice that the music changes slightly throughout the game as the story progresses to better translate the underlying thematics.

The soundtrack of AIVendetta, with more to come.

If there is one thing that we want you to take away from this story, it's that music and sound effects are really important to any game experience. Don't underestimate the power of sound when it comes down to creating an immersive experience. We are very lucky to have such an amazing in-house musician to help us create the game experience that we want to bring to you and we would very much advise any gamedevs out there to invest into their game audio as well. During our process of creating AI Vendetta we also met a great musician, Ninichi, who actually creates game music on commission. So we would definitely recommend to check out her blog for some of her music as well as other gamedev interests if you are looking for someone to help you with your game audio!

That's all for now! If you'd like to know more about the game, please feel free to leave us a message or give us a shout on social media. We always love to get into contact and would certainly like to help out any other gamedevs as well!

And with that I "wave" goodbye to you all! See you next time!

~Thom, CatbyteGames

Meet the cast

Have you met the cast of AI Vendetta yet?
In this you game play as proto, a robot with the power to transform and utilize different game modes and mechanics. You can play as Combat-, Stealth- and Utility mode. Each with their own unique game experience and possibilities in the game. Can you combine their powers to save humanity from certain doom?

Combat Mode

Use your rockets to blast a way through enemy defences. With decent shielding and average speed you are perfect for taking on any challenge. Place traps to outwit your enemies.

Stealth Mode

Combine your low signature movement and four wheel drive to sneak past enemy defences and dismantle traps. Use small corridors to avert danger. Use your charged focus optics to form a small but powerful laser beam.

Utility Mode

With reinforced plating nothing can get to you, use your magnetic powers to manipulate the environment and breach through defences. Use your seismic shock ability to further demolish anything that crosses your path.

STEALTH

COMBAT

UTILITY

Seasons Greetings, Goodbye 2016

Hi!

Wishing you all warm and happy holidays in the next few weeks
and all the best for the coming year!

Let's make this a year to never forget!

~The Catbyte Team

Like a boss: AI-Vendetta fully leveled.

Hi!

Today we are very glad to announce that we finally have built all of the levels,
including ALL boss fights, that we are going to feature in the game!

With this we are getting closer to reaching a beta stage product! All that still needs to be done feature wise is an overhaul for our UI and Menu (with full controller support) and an all new unlockables system. At the same time we are also working on transforming the game visually, we can't just keep those grey boxes there!
And of course we will also be fixing and tuning the game till we think it's really great!

As you may notice, there is still a LOT to be done before we are going onto the market with our game. Until that point we would love to keep in contact with you, especially if you are interested in trying out the demo (link below) because your feedback really matters! And of course, after the launch we still like to hear from you and we will be there to make sure your game experience is the best possible.

So what can you expect from us in the near future?
For starters, we will keep up our social media presence, especially on twitter with weekly screenshots.
Major announcements such as the, to be expected, beta stage announcement will of course still be primarily done through our blog, but we will keep you posted through social media as well of course!

~The CatByte Team

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