Dev Update – Nov. 2017

Late in the Fall season, we're back with an update! We've had 3 internal alpha builds since the last, and were spinning our wheels on stages without much progress for a short while. However, progress has picked-up with a focus on process and mechanics.

Through the development of our latest alpha builds, the remaining details for the LXU Armor are complete with the all the palette changes for weapons, new teleport and death animations, and capsule upgrade cutscenes. And several issues were resolved that caused overlay and transparency issues with the sprites.

Lightning Bit palette of the LXU Armor

LXU Buster Upgrade animation

In the most recent alpha, we took a hard look at enemy behaviours and boss moves and rewrote some really troublesome ones. Chrysalis has always been a solid boss, but one of her attacks was in need of improvements to really shine. On the other side of the spectrum, Sombra's been sitting sadly broken for quite some time, so we're rewriting his broken attacks and making him more powerful to boot.

Sombra’s Crystal Shards attack in-progress.

One of the more crucial things lately has been polishing the core mechanics around dashing, wall-jumping, buster shots, and Lyra's controls. An example of one of these is the dashing hit-box, which was previously fixed to Lyra's full height. It's now shorter when dashing, allowing Lyra to deftly dash under projectiles. To be satisfied in making enemies interact with Lyra in fun ways, the enemy encounters we're designing have to be well-tuned to those mechanical specifics, so we have to get them just right. We also have to fine-tune the mechanics around movement, like how slopes and the slippery ice work in our snowy crystal stage.

Tileset floor perspective tile examples

In-progress for the stages are some test tilesets which we've begun painting into our Lake stage overtop the associated art sketches that outline the detailed elements. There's nothing else that makes a stage feel alive than adding the art, so even the roughest tiles can start to make the stage seem lively. For the next steps to give the stage some depth, we'll be adding more tiles and some background layers behind them.

Regular posts continue to be our weak point as development goes on. But there’s some questions in our ask box we’ll get around to answering. And we are still working out some boss designs to show in the future.

Dev Update – Jun. 2017

We’re long overdue for another update, and while they’ve been lacking, our work has been continuing through into the start of the hot summer. Since the last update, we’ve been working steadily at revising some of our stages and improving the general game design mechanics.

 Most recently, much of this work has been done, in part, by our newest game design team member, puphop. He’s been going over the Everfree stage, and his keen eye for game mechanics helps us address some of the finer points of getting them right. We’re glad to have welcomed him onto our team and expect some great work from him!

 There have also been two new internal alpha versions completed and more work queued up. The recent changes have featured several enemy changes and additions, boss difficulty balancing, wall-jumping mechanics improvements, and various other fixes. Through these updates and what’s upcoming, we also have several LXU changes.

 The LXU armor hit a snag or two as had several more animations and details that came up as needed as we used it in testing. As of last update, we had all the base pieces in place. Since then we’ve added animations for them Lyra receives them from the upgrade capsules. We’ve got more to do with the palette mappings and implementing teleport animation changes, along with other cutscene-related sprite-work.

 Back onto the work for stages, besides the Everfree stage there are two other stages simultaneously in the works: a familiar Snowy Crystal stage and, what we plan to be the most difficult stage, the Canterlot stage. The former, although previously started and shown, has been left unfinished and neglected, while the latter is entirely new.

 Morale-wise, we’ve had some slowdown in the artwork side of things with some of our spriters being on a long hiatus and some personal issues and illnesses that have preoccupied folks for a good while. But we continue to work week-after-week on the game design in order to keep things moving on the many tasks ahead.

 Don’t disengage your power-suit just yet, as we have a new boss concept to show off that will be posted in the next week or two. We’ll have another update mid-summer or so, at least following our next alpha, and have other post ideas in mind for the interim.

Lyra in her LX suit is pretty tough, but she doesn’t start the game with it. As in the video above, the game starts out with Lyra outfitted in a more rudimentary outfit called the proto-suit.

In this way, the game starts out with just the basics. Jumping, shooting, and good old lime pellets. The video below shows later just before Lyra finally gets the LX suit she needs, and that’s when she runs into a hologram that reconnects her to the world she know.

From our latest Alpha, we now have the full LXU suit usable in-game for our alphas, built from individual parts to be layered as they are acquired. This ultimate-upgraded power suit provides a variety of abilities, which we’ll detail and show off in upcoming posts. In the meantime, don’t forget to read over this month’s developer update, and keep blasting those robots!

Dev Update – Feb. 2017

January came and went and along with it several flu strains and other illnesses affected various members of the team, including your friendly update poster @toastyjustice. Having taken the time to recover, we're back with a quick development update prior to showing off the stuff we had hoped to last month.

Alpha 109 is scheduled to be done soon, as late as middle of next week. Bug fixes, platform frame rate improvements, enemy changes and timers, and some boss tweaks are some of the various work we've got in the queue. There's also more visuals to be added: upgrade capsule animations, Sombra sprites, lighting behaviour, and some additions to the title screen. It's a mixed set of alpha changes that is not really focused on anything in particular, but rather follows our constant iterations and attention for building things into the game and improving upon them.

The next few posts to come will show off the armor, some animations, and excerpts from some of the cutscenes. These are all parts of the milestone we hit, which we referred to in the prior update. Since we're not sure when the game is done, where exactly does this put us currently?

The milestone we hit was to have the set of content that makes for a 'playable' alpha. But 'playable' does not mean publicly releasable, as we're still some distance from that. Rather, it means that any member of our team should be able to pick up and play the game through to the end, as rough as some of those may be. They can save and load their game, acquire all the items, and get a sense of the unfolding storyline. So far, the things we have are the following:

These aren't all finished, but having all the parts in the game puts us in the best position to work from. It lets us build out the rest of the stages and game, tune the gameplay mechanics, and keep a standard of play through the alphas. We'll be able to add sprites, mechanical polish, and fill in the holes as we keep things in a playable state. Meanwhile, the list of what we have done and in-progress is telling of the remaining work towards the game. The end of the game is developed in writing, but is being worked out stage-wise as well as conceptually. This includes bosses, which need some solid design and artwork, and the cutscenes that play into the climax and finale of the game.

TLDR: The team's bouncing back from some recent ailments. Our 109 alpha is in the works and will feed into a series of posts showing off some of the current in-game features.

MegaMare X Dev Update – Dec. 2016

Let's close out the 2016 year with another development update. Dear Celestia A.I., there will be some good stuff coming in the 2017. This year has been a bit rough at times, but we've made a good steady pace. Once January is underway with the holidays over, we'll show various features and progress that we've only talked about and not shown. Cutscenes, armor, and more will be featured in the new year's updates as we finish up the remaining work in our 1st major alpha milestone. What's all this milestone business? It means we've hit all our core gameplay needs, and we're ready to move on into iterations territory. Our 108th alpha build came out just before the holidays, with save/load game mechanics, various cutscene improvements, bug fixes, and a spiffy, fresh title screen:

The release also caused a few hiccups in the scripting files, and we're waiting on the last sprite-work for our armor pieces to be in-game before that's ready to show off.

As for what's next and underway:

And that's just the tip of what we've already got started as we continue past the year marker. Meanwhile, the team's been gaming together, had members return with fixed computers, and are gathering fresh energy. Our newest team recruits have been diving into things and are off to a great start. We've got what it takes, and the love to make it great.

Now for the ever-burning question on your snow-sprinkled holiday brains:

When will the game be released?

We don't know. It's unlikely in to be in 2017, but if our pace quickens a bit, a beta build in the coming year is possible. And betas mean testing. We've received a lot of interest in playtesting, but we haven't worked out an effective plan for how to approach it. If there's anything we decide on, we'll let you know here first. Keep your asks and comments coming in, we're always happy to hear from our fans.

TLDR: We have almost reached a milestone, and will be ready to show some stuff in Jan. There's still lots to do, but the team is getting good at this, so we're hoping for a 2017 beta.

Continue the cheer and friendship, sprinkle in some hard work, and be on the lookout for some robot-blasting fun in the new year.

Update soon, but first some ask responses

We’ve built up a queue of asks, and the holidays are a good time to answer some.

MegaMare X Dev Update – Oct. 2016

After a slow period during the summertime months, development has picked up following the joining of some new team members. We’ve welcomed @shinsart​ and Xujints to our ranks and they’re off to a good start. Shintari, as a sprite/pixel artist, has already begun making tilesets, while Xujints has begun on the dialogue and is helping with game design.

Spurred-on by by these team additions, we have produced three more alpha versions and are up to 106. These add placements for some missing items, change the intro boss, fix various gameplay issue, and improve our scripting capabilities for cutscenes. We just completed recent work on our underwater stage's layout, and finished parts of our upgraded armor sprites, of which half are in-game already. A number of new intro cutscenes have been added, with more cutscenes in progress for the armor parts hidden among the stages.

Now that the exciting stuff you wanted to hear about is over, here's some boring details on the team's overall status:

Some of the slowness has been due to a lack of availability with the volunteer nature of the project. So, over the past couple months, we've been working with individual members to reduce the amount of churn. Although we are still lacking some of the needed talents for the amount of pixel art the game requires, we hope speed of work will pick-up gradually and be more reliable for continued development. There is also some hold-up with game-design decisions for latter parts of the game that are only roughly written out. So iterations are now in-progress on finalizing details to move those forward.

TLDR: We're still at it, but nothing looks good in screenshots yet. But it will soon with our new team members!

MegaMare X Dev Update – Aug. 2016

August brings with it a development update! And it’s a special one, because it’s been almost exactly 3 years since MegaMare X made its debut at BronyCon 2013. So it’s a tech-demo anniversary update.

But first to the development at hand. Summertime for most of our team members, with its sunshine and baking temperatures, has brought with it an unusual set of personal situations. July was especially slow due to this, which, while not good for making progress, doesn’t mean that we’re at a standstill.

We have another alpha update, our 103rd, and a related second in the pipeline for additional bugs, fixes, and scripting support. Our present goal continues toward building out some small pieces of the content for the main portion of the game, and then we are moving on to further design and content milestones. These next milestones to reach will delve into the final stages, their bosses, and the unfolding plot therein. While some decisions need to still be made, the coming months will have some answers and a rough completion of the alpha.

We’ve come so far, and there’s more to do, but let’s go back 3 years to August 2013 to when our tech demo first hit the public!

Our team decided to get together and setup all we had on a table at BronyCon. MegaMare X had only been in development since the end of 2012 – but we were able to make a somewhat rushed (and often buggy) tech demo that made us realize just how much people enjoyed what we had created.

It was at a peak time during the fandom, and among other activities around us, we held down a table for the full three days over in the Salt Block Lounge. Helping everyone get a turn, listening and recording your feedback, and discussing where things might go.

It may have been a small table, but it often drew a crowd.

This was an exhilarating part of our early development that the team remembers fondly. Not only did it bring us together, but we had an overwhelmingly positive response to the demo, which encouraged us to dive into making the full game.

Looking back over the 3 years since, we’ve continued to have wonderful interactions with our fans. You guys help us keep this project going, and we couldn’t be more thankful for your support.

Did you know you can see the tech demo? We had an exclusive MegaMare X demo review by Phoe if you’re looking to check out what it was like back then: