Part 2 - Pre-Alpha

ATLAS: Pre-Alpha started basically as soon as we had the mechanics working, a tileset to play with, and basic sprite animations. The idea was to get something of a small game done, so we could move on and do other projects. We had been throwing ideas around, and we were planning to get to them... Eventually.

But what happened is that Lobba had been invited to attend BIG Festival as a representative of the local Indie Games Association, I looked at that and said: "What if I go with you to promote Moth Planet?" 

We talked it over and decided to rush production of the Pre-Alpha, something that was being very slow, as basically everyone had other jobs and responsibilities to deal with. That was when I effectively joined the team as a level builder besides just an artist. Me and Selene shared responsibilities in the thick of the pre-alpha map build, and Myr got our first tutorial done. 

SELENE: Working on a game with another job is... a challenge. It has been rough at times but making rooms has been a great way to keep my sanity!

MYR: Up until Lobba's invitation to BIG Festival and trying to set a deadline to ourselves, we were very aimless on what we were developing. Until now, I had been creating game objects and logic thinking we were making a small Cat Planet tribute game, but as ideas evolved and we decided on what we wanted to show for the pre-alpha, along with more detailed concepts about why Robin is doing what they are doing and what the end game goals may look like, production kicked into a frenzy of ideas, a battle royale of what to keep, what to throw away, what to improve or forget. 

At this point, we were almost set on the path of making a full game rather than just a little demo, so we threw around ideas on what it meant to 'finish' Moth Planet, we mentioned wanting 4 biomes, we mentioned wanting 100 or so rooms (we ended up with around 240+ rooms in the final game), we mentioned wanting a variety of hazards and challenges that were unique to each biome, designing maps where they could enjoy Robin's dumb fast acceleration and bouncyness, among many other things. 

ATLAS: With the date of the trip set, we also had a pre-alpha release date planned, and focused on that for the build. We decided to focus on making forest levels because they were the ones with the most complete tilemap so far, featuring hazards and some enemies.

MYR: With the Pre-Alpha deadline looming, we settled on using one single biome, developing the its main elements of that and nothing else. With a single focus on delivering what we thought that biome must be, we decided to go with the forest, since we expected the village would be purely exploratory and narrative, with little to no hazards compared to the rest of the game.

ATLAS: We still needed to finish some elements of the game's User Interface, which we ended up settling for something akin to scraps of paper, nodding to Robin's note taking and the fact they might or might not eat paper (don't quote me on that). A picture counter was all we did for the pre-alpha, as well as the buttons and text boxes. 

MYR: With Forest in mind, we implemented Water Blocks that slowed down Robin on entry, Flowing Blocks that accelerated Robin in a certain direction, we added spikey hazards to the Forest TileSet,  created some enemies such as the Trapper Plant and the Stalker Plant,  and added some counters to keep track of how many Moths were interviewed. Finally, a very simple tutorial and Movers to move around geometry and other objects.

SELENE: I remember the first few rooms I fumbled up in engine. They were all about having fun around the water, a little bit of projectile dodging (because I could put it in), some thorny passage with precision flying, a cave with a cat in it, the prototype pachinko and the prototype refuge (felt like players may want a place to breathe going out of the thorns XD)

ATLAS: The enemies in the forest were the first ones to be designed and the reason why we avoided adding more in the rest of the game. They proved to be very complex to animate and code, and the way they behaved in much ways was completely counterintuitive to how the gameplay was shaping up. The player was way too fast to be caught by most of these, so they would only work in close quarters, but tight rooms were counterproductive to the game feel, it was never meant to be a precision platformer.

But the pre-alpha did end up being a precision platformer for the most part.

MYR: There were some features we discarded for the sake of time and complexity, there was supposed to be a third plant that was more like a piranha plant. It would use inverse kinematics for their stalk, and they’d look like a simple bud growing from a surface, you’d think it wouldn’t be a threat if you didn’t touch it, but the idea was that it could actually extend its stalk from the floor like a frog shooting its tongue. So they could reach out and eat you in a certain radius. 

This was scrapped due to not having time to study inverse kinematics or Godot’s bone tools as the deadline was looming close, this repeated itself over to our other development periods and we cut the snapper plant entirely.

At some point we also had ideas to make every region have some kind of ‘gameplay event’ that made that area unique. For the village it could have been the pachinko you have seen in the demos and final game, but it would have actually been its own minigame with actual scoring and different gameplay where you wouldn’t have been able to move as Robin usually does and be more up to randomness just like a real pachinko machine. 

For the Forest we wanted Robin to find a Blue ‘Drone’ Orb, similar to the Fire Orbs, but it wasn’t going to be hostile, it had no fireballs or void beams, it could just take pictures just like robin, same light effect and everything, the first ‘lead’ to Robin’s big article for the Moth Planet. The Drone would be alerted to Robin after they took a picture of it (while the drone itself is taking pictures of random forest plants as a way to survey the surface), then it would run away and Robin would give chase until it escapes into the Caves. 

For the Caves we didn’t have a concrete idea, but we wanted it to be some kind of Donkey Kong Minecart event sort of deal that would end up leading you to the Ruins. As for the Ruins, the event lives on as the final room in the game, perhaps not as intense or crazy as originally envisioned, but we are still happy with how it turned out.

ATLAS: So we finished up the alpha build and released it to get feedback. We sent it to friends, acquaintances, followers, and a lot of the feedback was helpful, others not. It was a real challenge to learn which feedback was something we should take to heart and others we should disregard.

Some of the feedback helped us create the map system, others pointed out how to build the regions and use the dialogs to paint a story. Most if it, in my memory, helped define what would be the challenge level of the game. The pre-alpha consisted of random levels built by me and Selene, with varying levels of challenge. It lacked a definite tutorialization and difficulty ramp-up, something we would try to address in the next build.

MYR: After the Pre-Alpha came out, well… We realized we really wanted to finish Moth Planet now. It looked so nice and it felt pretty fun to test and develop, we definitively were out of our depth, but we wanted to carry on and do everything (or most) of what we discussed if it was feasible for the final game. 

With some feedback, many of our development cycles after the Pre-Alpha related to addressing common things people mentioned were missing or wonky in that build, so we got to work on our next release, our Alpha, to address many of these things.

ATLAS: With the pre-alpha done and published, I went to BIG Festival with hopes of getting to know other devs, show the project, maybe get hands-on feedback, and so on. The trip itself would warrant a separate post, but we did manage to actually talk to industry leaders in it (Lobba is a networking machine), and the main takeaway they had for us was: If you're making the game for fun, do what you want. If you want to be a professional, you need to ship this game and move on,  because "it will sell 0 copies".

Now this might sound harsh, but from their point of view, it means the game isn't commercially viable. If we needed the income to actually keep the lights on in the studio we'd go bankrupt. But because our main focus was learning and making a game, we decided to, against better judgment (somewhat), keep working on the game to the best of our vision, with a tentative release date goal. Three months.