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Title: Recess Rabbit Rumble
Release: January 28th 2018 Development Period: 2 Months Development Status: Completed Availability: PC (Arcade Cabinet) Tagline: There's only room for one classroom pet! |
Development Team:
Producer - Carlo del Mundo Designers - Erinn Thompson, Richard Faustino Programming - Carlo del Mundo, Richard Faustino Art - Erinn Thompson Full Game Credits Listed Below |
In Recess Rabbit Rumble, you play has either Hoppy or his brother Skippy, the two classroom pets of an unnamed school. However the students seem to be growing bored of the two and the school is looking to replace the two rabbit brothers! And it seems like the replacements aren't too keen on keeping our hero's around either...
Controls:
The controls may seem bizarre but this is because it has been designed to work for a PC that is housed in an arcade cabinet. Eventually an alternate control scheme will be implemented for more friendly use!
Controls:
The controls may seem bizarre but this is because it has been designed to work for a PC that is housed in an arcade cabinet. Eventually an alternate control scheme will be implemented for more friendly use!
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Player 1
Movement: WASD Shoot: F OR C Jump: G OR V Start: 1 (also pauses) |
Player 2
Movement: Arrow Keyes Shoot: k OR , Jump: ; OR . Start: 2 (also pauses) |
Development Log
For the first time in my game-making career I was able to create a game with real art and most importantly: animations. In case you missed the blog posts Recess Rabbit Rumble was made for a game development class, but I took some time after the game was submitted to give it further polish by optimizing some of the rushed code used to meet the initial due date, removing extraneous files, and making multiple difficulty adjustments.
Designing the game was a strange exercise in creativity as the premise of the game may indicate. Cabal (as covered in this blog post) was the inspiration for the mechanics of the game and Cuphead was the inspiration for the core design aesthetic of the game being challenged as well as gameplay structure. Admittedly I can't say if the artistic aesthetic of the game was also inspired by Cuphead as that's up to Erinn's discretion, however the crayon-like feel of the art really complements the setting.
Designing the game was a strange exercise in creativity as the premise of the game may indicate. Cabal (as covered in this blog post) was the inspiration for the mechanics of the game and Cuphead was the inspiration for the core design aesthetic of the game being challenged as well as gameplay structure. Admittedly I can't say if the artistic aesthetic of the game was also inspired by Cuphead as that's up to Erinn's discretion, however the crayon-like feel of the art really complements the setting.
In the early stages of the development, the first level "Night of the Living Dummies" was used as a testing room for the core movement and shooting mechanics of the game. The artist was able to create the art assets for the rabbits very quickly and began working on the first level we had planned to create being "Sleeping with the Fishies." However for initial beta testing, I felt that it would be appropriate to allow players to actually shoot a target so I created some crudely drawn dummies and apples. Eventually the stage evolved into the tutorial and features the only art in the game done by myself.
Tutorials, as it turns out, are incredibly difficult to do well especially in a game meant for the arcade. One consequence of designing the game for a single joystick and six buttons was that moving and shooting couldn't fluidly occur at the same time. As mentioned previously Recess Rabbit Rumble was inspired by the shooting controls of Cabal and as I found it was difficult to convey that moving and shooting could not happen at the same time. Despite flashing prompts to inform the player most people either didn't read them or weren't able to understand. As a result I removed the ability to skip the tutorial in later versions and increased the timer to ensure that players had an understanding of the controls.
Tutorials, as it turns out, are incredibly difficult to do well especially in a game meant for the arcade. One consequence of designing the game for a single joystick and six buttons was that moving and shooting couldn't fluidly occur at the same time. As mentioned previously Recess Rabbit Rumble was inspired by the shooting controls of Cabal and as I found it was difficult to convey that moving and shooting could not happen at the same time. Despite flashing prompts to inform the player most people either didn't read them or weren't able to understand. As a result I removed the ability to skip the tutorial in later versions and increased the timer to ensure that players had an understanding of the controls.
Arrays proved to very helpful in managing the scaling difficulty of each level and the smaller changes to the health points that I made post-release. The second level in particular "Slithering Serpents" had to be significantly scaled down after I realized that (1) not all players understood that the carrots only registered hits where the crosshair was when the carrot was fired (it isn't a moving hitbox) and (2) many players weren't comfortable with aiming and shooting yet. Thankfully the difficulty scaling for the level is controlled by two arrays: one representing the 5 stages of speed the snakes move at and one representing the health each snake spawns with depending on the number of players.
One of the most underappreciated parts of making a game feel tactile is synchronizing the animations of the objects on screen with the back-end code. Movement is a fairly obvious example where this is required but one small detail that needs special attention is the speed at which an object is moving across the screen in relation to the speed at which the animation is playing. The lizard enemies in particular required the hitbox for the tongue to move along with it per frame to avoid unjustified hits.
After all this time it was great to finally be able to work with a team on a game and a special thanks to Erinn for being my first artist!
One of the most underappreciated parts of making a game feel tactile is synchronizing the animations of the objects on screen with the back-end code. Movement is a fairly obvious example where this is required but one small detail that needs special attention is the speed at which an object is moving across the screen in relation to the speed at which the animation is playing. The lizard enemies in particular required the hitbox for the tongue to move along with it per frame to avoid unjustified hits.
After all this time it was great to finally be able to work with a team on a game and a special thanks to Erinn for being my first artist!
Licensing and Credits
Developed with the Godot Engine
godotengine.org/license
In Game Music Credit:
Main Menu/Theme - Rocket Power
Story Intro - Bummin on Tremelo
(Intro) Night of the Living Dummies - (Rocket) Your Call
(Intro) Slitherin Serpents - (Night Cave) Exotic Battle
(Intro) Sleeping With the Fishies - (Deadly Roulette) Off to Osaka
(Intro) Fearsome Furry Fiends - (Faster Does It) Fast Talkin
(Intro) Reavenous Reptiles - (Hard Boiled) Nonstop
(Intro) The Terrible Tortoise - (Rollin at 5) Hall of the Mountain King
Victory - Motivator
Defeat - I Knew a Guy
All songs used can be attributed to:
Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Sound Effects from http://www.freesfx.co.uk
Additional sound effects created by Carlo del Mundo
Developed with the Godot Engine
godotengine.org/license
In Game Music Credit:
Main Menu/Theme - Rocket Power
Story Intro - Bummin on Tremelo
(Intro) Night of the Living Dummies - (Rocket) Your Call
(Intro) Slitherin Serpents - (Night Cave) Exotic Battle
(Intro) Sleeping With the Fishies - (Deadly Roulette) Off to Osaka
(Intro) Fearsome Furry Fiends - (Faster Does It) Fast Talkin
(Intro) Reavenous Reptiles - (Hard Boiled) Nonstop
(Intro) The Terrible Tortoise - (Rollin at 5) Hall of the Mountain King
Victory - Motivator
Defeat - I Knew a Guy
All songs used can be attributed to:
Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Sound Effects from http://www.freesfx.co.uk
Additional sound effects created by Carlo del Mundo
Last Update: 07/03/2018