Bit Battles: October in Review
by Chris Haigler · 10/31/2007 (2:56 pm) · 1 comments
[Learn more about Bit Battles at Fanatical Games]
Has another month come and gone already? Time flies when you're kneck-deep in development with deadlines and scheduling conflicts looming overhead. Bit Battles has reached the dreaded 'slogging' stage; with the major engine features done what's left are the time-consuming tasks of taking bug fixing, balancing and... making actual game content. Progress at this stage is almost always measured in baby steps which takes a toll of motivation and makes the task of writing about progress (in a blog-style format, of course!) especially difficult. On the bright side, baby steps are better than none at all so with that said, let's review what took place in the world of Bit Battles this month.
The month started off to an unusually slow start. Where September ended, October began. Fragmentation was still not finished despite being two weeks past the deadline. The map had a completed terrain and geometry layout but still lacked objectives, powerups, hazard zones and team bases/spawnpoints (read as: everything that actually makes a level a level!).
As the first week droned on, Fragmentation found its legs. Team bases were setup so players could finally spawn in and Capture & Hold Capture Pylons were placed. Powerup and hazard zones were still to be done. In the meantime, I began some preliminary "roughing-out" work on Gateway, the next map. I talked about this in more detail here.
A look at Fragmentation, the latest completed map for Bit Battles.
With the second week gone, Fragmentation was finally, at long last, completed! Powerups were placed and hazard zones were thrown in.
The third week saw my focus shift to Gateway. I spent most of the week fleshing out the backstory and further developing the overall map theme. Gateway represents a sector of the network where a sudden hardware failure has caused routing failure and packet collisions. As a result, much of the sector is being destroyed by 'rogue' packets crashing into the landscape. Early concepts for the map fit well with the theme by being decidedly 'post-apocalyptic' in nature; the terrain is dotted with craters, structures have been reduced to rubble, etc. I discuss this further at the Bit Battles development blog located here.
And finally, with the end of the month fast approaching, it was time for even more fun. I spent much of this week revamping, reworking and generally redoing two of the five powerups in the game. The Quick Stop and Super Jump powerups were replaced with Energy Boost and Shockwave, respectively. Unlike their predecessors, these new powerups serve a purpose, offer a unique advantage to the player adventurous enough to grab them and they're just fun to use. Read more about this here.
Bit Battler using a Shockwave powerup. Luckily, no one was nearby...
Has another month come and gone already? Time flies when you're kneck-deep in development with deadlines and scheduling conflicts looming overhead. Bit Battles has reached the dreaded 'slogging' stage; with the major engine features done what's left are the time-consuming tasks of taking bug fixing, balancing and... making actual game content. Progress at this stage is almost always measured in baby steps which takes a toll of motivation and makes the task of writing about progress (in a blog-style format, of course!) especially difficult. On the bright side, baby steps are better than none at all so with that said, let's review what took place in the world of Bit Battles this month.
The month started off to an unusually slow start. Where September ended, October began. Fragmentation was still not finished despite being two weeks past the deadline. The map had a completed terrain and geometry layout but still lacked objectives, powerups, hazard zones and team bases/spawnpoints (read as: everything that actually makes a level a level!).
As the first week droned on, Fragmentation found its legs. Team bases were setup so players could finally spawn in and Capture & Hold Capture Pylons were placed. Powerup and hazard zones were still to be done. In the meantime, I began some preliminary "roughing-out" work on Gateway, the next map. I talked about this in more detail here.
A look at Fragmentation, the latest completed map for Bit Battles.
With the second week gone, Fragmentation was finally, at long last, completed! Powerups were placed and hazard zones were thrown in.
The third week saw my focus shift to Gateway. I spent most of the week fleshing out the backstory and further developing the overall map theme. Gateway represents a sector of the network where a sudden hardware failure has caused routing failure and packet collisions. As a result, much of the sector is being destroyed by 'rogue' packets crashing into the landscape. Early concepts for the map fit well with the theme by being decidedly 'post-apocalyptic' in nature; the terrain is dotted with craters, structures have been reduced to rubble, etc. I discuss this further at the Bit Battles development blog located here.
And finally, with the end of the month fast approaching, it was time for even more fun. I spent much of this week revamping, reworking and generally redoing two of the five powerups in the game. The Quick Stop and Super Jump powerups were replaced with Energy Boost and Shockwave, respectively. Unlike their predecessors, these new powerups serve a purpose, offer a unique advantage to the player adventurous enough to grab them and they're just fun to use. Read more about this here.
Bit Battler using a Shockwave powerup. Luckily, no one was nearby...
About the author
Associate Chris Haigler
Jester Dance