About time, right?

I’ve been working on Barn Brawl (and 4 other game ideas) off and on for the past 5 years.  The time – and the tech – is right for Barn Brawl.  

The past few years have been filled with me learning tons about Unity, programming, multiplayer frameworks, artwork, 3D modeling…being a solo GameDev is hard.

You came here for a DevLog!

Here’s my first – long overdue – DevLog.  Barn Brawl (in its current form) has existed as a playable prototype for about a year now!  I regret not posting my progress as I built that version, but I really wasn’t working regularly on the game.  We’d just bought a house, and most of my free time was spent setting things up, repairing plumbing / electrical, and hosting family – since everyone wanted to see the cool cabin in the mountains!

Yeah, yeah…what exactly is Barn Brawl?

Here’s the official blurb:

Barn Brawl flips the traditional Farm Game concept into a competitive party battle that’s anything but cozy. Compete with up to 8 players on or offline as you farm and fight to win each round’s challenge. Tend and defend your crops…or go on the offensive to smack and steal your way to victory! Use gadgets and items to enhance your field…or play dirty and use them to sabotage your rivals! Between each fast paced round, team up in barnyard mini-games to win bonuses and upset the leaderboard! It’s time to farm like you mean it – no-holds-barred – in Barn Brawl!

Basically, it’s a competitive farm-themed fighting / party game.  We’ve got a cast of 8 characters so far, each with different talents and stats.  I’ll talk more about them later.

I got the idea while goofing around playing a development build of the farm RPG I was building.  Someone walked in and asked “what does it do?” I pressed play, and handed over a controller.  The demo level was a test field.  Instead of farming and walking around…he threw a crate at me, then kicked it around the stage.  We had tons of fun chasing and whacking each other (even though the hits didn’t register).

So I thought: “Hey – it’s fun to whack each other with farm tools…what if I…”

Thus – Barn Brawl was born.

What I worked on this week:

I’m going to cheat a little and talk about the last month’s work.  Since I decided to shoot for the Southeast Game Exchange, I’ve had to scramble to get things “pretty.”  No show wants to approve a game that’s all primitive shapes and data fields.  While I understand why the player character is a capsule and the weapon is just a flashing hitbox – nobody else will.  They also don’t care that it has lag compensation, predictive physics, and cross-platform host-authoritative multiplayer with turnkey host migration (did I mention Photon Fusion ROCKS once you learn it?!?)

That’s a pic of Barn Brawl’s “Test Level.”  It has tools that let me test all of the functionality of the game from a single scene.  It doesn’t look like much, but I’ll give you a small tour:

• • Those large green boxes with the Ns everywhere are Field Tiles.  The Ns populate when the game it running to tell me what object occupies that tile, growth timers, and quality.
  • The crates at the top left are what I call PickupObjects: basically stuff in the game you can pick up and toss around.  The numbers on the side represent the weight (this helps me fine-tune the physics so throwing and being smacked by one feels realistic).
  • Those purple spheres are player spawnpoints – there are 8 in this level.
  • The large box labeled “ship” is the shipping box.  I can toss or deposit harvested crops here to earn gold.

Getting the physics right

Barn Brawl is completely physics-based.  This means the game isn’t just making up how things move – it’s calculating real-world physics as you play.  This means things have to look and feel “good,” or you’ll yell at the screen.

• • Characters have different throwing stats – Elijah was a high school quarterback, so he throws harder and farther than Jenny.
  • You can execute a “jump shot” that arcs upward.
  • Your intertia translates into your throw: a dash-jump-throw combo really flies!
  • When you dash, you have a harder time changing direction (and forget about stopping unless you hit something).
  • Jump timing feels amazing!  Thanks, Shigeru Miyamoto!

That being said – I made a farm game where you beat each other with farm tools.  Some things are obviously video game tropes:

• • When you carry something (even heavy stuff), you don’t slow down…most of the time. 
    

    • Facebook
  • Thrown objects don’t spin…unless they hit something and explode into a bunch of smaller objects.
  • Cartoon violence without blood (sorry, Mortal Kombat fans!)

To get things feeling just right, I made a test area with yard lines and hoops…like if American football and basketball got smacked together.  This let me test and tweak throw strength, arcs, wind resistance, etc.  That way, when you throw something – it behaves in a predictable and consistent way that you can learn and use as you play.  There’s nothing more frustrating than nailing the perfect attack throw – only to have the game cheat you out of that sweet, sweet pwnage.

Making it “pretty”

As I mentioned earlier, this DevLog covers the past month or so of work.  In that time, I’ve had to scramble to get art, animations, and make the game look like the world of Cowpens County.

Here’s a gallery of some of the artwork and character designs I’ve been working on it the last few weeks:

For now, these are the only pics of the characters.  I had to send all of our concept art to the folks at the Southeast Game Exchange, but you’ll be able to see that artwork once our Steam “Coming Soon” page goes live.  I promise to post that link soon.

Ummm…what about the game itself?

As I’ve added in the real artwork, I’ve been squishing bugs and rewriting systems to work better with the actual game code.  Testing a feature and actually shipping it are very different environments!

Just yesterday, I updated how we set up each level so that the configuration is loaded from a configurable object file.  This will enable us to use the same scene for multiple types of events, reducing the download size of the game (SSDs are expensive!); it also opens the door to custom game settings and (eventually) mods for unranked play.

The scoring systems are in, and I’ve started importing character models.  You can see Charlotte in the screenshots above.  Her animations aren’t quite right – I’ve got some editing to do both on the code side and in the animations themselves.  The first milestone was ensuring all animations carry across the network.  Charlotte neds to run on everyone’s screen, not just slide across!

I’ve also started preliminary level design – I made this one for the box art (I wanted to use actual game footage instead of a drawing), but I’m sure I’ll iterate on this and make it one of our demo levels for the show. 

I’m really proud of the fact that I’m using real game footage for things like our store art and marketing materials.  We’re not in the 8-bit era, where concept art had a purpose for selling the game.  Real game footage should look good enough for the artwork – and the trailer!

See you next time!

Ferg