Assassin Blue: Behind the Scenes Part 1

If you're here now, it's probably because of the recent popularity of my game, Assassin Blue. When I made Wolf I included my commentary as an unlockable feature, but there was no such thing in Assassin Blue... so I've decided to talk about the game's development here.


The Origins of Blue

Blue was a character I actually conceived of 2 or 3 years before I even started work on Assassin Blue. He wasn't called Blue, either. At the time I'd been working on a classic-style RPG like Earthbound or Dragon Quest, and I was coming up with character designs for the party. These images have been previously unreleased...

Walking animation

See the third character? That's Blue! And for the record, yes, the fourth party member is Kylie, the one and same heroine of Wolf.

His original design was virtually identical to the one he has today, down to his character. He was a boastful show-off with a strong moral compass, trapped in a promiscuous line of work (in this case, thievery). In addition to having the flashiest sword attacks, he provided healing spells for the party, making him one badass cleric.

Around the time that game was being developed, a big game idea was forming; why not make a Super Smash Brothers game using game maker characters? I was among the first to submit a design...

This was his first time being sprited for a platformer. I think the idea stuck.

Even though he hadn't actually made an appearance in-game, I tried to get him into the Smash Bros game. But as history tells us, both the Smash Bros game and the RPG were eventually discontinued and the mysterious Thief was never known.

...Or at least, until another game came along, called Wolf.

Wolf, my Zelda-esque adventure title.

The story of Wolf involves Kylie, a nice young woman, who inadvertently becomes a werewolf and kills just about everyone in her village. Now the game ends there, but originally I had some ideas for how to continue it. I had plans in particular for my old friend the Thief...


Blue as he was going to appear in Wolf.

His name was Hiro now, a twist on "Hero." He was to act as a foil to Kylie. Officially, he was a monster hunter who caught wind of Kylie's curse and pursued her. He was radically different from the Blue we know, however; he was interested only in his own glory and fame, and thought nothing of justice or the right thing, solidifying the irony in his name "Hiro."

I had his first appearance worked out, too. Kylie was to run into a lady being attacked by monsters, but just before rushing to her rescue--SHLINK! Blue appeared from nowhere, killing the monster and trying to impress the two ladies with his arrogant gloating.


The lady he saves, infatuated with her savior. Kylie was wise to him from the start, though.

But I decided to keep Wolf short and simple, so I cut out Hiro and released the game. Months later I began working on Assassin Blue, focusing the game on the hero I'd spent so many years working with.


Getting the Game Going

Getting the game off the ground proved to be nearly impossible. I spent two short weeks programming the basic engine in April or May 2008, until I had a demo that looked like this...



With the balance of combat and platforming, I knew I was on to something, but I lacked the spriting skills to make decent tiles for the game. So I put out at least 5 team requests across various forums, looking for someone to join up with. I got an early response from a guy called Kindred, who worked with me to make some tiles for the game's level 1.


The original level 1

The game was looking to be awesome, until Kindred suddenly disappeared off the face of the Earth. After he was gone for a month I put up all my team requests again, spending weeks looking for a response, slowly losing hope... To keep myself interested, I programmed the first boss, Riley, but even after he was finished I never got a response. Frustrated, I discontinued the project.

Then in July I found the old editable, full of potential but missing decent backgrounds. That was when the idea hit me; if I can't sprite the backgrounds, why not hand draw them? And so was born the Assassin Blue we know today:


The game's very first official release looked like this. Compare to today's:


After about a week of backgrounding, level 1 was finished and was met with great success. With another week of work I turned my very first original demo into level 2, squoze the already-made Riley at the end, and the game's first 3 levels were done. The rest is history.


One Last Fun Fact!

This was Red's original character design. Seriously.

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That's it for now. Next time I think I'll be doing something a bit more analytic, studying the game's level design or story...

Super Mario 64 is Better Than Mario Galaxy

I often see people claim that Super Mario Galaxy is a better Mario game than Super Mario 64, if not the greatest Mario game to date. I completely disagree, and I've always wanted a chance to talk about why in full detail. So here's my two cents on why Mario's first 3D platforming outing is still far better than his most recent...


Super Mario 64

Presentation

Graphics-wise, both games are/were pushing the limits of the system and treading new ground in their respective times. I don't think I need to spend more time on that particular matter.

But when considered as a whole, Mario Galaxy wasn't as universally appealing. With its cutesy bunny rabbits, cheesy talk about stars and frolicking in fields of flowers, Galaxy is decidedly girly and childish (an opinion only further made popular with the infamous U R MR GAY discovery). I felt outright embarrassed to be playing it at certain points. Mario 64 certainly was no GTA, but it didn't border on this level of girliness; as a young child and as a young adult today I still have fun playing it, and not once does it feel too "kiddy."

Mario Galaxy also got a lot of praise for its complex, epic orchestrations. I'm not going to argue with that, the music was big, loud and adventurous, and it fit. But the N64 cartridge they stuffed Mario 64 could never hoped to achieve that level of orchestration anyway. What Mario 64 gave us were a lot of really catchy, memorable tunes, songs I still remember today very clearly. What about Mario Galaxy? How many tunes do you remember from that? In all its powerful orchestration and big sound, it lost something. I'm not saying a game has to have memorable music to be good, but Mario 64 did have some classic videogame melodies and Galaxy didn't.


Super Mario Galaxy


Gameplay:

Mario Galaxy brought some new cards to the table in the gameplay department, that I won't deny. It's high point--for me--were the really great new powerups. Ice Mario? Boo Mario? Yes please.

And of course it got a lot of talk going about its crazy physics engine, right? Mario could walk around the surface of an entire sphere! But as cool as that was, it created some problems, too. The game's gravity rules weren't universal: sometimes you could walk around the bottom of a a planet, sometimes you couldn't, and there was never any indication of whether or not you could. There were a few good handful of times when I died because I assumed I could walk off the edge to the underside of a platform.

Mario 64's level design was more fun, too. Yes, you read correctly. Mario 64's open, explorable levels were fun and exciting, and they totally captured our wonder, totally helped us understand what a 3D game could be. Mario Galaxy's levels are almost all linear; the only path is to go from planet A, find the launch star, get to planet B, etc. And even when it did offer some large explorable areas, they never felt as open and exciting as in Mario 64. Really my biggest gripe in Mario Galaxy was that they reused level maps. I repeat: They took one level, copy and pasted it, and called it a new one with a little recoloring. Don't believe me? Look:
Wow! What a cool level!
Hey, wait, isn't this a little familiar?

I don't care if they had some differences here and there, if the missions were different, whatever. This was a HUGE game, destined to be a trend-setter for all Wii games to come. It was Mario's newest platforming adventure in years. How is it that nobody, at any level of this game development, saw level repetition and thought "This is great"? The game already has a few dozen maps, I'd rather have one less than the same one again.


Is Mario Galaxy a good game? Yes, it is. It was fun, certainly among the best of the Wii's offerings. But it isn't at the same level as Super Mario 64, and I can't agree with anyone who thinks so.

A Look At My Favorite GM Games

Alright, so. I've been a member of the Game Maker Community for about 4 years now, and in that time I've played a LOT of games. I'd like to talk about my four most favorite Game Maker-made games of all time. These are in chronological order.


Grapnel by ArchMageOmega

http://www.yoyogames.com/games/show/522
Take Spiderman-Man, combine him with the famous Helicopter game, and you've got Grapnel. This is a game that somehow borders on perfection; completely engrossing, completely addictive, exhilirating, and amazingly simple.
This is a game I will end up spending hours playing, usually without even thinking about it.
It's only flaw is in the unlockables; there are some really awesome ones that make the game even better (Accelarate and Rubber Floor, I'm looking at you) but many aren't very good. Geting the money to buy an unlockable is hard enough, worse that the one you decide to buy might end up being a waste of time.


Clean Asia! by cactus

http://www.yoyogames.com/games/show/2358
Clean Asia! is seriously awesome. The story involves giant alien eyeballs attacking Asia, and so of course the only method to defeat them is to send a lone pilot out against them in a super-cool spaceship. Whatever.
The game has two different ships from which you can select, the Reflector and Attractor. Of the two, the Reflector is the more classic ship and was the one I used first. But the Attractor is where things get cool. Its only main attack is a short ramming attack. It can blast through parts of the enemy ship, shattering them into a hundred tiny squares... and then with the second button, it draws the enemy's shattered pieces toward it, like a giant vortex of multicolored squares. Once you've got some enemy pieces floating around you, you can fire them one by one with the ram button, or--my personal favorite--just let go of the attractor, unleashing a storm of squares that does massive damage. And then, naturally, the enemy will shatter apart more and you'll have more pieces to fling at him.
Combine excellent SHMUP gameplay with excellent vector-y graphics, three totally different totally crazy fun levels, and some kickass music to top it off, and you've got one hell of a game.


The Hanrahan Game: Final Mix by flying squire

http://www.yoyogames.com/games/show/16984
The Hanrahan Game is straight-up well made action with a storyline that is pointless yet engaging. The graphics and music aren't spectacular but they work; the game does a good job at keeping things varied with many different locations and colorful environments. At the core this game is fun because of the awesome swordplay and enemy physics. When killed enemies go flying around in a hilrious mess, and you feel pretty badass running through a group of enemies, throwing them about like a demon. There's also a nice subweapon feature that opens the doors to some really cool extra attacks (particularly those of the explosive variety). The only major flaw in this game are some poorly designed bosses.


Shotgun Ninja by cactus

http://www.yoyogames.com/games/show/27705
Shotgun Ninja sets itself apart from the other games on this list as being the only I've actually managed to finish. This is partly a testament to how short it is, but even more a testament to how much fun it is. Slippery platforming with some awesome features like sticking to the ceiling, combined with fun shotgun/grenade kills makes for really fun gameplay. The graphics and sound are awesomely retro, and the music is particularly catchy and fun. Not to mention a hilarious plotline and engaging level design.
The only moment in which the game loses its magic is during a couple of the particularly long levels; getting hit once kills you, and dying makes you respawn at the beginning of the level. This leads to some huge frustration, but the game's sheer awesomeness made it bearable for me to play through the same level 15-20 times.


Those are my favorite Game Maker-made games. As I play more games of interest I'll probably be posting about them here.

Welcome!

Hey everybody!

I am Banov, and this is my brand new blog.

I'll be posting all sorts of fun things concerning me, myself, and I; my thoughts on games, music, news and updates on my own projects, etc. It'll be fun.

~Banov