Rise of the Clockwork Stallions DX Update #2
Rise of the Clockwork Stallions is a vast game. With more than fifty levels, more than fifty characters, and more boss battles than most triple A titles, you'd be left to wonder, what else could we have possibly planned for the Director's Cut? Some people have asked if this is going to be similar to DLC for RCS.
In this update, I'm going to walk you through a lot of the changes we've made to the game. I hope you're just as excited as we are to finally get to show everyone all of the work we've been doing over the last few months. This is definitely not a DLC for Rise of the Clockwork Stallions. There is a lot to cover, so grab a drink and something to eat!
-Note! Your previous save files WILL NOT WORK in the Director's Cut. There have been far too many changes to game code, and content for your saves to port over smoothly.-
In this update, I'm going to walk you through a lot of the changes we've made to the game. I hope you're just as excited as we are to finally get to show everyone all of the work we've been doing over the last few months. This is definitely not a DLC for Rise of the Clockwork Stallions. There is a lot to cover, so grab a drink and something to eat!
-Note! Your previous save files WILL NOT WORK in the Director's Cut. There have been far too many changes to game code, and content for your saves to port over smoothly.-
Overall Goals:
When I first started working on the Director's Cut, I had one major fear. I was worried that I wouldn't be able to improve the game enough to warrant a return play through for players that had already 100%'d the full release version of Rise of the Clockwork Stallions. Now though, after all the work we've put into the game, I find it hard to even go back to the full release. The Director's Cut plays better, sounds better, looks better, and is far more rewarding and balanced than the full release. There have been UI redesigns and improvements for relaying information to the player, that I feel, will be vital for anyone looking to unlock late game content. A lot of music tracks have been reworked, or outright replaced. Some character sprites have been redone, some level tiles have been completely redesigned from scratch, and there have been a lot of improvements made to level design.
When I first started working on the Director's Cut, I had one major fear. I was worried that I wouldn't be able to improve the game enough to warrant a return play through for players that had already 100%'d the full release version of Rise of the Clockwork Stallions. Now though, after all the work we've put into the game, I find it hard to even go back to the full release. The Director's Cut plays better, sounds better, looks better, and is far more rewarding and balanced than the full release. There have been UI redesigns and improvements for relaying information to the player, that I feel, will be vital for anyone looking to unlock late game content. A lot of music tracks have been reworked, or outright replaced. Some character sprites have been redone, some level tiles have been completely redesigned from scratch, and there have been a lot of improvements made to level design.
Character Selections
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In the last update, I promised that we would be introducing at least one new character to the Rise of the Clockwork Stallions Roster. It was crazy to think of adding any more than that right? Well, I'm not going to necessarily reveal all of the new characters, but I can tell you that the character selection screen had to be completely redesigned to make enough room for all the additions. Some of which, are the most unique and interesting characters in the RCS roster.
You might notice that we've also added something to help you keep track of new characters you have yet to play as. With a roster as big as this, it becomes difficult to remember which characters you had unlocked after buying new ones. Many times while watching Let's Play's of RCS, I'd see someone go to the store, purchase a character, only to return to the character selection screen to say "Which one did I unlock?" That won't be a problem anymore. Now when you buy or unlock a character, you'll be greeted with a "NEW" icon, letting you know that you have yet to select, or highlight that specific character. You'll also notice that the blue box has been changed from "Partner" to "NPC Select" to better help people understand that this is who your currently selected computer controlled player is. Another improvement to the character selection screen, is the newly implemented character attack description that you can find underneath the currently selected character's Attack and Defense. In the screenshot to the left, we've selected Flora Breeze, who has an attack of 8, and a defense of 6. Her attack type is labeled as a single bullet, and you can see that she has an alternative fire in the form of a bullet storm. This will also make it easier to tell which characters have charge attacks, and which ones do not. The Attack and Defense stats have also been re-balanced to better reflect "real world performance." In the full release of the Director's Cut, we will also be implementing a sort of menu to help the player understand the character attributes at the bottom of the character selection screen as well, something that wasn't even touched upon in the full release of RCS. |
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Meet Flora Breeze
Speaking of new characters, over the last month, we held a OC creation contest, the winner of which would get their character put into the game as a playable character. That character is, Flora Breeze. The creator of this OC asked specifically to remain anonymous, but I'd still like to congratulate the individual on their creativity.
Flora Breeze is a pegasus, with a strange fascination with nature. So, it's only natural that her attack be based on nature.
Her standard attack is a leaf, akin to razor leaf from Pokemon. It'll travel along a randomly defined path in front of the character, gradually losing speed as it does.
Her charge attack is what we called 'Floral Storm." Floral Storm launches a torrent of leafs and flowers outwards on a strong gust of wind. The projectiles will twist and loop around in the breeze, giving her charge attack a fairly large spread. Her character is geared more towards the frequent use of the charge attack, as her standard attack does very little damage, but her charge can be charged quickly and used in succession to previous charges. Allowing Flora to cover chunks of the screen in leafs and flowers. This is a great attack for clearing out large amounts of smaller enemies quickly, but in concentration, is also great for taking down larger enemies, or bosses. Floral Breeze isn't the only new character to join the roster however. Here are some sneak peaks at a few of the characters you'll be able to unlock and play as. Some of which I bet you'll never have expected to see in our game.
Flora Breeze is a pegasus, with a strange fascination with nature. So, it's only natural that her attack be based on nature.
Her standard attack is a leaf, akin to razor leaf from Pokemon. It'll travel along a randomly defined path in front of the character, gradually losing speed as it does.
Her charge attack is what we called 'Floral Storm." Floral Storm launches a torrent of leafs and flowers outwards on a strong gust of wind. The projectiles will twist and loop around in the breeze, giving her charge attack a fairly large spread. Her character is geared more towards the frequent use of the charge attack, as her standard attack does very little damage, but her charge can be charged quickly and used in succession to previous charges. Allowing Flora to cover chunks of the screen in leafs and flowers. This is a great attack for clearing out large amounts of smaller enemies quickly, but in concentration, is also great for taking down larger enemies, or bosses. Floral Breeze isn't the only new character to join the roster however. Here are some sneak peaks at a few of the characters you'll be able to unlock and play as. Some of which I bet you'll never have expected to see in our game.
Do-it-yourself Clockwork Stallion
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In the previous update, I briefly touched on the new mechanic of collecting scrap from destroyed Clockwork Stallions to build an upgrade your very own Clockwork Stallion. Now that the feature has been fully realized, I can go deeper into depth about it. You may have noticed the gears and bolts that enemies drop when they are defeated in the full release of RCS. In that version of the game, you couldn't interact with them in any way. However, in the Director's Cut, these pieces of scrap can be collected to create your very own clockwork stallion. You decide if the character will be a melee based character, or a ranged character. The ranged attack is a single bullet, similar to Twilight Sparkle's attack. When upgraded, this energy bullet will become larger, and will do significantly more damage. The melee attack is a propeller based battering ram. When upgrading, you'll notice things like spikes being added to the blunt edge of the ram, giving the attack continuous damage. The more it's upgraded, the greater it's range will become as well. Will you focus on upgrading the jumping ability of your clockwork? Or will you focus on upgrading your clockwork's charge attack. You can also use the scrap you collect to build new chassis. With a bit of work, you can turn what is a fairly weak character to start with, into one of the most powerful characters in Rise of the Clockwork Stallions.
We're looking at alternative uses for collected scrap as well. One idea that might stick, is building you own Clockwork Blocky. We'll have to see how that pans out. |
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Map-screen Improvements
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The graphics for the map screen hadn't changed in almost 3 years of development. It only recently became painfully obvious that they were very outdated, and did a poor job of helping the player understand the relayed information that was crucial to game play.
This is a screenshot of the original mapscreen from the very early development stages of Rise of the Clockwork Stallions, nearly 4 years ago. Notice how little screen space is taken up by the bar at the bottom? The idea was to fit as much of the game's vital information on that bar. Allowing the player to have as much of the screen as possible for exploring the map screen. Something we always wanted to do was make our map screen less restrictive than other platformers similar to ours. We did this by hiding paths and allowing quick travel with the overworld balloon. That's why we wanted a more minimalistic HUD. |
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Somewhere, that original idea was lost, and we went with a much more screen filling design. There were clashing fonts, and a general lack of uniformity to the HUD from the full release. I'm not entirely sure what brought this change about, but it stayed this way through the vast majority of the development cycle. There were minor changes here and there, such as the addition and removal of a date and time display in the top right corner of the screen.
A few months before the full release, we added a sub-menu to the map screen HUD that could be activated and deactivated by pressing "shift." The sub-menu detailed the players statistics. Everything from total of jumps, to total playtime was counted and collected in this sub-menu. A very cool feature, but one that was ultimately just more wasted space that we could have utilized a lot better. Which is exactly what we did. |
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This is our new mapscreen HUD for the Director's Cut of Rise of the Clockwork Stallions. As you can see, we went back to the core idea behind the HUD, smaller and more defined that the old HUD. It's not only just a prettier HUD, it also makes a lot more sense as well. Drop shadows have been added to all the text in the HUD, making it a lot easier to read everything displayed, regardless of how bright, or dark the background becomes.
The font in the HUD has also been changed to match the rest of the game. All of these smaller improvements go a long way to make the game look and feel as polished as possible. Something a lot of people had asked for when we released the full game, was a way of tracking which stages they needed to still collect crown jewels in. Sure, the stage icons become black and shiny once the crown jewel in that stage has been collected, but wouldn't it be nice to be able to see that at a glance? Well, now you can. We re-used the sub-menu from the full release to display the crown jewels you have, and the crown jewels you have yet to collect. This sub-menu can also be used to see if you've missed any of the special stages in a specific world. 
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Visual and audio Updates
We went through and redid some of the older, outdated tilesets for levels as well. Some updates are minor, while others are completely reworked. We did the same with some of the music in the game as well. Below, you can find side-by-side comparisons of Full Release vs. Director's Cut
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Full Release
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Director's Cut
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This track was used for both phase one and two of the Clockwork Interior Stage.
I just created a second track to be used in the second phase of the stage. |