MelterMan Drops On DESURA!

The MelterMan early access is now up on Desura.com!  Download it and play for FREE!  Let us know what you think and vote for us on Steam.  We have more content coming, and plan to publish it on X-Box and Playstation.  Follow us on Facebook (MelterMan), Twitter (@MelterManGame) and at Melterman.com for updates.

http://www.desura.com/games/melter-man

GDC Interview

Check out this awesome interview from GDC with our professors and MelterMan's very own lead designer, Kyle Kern.  Thanks to Microsoft's Level-Up!

http://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Level-Up/Episode-8-Interview-with-Robert-Kessler-and-Roger-Altizer-of-University-of-Utah

Steam Greenlight and other notable mentions!

MelterMan is officially up on Steam Greenlight, so please vote for us!  We also have two reviews on youtube, check them out here:

Murel's Indie Hour Interview with our lead designer, Kyle Kern:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTt7uD1z0e0

Indie Insights play through:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BeXOFLYg73k

Steam Greenlight link:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=427787428

Thank you all for your support!

Finalized intro

I made a book asset for the intro (seen below) that simply tells our basic story and sets up the game.  We're also going to reuse the book for the pause menus.  We also discussed what to do about the end of the game for the full version.  We plan on having MelterMan press the big red shut off button and having the toys exploide.  We're still working on all of that, but I am making the final image which will be a memo from "the desk of MelterMan" saying something like "I got everything under control.  Sorry about the mess, I'll waive the fee for this one."

Continuing Refinements

We've been continuing to refine the artwork and level design since our demo build is due Tuesday 4/14.  I made 12 new background tiles for the levels to add some interest and change.  Kevin made some nice animations for our melting, vacuum and air cones.  These will add some nice motion and polish.  We also decided on a logo for the demo version and I'm still working on the intro with the instruction manual.

Polishing and Detail Assets

So now that we're getting close to being finished, most of the artwork left are just little things that make the game feel more polished.  I will be making a texture for inclined ground, revising the drain and faucet textures, revisiting the character's texture, making light and dark collidable gears, and Kevin will be making some animations for the sucking, melting and air cones.

We also needed to come up with some kind of story intro.  We decided to make an instruction manual that tells a factory employee what to do in case of a toy take over.  It will the in a similar style to the image below.  We should have a lot of fun with it!

Movement

So we're nearing the end of the semester and all the art left is mostly refining and finishing.  We decided that we needed better edge art work for the levels and that I needed to redo the graffiti words to look more cohesive.  We also felt that we needed to create more movement in the levels to make it feel more like a factory.  I made a gear asset that will be collidable and rotate, which can interact with goo and add random movement that should be interesting.  Also, I made modular conveyor belt pieces so we can create conveyor belts that are as long as we need them to be.  Each piece has its own sprite sheet so once a conveyor belt is created, it will animate together.  We are also going to make a toy spawner that spits out toys randomly.  We feel like adding these elements will add make the game more dynamic.

SaltCON!!

MelterMan was at SaltCON this past Thursday-Saturday.  We got a lot of good feedback and there was a lot of interest, which was great!  There were a lot of kids at the festival, so we got to see how our target audience did with the game.  For the most part, they we able to pick up on the controls very easily.  There are some levels that are too hard too early, so we will have to adjust those, along with a few other tweaks.  The kids especially liked the sandbox level where they could just do whatever they wanted and mess around.  We hope we got the word out and that more people will checkout and play our game.

GDC!

MelterMan is at GDC!  We've had some really great feedback and interest!  Our Beta is now available for download on our website: www.melterman.com.  This weekend I am working on the posters for SaltCON.  We will be there Thursday-Saturday next week, get tickets here: http://saltcon.com/tickets/.   Come and check us out!

Screen Shots From The Latest Build!

GDC Crunch

So last minute we had to come up with promotional box art and a build for the school for GDC.  For some reason, even though I only deleted the non-deformer history, it still broke the rig.  So then we went to what should have been the original plan, and just used the original textures and UVs as a template.  Since it was such short notice, I did a very basic texture, essentially just blocking out the colors.  I'll go back to add details to it later, for the next build.  I also made the box art below, and a scene for the website and Facebook page.  And we finally settled on our small logo for Twitter.

New Theme In Game

So we got the new artwork in the game and it looks great!  I think I like it even better than the original theme.  We showed this build on Tuesday to the class and some grad students who haven't seen it before, and they loved it.  I still have to get the new character's texture done.  I accidentally broke the rig when I deleted the history after laying out the UVs in Maya.  So I had to go back and redo them, only deleting the non-deformer history.  We should have it done on Thursday.  We're pretty much focusing on getting everything working and perfect for GDC next week.  

New Toy Factory Art Assets

So over the weekend, I pretty much just made a bunch of new art assets to replace the old ones for the new theme:

 

I also added some details to the"cupid" turret, now it's a baby doll that shoots plunger arrows at you:

Here is the new MelterMan Logo:

As you can see, the background stone tiles are now a blue-gray instead of having a purple tint.  Also, I got some new brushes for photoshop that look more like graffiti.

I still have to work on making new graffiti images that will replace the hearts.  I'm thinking gears and some factory signs.  I also need to make an asset that will replace the curtains.  I'm going to try to make some lamps that will tile nicely and hopefully look good.  We want to get this all done before GDC, so we have about a week left to get it all in.  I'm also going to work with our programmer Austin today to set up the scene for the start menu.  We will have the new logo and the menu buttons to the left, and on the right we will have a conveyor belt dumping toys into a pile.  After some time, red goo will spray onto the toys and melt them.  I think this will look great and be something interesting going on in the start menu.

Theme Overhaul!

Since we are shooting for an E ESRB rating, we have decided to completely change the theme of our game.  We know we have a fun mechanic and game play, that don't really hing on the theme.  To avoid any interpretation of a sexual theme, and to re-purpose as many art assets as possible, we have decided to set the game in a toy factory.  The idea is that MelterMan must restore order to a toy factory that has been taken over by evil toys.  In order to show the rest of the artists how we can change the theme with some of what we have, I quickly  made the scene below.

We should have a lot of the new assets done this weekend, so I will post some actual screen shots soon.  I plan to make rubber duckies to replace the candles, a toy box to replace the couch, the heart graffiti with gears, the teddy bears will remain.  We haven't quite figured out what to make to replace the curtains, but were thinking industrial lighting of some kind.  We will also incorporate conveyor belts, which should add some fun to the game play.

Textured MelterMan!

So we got the main character in the game and he's all textured.  Turns out the animations from Miximo aren't going to work for what we need him to do ie: hold a gun and shoot.  So Brandi, our animator has started making animations in Unity.  This is very new to her so it might take a while to get them done.  As far as the texture goes, we realized that his hair color is too dark and blends in with the background.  To fix this I made him a red head.  I think I might try making him blonde and changing his shirt to green instead of yellow.  I also upped the saturation on the rest of him to make him pop against the background even more.

The programmers are also having to completely change the controller for the character.  I think once that's done he will at least move fluidly and we'll have a good sense of how he will play in the game.  Our designer is also figuring out what size he should be to keep the feel of the game the same as with the Spelunky character.  Adding this 3D model has pretty much broken the game for now, but I think once we get it done, it will be great.

Back at it!

Over the break our modelers made both 3D models for the game.  I started texturing them and we hope to get them in the game soon.  Now we just have to get the textures done, the gun modeled and textured and all the animations done.  We're using Miximo's auto rigger and some of their basic animations, but there will be some custom animations we have to make.

Here are some screen shots of them without the textures, in T-poses: