London’s Calling | Agents Of Speedwagon Part II | Episode 1

In this episode, the team meet each other, Roundabout fires up, and the adventure begins.

This is a podcast 4 years in the making, and one of the most insane campaigns I have ever had the pleasure of being a part of, we cannot wait to share it all with you.

Ghost Ring – Prototype 05/24/20

A few polish updates in this prototype!

First – there’s a new animation that plays whenever a ghost is destroyed! This animation should help the player feel like they’re making actual progress.

Second – the fight against the knight ghost is slightly modified. Every time you clear through one color, she flies away. When the fight ends, beams of light shoot out of the ghost, and the ghost explodes into paint of all colors!

Ghost Ring – Capstone Prototype 4/27/20

The major things changed in this update are the main menu and the addition of Level 2.

On the main menu, the player can select which level they want using the touchpad, and press the trigger to confirm. Eventually, each menu option will have its own icon. I’m planning on displaying high scores on the menu, but I’m still trying to figure out how to best take advantage of the real estate.

In level 2 – two enemies come at the player instead of one! This is also the level where the centipede ghost will be introduced to the player. At the end of the level, the player will face Hazza, a ghost of a cowgirl. Her bullets change the color of ghosts in the area. I probably have to tweak some things for difficulty, but… for now, this is how it is!

Ghost Ring – Capstone Prototype 2/23/20

Not too many changes in today’s prototype.

A bigger ghost variant was added, that moves slower and takes more hits to destroy. However, I still don’t have new models created for the different variants yet.

The color wheel now flies towards players instead of hanging in the middle of the ring. Additionally – the UI on the ring for the different paint colors doesn’t appear until the player gains the ability to change colors.

Finally – ghosts are now only damaged by their matching color, rather than the reverse.

Ghost Ring – Capstone Prototype 2/16/20

A new prototype was finished today. Here, there were a lot of aesthetics updated, which should make the game’s functions make more sense.

This new prototype will of course need to be user tested to figure out any issues. One potential problem is the color wheel appearing in the middle of the ring. The player is meant to grab the color wheel out of the ring to get it attached to their controller – however, this may not be clear, and some users may not be able to reach the color wheel.

Ghost Ring – Capstone Prototype 2/1/20

Today a few people tested the current prototype, and I got some useful feedback out of it all! Here’s some of the highlights, and how I plan on addressing them moving forward:

  • Whenever any liquid is on screen, the game slows to a crawl. I plan on simplifying the liquid physics I programmed – fewer, larger droplets, essentially.
  • Without spraying paint, there’s no way of knowing what color paint is currently selected (so you don’t know if you selected a color properly). To fix this, I plan on tinting the ring to fit the color selected.
  • A related issue is that it isn’t clear that you have to press down on the touchpad to change colors – testers assumed they would be able to change color with a light touch. I plan on increasing the sensitivity of the controls so that the touchpad works just off of touch.
  • Some players also didn’t realize there was a color wheel attached to the touchpad at first – the controller was held outside of the Magic Leap 1’s field of view, so they didn’t see the color wheel. I could change the color selection to be on the ring so players see it (for instance, making it so the players have to point to a floating color wheel), but I felt like that would be even less intuitive. Instead, I plan on having the first level of the game give the player access to only one paint color to start. In the middle of the level, the color wheel will appear in the middle of the ring, and fly over to the controller – that way, the player knows where to look.
  • Some players thought the numbers representing the paint fuel and health were “high scores”. To fix this, I plan on making the representations of the fuel meters more visual in nature.
  • In general, players wished the aesthetics of the game were more clear instead of just spheres, squares, and so forth.

Moving forward, I plan on introducing more structured gameplay (i.e. levels with specific enemy patterns). To that end, I also plan on introducing a variety of enemy types to the game to make gameplay more engaging. Here are some rough sketches I drew of different ghosts that could appear in the game:

The general concept with these ghosts is to create designs that are both “cute” and “scary” – something that will fit with a simple, cel-shaded art style, but creepy nonetheless.

The “shaggy ghost” is intended to be the “default” ghost type – it would float directly towards the player, like the spheres in the current version. The “speaker ghost” would have similar behavior, but would take more paint to defeat. The “foot ghost” would always try to go behind the player, making them more annoying to deal with. The “cat-snake ghost” would make a bouncing motion as it approaches – its up and down movement making it harder to hit. The “mushroom ghost” would grow in and out of the ground in an attempt to get closer to the player. The “centipede ghost” would weave back and forth as it approaches the player, and you would have to destroy its tail (or destroy every segment) to beat it.

The “knight ghost”, “cowgirl ghost”, and “serpent queen ghost” are intended as boss characters. The “knight ghost” would have armor of different colors – you have to destroy each of the armor segments before you could destroy the ghost. The “cowgirl ghost” has a magic revolver that can change the colors of other ghosts in the world – the player has to be able to swap colors quickly to defeat her. The “serpent queen ghost” would be massive – so big that you won’t be able to see her entire body at once. The player will have to spray paint in her mouth when she opens it to attack them.

One other concept I have with these ghosts is that certain shapes would change depending on the colors – for instance, red ghosts would have circular shapes on them, but green ghosts would use triangles. This would be done to accommodate for color-blind players – red, green, and yellow, may be difficult to distinguish for many players, so for them the shapes should provide a clue as to which color the ghost is supposed to be.