The goal for these past few weeks was to identify and execute on a few different tasks. Primarily we wanted to get a better framework down so that the game can be expanded without growing pains. Before we go ahead first into new level designs, expanding new levels further, and adding in all of the visuals, we took a look at the hard hitting stuff that might have missed the mark. Most of these were either known issues prior to the release of [Middle Man](https://underbudget-games.itch.io/middle-man "Link to Middle Man's itch.io page") or we were given feedback on them from the community. Some are as follows:

- Give better direction of being required to talk to the scientists(beans) before you can pick up upgrades
- Teach or have a way for people to learn the game more effectively
- Better indicate that the corruption blobs are dangerous

Having these in mind when starting our work made it really easy to identify where we should start. While we evaluated and updated these three things we also added some more cool stuff and have even more in the works! Personally, I think this sprint was very successful in the steps to getting the game on track for a full Steam release.
Along with knowing when to quit, you have to learn when to start and where to start. All too often I get caught up in the visuals of a game. I want to make them look as good as it feels and sounds, but before you begin to polish up the looks of anything, the foundation has to be great. I applied this concept to my level designs. I had made many different platforms but only used one for the functionality of the game before ever implementing the others. After it felt good to play, I changed the models up. I added a broken car and some sidewalk tiles just to add variety to the platforms and visuals. This did so much for the atmosphere of the game. Instantly there was more color to the level, and it felt like you were in more than just a field of floating rocks.

We started off understanding that having so many different tasks and multiple people working on the project, we were in desperate need of some type of organizational board. Our past solution, though good for what it was, just wasn’t the best fit. However while searching for a better solution we stumbled upon Jira. Jira is a project management solution that we have integrated into our workflow and has helped tremendously. I highly recommend, if not Jira, to find a solution that is suited for you and your team's needs!

After getting our projects organization down, we started work on the bulk of content that we would hope to accomplish by the end of the sprint. Starting with giving the player a better understanding that they are to interact with the scientist. Upon looking at different solutions we found that we really liked it being simple still so we added a pop up element next to the cursor to indicate that you can interact with certain objects!

<img src="/images/B_A-Interactions.png" width="700">

When we were searching for a way to teach the player the controls of the game, I struggled with finding a solution that wasn’t just plain text or a tutorial. These work for what they are, but I think that there has to be a better solution out there. After some thought we came up with a [control board](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=My5VeTABbPA "Link to youtube showing the control board in action") that will be displayed in the sheds. Visible from the very start of the game that would show off which button presses were active at any given time. We liked this idea and in execution I think it really is a fun little way to show the player the controls without forcing them to look at it.

The last major thing we had to have a look over was the blobs being too inviting. When we initially made the game it was just an extra obstacle that we wanted to throw in and we didn’t have much time left to better match up the visuals. Though we had already planned on wanting to change the visuals, the feedback we got made it even more important to do it early. Dan spent a TON of time on this visual; it looks much more minising and deadly. It also fits a lot better with the rest of the game’s visuals.

<img src="/images/B_A-Blobs.png" width="700">

## Minor updates and improvements

- Cleaning up the projects internals
- Adding a backout door in place of a mainmenu to get back to the hub
- Update internal systems to better house further content and improvements
- Test out new mechanics that ultimately were cut due to not quite fitting in
- Create a new upgrade system that is more in line with a newer RPG style
- Add visuals to show when the player is moving fast
- Show players best times on each level
- Add ability to replay a level on repeat
- Created various models
- Update the bauble count to better fit the aesthetic
- Added some improvements to visual feedback
- Add a level select in the Hub world
- Create Hub world in place of Main Menu
- Add more corruption spawns from Meteor strikes
- Added visual effects to meteors
- Update the skybox resolution to eliminate stretching at the poles as well as general blurriness
- Add a system that allows for collectibles
- Add ability to animate platforms
- Switch to new Unity input system to better help with controller support in the future

## Plans for the next sprint

Beginning this week we want to start getting more content into the game while we are still working on polishing up some of the systems. Unfortunately this means that content that isn’t essential will have to wait. Some of these being:

- Sounds
- Story
- New Levels
- New Music
- Animations

However, this does mean that hopefully by the end of the sprint or in the next that we will be able to jump to some of these and get them in the works! But who knows, maybe we will even be able to blast through some of the other tasks in the backlog and get to this sooner than later.
For now though we will talk about some of the things we want to get accomplished in the following weeks. Ideally we would like to get:

- Controller support for Playstation 4 & 5, Xbox One & Series X|S, as well as Nintendo Pro controllers.
- Steam page up for wishlists
- Finish refining core systems to allow for more content drip

After we have these completed we will be on a great path to getting the game fully released. If you enjoy these devlogs you’re more than welcome to join our [community discord](https://discord.gg/uzb3YWdg9a "Link to our discord!") as well as follow us on our [various media!](https://underbudgetgames.com/community "Link to our community pace") Check back in two weeks on March 22nd, 2023 for the next installment of the Middle Man devlogs!

Tune in March 22nd for the next devlog. I can’t wait to share what all we get done in the coming weeks, see you soon!

If you’d like to check out “Middle Man” as it is at the time of writing, you can find it here: https://underbudget-games.itch.io/middle-man

Finishing the First Sprint

After spending a week straight working hard on our game submission for the [Brackey’s 2023 Game Jam](https://itch.io/jam/brackeys-9 "Link to brackeys itch.io game jam page") on Itch.io, we have come up with, and produced, a game that we are proud to have developed. Throughout the week we learned new skills and traits that will help in our future developments; some of which being:
- Knowing when to quit
- When to start polishing
- Taking in feedback
- Focusing on the gameplay first 
- Modeling and Texturing
- Organization

Now, when I say “Quit”, in this instance, although it seems like a negative way to think about things, I believe it was exactly what we needed to do. From the beginning, I was constantly trying to think of how much the game actually needed to be fun, and how long it needed to be to feel fulfilling. I thought of different genres of games that we could do to stay within the bounds of our abilities, and settled on a first person platformer. Originally, the game was supposed to be nothing but platforming and jumping. While I believed our character controller was fun to pilot, I felt there needed to be a bit more to it, so we added a grappling hook, and boy, did that add to the gameplay way more than I imagined. From there, I thought we needed to add a bit more, scope creep was, yet again, present and I was falling victim to it. Before quitting, I kept adding in mechanics for the sake of adding more substance to the game for a sense of “uniqueness.” Afterwards, I took a few steps back to mess around with the current mechanics we had, and to my surprise it felt exactly as I wanted it to; enjoyable and fulfilling, the two most important qualities that make a game good. This was the moment I realized I needed to quit adding to the game, and work on the quality of the game over the quantity of mechanics.

Along with knowing when to quit, you have to learn when to start and where to start. All too often I get caught up in the visuals of a game. I want to make them look as good as it feels and sounds, but before you begin to polish up the looks of anything, the foundation has to be great. I applied this concept to my level designs. I had made many different platforms but only used one for the functionality of the game before ever implementing the others. After it felt good to play, I changed the models up. I added a broken car and some sidewalk tiles just to add variety to the platforms and visuals. This did so much for the atmosphere of the game. Instantly there was more color to the level, and it felt like you were in more than just a field of floating rocks.

Going back to what I said above, I knew when to quit adding and just be content with the core mechanics of the game. This allowed me to make five levels while keeping the gameplay in focus the whole time. By doing so, I was able to make sure each level feels like a continuation of the last, rather than each level feeling like a new level, and for a story driven game, this is the design you want. The progression through levels should match the progression through the story.

Another crucial part of this experience is learning to accept feedback and criticism. I am lucky enough to have people around me that don’t sugar coat things, and I really appreciate that, because it is a useful tool that not many people receive. Having feedback is super important as long as you can sift through all of it to find constructive criticism. People are always going to judge projects they have no hands in making; that’s just how humans are, but just because they don’t have a hand in making the project doesn’t mean there is no value in it. In most cases the players are the ones that keep your games successful, so being able to add in content and ideas they would like to see will only benefit your game. As long as the core fundamentals of the game remain intact you should work through feedback and criticism to improve your game; for existing players as well as expanding out to new players.

Continuing to stay organized was another skill that we had to work on. I fully admit that it's mainly me that causes the issues. I don’t think it's a huge deal, until it is in fact a huge deal, and it's something I am working on to better myself. However, with this project I was forced to stay organized because it helps speed up progress and keep things moving forward. I still admit that I'm not the best at it, version control and organized notes aren't the easiest things to me, but I’m getting there. 

I’m tired of searching and waiting for someone that can do art to come along to work with me, and for this reason I just learned it myself. I pulled up Blender and started making rocks. Though they aren’t the best by any means, they work and function as a rock should. After modeling them in Blender, I ported the models over to Armor Paint and hand painted the textures of each model. While again, I’m not the best at it, I was enjoying it, and personally think the textures came out really well. I used the bits and pieces of color theory that I know to make them. After that, it was just importing them into Unity and setting it all up. I almost believe that modeling and texturing helped me visualize and execute the level design to a higher degree than I would have otherwise.

All of these skills that we learned individually, and as a team, will help us further with every game we work . I personally look forward to working on more modeling and integrating myself further in the way that the game will look as an end product from start to finish of each process. We’ve already been implementing this more organizational approach to our other projects and it's helping a ton already.


## Moving forward past the game jam 

Before the jam we were originally working on a game that just wasn’t quite enough fun. I thought about a lot of things that could be done to fix it. Maybe it was just missing that artistic element, maybe it was the lack of difficulty, animations, and/or sounds. I wasn’t sure what it was missing, until I thought the game would be immensely more fun if it was Coop. I felt like it would add a lot more playtime to the game, and so we began to rebuild it. We are learning a new game engine that better supports our needs for this type of game, and ultimately the game has been delayed. We don’t want to release games that are half finished so we are opting to push the date back to make the game as well as we can make it. We also thought after the game jam that Middle Man was really fun so we have decided to continue working on the game for an upcoming Steam release.  

For Middle Man, we plan on adding a lot to it. We already have numerous changes that we are looking into getting fixed; bug fixes that we ran out of time to get cleaned up, and overall better design choices across the board. Some more of these changes include:
- More Sounds
- New Custom made Music
- More models
- Revamped Story
- Voice Overs
- Challenges
- And many many more Levels 

Many of these are already being worked on because we are working intently to get the game to a more polished and finished product state for the release. Along with this I will be making devlogs for Middle Man biweekly until we get closer to the full release. Tune in March 8th for the next devlog. I can’t wait to show you the work that we do over the coming weeks! 

If you’d like to check out “Middle Man” as it is at the time of writing, you can find it here: https://underbudget-games.itch.io/middle-man

Takeaways from the Brackey's game jam


## How we came to be

Back in 2016 I was going to a new school to get a kickstart on my field of study, I've always wanted to learn computers and more specifically game development and design. The school had a promising curriculum and the teacher seemed really cool, so I decided I would attend. Without saying too much the class really lacked a structure and made it really hard to learn without doing it independently. The class really began to divide themselves into little groups that would try to work through projects and learn as a group. Towards the end of the year we were tasked with a Capstone project, it was to encompass all we learned throughout the year and to see what we can work on for the upcoming year. Luckily my initial idea was ambitious enough for the teacher to allow a group of 4 people rather than only allowing groups of 2. Towards the tail end of our senior year I had talked to many people and formed a dev team and was very excited to get started making games for people to enjoy.
<img src="/images/ubg_logo.svg" width="200">

## The fall

But not everything goes to plan and one by one people started dropping the project. After gradutation I had built a dev team of a dozen people, but one thing remainded missing, we didn't have an artist. I thought it was fine but then I found it was not so fine. I was approaching the first limitation that I had encountered. So I scrambled looking for an artist, any artist at this point would do, unable to find one I began to feel disappointed and like I had failed. I was giving up. But a flurry of new ideas came in, I didn't need an artist right this moment to design systems and make a game that could potentially catch the interest of an artist wanting to work with the project. Unfortunately that time never came and slowly we began to lose interest again and again through every road block. Whether it be the lack of an artist, being slammed at work, or having so much college work it was even funny. The project had fallen to the wayside once more.

Finding my footing once more during some breaks in school that lined up with Dan. We started at it again, even releasing a mobile game on the Google Playstore. It was called Jump Jump and we published it under the name Syoto Studios. The game was relatively simple and I thought that was really all we needed because we needed to just release something, to finish something. This was a major turning point. Though Jump Jump is no longer available on the app store it was a fun experience and it taught me that I really did want to do this for a living, having positive feedback from family and friends was inspiring. Unfortunately issues came up again. We began school again, started working again, and still we had no artist, and no money to put towards decent models to finish the game the way we would like to have and so Jump Jump was removed from the store and we didn't look back.

I have designed quite a few games since then. Most of which ended up being way too big in scope. With each passing idea they got smaller with better designs overall. Understanding that a game is out of reach is important, its important to know what you can and can't do. For this reason we participated in a makeshift game jam, we gave ourselves 48 hours and we built a tower defence game. It wasn't amazing, in fact it barely worked. It had some art that worked just well enough to not look terrible together. It looked bad, played a little better than that, but it was finished. I was proud once more. A game that we had successfully started and finished. Another large boost in confidence. So I started planning a new game. This one was much more manageable and we got parts working, actually we got some pretty big features working but ultimately we deemed the game too much of a hassle and shelved yet another game.

## Looking towards the future

Over the course of these last few years I have learned and grown a lot both in terms of creativity, networking, and most importantly design. I've realized things that are important in games and really went at trying to find what it is that makes people connect with the games they do. I've learned why I enjoy games and how I can use that to further my understanding to make every game I design from here on the best experience it can be.

I want to make it very clear that we are here to make games, tell stories, and build communities around them. For this reason we do not have any intentions as of right now to stick to a single IP. We would love to work with the community on games and decisions pertaining to them.

Thanks for reading! I hope you'll join our community and stick around for more updates.

<h3 style="text-align: right;">This time we're doing it right.</h3>


nderbudget

Games

nderbudget

Games