Ben 10 Bounty Hunters

Ben 10 Bounty Hunters, the CN Games Studio's biggest game ever! Ben 10 Bounty Hunters is an 8-player multiplayer battle. (Sorry IE only for now)

The Idea
Inspired by games like Soldat and Gunster, I wanted to make a 2D free-for-all battle game that was kid friendly. Kid friendly means, no real guns, no killing, etc. I also wanted to simplify and add some light auto-balancing features.

The Design
Ben 10 is an awesome property but it was impossible to use the main aliens from the show. The sizes are too radically different for a multiplayer game (Humongasaur vs. Gray Matter would be pretty unbalanced) and the show was moving towards the new Alien Force brand. We needed a setting that worked for story and game design.

The Mythos
We spoke with the show creator about the idea of 2 factions of bounty hunters (Six-Six is a favorite) that constantly wage battle to keep the other from finding the Omnitrix. While we were not using the core Ben Aliens as playable characters we highlight the setting of the Ben universe. The 2 factions of bounty hunters, Steglocks and Zyllids, fight on Wildvine's home planet among the ruin of a Gray Matter city or on the volcanic homeworld of Heatblast.

The Weapons
Kid friendly means no killing so the bounty hunters use "capture gel" weapons. Players are suspended for a moment is a bubble of goo. The weapon designs were tough. We wanted them to be recognizable as the core battle weapons (e.g. rifle, shotgun, SMG, etc.) but not look like real guns. I think they turned out perfect.

Players only have 1 primary weapon at a time and a backup weapon if primary weapon runs out of ammo. Primary weapons run out of ammo quickly. If a player is dominant with the shotgun, they run down to their backup weapon and give other player a chance to take them out at least once.

Weapons are designed for player skill and balance. The rifle does good damage but is hard to use due to the required precision. The shotgun does crazy damage but you have to be right next to your opponent. Both these weapons can be difficult to use so we have the spread gun. It is a mix of shotgun and rifle; it does a bit less damage but it easier to use.

Oh yeah, we have 2D sniping.

Capturing
The use of the "capture in place" mechanic worked out well. Players are released right where they are captured stacked with a few seconds of invincibility. This means no spawn camping. No area camping either because if you capture someone in a well-defensible area (or next to the rocket launcher spawn you were camping) you better run because they will be coming at you with invincibility in a few moments.

Levels
I was fretting over level design from the beginning. That was a big mistake that hindered the game in the early stages of design. I was focused on making a really flexible system for level design. In the end it didn't seem to matter as long as I followed a few simple rules (no dead ends. mix open and closed areas, etc.). Placement of items was used primarily to affect the level design as needed.

One thing I am really proud of if the level cropping. The levels are designed for 8 players but they are also designed to be cropped smaller for 2 or 4 players. No more running around a huge 8 player level looking for the 1 other guy on the map.

What's Next?
We couldn't simulate the kind of traffic CartoonNetwork.com brings so some unexpected bugs have popped up. We are fighting stability issues and making updates as fast as possible.

A great many things were cut for this release (what is that XP bar for?) but keep an eye our for all those goodies in a future update :)

Speaking at SIEGE

I haven't been active is quite a while. I suffered a major back injury and had to have surgery. I have been out of work for 2 months but I am going back next week. Good thing, I am going stir crazy.

I will be speaking at the Southern Interactive Entertainment& Game Expo (SIEGE) in early October. I racked my brain trying to think of a good topic and I think I finally came up with something. I wanted to find something unique. My game design position is a bit odd but I feel it allows me to see things other game developers/designers don't get to experience: volume.

Since I became a game designer at Cartoon Network I have worked on over 100 Flash/Shockwave games. I have worked with numerous people/companies on games and I see the same handful of mistakes repeated.

I have helped work out solutions for these issues so now when they come up its an easy fix.

This is not a slight against the companies that make games for CN. These are really smart, talented game developers. Our internal team has made some of these same mistakes but now that i have seen them so many times I recognize them easily and have checks in place so I don't make them from the beginning.

My talk will be these handful of mistakes. What are the mistakes? Why are they made? What are the solutions? I will present examples (not from actual games to conceal the identity of the innocent) of the mistakes and outline the solutions we use.

This talk will be applicable to anyone making Flash games or 2D games.

New Game - Magnetface

Another new game!

Magnetface

So this was an idea I had a while back. I wanted to make a platformer with magnetic powers. I had seen other games with magnetic powers but I thought they were often overly complicated. These games I played were practically physics simulations, play with attraction and repulsion, etc.

I just wanted to bounce heavy objects off my character and make him fall down.

As luck would have it, in this episode of Billy & Mandy, Billy gets a magnetic face. There is SO MUCH cut from this game. I have many other ways to use this mechanic. Maybe one day we can make a sequel.

Our new game designer Adam Wolf (adamwolf.net) helped with testing and level design. Much of level 3 is his doing.

New game - Outer Space Trace

We just finished up Outer Space Trace.

This is one of 5 games which will launched over the next 5 weeks. The CN Games Studio is doing the 1st and 5th games.

With this game I really wanted to push myself to make a mouse-based game. I have to use a special mouse and as a result my mouse dexterity is very poor. Due to this I have developed a bias to keyboard controlled games.

From the outset I was really excited about this design. I really felt it was one of my better designs, simple and easy to play, while still having enough variety and strategy for deeper play.

The programmer really helped realize this design. He & I worked together ironing out many design issues. I am so happy with the result.

My best connection is 28.

New Game - Utter Nonsense

In a previous post I mentioned I wanted kids jumping around and yelling in front of their computer. Loco Motion was the jumping around, now here is the yelling.
Utter Nonsense

You get to talk to Cheese from Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends! Originally concepted for Fred Fredburger (from Billy & Mandy), the only lines of voice over were "Fred Fredburger", "Yes" and "AGH!" Utter Nonsense has 72 lines of VO!

I really wanted to make the game very easy. Again, we are dealing with a new way to play so I wanted to limit frustration as much as possible. So when you give your input its very easy to not fail but its not that easy to get a "Perfect" score. I think it worked out well.

Thanks to the CN Games Studio for doing such an awesome job.