Ontem foi o terceiro aniversário da Aduge!!!

O jogo ainda está um pouco incompleto do jeito como está agora, mesmo tendo um começo e um final, já que precisamos trabalhar em algumas das mecânicas, na implementação de vários assets e o level design geral. Semblante também é bastante simples, você controla Jung dentro da sua mente enquanto ele procura por sua própria identidade (representada por uma máscara) enquanto evita as sombras que o cercam. A metáfora é óbvia e não irei me demorar mais nela.

As mecânicas são bastante simples. Jung tem 4 mecânicas. Ele pode se mover, pular, brilhar e gritar. Para brilhar o personagem precisa ficar em um dos raios de luz para carregar o seu corpo. Jung brilha por um tempo limitado de tempo, e enquanto irradia luz as sombras são repelidas. Jung também pode usar seu brilho remanescente para gritar e atrair as sombras para si. Nós temos vários bugs para arrumar, mas as mecânicas core estão todas lá.

O pessoal da PUCPR (nós estamos à direita, de “uniforme”)

Deixando o jogo de lado e falando sobre o Jam em si. Foi uma experiência muito gratficante (e exaustiva) participar do Global Game Jam. As mãos extras foram cruciais para o jogo chegar nesse ponto. Em nome do time eu gostaria de agradecer ao Flor, Santo, Paulo e Rossato pelos seus esforços e dedicação durante o Jam. Nós também gostaríamos agradecer a Bruno Campagnolo por organizar o local do Jam e pelos refrigerantes e esfihas free. Nós iremos participar novamente ano que vem!

Março de 2009: A Aduge começa a desenvolver seu novo jogo, codinome Tsar Projeto.
Abril desse ano: Nos mudamos para o novo QG no Edifício Azuri.
Maio: O studio faz 2 anos.
Julho: Os Adugans compram uma máquina de espresso.
Setembro: Ainda sem festa de boas-vindas? Como assim???

Não mais! Uma semana atrás, no dia 8 de Setembro, a tão esperada Festa do Café da Aduge aconteceu nas três salas do Azuri que o studi atualmente usa; sendo elas o QG Em Si, o Quarto do Sol e A Cozinha. Tivemos aqui alguns dos nossos amigos mais próximos, cafés especiais de Minas, São Paulo, Espírito Santo e Paraná, e óbviamente, jogos.

Ingrid e Marcel competentemente assumiram o papel de baristas, e, entre espressos e cappuccinos normais, prepararam algumas variações interessantes como machiattos, mochas de nutella e nosso exclusivo café com brigadeiro. Tivemos também pães, cucas, bolos e salgados providenciados por nossos queridos convidados. Quanto aos jogos, do N64, Super Smash Bros. e Mario Tennis, e do CPS3, o preferido dos Adugans, Street Fighter 3 Third Strike (apesar de que não temos uma cabine CPS3, ainda, fazemos o melhor possível com um emulador). Os mais memoráveis de todos foram com certeza os desafios de Smash Bros. com 4 jogadores.

Gostaríamos de agradecer nossos convidados e certificar a todos de que foi realmente um prazer e razão de grande felicidade para todos nós ver vocês por aqui, então, voltem logo! E para aqueles que não visitaram o studio ainda, estajam certos, estamos esperando sua visita!

Estamos trabalhando em um projeto “novo”! Ele começou no último mês de Março e atualmente estamos aproximadamente na metade de sua pré-produção. Nós o chamamos de

Tsar Projeto.

Em breve vamos começar um diário de produção aqui mesmo neste blog e mais informações serão apresentadas futuramente em uma página especial.

Samus learning how to defeat Ridley by Vermon

Some Saturdays ago we hang out at Beto’s place. Our day’s mission was clear, to finish Super Metroid with 14% item collection rate. For those of you who don’t know what that means, 14% is one of the many alternative game modes for Super Metroid in which you must finish it with a 14% rate of collected items, the minimum possible without the use of heavy glitching (namely X-Ray climb). To achieve this task we had to make some sequence breaks, and beat some hard bosses with less than 3 times the normal items and energy.

Super Metroid is a great exemple of what some game designers call Organic Difficulty, the kind of game where the player chooses if they want to power-up or not. In the Zelda series, for exemple, when you beat a boss a piece of heart will appear, but the player chooses whether to take it or not, so alternative gameplay challenges appear (like the 3 heart contest, where you should beat the game with only 3 hearts, or the Caterpie/Wurmple solo challenge on Pokemon games). These kind of challenges are common on most progression games but some are more rewarding and fun to play like the aforementioned Zelda and Super Metroid examples.

In Super Metroid this organic dificulty is very dynamic ranging from cakewalk difficulty level (100% any time run) to near frustrating difficulty levels (14% speedrun). If you want to finish the game with 100%, you will end up overpowered as for most of the bosses you only need some of the equipments. For instance, you can kill Ridley (not the last but the most difficult boss) with 30 supermissiles, or only 20 charged plasma/wave/ice shots. But you can do this without all these equipments. Aiming for 14% it would take all 15 super missiles, 5 missiles, 5 power bombs (hitting twice) that you have available, and 109 charge beams shots. All this while avoiding Ridley’s semi-random attack patterns, since you’ll only have three energy tanks (or 400 health).
Super metroid presents you with a lot of features to help the player perform sequence breaks, like wall jumps and infinite bomb jumps amongst other more obscure (and glitchy) mechanics like the famous Mockball. You can find out about these tricks here.

To support all this sequence breaking and alternative progression systems, Super Metroid packs a carefully built level design, in which everything fits so you won’t get stuck while trying to do something you weren’t supposed to. Some examples of how the level design helps sequence breaking in Super Metroid are the rechargers and cold rooms you find while hell running (passing through hot rooms in Norfair without the Varia Suit), the fishes and other elements in Maridia that allows you to traverse it without the Gravity Suit, the physically different lava pits before Lower Norfair, etc. The game has also lots of exploitable bugs-as-features like, blue suit, mockball, speed ball, horizontal bomb jump, shoulder pumping, and other more abusive bugs like X-Ray Climb and the Glitch Beams that help on sequence breaking, speed running or reducing the minimum % to finish the game. Some of these bugs are very handy and usually don’t do any harm to the game’s runtime. Sometimes we are left to wonder if these bugs were discovered by the designers and after evaluation were just left unfixed on purpose.

All that rabble was to praise Super Metroid for it’s excelence in game design overall. The game is impressive on so many fronts that its clearly no wonder it hasn’t aged on its 14 years of glory. Super Metroid is something like a unanimity at Aduge. We all love it and we play it extensively even today making experimental runs or just-for-fun playthroughs and challenges (some of them were even played during our strategic planning!).

So for all of you fans of Metroid out there, get to work. Get your friends together, buy some pizzas, prepare your living room and pump up your Super Metroid. You can play the 14% Challenge, Redesign, Impossible, or whatever you feel like it. And don’t forget to get your super-missiles before entering lower norfair. We did.

With one meter high and directly from the under-meta-world comes this soft blue creature. It’s mission is not known, but all the creatures that have come to his path know it is quite fast and has a dark sense of humor. We may add it also has a quite flexible moral. This little creature is not a Pokémon (and will probably hurt you a lot if you dare to compare him to one). It attends by the name of Bichinho, and has more girlfriends than you ever dreamed of.

Although not originally created for this purpose, Bichinho is the main character of project Cedilha. It has gathered many fans, probably because of the combination between a cute and smiling appearance, and a definitely strong personality. We would like to enjoy the opportunity, and make a quick interview with Mr. Bichinho. (we’ll be having automatic translation)

Ghost Board: How do you feel being so loved and desired?

Bichinho: Meh, I don’t really care. As long as people don’t get into my way, they can desire me as much as they want.

GB: In which Olympic sport would you like to take part?

Bichinho: Any. /me love sports. With the right uniform I can do anything.

GB: But then, wouldn’t you be Kirby?

- The interview had to be interrupted, as our interviewer had to be changed and taken immediately to the surgery room. We quickly replaced him by another. -

GB: Our readers would like to know what inspires you to keep running through the levels.

Bichinho: Have you ever asked yourself where you came from? I’m sure I’ll find something at the end of all this.

GB: Do you feel bad, or what do you feel when people think you’re a pokemon?

- We gave up. Two interviewers in one day is way too much. –

(This interview was brought to you by Ingrid Skare, casually known as Night-Fox, or simply as Fox. Ingrid is Cedilha level designer, but is now busy learning pixel art.)