thomasmoonkang

Localizing a Game

I just finished going through and adding Japanese localization! I'm working with Yuta Kurosawa (@blackstream001) who did the Japanese localization for One Step From Eden!

I used the I2 Localization plugin which I've also used for One Step From Eden's localization.

Basically there are two types of localization you have to look out for. Standard and script.

Standard would be a button that says "Play" and never says anything else.

Script would be hardcoded, with the text set by script. For example, when you clicked a "Play" button that switched to say "Pause." These require manual updates, which I do by triggering a callback whenever the in-game language is changed.

It's a bit tedious, but you have to go to every text element (or the prefab which makes it much faster) and add the localization component if it's not Script type.

You also have to add every "term" to the localization sheet, which can be categorized by tab.

Currently, all the Japanese is auto-filled by Google translate as a placeholder

Gotta change fonts, make sure the other translations fit into the relevant boxes. Google Fonts has a ton of free fonts to choose from. You can also set backup fonts so that if there's a character that doesn't exist in the current font, the game will switch to a backup that does contain the character.

I'm choosing only one language because it's a hassle to localize into so many different languages every time you make a design change that needs rewording. One Step From Eden was localized to Polish, Spanish, French, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Korean, German, Japanese, Russian, Spanish Latam, Portuguese, and Turkish! It was kind of a hassle to update all of them, so I ended up not changing the cards too much after release aside from numerical adjustments.

Duelists of Eden will probably require more balance changes and it's important that changes are localized properly.

In the settings menu it's important to have iconography next to the "Language" option so that players who can't read the current language can locate and change it easily.

Of course if the game does well, and once the game is in a balanced state, it may be translated into more languages!

Updated Combo Tutorial

The combo tutorial was lacking in accessability, so I added some features inspired by Mortal Kombat 11's tutorials.

1. Going from a vertical to a horizontal display makes it easier to track the progress mid-combo and also makes more sense logically that the tasks will complete from left to right.

2. Each part of the combo now has a timer and a status. While the timer is going is when the player can input to cast the spell, and the task will show "Now." This should help beginners know exactly when to press the next action. Of course it can still be held/buffered beforehand. 

When the timer runs out and the spell does not hit while the bot is stunned, the task will show "Late". This should help beginners figure out what they need to fix. There's a bit more I could add like whether or not the spell missed completely or some movement or delay needs to be incorporated, but I don't think I'll include those advanced sequences in the tutorial.

3. The green and red colors should also make it more clear what part of the combo was successful and what was not. Symbols could be added for color blindness, but there are at least the "Hit" and "Late" texts for now.

My thoughts on PalWorld:

It's kind of funny seeing people compare it Pokemon, or bringing up games like Yokai Watch when PalWorld isn't really in that genre. It's more of a mix of survival/base/automation with the neat twist of monster catching to support that. I think the twist is pretty refreshing and scratches that itch for a lot of people (especially on a hunter-gatherer level). The survival genre has always been a super popular genre on steam, and seems pretty straightforward to be successful in.

It's crazy to see how many jealous and enraged people are online, trying to take down the devs or spouting non-sense about the game. Yeah, it's not the most meaningful game but it does have an enticing gameplay loop, and I thought it was pretty creative game design. There's way too much baseless hate going around on twitter these days, which is why I rarely tweet.

Anyway I will be learning a bit of Godot when I'm not burned out to see if it's a viable engine for the next project. Unity is still an option, but just has way more strings attached now.

One of my ideas is a Mechabellum x Fire Emblem roguelite, but we'll see if that's even any fun.

Happy Holidays and status update

Recently there's been a lot of fake websites pretending to be me or Duelists of Eden. Recently I've been noticing more and more cyber scam/hacks and it's so annoying when people just want to make cool stuff. So please be careful out there, if you have crypto, make sure it's in a secure place. Make sure you have unique passwords for important accounts. Don't trust Google Authenticator since it can be accessed from multiple devices.

Concepts are based off a "Potioneer" character that Squeaky designed. HOAI made eight variations of it that all look really cool. It's been super fun to see him create all these different versions of our concepts to choose from. They each have a unique flavor to them too!

It's actually pretty hard to come up with fun and interesting weapon sets for these new characters. I wonder what we'll do with potions...

Systems and game mechanics are nearing completion. Still slated for a February-March release, and will mostly be focusing on content, balance, and some QoL/matchmaking features.

Here's a little regex snippet that I use to highlight keywords + any trailing alphabetical letters.
So if the keyword is "Crack" it'll also highlight "Cracked" and "Cracks" and even "Crackling."

If you're interested in some random extension like this I'm using I've attached the entire class of Extensions I'm currently using for Duelists of Eden! They might be great or suck I kinda just made or found them as I needed.

Anyway happy holidays, I'm looking forward to finally releasing Duelists of Eden this year!

UI Reduction

This is a big thing I've been working on recently. Reducing the amount of UI on screen but keeping everything within reach.

After my consultation with Esty, he explained how overwhelming the game was on a first playthrough. There were just too many buttons and words and things going on at once. Since I've been using this UI and built it myself, I'm very accustomed to knowing where everything is, but for a brand new player they're going to have to look for what they want to do. There's a lot of ways to guide the player using colors, positioning, and size of buttons.

• Removed character stats

An old version of the custom lobby

• Removed artifacts
• Added header buttons
• Moved char select to center so it's easier to reach with keyboard/gamepad
• Also enabled showing both players decks in customs

Looking at this there's way too much to look at, way too many words on the screen especially with the decklists. Dreadwyrm on the left has a deck of 12 spells, so even something like reducing deck size actually helps here.

• Changed header buttons to icon buttons
• Combined Inventory button into profile in the top left
• Removed character select grid (but it'll come back later)
• Deck size max 12->10

This is the local game mode, but you can see there are no scrollbars on the decklists now. Changing the header buttons to icon buttons makes a huge difference in how cluttered the screen feels. I initially really disliked when Valorant changed their header buttons from text to icons, and didn't understand why until I realized I wanted to declutter my own game's ui. There are many more changes that went towards reducing ui, including having a toggle for showing advanced options in training mode, and removing the mana regen markers during normal battles.

There's a lot that goes in to making sure a new player feels comfortable enough to return to the game, but it's not talked about much. Though Ben Brode did a GDC talk about designing Marvel Snap, and one of his points was not ever having more than "8 words on screen at any given time." This is extremely difficult to stick to.

But using it as a guideline can make a huge difference.

Axed character concept - Oroban the Laser General

Here's a character concept we had in the works, Oroban.

Age: 44

Oroban entered the military as an experimental physicist, developing and testing mana-powered laser weaponry. She commanded expertise in the requirements and outcomes of her laser weaponry, the results led her up the ranks. Every military operation was a formula and using her constant of lasers, she could solve for any variable. Planning the perfect strategic use of sky lasers, she reached the rank of general. Finally, everyone would listen to her.

Likes: energy, lasers, research, accuracy, compliance, chain of command

Dislikes: irrational numbers, unexpected outcomes, plan B

Attack style: predictable, precise, methodical, incinerating

Equipment: communicator, rangefinder, extra high power laser pointer?

A couple of her mood board chars were Ozen from Made in Abyss and Ana from Overwatch.

I wanted to round out the cast by adding an older character and I always thought the idea of generals specializing in weapons (from C&C Generals) was awesome. But Oroban didn't end up looking or feeling that old or distinct enough from the rest of the cast.

I also tried like 4 different variations of weapons/subweapons for her that were laser related (like a Low Orbit Ion Cannon) that slowly traveled across the field, or hit the same tile for a long duration. But none of them felt fun to play or play against! So that's also another reason she was axed.

HOAI mentioned he wanted to do another take on her so who knows, maybe she'll make a return after all. (I need a red haired character)

Status effects visual effects

Under each character there are status icons with tiny numbers but they're difficult to read especially in the heat of battle. That's why for Duelists I've been trying to add more visual indicators of statuses and what they're doing.

For example the Poison "status display" has animations for when it deals damage, when it is being healed, and when it is finally being removed (along with matching sfx).
Mark has a timer with a little spark that shows a good time to dodge.
Spellpower has new visuals that show when it's being spawned in, and when it's being used up.
I recently added a shuffle visual that changes based on how many cards were remaining when the shuffle was triggered (up to 3).

Hopefully these help players to not just be able to analyze and see what's happening, but also feel what the status effects will do from just the visuals!

Updated to-do list for Duelists:

Lobby features
Visual polish
Rework and round out spell pool
Ranked mode...

How I come up with new Spells.

I come up with new spells in a variety of ways, but I think these are the main four:

1. Concept is cool

2. Combo is cool

3. Mechanic is interesting

4. Mechanic is necessary

(May have to wait for gifs to load below)

1. Double Team - Pushing the opponent back and forth, and setting up for more was a cool idea and feels good to pull off. This was also the inspiration for Tetra.

2. Crevasse->Purgatory - I had the idea of creating walls on the sides of the opponent, and then unleashing a torrent of fire in the newly created corridor. So Crevasse and Purgatory were added to make it happen. It looks super powerful but it's quite expensive to pull off, and of course there's plenty of counterplay like countering either of the moves, or doding the ice blocks summons.

3. Step Lance - Zelda's up B from Smash Bros had an interesting and fun mechanic where if you hit the first part of the move, it could hit them into the second part where you get teleported to. I wanted to make something like that and step lance was born.

4. Brushfire - I needed to add a way for Flames to spread in a way that wasn't too opressive or expensive, so after a bit of balancing Brushfire was created to spread flames upward.

Bonus: Tetra

Creating Card Pools

How do game designers keep track of the cards in their game? How do they design/release a set of cards? How do they keep track of everything?

Well I'm not sure so I kind of did my own thing, and of course I used Google Sheets cause I use it for everything.

This is just one way to do things.

I organize spells by synergy using a different color for each column. Flame orange, Frost blue, etc. If a spell has Flame and Frost synergies, then it will show up in both columns, but with the background color of the other column. If there's a third synergy, the text color can be changed as well. The goal is to have a well distributed amount of spells, though some synergies will have understandably smaller pools depending on how much of a central theme that mechanic should be able have.

It's quite boring to have the best/only option be making a deck with just one synergy. So we have to add some spells (like Acid Rain) that give a big bonus for combining synergies (Poison and Frost). Other synergies will have some natural combinations such as Poison with Push/Root/Break.

There's a lot of info this chart might be missing (so I also include mana costs next to each spell in my non-posted version) it might also be nice to have one with icons/descriptions. As a side note, spell icons also use similar color themes to show which mechanics they include.

Ideally each big spell pool has a few things including combo starters, poke, ramps, combo enders, and utility.

Here's an example of Flame synergy.

Starter - FireBreath/Firewall/Twinferno

Poke - Ember/Salamander

Ramp - Brushfire

ComboEnder - Eruption/Rage/Combust

Utility - StepBlaze

Since Duelists has so many game states, each spell can actually fill a few different roles, so take this with a grain of salt.

Esty8Nine's Game Doctor service

There's a streamer that I've followed for a while, who plays a ton of indie games every year and has been review/playing them on his streams. He recently started a service called the Game Doctor, where he consults for an in-development game so that he can get it on the right track and point out any blind spots. Even when he played One Step From Eden there were QoL features he was pointing out that I ended up adding to the game, such as being able to open the map during reward selection.

I watched some streamers play during the playtests and there were clearly things that new players were struggling with. A lot of changes have been made since then to help new players, but I know there are still a few things I'm missing. Esty is going to spend about an hour and a half playing the game and recording a session with his thoughts. Then we'll have a follow-up meeting to discuss potential fixes and changes to the game. A lot of developers have said great things about the service, and I personally think it's a huge hole in most developers projects. Since even watching him play and talk about a game on stream is valuable I'm pretty excited to see what comes from this. It's a bit odd to say but he may be the most experienced indie gamer out there.

I'll follow up with a post of what he contributed and how the overall experience was like!

Painter Witch sprites sneak peek

Jtangc finished the painter sprites! I can't wait to add them to the game, they look super fun. The way the brush and hair swoosh with each swing, the pastel colors. Very happy with how she turned out.

Anyway DoE looks like it's wrapping up soon. Some more content and spells and polish before release. Oh we'll need to test ranked mode a bit... It's definitely going to be messy with punishing leavers and stuff, but I'll probably be able to detect if people are abusing it using some of the underlying systems. One of the main issues might be hacked clients, but I'll also add a reporting system so bad actors get brought to my attention!

Demo week 1 and new backgrounds

Some new backgrounds by FrogApples. One of the issues with the game is clarity. There's so much going on, that everything has to look consistent and visually clear with spells flying all over the place. Changing the background can change how vfx look and over strain the eyes. So I had to manually darken all of the pretty new backgrounds. I guess duelists only fight at night?

The first week of the demo has been pretty awesome. Not as many players as the playtest I think, but more than enough for me. I'm ironing out a ton of kinks, so many qol improvements and issues in the netcode I've found thanks to this test (since alpha testers don't do unrated queue). The demo has actually given me the confidence to move launch up to possibly November!

Of course the game will still be getting updates after launch so it won't really change much in the grand scheme of things.

Duelists Demo incoming

Here's to the last public playtest for Duelists before release. The demo's a bit odd because it'll basically be the full game but it'll probably be up for a limited time.

We're wrapping up new player experience with some rewards for the tutorial. We've also changed all the spells to unlock at lvl 10 to reduce grinding, but still give players time to learn the game before throwing them into the deep end.

Until level 10, players can also match against bots in case there aren't many new players on at the same time. It should take less than an hour to reach lvl 10. There'll also be an offline and tournament mode with everything unlocked!

Also Gunner has officially been in with a unique stun beam and a fire creating missile weapon. He's become a bit less lethal since his OSFE days!

Unity Update

The last couple weeks have been pretty stressful, watching this Unity discourse and trying to decide the future of Duelists because of course it's being made in Unity.

The big issues for me were the retroactive changes in terms and the "per-install" fee.

The fact they could change the terms retroactively meant none of the games made in Unity were "safe" for developers. At any time Unity could take money from developers whenever they wanted, even 20 years down the road! I can't believe it even got publicly announced.

The per-install fee was insane because there is no way anyone can track that metric. Especially with storefronts like Steam. I'm pretty sure I've installed my steam games on at least 5 different devices! Paying money every time a customer upgrades their pc, gets a steam deck, laptop, etc. is just wild.

These two issues made me decide to quit Unity which I've used exclusively for the past 8 years. (I did dabble in GameMaker 5.0 when I was a kid).

Now Unity has put out an update with much fairer and non-retroactive terms that only apply to games made in version 2023+. Duelists is being made in Unity v2021 and I don't plan to upgrade to 2023. I tried it, and Unity just keeps getting more and more bloated so it was quite clunky.

This means I can finish Duelists according to plan right? Well clearly Unity can still change the rules whenever they want. So I will still be focusing on getting Duelists finished, and not adding as many features as I originally planned. This might've happened regardless because well multiplayer and online-profile development is not a good time. I want to make some smaller offline games again.

I will say it was really cool to see the community band together against this change. I think it was a good wakeup call that the community needed.

DoE Progress Check! September 2023

Here's about where we're at with everything:

Characters - 80% not sure how many we'll launch with, a couple may come out after

Netcode - 90% I really have to stop messing with this

Progression Systems - 70%

Singleplayer - 40%

Spells - 60% lots of rounding out and balancing that needs to be done

QoL - 50%

I don't know if there's a window to release anytime in 2023, so I'll probably be aiming for early 2024 around the same time I released OSFE (which was in March). There's been a lot of amazing games released this year, so it's pretty tough competition. I'm also super unsure of how successfully the game will sell, and if it'll even survive afterwards. I have less support with no publisher and have no plans for porting yet.

I'm also thinking about what to work on next, and it's definitely not going to have multiplayer!

Anyway, enjoy some cover art concepts by HOAI!

Poison Status and Shopkeeper Sprites!

It's tough, putting status effects in a fighting-esque games. I personally don't appreciate things that affect your controls (like reversing them). I wanted a status you could stack on your opponent and maybe cash in on later. 

The original status was Hack which would damage you equal to the amount when you shuffled. This was a bit too confusing for new players but I found it pretty fun and interesting because you had to think about shuffling and shielding what damage you could. 

I decided to remove it in the end and added Poison which damages you every 1 second (faster with higher stacks) and only gets cured when you move to the front row. This applies pressure, but you can decide to tank a little bit of damage if you want to stay back longer. The applier can also punish you for moving forward too brazenly.

There is also a card Venoshock, that deals dmg equal to the Poison stacks on the target. This lets you cash in all those Poison stacks before the opponent can cure it, and without waiting!

New shopkeeper sprites by jtangc!

DoE Alpha Access available (Ended)

I'm giving out alpha access to anyone who wants it. Note that the game is still very WIP and most of the testers are already very good. If you can, you should try to vs other new members first.

Matchmaking will probably have to be done via discord in #matchmaking channel.

DM me on discord if you want access! I'll have to give you a Discord role and steam key.

Analytics first draft!

I'm sure every well balanced card game needs these, but we finally have analytics working with generated reports! Thanks to Joe Darling for creating the program in python.

It still needs some work, but these reports will let me know how things are changing each version, what spells or characters are being overpicked or winning too much so I can adjust them. I don't think I want everything to be at 50% winrate everywhere, but it should reveal some important things about the meta in each version.

From a balance perspective it makes sense for all spells to be used equally, but it's fun to have niche spells that only some players like using, because not all players will be playing optimally to win. In addition, the power of a spell isn't the only thing that affects usage or winrate. If a spell looks really awesome, players will also want to use it more too! There was a game dev story about an FPS where the developers changed the sound of one of the guns to sound more loud and satisfying, and it's usage rate instantly jumped up!

I've attached the data in csv files by version in case anyone wants to take a look. Keep in mind this data will vary because we don't have many playtesters, and some of them like doing playing particular things!

If there's any reports in particular you guys want me to generate that I'm able to, I can generate it for you and add it to the post!

EVO 2023 Trailer and TAS

Had to send in a trailer for EVO indie showcase, and I didn't want to show the old content/sprites from the current trailer. So I made a new one! But I didn't want to re-do all the scenes and re-record everything every time I update the visuals. So I added a TAS (Tool Assisted Superplay) system.

The TAS scriptable object actually started out as a Tutorial setup, but I extended it so both characters could have set inputs based on frames. This way I can just record while the game runs through all the TAS scripts, and I'll have all my trailer content at the press of a button.

With balance changes, there might need to be a little adjustment of course, but it's so much easier now! All the fight scenes in the trailer are from these TAS scripts. In the future, I may try to figure out how to convert replays to this format, because it is a bit of a pain to manually add all of the inputs.

Below are screenshots of one of the TAS scripts for the Hazel vs Terra battle in the trailer:

Dev Update - Brands

Brands are back! But more subtle this time, with a background image on the cards that represent what type of spell it is. (the images are placeholder ones I made real quick)

Here are the current types: 

Shot - projectiles that move in a straight line

Step - step slash spells

Laser - the new hitscan type spells

Missile - spells that travel through the air with no hitbox, like Missiletow

Strike - Thunder, Ragnarok

Melee - close range spells with a solid hitbox

Wave - hits tile by tile

Utility - stuff like mana catch, transfuse, usually non damaging

I also want to do something for synergies like Flame or Frost, but I'm not sure if it's necessary since the keywords exist. I may tweak the border for those though, possibly having the color/shape change. I could even mix and match top and bottom borders. What do you guys think?

I've been messing with the card color/design too, I want it to look a bit different from One Step From Eden. These aren't the final colors!

Lastly, I'm in full development mode so I can work as fast as possible without worrying about breaking stuff and bugfixing. So no alpha patches anytime soon.

Selicy animation preview and project update

I'm back to working full time on Duelists! Sorry for the long break.

Currently working on lots of systems stuff like structuring the tutorial better and providing rewards for completing the tutorial, gaining character levels, and more.

Also trying to simplify the game and focus on providing complexity in other ways. I'm removing artifacts from the game and also simplifying and possibly removing some of the status effects like Hack.

Anyway here's a peek at a wip animation by @nucleose! We planned on doing something for all of the characters, but I think we'll only be able to get to a few.

Shopkeeper splash and sketches

Well, well, well. Look who's back! Will shopkeeper be in the game as a playable character? We'll see!

I just got back from vacation and will be getting back to work. Meanwhile the artists were cranking out some awesome stuff. Here's Victor's (HOAI) shopkeeper

Any guesses what her moveset might be?

Match History screen wip

Turning the replays screen into a "match history" screen by saving a little extra data in the replays such as winner, duration, owner (so the player is always on the left side).

You can still select/double click to start the replay and even import replay files from the file explorer.

If you guys have any requests for features on here please let me know!

About alpha access for Patreons (and Painter sneak peek)

Alpha keys and roles will be given out a few weeks before the next round of testing OR if I need more testers for any reason I'll prioritize you guys.

You're not missing much atm, as I get the game into better shape.

Thanks for bearing with me, and thanks to all the new patreon subs. Here's a sneak peak at one of the new characters we're working on!

Concepts were done by @SqueakyArt and splash sketch by @HOAIartworks

Testing Keys for Patreon subs!

Please either comment or DM me if you'd like to enter the alpha-testing for Duelists of Eden. I will be giving keys out to you guys this week!

Keep in mind everything is still WIP. Matches are currently found in Discord (I'll have to give you a role so you can see the channels).
Also please don't stream/share anything until further notice.

Built in Frame Data on cards!

Instead of relying on a wiki, I've added a frame data info viewer directly into the deckbuilder! 

This includes frame data info for:
Startup - startup time before hitbox
Mid - time during hitboxes spawning
Recovery - recovery time

OnHit - recovery time after hitting a target
OnShield - recovery time after hitting a shielded target
Active - time hitbox is active

In-game shop Draft 01

There will be an in-game shop where you can use in-game currency to buy stuff like palette swaps and outfits/skins for characters.

Also there will be a beta coming soon. Working on polishing the onboarding for new players and tutorials.

Let me know if you have any ideas for the shop!

Selicy splash art concepts

Done by HOAI Artworks, Selicy keeps her action-y pose and her scarf goes everywhere! I think it matches the theme and the colors of Duelists of Eden very well.

Selicy had the most pose sketches, usually characters only get around 3 but she got 6!

Duelists of Eden logo animation

Brushed up on some after fx skills and made this little logo animation for some of the upcoming DoE related videos!

Also made a Koishi Komeiji palette for Chiretta!

Maypul sprites sneak peek!

Surprise! We're doing a crossover with rivals of aether! Here's a peek at Maypul's sprites by jtangc.

I'm currently in the process of finalizing her moveset, including adding two unique status effects just for her mark/wrap ability!

If you have any comments, ideas, or preferences feel free to let me know in the comments.

Some palette swaps! Request in the comments!

If you have any requests for palette swaps for any of the characters leave a comment below. Can't guarantee anything but I'll try em out.