Devlog ~07: The Result - Voting. Choosing

Hellow! Vichelyna's here. How are you fellas?

Me? I’ve had so much trouble with internet connection lately. Ugh.. It’s like I’ve been in the middle of cave in the mountain nowhere -,-“

Ehm! Back to the topic. I’ve brought some news for y’all. First one, we’ve got the title for [anuStar]. We’ve named it, Stellar Arms. *SFX: clapping hands*

Why "Stellar Arms"?

We’ve done voting to choose the title (literally).

There was 5 choices and we’re getting narcissists enough to choose the-one-with-‘stellar’ in the title *LOL-ing*. And the ‘arms’? I don’t think another part of our body can do better than “arms”. Stellar Head? Stellar Belly? Stellar Armpits? Errrgghh.. Should I stop now?

Long comments directly from Lazcht:

We had weeks to gather title candidates to replace [anuStar] codename. I myself had to think about the universe and background story for this, then look for a suitable, memorable words and unique enough for this project.

I was thinking Sol’s weapon name, or something related to fire and water/ sun and rain, radius, umbrella, weapon, or name of the place the game sets on. I proposed some latin names like Solis (latin for sun) which hipondisliked because it sounded like chemical things haha. My favorite idea was Solis Arms. Arms stands for the term for umbrella-weapon Sol’s using.

Clea said “Whichever the name we choose in the end, it wouldn’t be as good as anuStar.” So actually he didn’t really gives a fuck, but he has good point.

Hipon proposed Sword & Scattergun, Solis Edge, Weapons of Umbra. Solis Edge was quite interesting, but sounds too close to Soul Edge, haha.

While Reijubv proposed some words translated in different languages, coolest one is Exilio something. But then again it’s sounds too “foreign”.

At last day we decided to make the title fix, we brainstormed once more, and get Stellar Arms.

Then moving on to logo. This was hardest game logo i have made so far, hipon was asking for a logo which focus on typography and he gave me references like these:

I personally don’t like a symmetrical or bended/stretched both sides likeGradius. I have posted this previously though, you can see all of my attempts on this:

and above was an idea sketch from Reijubv. he cleverly used the two fingers and a thumb for L and A, lol, but unfortunately it lacked “action” and seriousness i want to project.

Hipon kept on saying it was okay but didn’t quite like it and didn’t play with typography much, almost frustated, he then said, "Well maybe the references i gave was not your style after all, so do what you think is good."

Then i came up with the last logo, then i pixelled it out (why? because i want this project full of pixel!) and gave it little bit of colorful touch.

concepts i want to maintain was: fingers (for goey fingers), umbrella and jellyfish. I want them to look kind of sporty, simple, futuristic and funky. I’m now quite satisfied with the result! :D

now go back to Chel, i got enough space hijacking on this devlog.

Okei, at last but not least, we would say thanks to Cem, Aditya Sumantri, and Rendi Kristyadi for the fan arts. We’re quiet surprised with all of the fan arts. We love you, bros! :D

That’s all for today. Thank you for reading and the supports! And for the hijack-post by Laz ;)

[anuStar] devlog ~06: Enhancement

It’s been a while since the last devlog, yeah March has been a busy month for us, we’re working on multiple projects at the same time and it does affect our work on #anuStar. But it’s been around 2 weeks since the last devlog, so it should show some updates right? let’s get into it.

New Ability

We have tested and played this game for thousand times and we felt that we need to add more ability to our hero, Sol. At first, I didn’t agree with this idea because it would break the balance, but since the idea was quite interesing, I gave it a try.

So the new ability is called “Gallop”. It’s basically a dash move like megaman, the difference is that it does some damage and knocks enemy back. it is a multipurpose ability that could be used for dodging and breaking goey chaos.

It’s quite hard to implement this ability and it also needs a lot of changes until it feels right. It’s time consuming but it fits the gameplay well and it feels good knocking back enemies with this move.

Boss Rush

Project #anuStar concept is high-intensity action sidescroller with some comedy. This game is more like Gunstar Heroes or Contra 3, if you expect highly platforming action like megaman X you wont find it here. #anuStar has very minimal emphasis in platforming, it’s boss-heavy game like Contra 3 where every 2 screens a boss appears.

We have been working on 2 minibosses so far, I personally quite satisfied with the result. As the boss designer myself I tried to add some elements from classic games like pong and tetris in designing boss patterns. Why did I take some elements from classic games? Because classic games usually has very distinctive style and it only uses simple movement, it’s easy to make and feels unique when mixed with #anuStar.

can you guess the reference?

Phew, that’s already a lot to share. I didn’t expect I would write this much..

Until next time!

~hipon

[anuStar] devlog ~05: Goey? and news

Another weekly report is coming~
Last week, Hipon still tweaking the game balance, level design etc. Some things are getting better now. The mechanic become more solid and the dynamics are getting greater. The spawner system comes so satisfying too. But we still discussing for the balancing. Quite hard to finish dat one! Phewww~


But anyway, we're going to make it chaos and lot of humor! You'll find some unique motions from Goey. Like this one ;)

Again, Reijubv must make another sprites for Goey, and Laz still fixing some particle. Clea must compose draft for sfx + bgm stage, and Hipon should implement sprite and next-map-transition. SO much things to do!

Hope everything will done perfectly soon! And see you next week!

[anuStar] devlog ~04: Finding Harmony

Last week was quite tough, it's not because we worked really hard, if we look at the current build it may look quite stagnant compared to last week *at least, gameplay wise*. Actually, it's tough because I was tweaking the game balance, level design, etc and it seems I will keep tweaking this until it feels right.



Like I said before, this game overall style takes a lot of inspirations from one of Treasure's games, Gunstar Heroes. However, after I implemented the spawning system, it turns out to be very different, which is good! But, since the feel now differs from Gunstar Heroes, I can't use some techniques from Gunstar Heroes, I need to develop my own, in other words, I need to work harder XD.

I guess that's all for today, I don't really have much to reveal right now, even though the game might be different compared to first time I potrayed in my head, my goal still be the same, the gameplay will be chaotic, boss-heavy, and very retro :D

thumbs up from Goey

see you next time!

~hipon

[anuStar] devlog ~03: TL;DR on visuals

Ah, Saturday. My turn to post some updates here...

What have been done so far (by visual)...
This post contains many awesome interesting graphics and less texts, so get ready.

 

 

 

 Character/world concepts

Character concept came from a walk in a flooded road, we brought umbrella with us and i thought an umbrella would be a great idea for the character. Then, "parasol" word came to me, then "sol" as in "sun" for the elemental aspect of the main character, thus is fire, and flamethrower. I gave him name "Sol" for ease of use, though maybe there is already too much character named Sol, out there, haha.

That's all unintentional, were randomly picked, came naturally. Also as we don't bother much/picky (yet) with story, i go for my instinct and current interest. As for the enemies, i plan to make them using water-related elements/ symbolism. So it will be like fire vs water.

Some sprites done

(scrapped)

(used and work in progress)

Tileset/map

Early test of tileset/map mock, at first i thought i would revamp Plato project and used the characters and turn them to a bit futuristic, but hipon disagreed with that, but without world concept, i was getting hard time getting idea for the assets, then hipon said "Just make simple a grassland tile." Oh k den, lol.


But later when i came up with umbrella guy concept, hipon came up with city ruins, i came up with sunset and jellyfish.










And here is one of the latest mock screen i made, the color still need correction and tilesets still ineffective. I'm working on it right now.

 

 

 

 

Bonus GIFs

 goeyranger dance for the lulz by reijubv

We got help from reijubv for this project as additional spriter, so i got more time to focus on other things like tilesets and such. Last week i got sick and couldn't really contribute anything so i just dump all old things available, next week hopefully will show significant change. Well this concludes it, i hope we could interest you more with this amount of stuff today. See you next week! (hopefully in time too)

~Laz out!

...oh another GIF bonus for ya, because i'm awesome. :P

slowly showing even more custom(crappy)placeholder, better than ripped placeholders though..

[anuStar] devlog ~02: The Origin of anuStar

Helloo, it's been a week since I revealed project anuStar for the first time here. Actually we've created a devlog thread on tigsource and we update regularly. However, since I can't leave this blog empty, I should write something on here too...and you can follow me @ricolemba to get extra updates there :D

Actually, I started this project as a side-project, I was playing Gunstar Super Heroes at that time and really enjoyed it. I think I haven't said this, but I'm really obsessed with level design and Treasure's games really excel in that, and I haven't made any game that focuses on level design since Sword of August. I was thinking, it's been a long time, why don't I try making another one? then I made a prototype and Lazcht finally want to take a part. After that, this game now becomes one of stellarNull's official project. yeahh!

This game will mainly focus on level design and boss battles, I try to add unique elements to the game and at the same time I try to not too depend on gimmick. We will mostly innovate in level design, boss design and of course art direction and audio.

We haven't gave a lot of thought about the storyline and I don't think we will add story that much. I originally planned this game to be classic style sidescroller, but we'll see in the future!

I guess that's all I could share for now, see you next time!
~hipon

[anuStar] devlog ~01: and hipon's 2014 greeting

Hi guys,

hipon's here, a lot of things have happened and *unfinished...* in 2013. Stellar's latest game, PIXLE II, has been completed its development phase and we're still looking for sponsor right now, if everything goes smooth, the game will be released Q1 this year.

Actually, I wasn't much involved in development of PIXLE II, I was focusing in porting Koutack to iOS and for a newbie mobile programmer like me, it's really time consuming and sometimes, it gets reaaally boring because I work with optimization most of the time.

And for the other members, they usually have a lot of freetime after development phase is done.Well, to tell you the truth, I also have some spare time these days.

So, what am I doing in my spare time? please take a look at a gif below..

(some assets credited to Gunstar Heroes and artists at pixeljoint)

the details will be posted later! :D

~hipon

PIXLE II devlog ~02: We missed you!

Happy new year, folks. Lazcht tuning in!

It's first post since 2014. What's up there? In Jakarta when i live in, some places are still flooded, but luckily not my place (yet).

Been a while i'm not writing here, well we got Chel to cover us up and tell some development shits so we can slack a bit now lol, -edit- Chel is going off for certain time due to some personal problems.

So yeah i was kinda losing my ability to blog or doing networking etc since months ago. Lot of things happened IRL too as i need to adjust stuff to improve my productivity to even better than before.

Currently i'm being greedy working on multiple small projects after PIXLE II is done. some artbooks, collab game, prototype, and Montage Roux (i'll reserve my time later to post about this project, i swear this time)

Also this has been forever since the devlog~01, so maybe you want to read it again (as well myself).

Progress

It's done. Now looking for sponsor, so it might be slight change due to requests (if any). We put some stories to spice up the content, adding more achievements, and 100% completion medal. Fixing tutorials, putting up ingame hints for total newbie.

If you're a sponsor and interested with PIXLE II (and want to try the demo), please contact us right away! ;)