tinywars

01-2017 Fan Art Contest Winners

01-2017 Fan Art Contest Winners 863 712 andrew

[masterslider id=”4″]

 

The winners of the very first 2017 TinyWars fan art contest have been chosen! Thank you very much for entering.

 

I really enjoy hosting these types of contests. It really helps us see where people are in terms of their understanding of our concept and story. These contests totally help us understand our fans better and I hope everyone who entered found it to be rewarding!

 

Some kind words from Sean Braganza of Highereg.com (one of the judges for this contest!)

” TinyWars’ art contests never fail to bring out some of the best of DeviantArt, and this latest one is no exception. It’s always fun seeing such an outpouring of vivid color, anime-love and overall enthusiasm around a game still heavy in development.”

 

Here are your badges, please display them proudly on your DeviantArt submission!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thank you for entering! 🙂 

 

 

If you were selected as a winner, please message us using your official DeviantArt account here!

Building A.I.’s, Virtual Currencies, and Collection Mechanics

Building A.I.’s, Virtual Currencies, and Collection Mechanics 1080 1080 andrew

For those who have been following our social media, you may have seen some posts about a side project that we started working on over New Years. MemoryWars: TinyWars is an android game which we built as an experiment, but ended up releasing as a full fledged anime game. You can download it here.

What is this project all about?

Don’t worry, we have not given up on TinyWars. What this project really means to us is the ability for our programmers to work on new features and ideas that we would otherwise not be able to work on with the main TinyWars project. There is no interactive A.I., and up until this point, we had never even considered any sort of collection or virtual currency method for repeat gameplay. (I still don’t think it would be appropriate for TinyWars, but we had the opportunity to experiment with these features in our mini project.)

This is the first A.I. we have ever programmed; it’s quirky, stupid at times, but it works and is fun to battle against!

Now we can’t show off all of it (Not that it’s worth seeing anyways) but admittedly this is some of the sloppiest code we’ve done! …it works… and this is especially good practice for us! Having used some techniques in this project, I have looked back at the original TinyWars Tower Defense Engine and seen some very specific lines of code that could totally be optimized!

Collecting

While the primary objective of this project was to gain experience programming an A.I., collecting was added to the project for the very same reason: experience. We wanted to experience what it might be like to add virtual currency and collecting mechanics into the project. On top of that, the project currently had very little replay value. Play the A.I. a few times and get bored of it (Early players who tried the original android app testified to this in their reviews!)

So we added the collection method to increase replay-ability of the game.

Here’s a screen of the collection room. Currently one of these cards, the most common one, does serve a gameplay mechanic for the game. Now we have had all sorts of ideas on how this game could really be revamped and improved, but we must return to the main TinyWars project. I admit that the downloads of this project on the GooglePlay store are slightly disappointing, and this is probably an indicator that we need to get back to the main project. If people really like this, then we might resume adding the updates and new features to this game.

The “Beat All Levels” card can only be obtained after beating all the levels in the game.

Mysterious Menu

This was a chance for us to experiment with some other interesting elements such as a mysterious looking menu design. I believe when players are first presented with this menu, they will immediately recognize that these are levels which need to be played through. The red cards at the end should spark some curiosity and it might be obvious that these levels are supposed to be “hard” or “boss” levels.

Regardless, there was a good amount of effort and thought that went into the UI design of this mini project in order to present this game as a full fledged project and not just some side project that nobody should care about. We’re not interested in releasing “throw away” projects to the public.

Should I Play It?

Yes. Even though we refer to this as a “side project,” it is still a fully featured, full game worth putting some time into. I feel like my memory has been greatly enhanced simply from playing this game over and over again. And those levels at the end are truly a challenge.

We would be very sad if nobody plays our new game, even if it isn’t the main TinyWars project!!!

Download it here.

ART CONTEST! Light vs. Darkness 01-2017

ART CONTEST! Light vs. Darkness 01-2017 1842 2016 andrew

It’s a start of a new year, so why not kick it off with a fan art contest? So much of our fans loved the last art contest we did back in 2016, and we have learned a lot from the contest based on feedback we received from the participants.


HOW TO ENTER

  1. Submit your artwork to the official TinyWars DA Group. You can do this by uploading the artwork to your DeviantArt account and adding it to the DeviantArt group after it has been successfully uploaded to your account.
    How to enter
    In the sidebar of your DeviantArt deviation, you can select “add to a group” and find the TinyWars official Art Group called: “TinyWars-Artwork”
    Please make sure you select the proper folder to submit toLight vs. Darkness ART CONTEST 1-2017
  2. IMPORTANT: Make sure you include “TinyWars” somewhere in the title of the submission so it can be easily found. In the description also include: “Submission for the TinyWars 1-2017 Light vs. Darkness Fan Art Competition. For more information click here: https://tinywarsgame.com/2017/01/16/art-contest-light-vs-darkness-01-2017/
  3. Click here to see the DeviantArt group
    tinywars-artwork
  4. You can submit one fan art per day to the group! Artwork must be created during the submission period, no old artwork. (In order to be fair for artists of all skill levels, everyone should create the artwork within the same time frame.)
  5. LIKE us on Facebook or sign up for our Newsletter to be notified when the winners are announced!

CONTEST DETAILS

Theme

This time the contest will have a theme that the artwork can be related to, that theme is: “Light vs. Darkness”

Some might be asking, “Do I have to make an artwork within the theme?” The answer is no, of course you don’t have to. However, a few of our prize winning slots are specifically for those pieces of artwork that best fit the theme. If you choose to create an entry that doesn’t fit within then theme, then you will most likely not win in any of those categories. HOWEVER, we do have other more general categories such as: “Tiny Theme” and “Cutest Artwork” that don’t have to follow along with the theme.

Just note that at least 3 of our prize winners will be pieces that are related to the theme.

You can choose to depict a battle scene or artwork of Light vs. Darkness, but you may also submit entries that focus on one side, light or darkness. In fact, we will have sub-categories that will cover best “Darkness” and “Light” side artwork.

Contest Deadline:

Start Date: Monday, January 16, 2017 (01/16/17)

Final Submission Date: Monday, February 6, 2017 (02/06/17)

Submission Limitations:

You may enter as many submissions as you’d like to this contest, however you can only ad 1 submission per day. The artwork content can be anything you want it to be, you can tell a story, you can try to keep it within the TinyWars world or you can cross it with your own OC’s or fan art. The only type of artwork that is not allowed is artwork that has nothing to do with TinyWars or artwork that contains nudity. This will be at the digression of the contest judges.

WHERE TO SUBMIT:

Submissions must be made to this DeviantArt folder.
You can also find the “Light vs. Darkness” DeviantArt folder at our official TinyWars DA Group!

*By entering our contest you agree to the Official Contest Rules, Terms & Conditions outlined below.

PRIZES, 12 Winners:

We will be giving away these cute key chains to the winners of this contest. These are 2 inch tall key chains with standard key ring.

The last contest we had 5 winners, but we did not expect so many people to enter our contest so this time we have increased the winners to 12. There will be a minimum 12 prize winners in this contest! If the contest entries get a lot larger than we expect then we will also increase the number of prizes, however for the minimum, it will be 12. (1 key chain per winner)


Character References and Details

TIP: If you google image search “TinyWars + (The name of the character) you will find more than enough references for these characters!

Light Side

The “Light Side” is just a general term used to describe the “good guys” in TinyWars. This terms is not officially recognized in the game as it is simply an easy way to identify the characters for this contest. The members of the light side include: Mary, Suzu, Kim, Amy, Amy’s Older Sister, and possibly Kumo (Nobody knows much about Kumo)?

Character names from left to right: Kumo, Suzu, Kim, Mary, Amy, (Amy’s Older Sister).

Other Characters include:

This is the Stump King, you will see him a lot in the first chapter of TinyWars. He rules of the stump kingdom pictured below.

The stump kingdom is a humble, self sufficient tiny village where most of the food for the entire tiny kingdom is produced.This village serves as the food source for the rest of the tiny kingdom. The whole kingdom is pictured below.

(Top-Middle) Stump Kingdom, (Top-left) The Big People House, (Top-Right) Candy Castle where Amy lives, (Bottom-Left) The Mines, (Bottom-Middle) Main Kingdom covered in a mushroom.

This is the entire Tiny Kingdom. Those shows the place where most of the “good guys” reside.

This Big Girl

We can’t talk much about her, but she is seen in the menus of the game reading the “TinyWars Book” which is basically the menu system for the game. Again, she is a big girl, but technically on the “good” side even though she doesn’t interact much with the tiny people. In fact, that TinyWars book is a book that she uses to collect evidence, and tiny things, her book contains “proof” that the tiny people are real! If I could describe her in one word: Obsessed.

DARK SIDE

Again, the “Dark side” is just a generic term used for the sake of the contest and is never officially used as a label for the antagonists of the TinyWars story, don’t worry we’re not that lazy!

The Darkside is obsessed with the blood of “Mother.” It will be established early on in the game that one of the top theories for the origins of the “tiny people” is a curse put on them by an evil witch for some sins that the tiny people’s ancestors had committed. These details aren’t too important to the “dark side” however what is important is the battle between the tiny people and the witch which happened long ago.

This battle might be a great idea for a contest entry, hint…

The witch ended up finding the tiny people, (as they had stolen from her) and she began stomping on their village (and the tiny people). Eventually all the tiny people banded together and killed the evil witch (With the help of the Crows too.) However, the tiny people (who were already divided into two tribes) had a dispute over what to do with the corpse of the witch. One side in particular (the side we will be calling the “dark side”) decided to eat the flesh and blood of the witch.

THIS is the source of the magic that you see the tiny people using. Some tiny people have access to it, while others do not. MOST (but not all) of those who are on the light side have never partaken in the “blood of mother” and thus are unable to use magic. However, some, such as Kim, are capable of using magic, so it might be interesting to think about what that means for Kim or possibly her family, and why she is able to use magic.

The Crows

The crows are recurring characters in TinyWars, though they are not necessarily “main characters,” they have played an important role.  First, we must establish that one of the food sources for the crows is the tiny people themselves. The crows feast on the tiny people. However, the crows did band together with the tiny people to kill the evil witch, as the evil witch was quickly depleting the crows source of food (tiny people). Much like the “darkness” side, you can bet that some strange and supernatural things happened to the crows after they helped kill the witch. (Try to imagine, how would crows help kill a person?)

Enemies

Don’t forget that the enemies seen in the TinyWars Prototype are also considered “Dark Side” material.

Other than that, we really can’t go into too much detail about the lore and story of TinyWars without spoiling it too much. Hope this information is helpful! Good luck and mos importantly, HAVE FUN!


Official Contest Rules, Terms & Conditions

  1. In no way is this competition sponsored by, or affiliated with DeviantArt, Facebook, Twitter, or any other social media platform.
  2. There will be a minimum of twelve (12) unique winners. No single person may win more than once in this competition.
  3. Users may submit more than one submission, however please limit submissions to once per day.
  4. We reserve the right to revoke an entry/entrant for any reason.
  5. Entrant agrees to license non-exclusively, the right for TinyWars (and Bizurk Software) to post on social media, announcements, website or any other media, and anywhere on the worldwide web, submissions made to this competition.
  6. Submissions must be submitted to the TinyWars-Artwork DeviantArt group.
  7. The submission entry period is 1/16/17 – 2/6/17. Submissions must be made before midnight on 2/6/17.
  8. In no way will TinyWars, its sponsors, affiliates, employees, owners or the aforementioned sponsors/promoters of this giveaway, members, affiliates, or any other organization be responsible for any loss of property, special or incidental damages, injury or death, arising from or relating to this giveaway/contest or the prize.
  9. Under no circumstance will anyone employed by or working under with the aforementioned sponsors, TinyWars, or promoters be eligible for winning a prize in this contest.
  10. Winner will be announced within 2 weeks after the end of the submission period. Winner is responsible for contacting us and claiming their prize.
  11. It is the responsibility of the entrant to check social media posts and announcements regarding this giveaway/contest, updates, winner(s) and to claim prize if entrant is a winner.
  12. If winner does not claim their prize, a new winner may be selected, or the prize may be distributed to someone else.
  13. Winner agrees to allow the host of the giveaway to announce his or her full real name on the web, public, or any other medium, so that the winner may claim his or her prize.
  14. Contest is open to United States residents as well as international entrants.
  15. If the cost to ship prize internationally exceeds the value of $6 USD, the winner may be asked to pay for the shipping of the prize. Shipping for United States residents will be free.
  16. The official contact page regarding all inquiries or prize claiming should be made here: https://tinywarsgame.com/contact/
  17. These rules may be subject to change without notice*

TinyWars 2016 Recap [Part 2]

TinyWars 2016 Recap [Part 2] 1920 1080 andrew

Back in Part 1, I discussed the amazing relationship we share with our Art Team. In this post, I want to finish recapping my thoughts about 2016 and talk a little about our goals for 2017.

I ALSO want to talk about the incredible Music Team that we worked with! One of the big compliments we received from our prototype release was the incredible use of music.

In this post beta survey, one of the results of the questions is shown above. The question was to select the specific items on the list that you recall enjoying about the beta. Soundtrack wins by far.

The Music Team

The TinyWars music team is an incredible collection of musicians from around the world! However, unlike the artists, we do not have constant work being delivered to musicians. Music composition and recording is incredibly long work. We have waited anywhere from 6 – 12 months for a single piece to be recorded and mastered fully.

 

If you haven’t played our prototype or heard our official theme song, much of the music is live recorded and does take a significant amount of time to create. Some of our soundtrack was pre-composed, but almost always required some sort of remastering or modification from the artists before they were confident in delivering an acceptable rendering for our use. In either case, while the relationship we have with the musicians of TinyWars is a little different from the relationship we have with our full time art team, we hold the music of the game as one of the highest points of the project, and likewise, our musicians are some of the most respected members of the team!

 

I have embedded tracks from each of theses artists, I invite you to listen to each piece while reading my commentary about their work!

Edwin Toh

Pictured above is the recording session for the TinyWars Theme Song, Longing for Love.

Edwin’s ability to compose these orchestrated pieces really blew us away. He was one of the very first large contracts we had with a musician, and his theme song will be one of the major set pieces of the game, adding tremendous production value to the project overall. We hope that when players experience our game, and the music ques, that they will be instantly transported into another world.

So far, this was Edwin’s only contribution to the project, but it is a very important contribution which is why I want to thank and recognize him first in this list. The game would not be the same without his music.

Taichi HIYAMA

Taichi HIYAMA is another incredible composer and musician, his works primarily feature a recording of him playing the main violin sequences himself. He has some work for our project, some I can’t reveal quite yet! But I want to say that his music is top notch and we have utilized some of his tracks in the prototype, including this one:

I would love to spend more time talking about Hiyama’s style and how his contributions have really shaped the atmosphere of the game, but unfortunately we haven’t released our Story Demo yet, so you guys will just have to take my word for it! 😉

Farhan

Farhan’s work was featured in our gameplay prototype as the main menu theme. And while this was not the original intended purpose for his song, it really worked out nicely as the main menu theme and first impression of the game! Everybody loved it. Unfortunately, his track will be removed from the main menu in the final project, as we had intended to use it in the Second Chapter of the TinyWars story as part of the “Candy Castle” Arch.

Again, it’s very difficult for me to speak about music and its use in a game that has yet to be released, so I will let the music speak for itself!

ヨギ (Yogi)

This is a song that I think is highly under appreciated, maybe it’s my fault for making the prototype so difficult! This song plays during the final sequence of the TinyWars prototype, and it is one of the happiest songs I have ever heard. When I first heard this tune from ヨギ, I probably listened to it over 100 times on endless loop. It was great! I promise this song will not play on endless loop in the game, but I have no problem adding electronic music to our game as well!

 

 

The rest of the Music Team

The rest of our music team is incredible, it’s unfortunate that we have not been able to reveal even a fraction of the pieces we have for the game, though everyone has been credited on the Official Credits Page. We hope you will be able to fully enjoy the work that everyone has put into this project! We only talked about a few musicians here, because some of their work has already been showcased in an official release from us. However, the rest of the team is incredible, and we have many beautiful and emotional pieces for you to experience!

 

The reason I chose to only talk about the 4 musicians above, was because their music has been featured in one of our end products, I believed I would be able to have a more significant discussion of these musicians work knowing that their music is actually featured in one of our released products. Though we are still pretty limited since our gameplay prototype was generally lacking in content.

 

 

2017!

What awaits us next year is going to be a rush to release our Story Demo. I have listed some goals in previous updates, but basically we need to accomplish some major things in order to release this demo:

  • Complete animations (art)
  • Complete the assets required for the new “book theme” (art)
  • Complete the assets for the new levels (art)
  • Optimize the current build before adding new content/references (code)
  • Create the assets required for the Story Telling cutscenes (art)
  • Obviously, code in the new content (code)

 

You will notice there are no music goals in this list of things to accomplish. Fortunately, the music for our project has mostly been taken care of, not all of it, but a huge chunk of what has been planned in advanced has been taken care of.

 

As for as non-development related goals go:

  • We’d like to achieve 5K – 10K fans on our social media pages before the demo is completed.
  • I want to discuss the possibility of a Patreon with the fans at some point, as the finalized assets and animations are starting to get very expensive!
  • Conduct a lot more art contests and giveaways in 2017 to continue engaging with our fan base and encouraging new fans to join!
  • I’d also like to begin making a larger footprint in the video game scene, as the demo could serve as an MVP for outside funding or potential partnerships with larger studios.

 

These are some of the goals I have in mind for 2017, I don’t know if we will accomplish them all, however for sure, I want to release our Story Demo at some point in 2017. Please understand it is very difficult to give an exact date, not because we lack structure and coordination, but because we are maintaining a high level of quality, and working with a large, and mostly remote, group of team members, it is really difficult for me to give an accurate ETA on the next release.

 

We do have internal deadlines, but they are not always met, and unfortunately, without assets properly in place for one piece, it may make it very difficult or impossible to develop another piece. This is one of the flaws in a final product first development approach, but I believe the positives far out weigh the negatives. We build our products keeping in mind the final product first and foremost. Everything is planned out and mapped out to the exact details BEFORE the coding happens, and this allows us to streamline the most costly portion of the entire development, the programming!

 

This is how Bizurk Software operates its usual web/app production, and it is a proven and successful method for developing full featured products in a very short amount of time. It is our first time developing a video game project, and the combination of artists, musicians, coders, and marketing is really a new and awesome experience for us. Hope to see the project continue to grow in 2017!

 

Thank you for following the TinyWars development blog! Be sure to follow the official Facebook Page for smaller updates and fun posts!

 

 

TinyWars 2016 Recap [Part 1]

TinyWars 2016 Recap [Part 1] 1920 1086 andrew

2016 Year Progress Report and Recap

Been working on the TinyWars project all year, there were a few bumps in the road but we’ve finally made it to 2016. Here’s a list of some things that we had accomplished:

There are two teams in particular that I really want to discuss. You guys have been blessed with seeing the amazing art and hearing the awesome music of our game, and I believe I should discuss our incredible art and music team a little bit, I feel the 2016 recap is an appropriate post for it!

Art Team

I do want to spend some time talking about the TinyWars are team. We have worked with a lot of different artists throughout the year for various specialized tasks, but there have been a few key artists who have stayed with the project for a very long time and I’d like to take some time to write about them.

 

LaDollBlanche

LaDollBlanche joined the project in June of 2015, and has been working with us for over a year on various tasks! Back in the early days of TinyWars, we needed character renders. The character designs came from various artists, but we wanted one artists to be in control of the final render that will be displayed in game. And boy does she do a fantastic job rendering our characters!

There’s a high degree of consistency with her renders and shading methods, which look very high quality and detailed. As you might have noticed however, her artwork has not really been featured much in the latest TinyWars Prototype. And as of recently, the TinyWars project is finally moving into the next phase, which is story intensive. Cutscenes will be making their way to the project and we hope you will be able to fully appreciate the work and skill the she has put into rendering every one of our characters.

LaDollBlanche has been a blessing to this project and is one of the artists that I can truly rely on. She’s been with us since, essentially the beginning of the project, and hopefully play a role in the completion of it as well. The characters are the face of TinyWars, and thus, her work is the face of this project!

 

Chibionpu

Chibionpu (Also goes by Nicole on DeviantArt) joined us in September 2015. I think, one of the most underappreciated assets to any project is background art, but Nicole does a fantastic job and I think her artwork is really going to shine in a project where background and perspectives is a huge emphasis. Her work is highly detailed, and one of the greatest things about her personality is the drive to continue improving and adding more and more details to pieces until they look so polished, I’m almost blinded by it!

I swear, when she first sent this piece to me, from the thumbnail, I thought it was a photograph! This is the depiction of the giant’s house from the game, and it looks like we’re viewing it from the perspective of a tiny person, really brilliant. As you have seen in the title image above this one, her background art blends well with LaDollBlanche’s character renders. The hardness of LaDollBlanche’s character renders meshes so well with the smooth, dream like details of Nicole’s background art!

Nicole is also helping us front the new design theme for the TinyWars demo. The “Book Theme” will be the permanent theme for TinyWars and will be present in the demo and the final game. Her attention to detail makes her one of the most valuable members of the art team, no one cam do backgrounds like her! Thanks for being a part of this project, it’s truly an honor to have you on our team.

 

Nicole has also done some of the animations for the enemy units in the prototype! She has many skills besides BG work!

 

Starlipop

Starlipop joined us in October 2015 as an animator for the in-game units. His animations, of course, is what brings the game to life. It turns a piece of software into an interactive experience, and I think Starlipop has done an incredible job with the animation work so far.

Keep in mind the animations featured in our prototype were not fully completed, but you will be able to experience the full animations in all of their glory in our next demo. We’re not using cell shaded, 3D applications to do our animations, Starlipop draws every single frame out and details them wonderfully!

With Stparlipop as our primary character animator, I can rest assured that love and attention is being put into every single frame of our game. We really are going above and beyond what other mobile game companies are doing in terms of 2D anime projects or even 2D tower defense games for that matter. We hope that our players will experience and appreciate the high production value we have put into our project.

 

Much of the gameplay experience will be dominated by the character animations, and we have to thank Starlipop for the work he has done on this project.

 

Hyanna Natsu

Hyanna Natsu joined the TinyWars project in December of 2015. Her role in the project was to help translate our ideas about our characters (relevant to the story and personality) into their physical appearances. The goal was to make sure that each character was unique and iconic in their own way, while still having interesting design and looking like they all belonged in the same world.

 

While Hyanna did NOT do the designs for all of our characters, she did do them for a few of our characters which have been well received by the fans.

All the girls to the right of Mary were designed by Hyanna. It’s obvious that the art style on those 4 characters doesn’t exactly match the art style of the other girls, of course, our Chief Executive Character Renderer, LaDollBlanche, will process these character designs into the final output of the game; but those 4 renders (pictured above) are Hyanna’s design renders for these characters.

 

One of the greatest things about working with Hyanna Natsu is her ability to turn over work, FAST! When it comes to designing new characters, it’s a lot of work to take in all our backstory, personality, and ideas and turn that into a representation. What Hyanna has the ability to do is to quickly create MULTIPLE different versions of the characters she’s designing and send them all to us to choose from. She works really fast, but she also delivers high quality work, there’s no compromise!

Now it does pain me to say this, but the last and final female main character has been designed by Hyannna Natsu not too long ago. This girl (pictured above) is not a tiny person, and is in fact someone who is fascinated with tiny people, so much so that she has been collecting artifacts of their existence in her book that she’s holding to her side.

 

Because this is the final female lead that needed to be designed, we might not see Hyanna involved in the project any longer. But there is no reason to be sad! These characters, that she has designed, are the main characters in the project. Little pieces of her creativity are present in those characters, and will be present throughout the game. We thank you for your work Hyanna, it’s been really great working with you.

 

P.S. One of my fellow indie game developers, YandereDev, had expressed interest in working with Hyanna for some unspecified work on his project. He asked me to reach out to her and connect them. While Hyanna might be leaving the TinyWars project, there is definitely a lot of opportunities awaiting her in the future, especially in the gaming world! Good luck Hyanna! You’re a rock star! 🙂

 

 The Art Team

While I have taken some time to specifically appreciate 4 super star members of our art team, ALL of the artists involved in the project have been amazing. The reason I took my time to write specifically about these 4 artists was because my communications with the artists in 2015 – 2016 was primarily dominated by these 4 people, they worked on projects throughout the entire year and sometimes I would be communicating with these people on a daily basis. They played a huge role in taking this project from the baby stages to a more fleshed out and materialized reality.

 

TinyWars would not be where it is today if it wasn’t for these 4 members. We hope, as development intensifies, and maybe if we raise some bigger funding for this project (kickstarter or Patreon in the future? We’re not ready for it right now, maybe after the first demo releases) I hope we will be able to bring on some more key members to our art team.

 

The art is the front facing assets that players interact with, while some of our code (my code) has been messy at times, the art really redeems a lot of those glitches. I’m working hard to refine the project behind the scenes and make everything come together through software development, but the artists provide the work that most people will really appreciate and enjoy!

 

If you’re interested in seeing everyone who was involved in this project, please visit the credits page.

 

In Part 2, we’ll talk about the Music Team!

 

 

TinyWars Demo Production Begins

TinyWars Demo Production Begins 1920 1080 andrew

Today marks the beginning of the TinyWars Demo Production. Previously we had completed our gameplay prototype, which was not 100% representative of the final product. Now we are beginnig to develop the TinyWars Demo which will be as close as possible to the final product, this includes: finished animations, enhanced controls, story cutscenes, and the implementation of the first four levels from the proposed final project.

Starting Development

So what did we accomplish on day 1? Utilizing the project files from our prototype as a base for the final build, we went through and began refining the code and fixing a lot of inefficient code in the game. It was a very tiring and frustrating day and there’s a few more days to come. So while we have not produced any new content to our game, we are refining and bringing it to that higher, commercial quality level of code that one would expect from an ambitious project such as ours. Unfortunately, I foresee these “refining” days as taking up the rest of 2016.

While the prototype might seem like a simple piece of software, there is a LOT that is happening. All of the features have been currently built out, so we aren’t looking to add anything new at this time in terms of technical features, just improving what we have already assembled as our “template” for the final project. I strongly do not wish to add new content to the project until we can refine the technical features of this game as much as we possibly can.

Fan art from Starlipop.

I spent the past few nights, drinking coffee and staying up til 3am ~ 4am improving the prototype as much as I possibly could! Most of it was spent just remembering what some of this code was even doing. Going by, feature at a time, doing my best to convert some functions into reusable scripts and just refining a few other things. I am basically just going down the list of things one at a time, starting with the most pressing issues such as the “summoning circle glitch” which still has a few holes in it. We will get through this phase! It’s for the best!

As we continue to develop and improve the project we will release updated packages for the TinyWars Prototype which was released on PC and Android. (It has not been published to GooglePlay yet, but we have added the highly requested, “double tap to summon” feature.)

Any New Content?

While we have not added any new content to the project build yet, we are still simultaneously working on gathering the assets for the final build. Most of the music for TinyWars has already been established, we will not be spending any more funds on music at this time. (I know a lot of musicians and composers have been messaging us lately since the reception for our prototype was very high on the music side of things.)

This is a WIP of our new menu design by our primary background artist, Chibionpu. This reflects the new “book theme” which I briefly discussed in previous updates. If you notice on the left page, there are various objects taped to it. The leaf with tiny footprints on it is the most obvious, the theme for TinyWars menu system is that of somebody who is obsessed with the “tiny people” and is trying their hardest to gather any scrap of evidence they can! As you unlock new characters, that page will begin to fill up with items associated with the newly unlocked character.

The key with this new demo is to get it as close to as final as possible, and this is why so much time is being dedicated even to the menu system!

*You might have seen an interesting option in this new menu design, a “Multiplayer” item which we will discuss in a future update.

New Character

Who is the “tiny people” obsessed freak who spends her days gathering clues and proof of the existence of tiny people? It is this girl!

This is how much we care about the menu system of our game. This girl, who will not appear in most of the TinyWars main story (in fact she isn’t even alive at the same time, obviously, she is guiding us through the events that happened in the tiny people’s past.) She will be useful in helping to tell the story from the perspective of a “big” person. Since the game will mainly be played by big people, we needed to make sure we had an appropriate “guide” to take us through the game and make it a little more appealing to the average audience.

People who I have pitched this idea to has received it with enthusiasm. I think it’s really going to be a great story telling mechanic.

Where Are Our Priorities?

Some people might look at this, totally revamped menu design and new character exclusively for the menu system, and think that we do not have our priorities in the right place. I hope to alleviate those concerns by reminding everyone that we already built out our gameplay prototype, and rather refined compared to some other early prototypes I’ve seen in the indie game world. The core mechanics and system of the game have been put in place. While we spend time refining them a little bit, I do think it is important to start dressing up this game in a way that is commercially viable.

Bear in mind that there is a lot of small details and things in this game that we are working very hard on, right down to the menu system having its own story! This does not mean our priorities are not in the right place, rather we hope people will see that we are passionate developers who are putting everything we can into this project and not skipping over any details!

Demo Development Timeline

There are a lot of things I can not account for, or predict accurately. TinyWars is not a one man development team, we have many talented artists working every day on this project and, depending on the type of art, it is very difficult to predict accurate completion dates. What I am able to outline for you are our general development goals.

  • Refine the Prototype
  • Implement New Menu System
  • Implement New Interface
  • Implement Overworld Map
  • Build Out Tutorial Level
  • Create First Cutscene
  • Build First Level
  • (Repeat previous two steps for the rest of the levels)

That’s it! The demo should feature 4 highly polished and very refined levels! These should be the first 4 levels from the proposed final project. I can not accurately predict any deadlines for these items at the current moment, however I am hoping that this will be completed around Q3 of 2017. I know it sounds like a long time to develop 4 levels, but there is a lot going into this project and it’s not going to be MPV status, we’re talking about pumping out the most refined demo we possibly can.

Thanks

Thanks for keeping up with the development of TinyWars. Be sure to LIKE our facebook page for smaller updates and posts!