The 7 Year Making of Ballistic Zen | BZ Devlog
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 26 มิ.ย. 2024
- It took me 7 years to go from "never made a game before" to "I finished my first commercial game and released it on Steam." This is a rough documentation of that journey.
#indiegamedev #devlog #gamedev #gamedevelopment #indiedev #indiegame
BUY:
Steam: store.steampowered.com/app/19...
Itch: footnotesforthefuture.itch.io...
TIMESTAMPS:
Intro: 00:00
Inspiration: 00:55
Perfect Stride: 05:41
Goals: 07:26
Hoverblade: 08:45
Action Blocks: 12:48
Collaboration: 18:07
The Marathon: 22:40
Lines: 33:04
Ballistic Zen: 46:09
Everything Else: 47:25
What's Next: 48:26
REFERENCES:
My copy of Perfect Stride Alpha: drive.google.com/file/d/0B0rM...
Bunnyhop Tutorial: adrianb.io/2015/02/14/bunnyho...
RCSG tutorial: • CSG basics with Realti...
Hedera: github.com/radiatoryang/hedera
How I made the NPC models: • Blender Skin Modifier ...
Footnote Utilities (my unity library): github.com/alexjhetherington/...
My article about how I ended up with lines: www.footnotesforthefuture.com/...
My article on wall running: www.footnotesforthefuture.com/...
SOCIAL:
Discord: / discord
Twitter: / footnotesfuture
My Website: www.footnotesforthefuture.com/ - เกม
It's utterly amazing how much adding trees and changing the color affected the ambiance.
Trees are op
*ambience
@@StanleyKubick1 both spellings are correct
This is amazing!!! After playing BZ, I can tell how deep a role surf played in its design, and how you distilled it to a more digestible product. A lot of my viewers compared BZ to titanfall, but your emphasis on maintaining momentum (the core of surf's gameplay loop) sets this game apart from the competition. Bravo!
momentum maintenance is actually a massive part of titanfall’s movement, its super challenging and insanely rewarding. there’s so much tech to learn!
Making the random generation maps in a test lab them would be cool
Also if you really want, a tag mode would be so fun, like in the early version
Your shoutout to Spiderman 2's movement is appreciated. I remember years after outgrowing my Gamecube I would pull that game out just to swing around the city for 30minutes-1hour much like I do surfing on CSGO today. Once I get through Neon White I will check out your game! Thanks for this great video :)
I was expecting you to have to like 100k subs! This video was amazing and very educational! Definitely getting the game!
I watched the entire thing and loved seeing your progression throughout the years. Gave me inspiration to strive in my own passions :) I wish you luck with your game and hope everything goes swell!
loved the video, thank you youtube algorithms for showing me this
Amazing you were able to compose a product out of 7 years of hobby work! That amount of vision and resolve is definitely commendable, it does sound like having friends around that find your work interesting could be one of the main key reasons you kept on with it for so long. Makes me miss my school days!
Yep! Friends and free time was a killer combo I never took advantage of.
i found this game because repstersurf had it as a thumbnail for his stream so i searched it up, i might buy it
If you do, hope you enjoy!
Well done on the video. I picked up the game today.
I can't believe I missed this release, just bought it on steam! First saw it as I was starting game dev a few years ago and tried making a wall running prototype. Well done on completing it and looking forward to your future games. :D
Thanks! If you ever want to share any of your projects with me for play testing, feedback, or just for vibes, please do :).I love to hear from fellow wall run enjoyer (whether or not their game involves wall running)
You inspired me to continue working on my game! I'm always thinking about it and I've done some prototyping, but this narrow view of "i should start properly and make perfect game from the start" really makes all of game development less fun, so i thank you for reminding me that it is more valuable to express your vision and spending good time while making it!
its absolutely criminal how little subs you have rn. with this quality i expected your channel to have 10k subscribers
I used to play true skate a lot on my phone, this video made me so nostalgic for all the movement games i used to play🥲
Looks awesome, definetly gonna buy this on steam at some point
I had one look at this video and I went “isn’t this the really interesting arm rocket skating video from Jonas?” and then I watched the whole video and am now even more interested in it.
Congratulations on finishing!
I love this game and I have followed this game for a really long time! Good job and congrats on the release!
Thanks! Appreciate your support :)
User generated content would be cool, always love a game with a level editor.
Looks awesome dude!
Wish you and your game the best(Just bought it, already excited to play it!) ^^
I played zenith a long time ago. Super fun game, ignored the story but could spend hours doing stupid fun movement stuff.
still don't understand how you only have 90 subs, your content is great, video quality is nice ! Keep going you're gonna be famous :D
I think I'll need to release a devlog more than once every 7 years to get famous and I can't promise I'll manage :'D
This is one of the Ballistic Zen videos of all time. I was mezmerized watching, video is like game you wanna make, I'll be following
Great work, this deserves a lot of attention :) Feels professionally produced for a new youtuber!!!
that video is really inspiring and gave me the motivation to continue experiencing with game making thank you very much!
i love the game, you did a great job on the movement and i truly think that your game is one of a kind. hope you will come back to it and add more stuff
Its kinda amazing to hear such a similar love for these exact games N+ and Surf and your level making experience. So excited about this project! Maybe if I had pursued level design more and had connected with a community like you had I would be working on something very similar haha. ❤
Enjoyed your video! ❤️
Hope to see more of this!!
the procgen multiplayer mode looks insanely fun
Hey this is my first time coming across your one of your videos but i really enjoyed it and your game looks really enjoyable. Just got it on steam! Wish me luck (as i am terrible at surfing)
Really interesting vid! I am kind of struggling with making progress on my projects, but this kinda made me a bit more motivated to work again
You can do it!!
@@footnotesforthefuture3300 thank you!!
Love the art style!
Dude. I remember playing Zenith over and over and absolutely loving it. Finding all the secrets, getting to the moon... oh man what a throwback. I wish they made that into a bigger game.
happy to see someone do what i always wanted to or i still want to, it's just like u said no one makes what you like so you made one yourself, it's like an inspiration for me, i think i will try to do the same that is if i get time to i tried learning blender and godot last year but ig it didn't fit with my studies i am a post graduate now and idk if i will get time for my dream after i get a job, anyway great game i haven't played it yet but by just seeing it i get chills because i also wanted to play a game with superfast movement, actually a fps shooter with movements like your game, but i don't think anyone is going to make that , except you... and thanks for making this game, i wish i was a part of development of this game,
Purchased this awesome game! Thank you!
Man this is exactly the kind of game I love. The multiplayer procedural version is 100% something I would play
woah i thought this dude had alot of subs, wow ur incredibly underrated
game looks good. Well done 👍
oh I've never heard about tricksurfers, that's so cool
no idea why TH-cam decided to recommend me this video but the game looks really cool! I might give it a shot at some point, massive props to you for actually committing to such a massive project!
perfect strides reminds me of when i went on gmod with my friend and we battled while having the friction set to negative numbers
Thank you yt-algorithm for showing me this insane game! I always loved movement 'bugs'. Like ABH-ing in some source games or just bunny hopping in pretty much all if them. (That is why I am neon main on valorant btw :D)
That is why this game would suit ne quite well I think
wow you gotta release those collab features, they seem so much fun with friends... anyways amazing game bro 🫀🫀
Finished the game a few times now still missing two of the gold collectibles and I can say that the game is truly great, can’t wait to see the updates in the future
Such a good video
awesome dude
Amazing 🤗
Thanks for sharing your insights. And the game looks really nice, has those nostalgic PS2 era vibes
thanks for sharing
this is sick brah
nice video. It was suprising to see that you have only 500 subscribers.
The video was great, the game seems even better. I don’t think you’ll have to wait much longer to get more attention. You clearly deserve it.
What an amazing video
I really like that fun. Did you upload it anywhere?
Epic!
What an entertaining and insightful video, amazingly done.
And yes, outer wilds truly is the greatest game of all time! :)
Only game that has managed to get real tears from me!
amazing
amazing brother.
Well it's looking amazing, so looks like it's worth it :D
You should consider using clear auditory queues, and shifts the in music, like speeding up or changing pitch. It'll make it more obvious to the player that they have gained or lost speed.
17:40 lol the clambering diagram
Nice
Congrats! Game is looking awesome! I'll definitely keep an eye on it. For it to be a must purchase imo. I'd want to see co-op implemented. That's definitely not going to be easy though. I'm currently making a game in Unity. This seems like a very good video to study mainly about your approach and inspiration. I'll be coming back often to take notes. One question, what's your main social media? Just wondering where you got your audience. Since it seems you had people play testing it your game.
As you can see from the video it's extremely unlikely co op will be implemented. I'm sad to miss a sale but fair enough!
I have 3 social medias really - twitter; my website; discord. Check the video description :)
Getting people to play your game is an absolute grind - I'll share some thoughts:
1) twitter is like screaming into the void. I got a bunch of attention today from retweets from a semi-famous someone today and that was fantastic, but in general twitter has been useless
2) having a discord does not get you any attention - but it's great to have one *if your game is serving a unique niche*. People will slowly come, and it's really nice to have that.
3) having real life friends who are up for helping you is huge! That was a lot of my early testing.
4) I got a bunch of initial attention from some tutorial I wrote about wallrunning on my website. It's pretty much a fluke and no guarantee - but the point is that giving back can help get people involved in your community. This powered early testing.
5) I *paid* some people to playtest the game. Wasn't super interesting so I didn't mention in the video - but it was extremely useful and a guaranteed source. You shouldn't expect anyone to do anything for free; anything anyone does for you freely is a gift. It's fair to pay people. Understand that it might not be possible though! This powered 'medium' testing.
6) I got lucky and Jonas Tyroller featured my game on his channel and that got some attention; that got a bunch of people to the discord and that powered the later testing
7) I definitely would have loved to do more testing
8) definitely include links to all your socials on your socials; discord is definitely the best for organising tests; everything else is good for getting people to discord.
9) don't spam!
10) unfortunately all the activities that help you get testers are not directly related to forwarding your progress on the game (I mean - you have to put your stuff out there, and putting your stuff out there is a different activity from making progress)
The bottom line is this: there's no guarantee anyone will be interested in your project. Keep posting your stuff; try to be involved in the gamedev community and give back anyway you can (maybe by testing other people's games), and hope for the best.
Thanks for checking out my video. I wish you the best of luck, and feel free to DM me your project and I'll help testing it when I have time. :).
Hope that helps!
@footnotesforthefuture Well, I went on a long tangent. But seemed to have lost my comment. I was just saying that I agree with pretty much every point you made. I watched marketing videos recently and been doing some research. Twitter, I see as more of a game dev hub than a potential audience. It really depends on what type of video, gif material you post. Showing short and sweet videos is a better way to get people to be interested in your game. What you did with this video. Was basically sharing how your game was made. Which I think you made for game developers. So, basically not to drive sales. Discords for your audience are a must imo.
Paying for play testers is a great idea. Still early days for my project. But I'm definitely not stingy when it comes to putting money into my game. I plan on outsourcing a lot of the art using fiverr. Hopefully we could get someone on the team. But I'm not really at that point where we need one yet. I suggest you do research on steam. Try looking through what games sell well and what games don't. Take a day or 2 to do that. Kind of hurt when I saw all these good games not selling well. Casual games seem to do consistently well on steam. That is the niche I'm going for. I think the game you made will sell well. I can tell it's different than any game I've seen on steam before. I really love the line mechanic you added into the game. It's seems to have that final layer of polish on it as well which a lot of games are missing. Just keep marketing your game. The number 1 reason why people don't buy your game is because they don't know it exists. I think I got everything in there. Have a good day man. I'd love to have a talk with you on discord sometime. Gonna be busy moving stuff this weekend. So, it'll have to wait. But again congrats! 7 years is a helluva long time.
Baking lighting should always be the last step before shipping the game
good game
im gonna try the demo then see if i want to buy it
sssssssshhhhhhhhhhhhhheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeshhhhhhhhh
ben espacito and russel honor would be very proud, who knows, maybe they are
I hope so!
You could "detile" all your texture with some noise or overlay. Would make them look more natural.
Wow, what a genuinely insightful video. Out of curiosity, as someone who is clearly doing this out of love and passion rather than monetary incentive; what was your experience with the business side of things (particularly in the UK, which I assume you're from!)? Basically, I want to pursue a project like this but the business side of things scares me! Did you choose to form a company or did you sell as an individual? Would you suggest releasing passion projects such as this for free?
Yep I'm in the UK!
I'm currently a 'sole trader' which requires no setup whatsoever. If you make under some default allowance (£1000 as I recall) in a tax year, you don't have to do anything. If you make over that, you have to submit a tax self assessment. The tax self assessment is pretty long and boring but all things considered it's relatively straight forward (I've had to do it for other stuff)
Ballistic Zen is still small time and I've yet to make money; if those are your expectations for yourself I would recommend doing the sole trader thing i.e. no effort required.
The other option is setting up a limited liability company. It's a separate legal entity and there's a bunch of benefits, including the business can go into debt itself without affecting your personal finances (roughly). You have to pay a nominal fee and it looks pretty easy to set up. I opted not to do that; my recommendation would be to do that the moment you make any decent money (in my mind that means like £10,000) or the moment you want to hire someone permanently, take loans, go full time etc). (On that note of hiring people, I paid freelancers to do some things over PayPal, but basically straight from my personal account, it's a bit wild west but generally fine).
Whatever you do, the main thing is just keep records of exactly what you spend and what you gain (steam and itch give you reports so it's not much manual work - just make sure you know how to read those).
About whether to sell or not, it's a slightly different question. My opinion is:
1) you should charge for your game if you feel like it deserves it! Ballistic Zen is a bit of a weird game but it's a *unique* experience that I put a lot of time into, and I would totally buy it if someone else was selling it. I've made a bunch of jam games that I wouldn't dream of charging for because they're very short, janky, and experimental.
2) even if you do decide to charge, imo it's worth offering it for free too, anyway. Better people play the thing because it's free, than no one plays it because no me has heard of you! Even if I got loads of hype I would still try to offer a free version because I believe free copies end up as free marketing and will lead to a net total higher return... But my philosophy hasn't been put to the test yet. If I go full time ever we'll see :)
Overall - don't worry too much about the business side! If you have a problem because your game is selling well and you're not set up properly, thats a great problem to have; and you won't run into something terrible as long as you don't make decisions like sign away rights to other people etc.
The main thing is finishing the damn thing :)
Good luck and let me know how it goes!
@@footnotesforthefuture3300 That info is super helpful, just knowing how someone else managed it takes the burden off a little for sure, thank you! I think it was limited companies I looked into, but it didn't seem possible to run without an accountant which is obviously way out the budget of someone just trying to do it as a small hobby! But it's great to know it's possible to do it as an individual without that :)
I definitely agree that whether its for love or not, something made with so much time and effort should be worth something - your game looks to be worth every penny, I'll probably pick it up on steam at some point soon! But yeah it's definitely that feeling of, well the money isn't what I'm going for anyway so maybe a free release is just fine, definitely wouldn't hurt to have the option of both!
kinda reminds me of journey :D
Well that's a new one! Thanks!
Godot is about to get its fourth big update, Godot 4. So it's a pretty good time to learn it.
Very nice video, you should try out momentum mod!
Thanks! Definitely enjoy momentum mod. On the look out for other recs as well if you have them?
@@footnotesforthefuture3300 ig, i rly enjoy tf2 jumping and hl1 movement. i also recommend ultrakill bc the movement system is rly good there, there is just no bhopping, well there is but it doesnt get you any speed, only keeps your momentum. there is however slidehopping which increases your speed with every jump. another recommendation is of course titanfall 2, the movement is pretty complicated though.
I like this devlog!
Baking the lightmaps really shouldn't have taken more than a couple minutes on a GPU with the right settings. You may have had your lightmap scale way too high or used too many samples?
But not using lightmaps is definitely much faster
I experimented a lot. I don't think it's unlikely the right settings were there and I just lost patience trying to find them.
One thing I struggled with was the many different sizes of faces, and at some point I went down the rabbit hole of changing scales per face so larger faces had larger scales.
Something for me to revisit next time for sure
You would love rocket jumping in team fortress 2. Which is even harder to learn and more satisfying when you can do it well.
Definitely something I've tried to get into! I learned a few rollouts (could probably still do cp_badlands, but otherwise never got very good; too many variables for me!
there is NO WAY you have so few subscribers and this video has so few views... I THOUGHT I WAS WATCHING ONE OF THOSE 500k-1M VIEWS GAMEDEV VIDEO ESSAYS
46:42 lust for thrust? That name would be for a very different kind of game
I think you may have blundered by not using point scoring to teach the turning mechanic buddy. Good luck with the game though. I'm just disappointed that I can't use the tutorial points as the currency you mentioned later.
this looks familiar , did a youtuber played your game? because I remember this game
Yep! Jonas Tyroller
Have you ever played "perfect stride" for half life 2?
Edit: Omg you did lol
Oh it was originally a mod I think, I've never seen what you showed but cool!
I have! That perfect stride is the predecessor to the perfect stride i reference in the video; I believe it was made by the same people. I skipped it because the video was getting long enough already :).
I didn't like hl2 perfect stride that much; the arena was a bit too small for how fast you go and it felt a bit too chaotic for me. But I'm super thankful it exists! Not sure ballistic Zen would exist without it
Have you tried the game Stride?
I haven't, it's VR only right? I don't have a VR headset
uh the game of catch on auto gerated terra sounds really fun
:')
:)
I don't think sacrificing the visual quality of the game to cut down on lightmap baking was the right choice. Wouldn't it be easier to bake the lightmap only after you're done iterating over the level? Nevertheless, the game still looks great!
Thanks! Yeah I'd thought about it; I cut it out of the video to make the narrative (lol) a bit more straightforward; but yeah I'm not sure I made the right decision. I'll share the reasons why I didnt do it for posterity (although all debatable!)
1) I wanted to iterate on style before I finished the level layout; I could switch to baking at the end but then I'd have to do all the iteration at the end
2) Buildsize; lightmaps were getting pretty big!
3) I put this in another comment: I really struggled with getting the right lightmap sizes. You can see it in the video - there's a few visual glitches like sharp borders in the lighting where there shouldn't be. It's a consequence of me using large meshes with really varying sized faces that pretty much mandate giving each face a custom lightmap size
A MOVEMENT GAME I HAVENT PLAYED? oh wait im broke
Pay what you want on itch and buy it later on steam if you want to support me :) enjoy!
i really wanna bu bz but sheesh here in brazil the price is kinda spicy but i am going to stock some and buy it seems like a chill game
I was chatting to someone else from Brazil and they were telling me the same! I'm going from steam recommendations and they say that the price is adjusted for exchange rate *and* purchasing power but I guess it's not that accurate!
Still figuring out what to do, but in the meantime you can pay what you want on itch. Totally legit to get it for free on itch then buy it on steam or itch later if you think it's worth it!
@@footnotesforthefuture3300 hey man thanks in that case i am gonna wait for a while and grab 100 brl with my older bro so i can repay you for you dedication
cause you could just ignore me but you are trying to help me so thank you very much man
YO WTF I SAW THIS GAME YEARS AGO ON SOME GUYS TH-cam CHANNEL AND HE REVIEWED IT AND GAVE ADVICE LIKE GREENERY AND STUFF IDK WHOS VIDEO IT WAS THOUGH IDK HOW I REMEMBER THIS
Jonas Tyroller :)
@7:15 fine i do it my self xD
The Perfect Stride download isn't working for me, any chance you could reupload it?
It works for me - and I can confirm permissions are set up correctly. Maybe double check you copy / pasted it correctly?
Link again:
drive.google.com/file/d/0B0rMPGG6B5FaWFZ3R2ZWTS1MRVU/view?usp=sharing&resourcekey=0-wZHE32kuKgS8o2fm-qCEpg
Gosh if u knew you need this to make your game. I would made you all the models you needed men. I didnt new about your game in that time T_T
Dude you gotta re add multiplayer and procedural generation
I'm on ~1200 wishlists; 8800 to go ;)
How do you only have 566 subscibers
I don't post enough, I think :)
Imagine making a game for 7 years and then discovering that there is mirrors edge
:(
Nvm you mentioned it
Oh how do you like Titanfall 2?
Fantastic game :)
Please implement procedural races
Let's get those wishlists :D
you deserve more subs 7 years and only 100 subs feels kinda wrong
Found out about your game recently after Zerator's video (a french streamer th-cam.com/video/hKiV4d-66d8/w-d-xo.html ) and was instantly hooked ! I love going through the world and really want to speedrun it when I finish it !
Congrats for your work, your essay was fascinating, it's great !!!
Thanks for the kind words, and wasn't aware of this streamer! Thanks for letting me know :)
I think speed tracks in Trackmania would totally be your thing ;)
Yep there was a period when I spent a lot of time on Trackmania!
Didnt smi77y play this
Not that I know of, but send me the link if he did!