We moved out of our old dev house and into the new, upsized version to better accomodate our growing team last week. Our old landlords decided to start their renovations early. Between hammering, drilling, paint fumes, boxes, removal trucks and new house hangovers, we still managed to make some progress. Here's this week's wrap up:

25 November

We're testing out making the alien blood acidic.

NEW THEME ANNOUNCED FOR THE NEXT WWB! Classic democracy defiling terrorism... Your new theme for the next Weekend Workshop Brodown is: DIE HARD. Yippee ki-yay, mother - you know the rest. Remember to add WWB2 in front of your level name! Check out the thread for guidelines and rules: http://steamcommunity.com/app/274190/discussions/0/617319460824658095/

27 November

Happy Thanksgiving!

28 November

WWB1 WINNER ANNOUNCED! @V, you sir, have built a fine level. Not only are you the winner of WWB1, but you are also a total Bro! Everybody else, check out his level WWB1 Operation Blackout: http://steamcommunity.com//sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=346068393

Special mention to @GandalftheRockWizard and @Camrondog98 - we're looking at extending the deadline to accomodate everyone :)

1 December

Ruan: Update on Steam - Mac workshop fixes

18 November

Ruan: @8SCARFace8 (SVK) ...Near future or long term goals for Broforce - more destruction variety, vehicles, better multiplayer (local and online), more modes, more levels, more bosses, more bros, better polish / presentation.

The update this morning was trying to fix people's level publishing failing.

19 November

Richard: Spikes are starting to look fun. Now to fix online bugs until the sun comes up! ^_^

I'm busy cutting up gameplay footage for festival submissions! :D

Ruan: Aliens vs Terrorists. Round One. FIGHT!

21 November

Ruan: Today, as yesterday, I am reimplementing all of our Steamworks intergration so that Workshop will work on Mac again.

23 November

Filip: Got some alien poop hole pipe designs done, and completed the cave backgrop graphics. It's going gewd you guys!

12 November

Evan: @dODODONGOS we might eventually have a couple disarmed versions of a couple of the bros. Most of the bros would be effectively the same bro when disarmed.

Richard: I spent the afternoon dying my hair and beard pink! 8SCARFace8 (SVK), we experimented with Terreria-esque fluid last year, but realised that the performance, online synchronisation and content intergration overhead is too high so we scrapped it :/

13 November

Duncan: I've been working on the brute alien for a few weeks now. Here's a gif of the walk cycle. It may need some tweeks, but I reckon it's basically done. Also he needs more animations, like charging.

Ruan: New update is live \o/

Basil: Bugs and fixes - devs have been busy like a lighter salesman on the 4th of July.

Evan: We've launched a Broforce level building competition called the WEEKEND WORKSHOP BRODOWN. It's basically a weekly thing where the best level submitted that week wins a Devolver game of their choice for the level creator (as well as fame and glory). Here's the thread with the rules etc:

http://steamcommunity.com/app/274190/announcements

Please submit some themes for the first week. They can be movies, or action tropes, or settings etc. Also, we made a simple level editor guide video for getting started with the level editor:

14 November

Ruan: Now that the housekeeping update is out of the way, I'm also starting to work fully on Alien. First up - enemy in-fighting! I'm getting the mooks and aliens to fight each other. Fun!

17 November

Richard: Still my ++++ty programmer art, but this is what I've been playing around with:

HOUSEKEEPING UPDATE 2014

New Announcer Voice

New and improved emotionally devoid announcer voice - GO GO GO!

Bug Fixes!

• Brobocop's special now allows targeting the same unit multiple times
• Fixed Brobocop's special targeting indicators getting stuck on screen
• Fixed Bronan melee/special interaction
• Tweaked Brobocop's attack and added extra feedback
• Improved New Campaign box in level editor
• Added some help tips to Level Editor
• Heavy Shells are no longer behind their red bombardment lines
• Enabled circumnavigation on world map
• More feedback for world map helicopter control in fighting
• Fixed big dogs vanishing when being thrown
  Made dogs climb better
• Fixed camera zoom bobbing in and out
• Fixed large helicopter boss camera tracks
• Fixed level author names not displaying in workshop browser
• Improved Level Editor look and feel
• New mouse icons for level editor
• Added tagging to workshop levels for improved browsing
• Added three types of Quick Triggers
• Fixed Deathmatch camera glitch near end of level and players not respawning at bottom of screen
• Fixed being unable to load the first unpublished campaign in custom levels
• Fixed supercheckpoints messing up level times
• Fixed invulnerable characters' interaction with spikes
• Fixed some optimisation issues
• Fixed grass particles being incorrect color on other themes

Improved Level Editor UI

The level editor UI no longer burns eyes (as much as it did before).

Steam Leaderboards

Each custom level now has its own leaderboard!

04 November
Ruan: Been making some progress on the xenomorph climbing... THERE'S NOWHERE LEFT TO RUN!

6 November
Evan: I've been trying to fix the colours of the particles in the game. Some particles were blatantly the wrong colour... now they should be mostly appropriately coloured.

7 November
Richard: Glitch Art!

And also alien eggs spewing face huggers.

9 November
Evan: This is a kind of silly thing to do, but with the next update, if you want to, it will be possible to make terrorists lose sight of you by ducking in long grass.

10 November
Filip: Animating alien eggs!

28 October

Ruan: Implementing leaderboards for workshop custom levels.

So far I have the top score on every single level. Get on my level, casuls

30 October

Richard: I'm playing around with distortion shaders to push the terrain back as the bro moves through the tract. It's not right yet, but might just work!

31 October

Evan: I'm working on making the Xenomorphs climb...it's still pretty rough. Here's an image of the progress:

Richard getting into the Halloween spirit:

3 November

Ruan: Now that the aliens are capable of climbing roofs, I'm busy adding that functionality to the pathfinding system. Once that's done, I will be adding it to their AI. You'll hate me for this later ;)

21 October

Duncan: I've been working on some Xenomorph animations. Here's the not-quite-finished spritesheet:

The Xenomorphs have been re-designed, so I'm basically redoing the animation that was already there, with the new design. The JPG compression messes it up a bit, but I'm sure you get the idea :) They were redesigned because nothing is considered done in Broforce until it's had at least 3 iterations :P Also because they look better now :)

Filip: I'm busy updating and creating new animals. Here are some pigs, oink oink!

Ruan: Have you ever wondered what game developers do on their rare weekends off, when they finally don't have to work on games? Well, they work on games of course! We had a private jam this weekend and I started work on a game called Mehrgehrzerds.

22 October

Richard: What have the mooks being doing to the villagers?!

Ruan: I am (trying to) debug this block of code...

What do you think it does? What do you think is wrong with it? 

23 October

Duncan: Now I'm animating another alien. The Brute. He's not even close to done. Just layed out so programming can work on his mechanics.

Richard: Dev log - Ruan discusses level features and why we like weird levels:

27 October

Shaz: Deon, our musical maesbro, is in the office today, working on constructing high and low intensity variations of the original level music, reworking it to bring it in line with the adaptive music system we first implemented in Expendabros. This will bring the completed level music count to four, allowing for a more dynamic score across the various level types. Also working on the Alien level ambiences (cue audio easter eggs...)

14 October

...

15 October

Evan: We're planning a small housecleaning update in the next couple weeks, just with fixes, maybe Steam Leaderboards, but very little new content.

16 October

Ruan: While our art team are focused on getting some Alien stuff ready for us to implement, the programmers are toiling away at our so-called "housekeeping update" that will be focused on removing lots of small, long standing issues as well as more improvements to the level editor and sharing system. Here's a peek at a small portion of the buglist:

Richard: A wild dev log appears! Evan discusses level design in Broforce:

Ruan: Here are some concepts for alien terrain and interactables.

20 October

Shaz: Dawid's been working on a UI upgrade and some art for newsletters:

8 October

Evan: I'm going to stick in the new levels in the arcade campaign today. 

I might make Max's short range damage a bit higher, closer to Brodell.

9 October

Filip: I'm busy massacring [villagers]...It's rather joyful.

10 October

Richard: Looking into controller thing. [controller not working while playing online as a client]. [and some other bugs]

Evan: The Humble builds are with Humble (as of last night)...Humble usually takes a few hours to put them up. 

I've fixed Indianna Brones' inability to throw mooks...that was a bit embarrassing.

Here's a gif of him throwing a suicide mook...

I'm a bit sad about a couple things in the new update. I think we didn't do a good job with the music integration, and I want to fix that. Or at least improve that for now.

12 October

Evan: I added a brief guide to make level publishing a bit easier:

http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197995706092/myworkshopfiles/?section=guides&appid=274190

13 October

Ruan: Here's a screenshot of what our Mercurial commit log looks like around the time of an update.

Evan: I'm working on the hiding mooks and the grass (though Richard is looking into that).

Here's a gif of our progress. (The grass obviously needs to be bloody, and should fit better with the normal grass)

NEW TRAILER

This month's update in 60 seconds reads like a love letter to Michael Bay. 

IMPROVED SYSTEMS

STEAM WORKSHOP SUPPORT

• You can now share levels and update previously published levels on Workshop
• Automated GIF generation of all levels posted to Workshop
• Improved custom level browsing

NEW LEVEL EDITOR LOOK AND FEEL

• New triggers available for scripting level success, failure, victory and defeat
• Character commands - you can now script enemies' behaviour
• Enable / disable triggers with trigger actions
• Mass doodad replacement tool and doodad filter
• All Expendabros content integrated including saw blades, gun walls, new forest theme and female villagers!

ONLINE

• World Map, Race Mode, Explosion Run and Custom Campaigns now available for online!
• Improved Lobby for finding and joining games
• Replaced networking backend with Steam P2P API for improved player connectivity
• You can now invite Steam friends to join your game
• Online Explosion Run and Custom Campaigns are still very alpha and will most likely break - we are working hard to improve the experience!

NEW BROS!

THE BRODE

The world's deadliest assassin is on a rampage to get bloody retribution. She's working her way into even the most cold and hateful mooks' hearts...with the Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique. Revenge is messy.

BRO MAX

When terror takes over the highway, there is one man who is ready to stand alone...with a team of 24 other bros...to beat back the madness.

AND MORE!

• New levels!
• New enemy - Bazooka Mook
• All new foliage with deeper, thicker jungle

TWEAKS & FIXES

IMPROVED MOOK PHYSICS!

• Hold melee to throw an enemy
• Thrown / blased mooks can now bounce off others

Plus:

• Flashbangs affect vehicles
• Fixed trucks blocking flashbangs
• Villagers are smarter
• Spikes are not broken anymore
• Cherry Broling is slightly stronger

29 September

Ruan tries out a custom saw level for some level creation inspiration:

Richard discusses the perils of online deathmatch: Technical limitations of latency make it impossible for us to guarantee a high quality deathmatch experience. Think about it like this - If we have ping on 200ms to one another then when I shoot you, two possible problems can occur. Either I hit you on my screen, but on your screen the bullet misses, or on your screen I hit you, but on my screen I missed. Latency discrepencies are less of an issue with co-operative mode or modes with little player interaction.

http://www.polygon.com/2014/3/11/5491146/why-you-dont-want-an-online-mode-towerfall

30 September

Ruan: I'm going over every bug / suggestion list I can find and implementing what I can. More improvements to villager AI, the level editor and other not-super-exciting-but-still-important stuff are basically what I'll be doing until we launch the update. 

Our art team is here in full force - a rare occurance, oft foreshadowed by the red moon - so we'll get some badass promo art for the update & workshop ready. 

Finally - if you have a mac and would be willing to test the update, please join the beta group and add me on Steam!

[No posts for 2 days, update cruuuuuunnnnch!]

3 October

A glimpse into our daily lunchtime meetings:

Evan: I'm building some new levels. Here's a really short timelapse:

Ruan has tried to adjust it so that players who've played well past the last unlock don't instantly receive the new bros with each update. 

I'm busy adding some new maps...But at some point I'm going to rework the World Map system. Possibly in the next update, certainly before the end of January. It will probably mean removing some player progress, so I'm really not keen on doing it until we have a lot of new content to add to make that worthwhile :/

5 October

Richard: If anyone has a chance can they test the World Map Campaign online with a friend?

Thanks guys. I'm going to update the build now then test with whoever is around. 

I made a new thread so that this one doesn't go off topic:

http://steamcommunity.com/app/274190/discussions/0/613937943086127547/

6 October

Richard: We're busy putting the finishing touches on the update, Evan's building levels, Jarred's working on promo art for Steam, and I'm fixing little bugs. Things are surprisingly calm. I think we are getting better at this "making games" thing. Still, its going to be a long night.

I'm playing around with animation for long foreground grass. Not sure if its quite right yet.

7 October

Wee hours of the morning of update deadline day, three of the team members still going strong

HAPPY BIRTHDAY RICHARD!

We've started a daily development progress thread on Steam - not always very exciting but for those of you who like to know what's happening, check it out. We'll be posting weekly summaries here on the website too, if you're not a Steam user.

21 Sep

Ruan: I'm currently working on browsing user generated content from within the game. We're using a library that's missing some of the features that I need, but I managed to get the source and add some missing things. In this image you can see that I'm managing to list two of my test campaigns uploaded to workshop. It doesn't list them like that consistently, but I'm working on it. And the browser won't be as ugly as this xD

Success! So apparently Steam just sometimes says its busy if you request levels. Other than that it looks fine. You can now upload, view and download custom campaigns on the Steam workshop. Next step - building menus and interface for browsing, and doing things like keeping track of which levels you have played, sorting options, etc etc. Good times.

22 Sep

Richard: I'm busy making custom maps playable online, though the amount of bandwidth that players are going to need to play a map like this will be ungodly :P

Ruan: So the new system is working as well as the old system right now - you can upload / browse / download user created levels, using the Steam workshop! Incoming is all the things that were missing - better filters, search options etc.

23 Sep

Ruan: Workshop upload, ingame browsing, downloading and playing working fine, and the workshop page is starting to look sweet.

The game autogenerates a gif of you playing through the game as a workshop image. Next up - I need to implement rating of levels and check that the browsing is working correctly, which is tricky with so few levels up right now. And the closed beta group are afk and not uploading enough levels :/ So the workshop browser might suck a bit initially until there are enough levels up for me to test. Still though, it's currently at least as good as the old system!

25 Sep

Evan: At the moment throwing a mook into a barrel doesn't set it off... This is something that could happen though... Here's a gif of the current mook throwing.

26 Sep

Jarred: Posting up some new bros I did art on. Evan is busy working his magic, making these bros playable!

Evan: Here's some more throwing fun. The spike traps have been bothering me. They made a funny sound when a thing died on them, and sometimes you could kind of jump off them (especially at low framerates)...So hopefully the spikes are a bit better now.

27 Sep

28 Sep

Ruan: No cool screenshot today from me, now that workshop seems ok for launch, I'm going through bug lists / suggestions for the level editor. Some basic improvements in how the level editor looks, some improvements with managing large amounts of doodads, as well as some other small tweaks and fixes as we close in on our update launch. A bit worried as we haven't started building levels though...

Jarred: New art